Sticky Business 42/42 Achievement Roadmap: DLC Scope, Hearts, and Story Fixes

Verified for the Steam version on August 4, 2026, after the version 2026.177 update.

Sticky Business has 42 Steam achievements, but the number hides the most common completion trap. The base game supplies 29. Plan With Me supplies seven more, and Camp Zinnias supplies six. The current list assigns none to Book of Shadows or Seaside Tales. If your library does not include both achievement-bearing expansions, waiting for more base-game customers cannot produce 42/42.

This roadmap turns that split into one route. It also separates the counters that advance through ordinary orders from the two cleanup jobs that can stall for much longer: completing every customer chain and earning enough hearts to buy every sticker element.

Confirm the target before starting the grind#

Steam achievement group	Count	Ownership needed	Names to check
Base production and shop	15	Base game	Printing Money!, Sticker swiper, Fully upgraded, Up and away!, First Sticker!, Moa’ stickers!, Even moa’ stickers!, Time flies, Holy sheet, Sheet keep happening, I give tons of sheets, Ship it!, Mail Box full, Customer of the month, Saying goodbye
Base stories	14	Base game	Story time, Sticking around, A Good Lesson, A Couple of Stickers, Never too old, Growing up, Quit, Don’t Stick, Raaawr!, Sticky Friends, Going live!, Get well soon, Organized, New Beginnings, So long, and thanks for all the stickers!
Plan With Me stories	7	Plan With Me DLC	Mountains of Resilience, Stick with it!, Smells like Sticker Spirit, You’ve got Mail, With Stickers and Care, Sticker’s little helpers, What’s sticking, Doc?
Camp Zinnias stories	6	Camp Zinnias DLC	Camp Zinnias, The Crush, The Wingman, The Talent Show, A Summer To Remember, Sun-Popped Corn

The fastest diagnostic is the shape of the missing list. Seven missing names matching the Plan With Me row indicate an ownership or installation problem, not a hidden base-game trigger. The same test applies to the six Camp Zinnias names. Book of Shadows officially launched without achievements, while the current 42-entry list contains only the two achievement-bearing DLC packs.

Version 2026.177 also removed the old cross-game method that unlocked Thrifty Business stickers. Do not use an older guide that sends you to that mechanic during a current Sticker swiper cleanup.

Phase 1: establish a repeatable order cycle#

Create a design, save it to the shop, arrange a sheet, print what the first order needs, pack the requested pieces, and send the parcel. That is the game’s complete working loop, and it produces three early checkpoints without any special route: First Sticker! after the first print, Holy sheet after the first sheet, and Ship it! after the first parcel.

Before the shop becomes crowded, make one disposable design and delete it for Saying goodbye. Buy one inexpensive upgrade for Up and away! These two actions are easy to postpone because neither is required to fulfill an order.

From here, preserve the same cycle instead of making isolated achievement saves. Every ordinary day can advance several counters at once:

• Print count: Moa’ stickers! requires 250 pieces, and Even moa’ stickers! requires 500.
• Sheet count: Sheet keep happening stops at five sheets; I give tons of sheets stops at 15.
• Parcel count: Mail Box full requires 10 sent packages; Customer of the month requires 50.
• Calendar: Time flies unlocks after 25 played days.
• Revenue: Printing Money! tracks 1,000 coins earned. An early base-game guide confirms that the coins do not need to be held simultaneously.

If the print or sheet counters trail the order counters, add small, simple pieces to otherwise unused gaps on a sheet. Smaller designs let one print action move the 250/500 piece goals faster. This is a cleanup tool, not a reason to send the wrong item: each parcel must still contain every ordered sticker.

Success signal: the parcel is sent and the relevant package counter advances. Failure signal: the order remains open or appears as failed/late on the next day report. Return to the order card, compare every requested icon and quantity, print the shortage, then repack before the deadline.

Phase 2: prevent the heart bottleneck#

Sticker swiper and Fully upgraded are separate achievements. Sticker swiper covers the sticker elements sold in the upgrade shop; Fully upgraded covers the non-sticker upgrades. Coins alone do not finish both lists because many design elements use hearts.

Hearts come from leveling individual design components. A component gains experience when a sticker containing it is sold, and a level-up awards hearts. This creates a late-game failure pattern: a popular old design keeps selling, but all of its parts are already maxed, so the shop earns money without producing more hearts.

Use this recovery loop:

1. Open the creator or upgrade view and identify components that are not fully leveled. The current 2026.177 creator adds a visible fully-leveled indicator.
2. Build a saleable design from several unfinished components rather than adding one unfinished part to an otherwise maxed design.
3. List the new design. Temporarily unlist the old bestsellers whose components are already finished so incoming orders can select the new stock.
4. Ship orders containing the new design and inspect the experience display at the end of the day.
5. When those components finish, rotate again. Spend the resulting hearts across the remaining sticker categories until Sticker swiper unlocks.

Observable result: stars or experience move on unfinished components, followed by a heart award at a level boundary. Failure signal: orders are shipping but the same maxed designs dominate, or experience moves without a heart on that specific day. The next action is not to repeat the same stock: verify that the selected components still have levels available and rotate the listing.

