MISERY has 38 Steam achievements, but only 35 belong on an ordinary progression save. The final three require surviving 10, 50, and 100 Shinings on Hardcore, where the May 2026 update finally repaired the mode’s one-life behavior. Mixing that run with radiation threshold tests, friendly fire, dwarf killing, and 100 melee kills is an avoidable way to erase dozens of Shinings.
Evidence was rechecked on August 10, 2026: the official 38-name Steam list, the March 18 achievement update, the May mechanics/hotfix boundary, and a community route updated June 18. This roadmap organizes the set by save risk and shared setup. Achievement tracking can change with a patch; if a counter or preset behaves differently, trust Steam’s current description and the in-game notification before repeating a dangerous setup.
Use three save purposes, not one heroic file
- Standard progression save: build power, stations, storage, the garden, a detector, repaired equipment, and the exoskeleton. Most one-off and cumulative achievements belong here.
- Risk checkpoint: make a manual save before 90% radiation, 100% insanity, 1 HP healing, starvation, friendly fire, or killing a dwarf. Restore normal survival state after the notification appears.
- Hardcore file: reserve this for Survival instinct, Ghost of the Zone, and Hero of Zaslavie. Do not use it to test lethal thresholds or optional combat.
A community guide reports that custom difficulty does not count achievements and that progress for several cumulative tasks carries across saves. The official March update confirms four presets plus custom settings, but does not document every tracker rule. Use Explorer, Adventurer, Survivor, or Hardcore rather than Custom while hunting, and verify one cheap unlock before investing in a long counter.
For co-op tasks, decide who needs the credit before acting. The June route reports that some shared crafting actions count for everyone, while monster collections can require the hunter to land the killing blow. Watch for the Steam notification and do not assume proximity equals credit.
First clear the sixteen actions that unlock the toolset
| # | Achievement | Trigger | Route note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Home Sweet Home | Place your first furniture. | Pick up and place a starting generator, wall splitter, outside cabinet, or car battery after ensuring the main grid can hold it. |
| 2 | Bunker Rats | Sell something in SIRZEZ. | Move the sale item into the main inventory; objects nested in a backpack or rig may not appear for the trader. |
| 3 | Industrialization | Smelt an Iron Bar. | Power the Incinerator, put Scrap in the conversion slot, and confirm the process starts. |
| 4 | Anomaly Tourism | Jump into a teleporting anomaly. | Use a large stationary gray core, not a damaging pulsating orb. Enter with enough health to pay the teleport cost. |
| 5 | Melancholy | Smoke in the rain. | Store cigarettes until a rainy expedition rather than consuming the last one in the bunker. |
| 6 | Friendly Fire | Kill a friend. | Use a consenting co-op partner on the standard save, confirm respawn conditions, and recover dropped equipment. |
| 7 | Na Zdorovie! | Give Vodka to a Dwarf. | Find a dwarf around villages or lumber areas, offer vodka, then verify it can follow or be picked up. |
| 8 | Protein is protein | Eat a cockroach. | A raw or cooked cockroach has been documented to work; cooking is the safer normal-use choice. |
| 9 | PSYCHO | Kill a target while insanity is at least 90%. | Raise insanity near green apparition fields, keep an easy target alive, make the kill, then leave and recover. |
| 10 | Tools of Proletariat | Craft the Advanced Workbench. | Reserve its large material set and floor space instead of spending components on optional decor. |
| 11 | Clean like a tear! | Purify a bottle of water. | Build and power the Chemical Table, fill plastic at a suitable well, then convert the radioactive bottle into clean water. |
| 12 | Law and Order | Kill 10 Bandits. | Separate bandits around terrain and track your own kills; do not risk the Hardcore file for this counter. |
| 13 | Shiny thingy | Find your first Artifact. | Use the Busel Detector at an anomaly field and retreat before inspecting the item card. |
| 14 | Yack! | Eat the Poo. | Do the one-off action beside stored food and water, then correct the survival-stat damage. |
| 15 | Don’t tell Mom, that I am in Zaslavie | Play every guitar song once. | Find a guitar, sit somewhere safe, and cycle every song variant until the unlock appears. |
| 16 | Electrification | Turn on a light in the bunker. | Place a lamp, connect it to a live source through a cable or splitter, and verify illumination rather than cable appearance. |
Several of these share one setup. A working power circuit unlocks Industrialization, Electrification, later water purification, and station crafting. One SIRZEZ visit can trigger Bunker Rats, buy or repair needed gear, and prepare the detector. One dwarf should first receive vodka for Na Zdorovie!; do not kill that same recruit before it has also powered a generator for Labor Camp.
