Overview
Just a quick guide on how to get some of the more difficult achievements and a few notes about items and quests.
Intro / How to use this guide
This guide is here to help you get some of the more difficult achievements and to help you do some of the quests in an order that gives you some of the better rewards earlier. Some achievements are possible to miss if you do not do them in time, so this guide will help you avoid missing those. There is already a very comprehensive guide for Millennium 2 on the Big Fish Games blog. It is quite good and I recommend that you follow it. However, there are a few quests on there that could be done earlier and it makes no mention of achievements, so consider this guide as a supplement to that one. Due to the nature of this guide, there will be spoilers. It is unavoidable. I have to mention new characters / items etc. in order to tell you about them. However, to keep spoilers at a minimum, the guide is in chronological order, telling you just what you need to know for that stage in the game.
Also, if an achievement is not specifically mentioned in here, then it should be easy to get through following the regular guide and normal play. For example, the achievement “Myst’Rockfeller” which requires you to have 30,000 may seem daunting, but at one point in the game after completing the treasure map quest, you get a chest containing 30,000 gold so this achievement completes easily. If you have trouble with a specific unmentioned achievement or quest, leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help.
Things to know before you even start!
First off, I will recommend that you play the game as a conversion from Millennium 1. While you certainly do not have to do this, it will make things a lot easier and you will get to know the plot and characters much better that way. It is also nice to already know a few areas of the map. However, you can play it either way, but it will be easier with carried over items!
When you setup the game, I recommend hard mode. Why? Because if you’re going for the achievements, you are going to need it. There are tough, optional bosses called animal kings. When you play on easy, there are only 4. Normal mode gives you 6 and Hard mode gives you all 8. Since each animal king is an achievement, you need hard mode to get the most achievements. And don’t worry, hard mode isn’t too bad. I typically play games on normal mode myself, and it’s very doable, just requires a little more leveling perhaps.
Also, be sure to show enemies in settings, it’s easier to fight when you want and avoid fights when you’re low on hp / sp / supplies or in a hurry.
Another small thing to note is that in Millennium 2, unlike in 1, there is NO achievement for not using the option to “go through.” While this may seem obvious, I had expected the same achievement to remain so I ended up wasting a lot of time pointlessly walking through areas I’d already cleared until I took a closer look at the achievements!
On to the actual game!
Early Game to Autumn Forest Tips
When you first start out the game, assuming that you have converted from 1, there are a few items that stand out. The most important thing, strangely enough, are hats! Hopefully, you have the Cloud Cap from M1. If so, equip this on Marine immediately! Then, enjoy casting Jenne for 4 SP for the entire game! It makes things soooo much easier! The other cap to note is the Amazing Alchemy Hat. I somehow overlooked this one while in the Autumn Forest. It seems to counter almost every status effect and is a great hat for Benoit for most (if not all) of the game.
Speaking of gear, while the Big Fish guide does warn you, be sure to de-equip Karine before she leaves the party for good in the side scrolling section of underground mines. You will not get her gear back for the rest of the game and I’m honestly not sure about further conversions.
There are 2 quests that should be done ASAP in the early game and a third one that is handy but not vital. The most important is quest #6. As SOON as you get those 30 orbs, head back to the guild of magic. This is critical because completing this quest teaches Marine the heal spell. With the Cloud Cap on, this will save you a ton of food / healing items. Even without the Cloud Cap, it’s still very handy. When I played, I screwed up and didnt turn this quest in until far later. It made the Toad Swamp and particularly Shumen Forest a lot more difficult than they should have been. Get the heal spell!
The other quest that should be done as soon as possible is quest #11. You need to get the princess gown for some girl in the grand hotel. You get one free in secret room 4, but it’s not good enough. You have to go back to the guild of magic, pay 1000 gold to get it enchanted, then bring it back. This will take you to a dream world where you pickup the living mirror and most importantly, she gives you the Karenina Ring! Whenever you equip this ring and touch an xp basket, the person wearing it gets an extra SP. This may not sound like much and it’s kind of annoying to equip / unequip all the time (much like the noble ring) but there are a TON of baskets in M2 and this adds up fast. The sooner you get this ring, the better!
As far as the rest of the quests, luckily none are timed like in M1. In fact, you may wish to hold off turning some of the easy ones in (like the teddy bear) until you have a full party since everyone gets rewards. There is also one character you will recruit that must be present for 8 quest turn-ins.
