Take On Mars: 100% Achievement Guide

Have you ever played a so-called “walking simulator” and thought “Huh, there’s too much to do in this game. It offers an interesting plot that guides you through all this gorgeous scenery and it has just way too much interactivity”? If your answer is yes, then look no further — this is the ultimate walking (or rather driving at a snail’s pace) simulator.

Realistically, you’re looking at about 60 hours of slowly cruising around various places on our Red Neighbour doing not much else. Most of the achievements are straightforward and will be unlocked over the course of your campaign playthrough, while some others will require additional idling. There are also 3 achievements that require you to “cheat” by modifying game files. And then there’s also one that is locked behind content that has been removed, so you’ll have to use a Workshop mod to circumvent that unfortunate mishap.

Speaking about the mods, you can make some of the longer achievements much easier by doing your own ingenious creations. It’s a good thing to keep in mind, but the guide will leave both the suggestions and the implementation as an exercise to our readers.

Setting up the correct game version:
A VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: you have to start and play the campaign on the test branch that the Beta tab offers. Otherwise, the “Mars Conqueror” will be unachievable. If you have a campaign started on the regular branch – you WILL have to start over.

To get the correct branch, do the following:
1. RMB on the game->Properties
2. Click on the Betas tab
3. Enter the “IWantToBravelyTest” code under the Private Betas field. This will unlock the dropdown menu above.
4. Now click on the dropdown box.
5. Select the “test” branch.
As a result, your game should look like “Take On Mars [test]” in your library.

More on the branches can be found here: Link

Setting up the modding tool set:
Wish for your campaign was one mission long, for solar panels to generate 100-times the power, or for your rovers to be martian racecars? You are free to pursue your wildest dreams with both the mods already in the Workshop or with creations of your own design – it’s up to your imagination to find new ways to cheese the game. And it doesn’t take too much programming knowledge to make either! Good people have already made a good text-and-picture guide for modding here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1133323493

This guide tries to follow the approximate order of the achievement unlocks, while also grouping together the similar ones. Starting new games can be a bit overwhelming, so the authors tried to explain some of the basics in the earlier sections, but don’t expect the guide to go over every single game mechanic, or elaborate on simple concepts later on.
Most of the achievements will be unlocked throughout the natural progression of the Robotics campaign. Speaking of the campaign, I hope that you have read the previous section and are using the TEST branch.
Here is a pretty good guide that I’ve followed for my playthrough, so I won’t have to talk about any of that here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=231057626

Missions are bread and butter of this game, and missions themselves consist of groups of particular targets of three types: Explore, Photo and Analyze. Make sure that you’re using the appropriate type of HUD, which can be selected from the top toolbar. All the following achievements should be achieved long before the end of your campaign. You can also bump into the randomly generated side-missions from time to time to speed up the progress.

Explore objectives are usually the “openers” for your missions. You get close enough to the marker – BAM, objective complete.
Here’s how an Explore target looks like:

You should be able to get your first photo from your first probe, unless you have missed the markers completely. Photo missions require you to have multiple “dots” inside the camera shot at the same time when you make a photo:

You will get your first analyze target during the campaign intro. Analyze targets use all the different instruments you unlock through your tech tree. Different instruments require different interactions with the environment, obviously, but generally speaking, Analyze targets look like this:

While the first achievement of this group will be unlocked a bit later, you’ll start interacting with the tech tree right from the get-go. To see what a particular type of vehicle needs to be unlocked, select the according row from the list on the left, this will highlight the appropriate techs:

You will have to research all the techs during the course of your campaign. The achievements are descriptive enough on their own and don’t require further explanations.

Follow the instructions by Dram in this thread.

This group is pretty much self-explanatory: send any vehicle to a particular part of Mars. You should be able to get those done with probes.

For this one, you have to land something more serious than a probe, like a lander for instance.

You should get 3 hours by the time you get to the rovers, and 33 hours somewhere around the half-point of your campaign.

