Aven Colony – 100% Achievement Guide

How to get all the achievements for Aven Colony.

Ranks Achievements

All credit goes to Mcuoppolo!

There are four ranks-related achievements in the game: you will get them every time you complete a specific mission in the campaign.

Chancellor!

Attain the rank of Chancellor

Complete Sandy Gulch on any difficulty to unlock this.

Commander!

Attain the rank of Commander

Complete Hyla’s Crescent on any difficulty to unlock this.

High Commander!

Attain the rank of High Commander

Complete Arido Mesa on any difficulty to unlock this.

President!

Attain the rank of Expedition President

Complete Valley of Death on any difficulty to unlock this.

Missions Achievements

There are 9 missions in the campaign/story mode, each of them grant you an achievement if completed on Normal (medium) difficulty or higher. Every time you complete a mission (regardless of the difficulty) the map will be available for the sandbox mode. All the other achievements listed below can be unlocked in the campaign, some of them will require multiple games however.

Vanaar Champion

Complete the Vanaar campaign mission on Normal difficulty or higher

The first mission is a tutorial and you won’t have problems to complete it. You should try the insane difficulty achievement on this map. For the Speed runner achievement go to the end of this guide.

Sandy Gulch Champion

Complete the Sandy Gulch campaign mission on Normal difficulty or higher

This mission introduces the arid biodome: lack of fertile land and water aside, it is a tutorial too. You have plenty of energy and minerals on this map, so you can try the This is Madness! achievement: your biggest issue will be the complicate layout of the colony caused by the sandworm holes and the distant arable piece of land.

Azara Champion

Complete the Azara Falls campaign mission on Normal difficulty or higher

This is where the challenge really starts. You are on an artic map with little fertile land far away from your starting position which means that trade is your main food source, at least at the beginning. You have plenty of energy and minerals, but the most important of all is the gold mine: you can feed your entire colony at the start of the mission thanks to the unique trade deal. Once the food situation is stable, start the expansion: reach the fertile land and finally set up your local food production. You need to build a stadium and achieve several expansions to finally reach the alien structures and complete the missions, but after the colony is self-sufficient you won’t have too much troubles. For the Artic expansion achievement go to the end of this guide.

Hyla’s Champion

Complete the Hyla’s Crescent campaign mission on Normal difficulty or higher

Food, water and energy won’t be a problem in this mission. Minerals will. To avoid a nanite-deprived dead end you must plan ahead. Grow your base and go immediately after the Kelko sludge: build a research center and develop the required tech, then set up the production chain: greenhouses and chemical plant. The rest of the mission is nothing special, if you avoid depleting your nanite sources before the Kelko production is in place. Expand following the geothermal vents and create a strong perimeter to fend off the creep spores.

Tenari Champion

Complete the Tenari Glacier campaign mission on Normal difficulty or higher

Another artic map and another troublesome mission. You will start with a colony in bad shape so follow carefully your supervisor quests to proceed: as a first step always upgrade your construction drone. The 90% morale quest is the most difficult and annoying part of this mission: even with a colony running smoothly you will need several fully operative enhancers production chains to achieve it. Take your time to understand pros and cons of the enhancers: for each single happiness increment you get crime and low health so plan ahead and add buildings to counterbalance the side effects (as they count in the global morale). After the troubles with the happiness, the rest of the level is a piece of cake: build the expedition center and complete the artifacts quests to end this mission.

Arido Champion

Complete the Arido Mesa campaign mission on Normal difficulty or higher

I hope you have developed a good understanding of the concepts of the game because otherwise this level is going to be a painful experience. This is the only mission with a time limit in the campaign: you must accommodate 1000 immigrants in 10 sols to win, so prepare yourself for a race against the clock. Avoid the food/housing shortage while receiving at the same time huge number of immigrants is the biggest challenge: establish the usual production chains for the basic needs and then go for immigration centres, at least 2 of them at the very beginning of the mission. Manually put them on full staff to get 9 colonists with each ship; I recommend a minimum of 4 immigration centres to meet the mission’s objective (with less than 3 you can’t mathematically win by the way). Don’t waste time and plan ahead: the moment you can afford it build only skyscrapers. They are expensive but have the best resources/habitations ratio and with 9 of these you can cover all the requirements of the mission. If you avoid any “bottleneck” at the very start and your colony develop to a respectable size (and a stockpile of food/nanites) in the midgame you can still catch up if you fell behind. Build additional immigration centres (I ended with 6) and rush for the victory but don’t wait too much or you will run out of time.

