Starbound 100% Achievement Guide

Reference for unlocking all of Starbound's Steam achievements. Includes the icons/names of achievements, along with their descriptions (which are normally hidden) and tips/pictures for help unlocking them.

Introduction

This guide is intended to serve as a quick reference for completion of achievements in Starbound. I originally wrote this guide for the unstable version of the game, but I have created this revised version (without a table) to make it more clean and better organised.

If you see any incorrect statements (such as outdated information about unobtainable achievements/things I'm unaware of), please correct me in the comments. I will be happy to update the guide whenever I get the chance.

The main questline

These achievements are ones that are obtainable through the completion of quests in the game's main questline, and cannot be missed if you're playing through the game normally.

Congratulations on your Graduation!
Survive the Protectorate. It could have been worse.


Complete the initial mission by escaping Earth, or check the "skip introductory mission" box in character creation and you'll get it automatically.

The Wanderer
Meet Esther.


This achievement is unlocked upon meeting Esther Bright at the Ark ruins for the first time.

The Hopeful
Fix your ship.


This achievement is unlocked upon completion of the Erchius Mining Facility mission.

The Brave
Return Nuru to the outpost.


Complete the Floran artifact mission and speak to Esther at the Ark.

The Wise
Return Koichi to the outpost.


Complete the Hylotl artifact mission and speak to Esther at the Ark.

The Devout
Return Tonauac to the outpost.


Complete the Avian artifact mission and speak to Esther at the Ark.

The Resilient
Return Lana Blake to the outpost.


Complete the Apex artifact mission and speak to Esther at the Ark.

The Loyal
Return the Baron to the outpost.


Complete the Glitch artifact mission and speak to Esther at the Ark.

The Protector
Defeat the Ruin.


Once the final artifact has been placed into the Ark ruins, a gate will open up through which you can beat the game's final boss. However, this boss is extremely difficult without the right gear, and its attacks do a lot of damage, so you must make sure you have a lot of nanowrap bandages, strong armor (preferably accelerator armor) and ranged weapons - as melee is mostly useless in this fight. Edit July 21st 2020: when I originally wrote this guide, my impression was that melee was pretty bad against the Ruin, but apparently it's fairly easy now if you just run up to Ruin and stab him with a strong enough melee weapon. Once you defeat the boss, return to the Ark and talk to Esther again.

Sidequests

These achievements are obtainable through the completion of optional quests given to you by NPCs in the Outpost, with the exception of "Adventurer Eventuality", which can be unlocked by completing any quest in the game - including the introductory quest at the beginning of the game.

Adventurer Eventuality
Complete a quest! Joke's on you, there isn't any XP in this game.


As mentioned previously, this achievement is unlockable by completing literally any quest in the game. You can get it automatically by ticking the "skip introductory mission" box in character creation.

Ending Prohibition
Defeat the dastardly Dreadwing. Bring joy to penguins everywhere.


Defeat Dreadwing via the quest given to you by the owner of the Beakeasy bar.

Shock and Awe
Defeat the Shockhopper MK I. Notice it rarely hops.


Defeat the Shockhopper MK I via the penguin weapon shop owner's quest.

King Barbarian
Become champion of the arena. Crush your foes like an orange sorbet.


Complete all of Nuru's arena side-quests after she comes to the Outpost.

Cosmic Curator
Complete the Cosmic Museum's cosmic collection.


Once you have returned Koichi to the Outpost (after the Hylotl quest), complete all of his sidequests.

Tenant Quests

A Helping Hand
Complete 10 quests for your colonists. Feel like an asset to the community!


Fairly self-explanatory. As a way to speed things up, build one large colony with many inhabitants.

A Cheeky Chore
Complete 25 quests for your colonists. These guys sure do ask a lot of you don't they...


Fairly self-explanatory. As a way to speed things up, build one large colony with many inhabitants.

A Tireless Task
Complete 50 quests for your colonists. When did this become your full time job?


For this one, you will need a colony with a LOT of inhabitants in order to complete it in a timely manner. I used one with ~30 inhabitants and it still took me several hours.

Colony Achievements

These achievements are all unlocked in some way via colony building.

