How to get every achievement on one playthrough.

Its actually impossible to get every achievement in one playthrough. There are 11 achievements that are tied to specific character starts and this particular start doesn't even get any of those. If I were to throw a round number on the minumum number of starts it takes to 100% CK2 it would be around 20.

I am in the process of play testing this and will edit and update as I go through the game so that it will be relevant for 3.0.1 or whatever the final version of the game will be.

I still need to go through and clean up spleling and gramaticle erors. Most of the content is here, just not polished. If anyone has suggestions or comments, leave them in the comments below.

They are as follows:
St Thomas Dream, Beyond the Indus, The British Raj, Never Start a Land War in Asia, Norse-East, Legacy of the Indo Norse, What Schism?, Protector of the Holy Places, Red Sea Resort? United the Kingdoms, Prestor John, Papal Mache, Kali Maaa, and Holy Smoke.

A few others that are possible but not guarenteed are: Looking East and West, Great Indian Sultanate, My Very Own Subcontinent, Smash the Patriarchy, The One Who Brings Benefit, Pentarch, and Viking Ummah

Who, When, Where?

At the 867 bookmark one of norse characters that are invading England is Halfdan Whiteshirt in Jorvick(York) is the strongest choice. There are a few other choices at this date if you so choose. I'll be going through the Whiteshirt playthrough becuase that is what I have expereince at.

The reason for starting in England is that it qualifies for the Never Start a Land War in Asia achievement. Legacy of the Indo Norse also requires that you start as Norse culture character.

One thing that I would suggest not doing is marrying anyone. Whiteshirt starts off with three sons and the third one should start off married. I would leave the two heirs unmarried until you can find a suitable concubine in order to get a claim. More on this later.

Since Whiteshirt starts out with a large event spawned force and at war with the Petty Kingdom of Northumberland who is allied with the Mercia and Wessex. It's pretty straight forward in just beating down Northumberland as fast as you can.

Edit - As of one of the updates since I started this guide, the spymaster is no longer here. He is in the court of Mercia. There is a spymaster in Cumberland who is a lot younger who also has a Strong Claim on Mercia and he should be around 16 years old instead of around 50, which can make it a lot easier.

Concentrate on the holdings that are held directly by the King of Northumberland and assault everything down to get war score. Do not siege or assault Cumberland. The spymaster for the count also has strong claim on Mercia.



When you win the war, give one of the counties to this spymaster to land him. You won't go to war with Mercia immediately. If you don't land him, and he dies; there is no guarentee that his son that will have a weak claim will stay in your realm. If you land the spymaster then the son will still be a landed vassal.

A Jarl to King.

The next step is to get the title of King before you get your second duchy. I chose Wales because it has the lowest requirements to form the kingdom, it is out of the war with your brother, and it is not tribal. Declare war on all three of the petty kings in Wales(Cornwall, Deheubarth, and Gwynedd). With the event spawned troops, you should be able to take them out quickly and take one county from each of them.

You need 5 counties total and 1 welsh petty kingdom in order to create the Kingdom of Wales. Since you have the truce with the three welsh kings, you really should not declare war on them immediately. There are a few other things to do. You can attack East Angia or help out Ivar the Boneless in his wars with Scotland and the earls of Ireland. One thing that needs to be done is to build shipyards in all of your coastal counties.

You can also attack Wessex. Don't try to take anything that is de jure to Wessex proper. When Wessex is taken, you only get the land that is de jure to Wessex. That is unlike Mercia where you get everything. Middlesex is good target if you would want to use this as your capital.

Anothr alternative is if you have ships up and running is to do a little raiding. When I say a little, I mean attack Sardinia if it is still independant and at least take half of the island. This will set up as nice base to for later raiding operations. Krete might be possible without Sardinia, but it seems like it is too far for diplomacy range early in the game.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is a claimant for Wessex within Mercia. She is married to the King of Mercia however. Her son the heir to Mercia will have a weak claim on Wessex. You need a son from her either landed or of your dynasty. You can either raid the capital of Mercia or join Ivars war if he is still at war them and siege the caste to have a chance of bagging the queen. If you do get her, make her a concubine for yourself rather than your heir.