Kelori Champion

Complete the Kelori Strand campaign mission on Normal difficulty or higher

After the rush of Arido Mesa, this is a walk in the park. You are in a temperate map, so no troubles with the food, and for once you have a reasonable amount of energy sources/minerals at the beginning. Develop a standard colony with all the production chains/services until you reach the 150 buildings and the energy power required. You can import 25 zorium for the generator with a trade deal, this will save you the trouble to expand toward the only zorium deposit on the map: once you satisfy the mission objective feel free to recycle it. Build expedition centres (2 at least) and start the spore nests destruction/supply quests to complete the level. Upgrade your ships with zorium bombs, shields and thrusters from the research center to speed up the missions and build a hospital next to the expedition centres to prevent possible plague infections.

Valley of Death Champion

Complete the Valley of Death campaign mission on Normal difficulty or higher

This mission is very similar to the last one, but with one important difference: you are on a desert map. Stabilize and expand your colony: the key is merely surviving long enough to get your expedition centres operative (again). The lack of space and the fact the all the 6 arable areas are aligned one next to the other will dictate the layout of your colony, use the hovercraft garage to facilitate the movement of your colonists and to increase morale and efficiency. Fully upgrade your ships with a tier two research center because the rebels are well equipped.

Eden’s Champion

Complete the Eden Crater campaign mission on Normal difficulty or higher

You won’t have too troubles for this map, even if the last level. As for the two last missions, once your colony is more or less running efficiently you have basically won: keep your colonist happy to win the elections while finishing the quests on the exploration map. Try to diversify your food stockpile for morale boost with trade and collecting capsule pods, both near your colony and on the expedition map. As for the previous missions you should fully upgrade your ships before engaging the targets because the guardians are very though. If one of the robots emerge next to your colony, don’t worry: just build a couple of turrets right in front of its path, it will be destroyed without problem.

Policies Achievements

Policies can be used to control the development of your colony, but they (usually) reduce morale and should be handled carefully. Artifacts are always useful, however they have a high cost in time and resources before they can be put in use. See the single achievement description for tips.

Booster Shot

Enable a Colony Boost

First, you need a tier two research center and an energy battery to develop one of the 4 colony boosts. These are temporary upgrades for certain buildings, and you need at least one of them in order to activate the boost. Once you have completed the research simply activate the boost in the policies menu of your colony to get this.

Kid in an Elevator

Enable 10 Social Policies or Powers simultaneously

You can enable policies/boosts/artifacts in your colony management menu after you won your first referendum or completed the relative research. Activate 10 of these at the same time in the policies menu and you will unlock this.

Rigged Elections

Win 5 referendum elections in a row with at least 90% of the vote

Play a sandbox on the lowest difficulty for this: if you won a referendum with less than 90% you have to start again. The frequency of the referendum is not really important, but I recommend to stay on the 4/5 sols: if something went wrong you still have time to intervene. Anyway, save often. Develop your colony as you prefer, just follow some basic guidelines for the morale:

• Minimize the distances between the residentials and the production buildings.
  Use the Hovercar Garage to connect the main areas of your colony. 
• Diversify your food production through farms/trade and keep a steady supply of water. 
• Put air filters, parks and tunnels everywhere. 
• Avoid any policy that could lower morale (read: almost all of them) but go for Free gaming once
  you have a VR center. 
• Service buildings like retail centres (fully provided), bars and hospitals make wonders for morale. 
• If possible, retrieve a Unity artifact and activate it every time during election time. 
• Produce and distribute enhancers. Try to counterbalance the health reduction by using them only
  when an election is near.

And finally: every time that a referendum is coming always check the complains in the text window: it gives you good hints for improvements (especially for things you haven’t considered, ex: crime).

Artifacts Achievements

Artifacts can be acquired on the exploration map (which requires an expedition center): once you got one you need to bring the ship back to the colony and study it in the research center.
Before they can be use you also need an artifact containment unit (one for any single artifact you found): at this point they can be activated in the policies menu of your colony.
If you complete the campaign you will unlock all of them since they are included in the objectives of the last mission (Eden Crater).

United

Activate a Unity Artifact

With a morale boost for half a sol and a recharge time of 2 sols, it is probably the most useful. Try to get one of these if you are after the Rigged Election achievement.

Cleansed

Activate a Cleansing Artifact

It will remove all the creep/plague spores from your entire colony whatever they are still moving or are they already infecting your buildings. It requires a 2 sols recharge time in order to be used again.
It should be used as a last resort to prevent a creep spore infection to overrun your colony.

