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Outer Wilds is a magical space exploration game that has struck a chord with many players because of its hands-off approach to its puzzles. It sees players being trapped in a time loop that ends with the destruction of the solar system.
Players have to go through the loop repeatedly until they can piece together how to stop the destruction of their home before the timer ends.
The game is also an enjoyable experience in tracking down achievements, both in the base game and its DLC. So, here is everything you need to know to pick up all the gamerscore Outer Wilds has to offer.
Key Info Up Front
- Genre:Â First-Person Exploration
- Difficulty:Â 3/10
- Number of Playthroughs Required:Â 2
- Estimated Time Required:Â Approximately 30 hours
- Number of Achievements:Â 29
Outer Wilds Walkthrough
Before diving into what each achievement requires, we’ll look at the best way to tackle getting every achievement in Outer Wilds. This will keep you from missing any and having to do other achievements while also helping you tackle everything in the easiest way possible.
Step One: The Natural Playthrough
For this step, you should play through the game naturally to experience it how the developers intended it. None of the achievements are missable, but if you need help getting any or are ever not sure where to go next, the below descriptions will help you out.
There are also some helpful tips that you should know to ensure this playthrough goes as smoothly as possible.
Firstly, spend as much time as you can explore your home planet. Not only will talking to every character give you helpful tips that will save you some headaches later on, but you can also practice important skills like flying and traversal in zero gravity.
This will also help you complete challenges and solve puzzles in the solar system, where the conditions aren’t always so favorable. Also, always remember to suit up when you enter your ship.
It is a very quick thing to do, but that also means that it is easy to forget, leaving you in a bad situation when you exit your ship into the vacuum of space.
You should also know that the time loop in Outer Wilds is 22 minutes long. The Loop will restart if you die before the entire 22 minutes pass, but at 11 minutes, the sun at the center of the system will start expanding as a Red Giant.
It will eventually go supernova, but you’ll get a musical theme that starts at 20:40 to warn you that you’re running out of time for your current loop. There is no in-game timer for the loop, so you’ll have to use the sun’s appearance and the musical cue to piece together how much time you have remaining.
As you fly to other planets and locations, you’ll also need to manage your speed to avoid running into anything too quickly and damaging your ship. If you damage it, you can repair those parts by looking at them and holding a button.
An important note is also that if the reactor of your ship gets damaged, you only have one minute to repair it before it explodes and kills you early. Also, keep an eye out for warnings that Ghost Matter is nearby. You can then use the Scout or your ship’s landing camera to detect it, but avoid it as only a few seconds of contact will kill you.
Achievements in this Step
- You’ve met a terrible fate.
- Hey, what’s this button do?
- Hotshot
- It was worth a shot.
- Rigidbody
- From the Hearth to the moon
- Deep Impact
- Harmonic Convergence
- It belongs in a museum!
- Die Hard
- Pchooooooo!
- Gone In 60 Seconds
- Mmmm, Carcinogens…
- Cutting it Close
- Mica’s Wrath
- Archaeologist
Step Two: The Perfect Loop
You should only move on to this step after you’ve unlocked all of the other base game achievements in the game. To get the final achievement for the base game, Beginner’s Luck, you need to finish the whole game in a single 22-minute loop.
Since you can only have one save of the game at a time, you’ll have to delete your other save file and go through everything you need to do quickly and efficiently.
If you happen to die during your attempt, make sure to exit to the menu and start again, even if you didn’t make any progress on your first life. Once you’re done with this, you’re ready to move on to the Echoes of the Eye DLC.
Achievements in this Step
- Beginner’s Luck
Step Three: Echoes of the Eye
Before you can start the DLC, you first have to find the Stranger in the base game. To do this, follow these steps:
- Go to the new museum exhibit on Timber Hearth.
- Get in your ship and go to the Radio Tower on Timber Hearth.
- Look at the pictures there and then fly out to the Deep Space Sattelite by either finding the Deep Space Radio frequency or the tiny red dot added to your map.
