Lightyear Frontier

IMPORTANT: At the time of release, there was a glitch that made any paints and mixes you made prior to the update not count towards the achievement. Credit to CiphriusKane and Maka91 in the comments: the devs have no plans to offer a fix for this (as of 10/22), and have announced this position as such on both Reddit and Twitter. Nevertheless the achievement is not missable. A workaround is addressed further down in this solution.

UPDATE (10/4, 10/6): Credit to Magic Skoo1 Bus, MrFunkoPop996, KungFuStu73, and ChristianPf in the comments. At this time, the devs will allow you to claim 5 Black and 5 White Paint if you build the Mailbox. If you were missing those paints then collecting them WILL COUNT towards the achievement ticker, in addition to helping you mix all necessary paints since you do not need more than 5 of each. If you already claimed the mailbox award, you can boost this by having your partner start a new world and host you in it. In that new world, build a new mailbox and claim the reward accordingly.

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The way you pop this achievement is by using the Flower Press (to make the five base paints: Red, Blue, Yellow, White, and Black), and then making the 15 paint mixes (which you can make when using the Colour Mixer - requires 12 hardwood (from felling large trees, which requires a spike saw upgrade) and 10 red crystal dust (red crystal can be mined from Pine Heights with the spike saw upgrade).

Note (Credit to AquaSurf) that you will need to build the Grinder before you unlock the Colour Mixer (12 stone, 4 copper wire, 4 aluminum rods), since the Colour Mixer will only unlock once you have produced red crystal dust in the Grinder.

You can keep track of what paints you have by checking what ends up in your inventory after making each one, which sounds obvious enough, but the paint list updates in real time as you discover new mixes and it can make you miss something.

You will require a total number of the following base paints from the Flower Press to make all the mixes in one go:

8 red paint
7 blue paint
6 yellow paint
2 white paint
5 black paint

From this, you will need to mix the following additional paints, since they are used in other recipes:

3 green paint
2 orange paint
1 rose paint
1 purple paint

Then you can go ahead and make the rest of the paints - follow the paint list at the end of the solution.

Processing a colourflower in the flower press makes 3 paint buckets per flower, so you will need:

3 red colourflower buds (Pine Heights, Edge Cliffs)
3 blue colourflower buds (Meadows, along cliff bases)
2 yellow colourflower buds (Stepstone Peak - SE of Meadows/Cliffs)
1 white colourflower bud (Yellow Forest; I found them on the clifftops)
2 black colourflower buds (see spoiler below)

These take a while to respawn, so if you haven't been collecting colourflowers as you naturally find them while playing the game and are missing quite a few of them, you may have to pass quite a few days before they grow back. Note that every region (except maybe the endgame one) also has a secret cavern, and all except the Meadows one seem to have a single guaranteed colourflower spawn. However, they are hard to find; I personally didn't mark the ones I found (and I can't find a map of them online), nor do I remember where any of them are.

If you are starting the game after the DLC's release, know that it will take a while to get this one, since you only unlock the Black paint after you become able to access the final area (available "post-game", if it could be said that there is such a thing). It is named



which can be accessed only after



---------------

GLITCH WORKAROUND

If you were playing Lightyear Frontier before the DLC update, like I was, then due to a glitch any paints that you created before the update will NOT count towards the ticker. (For instance, mine got stuck at 95%, even though I had all 20 paints in my main world, because I had crafted Red Paint before the DLC.) However, the game WILL count discovered paints between all your saves, so you won't need to rediscover all paints in a single world.

Basically, once you've gotten all the mixes in your main world, you can still pop the achievement by starting a NEW one (if you are in this situation) and speedrunning your way towards making a Flower Press (and the Colour Mixer, if you needed to do that too). Since for me, most of the work getting this achievement was figuring out how to most efficiently get the Flower Press, my solution will outline my strategy (with a short addendum based on info in the comments for the Colour Mixer). As I recall, it took me a bit over an hour to get the Flower Press going from a brand new game start.

After you get your mech up and running again, you will need 4 of the 5 tools:

(1) Vacuum Harvester
(2) Spike Saw
(3) Seed Shooter (northern Meadows)
(4) Irrigation Hose (Pine Heights, NW of starting point. If you need the Colour Mixer, STAY HERE and clear Pine Heights before you go on)

You will need the following buildings:
(0) a tent (helpful for quickening the process, but technically optional)
(1) Assembler (for making lots of aluminum frames and parts)
(2) Small plot (for growing Polyberries; you will need 15 polyberries, so two rounds of 3 day cycles, for a total of 6 days of planting)
(3) Oil Presser (for 15 polyberry oil)
(4) Upgrade Depot (you need 5 aluminum parts for the Spike Saw I upgrade, which take 15 aluminum rods and 15 polyberry oil)

Set up your camp (best to do it somewhere in the NE Meadows, near your crash site) and gather all the polyberry seeds and also all aluminum you come across, although there are three automatically available areas where you can collect them without cleaning anything (all along the northeastern border of the Meadows - see the World Map and follow the boundary until you find them). I reckon you will need about 30 aluminum rods in total.

