Exhausting achievement

[Osmium]

I made the mistake of trying to 100% achievements and I decided to do the most tedious looking one first. I've been washing the temple with only the white nozzle for the past 5 hours and I'm 25% done. These barnacles are BRUTAL. I think I'm gonna get carpal tunnel. It got a lot more manageable when I realized I could press C to free aim the washer without spinning the camera around.

I tried to rebind the "change nozzle" keys from mousewheel to something weird like f1 so I wouldn't accidentally invalidate the challenge 15 hours in, but the game bugged out. Whenever I change a key, it goes blank. When I change another, it rebinds the most recent thing to what the previous thing used to be. Then, when I close settings, everything goes back to default.

[Bainen]

I have some good news for you once you regain control of the game... The Ancient Monument in that achievement isn't the temple, its the pointing hand level before that.

[meandhobbs]

lmao

[Osmium]

I had a good laugh at all this.

Originally posted by Bainen:

I have some good news for you once you regain control of the game... The Ancient Monument in that achievement isn't the temple, its the pointing hand level before that.

Thanks! That is so much more reasonable. Before starting I thought "Yikes, I never use the white nozzle. Maybe there's something I can do with an extension wand to concentrate the beam or something. Oh well, maybe it'll take 2 hours". Then I realize the entire outside is covered in barnacles or something that the game calls "ore" in the dirt identifier.

It's meant to be blasted off with red nozzle or something, but with careful and repeated point blank scrubbing it is possible to laboriously strip off 5% of the layer at a time with the white nozzle if you flick it back and forth really quickly. It takes 10 seconds to clean a few square inches. Seriously, load it up and go try it for a few minutes and imagine some guy stubbornly doing that for hours. I cleaned one entire slope of the pyramid along with some other parts.

After multiple game sessions I was thinking "Why hadn't anyone else complained about this? This game was otherwise much more chill with the achievements." Yeah, turns out I was doing the wrong level. I still need to clear it with the gnome at the top, but now I can do the rest with the trident or something.

[YangoBoy]

Originally posted by Osmium:

I made the mistake of trying to 100% achievements and I decided to do the most tedious looking one first. I've been washing the temple with only the white nozzle for the past 5 hours and I'm 25% done. These barnacles are BRUTAL. I think I'm gonna get carpal tunnel. It got a lot more manageable when I realized I could press C to free aim the washer without spinning the camera around.

I tried to rebind the "change nozzle" keys from mousewheel to something weird like f1 so I wouldn't accidentally invalidate the challenge 15 hours in, but the game bugged out. Whenever I change a key, it goes blank. When I change another, it rebinds the most recent thing to what the previous thing used to be. Then, when I close settings, everything goes back to default.

Wrong map like Bainen said but 5h for 25% kill me HAHHA lol

[Bainen]

The achievement wording is a little vague, but needs to be to not give away story elements. The 'ancient monument' could logically be the large statue or the temple. I wouldn't have known myself it was the hand at the time, as I didn't envision it as a monument. I happened to read an achievement guide when I was going through the achievements the first time.

And I fully agree, using the white nozzle on the temple would be brutal.

But trust me, the hand is bad enough with the white nozzle. That level has lots of little detail that is difficult to reach, no scaffold and no ladder (IIRC).

[PlutoniumBoss]

Originally posted by Osmium:

I had a good laugh at all this.

Originally posted by Bainen:

I have some good news for you once you regain control of the game... The Ancient Monument in that achievement isn't the temple, its the pointing hand level before that.

Thanks! That is so much more reasonable. Before starting I thought "Yikes, I never use the white nozzle. Maybe there's something I can do with an extension wand to concentrate the beam or something. Oh well, maybe it'll take 2 hours". Then I realize the entire outside is covered in barnacles or something that the game calls "ore" in the dirt identifier.

It's meant to be blasted off with red nozzle or something, but with careful and repeated point blank scrubbing it is possible to laboriously strip off 5% of the layer at a time with the white nozzle if you flick it back and forth really quickly. It takes 10 seconds to clean a few square inches. Seriously, load it up and go try it for a few minutes and imagine some guy stubbornly doing that for hours. I cleaned one entire slope of the pyramid along with some other parts.

After multiple game sessions I was thinking "Why hadn't anyone else complained about this? This game was otherwise much more chill with the achievements." Yeah, turns out I was doing the wrong level. I still need to clear it with the gnome at the top, but now I can do the rest with the trident or something.

The final job is the Ancient Palace, the Temple you need to finish with the gnome at the top is where the monks live. The gnome loads in at the top of that map, if you knock it off accidentally you can just leave the job and come back to reset the positions of everything and it'll be back up there.