- Look at the sun once you get to the satellite until a black circle of space appears on the sun. Render the satellite inoperable (see the achievement of The Silenced Cartographer below) so that you don’t have to come back later.
- Fly toward the big black circle, land your ship on the platform that eventually appears, and enter the door.
- Shine your flashlight on the object in the middle of the room you find yourself in. This will cause bars to start spinning on the walls. Turn your flashlight off when they line up on the opposite side of the room and then go through the newly opened door.
Once you have done the above steps, you will have the Stranger as a location on your map that you can fly to. The Stranger is main new area of the DLC, so you’ll want to thoroughly explore it and get all of the achievements other than Ghosts in the Machine.
Once you have them out of the way, you’ll need to start a new game and complete the DLC in a single loop, just like you did for the base game.
Achievements in this Step
- The Silenced Cartographer
- Around the world in 90 seconds
- Tubular
- Early Adopter
- The Grate Filter
- Flat Hearther
- Celsius 232.78
- Sleep. Wake. Repeat.
- Simulation Hypothesis
- Fire Arrows
- 1/900
- Ghosts in the Machine
- Oof, Ouch, My Bones
Outer Wilds Achievements
You’ve Met a Terrible Fate
Gamerscore: 110
Description:Â This achievement is for getting a second probe through a paradox.
Tips:Â To do this, you’ll have to head to the High Energy Lab. You can open a big window by sliding the energy ball there. You then need to take the black and white energy cores there and place them on the wall beneath the window.
This will create a black hole and a white hole. You’ll notice that you can shoot your probe into the black hole to make it appear from the white hole.
Then, give additional power to the cores by sliding the energy ball upstairs to make your probe appear out of the white hole before entering the black hole. Finally, launch your probe at the black hole and remove the black power core before it enters but after it exits the white hole to end up with two probes.
Hey, what’s this Button do?
Gamerscore:Â 36
Description:Â This achievement is for ejecting out of your ship.
Tips:Â To do this, enter your ship and sit down in the cockpit without buckling up. Look to your right, and there will be a bright red button. Push that button to raise your eject cover, and then press it again to be launched from your ship.
Hotshot
Gamerscore:Â 90
Description:Â This achievement is for manually boarding the Sun Station.
Tips:Â The Sun Station orbits the sun at the center of the solar system very quickly, which means this achievement can take a few tries. The easiest way to do this is to get to the sun, wait for the station to orbit it horizontally, and then start orbiting the sun from 2700m away.
As the Sun Station gets close to you, try to match your speed before maneuvering your ship to be in line with the station. Then, look at the doorway into the station and match your velocity with the door in particular. Once you’re properly positioned, exit your ship and jetpack to the door to get this achievement to pop.
It was Worth a Shot
Gamerscore:Â 36
Description:Â This achievement is for trying to escape the solar system.
Tips:Â To do this, fly straight away from the sun until more than 20,000km away. Then, the game will automatically kill you, giving you this achievement.
Beginner’s Luck
Gamerscore:Â 90
Description:Â This achievement is for finishing the game in a single loop.
Tips:Â To do this, it has to be in a completely new game, so start with a fresh save file. If you die at any point, make sure to exit the menu and restart entirely, otherwise, it won’t count as completing it in one loop. The steps you have to complete are below in the correct order:
- Get your launch codes from Hornfel.
- Launch your ship and fly to the Ember Twin near the sun.
- Land by the Distress Beacon and scan it with your Signal Scope.
- Get in your ship and fly to the Ash Twin.
- Land next to the equator, so you don’t get sucked into the sand and wait for the tower to be uncovered.
- Enter the tower after the bridge from the tower that looks like a sun and enter through its broken roof. You’ll know it’s the right one if it has the dead Nomai in front of it.
- Stand by the wall underneath a remaining piece of the roof to avoid getting sucked in the sand.
- Wait for the black hole teleporter to be exposed and use it to teleport while looking up to go to the core of the Ember Twin.