Every morning after you plant and water your seeds, make sure you protect them from weeds and then go immediately and forage for necessary materials (Wood, Stone, Aluminum, Polyberries). Get back around noon and sleep to pass time immediately to get to the next day. This is important not just to grow the polyberries, but also because since we are not giving fodder to any animal nests, aluminum in the Meadows will respawn very slowly and will usually only replenish one collection point at a time per site. Before you sleep, you can also put Polyberries into the oil presser to immediately bypass their processing times the next morning.

Once you have collected everything, and once you have upgraded your Spike Saw, go into the Edge Cliffs area (look for the huge yellow tree on the horizon). Go in with your vacuum (you don't need your irrigation hose) and clear all the noxious weeds, and then pass the day (either by sleeping, or, if you have taken enough time, by passing from Night into Morning). Copper will spawn shortly; you only need to collect 6 of them (2-3 collection points), and the recipe for the Flower Press will generate shortly after collecting your first one. (Note that you will need aluminum frames to complete it, so collect more rods in the Meadows if you happen to be short.)

Thanks to AquaSurf to noting the following procedure in the comments:

If you made the Colour Mixer in your first playthrough, and as a result you need to remix some paints in your second playthrough, then you will need to complete the following additional tasks:

a) build the Grinder (12 stone, 4 copper wire, 4 aluminum rods)

b) Clearing Pine Heights to unlock red crystal collection points

c) build the Colour Mixer (10 Red Crystal dust, 12 hardwood; about x2 trees. Both need the spike saw upgrade to collect, which you should already now have)


Finally, to make the paints, you will have to go around to the regions where your necessary colourflowers are located. If you have been following this solution, you should already have access to Red and Blue colourflowers. You may also have to visit Stepstone Peak (yellow). Credit to ChristianPf: You do NOT need to clear these areas to unlock their colourflowers.

---------

PAINT LIST

For reference, a catalogue of the 20 paints you will need:

Primary paints (from Flower Press):
Red
Blue
Yellow
Black
White

Secondary paints (from Colour Mixer; used in other paints):
Green
Orange
Rose
Purple

Secondary paints (from Colour Mixer; not used in other paints):
Sapphire Blue
Sky Blue
Turquoise
Gray
Night Violet
Pink
Wine Red
Citrine Brown
Bronze
Brown
Moss Green

IMPORTANT: At the time of release, there was a glitch that made any paints and mixes you made prior to the update not count towards the achievement. Nevertheless the achievement is not missable. A workaround is addressed further down in this solution.

UPDATE (10/4, 10/6): Credit to Magic Skoo1 Bus, MrFunkoPop996, KungFuStu73, and ChristianPf in the comments. At this time, the devs will allow you to claim 5 Black and 5 White Paint if you build the Mailbox. THIS WILL COUNT towards the achievement ticker, in addition to helping you mix all necessary paints since you do not need more than 5 of each. If you already claimed the mailbox award, you can boost this by having your partner start a new world and host you in it. In that new world, build a new mailbox and claim the reward accordingly.

-----

The way you pop this achievement is by using the Flower Press (to make the five base paints: Red, Blue, Yellow, White, and Black), and then making the 15 paint mixes (which you can make when using the Colour Mixer - requires 12 hardwood (from felling large trees, which requires a spike saw upgrade) and 10 red crystal dust (red crystal can be mined from Pine Heights with the spike saw upgrade).

Note (Credit to AquaSurf) that you will need to build the Grinder before you unlock the Colour Mixer (12 stone, 4 copper wire, 4 aluminum rods), since the Colour Mixer will only unlock once you have produced red crystal dust in the Grinder.

You can keep track of what paints you have by checking what ends up in your inventory after making each one, which sounds obvious enough, but the paint list updates in real time as you discover new mixes and it can make you miss something.

You will require a total number of the following base paints from the Flower Press to make all the mixes in one go:

8 red paint
7 blue paint
6 yellow paint
2 white paint
5 black paint

From this, you will need to mix the following additional paints, since they are used in other recipes:

3 green paint
2 orange paint
1 rose paint
1 purple paint

Then you can go ahead and make the rest of the paints - follow the paint list at the end of the solution.

Processing a colourflower in the flower press makes 3 paint buckets per flower, so you will need:

3 red colourflower buds (Pine Heights, Edge Cliffs)
3 blue colourflower buds (Meadows, along cliff bases)
2 yellow colourflower buds (Stepstone Peak - SE of Meadows/Cliffs)
1 white colourflower bud (Yellow Forest; I found them on the clifftops)
2 black colourflower buds (see spoiler below)

These take a while to respawn, so if you haven't been collecting colourflowers as you naturally find them while playing the game and are missing quite a few of them, you may have to pass quite a few days before they grow back. Note that every region (except maybe the endgame one) also has a secret cavern, and all except the Meadows one seem to have a single guaranteed colourflower spawn. However, they are hard to find; I personally didn't mark the ones I found (and I can't find a map of them online), nor do I remember where any of them are.

