Gears of War: Judgment

Just a quick video guide i just made on how to get Infinite Rare boxes , THIS MUST BE DONE OFFLINE delete your system cache and DON'T download the required update.

I believe that rare boxes will only gain you XP and weapon skins it is the normal prize boxes for getting kills will contain armor skins. please comment on this if you can confirm this . Thank you

As CounterInsurgnt has mentioned you will need to have your ribbons as close to 5 or even as less as one as i show in the next video needed for the prize box if you do as he says and get a few multi kill ribbons or i like to do a couple chainsaws as its 3x for an easy ribbon and then proceed though the next door you will hit a checkpoint after doing so reload section and then either follow the first video or the second with ever you prefer

UPDATE: I have just confirmed myself by unlocking the Gold armor and all weapons from the rare boxes but once you have alot of boxes to open then you must download the latest update and open them as otherwise you will only get Xp from them.Also i have another video coming soon that will speed this up ever so slightly. Thank you

Second video to speed up the process once you have managed to get it down to one ribbon needed for a prize box.

Many thanks to x AcEsHoT o for posting this in the comments to help you all out as i do apologise for not using commentary on my videos.

1. First make sure that you have Aftermath unlocked. It requires 40 campaign stars on any difficulty.

2. Next go to the Xbox Dashboard and go to "System Settings". There should be an option called "Storage", click on it. Hover over your main hard drive and press "Y" on your controller. Then click the option that says "Clear System Cache".

3. Boot up Gears of War: Judgment and when prompted to download the update, deny it by pressing "B" on the controller. Once the main screen pops up, press start and select your hard drive or whatever your saves and profile info is on.

4. Then go to the Aftermath Campaign and if you have already unlocked it, choose the section "Anybody Home?". If not play the Aftermath Campaign until you get to the section showed in the video.

5. Before you try to do what RodersArgoders is doing in his video with the storage location, you must make sure that you are no more than 10 ribbons away from getting your next Rare Prize Box. This is vital. If you have say 7000/8260 ribbons towards your next prize box, you must get to minimum 8250 ribbons before you try to do the glitch.

6. Once you are about 10 ribbons away from your next box, first return to the main menu to save your ribbon progress. YOU MUST DO THIS OR YOU WILL HAVE TO GET ALL THE RIBBONS YOU'VE GOTTEN SINCE YOU STARTED OVER AGAIN. Now once you're back at the menu, go back to Aftermath and press continue. BEFORE tagging the formers and getting the ribbons to get your prize box, go into the "Options" tab and then go into the "Storage Location" tab but do not select any of them by pressing B three times.

7. Now un-pause the game and tag the formers normally and upon the "Mission Failed" screen wait for the Rare Prize Box to pop up. Once it pops up, go back to the "Storage Location" tab and again, do not select any of them by pressing B three times.

8. Press Reload Checkpoint and tag the formers again and you should have another prize box pop up. You can do this infinitely many times but make sure that each time you die, whether you get a prize box or not, that you go to "Storage Location" and don't select any of them.

9. Once you have all the prize boxes you want, BEFORE returning to the main menu, go back to "Storage Location" one last time and select the hard drive with all of you saves and profile info. Then for good measure, press reload checkpoint one last time and then return to main menu. You should now have all of the prize boxes that you earned while playing. Sing Online and receive the update, and then open away.

Also as UGADawg1029 says, You may want to note if you haven't already, doing this will reset your progress toward other achievements (i.e. playing 10 matches on Blood Drive for Old School Marathon achievement. I played one match on Blood Drive and progress popped up saying 1 of 10). People may want to finish-up some progress achievements before attempting this.

The Short:
For the Golden Artifacts Achievement you only need to have 5 people playing (and with the Gold Armor and Gold Weapons). The wording makes it seem like you need all 10 players (both your team and the opposing team) in Gold Armor and with Gold Weapons, but you just need your team to have them equipped. Win an online match of Execution on the Museum map with your team of five gold armored, gold weapon skinned players, and this achievement will unlock. Be sure to be playing in the VIP playlists, as that seems to be the only playlist where you can find the paid DLC maps.