Empowered

Activate an Empowerment Artifact

This one will recharge all your batteries in the colony instantly. The amount of energy is fixed: if you don’t have enough batteries the exceeding will be lost. The recharge time is 1 sol.

Shielded

Activate a Shielding Artifact

It will create an energy shield with a large radius with the center in the containment unit (however it won’t cover the entire colony probably). This will prevent any spore/lighting/ice storm from hit your colony for 12 hours. After the use you need to wait 2 sols to able to use it again.

Expeditions Achievements

The following achievements can be unlocked only after you start expeditions, which means that you need a working expedition center. This can be done on any map in the sandbox mode and in all the missions in the campaign except the first one (Vanaar).

You can build an expedition center (spaceport section in the building menu) only after you have a research center. Expedition center are expensive, both in terms of building materials and energy/colonists required to work properly: you probably want to skip them, especially at the beginning. There are some advantages however: you can retrieve resource pods/artifacts and some quests give you permanent boosts to your colony. It is always recommended to destroy the spore nests to slow the respawn and complete the agriculture scanner mission to improve the output of your farms. If you are patient and persistent they can repay their cost, and even give you an edge on high difficulty.

All is Revealed

Reveal 95% of the fog on an expedition map

Once your expedition center is operative, send your spaceship to reveal all the fog of war in the exploration map. You can build several expedition centres (to get more ships) to speed up the process.

Expedition Tycoon

Keep 5 Expedition Centers operational simultaneously

No comment. You can get this on any mission/sandbox game.

Rescuer

Rescue 25 lost explorers

Explore the expedition map to find the “stranded explorer” locations: just send your ships to pick them up to complete the event and progress for this achievement. It works only with explorers (the damaged rover/ship events don’t count for this achievement); you will rescue the first four of them in Sandy Gulch. As for the Early Bird achievement below, you can’t achieve this with one game since you will never find 25 explorers on a single map.

Early Bird

Bring 20 units of Sandworm Meat back to the colony

This works exactly as the achievement above, but with sandworms. Reveal the exploration map and send your ships to collect the dead specimens once you find them. You will get a first example of this at Sandy Gulch. Again, you will pursue this in multiple games since you won’t get 20 sandworms meat in single map. NOTE: your ship must return to the base or the collected sandworms won’t count for this achievement.

Lewis & Clark

Explore 50 points of interest on expedition maps

Self-explanatory. This is cumluative through multiple games and you will get it naturally.

Misc Achievements

Below are listed all the achievements you can get in almost any mode/mission you want. I divided them according to their difficulty/time required. Some of them will come naturally with a bit of grinding, others are a bit more specific and you need to go after them on purpose to get them. You can use the “achievements” button in the main menu to check your progress.

Farm Life

Build 100 farming structures

Not too much to say about this. You will get it naturally by playing.

Solar Tycoon

Build 200 Solar Panels

No comment. You will get this during the campaign or several sandbox games.

Fire Sale

Recycle 100 structures

Another grind you will get with repeated games. Be sure you are recycling the structure, not imploding it. I can’t confirm if tunnels count for this achievement.

The Upper Grade

Complete 100 building upgrades

You will get this naturally during the campaign/sandbox games.

Sorry, We Don’t Serve Miners

Build 100 Mines or Laser Mines

You will get this naturally during the campaign/sandbox games.

Jack of All Trades

Complete 100 trade contracts

Another achievement that you will get without even trying. Select the trade routes with a limited quantity (for example 200 melons for 200 nanites) while expanding your colony with new structures for new contracts. Once you delivered the requested amount of goods the contract will be completed and counted for the achievement. You can build several trade centres to activate multiple contracts at the same time.

Dark and Stormy Night

Protect the colony from 100 lightning strikes

You can build lighting tower (defence section in the construction menu) after you create your first energy battery. You will probably achieve this without even trying as long you remember to build one (or more) of these in each level.

I’m Losing My Mine

Deplete 10 Mineral Deposits

On high difficulty this can happen very quickly. You will get this naturally during the campaign

Consumerism

Build 10 Retail Centers

Retail centres can be built immediately without any requirements. You can achieve this with a single colony if you want.

Park Ranger

Own 10 fully functional Parks in the same colony simultaneously

Parks are immediately available for construction, so this won’t to be too hard. Don’t forget they need to be in the same colony at the same time: you can’t build one then recycle it and start again.

