Starbound Achievements Guide

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Arron is a featured team writer and lifelong gamer. Ever since he started playing games on his old SNES, he's been hooked. Once the Xbox 360 was released he quickly found himself hunting down achievements and trophies as fast as he could. There are plenty of games that he has only played for the achievements or trophies, but he also plays a little bit of everything, with a particular love for deep RPGs and skillful shooters. Currently, he is working to 100% both Pillars of Eternity games while he waits for the biggest upcoming releases and some standout indies.

Key Info Up Front

Genre: Side-Scrolling Survival

Difficulty: 6/10

Number of Playthroughs Required: 1

Time to Complete: Approximately 60 hours

Number of Achievements: 51

Starbound Walkthrough

Before we break down every achievement in Starbound and how to get them, we’ll look at your overall playthrough. Doing so will not only let you know what to expect before you decide to tackle completing Starboundbut will also help you plan your playthrough to be as efficient and fun as possible.

Step One: The Story

The first part of your playthrough should naturally focus on experiencing the game’s main questline. There are no missable achievements in Starbound, so you should first focus on exploring the world, playing through the main story quests, and naturally discovering all of the game’s enemies and systems. This will let you get the story-related achievements out of the way and very likely see you making progress toward other achievements and help you understand how the game works and what you’ll have to do to unlock the other achievements. There are also no achievements tied to difficulty, so feel free to play on whichever three options sound the most enjoyable to you.

Achievements in this Step:

Congratulations on your Graduation!
The Wanderer
The Hopeful
The Brave
The Wise
The Devout
The Resilient
The Loyal
The Protector
Adventurer Eventuality

Step Two: Side Quests and Colonization

After you wrap up the main story quests, you’ll want to start on expanding your colony, getting crew members, and completing the side quests unlocked by doing so. This portion of the playthrough will make the most of your time, but you can thankfully approach it any way you want. None of the achievements here are too specific, so feel free to expand however you want and take the colonist quests that seem the most fun, especially since you’ll be doing so many. You may also complete some Step Three and Four achievements during this step by playing naturally. You may also want to start working on your collections for Step Three while running around, so check those achievements out.

Achievements in this Step:

Ending Prohibition
shock and Awe
King Barbarian
Cosmic Curator
A Helping Hand
A Cheeky Chore
A Tireless Task
Home Sweet Home
Cramped Colony
From the Ashes
All Walks of Life
First Mate
Feathered Friend
A Motley Crew
Captain of the Year

Step Three: Completing Your Collections

After you’ve got yourself well established and have done all of the quests and tasks that you need to, you’ll want to start working on finishing the more grindy collection achievements. You’ll have to find unique bugs, fossils, armor, crops, recipes, and codices. This step can take an incredibly long time to finish up, primarily because of collecting 100 unique codexes. So, make sure that you get as many of them as possible in the previous steps by finding them in chests. If you wrap up everything else and still need to get the Well-Read achievement, just keep grinding missions and exploring new areas until you get there.

Achievements in this Step:

Bug Tracker
Bug-Free
Alien Archaeologist
Them Bones
Protected Protector
Armour Aficionado
Book Club
Well-Read
The Simple Life
Starbound Valley
Just like mum used to make!
Culinary Century

Step Four: The Leftovers

At this point, there’s a good chance you’ll have a fair number of these already, especially the combat-related ones. Besides those, these achievements are for completing specific actions that you might have to go out of your way to grab quickly.

Achievements in this Step:

Monster Whisperer
Not in Front of the Children!
Villain
Nox’s Apprentice
Too Heavy to Kick
Sweet Revenge
Mint Condition
Not A Llama
Perfectly Generic Achievement
Augmented Reality
Destroyer of Worlds
Traveling in Style
You’re aMAZEing!
Amateur Bard

Starbound Achievements

Amateur Bard

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for getting your first musical instrument.

