House of the Dying Sun 100% Achievement Guide

* Spoilers below *

The game consists of 14 missions and a challenge / endless mode. To get 100%, you will likely need to play each mission many times (~5 times each). Achievements in italics can be ignored if you are going for 100% because you will need to have gotten them to get others. I wrote this guide because the requirements are not clear and the forum threads are incomplete. I will not be discussing ships, weapons, upgrades, or strategy.

Reveille – Complete host uplink training. Complete the tutorial level. A good place to start. This gives you the basics of ship handling and weapons.

It does not tell you how to manage your fleet, because at the start you only have one fighter. Later in the game, you add two more fighters and four capital ships. You can enter tactical mode (on a keyboard, by pressing enter) to see an overview of the star system and the locations of all friendly and enemy ships. There is no cloaking, but ships will warp in from out of the system. You can also use these screen to issue commands to all of your ships and switch your own control to one of your other fighters.

Another thing it doesn’t tell you anywhere is that if you lose a fighter, another one will warp into the system as backup after you destroy three ship (or shipping containers).

There are 14 missions. I suggest playing through them all on the easiest difficulty. This is like an extended tutorial. Complete bonuses when possible, but completing bonuses are not required to get the mission rewards and open up new missions. In doing so, you will unlock more ships and weapons. Missions can be done in any order, but I recommend completing all available missions before taking on the Broodmother mission.

If you complete all the missions on any difficulty, you will have unlocked the following:

Invader – Complete a mission on Invader or higher.
Gun Nut – Earn a new weapon.
You can be my wingman any time… – Earn a wingman. Second fighter.
…♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, you can be mine – Earn a second wingman. Third fighter.
Heavy Metal – Add a destroyer to your fleet. You actually get three.
Ember Lance – Earn a frigate for your fleet.

Once you beat the final mission, you will also get one of the six endings, more on that in the Endings section.

There are six endings. Each time you successfully finish the final mission, you will get the opportunity to select an ending and you get some epilogue text. At first, only the first or second endings are available. To get all of the endings, you need to beat all missions on all difficulties with bonus objectives. You then need to play the final mission at least six times to select each ending.

On the mission screen, each mission has three pips above it that start white and turn orange when they have been completed with the bonus objective. One pip for each of the three main difficulties: Invader (easy), Warlord (medium), and Harbinger (hard). There are two more icons available for each mission: on the bottom left there is a skull if you’ve completed the assassination (see the Assassination section for more) for that mission; on the bottom right there is a star if you completed the mission in Falcon Mode. Falcon Mode limits you to three fighters and you must complete the mission and bonus objective to get credit for it.

I don’t know if beating a mission on a harder difficulty level will give credit for the easier difficulties, you can experiment if you like. If you have to do every mission difficulty separately and do the assassinations separately, you need to beat each mission at least 5 times (6 if you beat it the first time without a bonus). So you may need to play as many as 14 missions X 6 times = 84.

I – first ending. Complete the final mission. No other requirements.
II – second ending. Complete all 14 missions (?). No bonus objectives required.
III – third ending. Complete all bonus objectives on Invader difficulty for this to be available.
IV – fourth ending. Complete all bonus objectives on Warlord difficulty for this to be available.
V – fifth ending. Complete all bonus objectives on Harbinger difficulty for this to be available.
VI – sixth ending. Beat every mission on Falcon difficulty for this to be available.

In the process of getting all the endings, you will also unlock these:
Cloaked Figure – Complete a bonus objective.
Warlord – Complete a mission on Warlord or higher.
Harbinger – Complete a mission on Harbinger.

Once you start completing bonus objectives, you will get crown currency to buy upgrades.
Black Thumb – Purchase an upgrade. There are 18 upgrades, you start with two (armor and shields).
Big Spender – Purchase all upgrades. This requires pretty much all bonuses on all missions.

There are 14 assassination achievements available, one per mission, whose descriptions start with the word ‘assassinate’. These achievements do not impact the Endings achievements.

Commodore Asgauth – Assassinate Commodore Ausgauth on Harbinger or above.
+ 13 more like this

During each mission, at some point, a named captain will warp into the system, usually at the helm of a powerful capital ship. This may happen on a timer or it may happen only when the primary objective is completed. On Invader (easy) and Warlord (medium) difficulties, killing the captains has no rewards, so they can be killed or ignored.

If you kill the named captain on Harbinger or Falcon (hint: it’s easier on Harbinger), you unlock an achievement and get an orange skull next to the mission. Note that you don’t have to get the bonus objective or even finish the mission successfully to get it., but you may need to complete the primary or bonus objectives to get the captain to spawn. It is possible to get the orange icon for Harbinger or Falcon and this in the same mission, but it is more difficult.

Challenge Mode is available after the first mission, best saved for later when you have all the ships, most of the upgrades, and more experience.

Baby Steps – Complete at least 1 battle in Challenge Mode.
Warm Up – Survive for at least 5 battles in Challenge Mode.
I’m not locked in here with you… – Survive for at least 10 battles in Challenge Mode.

These can be done at any time, in any mission or challenge mode.

War Criminal – Destroy an escape pod. Likely one of the first achievements you’ll get. Named captains will take an escape pod when their ship goes down, destroy it. This will happen just about every mission.

Lord Humungus – Run over a traitor lord’s escape pod. Hard to do on purpose. I suggest leaving this until the end because you may get it unintentionally.

Up Close & Personal – Destroy a vessel while inside its shields. A solid tactic for taking down shielded ships. You can fly within the shield sphere and unload at point-blank range. If you fly into the enemy ship, you will deal damage but lose your fighter; I don’t think this counts for the achievement. It requires practice to stay within the shields without making contact.