Surviving Mars – How to Obtain The Watney Challenge Achievement

I was surprised to see only 1.4% of players have unlocked The Watney Challenge achievement. It’s not overly difficult, if you set everything up just right. I’ll go over what I did in the guide. With this method, I unlocked it on my first try.

The Watney Challenge Achievement Guide

Please note: all credit goes to Bearfight!

Mission Setup

Configure a new mission using the images below as a guide.

Sponsor: International Mars Mission – You may as well take all the funding you can get on this one.

Commander: Psychologist – To help your lonely new Martian stay sane.

Game Rules: Each of these 8 rules improve your chances or speed things up and none of them disable achievements.

  • No Events – we don’t need events for this so turn them off.
  • Prefab Colony – free structures, why not?
  • Fast Rockets – why wait for supplies if you don’t have to?
  • Fast Scanning – why wait for scans if you don’t have to?
  • Increased Production – more production = good.
  • More Applicants – more chances that you’ll get an ideal candidate.
  • No Disasters – we don’t need a meteor hitting the dome, right?
  • Amateurs – we won’t need any specialists.

Build, Wait, Win

Site: I chose Elysium Alpha and landed at the pre-exposed area at bottom right.

Your First Rocket

  • Remove the RC Commander.
  • Add drones until you have 15 on board.
  • Put any remaining space toward orbital probes.

Your Second Rocket

  • Before you even land, request another cargo rocket.
  • Load it with 5 drones and 55 or 60 concrete.
  • Send it.

Your Third Rocket

  • Before you even land, request yet another cargo rocket.
  • Load it with 3 advanced sterling generators & 3 moisture evaporators & any food that will fit.
  • Send it.

Your First Cargo Pod

  • Before you even land, request a cargo pod for $100M.
  • Load it with 2 fuel refineries any food that will fit.
  • Send it.

Landing

  • Use existing and arriving probes to expose more of the area at bottom right.
  • Land near the concrete deposit(s), build universal, concrete and metal depots.
  • Create a transport route for your RC Transport that gathers metal from the surrounding area then drops it off at the metal depot.

Break Ground

  • Land all your rockets – away from each other but within drone range.
  • Build a concrete extractor. One is enough.
  • Build a self sufficient dome.
  • Build 3 Fuel Refinery/Moisture pairs
  • Deploy Sterling Generators and run power lines/pipes as needed.

Dome Time

  • Wait for everything outside the dome to finish construction and make sure it all works.
  • Build one house, one small grocer and as many parks as you want. At least 1.
  • That’s all you need.

Draft Pick

  • Find a colonist with no flaws and 2 or more of these perks Rugged, Composed, Nerd, Religious, Hippie.
  • Load just that one colonist into a passenger rocket and send it.
  • Land the rocket and watch your guy or gal walk to their new, lonely, glass prison.

Wait

  • If your colonist has Nerd, scan the anomalies in the area to complete research items and boost his/her morale. If not, that’s ok – mine did not have Nerd and he still made it.
  • At this point, just put it on the fastest game speed and keep an eye on things.
  • Wait 9 sols.

You Win.

That’s all folks. Couldn’t be simpler, IMHO. The image below shows what my base looked like when the achievement was won, for reference.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 15057 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices.

1 Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*