Battlefield 3 Achievement Hunting In 2025 (and Hopefully Beyond)

This guide is for players aiming to 100% Battlefield 3 in 2025 and beyond. It covers setup, workarounds, shortcuts and the best ways to unlock achievements despite inactive game modes. With practical tips on coordination, tracking progress, and avoiding common issues.

Introduction

So you might be interested in 100%-ing BF3 (maybe with the fear that the servers might shut down soon or because you want to relive some memories from a better time) and wonder how feasible this is in 2025. The good news is: It’s absolutely feasible, and it’s not even that hard or time-consuming. On top of that, the game has held up surprisingly well! It took me about a week of evening/night play sessions to go from 14/34 (that I had on first start and only covered basic progression) to 34/34.
With this guide I'm hoping to save you some time and headaches as much of the existing info on getting some of them is not clear/complete or rather dispersed over achievement hunter sites.

Preliminaries

EA has basically completely stopped giving a hoot about this game beyond keeping the Battlelog server up. As a result, you need to do some (or just one if you are on windows) things to get it to work (in case you haven’t yet).

• Manually update PunkBuster: Since the PunkBuster that's packed with BF3 is completely outdated.
  
• Install a user agent switcher: If you're on Linux, install a user agent switcher to pretend you’re on Internet Explorer, otherwise you cannot join any servers for some stupid reason.

Both of these have some guides available on the discussion page of BF3 on Steam.

Note: If you are thinking of using Venice Unleashed instead of dealing with the Battlelog launcher: VU does not support achievements, and it’s unlikely that it ever will in a way that's relevant for this. These achievements are tied to your assignments/achievements on Battlelog and VU cannot modify this data.

Unlocking Achievements

You may have tried to unlock some achievements and noticed them not unlocking immediately/properly. The reason for this is as follows:

The EA app that runs in the background keeps track of the achievements you’ve unlocked and it might show them unlocking, but it doesn’t immediately sync them with Steam. The sync happens at a specific moment—when you start the game (not just Battlelog). At that point, all EA achievements are synced to Steam, and everything you’ve unlocked will pop at once. So if you unlocked 5 different achievements during a single play session, all 5 will show up on Steam as having been unlocked at the same time.

Tips:

• Keep the Battlelog assignments page open in your browser on a second tab so you can track your progress.
  
• Keep in mind that your progress during a game only syncs to Battlelog once the game is over. If the server crashes (this rarely happens, but it did once or twice during my run), your progress from that round will be voided.

Gamemodes

An unfortunate issue with BF3 is that most gamemodes outside of Conquest and Rush are effectively dead. You will need to play many of these gamemodes to unlock all the achievements. However, there are special servers dedicated to keeping these gamemodes in the rotation, so people can complete them.

Tips:

• I'd recommend favouriting these servers and keeping an eye on them to see if there are players on them. Some can get pretty busy at times.
  
• To find them, search for “achievement” and “assignment” in the server browser.

Coordination

Another issue is that you cannot start games alone. To start a round, you need at least 4 players in total, and they need to stay in the game. If they leave, the round will restart and your progress will be voided.

There are various ways you can find people to do this with:

• Look or ask on the discussions page.
  
• Find a Steam (or Discord) group for BF3.

Here’s a Steam chat for BF3 achievement hunting: Join Chat
And here's a server dedicated to BF3: Join BF3 Discord [discord.gg]

Your chance to do certain achievements might have some time between them on dedicated achievement servers. So use your time wisely on the server while it’s populated, as many players are there for similar reasons and might be willing to help you out.
Also don't be afraid to ask people if they are trying to do achievements too, since some people might not have realized they are on an achievment server and others might know but are assuming they cannot specifically grind for them or cooperate.

Specific Achievements

Some achievements had annoying details or were possible to do in ways I would have loved to know ahead of time so I’m hoping to save you some time here. The achievements I am not mentioning should be self-explanatory or will naturally unlock as you play the game for a while, without needing to play specific gamemodes, so just focus on having fun while you work on those :). If you want any other achievements specifically mentioned, feel free to tell me, and I’ll see if I can add something useful about them.

Extreme Hoarder, Handyman, Home Made Javelin, and Pocket Full of Death

I’m naming this first because it’s good to have them early, as a bunch of achievements (listed above) rely on you having access to the crossbow and being able to use it.

Try to join one of the achievement servers when it’s on a Scavenger map, and just keep capping flags and grabbing weapons whenever you can. You’ll unlock Extreme Hoarder first most likely, and after 3 scavenger wins, you’ll unlock the crossbow. Homemade Javelin is quite easy as the crossbow with explosive ammo is basically like a short range RPG with slightly lower damage. Pocket Full of Death is by far the hardest of these to do the intended way, but you might be able to coordinate it with another player, as it only takes about 1 minute to do if they’re not actively trying to kill you.