For 333 hours, you can leave the game idling. It’s also a good opportunity to grind for the “Power Plant” achievement (more on that in its own section). A few things to know before you’ll waste your time with no results: a) you have to be logged in a vehicle on Mars, either in campaign or in a scenario, and b) the game window has to be active. The second fact is rather unfortunate if you’re unable to leave your workstation on overnight, but I haven’t found a way to circumvent that.

Go to the Rover Lab and create something using “Create New Vehicle” option.

You get money for completing targets and missions, self-explanatory. You don’t have to grind or do side-targets just for the money because of the next achievement.

Open …Steam\steamapps\common\Take On Mars\Scenarios\Campaign\MarsYard.scn
Line 14 should look like “Worth 0”. Change 0 to whatever value you feel like having that’s also more than the requirement. Save the file, launch the Mars Yard in the campaign, complete the Explore objective and enjoy your achievement, you dirty cheater.

You should get all of these achievements long before finishing all your missions by driving rovers around. You can check the distance traveled by rover in the top left toolbar.

If you really don’t want to do the Night Owl during a mission, just leave your rover going in circles during the night.

You will probably get at least two of the achievements in this group before finishing the campaign. Sometimes the small rock you tried to go over wasn’t that small after all, or that hill was a bit too steep – accidents happen.
For the last one, I could recommend installing a lot of EMS on top of a large rover, alongside all of your regular stuff, load Mars Yard and perform a leap of faith from the closest ledge as shown here:

Performing analysis on the monolith is also a good candidate, check “Monolith achievements” section for more info.

Speaking of Mars Yard, let me show you how to “escape” the thing. Get yourself a small rover, and follow the path shown on the screenshot through the partially-opened door:

The achievement will unlock as you’ll be approaching the gate.

After researching “Data Recovery Tool”, you will get the following message:

Equip the newly researched tool and finish the appropriate missions.

If you have followed the instructions in the beginning – this achievement should pop as expected. Otherwise – jokes on you, I’ve used both bold and underline!

For an unknown reason, this is achievement got multiple guides just for itself. I guess people really want to share those secrets of the known world, huh? To restore the cosmic balance, I won’t be making my own version, and I’ll link the existing ones for you to choose.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=165888807
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=275021835
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=273204837
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=166474081

From Main Menu, navigate your way through Editor->Gale Crater. Now on the top toolbar, click Load Scenario and select [CAMPAIGN] Gale Crater:

The Monolith is located at the following coordinates:

And looks like this:

Now make sure that you have TWO cylinders in the scenario editor, like on the screenshot above. If you can’t find the monolith, or one of the cylinders – make sure that the [CAMPAIGN] scenario is loaded.

Now spawn in a rover nearby, save the scenario using “New Scenario” and press Play on the Scenario Control panel. Drive inside the zone you’ve seen in the editor, the first achievement should pop.

I recommend using the laser as it has quite the range. Perform an analysis. Die in a spectacular way. Get the achievement.

1GW is A LOT of power, so by the end of your campaign adventures you won’t be even close to getting this done. Considering that you still have to grind for the 333 hour, I didn’t really try to get an optimal power-generating monstrosities and opted for something straightforward. Open the scenario editor on some flat map (I used Gale Crater) and create a large rover that looks like this:

SOLAR FTW. Now place a bunch of rovers around in a grid:

My game was running at a stunning 3 FPS rate, but it doesn’t really matter all that much. Make sure that it’s morning in the scenario editor, you don’t want to be using your precious solar panels during the night, do you? Now open your new scenario from Main menu->Scenarios->*Your scenario*. Switch through all the rovers to open the big solar panels and save. Enjoy the grind.

I got it by accident while trying to pause during screen transition. A proper way would be to spawn a lot of large rovers on to of each other in the scenario editor. You should know how to do that by now.

It seems to be one of those achievements you would get after researching Data Recovery Tool. In any case, the only way to get it now is to grab yourself a map from the Workshop kindly provided by Doctor.M.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2771122354
Complete the mission from the scenario and get the achievement.

Congratulations on 100% the game.
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