20 Minutes Till Dawn – Achievement Guide with Tips

General Achievement Guide

Note: Credit goes to El Papoy

If for some reason you wan’t to be done with this game as fast as possible here is the fastest way to complete every achievement. If a game takes 30 minutes on average (adding a little bit of time for rune and upgrade picking), it should take you 690 minutes (11.5 hours) to unlock darkness 15 and complete darkness level 15 on each character and gun using my method (it could technically take 10.5 hours if you played each character and gun only once, but in my opinion terrible builds will cause you to die a lot and waste time).

The other 10 achievements can be completed fairly easily on darkness 0 and can take as high as 5 games (doing each individually) and as low as 2 games (by combining multiple achievements) I recommend doing 3 games (1 hour and 20 minutes). This means that to complete all achievements efficiently should take you about 13 hours. There is of course a fairly high chance that you will die at least once attempting this which will increase the amount of time required. But I will try to give you builds and strategies that make your survival as likely as possible in each of those games.

• Sunrise: (Survive the full 20 minutes) This one will inevitably be unlocked if you are going for achievements
• Dark night, Darker night, Darkest night, Pitch black: (Survive on darkness 1,5,10,15) Again these are unlocked by simply playing the game. I would recommend playing until darkness 14 with whatever build you feel most comfortable with. I personally did it with Spark because she is much too strong. But doing it on a Shana shotgun build will get you more Xp which translates to more runes being unlocked when you get to darkness 15.
• On the edge: (Survive the night with 1 Max HP at the end) I would recommend playing a bullet-damage build to complete this one as death bullets ensures you have access to a -1 Hp upgrade and the second one can come from a Tome. Make sure you take a 3 Hp character to again give yourself the highest chance of succeeding. You may just never find a tome that reduces you Hp and if that’s the case I am very sorry for you. The build I would specifically recommend for this is Yuki’s hybrid build since Freezing enemies will help a lot with survivability. If you want to play a different build just make sure you take Frost mage early anyways. I could even see taking the Mysticism rune for this specific achievement.
• Reckless: (Survive the night with Abby and the Grenade Launcher by only using Abby’s special ability to fire) This one forces you to use specific things, but strangely I would recommend using Hina’s grenade launcher build to complete it.
• Nimble: (Survive the night without getting hit) This one literally only requires practice at the game so don’t rush into it. I would recommend completing it at the same time as On the edge. Since you don’t want to get hit anyways. Before doing it you should unlock the Blessing rune so that you start the game with holy shield and upgrade it as fast as possible. This is because the achievement only takes into account actually losing HP. (Might be a bug, but for now it works)
• Pacifist: (Survive the night without firing your gun) This achievement requires that you use Hina, as she is the oncly character (currently) that can deal damage without shooting by using her right click to summon her minion to deal damage. You should of course use the Grenade launcher to make your summons deal as much damage as possible. Because you will be using summons as your main source of damage you can just copy Lilith’s summoner build.
• Gotta catch ’em all: (Survive the night with 8 summons as the end) This is easily achievable with any character, but of course Lilith is the master of summons. There is a problem though the upgrades actually only allow for 7 summons. The last one is actually the runes summoned by Seismic ward so make sure you equip it before going for this achievement.

How to complete them efficiently?

Efficient Path: Completing these achievements can technically be done in 2 games as only two of them are character specific and you could for example do nimble, pacifist and gotta catch em’ all in one game. Keeping reckless and on the edge for the Abby game since she benefits from the bullet-damage increase. But that would be risky. You could also do 4 of them on Hina and just do Abby’s on its own. But on the edge does not combine particularly well with a non bullet-damage build. So I recommend doing three games in darkness 0 to complete these achievements:

1. Nimble & On the edge: As I said they combine very well since they are both about survival and Yuki’s playstyle already likes to abuse freezing enemies and dealing bullet damage.
2. Pacifist & Gotta catch ’em all: Just playing a summon build on Hina will unlock these achievements. I still want to note a few things. First of all as stated earlier you NEED the Seismic ward rune (even 1 point in it is fine). Second you should prioritize the Electro mage tree more than usual as you will need the Electro bug too. Lastly make sure you remove the finger you use to click the left mouse button from the mouse entirely, you wouldn’t want to accidentally press it and have to start again.
3. Reckless: Simply follow the achievement recommendations.

Gun & Character Achievements

(Mastery, Fallen angel, Strongwoman, Pyromaniac, Master ninja, Thunder god, Necromastery, Bullet mania, Yokai. The names are just here in case someone is trying to CTRL+F their way to these achievements)

So, as I eluded to earlier you could complete these 16 achievements by playing 8 games which use each character and each gun. The problem with doing this is that some characters really need specific guns to work properly and using non-optimal builds might cause you to die a bunch of time. For example when I was trying to complete the achievements my brain just jumped to Scarlett + Flamethrower has to be what you should do right. But I unknowingly combined THE worst character with THE worst gun in the game. So I died. Over. and over. And over again.

I ended up succeeding but I would’t wish it on my worst enemy. Instead I propose doing 9 games to unlock these 16 achievements. I believe that playing a few more games while avoiding subpar builds might save you a lot of time spent dying in the long run. So here are the 9 games:

1. Spark/Flame Cannon: The reason you combine these is because Spark can beat the game with literally any gun. So you may as well pair her with the worst gun in the game, which just so happens to have a fire rate and ammo capacity. This works perfectly with her large clip build. But to be safe (because it’s overall better) I would still recommend going for the Mini clip version of the build to give the flame cannon the best chance. Just like with the shotgun you’ll want to go down the Take aim tree as a priority although in the case of the flame cannon its because of the Assassin upgrade which kills enemies below 20% Hp. This helps a lot with how bad burn damage is. You may also need to prioritize the Overload synergy before Mini clip itself.
2. Scarlett/Shotgun: On the opposite end here we combine the best gun with the worst character. I would simply recommend doing the basic Mini clip shotgun elemental build you can find in Spark’s recommended builds. I would again aim for Overload quickly, but not over Mini clip in this case.
3. Diamond/Bow: Diamond gains a lot of free bullet damage and the bow scales well with it. Simply play Diamond’s optimal build with a bow.
4. Hina/Grenade: Hina’s optimal weapon is the Grenade launcher. So again simply follow her optimal build.
5. Abby/Batgun: The Batgun is Abby’s optimal weapon so you can do it with either of her builds. Although obviously elemental damage is the best type of damage so if you want to have an easier time play that one. (But the bullet damage one is really fun)
6. Yuki/Revolver: I personally enjoy the fact that a full clip of the revolver shoots out a butterfly and it is one of her optimal weapons. Simply follow either of her builds.
7. Shana/Crossbow: The crossbow is the second best gun on Shana. And although it will involve a lot of clicking, the mini clip elemental build shown in Spark’s optimal builds should get you this achievement easily.
8. Lilith/Grenade: Here is the first repeat. Lilith is one of the harder characters to beat darkness 15 with as summons just aren’t the best source of damage. So to give yourself the best chance I recommend playing her optimal build with the grenade launcher. This one may take a couple tries sorry. Otherwise you can as usual fully ignore the character mechanic and just do a mini clip elemental shotgun build.
9. Spark/SMG: The second repeat. Here the character is repeated simply because it completely ensures that you will only need to play one game to unlock the achievement. Spark is extremely strong and her large clip build is perfect for the SMG. The SMG could work on a multitude of other character since it is a pretty good gun. Spark is just that much stronger.