Achievement guide & hard ones
Most of the 85 achievements come naturally from the campaign and the three story DLCs. The hard tail is grind work — 300 takedown kills, 50 brutal takedowns, 30 proximity mine kills — plus two mutually exclusive sets: recruiting informants for Live Another Day clashes with killing them for Can't Trust a Rat, so plan two runs if you want both.
Eighty-five achievements come bundled with the Definitive Edition — the full base game plus every story DLC — and the October 2026 patch finally made the tracker trustworthy again. Here is the shape of the list: what falls into your lap, what wants a spreadsheet, and the pairs that force a second playthrough.
How the list is built
The good news: none of the 85 are online, none require a second controller, and the 2026 patch fixed the worst of the tracking bugs — including progress that used to vanish if you closed the game mid-session, and achievements that failed to fire while driving. The bad news: two sets are strictly opposed, and several want hundreds of repetitions. Steam's own completion percentages make the difficulty curve visible: the campaign gimmes sit above 50%, while the true tail lives below 3%.
The easy 30: mostly the story
| Achievement | % of players | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| Somethin' I've Gotta Do | 68.7% | Complete the prologue in Delray Hollow |
| Standard Communication Grid | 62.6% | Wiretap the Delray Hollow smack racket |
| Softened 'Em Up | 60.6% | Weaken a racket by killing all its enforcers |
| One Good Turn | 48.8% | A 180° turn at speed without hitting anything |
| Bon Appétit! | 41.3% | Feed a body to an alligator |
| Racketeer | 37.3% | Bring one racket to maximum earn |
Everything else story-related — one per district milestone, one per Marcano target — lands as you play.
The grind tail: what 3% of players actually finished
| Achievement | Requirement | Practical tip |
|---|---|---|
| Combat Specialist | 300 takedown kills | Brutal and stealth takedowns both count; it is the 10% |
| Closed Casket | 50 brutal takedowns | Hold the attack button until the gauge hits the white zone |
| Shh, shh | 100 stealth takedowns | Do it during racket cleanups, never rush the timer |
| Operation: Deep Sleep | 30 dart gun knockouts | Only after Stones Unturned; bounty runs stock free ammo |
| Danger Close | 30 proximity mine kills | Herd enemies with whistles onto a planted mine |
| Spotter | 30 sniper support kills | Mark targets, call the shot, repeat — SU missions first |
| Blade of Death | 20 throwing knife kills | Sign of the Times gear; headshots not required |
| Flambé | 10 molotov self-immolations | Shoot the bottle, not the man |
| Trap Game Strong | 10 vehicle traps | Tickfaw Harbor trap routes; there is an achievement waiting |
| Street Rocket | 50 km in the Samson Harrier | Faster, Baby! sprint car; stack it on Sinclair Parish runs |
| Pop, Pop | 4 kills via slow-mo, ten times | Unlocks in The Way of Flesh — Max Payne the mid-game |
The mutually exclusive sets
Three trophies are a divorce: you cannot hold them all at once.
- Live Another Day wants 15 recruited racket informants. Can't Trust a Rat wants 15 killed. Recruiting also feeds The New Boss (flip 16 racket bosses — wiretap every district first so the option exists at all), while killing every boss feeds No Loose Ends. Plan one run as the merciful Lincoln, the other as the efficient one.
- Family sits on the darker path: it fires when you kill your own underbosses, which also locks in the rule alone ending and drops the surviving factions to 0.4% kickback. Save it for a run where you have already banked everything else.
Money, main quests and DLC extras
The ledger achievements are quietly the most demanding: Cash in Hand ($150k banked), Baby, You're a Rich Man ($500k earned), Hole in Your Pocket ($500k spent) and Big Earner ($10k from one underboss in a single payout) all come naturally on a long completion run — the racket economy is what prints the money. Each underboss's side-mission chain carries its own trophy (.45 in My Hand, IRA Don't Ask, I Need a Favor), and the DLC adds its own sub-lists: the Faster, Baby! grow-house pair (Herbalist, Mr. Green Thumb), Sign of the Times' Barkeep, Pour Sammy!, Haunted Places and Worse Than Dying, and Stones Unturned's Skip Trace. They are where the last 15 hours of a 100% run go.