Build the middle nineteen around permanent bunker progress
| # | Achievement | Trigger | Efficient checkpoint |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | DIY Expert | Craft 50 items. | Craft supplies you will consume anyway; record the notification because the interface does not expose every historical contribution clearly. |
| 18 | Minor Victory | Kill a Dwarf. | Save first and use a dwarf not assigned to the generator or carrying irreplaceable loot. |
| 19 | Whacko | Reach 100% insanity. | Pair it with PSYCHO near a green apparition field, but make the kill before control or inventory access becomes unreliable. |
| 20 | You can not fix it sober | Fix a broken weapon at Technic. | Bring the broken gun, required repair parts or kits, rubles, and free main-inventory space; the repair appears through the Technician transaction flow. |
| 21 | Labor Camp | Make a Dwarf work. | Bring a tamed dwarf home, craft the Dwarf Generator, add vodka, and confirm power output. |
| 22 | Starvation | Reach the achievement’s full hunger and thirst threshold. | Do it in the bunker beside prepared food and clean drink; read the current bars because the wording and meter direction can be confusing. |
| 23 | I am Soup | Wear a Cooking Pot as a helmet. | Move the pot into the head slot, wait for the unlock, then restore real protection before departing. |
| 24 | Stroybat | Demolish 10 concrete bunker blocks. | Count only blocks that open useful station or storage space, and monitor sledgehammer durability. |
| 25 | From Ashes to Ashes | Cremate 100 items. | Feed genuine trash and unwanted objects into a powered Incinerator; keep Scrap separate when you want Iron Bars instead. |
| 26 | Not Great, Not Terrible | Reach at least 90% radiation, then cure to 10% or lower. | Use a controlled radiation source with a strong cure already in the quick slot. Leave other damage sources out of the test. |
| 27 | Juggernaut | Craft the Exoskeleton. | Recover a Torn Military Uniform from later Nuclear Bunker loot, repair it at the Sewing Machine, then use the Advanced Workbench recipe shown by the client. |
| 28 | Back from the Afterlife | Use a medkit at 1% health or lower. | Set up in the bunker with a partner and a very low-damage tool if possible. Do not improvise with radiation, hunger, and enemy damage at once. |
| 29 | Natural Selection | Kill every required monster. | Maintain a seven-name checklist and land the finishing hit: Zombie, Swamper, Twins, Crayfish, Ratwolf, Ghoul, and Screamer. |
| 30 | Battle Scars | Sustain 100,000 damage. | Let normal progression contribute first. Armor reduces received damage, but removing it only to grind creates more recovery cost and risk. |
| 31 | Collectioner | Find 10 different Artifacts. | Track unique names, not pickups. The documented set contains 12, so duplicates do not advance this requirement. |
| 32 | Alcoholism | Drink 100 Vodka. | Accumulate the counter gradually and reserve separate bottles for dwarf recruitment and generation. |
| 33 | You’ve got cancer | Smoke 100 cigarettes. | Cigarettes stack to 20 after the May update; keep one aside for Melancholy until that unlock is done. |
| 34 | Butcher of Zaslavie | Kill 100 enemies with melee weapons. | Use ordinary low-risk targets and repair or replace the weapon before it turns a safe cleanup into a bad fight. |
| 35 | Comrade Capitalist | Earn 1,000,000 rubles. | Build a repeatable sale loop around expedition loot, trophies, artifacts, vegetables, or processed goods; confirm that the live tracker counts gross earnings as expected. |
The fastest route is not to grind each counter in isolation. Every expedition can feed several without changing the plan: melee a safe enemy, recover a unique artifact, collect sale goods, bring home trash for cremation, and craft the supplies used for the next departure. Stop when adding one more counter would endanger the haul.