- Run around the core until the orb switches and deactivate the shielding around the warp core to turn off the artificial gravity and grab the now revealed core.
- To back to the white hole warp pad and use it to return to your ship.
- Fly to the Dark Seed Bramble and use your Distress Signal search to help you navigate it and find the signal source.
- Turn around and follow the small lights behind you until you find a seed surrounded by corpses.
- Send your Scout through the seed and then fly down to the red light that appears.
- Stop by the red light seed and get out of your ship.
- Align yourself so that you aren’t looking straight at any white lights, and then slowly approach the seed to enter it while avoiding the Anglerfish there.
- Head to the location of the Scout.
- Go straight for the vessel inside the seed and enter it.
- Head to the left from the hallway and find where you can place a warp core.
- Place the warp core, move the orb to power it, and use the code input device to enter the right code.
- Once the code entry machine drops, grab the orb switch and pull it upwards to finish the run.
Rigidbody
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for knocking a satellite out of orbit.
Tips: The satellite you can do this with orbits your home planet and is pretty easy to find. Once you do, fly your ship into it and you should bump it out of orbit and get this one to pop.
From the Hearth to the Moon
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for flying the model rocket on your home planet to the moon.
Tips:Â To make this as easy as possible, wait until you’ve already been to the moon, Attlerock, yourself. Then, after waking up, use the Eye Signal Locator to set a marker on the north pole of Attlerock.
Then, go to the toy rocket platform and wait until the locator is around 700 meters away. Launch the rocket, and you should be able to fly straight up to the moon. You can crash into it as hard as you want, and the achievement will still pop.
Deep Impact
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for breaking through the currents of Giant’s Deep.
Tips:Â To break through the planet’s surface currents, you have to ram into the planet with a significant speed. To do this, head straight away from the planet until you’re around 170km away.
Then, turn and fly straight toward the planet, accelerating the entire time. This will get you enough speed to crash through it, but it may take a few tries as you can get unlucky and hit an island or something else that will prevent you from breaking through the current.
Harmonic Convergence
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for hearing all travelers’ music at once.
Tips:Â The easiest way to get this achievement out of the way is to fly 1.5km away from the sun and then turn to look back on the solar system. Take out your signal scope and set it to Outer Wilds Ventures to hear all of the instruments at once.
It Belongs in a Museum!
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for bringing an artifact back to the museum at the observatory.
Tips:Â The easiest way to do this is to fly to Ash Twin and get into the tower with the hole in its roof. Teleport to the core of the planet, open the core housing, and disable the artificial gravity. Grab the core and then return to your ship and take it to the museum.
Die Hard
Gamerscore:Â 36
Description:Â This achievement is for being alive at the end of a loop after taking and healing over 1,000 damage.
Tips:Â This one can be a bit hard to get naturally, but following the below steps will get it for you:
- Wake up at the start of the loop.
- Get your launch codes and put on the suit in your ship.
- Get back out of the ship and run into the fire until your vitals become critical.
- You can then heal by either eating some roasted marshmallows or using the medkit in your ship.
- Repeat this process around ten times to be safe, and then wait out the rest of the loop without meditating.
Pchooooooo!
Gamerscore:Â 36
Description:Â This achievement is for sending your ship flying with a gravity cannon.
Tips:Â You can find the gravity cannon on the Ember Twin. It is a spire with many holes in it that you have to land inside of. Then, from inside your ship move the energy orb to the top left to send your ship flying.
Gone In 60 Seconds
Gamerscore:Â 36
Description:Â This achievement is for dying in the first 60 seconds of a loop.
Tips:Â After you wake up, walk into the campfire and stand there until you die.
Mmmm, Carcinogens…
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for eating 10 roasted marshmallows.
Tips:Â This can be done immediately at the campfire on the planet after you wake up.
Cutting it Close
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for narrowly avoiding death by oxygen depletion.