For Gold Weapons, you need a Gold Shotgun and a Gold Rifle. If you have a Gold Gnasher or Gold Sawed-Off, you will also need a Gold Lancer, as that is what the game gives you as your default rifle when you start the match. Likewise, if you have a Gold Rifle (like the Lancer, Retro Lancer, Hammerburst, Classic Hammerburst, or Markza), you will also need a Gold Gnasher, as that is the default shotgun the game gives you.

The Long:
The Gold Armor and Gold Weapon Skins are unlocked from Rare Prize Boxes, which are awarded by obtaining specific amounts of Ribbons within the game. Ribbons in this game are listed on the fourth page of the Stats and Awards section of the starting menu of the game. The Ribbons have explanations of how to obtain them. There is no instantly available counter of how many Ribbons you have to get to the next Rare Prize Box, but as you unlock ribbons a small counter will occasionally pop up on your screen at key milestones.

Unfortunately, as you unlock Prize Boxes, the required amount for each additional box increases. This means that initial boxes will be easier to obtain than later boxes. At release, both Normal and Rare Prize Boxes could award either a weapon or armor skin, or a small amount of XP. After the 6/18/2013 Title Update, Normal and Rare Prize Boxes are now setup to award their specific weapon and armor skins first, and then award XP after the respective skins of each box are fully unlocked. This Title Update also enables the use of a Rifle and Shotgun loadout in Team Based games, instead of the release setup of only one primary gun and a pistol.

You can choose your weapon skin at the Character Setup screen. From the first page of the Character Setup, hit the start button when on the Gold Weapon skin to apply it to all of the guns you already have the skin unlocked for. While you can only equip one specific gun, your unlocked and applied Gold Weapon skin will still appear on the secondary weapon given to you.

As mentioned above, while you can pick your primary weapon, the corresponding secondary will be applied to you in team games. What this means is that you can pick either your preferred rifle or your preferred shotgun, but not both. If you pick a Retro Lancer as your equipped weapon, the game will also impose the Gnasher as your secondary weapon. So, if you pick a Rifle of any type, the game will impose the Gnasher as your secondary weapon. But, if you pick the Sawed-Off shotgun as your equipped weapon, the game will impose the Lancer as your secondary weapon. The same is true for if you pick the Gnasher as your equipped weapon, the game will impose the Lancer as your secondary weapon.

This means that if you only have a Gold Sawed-Off, you will need a Gold Lancer, as the game will let you pick only one of your loadout weapons, and default you the other. If you have a Gold Rifle, like a Gold Markza, you will need a Gold Gnasher. If you unlock only Gold Rifle skins, you cannot complete this achievement, as you will need a Gold Shotgun skin. The same applies in the opposite situation. The two key Gold skins are the Gold Lancer and Gold Gnasher, as one of those two will be required to complete this achievement.

While still at the Character Setup screen, go to the next page, choose your desired character, and then go to the next page and select the Gold Armor character skin.

After assigning the Gold skins for your weapon and armor, then find 4 other players who also have the necessary skins for this achievement. Form a party of five, and then have the host of the party search for a match of Execution. Currently, this will only work in VIP Execution, as the DLC is not available to those who do not have the VIP Pass. You can play either Ranked or Standard match setup. Ranked waits to pit you against another team of five players, which may take time depending on the population of the game and match type. Standard matches will put you into a game in progress immediately.

Because of the potential chance to join a game in progress if you select Standard, you may want to set your character as Damon Baird, and apply the Gold Armor to him. Baird is the default character for this game, so that if you join into a match and no one else is using your preferred skin, you will be assigned Baird's character until the next match begins.

It is more likely that you will be put into a fresh game against bots if you select Standard, as you are a team of five players, and the game may not be able to find a match for a team with five open spaces. Playing against bots is fine, and will not invalidate the achievement. All that is needed is your team of five players, all with equipped Gold Armor and Gold Weapon Skins, winning an Execution Match on Museum.

There is no pattern to the map cycle, so you may have to play through other maps before you get to Museum. Museum could be the first map you play, or the last map of the cycle. Each time you join in the cycle may be different, so just keep playing until you get to Museum and win.

Victory in Execution is the first team to win 5 rounds.