If you are starting the game after the DLC's release, know that it will take a while to get this one, since you only unlock the Black paint after you become able to access the final area (available "post-game", if it could be said that there is such a thing). It is named



which can be accessed only after



---------------

GLITCH WORKAROUND

If you were playing Lightyear Frontier before the DLC update, like I was, then due to a glitch any paints that you created before the update will NOT count towards the ticker. (For instance, mine got stuck at 95%, even though I had all 20 paints in my main world, because I had crafted Red Paint before the DLC.) However, the game WILL count discovered paints between all your saves, so you won't need to rediscover all paints in a single world.

Basically, once you've gotten all the mixes in your main world, you can still pop the achievement by starting a NEW one (if you are in this situation) and speedrunning your way towards making a Flower Press (and the Colour Mixer, if you needed to do that too). Since for me, most of the work getting this achievement was figuring out how to most efficiently get the Flower Press, my solution will outline my strategy (with a short addendum based on info in the comments for the Colour Mixer). As I recall, it took me a bit over an hour to get the Flower Press going from a brand new game start.

After you get your mech up and running again, you will need 4 of the 5 tools:

(1) Vacuum Harvester
(2) Spike Saw
(3) Seed Shooter (northern Meadows)
(4) Irrigation Hose (Pine Heights, NW of starting point. If you need the Colour Mixer, STAY HERE and clear Pine Heights before you go on)

You will need the following buildings:
(0) a tent (helpful for quickening the process, but technically optional)
(1) Assembler (for making lots of aluminum frames and parts)
(2) Small plot (for growing Polyberries; you will need 15 polyberries, so two rounds of 3 day cycles, for a total of 6 days of planting)
(3) Oil Presser (for 15 polyberry oil)
(4) Upgrade Depot (you need 5 aluminum parts for the Spike Saw I upgrade, which take 15 aluminum rods and 15 polyberry oil)

Set up your camp (best to do it somewhere in the NE Meadows, near your crash site) and gather all the polyberry seeds and also all aluminum you come across, although there are three automatically available areas where you can collect them without cleaning anything (all along the northeastern border of the Meadows - see the World Map and follow the boundary until you find them). I reckon you will need about 30 aluminum rods in total.

Every morning after you plant and water your seeds, make sure you protect them from weeds and then go immediately and forage for necessary materials (Wood, Stone, Aluminum, Polyberries). Get back around noon and sleep to pass time immediately to get to the next day. This is important not just to grow the polyberries, but also because since we are not giving fodder to any animal nests, aluminum in the Meadows will respawn very slowly and will usually only replenish one collection point at a time per site. Before you sleep, you can also put Polyberries into the oil presser to immediately bypass their processing times the next morning.

Once you have collected everything, and once you have upgraded your Spike Saw, go into the Edge Cliffs area (look for the huge yellow tree on the horizon). Go in with your vacuum (you don't need your irrigation hose) and clear all the noxious weeds, and then pass the day (either by sleeping, or, if you have taken enough time, by passing from Night into Morning). Copper will spawn shortly; you only need to collect 6 of them (2-3 collection points), and the recipe for the Flower Press will generate shortly after collecting your first one. (Note that you will need aluminum frames to complete it, so collect more rods in the Meadows if you happen to be short.)

Thanks to AquaSurf to noting the following procedure in the comments:

If you made the Colour Mixer in your first playthrough, and as a result you need to remix some paints in your second playthrough, then you will need to complete the following additional tasks:

a) build the Grinder (12 stone, 4 copper wire, 4 aluminum rods)

b) Clearing Pine Heights to unlock red crystal collection points

c) build the Colour Mixer (10 Red Crystal dust, 12 hardwood; about x2 trees. Both need the spike saw upgrade to collect, which you should already now have)


Finally, to make the paints, you will have to go around to the regions where your necessary colourflowers are located. If you have been following this solution, you should already have access to Red and Blue colourflowers. You may also have to visit Stepstone Peak (yellow). Credit to ChristianPf: You do NOT need to clear these areas to unlock their colourflowers.

---------

PAINT LIST

For reference, a catalogue of the 20 paints you will need:

Primary paints (from Flower Press):
Red
Blue
Yellow
Black
White

Secondary paints (from Colour Mixer; used in other paints):
Green
Orange
Rose
Purple

Secondary paints (from Colour Mixer; not used in other paints):
Sapphire Blue
Sky Blue
Turquoise
Gray
Night Violet
Pink
Wine Red
Citrine Brown
Bronze
Brown
Moss Green