Keep a small manual ledger with two columns: sticker parts already purchased and components that still have levels remaining. A directly captured Steam tracker guide recommends this exact separation. The linked spreadsheet is not needed; the useful part is preventing a category sweep from becoming guesswork.

There is also a measurable optional branch once coin-funded upgrades are comfortable. A directly captured Steam heart guide reports that order XP bonuses top out at 75% and that 15 extra stickers can reach that ceiling; a separate Chinese Steam guide describes the same 15-freebie cutoff. Both pages display Steam’s removed/incompatible warning, and no current official page confirms the number, so test it instead of treating it as permanent.

Make one tiny, low-cost freebie and keep it unlisted. Pack 15 copies into one otherwise correct order, then compare the component XP on the day report with an ordinary order. If XP clearly rises, use the branch while hearts remain the bottleneck. If it does not rise, packing slows the route, or coin purchases still matter more, stop adding extras and return to rotating unfinished components. The requested stickers always come first.

Phase 3: run customer stories by messages, not by guesses#

Customer chains advance through orders and, at specific points, custom sticker requests. Check the latest message for the named customer, make a design that answers the request actually shown in your save, list it, and keep shipping. Do not substitute a theme chart from an old guide: DLC ownership and later updates changed the available story pool, while the current message in your game is the safer instruction.

Use the achievement names as a four-part checklist:

1. Base chain: clear the 13 named story achievements, then verify Story time. If one base name is missing, find that customer’s latest message instead of waiting blindly.
2. Plan With Me chain: clear its seven named achievements. If all seven are absent, stop advancing days and verify that the DLC is owned, installed, and enabled.
3. Camp Zinnias chain: clear its six names. The same ownership check applies if the whole group is absent.
4. Final pass: compare Steam’s live list against the table above. Book of Shadows and Seaside Tales stories can be played, but they do not fill a missing slot in the current 42.

Messages do not necessarily arrive back-to-back. Continue the normal create-print-pack-send cycle and recheck the conversation after later days. If an order appears but the chain does not advance, first confirm that you shipped what the current request asked for. For the Plan With Me contact @ajaywalker, a community troubleshooting reply reports that creating a fresh matching sticker can matter even when an older matching design already exists; use that as a narrow last-resort workaround, not a rule for every customer.

Success signal: the customer’s next message appears or the corresponding named story achievement unlocks. Failure signal: an entire seven- or six-name DLC group is missing, which points to ownership; one customer remains stuck, which points back to that message and order; all named base stories are complete but Story time is absent, which calls for a direct comparison against Steam’s current base list.

When Raaawr! is the one chain that will not move

Three directly captured Steam Guides converge on the same bounded diagnostic for Marc, Pedro, and David: their chain uses dinosaur, pride-flag, and race-car themes, while the dedicated Raaawr account reports that qualifying designs had to remain listed across multiple days. One broader achievement guide also warns that an old qualifying design may not satisfy a later request, so the safe starting point is still the exact message visible in your save.

1. Open the newest message from Marc, Pedro, or David and identify the theme requested at that point.
2. Create a fresh design for that request. If the message is ambiguous, use the guide-backed dinosaur, pride-flag, and race-car set as the fallback boundary rather than adding unrelated themes.
3. Keep the qualifying designs listed and continue fulfilling their orders through ordinary days.
4. Recheck Messages after each relevant order. Do not expect an immediate unlock: the dedicated guide describes a long, uncertain chain rather than a single guaranteed sticker.

Observable result: another family message appears or Raaawr! unlocks. Failure signal: only old qualifying designs remain in the shop and the relevant customer never advances. Rebuild the theme named in the current message, confirm the new design is listed, and continue the normal order loop.

Final 42/42 cleanup decision tree#

What is missing?	Most likely boundary	Next reliable action
Exactly the seven Plan With Me names	Plan With Me is absent or inactive	Verify Steam ownership and installation before advancing another day.
Exactly the six Camp Zinnias names	Camp Zinnias is absent or inactive	Verify Steam ownership and installation, then return to its customer messages.
Sticker swiper	At least one sticker element remains locked	Rotate unfinished components through listed designs, earn hearts at level-ups, and sweep every sticker category in Upgrades.
Fully upgraded	A non-sticker upgrade remains	Sweep the upgrade menu separately from sticker elements and fund the last purchase through normal orders.
Moa’, sheets, parcels, days, or coins	A cumulative counter is unfinished	Keep the normal cycle; use small gap-fillers for print volume and do not leave open orders unsent.
One named story	A customer-specific request is incomplete	Read that customer’s newest message, make the requested design, list it, and ship the next matching order.
A guide asks for Thrifty Business unlocks	The guide predates version 2026.177	Discard that step; the current patch removed the cross-game unlock mechanic.

The route is complete when Steam shows all 42 entries unlocked: 29 base, seven Plan With Me, and six Camp Zinnias. The important distinction is that time solves only the counters. Missing DLC groups, a maxed-component heart loop, or an unanswered customer request each need a different correction.

Sources & credits#

• Sticky Business on Steam