Achievement/Trophy Overview

Choose Challenges

Achievements/Trophies and Challenges are dependent on one another. You can only get those achievements whose challenge you have accepted, e.g. you may beat the mode without dying, but you won't get "Combat Specialist" unless you picked the Challenge first.

Choose Cards

When it comes to choosing Expedition cards, I recommend ignoring the score and picking Thinner Herd (”Fewer infected can be found wandering.”) which will punish you with -50%.

Achievement List

Let me begin with a recap of the achievement list for the Cold Darkness Awakened add on. There are 10 achievements for this mode, 9 of which are connected to challenges and one for completing the mode.

• Uncovering the Truth - Cold Darkness Challenge: Collect all 8 documents. (25G / Bronze)
• Give a Man a Fire - Cold Darkness Challenge: Kill 20 enemies with Dragonfire Shotgun Rounds. (15G / Bronze)
• Armed for Bear - Cold Darkness Challenge: Pick up 6 different weapons. (20G / Bronze)
• Spinning Leaf - Cold Darkness Challenge: Get 5 headshots with the regular arrows in 1:00. (25G / Bronze)
• Legendary Gunsmith - Cold Darkness Challenge: Open 6 upgrade pry chests. (20G / Bronze)
• To the Rescue - Cold Darkness Challenge: Rescue 6 prisoners. (20G / Bronze)
• Perfectionist - Cold Darkness Challenge: Shutdown all the towers without any mistakes. (25G / Bronze)
• Epidemiologist - Complete Cold Darkness. (25G / Silver)
• An Ocean in Storm - Cold Darkness Challenge: Kill 75 enemies in a single Cold Darkness run. (25G / Silver)
• Combat Specialist - Cold Darkness Challenge: Complete Cold Darkness without dying. (50G / Silver)

For all the collectible-related achievements, remember to use Survival Instincts once Nadia has marked a location or you've found the Archivist Map. Go to the map, mark an item location on it and it should light up as a blue beacon in Survival Instincts when you go out into the world.

Achievement Roadmap

First Playthrough

I recommend to tackle the following 5 achievements first:
Uncovering the Truth, Armed for Bear, Legendary Gunsmith, To the Rescue and An Ocean in Storm. In short: collect everything you can find, and since that will take a while and force numerous encounters with infected, take the opportunity to kill 75 of those.

Besides the corresponding achievements you will also get the one for finishing the mode.
Do not use the Expedition Cards “Too Late” or “Unsupplied” during this step. If you’d like to boost your score a little, “Clueless”, or any of the flashlight-related cards (e.g. “Perfect Timing”) are a good choice. You are free to die or make mistakes at this point. Of course you can always choose a general Expedition Card to strengthen or weaken yourself.



Achievements gained during this step:

Uncovering the Truth
Armed for Bear
Legendary Gunsmith
To the Rescue
An Ocean in Storm
Epidemiologist

Second Playthrough

Now that you are familiar with the gameplay it shouldn't be too difficult to shutdown all towers without mistake and to complete the mode without dying for Perfectionist and Combat Specialist.

Further there are two more combat related achievements to tackle, Give a Man a Fire and Spinning Leaf (killing 20 enemies with Dragonfire Shotgun Rounds and getting 5 headshots with arrows in one minute). The latter might be the most difficult achievement in this mode as it requires a lot of patience and precision.

Achievements gained during this step:

Perfectionist
Combat Specialist
Give a Man a Fire
Spinning Leaf

The Achievements in Detail

Epidemiologist and Combat Specialist are self-explanatory - just finish the mode (without dying). Also clear is An Ocean in Storm, which requires you to kill 75 enemies in one run. Just keep playing until you get it, before you tackle the final tower. I got it long before I found all the documents.

Uncovering the Truth (Collect all 8 documents.)

First of all you should be aware that there is an Archivist Map out there, that will reveal all document locations on the map. See if you can find that.

I found it atop a watchtower immediately south-east of the central structure (both in the PC and Xbox One version of the game).

Most documents are easily reached. For the one north of the central structure you have to do some tree climbing and approach is from the left (west).

Armed for Bear (Pick up 6 different weapons.)

This one shouldn't be too bad. Nadia will occasionally call in a weapons cache they have spotted on their flyby with the helicopter and mark it down on Lara’s map. Just use the map and survival instincts to locate it. Do this 6 times and you are done. This was actually the first achievement I got.

To the Rescue (Rescue 6 prisoners.)

Prisoners are usually tied up in huts or locked in cages.

Again Nadia will occasionally mark a prisoner’s location on the map. Go there, free them and as a bonus you will get a new skill (e.g. “Inner Strength”, “Ancient Abilities”...). Rescuing six shouldn't be too hard. Just check out the locations Nadia adds and search all the huts.

Legendary Gunsmith (Open 6 upgrade pry chests.)

If you use the Survival Instincts frequently, you will easily spot the large pry chests (aka strongboxes) scattered throughout the area.

You need to find 6 of these. While hunting for documents, weapons and prisoners, you will come across a few of these.

Give a Man a Fire (Kill 20 enemies with Dragonfire Shotgun Rounds.)

This one is quite simple. After obtaining a shotgun, craft “fire bullets” and use them on enemies.

To craft fire bullets, hold down “Alt Fire” while not aiming. To shoot Dragonfire Shotgun Rounds, press “Alt Fire” while aiming.

Alt Fire (the alternative fire method) is RB instead of RT on the controller or the middle mouse button instead of the left when playing with mouse and keyboard.

Spinning Leaf (Get 5 headshots with the regular arrows in 1:00)

Choose the lowest difficulty setting and concentrate on using the bow. During a swarm you should find enough enemies to shoot five of them. The difficulty will be to perform headshots. If you’d like to have more time to aim at the heads, try finding a group of five enemies in your vicinity that haven’t spotted you yet and start picking them off one by one. It is not as bad as it sounds, actually. I chose the latter option.If you are having difficulties, pick any outfit that gives you all the Skills from the Hunter Tree (Tier 3 required), you will want to have "True Shot", which allows you to use locked shots which automatically target heads. With this it should be easy.

Perfectionist

As for the Perfectionist, simply complete all the towers without any mistakes. So be very careful when deciding whether a condition is met or not; whether you have to pick the first or the second option. (I will write a complete guide for this at a later point.)

In the first tower you have to complete one step, in the second two and in the third three, so overall you have to make 6 correct choices.