Tips:Â Fly your ship to Attlerock and land. Get out of your ship and go underneath your ship right next to the purple tractor beam. Fly up into the bottom of your ship until you run out of fuel and start using oxygen to propel yourself. Once you only have a minute of oxygen left, go into the tractor beam to save yourself and get the achievement.
Mica’s Wrath
Gamerscore:Â 90
Description:Â This achievement is for flying the model rocket into the sun.
Tips:Â The model rocket can be flown off the platform at the top of the starting village. At the start of your loop, run to the platform, fly the rocket straight there to destroy it, and get this achievement to pop.
Archaeologist
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for filling the ship log.
Tips:Â Ship log entries are unlocked by exploring the system and talking to characters you find. You will likely get the majority of these naturally as you play through the game, but here are the number of entires for each location in the solar system:
- Gravity Cannon – 2
- Tower of QTÂ – 4
- Tower of QKÂ – 3
- Quantum Shard – 3
- Quantum Grove – 2
- Quantum Caves – 2
- Lakebed Caves – 3
- Quantum Moon – 2
- Quantum Shrine – 4
- Sixth Location – 6
- Solanum’s Shuttle – 2
- Quantum Moon Locator – 3
- White Hole Station – 4
- High Energy Lab – 3
- Ash Twin Tower Designs – 4
- Alignment Angle Diagram – 4
- Statue Island – 2
- Statue Workshop – 3
- Sun Station – 4
- Ash Twin Towers – 2
- Black Hole Forge – 5
- Nomai Mines – 3
- Volcanic Testing Site – 3
- Ash Twin Project – 5
- Anglerfish Fossil – 3
- Old Settlement – 4
- Mural 1Â – 1
- Mural 2 – 1
- Mural 3Â – 1
- Escape Pod 1 – 2
- Escape Pod 2 – 2
- Escape Pod 3 – 3
- Nomai Grave – 4
- The Vessel – 6
- Eye Signal Locator – 2
- Southern Observatory – 4
- Tornado Simulation – 2
- Construction Yard – 3
- Orbital Probe Cannon – 3
- Control Mod – 2
- Launch Mod – 3
- Probe Tracking Mod – 4
- Ocean Depths – 2
- Bramble Island – 1
- Feldspar’s Camp – 3
- Frozen Jellyfish – 3
- Northern Glacier – 2
- Chert’s Camp – 5
- Sunless City – 3
- Hanging City – 4
- Gabbro’s Island – 4
- Village – 3
- Zero-G Cave – 2
- Riebecks Camp – 2
- Esker’s Camp – 1
- Lunar Lookout – 1
- Dark Bramble Seed – 3
- Gravity Cannon – 2
- Frozen Nomai Shuttle – 4
- Ruptured Core – 4
Echoes of the Eye Achievements
Around the World in 90 Seconds
Gamerscore:Â 90
Description:Â This achievement is for getting around the Stranger in no more than 90 seconds.
Tips:Â At the start of the loop, sleep by the campfire for approximately 10 minutes and 45 seconds. Fly to the stranger and go inside. Start going to the left and take the leftmost path, except for going right at the broken dam.
The timing for this achievement is very important so that you are doing the second half of the Stranger after the dam bursts, as it will give you the speed boost necessary to complete it in the time requirement.
Tubular
Gamerscore:Â 90
Description:Â This achievement is for riding the face of a big wave in the Stranger.
Tips:Â Go to the stranger after waiting at the campfire in your village for ten minutes at the start of the loop and push the raft onto the river.
Ride it down carefully, and once the dam breaks, catch the resulting wave and use only your left and right lights to stay on it for at least 15 seconds. If you have a hard time staying on the raft, hold the button to have your thrusters pushing down the entire time.
Early Adopter
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for returning an artifact to the temple.
Tips:Â To do this, head to the Damage Laboratory and enter through the hull breach. Exit your ship, go through the burned room, and open the door to reach the main laboratory.
However, there are three artifacts in the room, so make sure you get the one that looks like a C. Then, return to the temple in the Hidden Gorge with the artifact, place it, and then fall asleep at the campfire.
