Microsoft Solitaire Collection
76 Achievements
1,850
201-302h
PC
Strive for Perfection
Completed every Daily Challenge in a month
40
2.4%
How to unlock the Strive for Perfection achievement in Microsoft Solitaire Collection - Definitive Guide
Complete every single daily challenge in a month. This does not have to be done on the correct days - you can do every challenge on the final day of the month if you want, since you can select previous days' challenges from the "View all [Month] Challenges" icon to the top right of today's 5 challenges. You can also change your system date and do a previous month's challenges (your achievement will be timestamped at the changed date). Along the way to this achievement, you'll also pick up a Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Diamond medal, helping towards the achievements for those.
Challenges range from Easy to Expert, and there are 5 challenges each day (1 challenge for each of the 5 different games). So you're looking at around 150 challenges in total, give or take a day or two's worth.
The difficulty in this achievement is essentially completing the Hard and Expert challenges. Thankfully, user Voranc religiously uploads the solutions to every difficult challenge on his channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Woranc/videos
You can search YouTube for them too, which makes life a little easier:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=microsoft+solit...
Unfortunately, he seems to delete the entire month's worth of uploads once the month is over... So February's are now deleted. As will March's once we get to April. Therefore, you'll need to at the very least complete all the difficult challenges for a month before he deletes the solutions. You'll then be free to go back and complete the easier challenges at your own pace (note: according to Maliicious in the comments you can only go back 2 months). Irritating, but all the hard solutions, if only for a limited time, is better than nothing.
As Falcon says in the comments, some of the older solutions can be found on other channels, but they're not quite as comprehensive as Voranc unfortunately:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTkORNNzlAW0LCgD1Suh39g
https://www.youtube.com/user/mscdc4
Challenges range from Easy to Expert, and there are 5 challenges each day (1 challenge for each of the 5 different games). So you're looking at around 150 challenges in total, give or take a day or two's worth.
The difficulty in this achievement is essentially completing the Hard and Expert challenges. Thankfully, user Voranc religiously uploads the solutions to every difficult challenge on his channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Woranc/videos
You can search YouTube for them too, which makes life a little easier:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=microsoft+solit...
Unfortunately, he seems to delete the entire month's worth of uploads once the month is over... So February's are now deleted. As will March's once we get to April. Therefore, you'll need to at the very least complete all the difficult challenges for a month before he deletes the solutions. You'll then be free to go back and complete the easier challenges at your own pace (note: according to Maliicious in the comments you can only go back 2 months). Irritating, but all the hard solutions, if only for a limited time, is better than nothing.
As Falcon says in the comments, some of the older solutions can be found on other channels, but they're not quite as comprehensive as Voranc unfortunately:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTkORNNzlAW0LCgD1Suh39g
https://www.youtube.com/user/mscdc4
29 Comments
woranc removed the videos. Is there another source? Did someone download the videos for february?
By AP E JC on 02 Mar 2015 13:56
I don't see any others. Looks like he make keep doing march by it sucks that Feb is gone.
By Fuzzmeister J on 02 Mar 2015 17:55
I found a online Freecell solver, and it worked.
https://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/js-fc-solve/text/
You need to input the columns and the cards from left to right and from top to bottom. Choose the tab "solve any board" and write in "Input"
For example, first column (left to right) has Ten of clubs as the top card, next Queen of hearts, Ace of spades and Two of diamonds.
Second column has Six of hearts (top), Eight of hearts, Three of diamonds and Seven of clubs,
You need to write like this;
TC QH AS 2D
6H 8H 3D 7C
10 needs to be written as T.
When you finish to write, press the Solve! button, and if everything goes right, in the output you'll see the same cards that you have in your game (if not, maybe you wrote one wrong), and you can press play to watch the movements or you can press the next one that show only 1 movement at a time.
i haven't search for a solver of the other modes, but I'll update this guide when I find them
https://fc-solve.shlomifish.org/js-fc-solve/text/
You need to input the columns and the cards from left to right and from top to bottom. Choose the tab "solve any board" and write in "Input"
For example, first column (left to right) has Ten of clubs as the top card, next Queen of hearts, Ace of spades and Two of diamonds.
Second column has Six of hearts (top), Eight of hearts, Three of diamonds and Seven of clubs,
You need to write like this;
TC QH AS 2D
6H 8H 3D 7C
10 needs to be written as T.
When you finish to write, press the Solve! button, and if everything goes right, in the output you'll see the same cards that you have in your game (if not, maybe you wrote one wrong), and you can press play to watch the movements or you can press the next one that show only 1 movement at a time.
i haven't search for a solver of the other modes, but I'll update this guide when I find them
1 Comment
Freecell isnt even the Hardest the issue is Expert Spider
By on 05 Oct 2021 22:11
A perfect banner is earned by finishing every single daily challenge in a given month. If you're good at the game, you can do this on your own. Some of the expert challenges can be quite trying, so I frequently found myself looking for solutions on YouTube. Just search for the challenge date. This achievement will unlock once the last challenge has been completed. At this point, it doesn't appear that you can go back and earn this retroactively for a previous month.
This will be the hardest achievement in the game because you'll have to do every challenge for a month, meaning you're guaranteed a bunch of expert challenges in each game type, which can be tough. Every day has five challenges, one per each of the five game types, and the challenges can range from easy to expert. Thankfully the challenges are not random and are the same every time, so if you fail one, when you retry it will always be the same challenge, allowing you to change your approach each time instead of starting from scratch each time you retry.