Keep in mind that if Whiteshirt were to die after the truce with the welsh kingdoms, they are fair game for his heir, If any of the welsh kings die, then they are also fair game. You can take the prestige hit and catholic negative opinion modifier too. I don't think it is necessary.

When the truces expire, declare war on two of the petty kings and take the two counties. This should allow you to usurp one of the petty kingdoms which will allow you to create the Kingdom of Wales.

On Britannia

Once you have a Kingdom, then you are free to press the strong claim on Mercia if the claimant is still alive and landed to you. If his son is now the earl, that is more of a problem. You just need to wait for an appropriate opening to press the claim and try to speed it up as well as you can. Patients is a virtue and it is better to wait it out and try to get the whole duchy rather than rather than doing piecemeal one county at a time.

When Mercia is under your control and depending on the nature of your occupation, you may have a weak claim on Wessex. For this to work, the son of the King of Mercia must be landed and his mother must be dead for the claim to pass to him. It's a weak claim, so just do what needs to be done.

Once you cut Wessex down and take out East Anglia, you can start spreading out the spoils. Keep in mind that some of your strongest vassals are catholic and even though you pressed a claim for them, they don't much care for your norse pagen ways.

I start one merchant republic and a few duke level vassals. You should also keep an eye on these guys because they can grow extremely fast and powerful. If Ivar or one of his sons is still going, I use the subjugation cb on him in order to bring them into the fold at this time. Your vassals should do fine job taking out Ireland and Scotland without any intervention from you.

By this time you may be thinking about creating Britannia. You could and get the achievement but there is one reason why I don't. In order to get the Indo-Norse Legacy, you need to have a kingdom within India as your primary title. I am not sure if having an Indian Empire whould satisfy the achievement. A less diserable way to do it is form Britannia and then setting it for Elective Monarchy when you get to India and make sure that no one from your dynasty gets elected. From first hand experience, that is not optimal.

The next stage and legaleezzzzzzz

To get from west side of the map to the east side, there are three different paths to go.

1. South path or Egytian Path optimal and even if you go one of the other paths, you still want to come back to this one.

2. The Center path goes through the Caspian Sea and into Khiva. This would be a pretty good path if it were not for the Norse not losing their ability to navigate rivers when they switch religions.

3. The North path would be just plowing through all of the tribal land in the steppe. It seems kind of obvious, but the kicker is the attrition and logistics. It's a lot easier to sail troops 90% of the way then marching them 100% of the way.

Regardless of which route you chose, I would recomend kicking off the crusades as early as possible. Simply take Rome from the Pope in year 900 or later. Within a year or two you will be notified about the formation of the Templars and the Hospitillars. Within a 5-10 years there should be a crusade issued. Be mindful that the crusade could be aimed at you. If it goes to Jerusalem it is an opportunity to secure some prime real estate in the middle of the map by turning Catholic and then joining the crusade.

There is another way of securing weak claims on kingdoms and taking them in a single war. It is extremely luck based and sometimes futile. When it does pay off it does pay off big. Using the raiding features of the Norse and tracking down title claimants of kingdom and forcing them to bear claimants of your dynasty. Better yet, have them bear your heir with a claim on a far off kingdom.

Since we are staying at king level instead of empire level, this creates another problem. With Gavelkind we would basically lose whatever gains you make the first time your ruler dies if you have more than one son. Because of this we need the following:

Legalism 3 which allows us to take Late Feudal Administration.
You also have to be of a religion that allows it. Unreformed pagan does not.

Getting Late Feudal Administration and converting to Catholicism allows you to take other succession laws other than Gavelkind. It takes roughly 500 culture points to take Jorvick from Legalism 1.6 to 3. I reached the point about 910 which is about 43 years into the game. You really should not take your next kingdom until after this point. As I noted above that unreformed pagan can not go from gavelkind to primogeniture. A person with a title such as primogeniture can go from catholic to unreformed pagan and the succession law will stay primogeniture.

Another thing to note is that if a character holds two equal titles and the primary is gavelkind and the second is primogeniture, both titles will go to the same heir most of the time. What is more, the title holder will benefit from +30% demesne from gavelkind. The kids will be happy and you don't get the unlanded sons BS. As long as your first son is alive you will have no title crisis. If your first son dies or you only have daughters, then it could very well be a problem that needs to be addressed.

