Achievements

The achievement screen of Pascal's Wager lists 82 achievements spread over six tabs: the base game, New Journey (new game plus), the Dark Mist maze, the Tides of Oblivion DLC, the Obsession Challenge and the Arcade mode, Dance of the Throne. Most are plain boss kills, but a large group are counters that the game tracks silently, and a handful have conditions that differ from what the English text suggests. Seven of the Arcade achievements also hand Elena permanent talents (see the Elena section below).

Overview#

Each achievement has a tier shown as a colored frame: Bronze (level 1) 52, Silver (level 2) 20, Gold (level 3) 9 and Platinum (level 4) 1. Tiers carry no extra reward in the game's data; the only gameplay rewards are the Elena talents below.

Achievement list#

Columns: Max is the internal counter target (1 for plain events). Min. difficulty shows the data field leastUnlockDiff: "Normal only" means the achievement can not be earned on Casual (see Hidden mechanics below). Shown before unlock is the isAlwaysOpen flag; when it is "no", the screen displays "???" for the name and goal until the achievement is done. Goals are summarized, the in-game text is longer.

Pascal's Wager#

New Journey#

Deep into the Dark Mist#

The Tides of Oblivion#

Obsession Challenge#

Dance of the Throne#

Elena talent unlocks#

In Dance of the Throne, killing each of the seven "Obsessed Ones" gives Elena one extra talent and the matching achievement (Shadow Moon to Path of Truth, 60005 to 60011). The talent belongs to the achievement: the data field Achievement on the talent row links them, and the stage monster row carries the talent id in TalentAdd. The stages, opponents, talent ids (17401 to 17407) and effects are in the table at Arcade mode#Elena's talents in the mode.

How it works:

• When Elena (hero 10007) kills one of these bosses during a run, the talent is added to her immediately and the achievement is granted at once (ControllerStoryMode:AddTalent).
• At the start of a stage-select stage, InitArcadeHeroTalent goes through Elena's talents and gives her every one whose achievement is already finished (controllerstorymode.lua:1510-1512; the call is not made in a full playthrough). So the unlocks are permanent for the account, not for a single run.
• In the talent screen, these seven talents are shown without the grey frame in Arcade mode even if the normal prerequisites are missing (PlayerInfoCtrl).
• The data values are 300 for both Max Health talents, 150 or 200 for the three stamina-chain talents and 200 or 300 for the two Max Stamina talents. The talent screen divides property bonuses by 1000 when it previews them, so 300 on Max Health reads as +30 percent (inferred from the preview code, the in-game description only says "increases"). For the stamina-chain talents the unit is not shown anywhere I could find.
• One more Arcade achievement is tied to a pickup rather than a kill: Lost in a Dream (60015) is granted by quest 10062310 ("pick up an item" in stage 1006, Blessedland).

Hidden mechanics#

Two layers of tracking. Each save keeps counters (achievementList) and an "already counted" id list per counter (achievementStatisticsList). When a counter reaches its Max, the achievement id is pushed to the account-wide finished list, which the platform layer uploads (the whole list, comma separated) every time something new is added. Counters are stored in the save, the finished list is shared by all saves.

Counters survive new journeys. Starting a new journey (FS_SaveStory:Restart) does not clear the counters or the "already counted" lists. Everything with a Max above 1 keeps accumulating across journeys of the same save. Because the dedup lists persist too, Whisper of the Heart ("in a new game round") can be completed with one companion contract in each of three different journeys; the text suggests a single round, the code does not enforce it (inferred from the absence of any reset).

The achievement screen does not show progress. The progress text of every row is hard-set to "1"; the counters are never read by the screen.

Difficulty gate. RecordAchievement discards the event when the achievement's leastUnlockDiff is higher than the current difficulty. Difficulty ids are Casual 1, Normal 2, Expert 3, and SetDifficulty clamps anything above Normal down to Normal. 31 achievements are flagged Normal-only: the 12 story-boss ones (Crazy Prologue to Escape from Madness), Nightmare, The Truth, Challenge, Legendary Courier, all 5 Dark Mist ones, 8 of the 10 Tides ones (all except Trading Without Borders and Dominator's Revelry) and the two Dance of the Throne ones Endless Nightmare and Empress of the Eternal Night. In practice this means the DLC document hunt (Pieces of Old Days, 28 documents) does not count on Casual. Achievements the game awards by calling the account list directly skip the check: 60002, 60003, 60004, 60012, 60013, 60014, 50001 to 50004 and the Elena talent grant. So Endless Nightmare and Empress of the Eternal Night are flagged Normal-only in the data but nothing in the call path blocks them on Casual (inferred from the call path).

Mode gate. In the Obsession Challenge (time-challenge mode) RecordAchievement always returns without doing anything, so no story achievement can be earned there. In Arcade mode it only accepts ids from 60000 to 70000. Achievements 50001 to 50004 and the Elena skill ones bypass the gate because they call the account list directly.

Platinum rule. Pascal's Wager (12014) needs 42 finished achievements with id below 20000, which is every other achievement in the first tab. It is awarded by two redundant checks (per-save counter and global count). Achievements from the other five tabs never count towards it.

Strong Obsession staging. "Defeat a Strong Obsession" and "Kill all Strong Obsessions" refer to final bosses whose grade was raised by Lunatic. When a final boss (not a maze boss) dies, the game checks grade > grade threshold. If so, Nightmare (11005) is granted. If not, a per-journey flag is set and The Truth (12011) is no longer possible for that journey. The same flag is reset at the start of each journey. The last base boss (8001) and the last Tides boss (9078) count as Lunatic kills automatically, so they never set the flag. Note that The Truth is checked when you finish the game (quest 88888), together with Challenge and Legendary Courier.

