Overview
In this guide I will explain every achievement in this game in detail as much as I can. Please note that there will be spoilers in this guide. There will also be a special section at the end on how to unlock the password for the “super_secret.rar” file, which is located in the game directory.Note that not every text is written by me. The Amnesia Fandom website has been a HUGE help in making this guide and I really appreciate their walktroughs/tutorials/step-by-step guides.
NOPE (Rainy Hall)
Unlock this achievement by exiting the game right after the beginning cutscene has finished.
Alchemist (Entrance Hall, Labratory, Wine Cellar, Archives)
Location to unlock: The Entrance Hall
Entrance Hall connects to: Labratory, Wine Cellar (locked, key found in Archives), Archives, Refinery (can be accessed once the player removed the Shadow’s residue)
Walkthrough description:
The Shadow covers the main entrance gate to the castle in its residue if the player interacts with the large door, as well as the path to the Refinery. The player will have to prepare a corrosive liquid in the Laboratory and use it to dissolve the organic matter to gain access to the Refinery.
The Shadow gradually consumes this area as Daniel makes progress. This starts to happen when he leaves the Archives after obtaining the Wine Cellar key, and then happens again after having gathered all the ingredients in the Wine Cellar and when the acid is finally created in the Laboratory. The cosmic force roars angrily and the corridors leading to these three areas are engulfed in its fleshy matter, making avoiding injury difficult.
Escape Artist (Cellar Archives, Archive Tunnels)
Location to unlock: Cellar Archives
Cellar Archives connects to: Refinery, Archive Tunnels
Walkthrough description:
Upon entering the area, the Shadow will roar rather loudly. After the player walks a few steps, the screen will fade to black and upon gaining vision, the whole place becomes flooded and The Shadow overtakes the area. If the player waits some time or walks a few steps, the Kaernk is revealed for the first time and starts to hunt down Daniel.
In the first room on the right side of the first corridor, there is a single lever. If the player wants an extra Laudanum, the player can ignore this lever for now.
Continuing down the corridors, there will be another room with one Laudanum on a shelf. This room contains nothing else and is only there for the extra laudanum. Continuing to the end of the corridors, there is a gate which cannot be opened. Go back to the room with the lever and pull it. There will be a countdown in which the player must reach the now opened gate to proceed to the next area.
Upon arriving, the player is met with a gargantuan room with boxes everywhere. Another Kaernk will spawn further away and the gate will close upon entering this area. On most boxes, there are ripped off body parts (legs, arms and torsos).
If the player throws a meat piece in the water, the Kaernk will approach the meat piece and chow down on it, buying precious time to open another gate with a wheel to open it. Be quick, as the gate opens very slowly and requires the player to rotate it. By the time you open the gate, the Kaernk will already be on your tail, so run as fast as you can and try to shut the door behind you. Doing this will buy you more precious time to find the hollow needle, which is located on a shelf near the next level door.
Descendant (Back Hall, Machine Room, Elevator)
Location to unlock: Back Hall
Back Hall connects to: Storage, Guest Room, Study, Machine Room, Elevator
Walkthrough description:
First rod
Start by getting the key for the Machine Room in the Guest Room. You will soon notice you need 3 pipes to fix the machine in the machine room. One can by acquired through the Study, at the end of the hall where rocks collapsed through the ceiling. You will soon see one of the windows starts to crack, you want to throw an item at this windows to break it. After that, you can climb outside and go to the right, you will come by window with broken glass, you can enter this room and one of the rods will be located here.
Second and third rod
After acquiring the first drill part, a Grunt will spawn. The best way to deal with this is to hide in a dark corner until it’s gone.
After obtaining the first drill piece, go to the second expanse you can access, which is the chemical storage. Search all the rooms, as the two remaining drill pieces can be found in them. The rooms also have plentiful supplies, like tinderboxes, Laudanum, and oil. Once all three drill parts have been retrieved, all that needs to be done is to open the inventory and combine them to create the Hand Drill.