More legal mumbo jumbo and Quest for Claims

As you may have figured out, we are looking for people with claims. You may also know that the Sultans do not willingly marry their daughters to roving vikings. So we do it the unwilling way. You can use the Claimant Button, but that is a little too tedious. Female claimants are broken into two camps:

1. Daughters will have weak claims that can be transferred freely to their children.
2. Grand daughters will have weak claims that can only be passed on if their claim was pressed in war.

Since we are discussing claims and particular ones that involve Muslims and the Iqta government. I don't believe that you can press their claim unless they have converted to a religion that allows for female title holders. For that reason, you can disregard all of the weak claims that will die with them.

You are really just looking for the daughters of the current Sultan in the case of Egypt or daughters of the previous Sultan. Where to look?

1. The current Sultans court will have all of the underage children in it. It is usually in his capital county in the castle. If he has a barony in the capital, they can be there also I have found. I can not account for finding them in any holdings outside of the capital.

2. Married daughters go to the court that their spouse resides in.

3. Underage daughters of former sultans go to some relative somewhere. You just need to find them.

I believe the base chance of taking prisoners is 15%. It seems that it is an all or nothing deal as I get all the females in the castle one time and none the next 10 times. This is a lot of RNG involved here and I would say that the Sultan doesn't take kindly to you running and assaulting Cairo every few years. Wait until he is at war and has his levies pulled down. It makes the assault a lot more doable. Sieging a full castle with levies is just time consuming and it allows the Sultan to gather forces which are pretty formidable. If he is not at war and has taken land to the west in Cyrenia, you can raid those lands and until he pulls armies together to run you off, jump on the boats, sail to the nile delta, and then make a mad dash to Cairo.

On to the Middle East

Lets say that you successfully captured the Egyptian princesses. Give one to your heir as a concubine and give one to your second in line and then one to your third in line. If you have extra, then repeat the process as you see fit. The important part is that they can not have any legitmate children that would preceed the child of this union. This child must then become the ruler of Wales and have the weak claim on Egypt passed to them from their mother. Then it is matter of waiting for the weak claim to work its wonder. Sometimes it takes a little encouragement. Maybe a lot of encouragement.

You can convert to Catholic once you have taken the princesses as concubines. The princesses will simply go to your court instead of returning to their families courts. Once they are in your court, then you can marry them even though they are of a different religion. This could be useful if you find the need to turn Catholic before an actual heir is born from the concubine princess. Yep, its probably a glitch.

There are some advantages to doing a title claim cb versus a holy war. You generally don't have to worry about other nations joining against you. If they don't have any allies when you declare war. there is no chance that someone else is going to join on their side. With the kingdom claim cb, you can take out multple duchies with one war. Egypt starts out with 5 duchies in 867. Its highly probable that they will have 9 duchies or more within 50 years of the start as they press their neighbors to the south very hard.

Another advantage with going with a claim cb versus a holy war is that it will vassalise the Mamluks. The Mamluks could very well be the best mercenary company in the game. Having them as vassal will reduce the cost to the point where you can have them as a standing army with your retinue. Unlike vassalized Holy Orders which seem to join every faction, the Mamluks are very loyal and it doesn't change no matter what religion you are.

The disadvantages of using the kingdom claim cb is that all of the Egytptian vassals are going to be Sunni and they will rebel almost instantly. These rebellions can be very dangerous and will be a tougher fight than taking Egypt in the first place. Once you beat the first wave a rebellions, life does get easier.

Tip: What I do with the Sunni Emirs once they have rebelled and I have captured them. I revoke their duchy title and then I find one of those little pesky Norse adventurers that are all over. I settle him in the Duchy/Emirate and then don't worry about it for a number of years. I know its not optimal about replacing a sunni with a pagan. It is a short time fix and it does kill 2 birds with 1 stone. I tend to leave all prisoners in my dungeon until they die or at least they don't pose any threat to me.

If a claim on Egypt can't be acquired and there is a crusade to Jerusalem, it is worthwhile to convert and join the crusade. Once Jerusalem is taken, then a holy war for the Sinia is the next probable action. Set up the Sinai as a merchant republic in order to get a subastantial number of ships that have access to both the Red and Mediterranean Seas.