Home Sweet Home
Attract your first colonist. Make sure you treat them right.


Obtain a colony deed from Frogg's Furnishings in the Outpost, and build a house with a light source/door.

Cramped Colony
Build 5 homes in a very small space. This isn't a healthy way for anyone to live.


The easiest way to do this is to build 5 adjacent rooms, each 2 blocks wide and 7 blocks tall, with doors connecting them. Then just place torches and colony deeds inside and you're done.

From the Ashes
Build a large colony. Well done Protector!


Build a colony with a total of 10 inhabitants.

All Walks of Life
Attract 10 unique tenants. Marvel at their collective peculiarity.


Obtained by attracting 10 different tenants to your colony. However, only tenants attracted using the Frög Furnishings and biome-exclusive furniture sets will count. For a full list of tenants that count for the achievement, visit this[starbounder.org] wiki page and look under "Themed Furniture Tenants" and "Mini-biome tenants".

Note: since Frög Furnishings only changes what furniture sets it sells every 24 hours, you can change your computer's clock and make it change instantly to speed things up.

Crew Achievements

The following achievements are unlocked through recruiting different NPCs to become part of your ships' crew.

First Mate
Recruit your first crew member. Captain!


NPCs can be recruited as crew members in several ways. If you find a settlement of NPCs on a planet, you can sometimes complete quests for them. If you complete enough of these quests, they will ask to join your crew. Occasionally, colony tenants will also ask to join your crew provided you've completed enough quests for them. You can also recruit penguin crew members by using a Dubloon at the Beakeasy.

Feathered Friend
Recruit a penguin mercenary from the Beakeasy.


Buy a Dubloon at the Beakeasy (3 diamonds) and recruit a penguin.

A Motley Crew
Recruit one crew member from every race. It's like a teeny tiny protectorate.


For this achievement, you need Apex, Floran, Glitch, Avian, Hylotl, and human crew members (which are all fairly easy to get if you build a large colony or visit a lot of cities). However, you also need a Novakid. Novakids are pretty difficult to get, because they only spawn as tenants in houses with saloon-themed furniture.

Captain of the Year
Recruit at least 12 crew members. Consider starting a pension plan.


For this, you will need your ship's size fully upgraded. To get crew members, complete lots of quests for village NPCs and/or hire mercs from the Beakeasy.

Tip: you don't need 12 members at once. You can hire and remove crew members if your crew fills up, and as long as you have had 12 you should get the achievement.

Combat

These achievements are all unlockable through PVE combat (or, in the case of Nox's Apprentice, PVP).

Monster Whisperer
Capture a monster. How does it fit in that tiny ball?


Throw a capture pod at a weakened monster.

Not in Front of the Children!
Defeat Mother Poptop. Every Poptop you meet from here on out is a lonely orphan.


Kill a Mother Poptop. They can be found in various dungeons.

Villain
Incapacitate an innocent bystander. You monster.


Kill an NPC (only works with some; e.g. the ones found in shadow biomes).

Nox's Apprentice
Kill another player. Unity is overrated anyway.


Kill another person in multiplayer. For this to be accomplished, both players must first type /pvp to enable combat. However, you can also get the achievement by killing someone with fireworks, which you don't need to type /pvp to damage someone with. You can also obtain this achievement by yourself with this method suggested by a user in the comments:

Start by opening the game from Steam (make sure you're online), and then launch a dedicated server. After that, open a second game using the .exe in the steam directory or a shortcut to it. You will have to switch game windows at times. Running the server and two games at the same time, join the server at 127.0.0.1 on both games, but with different characters. Make one player fly to a randomly generated planet and invite the other to their party. Make the other player accept the invite and beam to their ship. Make both players beam down to the planet. Have the team leader player remove the other character. Set each player to pvp & not admin, then use the player on the game you launched with Steam to kill the other player.

Too Heavy to Kick
Destroy a robot chicken. Don't try to eat it.


Robot chickens are often found in Glitch villages.

Sweet Revenge
Kill 100 small flying monsters. They had it coming.


This can take a long time, but if you kill every one you see you'll unlock it eventually.