This is an alternate method to boosting rare prize boxes for people like me who have about 7000 ribbons to the next one.
(This method will erase some current achievement progress (Killing 20 flag carriers, 5 caps as Paduk ect.)

Sometimes when you start up games and you get an update it deletes updates for other games so do that till it happens with GoWJ (for me it only takes 1 game to do that which is DMC).

Now to be on the safe side you may want to back up to cloud or an external drive.

1. After backing up, go to system settings - storage - Hard Drive and delete your player data (DO NOT delete your campaign data)

2. Restart Gears and DO NOT download the update (making you offline).

3. When you press start you'll notice you'll be at level 1 with no ribbons or medals, but you also won't have any progress towards your Prize boxes.

4. Go onto the Aftermath campaign Chapter 2 to get some ribbons on the formers (either by Retro Charging or from Deaths from Beyond using grenades).

5. After you get close to getting the Rare Prize Box back out and go to Private Versus (any gametype will do).

6. Play till you unlock a Prize box then press start go to Storage Location then press "B" twice.

7. Now try and get it down to 1 ribbon per prize box (by getting ribbons and backing out). Now after each ribbon you'll get a prize box and then - start, storage device "B" "B" (Repeat till you have the required amount of boxes)

8. When that's done back out and connect to Xbox Live and download the update. Now open your boxes and you should have everything you need to get the achievement. You will be returned back to the level you were at and have all the medals and ribbons you had previously.

Hope this helps someone, any questions leave below. If you're going to leave a negative please leave a comment explaining why. Any further information will be posted below.


Happy hunting folks

My solutions come with built-in tl;dr. Skim the bold-text and you will have all the pertinent information you need to get this achievement in the smallest amount of time. Continue reading after the bold text if you need more details on that specific nugget of information.

First off, because of HolyHa1fDead's experiments with the DLC packages, we now know for certain that the Museum map required for this achievement is only available if you possess the VIP Pass, despite it being specifically listed as a map included with the Lost Relics DLC. Ergo, this achievement will not be possible to earn when only possessing the Lost Relics DLC. I am also reasonably certain that the Car 13 and UIR skins for other DLC achievements are not in their respective packs and only come bundled in the VIP Pass as well. If you elect to work on DLC achievements in this game, buy the VIP Pass. Buying either pack by its' lonesome is a waste of money.

You will need an absolute minimum of 3 gold skins to attempt this achievement; the player skin, a rifle skin, and a shotgun skin. You can equip any gold-skinned weapon you like to your character but must also skin at least one weapon of the opposite type. If your equipped gold weapon is a rifle (Lancer, Retro, Hammerburst, Markza) you will also need a gold skin on the Gnasher. Similarly, if your equipped gold weapon is a shotgun (Gnasher, Sawed-off) you will also need a gold skin on the Lancer. This is because the execution mode will automatically assign you the "default" weapon of the opposite type as a secondary, but will still honor the skin you applied to it in Character Setup.

To unlock the gold skins you need, you have to get rare prizeboxes. Rare prizeboxes are awarded by getting a shitload of ribbons. The first prizebox is unlocked by getting 100 ribbons and the last one you may have to grind for is unlocked by getting 3310 total ribbons. The number of ribbons is a cumulative total that rises by a steadily increasing number, so you go from e.g. needing 810 ribbons to needing 920, or 110 more ribbons from your last prizebox. The final prizebox that may hold a skin is 640 ribbons more than the previous box.

Rare prizeboxes contain a total of 16 skins; gold & ribcage for each of 7 weapons, and the gold & bee player skins (the Hammerburst and Classic Hammerburst use the same array of skins). The skin you are awarded is completely random. I unlocked the necessary weapon skins in early boxes (somewhere around boxes 5-10) but did not unlock the gold player skin until my 16th box, while a friend of mine unlocked a gold Lancer very early, got his gold player skin on his 9th box, but was yet to get a gold shotgun skin at 12 boxes in.