In order to make the jump from Middle East to India you will need either or both:
1: 100+ ships in the Red Sea
2: Oman to be close enough for diplomacy and holy war cb

To get to both of those objectives Mecca should be the next objective. Holy War on Mecca and then retain as many of the holdings for your own demesne. Move your capital to Mecca and give any holdings from Britannia away to the appropriate vassals. This will give a sizeable fleet and your demesne troops will be concentrated on the center of the map. If needed they can be quickly sailed to India or back to Britannia.

Once Mecca is secured, then it is just a matter of a few Holy Wars until you get Oman. Once you get to Oman, you should be close enough to the Indian Kingdoms that you can declare Holy Wars on one of them.

Prestor John Achievement

If Egypt is taken whole, it is fairly simple if the Miaphysite Abyssinnia is in the game. If you are Catholic and hold Egypt it should trigger the event.

If Egypt has already taken out the Miaphysite Abyssinia, then you should have the option to create the title since you should hold all of the de jure lands. You should also be able to find someone of the Miaphysite religion and grant them land. Create the Abbyssinia Kingdom and grant that to them. This will make them and independant King and since it should border you, the achievement should kick in.

Jumping into India

The goal is to get one kingdom in India and the easiest one to get to is the Kingdom of Sindh. You can't directly holy war from Oman to Sindh. You can go from Oman to Baluchastan and then to Sindh. 90% of the time this is the route of least resistance. However if one of the Empires blob in that area, it could be a different story. Not only is Sindh the closest it is only made of two duchies which means that with two holy wars, you basically have the Kingdom unless there is some de jure drift.

Once you capture and usurp or create the Kingdom of Sindh, this should give you the Beyond the Indus achievement. Move your capital to Sindh and make it your primary title. When your capital changes to Norse culture, then you should get the Legacy of the Indo-Norse achievement. Once you get this achievement, then you are free to form an empire.

The Saint Thomas's Dream achievement is triggered when you hold every de jure county and all of their holdings of a kingdom as a christian. I don't believe that they have to all be converted to a christian religion.

Your map should look something like this.

India Roadblock

If you get to Oman and see that the above situation where Rajastan has formed already and in this case blobbed out into Persia, what can your do?

Since you are a King and Rajastan is an Empire, you can swear fealty to them and become their vassal as long as you border them. For what is worth, you can swear fealty to the Arabian Empire too, even though Wales is about 5X the size of Arabia. The advantage of swearing fealty is that you can't be directly attacked from the outside. Another advantage is that you can use a lot more diplomatic actions within the realm such as inviting claimants to your court.

On the disadvantage side, you won't be able to declare holy wars on the other vassals of Rajastan. Realm Peace can be proclaimed and keep you from fighting your fellow vassals.

Papal Puppet

Once you attain Emporer level, you can vassalize the Papacy. The pope could accept vassalization outright. More than likely you will have to raise an anti-pope and press his claim against the pope. To do this you will need to:

1. Be an Emporer since the Papacy is a King tier title.
2. Free Investiture to set up an anti-pope.

Having the pope as a vassal will make the Holy Smoke and the Papal Mache achievements much easier.

For the Holy Smoke achievement, you will simply need to be Norse Pagan and sacrifice any religious leader. The pope, orthodox patriarch, or a caliph will work.

The Papal Mache is significantly harder to accomplish. First you need either a catholic or fraticelli pope, or one of the muslim caliphs. The orthodox patriarch will not work. There is also some RNG involved since it requires that they be trampled by elephants. This will probably take several popes before you get the elephants to do the deed. It only works if your capital is either in east africa, the middle east, India, or Persia.

The Push North

The Norse-East and the "Never start a Land War in Asia" achievements have similiar sounding objectives.

For the Norse-East achievement, you have to personally hold the Kingdom title of Mongolia. There can also be a Empire title of Mongolia which to my knowledge won't satisfy the achievement. In the screenshot, you can see the Empire level Mongolia as the light purple. The Kingdom of Mongolia is North Eastern portion of it.



For the "Never start a Land War in Asia" achievement, you must control the Eastern Steppe. In the title finder, type Eastern and select Eastern Steppe Region to show the target area. In this screenshot, it shows up as seven duchies.