Bug-catching

These achievements are unlocked through catching insects with the bug net item.

Bug Tracker
Capture your first bug with a bug net. Esther would be proud.


Craft a bug net and catch a bug.

Bug Free
Catch 42 unique bugs. Give them all funny names.


For this one, you need to catch every bug in the game. Different bug types live on different planet types, so be patient and make sure to look for bugs on ALL planet types.

Fossil Collection

These achievements are obtainable through the unearthing of fossils with a fossil brush.

Alien Archaeologist
Restore a complete fossil. Make wild assumptions about what it used to be.


Using a fossil brush (preferably the Master Brush) successfully unearth one fossil and put it in a display case.

Them Bones
Unearth 55 unique fossils. Try not to pay attention to the ones that are alarmingly humanoid.


This is very, very time consuming, but with patience and many master brushes you can do it. Biomes with tar seem to have far more fossils than others, so look out for them if you're going for this achievement.

Armor Collection

These achievements are unlockable through the crafting of armor.

Protected Protector
Obtain an entire set of armour. Now use dye to make your armour fabulous.


Get any set of armor (no dye required). This does not work with cosmetic armor.

Armour Aficionado
Collect 210 unique pieces of armour. See how many you can wear at the same time. (Spoiler, it's 3).


For this achievement, you must craft all 210 pieces of racial armor in the game. Every race has 10 sets/30 pieces, and there are 7 races total, so you just need to craft each of the 10 sets for every race.

Lore Collection

These achievements are unlockable by collecting codices in chests in villages, dungeons, and instanced missions.

Book Club
Find a Codex. On Earth it's rude to read other people's diaries.


This is extremely simple. Just find a codex in a chest and read it.

Well Read
Find 100 unique codex items. Study them all, prepare for a pop quiz.


There are a total of 116 codices in the game (might be an outdated number), so this will take a lot of exploration and completion of missions. However, it is doable once you've reached the endgame. Note that these codices must be ones you actually find in chests. "Free" codices that you're given by an NPC/quest/whatever do not count for the achievement.

Agriculture

These achievements are unlocked by farming crops.

The Simple Life
Harvest a crop. See what happens when you eat it.


Harvest any crop. Easily unlocked just by randomly collecting plants from a planet.

Starbound Valley
Harvest 30 unique crops. Start thinking about who you'd like to romance and that barn extension.


Fairly easy once you have explored many planets and have a decent farm going. Ironically, despite this being one of the easier achievements, it was actually the last one I ever unlocked in the unstable version of the game.

Cooking

These achievements are unlocked through cooking various food items.

Just like mum used to make!
Practice your chef skills. Try not to harm anyone.


Cook one item.

Culinary Century
Prepare at least 100 unique dishes. Bonus points if they're edible.


This is a tough one if you don't have tons of ingredients lying around, so I recommend already having a large farm built before even attempting this.

Misc Achievements

These achievements don't really fit cleanly into any of the other categories and mostly stand on their own. If you have any suggestions on categorizing these further, feel free to tell me.

Mint Condition
Collect at least 50 unique action figures. Insist to your friends they're actually called statuettes.


Action figures have a 1/1000 chance to drop from their respective monster, so this achievement is insanely grindy and pretty much impossible to get without spawning them in using a command. When I originally wrote this guide, I assumed they would be rebalanced to make this achievement more reasonable to get, but that hasn't happened so you really should just use commands. If you still insist on getting all the trophies legitimately, you can see the exact drop rate for each monster's trophy on this page[starbounder.org]. Some bosses and mission-related enemies have much higher trophy drop rates, like 1/20 and 1/40, but it'll still take you an incredible amount of time to get the achievement doing it that way so good luck.

Not A Llama
Obtain a complete alpaca costume. Use it only for good!


Collect all three pieces of the "Alien Alpaca" costume set. This set can be found in stone chests on snow planets.

Perfectly Generic Achievement
Obtain the mythical perfectly generic item.


The "Perfectly Generic Item" is a filler item that can be bought at the outpost or through adding an invalid item to your inventory.

Augmented Reality
Augment your EPP. Now it's an AEPP.