The Grate Filter
Gamerscore:Â 35
Description:Â This achievement is for swimming through the grate in the Stranger’s dam.
Tips:Â At the Stranger, take the elevator to the left of the main door. Go through the doorway at the top and turn right through a second doorway.
You’ll be at the top of the dam. Look over the right edge of the dam and line yourself up with the grate with water pouring out of it. Stay aligned with it, jump into the water to your left, find the grate, and swim through it.
Flat Hearther
Gamerscore:Â 35
Description:Â This achievement is for getting crushed by an elevator.
Celsius 232.78
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for putting a slideshow dial in a fire.
Ghosts in the Machine
Gamerscore:Â 110
Description:Â This achievement is for finishing the DLC in a single loop.
Tips:Â To do this, follow the below steps:
- Get to the Stranger and grab the artifact from the haunted house with ghost matter to its right. Go into the first dream world, blow the lights out, and wake up.
- Head to the tower and materialize the house.
- Go to the hidden gorge and die to enter the dream world there. Turn off all the house lights and head to where you spawn the bridge. Drop your artifact there and find the invisible path behind the bridge spawner. Grab your artifact and leave. Go to the invisible path and take it to the archive before immediately taking the elevator back up.
- Take the raft and get to the tower’s dreamland. Go straight into the well, ride the elevator down, and then back up, being careful to avoid the owl in the area.
- Return to the raft and take it to the woodlands. Go through the house’s dreamland and reach the archive to get this achievement.
Sleep. Wake. Repeat.
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for waking up from a dream in five different ways in one loop.
Tips:Â The five ways you can be woken up for this achievement are:
- Burning
- Drowning
- Falling
- Being woken by the bell
- Being caught by a Stalker
Simulation Hypothesis
Gamerscore:Â 35
Description:Â This achievement is for returning to your home village with an artifact from the Stranger and sleeping at the campfire there.
Fire Arrows
Gamerscore:Â 110
Description:Â This achievement is for landing your little Scout on the sun on the wall when you ride the raft.
1/900
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for completing a puzzle to get a turd.
Tips:Â Go to the simulation in the hidden gorge on the Stranger. Go right and follow the candles until you reach the totem pole on your left. Use it and focus the artifact to light up a bridge. Go back to the room you entered and jump through one of the paintings on its right wall.
Follow that path until you reach another totem and use it to extinguish most of the lights in the house. Go back through the painting and over the bridge and drop the artifact to get night vision. Once you reach the house, turn right and head up the stairs. Follow the path until you get to the patrolling enemy.
Wait for it to pass and then follow it up to the balcony. Jump over the edge to the roof and follow it until you can climb up the crest. There, you will find the turd and get the achievement.
You’ll Never Take Me Alive!
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for swimming in the water in the house within the hidden gorge simulation.
Tips:Â Go to the house in the simulation with most of the lights extinguished. Once you get there go down the stairs to the left and use the hand warp to get around the enemy near the bridge. Turn left after crossing the bridge and go to the torch statue. Light the bridge, turn left, and jump over the railing into the water.
Oof, Ouch, My Bones
Gamerscore:Â 55
Description:Â This achievement is for getting kicked out of a simulation by a Stalker with a lamp when you don’t have an artifact.
The Silenced Cartographer
Gamerscore:Â 35
Description:Â This achievement is for disabling the Deep Space Satellite.
Tips:Â The easiest way to disable it is by ramming into it with your ship.
FAQs
Question: Is Outer Wilds a Horror Game?
Answer: Outer Wilds elements can be chilling or ominous, but the game itself is not a horror game and does not try to scare the player.
Question: Are there Any Missable Achievements in Outer Wilds?
Answer: No, you can get all of the achievements in any order without worrying about missing any during a playthrough.
Question: How Many Endings does Outer Wilds have?
Answer:Â Outer Wilds has eight different endings for players to discover, although they don’t have any achievements tied to them.