Achievements that took many years to be discovered

Nothing rocks the world of achievements in Tibia more than an old achievement being finally discovered. From the initial rumor, to the proof that it was obtained to finally the confirmed spoiler, achievements hunters get super excited and everyone wants to know the details of the discovery.

When achievements were first introduced in Tibia 8.6, back in 2010, there were lots of them related to basically everything that existed in the game at the time. The next few updates added several new achievements like those, until after the 9.1 update when most new achievements were just related to the new content. As years gone by, many of these original achievements about “anything” remained undiscovered, and each one of them has its own peculiar discovery story.

In this article we’ll talk about the achievements that took more than 5 years to be discovered.

Cold as Ice (6 years and 2 months*)

In August 23, 2016, a player named Simox (original character no longer exists) revealed in the achievements thread that he and his friend had discovered a new achievement that required sculpting 10 Ice Mammoths from Ice Cubes: Cold as Ice. According to Simox, they knew the achievement for a few months already, and in fact other players confirmed that they were told about the discovery beforehand, which means it actually took less than 6 years for the discovery, but we don’t know exactly how long. If we assume they tested it during the Colours of Magic event reward, however, the discovery probably took in the last week of March, which would mean 5 years and 8 months since its implementation.

This discovery was the first of a few discoveries that were just a “harder version” of other known achievements, which many players did not like as it suggested the remaining unknown achievements could be similar to this one and not some more interesting mysteries. As we’ll see throughout this article, even though there were other similar discoveries, there were also a fair share of different achievements discovered.

Biodegradable (6 years and 4 months)

Biodegradable was discovered in October 26, 2017, by Enduroman. Discovering this achievement took Enduroman quite a lot of work, because he had to make the Port Hope lake dirty by himself several times until he finally got to 50 Shimmer Swimmers, even though he wasn’t sure if there was an achievement for it or not.

The theory that an achievement related to this world change existed quickly came up as players realized that there were achievements for most world changes, and there were two missing achievements from the World Changes update. By browsing through the Achievements Thread, we dug up an interesting conversation about this theory back in 2016:

As it turned out, despite Enduroman’s own disbelief with the achievement he decided to give it a try, and we’re very glad he did!

Heartbreaker (6 years and 6 months)

Heartbreaker is one of those achievements you can easily make on a free account level 8 character, and all you need is some cash for the marriage outfits. And yet, it also took this achievement over 6 years to be discovered, which is a very interesting fact. But the story of its discovery is even more interesting because it was, in fact, discovered by accident. Not only that, the player who realized he had it (Baka Carii, a character that does not exist anymore) didn’t notice the achievement immediately, so he actually had no idea when he received it.

The accidental discovery was revealed by Fairy Fox on the achievements thread in March 14, 2017. In that post, he also asked achievement hunters to start investigating the achievement based on its name and description. Quickly, players started to come up with all sorts of theories that involved stepping on heart pillows thousands of times or getting married and divorced to the same player several times.

Less than 24 hours after the post by Fairy Fox, players had figured it out already and the spoiler was made public. As it turned out, the secret of the achievement is nothing other than an unusual dialog with the marriage NPC during the wedding ceremony.

Pyromaniac (6 years and 11 months)

Pyromaniac has a very special place in our hearts here on TibiaLD, as we were part of its discovery. It all started when we discovered that we can view achievement IDs on the website. With the IDs, we could then sort achievements, confirm which ones were from which update and confirm the IDs of missing achievements. We have already discussed Achievement IDs here on Tibia LD in a previous article: What are Achievement IDs and how are they useful?

Using the IDs we were able to get thanks to the help of other achievement hunters (Firdeso, Mente Brilhante and Enduroman), a gap between IDs #186 and #188 (both related to Bewitched) popped up. Since #186 is Fire Devil (use 100 Dry Pieces of Wood), Firdeso was the first to make the bet and try more pieces.

Curiously, Firdeso himself had already tried 300 pieces of wood before that, so he only needed 200 more for the achievement. After breaking the news about his discovery to us in private, we were also able to get the achievement by scavenging the markets for Dry Pieces of Wood out of season. Once all 3 of us had the achievement, we made the discovery public, as usual, on the Achievements Thread.