As you push north into the steppe, you will more than likely be fighting both muslims and pagans. One item of note on using the holy war cb against pagans or against any religion with low moral authority. They will convert if you give them much of a chance.

With that in mind, while you are waiting for the truce timer to tick down in India, set up a raiding party and try to grab claimants. I would try to not use any levy forces and only use retinue and mercs/holy orders. A benifit for taking Jerusalem is that you can vassalize some of the Holy Oders. These can be used with your retinue for raiding. With the attrition of the steppe in winter, it is just a good idea to have troops that replenish.

You might get lucky and find a claimant that will join you. As a feudal christian, you can't take concubines. You can educate child prisoners and try to get them flip their religion and or culture. This makes it a lot easier to get them back to your court if you share the same beliefs.

There is also a chance that the Pope can call a crusade against those Mongols in the North East corner. It's a long shot, but what have you got to lose by asking?

Knock knock, Mongols calling.

When the Mongols invade, they target the Kingdom of Mongolia for their first war. If you have it already or land in de jure Mongolia, you will get attacked fairly quickly. The problem with the Mongols is logistics and attrition. They can drive up the war score quickly by sieging and assaulting holdings while you try to get armies across the map. I break my armies into 10K sized units and march them to the counties along the silk road since they have the highest supply limits. Typically the Mongols will also break their forces into 10K units and also have one large doom stack of around 30-40K. As the war progresses, the Mongols may even split their large doom stack into smaller and more manageable sized forces.

If you don't have the Kingdom of Mongolia and the Mongols form it, you will likely have to holy war it from them. Check for claimants first if the kingdom was formed prior to the Mongols. Pressing their claim could be an alternative. Pressing weak claims on Nomads is tougher than on feudals because the titile will very seldom go to someone that weak claim can be pressed (child or female). I believe that the title has to be held by the Player in order for the Norse-East achievement to unlock. That means, press claim, win war, and then revoke title.

Once you defeat the Mongols, they will probably move on to a weaker nation and take them over. For instance, I beat them on the initial invasion and they took their 25K event spawned troops and invaded the Crimea. If you are trying to complete Medieval Schlieffen achievemant, you only need to be at war with the Aztecs(Nahua culture) and with someone of Mongol culture. You don't need to be fighting Aztec and the Mongol hordes at the same time.

Dharmic Religions and associated achievements.

After getting the St Tomas Dream, you should switch to one of the Indian religions. I am not going into a lot of detail, but just give a few points on each and the whole together.

1. You need to be in a caste in order to hold land. When you convert, you will have to buy your way in and it is expensive (6000 ducats or something like that). Don't lose your caste by marrying outside of it unless you really want to buy your way back in.

2. When pressing claims outside of India, do not convert the claimant to your religion. They will have no caste and can not hold land as someone of your religion. Leave them as their own religion and you can still press their claim.

3. You can switch religions once in a characters life. I would recomend educating and starting out as Hindu and then switching to Buddhist or Jainist later in life. Hindu allows you to Holy War and to chose Kali as your patron diety. Buddhist and Janist allow you to pick your heir. Jainism also has a +3 demesne limit and a +15 vassal opinion. Buddhist has +4 learning and can still do a county conquest versus no wars with Jainism.

Once you are of a Indian religion and then form the Empire Britannia, The Britsh Raj achievement will unlock. For the United the Kingdoms achievements, you will need to create England, Ireland, and Scotland. It is likely that you will have had this option for some time and it is likely that Wales has de jure drifted across all of Britannia if these titles have not been created. These titles should be titular and it is really up to you if you want to create them or not.

For the Red Sea Resort you need convert Mecca into one of the Indian religions. For the What Schism? you need Constantinople and Rome to be the same Indian religion. If you join the Monastic Order for their religion and progress to the tier 4 of that order, you will get the ability to convert counites. The county has to be one that you personally hold and it cost 1000 devotion. It takes a lot of devotion to get to that level and it takes a lot of devotion to convert it. Plan ahead and when you do use it, it is instantanseous.

For the Kali Maa achievement, you need to be Hindu and your patron diety needs to Kali. Hold a Kali Puju festival when you have a king or emperor as a prisoner. You should get the option to sacrifice them and it will unlock the achievement.