Similar to the Refinery, there are large wine barrels everywhere. However, two barrels in the vertexes of the room (they look similar to the oil barrels and are marked as primary and secondary) contain volatile chemicals and need to be used to create an explosive. The taps are rusted shut however, so one will have to use the hand drill on each barrel to obtain the liquid with the chemistry pot from the Laboratory. As a result, you will obtain a pot of explosive liquid. Use this to demolish the rubble blocking the path to the rest of the Storage.
The explosive does not become active once deposited on the ground near the rubble. To set it off, an object has to be thrown at it. Be careful though, as the blast radius is very large, and standing near the explosive when it goes off can result in significant health loss.
It is now possible to progress all the way to the furthermost room in the Storage, where the rods can be found. It should be noted though, that a Servant Grunt hides in one of the smaller rooms that can be reached from the large, open area you end up in as you follow the hallway. To avoid this encounter, simply skip opening the door to the far room in the big, open area with the large working bench.
Machine Room
To activate the machinery you have to stabilize the steam pressure, insert the rods in the right holes, fill the burner with coal and put the cogs on their place. These operations can be done in any order.
1. Stabilizing the steam pressure. You should find yourself facing a console with six levers with roman numerals above and below them. The trick of stabilizing the steam pressure is to arrange the levers in an order that add up to 8 at the top and 8 at the bottom. A correct configuration to accomplish this is (from left to right): Down, down, up, up, up, down. The solution to this puzzle is hinted in the note “Elevator Machine Instructions”.
2. Inserting the rods. The console has three holes and “Tractatio Fluxus” written above. After having gathered all three rods from the Study and Storage, the machinery can be powered from here using them. The Flow Cycle Rod found in the Study fits into the circle hole, the Trinity Stream Rod found in the Storage fits in the triangle hole and finally, the Four-phase Amplitude Rod found in the Storage fits into the square hole.
3. Repairing the machinery. Three cogwheels are missing from the machinery. Luckily, these can be found stowed away in different places in the Machine Room. The first wheel is found in the room where you insert the rods, on a small table in the corner. The second one is right in front of the door of the same room. The final one is in the machinery room, at the entry door’s left. Once all three has been obtained, you just need to attach each wheel to the empty spuds on the machine, and they will fit in automatically.
4. Feeding the burner. In a small room adjacent to the one with the machine, pieces of coal can be found scattered all over the floor. To fuel up the machine, three of these will have to be added to the burner found at the side of the machine. Once enough coal has been added, a message will pop up telling you that the burner is full.
Once all above tasks have been completed, all that is left to do is to pull the lever on the machine.
If you’ve done everything right, the machine should start, and the elevator will function properly. When leaving the Machine Room, the Shadow will invade this section of the castle.
Pipeworker (Cistern Entrance, Sewers)
Location to unlock: (Entrance to) Cistern, Sewers
Entrance to Cistern connects to: Morgue, Control Room, Cistern, Sewers
Walkthrough description:
First step is to lower the bridge to the Cistern from the Cistern Entrance. Once it is lowered, you can go to the Cistern. In here you want to look for 3 valves, these can be turned to lower the water level in the sewers. Once you did this, go back to the Entrance.
Now you want to enter the morgue, you need a vaccin for the poisonouss fungi that lives in the sewers. To do this, pull the lever for the bridge to the Cistern to make it go up, run to it and jump on. When it pulls you back up, you can jump to the other bridge (it was jammed before) and enter the morgue.
In order to survive the toxic fungi in the Sewer, it is necessary to get vaccinated with the blood from a day-old dead body lying on a table in the Morgue.
A note on a nearby table explains that the transfusion of blood from a person who has already had the vaccine will provide enough protection to pass through the sewers unharmed by the fungi. To get the vaccinated blood in your circulatory system, you must first use the hand drill to drill into the skull of the deceased lying on the table. After drilling a hole into the skull, you need to assemble a syringe using the Hollow Needle acquired earlier in the game and a Copper Tube found in the Morgue. After creating the syringe you can then use it to inject yourself with the blood.
