Apocalypse/Emperor

[Hallowsend]

Any tips on quickest methods to reach Emperor rank and getting the Apocalypse achievement number of kills?

[Linkblade]

I'm ranked the highest skill class 12, so I frag pretty fast and have put 165 hours into Toxikk, which for me is a very long time, and I still don't have Apocalypse achievement. I'm at ~15.000 kills but 20.000 are needed, so 1/4 is missing and I would need to clock another ~165h/3*4-165h= 55 hours into it. That's a massive time invest in my book.

So, I wanna know too how to get Apocalypse faster. Can I just run a bot match and automate the input somehow and run this over night?

[Hunter]

The fastest "legit" way would probably be to host a solo game with high amount of SC1/SC3 bots with some mutators, on Cube (DM) or Ganesha (DM/DOM) with instagib if possible. Should take about 10 to 15h for the 20k kills.
I grinded 40h+ against bots back when the achievement was new, so 10-15h now is decent. Pretty sure I did those 20k kills against real players afterwards anyway... :P

[Linkblade]

this solo game to be hosted with bots does not need to match any requirements? like ranked or all sc class or something? just fragging bots in any match works?

[Hunter]

If you host a server (using the in-game multiplayer menu) with a password so that nobody can join, it should work. I'm not too sure about instagib granting XP but mutators are fine iirc. No idea if an offline game grants XP though, aside from the solo campaign stuff.

[Linkblade]

Thank you! Though it's not about XP but about frags. Does the game count those in your described cases?

[Hunter]

Frags should definitely count that way. I could be wrong but I think that if a match doesn't grant any XP, stats shouldn't update either. It's much safer going for "XP-enabled matches" imo and it's easy to check if it's working or not. Up to you to test and see! :)

[Linkblade]

Alright! I'm gonna test it! Thank you very much!

[Hallowsend]

Thanks for the ideas.

Originally posted by Linkblade:

Alright! I'm gonna test it! Thank you very much!

Please let us know how you get on!

[Linkblade]

So now I tested. Playing with bots works! You can track this by looking up the Apocalypse achievement. Though that number only updates once you exit the game.

The fastest way I found was the following:
Host game with maximum bot number 16, bot level very low Ridiculous (though they still aim pretty good), finish score: max (100), time: max (60 minutes), map FusionKKore (because it's small and open, so you can see many targets where you spawn), mode Bloodlust (of course), now the mutators are important:
- Instagib because that's the fastest way to get a kill
- Respawn Time: 0
- Spawn Protection: max (10 seconds). You would think that the minimum time would be better, but that kills also you once you spawn without a chance to do anything. The trick is, that once a player shoots the spawn protection is gone! So bots will shoot right away and can be killed, but you don't shoot, instead you go to the best place from where to shoot and then start your spree. The best place in FusionKKore is in the upper level where the jumppads push you up. In that angle you have two spawn points directly in your line of fire and can shoot non stop. Because the map is so open bots will frag each other pretty fast too and you will have respawners every 0.1 seconds.
- DON'T enable faster shooting speed or faster game speed! The bots although Ridiculous still have pretty good aim and kill you with one instagib shot. Enabling these mods will get you killed more than you can kill others. Without it I could frag faster
- Floaty Physics because I like that, but this is totally unimportant.

With these settings I made 100 kills per ~5 minutes. I did 6 matches but that gets exhausting pretty quickly. I still need to do this 45 times, so I would need to spend about 4 hours for 5000 kills and 16h for 20.000.

That's too much of a time invest for just this achievement for me.

Isn't there any way to automate this bot killing?

[.Girz0r]

Originally posted by Linkblade:

Isn't there any way to automate this bot killing?

If you find out, let us know.

[Hallowsend]

Originally posted by Linkblade:

So now I tested. Playing with bots works!...

Thanks for the detailed account. It's a start. Agreed, would be great to speed up or automate though.

[Patrol1985]

Originally posted by Linkblade:

Isn't there any way to automate this bot killing?

If you want to "automate bot killing" then at this point why not just use "Steam Achievements Manager" and obtain the achievement by clicking its icon?

[Linkblade]

Originally posted by Patrol1985:

Originally posted by Linkblade:

Isn't there any way to automate this bot killing?

If you want to "automate bot killing" then at this point why not just use "Steam Achievements Manager" and obtain the achievement by clicking its icon?

wow, such a thing exists? Well thanks for trying to help. This though seems highly destructive for the system of Steam's achievements. I hope this programm gets banned or avoided quick. Otherwise all achievements don't have any meaning anymore. I don't want my account to get banned by using this program, so I won't use it. Even if it's safe to use for now, I won't use it, because it's lame. Ok, automating bot killing is lame too, but not at the same level in my book.

[Patrol1985]

Yes, it does exist and yes - it rendered all the Steam achievements useless in terms of being "achievements", because anyone can unlock them easily now with a few clicks. That's actually the reason I stopped caring about them mostly.

And yes, you can VAC banned by using this program along a game which is VAC protected, but you were looking for shortcuts anyway, so I suggested it ;)

Originally posted by Linkblade:

Even if it's safe to use for now, I won't use it, because it's lame. Ok, automating bot killing is lame too, but not at the same level in my book.

Yeah, it mostly comes down to "everyone's individual book" now. I met people who think the Steam Achievement Manager is not lame ;) If by "automating bot killing" you mean using some external software which will play for you, then to me it is equally lame as Steam Achievements Manager. When it comes to automation using only in-game methods then to the best of my knowledge there is no such thing.

[Hunter]

The Steam Manager Achievement have been around for ages, this isn't a new thing at all. And there is basically zero risk of getting VAC banned if used right, despite people telling otherwise (not saying anyone should use it though...).

Honestly for ♥♥♥♥ achievements like Apocalypse, that's one of the rare instance of SAM being fine by my book. Getting 20k kills isn't really challenging, just very grindy. It's not really a gaming "feat" to be proud of.

Between using cheats/unintended ways (like automating bot killing) to get the achievement ingame or using SAM to get it, there is virtually little to no difference imo. You will probably feel "safer" when getting the achievement to pop ingame instead of using SAM but in the end, you are still cheating to get the job done faster... while people have done it legit. :)