XCOM 2
80 Achievements
1,520
147-185h
Valhalla
Beat the game on Commander+ difficulty in Ironman mode
50
0.3%
How to unlock the Valhalla achievement in XCOM 2 - Definitive Guide
The obvious stuff
-Ironman is a game mode where you can only save once. The game will save at certain points automatically (e.g. at the start of your turn during battle) and the autosave option makes no difference. If you fail the game for whatever reason (e.g. Avatar meter being full) you will fail the game entirely and will have to totally restart from the beginning potentially losing 20+ hours of gameplay.
-This can be done on commander or legend difficulty (if you're REALLY looking for a challenge)
-This can be done in combination with other achievements (e.g. only using 4 squad members, not letting a single solider die, etc) but this would only make it a lot harder and more frustrating so i'd strongly advise against it.
-You cannot change difficulty of the game at any point (it will warn you in-game changing difficulty will disable achievements)
-For the love of all that is good don't try this as your first playthrough (even if you've played xcom 1!)
Most important tips
-While you can't 'save and load' in the traditional sense, you can quit the game and reload back up. For example, if you're in a battle and your strongest character dies that you've named after your BFF/GF/BF/whatever and spent hours customising them to make them look super-cool. Quickly pause > hit the guide button > press start on xcom2 > quit. Reloading the game will bring you back to the start of your turn. You'll be doing this a lot.
-Take your time! Don't rush! Yes, some missions are timed but I still found i could take a turn to reload and position units strategically without running out of time.
-This also applies out of battle. Of course this isn't an achievement you want to go on for too long, the longer you take, the worse it'll be if you fail. However rushing the main missions may mean you're far into the story fighting higher tier enemies while you've only got 4 soldiers and tier 1 gear.
-Fight enemies, not armies! Never pull more than 3 or 4 enemies at time, you'll get overwhelmed (especially if game autosaves and you've got 5 half-dead soldiers versus 8 full health enemies). If you go too far forwards in a mission and end up pulling 3 groups of enemies it's probably worth quitting and reloading the game before the game autosaves.
-Hack, hack, hack! Hacking and disabling can be helpful, but hacking and controlling enemies can save your soldiers a great deal of hassle. Firstly, you'll have an extra unit to help you fight, but more importantly if you move the controlled mech unit close to the front of your units, the enemies will target the mech units, rather than your soldiers. Also, hacking the security lights (whatever they're called) can grant nice bonuses (increased supply income or increased hacking skill, for example).
-Say hello to my little friend! Grenades, grenade launcher, explosives in general can be VERY helpful. Not only do they have an area of effect with a 100% chance to hit and armour shredding, but they will also destroy an enemy's cover, turning a 34% chance shot into a 72% flanked shot with 40% crit chance. Very useful.
Less important tips
-Don't forget to gear up well! I did rush a bit too much when I started (as i advised against above) and found myself with low level gear and wasn't hitting hard enough. I would apply this mainly to weapons, moreso than armour (I completed this game using only tier 2 armour, but tier 3 weapons).
- Don't ignore the avatar meter, but don't focus on it. I didn't find the avatar meter too much of a problem, I only had to take down one avatar factory to buy me a small amount of time.
-Engineers are probably more important than scientists at first. Engineers should always be working on something. Usually assigning an engineer to a facility (e.g. resistance comm) is much cheaper and more efficient than upgrading.
General tips - these apply to xcom 2 in general, rather than commander ironman but are very useful for this achievement.
-Try not to let your units die. There's a high chance you're going to lose a unit or 2 early on but hopefully only rookies. This is OK. But once they get a class and have been promoted a few times they become MUCH stronger and losing a high-ranked unit can be very detrimental.
-Linking in with the above point, try to get a solider promoted as high as possible as quick as possible. Some of the higher-promotion abilities can be a real game-changer.
-Shredder! Always have this ability with your grenadier, the armour of some enemies can really sponge some of your shots, shredder will take away 1-3 (depending on your grenadier's weapon tier) points of armour. Also, when possible, I'd recommend attacking first with your grenadier, lowering armour, then using your other units to hit with higher damage.
-Executed! The weapon mod 'Repeater' offers 5/10/15% chance to insta-kill and can be very useful for the last mission. I'm going to assume you know what the last mission is and what you have to do (if not look away now or spoiler!) - kill the 3 avatars while getting swarmed with aliens/ADVENT. Ideally you'll want a superior repeater with 15% chance, but an advanced (10%) may do. Equip the mod to as many soldiers as you can (assuming you have more than 1, i only actually had 1 when i did it and that did enough), this means you have a chance to instantly kill an avatar, assuming you can get close enough. If you don't instantly kill the avatar you can always reload and try again, if you feel you need to.
Works in base game only, it does not in War of The Choosen.
Achievement is quite easy with infinite turn glitch. This glitch works in standard and Ironman playthrough, on any difficulty.
To make it work you have to save game short before you finish last move of your last character after which normally enemy would have his turn and then load that save. You will still have your turn while enemy looses his.
Just be carefull with few exceptions, enemies who transforms from other forms or pop up can still make their move so watch out when you want to trigger them - this applies for Andromedons, Chryssalids and Faceless.
Using this glitch you can even go for all below achievements in same playthrough:
Second, turn off the Action Camera (in the Options->Gameplay->Show Action Cam). Seriously, that thing screwed up my timing on Save & Exit so many times. It's much easier to judge when to hit Start with it off.
Third, save scum it. Go offline before every mission, after making sure your save file syncs/updates. If something goes tits up, you can delete/download your save file and try again (very handy if going for The Untouchables achieve, especially with missions involving Faceless).
Finally, TAKE BREAKS. It gets really tiring having to do this after every turn and your timing will invariably suffer.
If you are following the Road Map, then this will be your third playthrough and is arguably the hardest trophy in the game. In Ironman mode, every decision is final. There is only one save file and it is constantly being overwritten by every decision you make so if you make any mistakes at all, then you have to live with them.
First of all, recognize you are not going to have a perfect playthrough as there's no such thing in this game. Mistakes will happen and the game does seem to punish you for it but not every mission has to be a success for the game to be a success as you can fail a lot of missions and have things go wrong, though still be okay because you will eventually reach the turning point. In every playthrough, there's this moment where you stop playing catch-up with the aliens and start steamrolling them. Generally, this happens once you have a few Psi Op units on your team, you have established contacts across the globe and you suddenly have enough cash to buy all the things you want. There will come a time when the enemies stop getting stronger and you don't. This game was designed to make you work to get to that point but you can do it. The hardest part of the game will be the first few missions.
If you're really worried about this playthrough, there is still a way to save scum. It's a bit more work but you can create a backup either to a USB device or the PS+ Save File Cloud (if you have a PS Plus account) and revert to that if things go horribly wrong in your game. I don't recommend doing this often, as the load times in XCOM 2 are pretty long (even with the latest patch) and it would be tedious to keep quitting the game to overwrite the save file but making a backup at the start of each mission isn't a bad idea.
See the "Tips for Surviving XCOM 2" section of the Road Map for more information: LINK
Here is an exploit that you can use to make this trophy significantly easier: LINK
Leave one save during the battle, on a different difficulty level.
Fix the game as described in other trophies for endless moves.
Load your save in terminator mode or start the game (depending on your choice).
That's all!