Collection of tips to know what to expect if you are going to 100% Kona 2.
Intro
Time to 100%: 12h-14h (slow pace and without following guides but checking what I missed at the end).
Difficulty: 3/10
Enjoyment: 8/10
Amount of suggested playthroughs: 1
Roadmap and tips
There is no real point of no return but for comfort sake, I suggest taking the quarantine zone (further towards the end of the game) as a good place to check what you missed and backtrack accordingly. In that sense, feel free to enjoy the game without knowing anything about it, because if you are careful you will find most collectibles anyway and will only need a small cleanup before the end of the game. I suggest taking a screenshot every time you find something (maybe a screenshot of your position on the map), so at the end you can cross check what you are still missing.
Start the game on survival (it is not hard) and don’t kill any animals (real animals). Killing ghost animals is ok. This will be enough to get everything in one playthrough.
The collectibles are hard to miss if you are used to exploring a game properly. Just make sure you navigate each map consistently, and you will find everything without problems, it is not a pixel hunt. Below I list some collectibles worth mentioning. Of course there are videos on youtube already, so in case you are interested in a particular collectible, you can check those. This is just a roadmap.
The herbs are easy to spot because they are always bigger bushes, and they are brown-ish colored but tricky to find them all.
True Detective
Complete all pages of Carl’s Journal.
This unlocked for me after metting Joules for the prototype built with red Mistanite (my journal was not complete yet) and unlocked together with “Journal of Eweewach Valley”.
All the pages are pretty easy, the only ones I found myself missing where three entries from the underground laboratory…next to the reactor there is a black spot. The narrator will refer to it as a shape of a man (it is in fact in the shape of a man after one accident), next to some blue sparkles. That event will unlock all three entries (it includes a photograph).
Pinto
Break the song
In the Leech Lake map you will come to a general store where is also a Cola vending machine, the biggest and fullest store you visit, with a wooden bear in the middle. If you interact with the vinyl player, a song is playing: you can break the music player with the hatchet while the music is playing.
Kona Cola
Buy a drink in every vending machine.
One machine in every map, except the mines, where there are two (one right before the entrance to the underground laboratory, one in the darker area in sector D). Unless you want to count the cola machine in the tunnel as part of the Leech Lake map…
If we treat the Quarantine zone as a “check up” place similar to a point of no return, then this is the only collectible achievement that you won’t have unlocked by then, because the last vending machine is after Jules / Quarantine zone.
Snowglobe achievement
(one for each map)
I missed the one in the mines (reactor – underground laboratory) and it was in the archives in a dark corner. I believe for the Hamilton mansion I actually found two (one of the two was in the attic), the only snowglobe that I found in two different locations apparently.
Armed to the Teeth
Find all weapons.
If you found all weapons at the first occasion you had of finding them, this will unlock the moment Joules will give you the Phaser (the weapon that shoots blue light). If it didn’t unlock, you will be able to find more weapons later. The weapons are:
Hatchet (not sure if it counts)
Revolver
Rifle
Shotgun
Phaser
Decontaminator
Find all Mistanite fragments.
This unlocked for me even before finding all the red ones, so probably refers only to the blue ones. It unlocked for me in the Valley. It is pretty easy to find the fragments because your Geiger counter starts working already pretty far from the fragment. The only tricky fragments I find worth mentioning are:
– the one in the underground laboratory: you have to train the tunnel and start the ventilation so you get access to a space you can crawl under (a fan that stops) and the fragment is there. Easy to see actually.
– after delivering the documents you had to pick up in the archives to the guy in the interview room, don’t forget to go to the last interview room to get that blue fragment (easy to forget since you don’t have a reason to go back there, I believe).
Find all jolly chimps.
There are 4 chimp dolls (you have to examine them). One in each map (last one in the Valley). I missed the chimp in the Leech Lake map…the others were no problem. As soon as you get the sledge, after the wooden covered bridge you can go right, there will be a tree with a lot of trash bags around (they looked like rocks to me at first…). There is a lot of loot around (tape, batteries etc) and the chimp is on the floor. Even knowing it was there I could not spot the chimp…it is inside a broken cardboard box, pretty hidden.
Mary
Spot all Saint Mary’s statues.
This is tricky. The first one is in Hamilton Mansion, outside in the “garden”. They can be bigger or smaller (never bigger than knee height). The only one I missed was the one in the Old House, upstairs. Going upstairs is blocked in the beginning, but if you repair stuff around the house and board up BOTH windows you can go upstairs and there will be a Mary in the bedroom. During the Leech Lake map around the general store make sure you keep your eyes open because with the snow storm it is hard to spot them so be careful. They were not otherwise that complicated. There is a video on youtube already if you need to know which ones you missed (there are 8).
Paraboliques Fan
Find all hockey cards of the Paraboliques of Québec.
This is maybe the trickiest one. They can be inside chests, on shelves, in drawers…so really be sure to check a bit everywhere. As always there is a video on youtube if you want to check. In my case the only one I had missed (but doesn’t seem a particularly difficult one so don’t know what happened) was the Parabolique #3, which is in the underground laboratory, when you lift the gate using the jack to bend it, it’s on a shelf on the right as soon as you enter.
Parachute
Open all chests with parachutes.
This will come natural as well if you are exploring correctly. A tricky one easy to miss is right after your first boat ride, in the “love nest” on the small island, go around the house because there is a chest there, easy to miss. Another one easy to miss was the last one, that is right before the last area (right after Jules gives you the prototype in the quarantine zone), make sure you cross over the train because on the other side not only you will find the last frozen body, but also the last parachute chest.
Frozen
Find six frozen bodies.
I think this comes naturally with the story and the objectives / diary entries and I am not sure if you can miss any frozen body BUT the last one on the other side of the train probably yes and was the only one I was not sure of.
Herbivore
Collect 20 herbs.
This is also trickier than it sounds and probably harder than the hockey cards. What will help a lot: check your map regularly because if you walked by a herb without noticing, the herb will be marked as a white dot on the map. So check regularly and if you see white dots, you know you missed one. I think there are exactly 20 herbs in the game…so it’s not like you have 50 herbs around and you have to pick up 20…you basically have to collect all herbs in the game and it might not be easy. The best for this would be to have a map with all herb spots (instead of following the video herb by herb) BUT we don’t have it and to help you a bit I would suggest while exploring to always keep an eye open for the brown bushes: those are your herbs. You can find them already as early as hamilton mansion (before leaving the mansion with the boat, don’t forget to get the herb right before the boat on the right). Once I got to Jules at the quarantine zone, I realized I didn’t get all herbs so I backtracked a bit (a lot, and you don’t want to do that). I had missed the herb on the “love nest island” and the herb before the boat before leaving Hamilton Mansion.
Note: I never used a herb (even on survival difficulty) so I could track how many herbs I picked up. The achievement popped when I had in my inventory 13x Crowberry herbs and 7x Labrador leaves.
Inukshuk
Spot all Inukshuks.
There are only 3 “stone monuments”. 1st and 3rd are very big but kind of out of the way. The second one is composed by many little ones. The one I missed was the first one, right in the first map, it’s on the southern side. I guess I got overwhelmed by the beginning of the game and scared of wolves but they are not a danger so feel free to explore right from the beginning. The third one is before the quarantine zone and the second one is in the Valley.