The easiest way to get this is through completion of quests, but you can find them in chests as well.

Destroyer of Worlds
Move a planet's worth of blocks. If you weren't using a Matter Manipulator you'd be ripped.


This achievement requires you to break and obtain at least 10,000,000 blocks. This is insanely grindy, and there aren't many easy ways to get it, especially if you're not using admin commands. However, below I have listed several methods by which you might be able to obtain it.

Method 1 (credit to DarkNoddy!):
One extremely efficient way to get the achievement is to fill your inventory with 1k block stacks (40k total) and suicide repeatedly in a pit of lava at beam point on a planet's surface. You pick up the blocks again as soon as you fall in the lava, so all you have to do is beam down repeatedly and you should be able to get the achievement within an hour. To make things a little quicker, you can skip the beam-down animation by typing /suicide.
Here's a helpful picture demonstration of this method.[gaming.stackexchange.com]

Method 2 (credit to falconpunch444!):
See this guide.

Method 3:
A far slower and less efficient way to get the achievement is to type "/spawnitem superfishaxe" (a special unobtainable tool) to mine blocks more quickly. I don't really see why you'd do this considering how incredibly slow it'd be compared to the other methods, but it's an option if you want it.
Traveling in Style
Obtain a cool vehicle. Pop some sweet wheelies.


Buy a vehicle controller from the merchant at the Outpost.

You're aMAZEing!
Complete Mazebound. You only need to beat it 300,000 times to win a slide whistle.


Go to the Beakeasy bar (underground area in the Outpost) and win the arcade game (unlocked upon beating the Avian quest). The achievement unlocks as soon as you pick up the winning ticket, and there is no slide whistle for beating it 300,000 times.

Map created by forum user Varixai (this may no longer be accurate in recent versions; the maze is still solvable easily if you just make repeated left turns):[community.playstarbound.com]


Amateur Bard
Collect your first musical instrument! Keep playing, even when everyone begs you to stop.


Find an instrument in a chest.

Thanks for reading!

If this guide helped you out, please consider giving a thumbs-up or an "Extra Helpful" award so more people can see it! :)

I have really enjoyed working on this guide, so I hope you guys find it useful! Although I haven't been active on Starbound in several years, I'm still open to suggestions for this guide, so feel free to leave them in the comments below!

[Raine]

I was going for 100% but seeing a handful of the extremely grindy achievements has made me change my mind. Thanks for the guide!

[Story Enthusiast]

Thank you so much for making this guide!!

[llefty]

Hi Story Enthusiast, thanks for letting me know. It's possible the map is randomized in more recent versions, so I'll just add a note making mention of that. Thanks for the tip!

[Story Enthusiast]

@Drizzle I got the achievement while also having a penguin crew member!
Also @llefty it looks like that map no longer is accurate? The room I spawned in was L-shaped and the maze seemed a lot bigger (but still solvable just by hugging the left wall)

[Drizzle]

Also, I don't know if it's been mentioned, but word on the street is a penguin crew member breaks the Motley Crew achievement permanently on that save.

Has been a problem for years, so don't expect a fix.

[Drizzle]

Was doing Destroyer of Worlds with commands and around death 100, it just deleted my stuff. So that can happen. Make sure you're not carrying anything valuable that also drops on death, like nanowrap bandages or the like.

This guide has been unbelievably helpful! I only have 4 left to do. Still not sure if I want to grind for the figurines, cause that seems absurd and I'm still missing 1 fossil ;_;

[Lostprophets]

I'm looking for people I can play Starbound with. If anyone is interested, please send me a message and I'll give a reply.

[naerbo]

There is one thing to note about Novakids in Motley Crew. They have western inspired villages, so it is possible to do without having a colony. But it took some time for me, maybe 30-40 hours from the start of the game, so just keep an eye out.

[Crow]

This is really cool! I keep having trouble with the bug catching, they're so hard to find!

[reletr]

For the Villain achievement, you don't need frogs or shadowmen. Go to any village and start destroying and picking up furniture, blocks, etc. Eventually you'll reach a point where the guards become aggro'ed to you and the villagers become vulnerable to damage.