The infamous 'Climby Climby Robot' Achievement

[Garfiel L'zanya]

Hey all. Big fan of the beauty and simplicity of this game; not so big a fan of the 'Climby Climby Robot' Achievement.

I'm on my way to 100%, but the aforementioned achievement is quite tedious - to say the least. Here's what's so frustrating about it.

Starting off, there's the apparent lack of tracking how much you've climbed in-game. It's rather difficult to know whether you're doing things 'right' when there's no feedback being given back to you as a player. Maybe there's some sort of dev tool or mod - something - out there in assisting the player in keeping track, but as far as I know, you're just going to be guessing.

The next issue has multiple facets, and I briefly touched on it before - what is the 'right' way to climb? Since climbing is based on the use of M1 + M2 (at least for Keyboard+Mouse users) - or more accurately, since climbing is based on using each hand to move across a surface - what contributes towards the achievement?
-- How is climbing distance measured? Should you use one hand to grasp onto a surface, and before letting go use the other hand to grasp? This is much slower, as you have to manually keep track of when BUD gets his hand attached, and thus less time is spent actually climbing and more time is spent confirming BUD's hands have the little circles around them so that you can cognitively confirm this and proceed to let go of the previous input and repeat the slow process over and over again. I don't know about other players, but I tend to climb with both hands dug in at once and propel BUD, and I wonder if this technically counts as climbing, as there is no distance being covered from each arm to the other, which as I've stated before would seem to be the 'obvious' way climbing would be measured.
-- Which directions count towards climbing? Is it only vertically? Since you can grab any surface, does that mean every surface is measured? Is shimmying along horizontal across the side of a mountain climbing, or is climbing UP the mountain the only way to 'climb'? For all that, what about climbing DOWN something? It would still be vertical, but what is considered climbing? What's more, you can 'climb' across flat surfaces you can normally walk on - is this considered climbing as well?
-- Lastly, 10,000 meters? If I'm not mistaken, the goal in the game is to get the Star Plant to 2,000 meters - does that mean the player has to climb five times the plant's height? With all of the aforementioned unknown factors weighing them down? Surely, in my time playing games, I have done some mind-numbing and repetitive tasks, but nothing so blatantly boring yet fully commited as this. Hopefully, this is an achievement that is tracked culmulatively, and not in a single session - god forbid.

I should say, I absolutely love the game, and it has been a blast to play - however, asking the player to perform a repetitive, mundane action without giving them any sort of feedback whatsoever as to whether or not they're doing it correctly is kind've a buzz-kill for completionists like myself.

Again, this isn't a critique of the game as a whole. I love so much about this game - the visuals, the sounds, the gameplay, the exploration, and much, MUCH more. I would still recommend this game to anyone - but this achievement (pardon my French) is a real ♥♥♥♥♥.

If anyone has any ideas or comments on the two big issues I mentioned (The climbing method and it's measurements, and the directions applied), I'd be glad to hear them. I'm still working on the achievement, so I'll try to keep things updated if there's anything I can speculate on to help clear things up.

[Mister Ikkus]

Climbing is climbing. You can only use BUD's hands. No jetpack. No jumping. After getting 100% and every other achievement, I worked on this one. I started at the bottom of the main stalk and climbed hand-over-hand all the way to the top. When that didn't do it, I started again from the bottom. It wasn't long after starting the second climb that the achievement popped.

[Skirlasvoud]

The plant itself is over 2000 meters tall. Slightly more because it curls and winds.

So, whatever happens, I can assure you that climbing it 5 times from bottom to top will cause the achievement to pop. Probably far less because you've already did a lot of clambering to get the plant to reach that height. Good luck!

[TRYED]

Thx for the tips. I went hand over hand 3/4 the way up. I guess I did more climbing before hand, than I though. Cheers!

[Kavukamari]

I made an autohotkey script that does the Hold-Forward-and-Alternate-Mouse-Buttons thing for you, so you just have to give BUD a relatively straight vine and press ctrl+h and just nudge him in the right direction when he's about to fall off. it's still annoying and involved, but your hands aren't going to die or get carpal tunnel (yet) cause the hard part is done by the script

poo := false
delay := 750

Loop {
    if (poo) {
        Click down left
        Click up right
        Sleep, %delay%
        Click down right
        Click up left
        Sleep, %delay%
    }
}
return

^h::
    if (poo) {
        Send, {w Up}
        Click up left
        Click up right
        poo := false
    } else {
        Send, {w Down}
        poo := true
    }
return

you can mess with the delay variable to see if you can get him to climb at a faster speed, but i found that 500ms went up too slowly because he changed hands too fast and didn't raise his body up enough, and 1000ms changed hands too slowly, so he climbed slower, so I thought 750 was a good middle ground

the poo variable is just my "is it turned on or not?" variable

press ctrl+h to start the script, and press ctrl+h again to stop it when you're done or you need to go back to the bottom of your vine

I found that I got really great results when I manually grew an extra offshoot from the bottom of the vine with native BUD, and at the closest to the end of that offshoot, I continued with another one, trying to get as vertical as possible. When you run out of shoots on that vine, grab one from the main vine again, and try to line it up with the previous one so you'll hook onto it as you get to the end of the old vine

it's hard to explain, I hope you know what I mean

[Anaerob]

In the name of science, I tried going from the top down to the bottom. After one full climb down, the achievement popped (seems reasonable as I did some climbing completing the game). This probably means that climbing downwards also counts towards the achievement. More research is needed!

[Mike Shinoda]

Just did it feel extremely satisfied it is much easier then expected

[sumolagann]

I did it with tree drops

[Thumb]

I've enjoyed my time with the game, I don't think its that hard to get, I only had to get a guide for a few of the achievements after finishing the plants growth.