All of the other standing solutions for this achievement outline a method of duplicating prizeboxes with an exploit that involves another storage device, so I will not explain this method. Because once upon a time all prizeboxes contained a random reward, this exploit was necessary in the interest of saving yourself from what was entirely random chance. Instead of getting skins, you could instead get screwed by getting nothing but experience out of the boxes while the next unlocked box was placed further out of reach by requiring a greater number of ribbons to receive. Fortunately, this is no longer the case because all prizeboxes now surrender all skins first, before giving you any experience as a reward. The duplication method is thus an anachronistic rigmarole that takes entirely too much effort post-patch being a solution to a problem that no longer exists.

What follows is the most expedient way to get the gold skins you need the good old-fashioned way: grinding. Don't mistake my suggestions as contempt for anyone who uses the exploit, because I honestly do not really care how you decide to go about getting your gold skins in the end. The entire grind I outline below will take a maximum of 4.5 hours to unlock every rare prizebox, though it may not be necessary to obtain all of them as explained above.

Load up Cole's Testimony, chapter 2: Container Terminal. Skip the declassified mission, hop into the Silverback, hit to enter missile-mode, and spam missiles at everything that moves. In 3 minutes you will earn 40 ribbons per run on average, which include Boombardier (multiple enemies killed with one rocket), Hail Mary (kill from 100+ feet with a rocket), and Nice Suit (10 kills with a Silverback). Once Baird says there's no reason to hang around outside, reload the checkpoint and do it again. The ribbons count toward the next prizebox as soon as they're earned no matter what you do afterward, but will only give you experience if you finish the section and reach the scoreboard, though fortunately you do not have to do this each time because all of your ribbons are still accumulating in the background despite the checkpoint being reloaded. When you're done grinding, simply walk to the end of the area and hit to make all of the earned experience count.

Once you get all your skins, the real fun begins. You will have to assemble 4 others with the requisite skins to attempt this achievement, which means it's guaranteed that you'll have to put up a boosting session. Your chances of randomly dropping into a public match with four other people wearing the necessary skins is nonexistent, not to mention that almost nobody plays the VIP playlists despite the influx of hundreds of people when Judgment was free in April with Games With Gold.

You must use the VIP execution playlist, and from my own experiments there, the map rotation is completely random each time you get a new lobby. You could try it today and get Museum right away, then try it tomorrow and Museum will be at the end of the 10-map cycle. Optimistically, these matches should take 2 minutes per round (versus bots) and you must win 5 rounds to end the match, so you could be looking at 90 minutes of play before Museum even turns up. It may be a better idea to simply exit and re-search until Museum shows up as your first map, though. Once you've gotten this far, the only thing to worry about is getting the Museum map and winning the match when it comes up.

The 1st attached video shows the method xblOrder and I used to obtain ribbons for the prize boxes. This method does not require aftermath, clear your cache or going offline.

The 2nd attached video talks about the requirements for this achievement.

Everyone above has already worked the solutions for boosting golden armor and weapons. All credit goes to them. I’m only writing this as a compilation of what I believe is most important with some additional explanatory notes to help those who may still be having some trouble. I just did this on a dummy account (4/19/2014) so I know it works currently.

First note that if you do this boosting, your progress towards some of your other achievements will be reset to zero (e.g. Old School Marathon - 10 matches on BloodDrive), so to be safe you should do this when you have either no progress or already completed any achievements that require a lot of work. You will notice that if you already have one of these affected achievements, it will still show as completed but you will start to see status messages as though its not.

Prize boxes are awarded for accumulating three different things. Normal prize boxes are for enemy kills, rare prize boxes are for earning ribbons, and Epic prize boxes are for leveling up. For normal and rare prize boxes, the higher your level, the more kills/ribbons are needed for the next prize box. At level 1, you only need 100 kills for your first normal prize box and 50 ribbons for your first rare prize box. Thousands of kills/ribbons are required when you get to high levels. But don’t worry if you are high level - you can temporarily drop yourself to level 1 just to boost prize boxes and then reinstate your rank.

In order to boost normal and rare prize boxes you need a convenient save point in campaign just before it is easy to get kills/earn ribbons. Like most, I suggest using the first checkpoint in the “Anybody Home?” (second section) of Aftermath. There are tons of Formers to kill and it is very easy to get the Clusterluck ribbon by killing multiples with a grenade. Unlocking Aftermath requires earning 40 stars in the campaign. Then just play Aftermath until you get to “Anybody Home?” and you’re ready to boost.

