Gears of War 3

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How to unlock your silverback
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In order to get the silverback you need your barricades at level 7, this isn't very hard to do. Start a private horde match on insane with two controllers. Turn on these 3 mutators:

-Friendly fire
-No ammo pickup
-Enemy regeneration

Give the money of your second controller to your main account, let him build a base and let him spend the money on barricades. Then you stick eachother with a smoke grenade and you'll both die because of the friendly fire mutator. Restart from beginning and repeat the process.

..Or just play online horde, it's fun, trust me! :p

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How to level up your silverback to level 3
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Mutators and difficulty DO affect the amount of money that you spend on your fortification levels. They do NOT affect the amount of money you earn.
For instance you earn 500$ regardless of the difficulty you're playing on, however when you're using that 500$ to spend on a fortification it'll count more when playing on insane than when playing on casual.

Casual: 60% of money spend actually counts
Normal: 80%
Hardcore: 100%
Insane: 110%

Knowing this, playing on casual might be easy but it'll result in spending way more time farming for money to repair your silverback.

Same thing goes for mutators, but those affect the amount of money spend by the same way they affect score (so friendly fire +5%, super reload -25%, vampire +10% etc.).

My advice is to play on either normal or hardcore, using the following mutators:

-Super reload/No ammo pickups
-Enemy regeneration/Inf ammo
-Friendly fire

Just find a combination that works for you, remember, the more mutators that make it difficult the faster it'll go, because they also affect the amount of money that is actually counted towards leveling up.

Now what I would do is play on Overpass and camp at the top of the map where you buy the silverback. Start at wave 1, make enough money to get your silverback and make it to wave 9. If you feel good enough then you could start on wave 9 right away instead of wave 1, but then you will not have your silverback right away! At wave 9 you just kill almost everything, then let yourself get killed and spend all the money on your silverback again.

The friendly fire mutator is a kind of a must because then you can destroy your own silverback by shooting it. (Thanks to Lord Terentius). To unlock the friendly fire mutator you need to finish the campaign in 4 player co op. If you don't have this mutator you can always let enemies destroy your silverback but it's more time consuming.

Money total spend for level 2: 200.000
Money total spend for level 3: 500.000

I can confirm that at level 2 you do not have rockets available, you need to level it up to level 3 to be able to upgrade your silverback.

There is a level 4 (and even a level 5!) but this is not needed for the rockets.

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How to get the 500 kills
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Once you get to level 3 you can upgrade your silverback for 10,000. You get unlimited ammo for the rockets but the reload time is terrible. You can just do the same as you did in step 2 only now you can play on casual since difficulty doesn't matter.
(Thanks to Lord Terentius for confirming this)

To fire rockets you have to tap A so you get into locked down position. You can't move with your silverback while firing rockets so make sure you won't get damaged too much. Top of overpass, the top of Trenches or a spawn-hallway of Blood Drive might be a good idea to camp and get your kills. Just start at wave 9, earn enough cash to buy the silverback + upgrade ($22,500 total) and then either stay at wave 9 or just play through the waves. They all die with 1 rocket hit anyway on casual.

...Or just let your buddy buy a silverback and upgrade it if he has level 3 and keep repeating a wave. Although you owe him big time then! ;-)

Tip from Ozzpot: You don't get a in-game progress bar while working on your kills while playing horde. Only way to check it is from the main menu and then to your achievements where it keeps a counter.

If you have any comments and/or advice for this guide, please tell me :-)

Here's how I got this achievement:

First, get your silverback to level 3.

Difficulty: Hardcore
Mutators: No ammo pickups, Must active reload, Friendly Fire (FF is key, any other +10%s will work)
Map: Trenches
Wave 9

This setup gives you 125% of money spent towards silverback upgrades.

Start wave 9 on trenches and buy the command post at the top by the one shot spawn. Do not spend any more money. Camp up here and rack up enough money to buy the silverback ($12,500). Let the last enemy kill you to repeat the wave over and over. When you can finally buy the silverback, take it up top with you and use it for the waves.

During the intermission, damage the silverback and put all your money into repairing it. Shoot it with your lancer to earn some extra money.

With this method I can rack up about $7000 in 3-4 mins once I start using the silverback. With a 125% multiplier, that's about 8750 towards the silverback every wave.

I got level 3 in about 2.5 hours using this method. I started out as a low level 1, maybe about 1/4 of the bar filled so I'm thinking about 3 hours if you start from scratch. I also lost a bunch of time because the last grenadier decided to kill himself, completing wave 9 and moving to 10. Wave 10 is much less effecient so stick with wave 9.

Once you have level 3 silverback...

Difficulty: Casual
Mutators: Infinite ammo, Super active reload, Big Explosions
Map: Overpass
Wave 9

Do what you did earlier to build up money, you'll need $22,500 ($12,500 to buy silverback, $10,000 to upgrade) to use the rockets. Once you have the upgraded silverback, camp at the top of the stairs right next to where the turret spawn is up there. All the enemies will funnel towards you from the bottom and with big explosions you'll kill everything in 1 hit except cerepedes. Let the last guy kill you, rinse and repeat. Make sure your silverback doesn't get beat up, it's much more expensive to repair when upgraded.

You'll get about 18 kills per wave doing this, waves last about 5 mins. So about another 3 hours for the 500 rocket kills.

Please comment if you have suggestions or improvements, thanks.