Now you can safely enter the sewers without dying from the Entrance to the Cistern (down the ladder).
Restorer (Chancel, Choir, Transept)
Location to unlock: Chancel
Chancel connects to: Nave, Inner Sanctum
Walkthrough description:
Transept:
The three rooms each contain a different torture device: the Strappado, the Judas Cradle, and the Saw. An Orb piece can be found in each room. In the Saw room, the vitae necessary for Agrippa’s potion can be gathered from the blood in the drainage pipe. This is done by combining the string found in the small room at the top of the stairs with the glass jar to make a glass jar on a string, and then lowering this down the drainage pipe to fill it with blood. As each of the torture rooms are visited, various flashbacks occur in which Daniel revisits the torture he inflicted upon various people. His sanity will be lowered considerably.
Choir:
As you enter the Choir, you will automatically face left. Hug the left wall while walking forward and you will eventually reach the Iron Maiden room. Collect everything, most importantly the Orb piece.
Exit the Iron Maiden room and move forward. You will pass a bridge to your left. Do not cross it as a monster lurks nearby. Continue moving forward until you reach the edge, then turn right and cross the first bridge you see to your left.
Collect the items near the rocks in front of you, then move near the wall. Proceed forward while hugging the right wall, and you will eventually reach the Wheel room. Collect everything.
Exit the Wheel room and continue moving forward with the wall to your right. Once you come to the collapsed pillar, you might hear a Brute growling. Hide for a while until you feel safe, and then cross over the gap using the collapsed pillar. Keep moving forward while hugging the wall to your right until you reach a room with a bunch of mushrooms outside. Break the largest one with your hammer and chipper and take the Poison Gland. Afterwards, enter the Brazen Bull room and collect the last piece of the orb.
Exit the Brazen Bull room and move forward, still hugging the wall to your right. When you have to choose between going right and going straight, go straight until you reach the edge. Move forward with the edge to your right until you reach a bridge. Slowly cross it and move forward until you reach the exit.
Chancel
To restore the orb, the playermust put all the pieces in the bowl to the left when you enter the room with the gateway to the Inner Sanctum (the room with the generator-looking hallway)
Quitter (Cells)
Location to unlock: Cells
Cells connects to: Nave
Walkthrough description:
When the Shadow is chasing you in the Cells, let it kill you.
Survivor (Orb Chamber)
Location to unlock: Orb Chamber
Orb Chamber connects to: None, story ends here
Walkthrough description:
When in the Orb Chamber and Alexander is waiting for the portal to open. Push all three of the stands with the orbs over. This will make the process stop and Alexander gets killed by The Shadow.
Sacrifice (Orb Chamber)
Location to unlock: Orb Chamber
Orb Chamber connects to: None, story ends here
Walkthrough description:
When Alexander is opening the portal, do nothing. This will kill Daniel and let Alexander escape.
Benefactor (Nave, Orb Chamber)
Location to unlock: Orb Chamber, Nave
Orb Chamber connects to: None, story ends here
Walkthrough description:
This one requires some preperation, it is better to do this all BEFORE you get captures in the Chancel. We must prepare the Weyer’s Tonic to save Agrippa, he mentioned this multiple times almost every time you saw him.
Acquiring the ingredients
Tampter is the saliva of the Kaernk (the water creature) that can be encountered in the Cellar Archives and the Cistern. To acquire it, one must go to the room adjacent to Agrippa’s chamber, climb up the wooden stairs and find a haunch of meat. After that, you must go into the small room with the well (after you have opened the two doors in Agrippa’s room), which is located near the Transept. There, the meat is attached to the well and lowered, where the Kaernk will devour it, leaving the bone covered in Tampter. If you miss this step before being captured in the Chancel, there is an additional Kaernk in one of the wells in the passage between the cells and the first room of the Nave (after you escape from the Shadow).