Now what?

If you get to this point and still have a 100-300 years to go. What other achievements can you knock out?

1. Looking East and West - Be Emporer of Rajastan and Persia. Converting to Zoroastrian would add the The One Who Brings Benefits. Converting to Muslim could unlock The Great Indian Sultanate and Viking Ummah and will be time consuming as they require the conversion of land to the Islamic Faith.

2. My Very own Subcontinent - Completely contol all of India. This is a sketchy achievement as it doesn't always fire when it is supposed to. Kind of frustrating.

3. Pentarch and then Smash the Patriarchy. Pentarch requires you to be Orthodox and hold Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch. You should either have them or at least be able to take the 1 or 2 remaining with ease. For the Smash the Patriarchy, you need to convert to Cathar, Messalian, or Bogomilist. Cathar might be the only alternative as it might be difficult to find anyone left in the game that is Messalian or Bogomilist. Convert to Cathar, have a female ruler and replace the bishops in the above 5 counties with female Cathars bishops.

[seanpremierleague]

The first two achievements in the guide would not be unlocked if you used this strategy though, because of the cultural and geographic requirements of those two. For Eternity Denied, try to get Glitterhoof.

[seanpremierleague]

I was looking at the achievements list, so realistically, if you have all the major dlcs, you could get about 30+ achievements from starting at the Early Middle Ages bookmark (769 AD) as either a Romuva or African tribal and use tribal retinues, ignore demesne limit, even after feudalising, and hope for RNG to be on your side (Immortality, (maybe heir of Alexander or Ashoka) Survive End Times, etc.) and make sure your immortal ruler can easily build piety to convert/reform religions (don't pick yourself as religion head for reformed religions so you can convert again) and prestige to convert culture/take decisions requiring prestige (Restoring Roman Empire/I think forming Outremer) and switch societies often (Warrior lodge, demon worship, monastic?( Lucifer's Own membership is the easiest way to get the achievement requiring you to crown yourself as an emperor, otherwise your ruler has to be insane, ambitious with imperial administration, or some other requirement.

[a bad driver]

I read the entire first 5 paragraphs of your intro before realizing the guide was not for Dragon's Dogma.

5/5 would read again.

[SotiCoto]

Okay... I finally got most of these, and quite a few others besides.

I missed Prestor John because I couldn't figure out how to convert to Catholic while Abyssinia was still Miaphysite... Only learnt much later that converting religions involved giving up the Fylkirate.

Since I was going quickly (because Norse Pagan with Holy Fury is OP as fuck AND I let my vassals run rampant), I took some time out of my week to get a Russian character to take the Rus empire, then form the Slavic Union...

Did save-scumming to get the Muslim India one, the Catholic India one, the Hindu India one, Kali-Maa, the Indian Mecca, Rome and Constantinople ones, the Zoroastrian one (already had East and West) and the Orthodox one. Could NOT get Smash the Patriarchy as the locations in question weren't in my Demesne so I couldn't replace the priests.

Now I just have to get a Bear into power (following the LEGEND journey for the Wolf Warriors) and use it to eat a Bon person before they go extinct.

[ViridianZe]

click bait much

[TuGun Jr]

So you dont need to disband event troops before declaring a war, the only troops that have to be disbanded are levies.

[SotiCoto]

This guide is tricky to follow. Or maybe I'm just held back by bad habits and out of practice at the game... I've not really done iron-man mode before... nor played as a pre-existing ruler.

I got to the bit where I'm supposed to take Wales with the event-troops... but I already disbanded the event troops because I'm used to disbanding all my armies before declaring a new war, since usually it doesn't allow me to declare war with them active (Levies normally, right?) ...

Plus I'm not entirely sure about the Mercia situation. Am I supposed to have gone to war over that before taking Wales?

... Ugh... now I've got to see if I can take Wales with just my levies... or else I'll have to start over.

[Fredericks of Cursewood]

I guess I kinda know that since I wrote that it's impossible in the very first line of the description.

[k!po]

Title is kinda big click bait but i guess ya know that when you played the game

[AppleBanana]

This guide should have 5 stars. Wonderful work. Big ups to the author. Well done.