Any cheesy strategies to farm the Distant Friends achievement?

[waifu]

This is my last remaining achievement. I don't know how to go about it other than just playing the game and breaking mountains here and there. Are there any super cheese methods for easily getting it?

[Chibi Life]

just start a mission and push ` to enter console and type "secret" break the glowing mountain and there you go lol.

[Drain]

I don't think he was asking for a cheat, nor should you provide one. As far as legitimately obtaining them, there's no fast way to do so. You just have to keep an eye out every mission, sooner or later they show up. Note that once you break the mountain and get the beacon, you do not have to also get the pod. Once it is on the field, you will get the pilot, assuming the pod is not destroyed. Aliens do not move onto pods nor try to attack them, so rarely do they need to picked up.

[Pherdnut]

Keep restarting on Detritus to get the disposal device mission where the bonus goal is to destroy all mountains with the acid cannon.

[Alturis]

I have heard that the pod often (or usually?) shows up inside a mountain that is pre-cracked when the mission starts. I have been playing through the game over and over and only half heartedly attemping to break mountains and I am not seeing many pre-cracked mountains at all. And on the rare cases I do get a mission with them they don't have any glow in them.

I am about ready to be done here and getting quite tired of playing the game and only focusing on looking for the glowing mountain crack. Its losing its pull for me now... This achievement seems to far surpass the difficulty of any other and is getting quite frustrating as I seem to have no control over it (which is a complete 180 from all the others)

Really all I am interested in getting is the final coin to unlock the secret squad. Not all that obessed with being a completionist.

[Sir Render]

Originally posted by Pherdnut:

Keep restarting on Detritus to get the disposal device mission where the bonus goal is to destroy all mountains with the acid cannon.

The beacon can't appear on the first island as far as i know.

[waifu]

Originally posted by Alturis:

I have heard that the pod often (or usually?) shows up inside a mountain that is pre-cracked when the mission starts. I have been playing through the game over and over and only half heartedly attemping to break mountains and I am not seeing many pre-cracked mountains at all. And on the rare cases I do get a mission with them they don't have any glow in them.

I am about ready to be done here and getting quite tired of playing the game and only focusing on looking for the glowing mountain crack. Its losing its pull for me now... This achievement seems to far surpass the difficulty of any other and is getting quite frustrating as I seem to have no control over it (which is a complete 180 from all the others)

Really all I am interested in getting is the final coin to unlock the secret squad. Not all that obessed with being a completionist.

Well that is unfortunate then. I just ended up using the "secret" command in the console.

[Breadsmith]

It's really not hard, I actually found all three before I found all the "normal" pilots. It took me 40+ hours to find Archimedes.

[Chibi Life]

I don't blame you for using secret. I found this particular achievement to be very unfun. I was putting it on easy, ignoring the vek and killing mountains, timeline fails and I redo.

[Alturis]

Originally posted by dude:

Well that is unfortunate then. I just ended up using the "secret" command in the console.

That actually works? I tried that and it didnt do anything for me.

[FilipinoMilitiaMan]

The secret beacon can also be found under broken ice/in water tiles made by tidal waves.

Fighting on the ice island second gives a lot of opportunity to shoot mountains/ice to look for the pod.

[Pherdnut]

I found the first two by accident and am pretty sure I missed two opportunities before I knew about the Easter Egg pilots. Definitely had the first (and best) one before getting all normal pilots. Just watch for glowy spots in cracked mountains/ice on regular map missions. Not sure about fire and smoke but you can see it through acid, I know that. And pay attention if pilots/island leaders say something is weird about the terrain (I think they only notice when it's broken, not when it's cracked and showing). I feel no need to cheat for the third. I expect it will come along eventually.