High On Life Achievements Guide

Getting All High On Life Achievements Without Losing Your Mind

I spent about forty hours grinding through High On Life's achievement list last year, which feels like a long time for a game that runs roughly twenty hours on a normal playthrough. The main issue most people hit is that several achievements are mutually exclusive depending on your choices, and one of them requires a specific glitch workaround that Gearbox never actually patched out. Here's the straight rundown. Before you start, make sure you're playing on the highest difficulty you're comfortable with, because one achievement is locked behind Merciless mode completion. I learned this the hard way during my first run — I played on Normal, finished the game, unlocked the base story achievements, and then realized I'd permanently missed one that required finishing on Merciless. That added another solid five hours to my total playtime. The achievement list breaks down into three categories: story progression, weapon collection, and some oddly specific side quests. Story achievements are straightforward — just finish the main campaign. There are no branching paths that block story completion, which is unusual and actually kind of generous.

Weapon collection is where people trip up. You need to collect a certain number of Gunspeakers throughout the game, and the tricky part is that a few of them are optional and easy to miss. I missed one in the Mars level during my first playthrough because it's hidden behind a destructible wall that doesn't look destructible from the outside. The workaround was to use a specific attack angle on the lower portion of the wall rather than the upper part, which triggers the break animation. I wish I could remember the exact Gunspeaker name — I think it was something like Whiney or Karen, but I'm not confident on that detail. The achievement tracker in the pause menu does show which weapons you've collected and which are still missing, so keep an eye on that. The hardest achievement to get is the one requiring you to complete all Wess' side quests. Wess is the NPC who gives you optional missions, and he only appears after you reach a certain point in the story. If you rush through the game, you might not even notice him. I found him in what felt like a random convenience store on Saturn, and he had eight side missions listed. Most of them are fetch quests, but one of them requires you to return to an earlier location that you might have already left behind. I had to do a quick check of my map markers before committing to any side quest to make sure I wasn't locking myself out of a return trip. There's also an achievement tied to multiplayer, which is unfortunate because the multiplayer servers were shut down. If you haven't played multiplayer yet, you're out of luck for that one. I was genuinely disappointed when I found this out, because I'd already finished everything else. It's worth checking whether there's any community-led server restoration project, but honestly, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Practical Steps and Workarounds

If you're starting fresh, here's the order I'd recommend for efficiency. First, finish the main story on Merciless difficulty. This handles the story achievement and the difficulty achievement in one go. Save often, because the game doesn't have an autosave system that's particularly reliable — I lost about twenty minutes of progress once because a crash happened during a cutscene, and the manual save I made thirty minutes prior was the only copy available. After completing the story, go back through and collect any missing Gunspeakers. The in-game collection menu is your best friend here — it lists every one and marks them as found or unfound. Don't trust your memory. There are twelve total Gunspeakers, and you need eleven for the relevant achievement. That means one is intentionally missable, which is apparently by design, so pick whichever one looks least interesting to skip. For the Wess side quests, I'd suggest doing those during your first playthrough rather than backtracking afterward. Talk to every NPC you come across, especially the ones with exclamation marks over their heads. Wess himself puts up a sign that says something like "Help?" or "Side Jobs?" and it's easy to walk right past it if you're focused on the main mission markers.

The final piece is the optional challenge achievements, which include things like "kill X enemies with Y weapon" and "complete Z missions within a time limit." These are straightforward if you just keep them in mind while playing naturally. No special build or strategy is required. I got these without changing my playstyle at all.

What Doesn't Work

A few common approaches people try online are unreliable. Some guides suggest using trainer programs or save editors, but those will flag your account and likely prevent achievement tracking. The game does support Steam achievements, and Valve's anti-cheat system will catch modifications to your save files. Don't bother. Another approach is waiting for a sequel or a re-release that might bundle everything, but there's no announcement about that. Ghost Town Games has been quiet since the original release, and there's no indication they're planning any content updates that would add new achievements or restore multiplayer. Also, playing on co-op doesn't help with most achievements. Only the host player receives credit for completion, and the guest gets nothing beyond XP. If you're trying to share the workload, you're wasting time.

That covers everything I know about getting all the achievements. It's doable, but the multiplayer lockout and the Merciless requirement make it less accessible than it should be. I spent about sixty hours total for 100% completion, which is more than reasonable for this type of game, but the wasted time on the Merciless misstep was avoidable with better preparation.