These are the basic steps, explained in further detail below:

1. Unlock Aftermath - Anybody Home? section.
2. Leave only your Saved Campaigns on the hard drive without your Player Data. (You can save your Player Data to the cloud or elsewhere although it's probably safe to just delete it - see notes below.)
3. Clear System Cache (go to hard drive and press Y device options).
4. Disable Internet Access (e.g. configure network to manual settings and enter wrong numbers).
5. Start Judgment and select chapter Anybody Home? in Aftermath, go straight ahead down stairs and pick up extra grenades going to the right at the bottom so you have 4 grenades total. Move on down the next set of stairs towards generator where checkpoint is set.
6. After the checkpoint just keep throwing grenades killing two or more Formers to get Clusterluck ribbons and reloading last checkpoint. Try to keep track of when you are getting close to 50. If you lose track of the count, exit to main menu and go to Stats and Awards - Ribbons - to see the Clusterluck ribbon count. (If you want to boost normal prize boxes, just keep killing Formers and reloading last checkpoint using any weapons paying attention to the normal prize box status indicator as you get close to 100 kills. You can check kill count status by returning to main menu and checking Stats and Awards - Summary - Campaign - Kills.)
7. CRITICAL - hit start button and return to main menu when you hit 49 ribbons exactly. (or just before 100 kills if you are going for normal prize boxes). If you accidentally see a prize box pop before doing this, hit the start button, go to options - storage location - hit B 3 times - and reload last checkpoint. If you fail to do this, you will need to start over by exiting the game and deleting the the player data on the hard drive and then from step 5 above.
8. You are now ready to boost - go to campaign - aftermath - continue. Throw a grenade to get one ribbon (or enough kills for a normal prize box). As soon as you see the prize box pop, hit start - options - storage location - hit B 3 times - and reload last checkpoint. You can see this best in RodersArgoders second video above.
9. Repeat step 8 above for as many prize boxes as you like and then exit to main menu.
10. CRITICAL - enable internet access, reconnect to xbox live, restart game, let the update install, and select the hard drive storage location, BEFORE opening any prize boxes.

I'll add one note about actually going for the achievement playing Execution. There seems to be a lot of confusion about which playlist must be used. It seems only logical that Execution on the DLC playlist would eventually cycle to the Museum map as long as everyone has the Lost Relics DLC. I just did this last night with a group and we spent 3 hours on the DLC playlist and never saw Museum. Within an hour of switching to VIP playlist, we got Museum. Based on this, despite all logic, it seems you NEED to play Execution on the VIP playlist to get this achievement.

Also, I should note that because you are most likely only going to face bots at this time because no one is playing Execution, you can actually get this done using splitscreens. This is great because if one gamertag purchased VIP on a particular console, another gamertag will get the benefit of VIP if they play splitscreen on that same console; the VIP license stays with the console. In our case, my gamertag purchased VIP and Lost Relics on my main console. I played the game on a different console after downloading the VIP pass and Lost Relics to it. My main console was used splitscreen by two other gamertags that had not purchased either - they could use Lost Relics and VIP. So my single purchases of VIP and Lost Relics covered three players. In theory, you really only need licenses on two consoles and one gamertag to get five players for this achievement. (You'll need at least one extra unlicensed console for the licensed gamertag to play on though.)

Notes:
In step 2, I’m almost certain you could just delete your player data as long as you have previously played while connected to xbox live because I believe all your stats are saved on the gears server. I did not test this specifically, but when I first reconnected to xbox live after boosting the prize boxes and installed the update in step 10 above, I selected the hard drive storage location which had only the new Player Data file created when boosting. However, the old rank of 14 and all the other player stats showed up anyway. I had my old Player Data on the cloud but I never selected that storage device. This could only have happened if the stats on the judgment server superseded those in the hard drive Player Data file which was only rank 1 when I finished boosting. I would probably still back up the Player Data though if you are able.