There is one more quest worth mentioning that can be done in the early game that gives a good reward. Quest #6 leads to it, quest # 27. You have to find 10 charms that you couldn’t see until you start this quest. It takes a bit of backtracking, but you can get all of the charms after finishing Toad Swamp. Completing this quest will give you either more MP for Marine or another new spell. The shrines for quest 27 are located in the following spots:
Green Grass Pond, an otherwise unused area off the trail to the west in Green Grass.
The Shrine of Myst in the first starting area
The Turquoise Cave
The Guild of Mind
Eternal Autumn south of the guru guy that makes cure potions
The Guild of Speed west of Eternal Autumn
The town of Shumen
Toad Swamp- After entering, stay south and go east 2 screens, watchout for the zombie king!
Toad Swamp-Way up top near the end of the swamp, near the boat.
After getting these 9, return to the guild of magic for #10 and your reward.
Toad Swamp and More Than a Tour Operator Achievement
Once you enter toad swamp, you will pick up a 2nd fairy that says hihihi a lot. She’s not spectacular but she comes in handy. However, there is an easily missable achievement involving her. She needs to be present in your party to complete 8 quests. This is why it can be advisable to save some of the earlier / easier quests (teddy bear, ugly girl, read the sign etc.) for until you recruit her. You should be able to get 8 quests easily,(unlike Hirado’s 30 in M1) but if you don’t know about the achievement it’s easy to miss this one!
One other thing to note is that Toad Swamp is the only location that snore peas can be found. Be sure to search around the various garden-like vegetation to find them. You should find at least 4 and you will need 2 to beat every quest. Don’t eat them until you need to! You will need them to enter the Ju-Ju house twice, once to find a map piece (Quest 3), once to find a gate (Quest 40).
Shumen Forest
Shumen forest itself is a long, tough slog. Be sure to stock up on healing items and stuff that revives SP. It’s a big area with lots of tough enemies that can wear your supplies down. When fighting lots of mukos, I found that it was safest to call Jenne for the attacks and have everyone else defend. The mukos seemed to hit really hard and unpredictably at times. The birds near the end hit really hard and the half bird/scorpion things have an attack that can insta-KO. Keep your SP up on Marine, call Jenne a LOT and remember that Abu can cure angry both in battle and outside so you can always call Jenne.
Also, a minor note is that you can find an exquisite banana in the window of the healing house near the end of the forest. I opted to not take it right away because once you have it, you are forced to fight the Gorilla King upon entering secret room #21. Secret room #21 also lets you complete quest #21, become a poet. The Gorilla King isn’t the toughest animal king, but he can prettymuch kill a party member every attack, so he’s not that easy either. So keep this in mind if you want to save the fight with him until you’re leveled up more and have a bigger stock of revive items.
Gigantine’s Lair and I Can Kill! Piu! Achievement
When you first enter Gigante’s Lair, you will find that worthless character Piu-Piu. He (he?she? who knows!) starts at level 1 and has terrible stats. Unfortunately, you need to deal with Piu fairly quickly because there’s a missable achievement with him. This was the one achievement that I missed and had to revert to an earlier save, so fair warning here.
Update 8/25/15: Player hcbsmits says that the “I Can Kill! Piu!” achievement is now working properly and only requires 1 kill now. Muscrats are still a good way to do it.
In order to get the “I Can Kill! Piu!” achievement, you actually need to kill 50! enemies with this worthless yellow pile of garbage. The achievement says you have to kill 1+ with him, but it’s wrong. You need 50. This is a pretty grindy and annoying task. How I did it was I included him as the 4th member of the party and set to killing some spiders in Gigante’s lair. Just set him to defend the whole time. He should level quite fast and will likely die a lot (deservingly!). Don’t waste precious mandragores on him, just use Abu’s revive KO ability. If he’s dying too much for your taste fighting spiders, you can go fight big cats and dinosaurs east of Autumn Forest with him first. I got him to at least level 15, later on to about 20. I would say that you need him at least level 15 because his attacks are so weak, he cannot even reliably kill muskrats. Yeah… he’s that bad.
