Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood

To get this achievement you will have to complete the game on a lesser difficulty to unlock the VERY HARD difficulty. When you have done this I would recommend using the cheat code 735S653J which you input in the Exclusive Content option on the main menu. This will give you the Prime Ranger pistols for the first 2 levels of the game, which comes in handy as it can be tricky with the pistols you start with normally.
Play as Ray on every level you can choose him as he doesn't have to manoeuvre through as many difficult areas as Thomas does.
Whilst playing you will need to remain behind cover whenever possible. When you are shot it is vital that you hide immediately as it only takes 2-3 bullets to kill you. Reload your guns between skirmishes with the enemy as most guns beside the quickshooters and shotguns take a while to fully reload.
A tip that will make the game easier near the end is to save your money until the 8th level and visit the shop. Purchase the Superb Volcano handguns and Superb Classic Rifle. I think the Superb Volcano's are on level 8 and the Superb Rifle is on level 9. They will cost you just over $2000 to get the 2 pistols and the rifle but it is worth it as they produce one-shot kills and will make the game a lot easier, in my opinion.

Hope this helps.

This Guide Is Only For the Boss Fight with Barnsby:

This is definitely the hardest section of the game in Very Hard. If you made it past the brutal first 2 levels from the Civil War and felt that the game was a breeze afterwards, this is a final rude awakening. However, a few tips will make this fight MUCH more manageable.

1) Play as Ray with the Superb Volcanic Pistols (2), Superb Classic Rifle and a full stock of Dynamite.

2) Be sure to kill all of Barnsby's men on the ground level BEFORE triggering the checkpoint going up the spiral staircase. Thomas will babble on about getting buried in sand but feel free to take your time and ignore him as the sand cannot kill you. This should leave you with only one person on your way up the spiral staircase after the checkpoint making life a lot easier when you are re-doing this several dozen times.

3) When you get to the top of the spiral staircase with Thomas, HANG BACK! Don't trigger the bridge to fall but instead shoot Barnsby from afar (easier with the rifle) so that he is one less thing to worry about. If you do not trigger the bridge collapse his men will not spawn, leaving only him to deal with! You know that you have damaged him enough when he eventually makes a pained noise, stops talking to you, and stops firing at you.

4) Trigger the bridge to fall with a full dynamite stock in hand. As soon as you see Barnsbys men start to appear, throw the dynamite continuously every few seconds so that it lands in the area just behind the pillar with Marissa. If you aim well with good timing, you will take out the majority of his men, usually leaving the just last wave of snipers and a straggler or two. I found that aiming up close to the ceiling (well over Marissa's head) and just to the right of the pillar managed to land it in a spot that killed 8-10 of his men.

5) For me this step was crucial to keep myself from getting destroyed every time by the snipers: TURN OFF DYNAMIC COVER!!!! This will allow you to creep around the pillar without accidentally moving too far into the open and getting instantly murdered by the snipers.

I found that creeping around the left side of the pillar was easier for whatever reason. Make sure you only peek around the pillar EXTREMELY slowly! If only the snipers in the back are alive, only peek out immediately after they fire a shot so that they are caught reloading.

You know that you have killed the last of his men when Barnsby starts getting chatty again and challenges you to a duel.


Unfortunately even if you do everything right, you will die over and over from getting one-shotted by the inhumanly quick and accurate snipers, or have dynamite blow you to pieces, but with enough retries and some luck/skill this is manageable!

My solution is also for the Barnsby fight, and leads on from cfasand's solution.

Like cfasand says, don't go to the top of the spiral stairs, and finish the shoot-barnsby section of the fight before the henchmen spawn. When you hear Barnsby do his injury cry (which will be two pained sounds). Now, make sure you have full dynamite. At this point, you should have full dynamite, because you don't really need to use it before this point on this level, if you're skilled with akimbo pistols/rifle.

Anyway, after Barnsby has been injured, change your loadout to dynamite+pistol (either will do, but I prefer the Superb Ranger/Superb Quickshooter). Turn around from the stairway (i.e, so you're in line with looking down the stairs), and move backwards to trigger the rocks falling from the ceiling and destroying the bridge. The moment you hear your AI teammate yell "Look out!", throw a stick of dynamite just below the ceiling, and to the left of the pillar that the girl is hiding in front of. That is your 'mark' dynamite throw. Every couple of seconds, throw a dynamite at that spot. Rarely, you'll see a henchman move to the front of the area of the enemies. In this case, with all the dynamite kills you should be getting, you should easily have enough concentration to dispatch any close-range enemies.