As for the vitae, it is acquired by distilling the blood of a tortured human being. In the Transept, by ascending the spiral staircase, you will find Alexander’s study where there is some string on the desk. Attach this string to the glass jar. In one of the torture chambers in the Transept, you will find a drainage pipe covered by a grate. Open the grate, lower the glass jar into the blood and retrieve it. If you miss the blood in the Transept before it’s blocked off there is another grate in the room that opens up next to Agrippa’s room (cannot do this before being captured). By boiling the blood in the laboratory, you extract the vitae.
The fungus with the poison gland can be found in the Choir, just before the entrance to the chamber with the Brazen bull. You can get the gland by breaking the fungus itself, either using a rock or the hammer and chipper from the Prison blocks. The poison is extracted in the laboratory as well. If this step is missed before the Choir collapses, additional fungi can be found if you attempt to re-enter the Choir after escaping from the cells (You will be unable to reach the Choir due to a cave-in, but fungi can be found at its base).
Making the Tonic
Note that the tonic CANNOT be completed before you are captured in the Chancel, and this capture, in turn, does not occur until you’ve gathered all six Orb pieces. Upon your subsequent escape from the Cells and flight from the Shadow, the quakes will cause parts of the castle to collapse, making the Laboratory accessible.
In the Laboratory, you have to (in no order), boil the blood on the burner to extract the Vitae, place the jar under the vice, then put the poison gland in the vice and crank it until it is squeezed into the jar. Finally, put the jar under the contraption on the centre table, and place the Tampter-covered bone inside of the contraption. This will steam the bone and put the Tampter in the mixture. The potion is now complete and ready to be used to free Agrippa.
Taking Agrippa’s head
To take Agrippa’s head, go back to him and give him the Tonic. A room will open to the left of him, there is a bone saw there. Use it on Agrippa to cut off his head and take it with you.
The Orb Chamber
When Alexander has opened the portal, you want to throw Agrippa’s head into it. You do this by selecting it from your inventory and then left-clicking on the blue portal that has formed in front of Alexander.
Egotist (Amnesia Justine)
Description:
This achievement is unlocked when you beat the DLC while letting all victims die.
Vacillator (Amnesia Justine)
Description:
This achievement is unlocked when you beat the DLC while letting at least one victim live.
Altruist (Amnesia Justine)
Description:
This achievement is unlocked when you beat the DLC while saving all the victims.
Still Alive (Amnesia Justine, Library)
Location to unlock: Library
Walkthrough description:
Go forward and into the room with the projector, turn right and head to the bookcase facing you. Search the shelves for a book you can move and pull it away.
A note will reveal itself, pick it up and read it.
Illuminatus (The Dark Descent)
Description:
This achievement is unlocked when you pick up every tinderbox in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. For a list of all the tinderbox locations, please visit this website[amnesia.fandom.com].
Masochist (The Dark Descent)
Description:
This achievement is unlocked when you beat the game on hard mode.
Master Archivist (The Dark Descent & Justine)
Description:
This achievement is unlocked when you collect all the notes in both Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: Justine.
Please check out this guide for all the locations of the notes in both games.
Insanity (The Dark Descent & Justine)
Description:
This achievement is unlocked when you achieve every other achievement!
Special (“super_secret.rar” file)
To achieve the password for the super_secret.rar file, you must get all three endings in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The difficulty doesn’t matter.
As you can see in these screenshots below, every ending has a different code on the bottom.
When combined, it should make the password lke271tyr299odn314
The rar files includes the following:
- Folder 1: Video (Very early video footage of the game)
- Folder 2: Art (Concept art of creatures, environments and characters)
- Folder 3: Design (Powerpoint presentation, JPEGs, Engine, Sketches, Word document)
- Folder 4: Herbert’s Lost Diary (This was removed from the game)