ScizX and IXI FalcoN have wrote wonderful guides to getting this achievement. This cheevo is very time consuming,all in all I have spent a total of close to 6 hours getting this bugger. Here's how I did it:

Get your Silverback to LVL 3:

Difficulty: Insane
Mutators: Super Reload, Enemy Regen., Friendly Fire ( FF is a must, in order to damage your own Silverback)
Map: Overpass
Wave: 1-9

Make your way up to the top of the tower where the silverback spawns and stay put. This is the best place to be in this whole map, you can easily bounce from one wall to the other while in cover, so use to your advantage.

Start out with wave 1, that way around wave 6 you should be able to purchase the silverback, but don't buy it just yet. I found it easiest to stockpile tons of money first then buy, damage, buy at the beginning of each wave. Once you reach wave 9 with these mutators you will encounter an occasional serapede and armored kanti every few rounds, those are going to be your biggest foes. Other than that it's a piece of cake.

I was racking up around $7000+ per wave once on wave 9. I waited until I had roughly $90,000 earned without buying anything before I purchased the silverback.

LVL 3 Silverback Unlocked:

Difficulty: Casual
Mutators: Enemy Regen, No Ammo Pickup, Friendly Fire (FF again a must)
Map: Overpass
Wave: 1-6

Again start at the beginning, that way the silverback can be purchased by wave 6. I died a few times in the previous waves due to no ammo because of the mutator I chose, you want this. Make sure you have $22,500 in the bank by wave 6, $12,500 to buy silverback, $10,000 to upgrade.

Wave 6 spawns anywhere between 22 and 26 enemys per round. Set the silverback in the first corridor facing down the stairs from where it is purchased and just start having fun blowing locust to bits. The nice thing about this wave is it is mostly drones, grenadiers, formers, an occasional boomer and kantus, but nothing one rocket won't take care of.

Once you kill everyone except for the last guy, make sure he kills you. If for some reason he dies then wave 7 has been known to spawn grinders and maulers. These guys will tear your silverback into shreads. (Found out the hard way)

But be careful, do not waste any money on other fortifications, reason for this is because if for some reason you silveback is damaged it take quite a bit more money to repair than it does not upgraded.

Wave 6 spawns 22-26 enemies, but for mathematics sake lets just say only 20 spawn. So 500 kills needed for the achievement, 20 kills per wave equal 25 total waves. Camping in this spot means you must let the locust come to you so average wave time is 5 minutes. 25 waves times 5 minutes each, equals roughly 2 hours of play time.

Any comments to make this guide better or change something let me know. This is my first guide I have made so be easy on me haha. Any negative votes please explain why and I will address the situation.

Happy Hunting...

I'm not going to go over how to get your Silverback leveled up to 3 as that's been covered in the other guides better than I could do it.

That being said, you can use this technique to level up BEFORE you get the rockets as well, just do the same thing and kill everything with your guns, get out and repair the mech...repeat.


On the "Blood Drive" map there is basically what amounts to a closet at the top of one of the sets of stairs (I"m not sure if you always start in the same place every game, but I seem to start out across from it most of the time if not always.)

After you get your Silverback leveled up, build up the barrier in front of the "closet," then back yourself in and wait for the enemies to come to you. Be aware that if you get to a boss wave w/ any type of Berzerker or a Cerapede you'll be in trouble since there's only one way in or out. Maulers are not a problem as a well-aimed missile blast down low seems to take care of them easily.

I tried a solo/private match with infinite ammo (and no ammo pickups since you won't need them, and it will help lessen the penalty for using unlimited.) and I was able to get enough $$$ for everything by the end of the 8th round. I then proceeded to get 19 kills in the 9th, 15 in the 10th ( was lucky and got corpsers as the boss.) 11 in the 11th, etc.... as long as you can survive you can rack up the kills. I was easily getting 25 per wave later on. I don't know if 25 is the limit to the counter or 25 is the max number they send out though, because some times it seemed like more.

Again, be advised that bad luck on the boss waves can put an end to this strategy very quickly, and handling the preceding waves solo can prove to be difficult. I hid at the top of the stairs on the opposite side and shot eveybody as they came up.

Using this method I got 248 kills by the time I died @ level 20 from Berzerkers. Try to remember to shoot at the maulers' feet, as their shield can block a rocket.

Edit: If you die enough on a boss wave the boss will change. After being killed by Berzerkers a few times I got the reavers, which are no problem at all. So if you get berzerkers hide the silverback and get out, then kill as many of the little guys as you can for the extra $$$ and keep restarting the level until you get anything else (besides lambent zerker, because that's even worse.) If you have insta-gib melee equipped, you can run out and one punch the regular berzerkers, then go back to business as usual. Lambent zerker is really the only major problem.

If you have two controllers you can put player 2 across the hall from you to not only draw some of the attention away from you, but if you position him properly you can use his camera to see what's coming up the stairs or if any guys are hugging the wall in front of you. You can also switch controllers really quickly and use player 2 to kill cerapedes if necessary.

I posted this before I actually got the achievement, but I got it on round 22 after restarting once because I didn't know that the bosses change if you fail a few times. If I hadn't restarted at round one a second time, I figure I should have gotten it at around round 40, and it should take somewhere around 2 hours.


Have fun and good luck!

We found a good way to boost the Roket-Kills easy ...

Map: Clocktower
Diff: Causal
Base: Courtyard Spawn

One builds the Silverback with Rockets - so we should save as much money as possible in the first rounds.

When the SB is online, we rotate the rounds. So everyone should make 25+ kills every round.
The other players stay in the back and only kill enemies they get through (like when SB reloads etc.)

see the image:


red = SB
blue = other players

During Boss-Levels we should put the SB in the far back ... so i doesn't get destroyed