[darkness]

I believe the achievements should be achieved during the game not finishing the washes and then finding out that oh yeah, to get this you needed to have done this first. I t's the other way round or at least perhaps mention of an achievement during the wash itself like hey extra bonus if...
I have finished most of them only to find out that I have lost more than 10 achievements and keep losing. So yeah, that's my 2 cent on the matter.

[Osmium]

Just to clarify, when I said I was doing the "temple" in my original post I meant I was cleaning the entire Ancient Palace with the white nozzle! The big pyramid thing. I did most of the locations 2 years ago but stopped before doing the palace or the DLC before returning to the game a month ago so those were the only locations I remembered. I also misremembered what it was called, which led to all the confusion with achievements and trying to describe here what I did.

I just did the achievements for the gnome on the temple and the hand monument with the white nozzle today. It was about 2 hours and I did it while finishing half a season of anime on my other monitor. That was so much easier than scrubbing barnacles off the palace one inch at a time. I am still NEVER going to use the white nozzle again, though. Not unless I'm intentionally washing the dirt that's covering up graffiti while leaving the graffiti intact.

[Osmium]

Originally posted by darkness:

I believe the achievements should be achieved during the game not finishing the washes and then finding out that oh yeah, to get this you needed to have done this first. I t's the other way round or at least perhaps mention of an achievement during the wash itself like hey extra bonus if...
I have finished most of them only to find out that I have lost more than 10 achievements and keep losing. So yeah, that's my 2 cent on the matter.

Yeah, some are kinda strict. I did the van entirely with the red nozzle but the achievement didn't pop up because I squirted a little water into the air at the very beginning with a different nozzle. It didn't touch the van, but apparently that still invalidated it. Fortunately I was able to do it again in a few minutes and learned the lesson on a much smaller job than if I had made that mistake on a larger one.

[Tripas]

Oh Jesus, it's a good thing you complained about it in here and found out you were actually doing the wrong level, because can you imagine if you hadn't?

I mean, just imagine you finally finishing that level after about 25 hours of white-nozzling it, only to not get the achievement at the end? I don't know about you, but I would have probably eaten my keyboard in frustration.

[Osmium]

Originally posted by Tripas:

Oh Jesus, it's a good thing you complained about it in here and found out you were actually doing the wrong level, because can you imagine if you hadn't?

I mean, just imagine you finally finishing that level after about 25 hours of white-nozzling it, only to not get the achievement at the end? I don't know about you, but I would have probably eaten my keyboard in frustration. :berserk:

You'd think so, right? Many other games have wasted far less of my time while inspiring me to greater degrees of rage. Certain parts of Elden Ring seem to be designed to just squeeze the profanity out of me.

However, this game in particular epitomizes the phrase "it's about the journey, not the destination". Powerwash Simulator is almost entirely about the meditative act of slowly scouring dirt away and the gradual satisfaction that brings. If I had followed through and spent 20-25 hours doing the whole thing, I really would have achieved something and gotten some enjoyment out of the process (otherwise I wouldn't have tried it), whether or not I got a little popup in the bottom right corner that acknowledged it.

To use Elden Ring as an example again (I've been playing a lot recently), there are people who spend many hours doing challenge runs like beating all 165 bosses without dying or even getting hit at all. There's no Steam achievement for that, but that doesn't diminish the experience that person had at all. It might be annoying if that person expected an achievement, but at the end of the day Steam achievements carry about as much clout as an adult's spelling bee trophy they earned when they were 6. Nobody other than the player cares.

Also, if I really felt like I had accomplished the spirit of an achievement and still felt the need to record it in my profile without redoing it, there are editors to manually unlock them.

[Sarvok]

I didnt know there was a White nozzle only temple achievement? i thought only the Hand had the white nozzle achievement

[PlutoniumBoss]

Originally posted by Sarvok:

I didnt know there was a White nozzle only temple achievement? i thought only the Hand had the white nozzle achievement

You are correct, the desert hand or Ancient Monument is the only one with the white nozzle only achievement.

[Duneman]

The final level was bad enough with any nozzle. Trying to do that with just the white nozzle would bring tears...

[Pumpkin_Masher]

Originally posted by Tripas:

Oh Jesus, it's a good thing you complained about it in here and found out you were actually doing the wrong level, because can you imagine if you hadn't?

I mean, just imagine you finally finishing that level after about 25 hours of white-nozzling it, only to not get the achievement at the end? I don't know about you, but I would have probably eaten my keyboard in frustration. :berserk:

I was browsing my library and saw that I was only missing 1 achievement for a decade old game, and it was to beat the game on hard mode. So I played through the entire game, on hard mode, just for the achievement not to pop. Talk about frustrating.