Challenge is checked at the end. Challenge (12013) is evaluated only at the end of a run: Terrence's level must still be 1. Gaining a level then losing it by any means is irrelevant; the check is a plain level test at that moment.

Legendary Courier. At the end of a run the game requires journey number at least 4 (BattleData.GameLoopMax) and that the Egg of the Bearer (item 10018) was not used in that journey. The "used the egg" flag is reset to false at the start of each journey, so only the current journey counts, not the earlier ones. The flag is set only while the journey counter is exactly 4, so from journey 5 on the egg is no longer tracked (New Game Plus#hm-legendary-courier-has-a-loophole-legendary-courier-needs).

Ingenuity and Great Master. The two +5 trophy achievements are staged: each time a trophy reaches the maximum strength level (internal level 6) the game first tries to bump Great Master if Ingenuity is already complete, then adds one to Ingenuity. So Ingenuity takes the first three +5 trophies and Great Master the next three, which is why its description says 6 while the data Max is 3.

Alchemist needs 17 of 18. The data lists 18 formula quests (Q12014 and Q22405 to Q22421) but the counter stops at 17, so one formula can be skipped.

Crafting counters count batch size. Druggist, Merchant in the War and Blacksmith add the quantity you craft in one confirmation, not one per craft. Despite the label "Acquire 20 Trophy items", Blacksmith counts trophies crafted at the altar, not trophies picked up. Likewise "Make 30 Weapon items" counts items of the Attack main type (the throwables). Illusion counts every Anthozoan Bones added to the bag by any source, so quest rewards and drops count; spending them later does not reduce the total.

Beginner and Grandmaster use the word "Immundus" for talent stones. Beginner triggers the first time any talent is raised. Grandmaster adds the number of Immundus Diamonds (item 50004) consumed.

Obsession Challenge naming. The constants behind 50002 and 50003 are called "killAllBossInCustomMode" and "killAllBossInNormalModeVeryHard". The code checks time records at challenge level 5 (Custom) for The Obsessed One and level 4 (Very Hard) for Eternal Colossus, which matches the English text if "Standard Mode" is the given-character mode and "Colossus" is the Very Hard level (inferred). Untouchable (50001) accepts a no-damage record at any of the five levels.

Dance of the Throne checks. Return to Sender needs 10 parried projectiles inside a 10 second window (it compares each new parry to the one made 9 parries earlier). Deadly Elegance counts three Beat Back events while using the two Lone Shadow skills; the counter is kept on the hero object, so it is not guaranteed to survive a scene reload (inferred). Empress of the Eternal Night needs an average stage grade of 4.0 (S counts 4, A 3, B 2, C 1, over the 8 stages) at the Hard pattern.

Casual players. On Casual you can still earn everything that is not flagged above, including the base-game collection counters (Siflers, documents, Heggies), the crafting counters and the Ichthyosauria Sifler and Heggie ones. The platinum is not reachable on Casual because Crazy Prologue and 14 other base-game achievements are inside its 42 (inferred from the gate).

Trivia#

• The platinum's internal Chinese title reads as "Pascal's Pact" rather than "Wager".
• Two achievements are called Dark Mist Lord: 12008 (Silver, all five Lost Valleys, see Collectibles) and 30001 (Gold, the final boss of the maze).
• The game text spells the boss name "Rosen Cavailer Patrick" in achievements 10009 and 10017; this page uses the corrected spelling.
• Icons: the 82 icons are numbered by Icon, not by id; Dominator's Revelry (40010) uses icon 40011.

Sources#

• reference/lua_src/luascript/structdata/fs_achievement.lua:1-125 (finished list, platinum check at lines 75-102)
• structdata/fs_savestory.lua:3557-3594 (per-save counters), 120-122, 985-1005 (storage), 1252-1321 (Restart, does not reset counters), 3483-3490 (SetKillBossNotInSan)
• structdata/ms_achievement.lua:9-72 (id constants and thresholds: BeforeSecondTime 20000, InSanDuration 18000, bottle ids, boss ids, ArcadeMonsterList)
• controller/controllerstorymode.lua:6290-6312 (RecordAchievement gates), 1510-1512 (InitArcadeHeroTalent only in stage select), structdata/fs_savestory.lua:1993-1997 (SetHadNoobItem only when the counter equals 4), 8862-8874 and 9312-9318 (quest-driven), 9431-9442 (OnCompleteOneGame), 1717, 1722-1737, 1862, 3365-3380, 5517-5534, 5587-5589, 3505-3516
• controller/controllermain.lua:2132-2140 (Lost Valley entry)
• ui/controller/playerinfoctrl.lua:4851, 4894-4927, 7451-7458, 7515-7519; ui/controller/exchangectrl.lua:460; ui/controller/mainmenuctrl.lua:8734, 9100-9162; ui/controller/achievementctrl.lua:10-22, 262-285
• logic/player/hero10007.lua:140-160, 560-590; logic/playervalue/animalbase_value.lua:588-625; structdata/fs_arcade.lua:698-716; structdata/fs_challenge.lua:569-613; structdata/fs_userdata.lua:109-121
• logic/battle/battledata.lua:18-22, 45, 123-132; structdata/ms_itemdata.lua:110-112, 156; sdk/sdkhelper.lua:1191-1210; structdata/ls_achievement.lua:55-82
• Tables: es_achievement.lua (82 rows, Achievement kit table), es_herotalent.lua ids 205-211, es_storymonster.lua rows 2231, 2291, 2358, 2405, 2623, 2695, 2727 (TalentAdd), es_storyquest.lua (Achievement and type-30 action columns), es_trophydata.lua items 60075 and 60080, es_itemdata.lua items 10018, 40011, 50001-50005