ROADMAP
Overview:
- Estimated trophy difficulty: 2/10 with beneficial Game Rules (Cheats) on, 4/10 without (Platinum Difficulty Rating)
- Offline trophies: 51 (38
, 10
, 2
, 1
)
- Online trophies: N/A
- Approximate amount of time to platinum: 60 Hours with beneficial Game Rules (Cheats) on, 120+ Hours without (Estimated Time to Platinum)
- Minimum number of playthroughs: 8 - One per each Mission Sponsor, excluding International Mars Mission
- Number of missable trophies: None
- Glitched trophies: None
- Does difficulty affect trophies?: No
- Do trophies stack?: N/A
- Do cheat codes disable trophies?: Some, see Walkthrough
- Additional peripherals required?: N/A
Introduction
Surviving Mars is a city building sim brought to us by the creators of Tropico. The game is set in, as you know it, Mars where players will need to build and expand a Colony of space-faring hopefuls, deal with the harsh environments and hazards of the planet and explore the Mysteries of this planet.
Walkthrough
Step 1: Complete the Tutorial
Surviving Mars can be a rather complex game and if you don't know what you're doing, you'll find yourself constantly putting out fires all the time and struggling to make any progress. The game is akin to a sandbox building & management type and does not feature any story or campaign mode. However, players may select one of the dozen Mysteries that function as mini-scenarios for each of your playthroughs to inject a bit of narrative into the game. There's no trophy for this step, but rather it serves to familiarize you with the mechanics of the game.
As of Aug 2018, patch 1.04 was released for the PS4 allowing players to customize each playthrough with a series of "Game Rules". These Game Rules are designed to either make your life much easier, or significantly much harder. Some of these Game Rules will disable trophies so do pay attention to the tooltips under each one of them if you choose to do so. DO NOT start a new game in Creative Mode as trophies are disabled because certain Game Rules are on by default in this mode.
If you want a good challenge and you're really into micro-management, then I would suggest playing the game without any of the Game Rules. If you want an easier time, then following Game Rules will enable you to enjoy the game at a casual pace while still enabling trophies to be unlocked. You can read more at https://survivingmars.paradoxwikis.com/Game_Rules
- Prefab Colony - Begin with free prefabs for all buildings necessary for a small colony
- Fast Rockets - Rockets travel ten times faster
- Fast Scanning - Sector scanning is ten times faster
- Increased Production - The base production of all resources is doubled. Production from upgrades and other modifiers is unchanged.
- More Applicants - Start with 500 additional applicants
- Disable Disasters - Disables all disasters (excluding those coming from mysteries)
There's no right or wrong way to play the game, though as is staple for all building/management sims you want to be focused on securing resources, building ample production buildings and satisfying your population in order to grow comfortably. The same goes with Mysteries, there are no right or wrong choices, your choices will only affect what happens at each step of the mystery and potentially the amount/type of rewards obtained.
Step 2: Complete a playthrough with each of the Mission Sponsors
Excluding International Mars Mission, you'll need to play once as each of the 8 other Mission Sponsors and complete a specific task (not to be confused with the Mission Evaluation in-game mechanic which may or may not be related to the task required for the trophy). At the same time, you'll also need to complete specifically 6 of the 12 available Mysteries. Barring a couple of them, the Mysteries are really easy, straight forward and almost impossible to fail.
Keep a lookout for whenever you discover the breakthrough technologies “The Positronic Brain” and "Project Phoenix". You can discover a maximum of 19 out of 55 Breakthrough techs per playthrough, and the order you receive them is randomized but if you always pick the same location to start the game, it will always give you the same 19 techs but in random order. Therefore, if you did not get these breakthrough techs on a playthrough, then you must pick a different location to start the game the next time. The following trophies are related specifically to these 2 technologies - The Positronic Man , Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
, and Immortality of a Kind
You'll be aiming to reach the endgame with at least one of the 8 Mission Sponsors, meaning reaching 1000+ Colonists for Multiplanet Species , researching all technologies for The Boundaries of Knowledge
, building all the Wonders after you've researched them for The New Wonders of the World
and subsequently turning your attention of the trophies Dream of a Green Mars
and S.P.E.C.I.A.L
in this particular playthrough.
Step 3: Clean Up
If there are any trophies left by the time you reach this step, please refer to the relevant trophy description for a method on how to unlock them as quickly as possible.
Most importantly, have fun!
[PST Would Like to Thank yewjhin for this Roadmap]
Space Race & Green Planet DLCs:
Overview:
- Estimated trophy difficulty: 4/10 (Personal opinion)
- Offline trophies: 20 (16
, 4
)
- Online trophies: 0
- Approximate amount of time to 100%: 30-40hrs (Personal opinion)
- Minimum number of playthroughs: 10 (One as each of the Sponsor Factions in Space Race DLC)
- Number of missable trophies: 10 (Limited time in each playthrough)
- Glitched trophies: None
- Does difficulty affect trophies?: No
- Do trophies stack?: No
- Do cheat codes disable trophies?: Some 'Game Rules' disable trophies. Read the in game description.
- Additional peripherals required?: No
Walkthrough
Step 1: Complete all Space Race DLC trophies
The Space Race DLC now introduces other AI-controlled factions into the game. However this feature is entirely optional, is not required for any of the trophies, and can be disabled in the starting menu. For the Space Race DLC trophies, you'll be tasked to play as each of 7 designated factions and achieve a very specific goal, most of the time within 100 Sols. These can be quite challenging and I would recommend enabling any Game Rules that don't disable trophies in the menu. You can refer to the Game Rule description to see if it disables trophies.
For trophies that require 500% Challenge Rating, basically the map has to have an extreme amount of hazards (Dust Devil/Storms, Meteors, Cold Waves) and limited amount of resources. You can try using this link to look for suitable coordinates: LINK
At the end of this step, you will have earned the following:
Space Shopping
Tao
Space Capitalism
Europa Universalis
Waste Not, Want Not
The Pace of Progress
No Pain, No Gain
The Garden of Eden
Bushido
Gold Rush
Step 2: Complete all Green Planet DLC trophies
All of these trophies can be completed in a single playthrough and I would recommend to do this in conjunction with one of the easier trophies in the Space Race DLC (e.g. Space Shopping [USA] or Tao [China]) if you're keen on saving time. Basically you just need to follow the tutorial/hints that popup and keep increasing the terraforming properties of the planet by constructing specific buildings, completing research and special projects, then finally constructing a Capital City.
At the end of this step, you will have earned the following:
Move this Mountain!
Seeds of Life
Red Button
Tears of Joy
Fear my Botany Powers!
Now we need ducks
Detox
Skies of Blue
Creator of Worlds
Capital Achievement
[PST Would Like to Thank yewjhin for this Roadmap]