Combine the dangerous thresholds in a controlled order
PSYCHO, Whacko, Not Great, Not Terrible, Back from the Afterlife, and Starvation all ask you to approach a failure state. Do them on the standard save with the cure visible before you start.
Insanity: PSYCHO before Whacko
Find a green apparition field with an easy target outside the most dangerous center. Raise insanity past 90%, make the kill for PSYCHO, then remain only long enough to reach full insanity for Whacko. Retreat along the marked entry line and use the verified recovery item. At maximum insanity, vision and controls can be unreliable, so reversing the order makes the kill harder.
A June route also documents a tutorial method using the early apparition area and deer. It warns that the tutorial can inherit the last loaded difficulty in ways that alter damage or tracking. Restart the game before using a tutorial shortcut, and abandon it if the first expected notification does not appear.
Radiation: one source, one strong cure
Store normal equipment, make a manual save, and stand near a known radioactive object until the meter passes 90%. Use a treatment capable of taking it to 10% or lower in one controlled sequence. Do not pair this with an anomaly field, spoiled food, combat, or the 1 HP test. If health is already collapsing, leave the source before opening the inventory.
One health: remove randomness from the last point
The June route recommends a co-op partner and a toy/plastic hammer that can chip very small amounts against an unarmored player. Lower health safely first, then let the low-damage tool approach the final point. Check the numerical or segmented health display in the inventory, use the medkit at 1% or less, and wait for the notification. Enemy attacks and anomaly hits have variable damage and are poor final-step tools.
Hunger and thirst: stand beside the recovery
Let the two survival bars reach the achievement’s full failure state inside the bunker with safe food and clean water placed in the main inventory. Difficulty changes depletion speed. Do not use Hardcore, and do not combine this with radiation or 1 HP. Recover both bars only after the unlock appears.
Natural Selection is a location checklist, not a damage test
The June guide documents seven required killable monsters. Use the location clue to find each and safe terrain to control it:
| Monster | Documented location signal | Credit/risk check |
|---|---|---|
| Zombie | Military areas in City points of interest and sometimes Nuclear Bunker expeditions. | Armed variants make open approaches expensive; confirm your finishing hit. |
| Swamper | Swamp areas on Meadow expeditions. | Weather can alter aggression after the April update. |
| Twins | Storage areas and basketball courts in City points of interest. | Use terrain they cannot cross and do not mistake durability for a missing counter. |
| Crayfish | Tall grass during City expeditions. | They became mostly peaceful except when harassed or during rain; the May update also made them more vulnerable to melee. |
| Ratwolf | Roaming near City buildings. | Fast pursuit plus nearby radiation can produce two simultaneous failures. |
| Ghoul | Sleeping or roaming in Nuclear Bunker rooms. | Noise wakes it, and close contact can be lethal; clear an exit before firing. |
| Screamer | Nuclear Bunker rooms, somewhat rarer than Ghouls. | Its call draws Ghouls, so isolate the kill or retreat rather than fighting the whole room. |
Keep the checklist outside the game or in a note. Steam shows only the final achievement, not always the missing creature. In co-op, have the player who needs Natural Selection land the last hit and wait for the next tracker change before assigning the next monster.
Do the million-ruble and three 100-count grinds as by-products
Comrade Capitalist, Battle Scars, Butcher of Zaslavie, Alcoholism, You’ve got cancer, DIY Expert, and From Ashes to Ashes are long counters. Build a ledger with the current Steam tracker where available and attach each counter to normal play:
- Craft cables, medicine, tools, and building pieces you will use instead of producing fifty disposable objects.
- Cremate genuine trash at the end of every return; route Scrap to iron when that has more value.
- Use melee on isolated low-risk targets, then switch to a firearm or leave when the fight stops being cheap.
