"Crystal Mess" Achievement Guide

Where to find the crystals and how to carefully collect them.

Introduction

This brief guide will assist with the buggy "Crystal Mess" achievement. There are two methods presented in this guide: set FPS to 24 in the launcher (suggested by the comments), or the long-and-tedious way of patiently collecting the crystals one-by-one.

-----------SAVE YOUR PROGRESS BEFORE ATTEMPTING----------

Where It Is

This achievement is available between the Lefty Lugnuts bounty and taking the boat to Doc's Retreat. It is best to attempt this after completing the first task of this bounty, collecting the Sleg Call.

Cave Locations

There are two caves that contain the crystals. I suggest exploring both caves prior to collecting the crystals in case breaking the planks barricading the cave is a possible cause for the achievement breaking.

• Cave 1: From The Wilds entrance, head to the left past the constructed houses and follow the river. You will come across a sign that shows "Welcome to the wilds!". Standing next to the sign and looking across the river, there is a waterfall. To the left of the waterfall is a small patch of land with some foliage. Go to that island and you will discover a cave covered in wooden planks. Destroy the planks and collect the two moolah pots sitting on the cave floor, but DO NOT destroy the crystals yet. Collecting the moolah pots while picking up the crystals may conflict with the achievement progress.
  
  
• Cave 2: Keep progressing forth into The Wilds, the river continues along the canyon. Once you come across a land-ramp next to a large grey rock, run along the rock and jump to the next rock that is sitting in the middle of the river, and from there to the small stretch of land that connects to a much larger area. You could also just swim across the river. Within that area, behind some trees and foliage is another cave. Just like the last one, destroy the planks and DO NOT destroy the crystals yet. SAVE, and move onto the next step.

How To Get It

Both caves have large orange-glowing crystals on the walls in clusters of three chunks that can be shattered by a zappfly. When the crystal fractures, three shards will fall to the ground. Collect these shards for the achievement.

Set FPS to 24 (Suggested by comments)

1. In the launcher settings, change the FPS to 24.
   
   
2. Collect the crystals and the achievement should unlock first try!

Tedious / Patience Method

1. Break one cluster at a time and let the shards fall to the ground before collecting. Note: some crystals may get stuck on the cave wall or fall through the ground, however there are more than 25 crystals to collect.
   
   
2. Carefully approach the shards on the ground, collecting one at a time. It's best to wait for the moolah tooltip on the bottom left to disappear before collecting the next shard.
   
   
3. Repeat these steps until both caves are depleted, or the achievement unlocks.
   
   
4. If the achievement did not unlock, reload the save and try again.

Best of luck to everyone, and thanks to the community for commenting on their other successful methods!

Credits

Image Sources

Banner:
- Stranger picture: http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2012/05/18/just-add-water-provides-updates-for- strangers-wrath-hd-vita-munchs-oddysee-hd-more/
- Achievement icon: Steam
- Created with photoshop

[JonahMagic]

Thank you for your guide, but I would like to add something:

After following your guide the achievement still didn't unlock. But after closing down the game and opening it back up, I got the achievement after only collecting a few crystals in the 1st cave.

So I would like to add that if the achievement doesn't pop after following your guide, restart your game and retry it. You'll then likely unlock it in the 1st cave.

[Tree, Bearer of Dry Wit and Puns]

Still works

[Fuzz]

Wow, it's been ages since I made this. I'm happy it has helped many of you, and I'm happy you're all sharing your other workarounds here. I'll update this guide to include the FPS suggestion for future viewers.

[RustyMan]

Can confirm the bellow: changing max fps in launcher to 24 made me get the achievement first time after trying for ages without doing so.

[Apple Jew]

Changing max fps in launcher from 100 to 24 works like a charm. Everything else didn't bear any fruit.

[bluntbows]

For anyone who may use this guide in the future, you can try setting your monitor's refresh rate to 24 hz. I did this thinking that a high refresh rate may interfere with the achievement, and it worked for me.

[Renato-BR]

I've got it. Had to start a new game before loading the save game prior to start collecting.

[Xenu]

Not working at all for me even when i'm at Freely :(

[Fuzz]

@Silk Glad you found a way to get it working! I wish this one wasn't so glitchy.

[Silk]

I tried 10 times with no result after killing the sled, never worked. I tired once during Elboze Freely, got it immedialty without picking one by one.