This idea was also discussed in the achievements thread at least once before:

Again, achievement hunters were on the right track, but this time it took a little push from the IDs discovery to commit to the idea.

The Snowman (9 years and 3 months)

The discovery of The Snowman was made public by Rado of Elera on December 28, 2019. Rado probably waited until that year’s Christmas event was over so he could have “exclusivity” on the achievement for a year – which I’m sure no one minds considering the value of his discovery.

Why did it take so long? First of all, opening Snowmen Kits is not something most Tibians will do at all, let alone 100. But certainly the fact that the original kits disappear after the event is over makes it a lot harder, since they cannot be traded on the market and saved for “later”. Also because of that, it’s likely that players who like to decorate wrapped their Snowmen into furniture kits to avoid losing them, and just reused them the next year – which does not count for the achievement.

Rado provided us with all the information about the achievement soon after revealing it, but he never talked much about it in the forum. But since he’s a known achievement hunter with a lot of points, it’s very likely that he was indeed looking for an achievement and not trying to build an army of snowmen!

Was he the first player to think about it, though? Not really. Look what we found in the Achievements Thread:

More than 3 years before its discovery, this idea had already been discussed. Unfortunately for Smuu (and everyone else), he didn’t trust this idea enough and we had to wait until Rado of Elera invested on it. Makes you wonder though: how many times have players thought about some existing achievement, but gave up before actually getting it?

Fearless (9 years and 3 months)

Fearless took about the same time to be discovered than The Snowman did, but they were implemented (and discovered) one year apart. The discovery of Fearless also happened with the participation of TibiaLD staff.

With the introduction of the Character Bazaar, Hunter of Dragoes realized that the data from the bazaar could be analyzed to look for unknown achievements in traded characters. With the support from Galarzaa, the creator of NabBot, they went through all the traded characters data at the time and listed the rarest achievements. Fearless was on top of that list.

By inspecting the other information available on these characters – level, completed quests, bestiary records and other achievements – we suspected the achievement was related to the Horestis World Change. In order to get more details, however, Hunter contacted players that had acquired a character with Fearless, and one of these players provided us with its description, which is the spoiler to the achievement in itself.

What was a secret until now is that we actually found 5 different characters with Fearless, not just one. This was a great surprise as one would expect the existence of the achievement to be public if this many players had it (not counting other players that could have it but didn’t sell their characters). The explanation for this is as simple as astonishing: all 5 characters belonged to the same player. Apparently, this person decided to make Scorpion Sceptres a big source of income, so he had several characters on low populated worlds he used to try and break jars – until he decided to dump them all on the Bazaar and cash in some faster Tibia Coins.

Anyway, we know that because this player told Hunter when he messaged the characters we found – one particular auction had failed so he talked to the original owner. Needless to say, this player wasn’t very interested in the achievement or talking much about it, but he did know he had it on multiple characters. Since then, we’ve been collecting these characters to keep as souvenirs, and that has been definitely easier and faster than actually breaking 50 jars. Since the public discovery, there has been no record of any player obtaining the achievement, which is why we don’t have a screenshot of it, yet.

For those who hope to get it some day, here’s some useful information: the fastest character to have obtained the achievement got it 3 years and 5 months after being created. The average, however, is 4 years and 11 months. But since this depends a lot on how populated the world is and how often you try, it can be much faster – we’re aware of achievement hunters with about 20 jars broken since the achievement was revealed, so it should be possible to get it on less than 2 years on a very empty world. If you’re playing on a populated world, however… You’ll need a lot of time and luck.

To wrap up Fearless, there’s one final thing we have to say. Even though we found characters with the achievement already on the bazaar, it’s impossible to know what other characters with lots of broken jars exist out there. Their original owner didn’t want to talk much, so he wouldn’t say. This means that there’s probably a few characters out there in the world with 40+ jars broken, and their owners have no idea how close they are to getting something we all desire so badly.

Transmutator (10 years  and 6 months)

Transmutator was the first achievement that took more than 10 years to be discovered. It also had the participation of TibiaLD staff, and we have talked about it in detail in an article as well: The transmutational saga.