As far as how hard and expert difficulties affect the game types, for Klondike you'll be getting three cards at a time from the stock pile instead of one. This changes the strategy so you can't only focus on flipping cards on the board; you also need to get access to cards in the stacks of three from the stock pile. There will definitely be some trial and error here. For Spider, you'll be playing with at least two suits, but sometimes four suits for expert. Thankfully it's very unlikely you'll have to solve the deck, but if you haven't played with two or four suits yet, this could take some practice to work through. For FreeCell, Pyramid, and TriPeaks, there is no change to gameplay, just harder layouts.
Here are the different types of challenges:
"Solve the Deck" / "Clear X boards in Y deals" - these challenges are basically the same as playing any normal game of any of the game modes, so you should work through them the same way you'd work through any normal game.
"Play the X to the foundation" - you'll get these in Klondike and FreeCell challenges. For the easy and medium difficulty ones, you can typically just focus on the card(s) needed without playing through the deck evenly. For hard and expert though, especially for FreeCell, you're likely going to have to work through the deck like normal, playing as though you're trying to solve the deck
"Earn a score of X" - these show up for all game types except FreeCell. For Pyramid, you won't be doing anything different than when you try to complete a board like normal. For TriPeaks, you should be going for the longest combos you can find since that's where the bulk of your score will come from. For Klondike, you get some points for stacking cards on the bottom but more for adding cards to the foundation, so focus on bringing as many cards down from the stock and adding to the foundation. Spider is a little different than the rest. You lose a point every time you make a move, including undoing, and you get 100 points for every stack you complete, so the goal is to complete stacks in as few moves as possible, but you really don't have to worry much about making too many moves and losing score.
"Finish X stacks" - this one is specific to Spider and only requires you to complete stacks. Since that's what you do to win Spider games anyway, there really aren't any different strategies here
"Clear X Ys in Z deals" - these are specific to Pyramid and TriPeaks where you have to remove a set number of a specific card from the board. For TriPeaks if you just focus on completing the board like normal, you will complete this challenge as fast as possible anyway. The only difference with Pyramid is that if the card you need to eliminate is in the stock pile and not on the board, you should try to match them in the stock/waste piles where possible, otherwise you'll have to go through additional boards to find more of the cards you need
General strategies for each challenge don't change much from completing each game type like you normally would, aside from the hard and expert Klondike challenges which use three stock cards at a time. There really isn't a way around the Expert challenges to unlock this achievement. Some of them I spent 15-20 minutes on a single challenge trying to figure it out. Thankfully you only have to do this once, and then for the badges for the remaining months, you can skip harder challenges in game types you struggled with.
Once you've completed all 155ish challenges for the month, the achievement will unlock.
As far as how hard and expert difficulties affect the game types, for Klondike you'll be getting three cards at a time from the stock pile instead of one. This changes the strategy so you can't only focus on flipping cards on the board; you also need to get access to cards in the stacks of three from the stock pile. There will definitely be some trial and error here. For Spider, you'll be playing with at least two suits, but sometimes four suits for expert. Thankfully it's very unlikely you'll have to solve the deck, but if you haven't played with two or four suits yet, this could take some practice to work through. For FreeCell, Pyramid, and TriPeaks, there is no change to gameplay, just harder layouts.
Here are the different types of challenges:
"Solve the Deck" / "Clear X boards in Y deals" - these challenges are basically the same as playing any normal game of any of the game modes, so you should work through them the same way you'd work through any normal game.
"Play the X to the foundation" - you'll get these in Klondike and FreeCell challenges. For the easy and medium difficulty ones, you can typically just focus on the card(s) needed without playing through the deck evenly. For hard and expert though, especially for FreeCell, you're likely going to have to work through the deck like normal, playing as though you're trying to solve the deck
"Earn a score of X" - these show up for all game types except FreeCell. For Pyramid, you won't be doing anything different than when you try to complete a board like normal. For TriPeaks, you should be going for the longest combos you can find since that's where the bulk of your score will come from. For Klondike, you get some points for stacking cards on the bottom but more for adding cards to the foundation, so focus on bringing as many cards down from the stock and adding to the foundation. Spider is a little different than the rest. You lose a point every time you make a move, including undoing, and you get 100 points for every stack you complete, so the goal is to complete stacks in as few moves as possible, but you really don't have to worry much about making too many moves and losing score.
"Finish X stacks" - this one is specific to Spider and only requires you to complete stacks. Since that's what you do to win Spider games anyway, there really aren't any different strategies here
"Clear X Ys in Z deals" - these are specific to Pyramid and TriPeaks where you have to remove a set number of a specific card from the board. For TriPeaks if you just focus on completing the board like normal, you will complete this challenge as fast as possible anyway. The only difference with Pyramid is that if the card you need to eliminate is in the stock pile and not on the board, you should try to match them in the stock/waste piles where possible, otherwise you'll have to go through additional boards to find more of the cards you need
General strategies for each challenge don't change much from completing each game type like you normally would, aside from the hard and expert Klondike challenges which use three stock cards at a time. There really isn't a way around the Expert challenges to unlock this achievement. Some of them I spent 15-20 minutes on a single challenge trying to figure it out. Thankfully you only have to do this once, and then for the badges for the remaining months, you can skip harder challenges in game types you struggled with.
Once you've completed all 155ish challenges for the month, the achievement will unlock.