Gunslinger and Show of Force

These require you to get 10 kills with each of the weapons from the respective DLCs (Back to Karkand and Close Quarters). These weapons range from trivially unlocked to almost impossible (or at least very unlikely) in the current map rotations. You *can* get them all done the legit way but especially the guns locked behind specific gamemode wins or time spent on DLC maps are a royal pain to get. However, if you know someone else who has all the weapons unlocked, they can drop the weapons for you, and the kills you get with those weapons will count toward this achievement.

For Gunslinger:

• FAMAS
  
• G53
  
• QBB-95
  
• QBU-88
  
• PP-19
  
• L85A2 (this one is a pain because of the 5 SQDM wins requirement)
  
• QBZ-95B
  
• MG36
  
• L96
  
• MK3A1

For Show of Force:

• ACW-R
  
• AUG A3
  
• JNG-90
  
• L86A2
  
• LSAT
  
• M417
  
• M5K
  
• MTAR-21
  
• SCAR-L
  
• SPAS-12

Also, a useful detail to keep in mind is that Battlelog has a tab containing the stats (including the number of kills) you’ve gotten with all the related weapons. Make a note of the weapons with fewer than 10 kills to save yourself some time.

Decorated

VERY IMPORTANT: You do not need to unlock the DLC ribbons. Only the base game ribbons count toward this achievement! This will save you a lot of time and headaches.

In my opinion, this is likely the most annoying achievement to get nowadays, since it requires you to repeatedly do certain things that are a bit tricky to pull off, given how dedicated/skilled many of the current BF3 player base are.

Some of the more confusing ribbons for me were:

• Emplaced Weapons Ribbon: Destroy 2 planes in 1 game using one of the stationary AA guns. These are generally near runways on maps with jets, but not all maps have them. The problem though is that many of the pilots are full time dedicated plane sweats that don't come close enough to these stationary weapons for long enough to get them, so you might have to coordinate with others.
  
• MCOM Attacker Ribbon: Arm 2 MCOMs during 1 game.
  
• MCOM Defender Ribbon: Kill 4 enemies during or after they arm C4 on an MCOM.

I might add more to this section if I come across other tricky ribbons.

Dropship and Death From Above

Both of these are about the gunship that exists on all Armored Kill maps. You can control it by taking a specific middle control point (with a little plane next to it), and then from the respawn menu, you can spawn inside the plane if the control point is under your control.

The gunship has two fire modes: an automatic weapon and a howitzer. The howitzer is the easiest to use for taking enemies down. When trying to destroy the gunship, it’s vulnerable to attacks from a jet, except for deploying flares. So if you take care of opposing jets, you should be free to destroy it.

Complete Warrior

This one is just a bit tricky, but you can organize it with another player in the same way as Pocket Full of Death.

Destroyer

This is another annoying Armored Kill achievement. The vehicles required for this only appear on Armored Kill maps. Kills with the tank destroyers (Sprut-SD/M1128) are easy enough to perform, but mobile artillery (M142/BM-23) is another story. They’re quite hard to use effectively. You’ll want to coordinate with other players because without help, it’s unlikely you’ll get any kills with the mobile artillery, as it has a lot of spread and is hard to aim.

Additionally, these vehicles don’t spawn at your deploy point, but rather at the closest control point to your deploy point. My recommended map for this one is probably Armored Shield, where they spawn at A and E.

Bite Your Finger

Easy to get, but you need to be on Epicenter in Conquest mode to get it.

Third Tour

You can do this on Gulf of Oman, which often has an active dedicated server. All 3 of these vehicles spawn on there.

AA’s Revenge and Heavy Lifter

I’m grouping these together, as they tend to be on the same maps, as part of the Endgame DLC. The AA jeeps (Vodnik AA/HMMWV ASRAD) are pretty easy to get kills with. The dropship works similarly to the gunship, where you have to capture a specific control point, usually in the middle. Wait until it shows that you can spawn inside the dropship (as something other than a paratrooper), and then make a kill with that vehicle after landing.

Like a Boss

You almost certainly will have to coordinate with another player to get this one as these have no weapons and require you to run the other player over. It only seems to be available on conquest maps from Back to Karkand, usually in a sort of hidden spot. The easiest I know of is on Wake Island near C, on the side of the building.

Capture the Flag and Transport Pilot

Both are done in the Endgame CTF gamemode. Capture the Flag itself is very self-explanatory, but Transport Pilot will almost certainly require coordination with other players. Otherwise, you’ll have the usual suspects hogging the helicopter while staying at the back of the map. Anyone capturing the flag will likely immediately bolt off on a dirtbike after capturing it.

It’s No Sidecar

I’m only mentioning this here since you don’t need anyone else to get it. Drive around on a dirtbike, find a victim, hop into the back seat of your dirtbike, and finish them off.

Conclusion

Hopefully, that covers everything you need to know. If you have any questions or suggestions for the guide, feel free to share them. Enjoy! :)

[∙VETERANMEHDI∙]

[MTesseracT]

Thanks :)

[069]

Great guide dude