After investigations shrouded in mystery by Hunter of Dragoes, the achievement was discovered even though it was bugged and unobtainable. There were two problems with it: the requirement of one unobtainable item and a final item that was seemingly impossible to use. After reporting the problems to CipSoft, we started to wait until the fix to be able to make the announcement having obtained the achievement.

During this waiting period, the fansite TibiaSecrets coincidentally published an article about Yalahar’s Alchemists quarter, which included information on the transmutation machine and a list with 22 of the 23 known items required for the achievement, missing only the Cockroach Leg which was the unobtainable item we mentioned.

Because of this coincidence, we decided to reveal our discovery of the Transmutator achievement and the fact that it was bugged and currently being fixed by CipSoft. Three months later, a patch was released with a fix for Transmutator, and all characters that had already used the 22 known items received the achievement. In practice, CipSoft removed the Cockroach Leg and the 24th mysterious item from the requirements, making it quite simple to get.

Guess what? If you thought “someone had this idea years before” you guessed right. The transmutation machine was also topic of discussion in the achievements thread.

This time, however, we can’t say for sure if it was the players’ own lack of effort that prevent the discovery of the achievement or not. Maybe someone did investigate it thoroughly (maybe even before that post), but due to the problems with the achievement it remained undiscovered.

Unlikely Pathfinder (11 years and 4 months)

Unlikely Pathfinder was the last old achievement discovered by players. On November 10, 2021, a rumor quickly started to spread about a new achievement being discovered related to Beregar. It later became clear that Rosk Roll had accidentally discovered the achievement while doing The Hidden City of Beregar Quest. After realizing he was facing something new, he contacted Mirius which shared the information with Letal Griphus. Together, they verified the discovery while on Griphus’ live stream, making the discovery widely known.

Due to the simplicity of the method, it was clear that this was something new, recently changed. Because the discovery happened just one day after two game patches (the second one being an emergency fix to the regular patch), one can assume that it was during this update that the achievement became obtainable with the discovered method. Initially, the hypothesis that the achievement was bugged and fixed was raised by players – as it had happened with Transmutator. On the following day, however, CM Skerio posted on the Auditorium saying the change was not intentional but would be kept.

There was more to it, however. It was quickly revealed that a character with the name Unlikely Pathfinder existed with a last login date of May, months before the achievement’s revelation. The truth is that Hunter of Dragoes had already discovered about this achievement, but even after the discovery it felt like there was something off about it. After some investigations, Hunter asked CipSoft about the achievement and if it was working as intended or not. CipSoft eventually explained that yes, it was working as it should, and it should indeed be that rare and hard to get. After that, further investigations to uncover the details were set in motion, but before definitive answers were found the achievement became easily obtainable.

We believe that it was in fact CipSoft’s investigation on the achievement that led to the bug that made it easy to get. They probably changed the odds of successfully traveling from Beregar to Kazordoon to 100% in order to test if everything was working as expected. For some reason, this change made it to the game.

Remaining Unknown Achievements

So how does our future look like? Currently, there are 2 unknown secret achievements left to be discovered. One of them, #513, is from the Summer Update 2020, so even though it’s taking some time to be discovered, it’s not that old. For all we know it could be just something that really takes time and there has not been enough yet. For instance, Nanny from Hell took a bit more than 4 years to be discovered but it couldn’t be less than that since it requires participating in a yearly event 5 times.

But there’s also #195. This is the last old achievement (back from 8.70, Winter Update 2010) left to be discovered. It’s also in the middle of achievements related to common things (194 is Ashes to Dust, 196 is Safely Stored Away), so it could be “anything”. The IDs around it are also related to doing something many times, and the two preceding IDs are related to skinning and dusting. But these mechanics have been explored a lot already and we can’t discard that it could be something else entirely.

We have no doubt that right now there are Achievement Hunters crafting theories and testing ideas about these unknown achievements. Maybe someone’s on the right track? Perhaps the right idea has already been discussed somewhere, we just didn’t try it? Let’s just hope we do not need 10 more years for it…