So once you get him to at least level 15, head on back to the roads near Green Grass. Gear him up as best you can, I think I gave him shepherd’s hat/coat, a Shumen Scarf or the cursed pocketwatch of the gods. Just try to get his attack / str up. Then remove everyone in your party but Piu and Marine and go roaming around looking for muskrats. Set Marine to defend, have him attack muskrats. He is so crappy that half the time they will run away before he can kill them, it takes a while. After 50 boring muskrat kills, you will get your achievement and can de-equip him and remove him from your party forever. The reason you need to do this soon is because as soon as you enter the ancient temple (which is the next area after you find him) he gets taken out of your party and cannot rejoin.
Also of minor note is the fact that you complete Quest 16, (Find Bryan) as soon as you talk to Bryan, not when you turn him in to his mom. This is only important if you need a quest for Dee. Just put her in the party before you talk to Bryan in Gigante’s lair.
(Pointless aside about Piu)
I not only missed this achievement the first time and had to reload after getting to the temple, but since the text for the achievement was wrong, I couldn’t figure it out. I killed 30 enemies with him, it still didn’t pop. He actually gets a skill called “Piu-Piu” at around level 17 or so. I thought I had to kill with this skill to get the achievement. It takes 50 SP to cast, which he is nowhere close to. So, I equipped him with the cursed Owl eye, still didn’t have enough sp to cast it. So I went around giving him the Karenina Ring and finding all the xp baskets I could. Finally wasted an sp boosting item on him, only to discover that the Piu-Piu skill misses EVERYTHING! It cannot kill a muskrat, misses everytime on everything. Ugh. I even tried it on Gigante for a hilarious wipe. Needless to say, I hate this little rat. If you find out what the “Piu-Piu” skill is used for, I would be mildy curious so leave a comment!
Early Monster Kings
After clearning Gigantine’s Lair, you should have a fairly strong party. Those big groups of spiders give nice xp. It’s not mentioned in the other guide, but at this point you should be strong enough to clear some of the easier monster kings if you wish to do so. Why would you want to fight them early? Mostly for xp, a few of them give gold and some items as well. The monster kings that are available for easy mode are the 4 easiest.
The Scorpion King west of a pond west of Turquoise Cave, Queen Twin north of the guild of resistance, Imp King in Eternal Autumn, and Gorilla King (secret room 21 w/ exquisite banana) should all be beatable now. Lion King is south of Gigante’s lair and is from normal difficulty, but should be beatable now as well. Remember to save first and if you can’t beat them, don’t worry you can always come back after you’ve gotten stronger or beaten the main game. You can’t yet reach the Ooze king and the two hard kings, Trickster and Zombie are best saved for later. I found the Zombie King to be the toughest of all.
Laser Blaster Achievement
Once you get Gravitron up and running, you’ll notice that he has an achievement. Unfortunately, once again the text describing this achievement is incorrect. It claims you have to kill 50 enemies with Gravitron’s laser. This is WRONG. What you actually need to do is use Gravitron’s laser skill 50 times. This takes longer and I am unsure whether or not it counts if he tries to fire it and it fails. Irregardless, you just need to keep doing it until the achievement pops.
I found a great place to grind out this achievement and also get great xp at the same time. At the north gate, there are 2 machines that heal you for either 50 gold or xp (at this point in the game, you should have plenty of gold). Go north one screen from there and there is a battle with 2 spider things and 1 knight. Just spam his laser on this battle, you can even have everyone else defend if you wish. Then go to the left one screen, fight one battle there. By this point, he should be nearly out of SP. Just go back and refresh, repeat until you get the achievement.
If you don’t feel like grinding this out, you don’t have to. Luckily Gravitron will stay with you the rest of the game and his laser skill comes in very handy in the last area, Crystal Crown. It’s up to you whether to do this early or not.
(funny bug)
Somehow, after talking to Gravitron’s owner, I got a crazy bug where Jenne’s battle picture changed to the scientist guy! It went away after a while, but I found it to be hilarious! This is NOT photoshopped. Feel free to comment if you also get this bug after getting Gravitron.
Diamond Mine Grind
(This Section Added March 22, 2015)
*Ghost of future games speaking*
After playing through Millennium 3 and 4 (check out my guides for them, shameless plug 😛 ), I discovered something that I wish I’d done more of before importing. Towards the very end of the game in the mountains, there are some crabs you can fight that drop diamond nuggets. These nuggets sell for a LOT. I highly advise grinding out killing these crabs, up to 99 nuggets if you can stand it! Gravitron’s laser makes short work of them. The reason for this is because they will come in very handy in M3 and M4. You cannot import your money between games, but you CAN import diamond nuggets, which are basically the same thing.