If you follow this, the boss segment will be over in seconds, you won't have to worry about the snipers, and you'll get Barnsby talking to you again, which will, after a bit of conversation, lead you to the duel.

I hope this helps, because this boss is extremely difficult on very hard mode, however, I did try a few different things and this worked like a dream.

I have just completed it on Very Hard (to unlock it you need to complete the game at least once). I need to notice it unlocks Hard achievement as well. It will help if you start with some money from previous playthrough. The other solutions recommended to play as Ray, but I have completed it with Thomas and mostly had no problems. I will discribe some tactics as Thomas next:
I recomend to carry at least one Quickshooter to take out enemies at close range in first levels (later you best to do it with Bow). The second gun doesn't matter, so you can carry any. Use your Classic Rifle most of the time, once you get at least Prime Rifle you can kill enemies with one shot. And certainly use a Bow! Bow is a great close and mid range weapon. Bows Slo-mo really helps, and there is some trick to extend it: if you quickly release LT and press it again before the reticle begins to scatter, the Slo-mo will start again. With this trick you can make a constant slo-mo in tough situations.
Use cover system, stay at long range (most enemies can't do serious damage at long range, but riflemen can kill you with 1-2 bullets) and use your rifle. And you will have almost no problem most of the time. Also try to buy the best versions of Bow an Classic Rifle as you can (there are Superb Rifle in Chapter VIII and Superb Bow right at the start of Chapter X)

P.S. if you have any problems with some part of the game PM me or leave it in a comment, I'll try to help you :)

You don't have to start a new game because I started the last two missions first then the rest and got the achievement. I'd say it was hard on 3 parts of the game , the first 2 missions where your in the Army uniform , there the hardest but after that should be a breeze but make sure you use Ray because the game becomes twice as hard if you use Thomas because ray has akimbo pistols and that's handy because most the time when you walk up to an enemy it will automatically lock on to them which is good :) And save up your money till you reach near the end of the game when you can get Gold guns because you'll need them :)

Like for me I saved up until I reached the second part where your aloud to free roam but because Iv played the game 4 times I already had loads of money so I bought some silver guns through the game before I reached that part.

What I used for ray was a gold hybrid pistol and a gold ranger and the gold rifle but you want the rifle the most because of its accuracy and reload speed , and range is good when you get ambushed by enemy's from up high all the time but Thomas will usually point out to you were they are but it shouldn't be tough I mean I died quite a bit but once you sort of knew the situation it was easy to get past.

You'll probably have trouble on the second mission playing as Thomas when you have to shoot the boat down with the cannon but if you just wait for the boat to get close you can just pop up and shoot the snipers but you got to watch out because the snipers in the game will floor you with one shot on that difficulty !

And make sure you save your concentration mode for tricky situations like the snipes, and when there are groups of enemy's, or if your near death :)

The duals are all depended on the time that bell goes off , but what I did was watched there leg movement and saw how many times they moved left or right before they shot me and once I knew the pattern I pretty much shot them before there gun even came out of there holster.

The last thing I'll tell you is about the last mission , that will be difficult but there is a way you can get it done easier. When you kill all the guys on the ground floor and then Thomas starts blabbering on about getting killed by the sand , go up the spiral stairs killing the guy on the stairs then when you get to the top of the spiral stairs , hang back and don't go close to the pillar in the middle or it will collapse. Do that and you should be able to hear Barnsby saying how he hates you and stuff..

Then just shoot him a bit until you hear him make a noise like his dying then that's when you walk up to the pillar, then it shall collapse. Then use your dynamite to kill his henchmen but watch out on the left , there is some guy who just destroys you with one shot which can be annoying because you'll have to shoot Barnsby again.

I hoped my blabbering on helped you.

Happy Hunting!

i was an unfortunate soul who had to complete this using thomas and the dynamite guides weren't helping me at all, i had already gotten to the last checkpoint befor the duel so i wasent going to back out and i looked everywhere for a solution but i couldent find so after a hugely long amount of time the tactic that won it for me was only targeting barnsby's men and not him untill there were no more men left, i would first run up the stairs and use the superb heavy rifle to kill the first 3 men, then when the next 4 - 5 spawned, i used the concentration and kept going back to cover (by this point you should have made crouch toggle and dynamic cover should be off) then i would very slowly poke out and try to pick off the rest of the men untill i got my next concentration, i used 3 concerntrations and a couple of pick off shots, then i shot barnsby about ten times by going in and out of cover fast and i finally got to the duel. hope this helps the thomas players.