- Sell by trader category and compare live prices. The economy has changed several times, including vegetable sales and broken-weapon repairs.
- Reserve vodka for dwarves and one cigarette for rain before consuming stock toward the 100-use counters.
- Let ordinary damage advance Battle Scars; healing and armor costs can make deliberate damage farming slower than progression.
A community guide describes save-reload loops for accelerating consumables and ruble earnings. Those methods rely on tracker behavior that may be unintended and may change. This route does not require them. A repeatable intended economy is slower but leaves the bunker stronger when the achievement ends.
Hardcore is one 100-Shining run with two intermediate unlocks
The final three achievements form a single chain:
| # | Achievement | Hardcore requirement | Meaning for the run |
|---|---|---|---|
| 36 | Survival instinct | Survive 10 Shinings. | Validation gate: the bunker loop, return timing, and food plan work under Hardcore pressure. |
| 37 | Ghost of the Zone | Survive 50 Shinings. | Consistency gate: stop adding optional risk once power, storage, treatment, and food are stable. |
| 38 | Hero of Zaslavie | Survive 100 Shinings. | Preservation gate: every expedition must justify exposing the one-life file. |
The March official update describes Hardcore as permadeath with harsher survival settings. The May 21 notes say the respawn bug was fixed so it is now truly one life. Assume death deletes the attempt. Before starting:
- finish the 35 standard achievements elsewhere;
- practice ten clean Shining returns on the same general routing discipline;
- know how the current preset displays the Shining counter;
- use short lanes and early dumps rather than full-map clearing;
- keep a recovery loadout and production reserve in separate bunker containers;
- avoid Nuclear Bunker raids, high-radiation artifact searches, friendly fire, and lethal threshold tests unless survival requires the reward.
At Shining 10, do not celebrate by changing the build. Audit food, water, power, cures, weapon condition, and route margin. At 50, remove any system that still depends on a rare consumable or lucky spawn. From 50 to 100, the achievement is repetition under control, not escalating difficulty for its own sake.
If an achievement does not unlock, inspect the condition before repeating it
| Missing unlock | Likely reason | Next check |
|---|---|---|
| Cheap action on a Custom game | Community testing reports Custom does not count. | Load a named preset, restart if needed, and repeat one low-cost condition. |
| Sale or repair interaction | The object is nested, the wrong trader is open, or the repair transaction did not complete. | Move all requirements into the main inventory and verify the item leaves or changes state. |
| Collectioner after ten pickups | At least one pickup was a duplicate. | Compare names against the twelve-item set and seek the missing unique type. |
| Natural Selection in co-op | Another player landed the finishing hit or one of the seven types is absent. | Assign the last hit and maintain a creature checklist. |
| Threshold achievement | The meter stopped just outside the requirement or recovery crossed the wrong endpoint. | Read the live value, use one controlled source, and wait for notification before curing. |
| Hardcore milestone | The run was not on Hardcore, a death invalidated it, or the counter has not advanced to the next Shining. | Verify the preset and pause-menu count before continuing the file. |
| Cumulative grind | Assumed global/co-op progress did not count in the current build. | Perform one more action yourself and watch the Steam tracker before scaling the method. |
Do not repeat a 100-use grind until one test action moves the current tracker. The cleanest 38/38 route is a standard bunker that turns ordinary play into 35 unlocks, followed by a deliberately uneventful Hardcore file that survives long enough to earn the last three.
Official identity and achievement boundary
The official Steam listing for App 2119830 supplies the developer and publisher names, a release date of October 23, 2025, and the screenshots used here; those identities are Platypus Entertainment and Ytopia. Steam’s global achievement page displayed 38 achievements on August 10, 2026. The official March 18 update introduced the presets, Custom settings, achievements, and Hardcore; the May 21 update fixed Hardcore respawning and exposed current item/trader stats. Exact routes were rebuilt from a readable 38-achievement community guide updated June 18 and cross-checked against multiple mechanics references. Warning banners, old prices, unsafe Cheat Engine advice, untranslated guides, and unverifiable Fandom claims were not used as standalone evidence.