In step 3, it is now necessary to actually disable internet access (e.g. by inputting invalid manual settings) rather than just declining the update because the operating system now automatically downloads the update if you are connected. You are not given the option to decline the update. This wasn’t the case when I boosted before. Many of the other guides written before may not account for this but they probably still work as long as you disable internet access instead of just trying to decline the update.

In step 5, the Aftermath save game you create while boosting by playing without the update will be useless later after you accept the update. This doesn't affect anything, but if you try to continue Aftermath or load that save game after updating, your system will halt and you'll have to reboot. Just overwrite the save after boosting.

In steps 6-8, conceptually it may be useful to imagine a “hard” total and a “soft” total for ribbons (or kills) The hard total only gets set when you exit to the main menu. The soft total increases above the hard total every time you reload last checkpoint normally (i.e. without cancelling the storage location). However, whenever you cancel the storage location (by selecting options - storage location - hit B 3 times) before reloading the last checkpoint, the total returns to the hard total which was set the last time you exited to the main menu. This is why its good to occasionally exit to the main menu to lock in your hard total as long as you haven’t seen a prize box pop. This is also why, if you do see a prize box pop unexpectedly, you should cancel the storage location immediately to return to your hard total and then begin accumulating your soft total again so you can lock it in as a hard total (by returning to the main menu) just before the prize box pops.

For example, let’s say you exited to the main menu and saw that you had 25 Clusterluck ribbons (your hard total) under Stats and Awards. You would continue your Aftermath game and start just reloading the last checkpoint repeatedly trying to count 24 more ribbons and then return to main menu to lock in that hard total. If you accidentally lost track and saw the prize box pop (i.e. you hit 50) before you could lock 49 as the hard total, you should immediately cancel the storage location and reload the last checkpoint to return the total to the lower hard total of 25 so you have another chance to lock in the number at 49. If you exit to main menu without cancelling the storage location, you will lock in the hard total at 50 and have to start over again (by exiting the game and deleting the player data file on the hard drive). This same logic applies if you are boosting normal prize boxes which requires 100 kills instead of 50 ribbons.

In step 10, you must have the update installed BEFORE opening rare prize boxes or you will only get xp, not skins unlocked. As mentioned above regarding step 2, all your stats will be superseded by those stored on the server. My rank automatically returned to 14 and my ribbon count also returned to a number below 50.

This solution is to help get the map Museum if it is not appearing in the VIP playlist rotation. The solutions given are great for getting the golden skins but none help with finding the map.

Apparently after the "supposed" sybarite fix, the VIP playlist map rotation was broken and museum may not appear in the rotation for awhile and I mean awhile. If you and your boosting party are having a hard time finding the map, try breaking your party and searching separately until one of you finds the required map and then that person invites everyone in the party and tries to stay alive until everyone joins. That one person can even win a round and the group finishes the remaining (4) rounds and the achievement will still unlock.

NOTE: Always ensure that skin your party is using is gold, DO NOT pick up any other weapons.

Thanks to the following people for helping to figure this out:

ragtagspinners
PoopDecker
Duo Zero Seven
BossManHDC

I just wanted to write a quick guide to how you get this achievement as of July 2023. The Judgment servers are known to reset every few months so you may have limited time.

To get the museum map you will need to use the VIP playlist so you will need both the VIP Pass and the lost relic DLC. You also need 5 players.

First off, you will need the gold skins for the character, the Lancer Rife or Retro Lancer and Gnasher or Sawn Off Shotgun. See any other guides for how you boost the ribbon boxes. I recommend Mobius Evalon guide for Cole's Testimony, chapter 2: Container Terminal where you use the razorback missile kills.

The guides for deleting cache are pointless on the backcat version so don't bother with them. Even on the 360 I had trouble with them.

Once you get your group together as the host select VIP Execution and select quick match. I believe the playlist is set with Blood Drive being the first map and Museum being the last in the cycle. So you will have to play all 10 matches on the playlist. I recommend playing a match beforehand to check everyone has the correct skins on. The list of maps you will play on is below. Museum will be the last map.

When you play on the museum map as the other guides mention, do not pickup any weapons as they will not be gold and it will void the achievement.

Blooddrive
Haven
Lost city
Libary
Boneyard
Checkout
Streets
Gondola
Rig
Museum