Tips: You can find an instrument in multiple ways, and you should get one naturally. When looking for fossils, you can get one from chests, sidequests, and digging one up.

Perfectly Generic Achievement

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for purchasing the Perfectly Generic Item at the Outpost.

You’re aMAZEing!

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for beating the Mazebound arcade minigame.

Tips: Mazebound can be found in the Beakeasy bar and can be played once you unlock the achievement The Devout below. The game is just a simple maze, so you can ignore all the other information and stats on the screen as they don’t mean anything. To finish the maze, follow these steps:

From the start of the maze go left.
Go down to the end of that hall and turn right.
Go down to the end of that hall and turn left.
Go forward to the end of that short hall and turn right.
Go down to the end of that hall and turn right.
Go down to the end of that hall and turn right.
Go forward until you can turn left and do so.
Go forward just a bit until you can turn left and do so.
Go forward and turn left at the second doorway.
Go all the way down and turn right.
Go all the way down and turn right.
Go forward until you can turn right and do so.
Go forward until you can turn right and do so.
Stick by the wall on your right, go down as far as possible, and turn left.
Go all the way down and turn left.
Go forward and take the second right.
Go forward to complete the maze.

Bug Tracker

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for capturing your first bug with the net.

Tips: To catch bugs, you have to first build a net at a foraging table, which is easy to do. Then, carry the net with you and use it to grab any bug you see flying around. Bugs can be tricky to spot, but they are small pixels that fly around the world and are sometimes colorful.

Just Like Mum Used to Make!

Gamerscore: 10

Description: This achievement is for making your first recipe.

Tips: To start making food, you have first to craft a campfire using four logs and a torch. Then, you can interact with it to bring up a cooking menu that lets you turn ingredients into cooked food. Then, just choose any recipe you have the materials to make.

Home Sweet Home

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for getting your first colonist.

Tips: To house a colonist, you first need to build them a room enclosed with a light source, door, and filled-in background. Then, go to the Frogg Furnishing store in the Outpost to purchase a Colony Deed. Once you place that in the room, a colonist will appear and join your colony.

First Mate

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for getting your first crew member.

Tips: NPCs will join your crew occasionally after you finish a sidequest for them. When NPCs are willing to join your crew, they will offer, and all you have to do is accept to get this achievement to unlock.

Alien Archaeologist

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for getting your first complete fossil.

Tips: Before gathering fossils, you need to craft a few Fossil Brushes at a Fossil Station. Then, you can use the brushes on bones in the background of generic caves on planets to start the excavating minigame. The minigame works similarly to Minesweeper, so it may take some time to hang it. Once you have the fossil, you must place it in a Fossil Display that you can build at a Fossil Station to count as collected. Also, get rid of any enemies near fossils before you try to collect them, as they can still attack you during the minigame.

Monster Whisperer

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for capturing your first monster.

Tips: The first step to this achievement is crafting a capture pod at a Pet Station with three Durasteel Bars and one Diamond. Then, you have to weaken a monster and throw the ball at it to capture them.

Traveling in Style

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for buying your first vehicle.

Tips: You can get your first vehicle from Penguin Pete at the Outpost. The cheapest is the Hoverbike, which goes for 11,000 pixels, meaning it will take some time before you can get it.

Book Club

Gamerscore: 10

Description: This achievement is for getting your first Codex.

Tips: Codices can be found throughout the game, such as in chests in dungeons and the wild and bookcases.

Augmented Reality

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for augmenting an Environmental Protection Pack.

Tips: The first Environmental Protection Pack you can craft is a Breathing EPP using an Anvil with six Tungsten Ingots, one Living Root, and ten Glass. Then, you’ll need to find an EPP augment, which can be found in chests, rewards for completing quests or can be purchased from some NPCs. Then, slot the augment into your EPP, and you’ll be done.

Adventurer Eventuality

Gamerscore: 20

Description: This achievement is for completing your first quest.