Having a ton of nuggets in your import file will make it much easier to buy gear, promotions, and training in M3 and M4. It will also make it a snap for you to get the Myst’Rockfeller achievements in both 3 and 4. (Hold 99,000 gold) To get those, all you have to do is save the game, sell your nuggets, get the achievement and reload. You have been advised to mine for diamonds!
The most effective spot to farm for diamond nuggets is the following spot:
This is the screen right after the one that has the snowman you can buy Elder Mandragores and Super Phials from (look for a snowman with a green box looking thing by it). The circled enemy is an encounter with three Diamond Crabs. It comes right down at you, then you beat the crabs, leave the screen, come back and it respawns. Make sure your party has equipment that inflicts stun or paralyze and they won’t be able to run away if you prefer not to use Gravitron’s Laser.
*Ghost leaves*
Killing Gigantine and Quests 17 and 18
Surprisingly, Gigantine is an optional boss and you’ll probably want to fight him after beating the main game. It’s tough and it’s a long fight, but Gravitron is really helpful, as is Jeanne with the superboost. Benoit can lower defense and attack as well. During the fight, at least one character will get Pox’d. This is a special status that cannot be cured through regular means. However, it can be cured via sleeping. Do NOT do this or you will ruin quest #17. After you beat Gigantine and have at least one Pox’d character, you will need to walk all the way to Autumn Woods, stopping to cast heal many times along the way and putting up with the annoying blinking red screen. Don’t rest along the way, just keep eating food or healing. Go to Eternal Autumn, warp to the east side of it, then enter from there. Head east then north and you’ll eventually find the healing guru guy. He will make you a special curing mandragore that you DO NOT EAT!!! You keep healing yourself and go back to Shumen, where you give the special cure to Sarah, completing quest #17. This one is easy to screw up, so watch out! After that, go downstairs to rest and talk to the Chief’s wife to turn in Quest 18, kill Gigantine.
Slaughter King Achievement
After all the quests were done, all animal kings were dead, all secrets found and I was ready to end the game, Slaughter King wasn’t done. I think it may have had something to do with my constant use of “Call Jenne” to kill 75% of everything in the game, but somehow Abu didn’t even get close to the 200 kills needed for this achievement. After completing everything else, he was only at 104 kills. So, here is a fast trick to get those kills. Remove everyone in your party except for Marine and Abu and give him Marine’s Virtuoso Belt (Hopefully you’ve had her wear this, it’s amazing with that umbrella!). Then head on back to the roads near Green Grass and fight everyone’s favorite punching bag (and deli meat), muskrats! Have Marine defend and he should kill 2 or 3 of the little buggers in one attack. It goes a LOT faster than with Piu-Piu!
Quest God achievement and quest #14
Something interesting that I found out as I progressed was that quest 14, Find the Tavern of Spirits, is actually missable. If you do not talk to the guy in Shumen before finishing Toad Swamp and heading out to Gigantine’s Lair, he leaves town. Without him there to give the quest, you can’t complete it.
Interestingly enough, this quest being missable doesn’t mean if you miss it like I did that you can’t get Quest God and Sherlock Learned From Me. The game only requires that you get 40 quests and there are actually 41. In Crystal Crown there is a bonus, unnumbered quest. On the screen where you can get the Air Sandals, there’s a cave to the right of it. Talk to the girl in there and she asks you about lighting the northern light. That can be found later in the dungeon. On the screen where you can buy the Elder Mandragores from the snowman, jump down and exit to the right. Equip the air sandals and then jump way way up and then interact with the light there. That complete the bonus quest. Then as long as you complete the remaining quests besides 14, you can still technically be counted as getting them all.
Of course if you don’t miss quest 14, then you get 41 out of 40 quests and Quest God will unlock before you finish the last quest.
Conclusion and fixed achievements
Originally, Sherlock Learned from me, Kaiserslautern and baby steps achievements were not working. Luckily, the devs released a patch that fixed these!
As of June 6th 2015, the three achievements have now been fixed. If you were previously affected you can now load your game and get the last three. First Steps and Kaiserslautern should unlock immediately after loading a save that meets the qualifications. Sherlock Learned From Me only unlocks when the game is beaten.