Heisenberg

Distribute a total of 500 enhancers

You can achieve this in the very first mission (Vanaar): you will be asked to produce and export Cerulean Glow to fulfil a trade contract. Once the agreement is satisfied, build a dispensary and wait for the achievement to unlock.

Sugar Tooth

Manufacture 1000 Candy

Candy can be produced in a mill with corn syrup. To get the latter you need a tier one chemical plant with a steady flux of water and corn from farms/greenhouses (or get it from trade).

Blasted!

Destroy 50 Creep Spores before they reach your colony

Build plasma turrets and blast the spores before they reach your colony buildings to get this. Watch out for the warnings of spores approaching (they usually come from the same direction) to plan your defences. Don’t forget you need a research center to unlock the turrets construction. Again, this can be achieved with multiple missions.

Zombies!

Get 50 colonists infected by the plague

This will come naturally: plague spores (not to be confused with creep spores) will spawn periodically, just let them hit your colony to start the infection. On high difficulty you will get this without even trying. If you want to get rid of the virus, build a hospital and a tier 2 chemical plant to produce/distribute the plague vaccine: they are very effective.

You Have Been Warned

Receive 10 warnings from Commissioner Veronika

You will get this naturally, especially if you play on high difficulty. You’ll be notified whenever a problem starts to develop in the colony: the quality of the air and the lack of water/food will be the most common causes for a reprimand.

Megalopolis

Own 3 fully functional megastructures in the same colony simultaneously

The megastructures are extreme expensive, and you need to build and maintain (read: provide energy/manpower) them for this achievement. Stockpile resources and develop your colony to sustain them before the construction. NOTE: you don’t need to have all the 3 megastructures available; you can build 3 Earth history centres in the same colony and still get this.

Sol Survivor

Survive for 50 sols in any mission

Not too much to say about this. If you won any of the missions in the campaign before the 50 sols you can choose to continue on the same map (or simply avoid to declare victory). At this point you are basically in a sandbox mode: keep playing until you reach 50 sols to unlock this. I can’t confirm if this works for the sandbox mode.

A Thousand

Get 1000 colonists in the same colony

Play a sandbox until you get this or complete the Arido Mesa mission (it is the main objective).

Ellis Island

Accept 2000 immigrants

This one is related to the achievement above, with the only exception that you can get this with multiple games. If you play the campaign it will come naturally.

The Great Depression

Have 200 colonists unemployed simultaneously

This will happen when your colony grows exponentially in population, but you are not expanding you building with the only exception of the energy/water/food production. There is a good chance to achieve this during (or at the end of) the Arido Mesa mission, otherwise you will get this naturally in sandbox mode with very large colonies.

Missions Achievements

The last 3 achievements can be obtained only in the campaign mode and are related to specific missions/parameters. They are without doubt the hardest to achieve, especially Speed runner.

This is Madness!

Win a campaign mission on Insane difficulty

This one is easier than it seems: pick Vanaar or Sandy Gulch as they are tutorials for the game. If you have already finished the campaign you already know all about the mission objectives and game mechanics.

Speed Runner

Complete Vanaar by the end of Sol 5 (in campaign mode at Normal difficulty or higher)

This one is a truly nightmare and the hardest achievement in the game. The last objective to complete Vanaar is an Earth history center, and not just build it but keep it working for an entire sol. The last thing is the real source of pain because it means you have 4 sols to finish the mission.
Don’t wait for the mission quests to appear: as long you have the building already in place they are counted as completed. You will receive the reward (if there is any) and the next quest will pop up. For this reason I suggest to play this and write down all the buildings required and quests you will face during the mission.

Arctic Expansion

Reach a population of 350 colonists in Azara Falls by the end of Sol 5 (in campaign mode at Normal difficulty or higher)

Related to the one above. The key difference is that you don’t need to win the scenario, so basically this is “Ice Mesa” mission with 5 sols instead of 10 and “only” 350 colonists to house. With that in mind you should follow the same pattern you used for Arido Mesa, but with some differences.

First, the trade center: you have to rely on imported food so the gold mine and the deal for the rice is essential. Keep your immigration centres always fully staffed: you don’t have any food production buildings so you have colonists to spare at the beginning. Expand towards the 2 geothermal vents for the fertile land and the resource capsule as soon as you can, the imported rice can’t satisfy the demand of 350 colonists and can’t afford famine. Since you have only five sols you will struggle to build skyscrapers: tier 3 habitats are fine; it is more important don’t run out of houses at any point so go for the base version and then upgrade them. Don’t forget that you will receive reward for each population milestone you reach (50, 100 etc…): choose nanites and keep expanding as fast as you can.