- Estimated Achievement Difficulty: 3/10
- Offline: 9 [150]
- Online: 2 [50]
- Estimated Time to 200 : 6-10 Hours [100+ without achievement trading]
- Minimum Number of Playthroughs Needed: 10 [likely 20+]
- Missable Achievements: None
- Do cheat codes disable Achievements: No Cheats
- Does difficulty affect achievements?: Yes
- Glitched Achievements: All Potentially Glitched
- Unobtainable Achievements: None
- Extra equipment needed: No
Introduction
If you have played the board game Settlers of Catan or any of the other permutations of it, you will be able to pick up this game very easily. If you have not played any version of this game, it is a simple strategy board game where the object is to build cities and gain other perks in a race to get ten Victory Points. Simple and enjoyable to play against the computer or against a friend online.
Step One: Medium Difficulty Playthrough
The first achievement to try for would be the "Scholar of Catan" achievement. Boot up a game with 3 medium AI players and play to win. This may take a few tries, but you will learn a few techniques in doing so that will help you in the later stages. You will definitely get "Settler of Catan", and depending on how many attempts this takes, you may get the "Merchant of Catan" and "Villager of Catan" as well. The achievement guide below offers some tips on beating the AI if you need them.
Step Two: Hard Playthough
After getting the "Scholar of Catan", move on to the "Professor of Catan" achievement, winning a game against 3 hard AI opponents. Use the tricks that you learned to beat the medium opponents and you shouldn’t have too many problems, but again this may take a few attempts. Again, depending on how many attempts you need, you may get more achievements, maybe even going up to the "Citizen of Catan" achievement. Refer to the achievement guide below for tips on beating the AI.
Step Three: Online Ranked Play
The "Chancellor of Catan" Achievement requires you to get 1000 Victory Points in Ranked Matches. Doing this the way that the developer intended, that would take you between 100 and 250 games. A game takes between 30 minutes and an hour, so you are looking at a MINIMUM of 50 hours to get these achievements. There is a way to cut this time frame down to five hours or so, though.
You can boost this achievement by getting a group of four players together for a ranked match. Make sure that all of the players are on the others’ preferred list and just keep attempting to find a game until the four of you are in the same game. Once you are able to build a settlement or a city in the game, spend the full minute of your turn repeatedly building a city or settlement and then undoing your move. The achievement counter measures the amount of points gained, not the amount of points that you finish the game with, so it is possible to get 1000 Victory Points from a single game. There are a lot of rumours about this, but I have done it, so I know that you can stop, exit to the dashboard, pick it up a month later and pick up where you left off if you cannot get the full 1000 in one game. You can do this if a player leaves the ranked match and is replaced by an AI (and if you don’t have the full 4, you will almost definitely have the non-boosters leave, and leave a bad review on your rep). You can even quit the game early and still keep your progress. In getting the Chancellor achievement, you will unlock the "Elder of Catan" and "Statesman of Catan" and "Ambassador of Catan" achievements as well. It is also simple to arrange to have everyone get the achievement during this process as well, since you don’t actually need to play the game, just invite someone into the game (Player Match only).
Step Four: Achievement Mop Up
If you have done this the legitimate way, you will probably not have any achievements left when you unlock the "Chancellor of Catan" achievement. If you boosted, though, you will likely still have the "Builder of Catan" and "Knight of Catan" achievements for finishing the game with the Longest Road and Largest Army cards ten times respectively. To finish these off, just start a game against two easy AI players and you should be able to get both of these cards at the end of the game, if you focus on road building and buying development cards. Rinse and repeat as needed until both achievements unlock. You should then have the full 200 . If you have any trouble with these last achievements, refer to the tips in the achievement guide below.
Glitched Achievements:
The game had a fatal glitch in it that will activate if you unlock two achievements simultaneously. For example, if your win against the medium AI players gives you 25 Victory Points, you will unlock one, and the other will be locked forever. As a result, you will see some people who have unlocked the 100 VP achievement, but not the 25. There is a way to fix this, though it is not available to everyone. You will need to recover your gamertag to an XBox that you have not played Catan on before and fulfill the requirements again on that machine. It is probably too late to hope for a patch, but at least there is a way to fix the problem.
Conclusion:
Catan takes as long as you like to get the full 200 . It is fun to play against friends online, amusing against the computer, though not as challenging, and a game that you can play many times after getting the 200 . If you want to rush through the achievements, you can do so, and if you want to take your time, you can do that as well.