Regarding the Auditore cape in all cities. All you have to do is travel there, and you get credit. Which makes it pretty fast to get. As soon as you arrive at the destination travel station, then talk to the travel station dude again and get your next city. Don’t forget the mountains… which is required for that trophy.
I always thought it odd that they consider the mountains a city. I had to look that one up because after visiting all the cities I hadn’t gotten the achievement yet.
Just a heads up - chapter 12 is now available as DLC, for 320 points ($4, I think). I read one review that said it was OK - six missions. Haven’t tried it, and probably won’t for a while since I’m waiting for Bioshock 2 to come out.
I downloaded it and played in on Friday night. It was fun, but since I had my super armor, it was fairly easy. There’s a new map icon for “special memory” or something like that. I had to go to the North end of Forli, that takes forever to get to, and all it was the ability to get on top of building and fly! WTF! Big deal! The buzz about memory 15 was that you’d fly during one of the six missions, but not exactly. I’m hoping memory 16 will turn that into a mission of some sort. Furthermore, I didn’t like the ending of 15. It seemed to just sort of… stop.
The DLC was really quick, but fun.
I think one of the reasons they probably put the special flying memory in because so many people were ticked that they missed the Fly Swatter achievement in the game (like me :D) and there was no way to go back and get it without playing the whole game again. Now you can just get the DLC and still get the achievement without replaying. I’ve only managed to kill a few guys before crashing. Maybe there is more to it if you kill a sufficient number of them?
Ok, for those of you who are achievement junkies, how the hell did you get the one that requires killing 10 guards at once in conflict mode without taking any damage? When I’m able to be surrounded by that many, the little chicken shits keep running away before I get to them. The highest running total I’ve been able to achieve is 8. I’ve tried everything I can think of, including getting close-but-not-too-close to a group of 4 guards trying to block my path through the streets, and then trying to inch closer to them when the numbers of surviving guards in my immediate vicinity dwindle, but the little bastards still run away.
I gave up trying. I also gave up on the other two combat achievements. I discovered that no matter how hard I tried, I could only ever sweep 4 guards with a polearm, not 5. I could never get 5 to face me within the arc of the sweep, and the rare times I did, I would usually be attacked during the charge-up for the maneuver. (It’s a pretty pointless maneuver actually.)
Though with the 10 guards at once, I wonder if you could find a bunch of guards and poison a bunch before engaging them in combat. I don’t remember if poisoned guards still enter conflict mode or not.
Get a large crowd of guards to follow you, then use a smoke bomb, then hidden-blade assassinate as many choking guards as you can until they start to recover. As soon as they start to recover, throw another bomb and repeat. You can usually get 4 assassinations in per bomb, especially if you start with a double. I did this in the southeast section of Firenze, at the Doge’s palace. All you have to do is stand in a restricted area long enough to piss off some guards, then run back and forth past the various guard stations until you’ve got a large crew. You can’t get his from the first moment they start chasing you, and I think you need to have all 10 chasing you before you make your first kill. I also made sure I was at full health before each attempt, but I’m not sure that’s necessary. Took me about 8-9 attempts, but there’s a Doctor and an Armorer nearby, so I could retry pretty quickly.
Smoke bombs help with the sweeping achievement as well, though it’s a pain - you’ve got to drop the pike, throw the bomb, pick up the pike, and sweep. If there are any other weapons on the ground, you’ll pick up the wrong one and probably run out of time. I wound up doing it in regular combat.
And don’t forget to knock down a peasant with a broom then kill a few guards with it! No achievement, but it’s very funny.
Now that I have to try!
BTW, the first DLC for AC2 is out, and its not bad. It’s pretty cheap ($3.99) too.
The sand and sweeping stuff wasn’t too bad for me. You can fudge the sweeper a bit by making a couple of sweeps in short succession. Even if you take down 3 and than 2, as long as all five are rolling around on the ground simultaneously you’ll get the achievement.
I’ve tried the smoke bomb technique for the No-Hitter achievement (kill 10 in one session without getting injured) over and over and over and over again, but still have the running away problem or if the second or third round smokes everyone who are left, the act of smoking them knocks us all out of conflict mode before I get to killing them.
I forgot to mention that this is last achievement I have left, which is driving me NUTS.
It’s funny when it breaks as well.
One other thing - if you do it in front of the Doge’s palace, there’s a group of Brutes guarding the front gate. Get them involved in the chase, but don’t kill them until you’ve thrown the last smoke bomb. It’s less likely for the weak guards to run away if there are still Brutes in combat mode.
The other thing I tried was the assassination mission of killing 10 Brutes in 60 seconds. You’re supposed to get them all involved in combat with your mercenaries, then poison and/or hidden blade them all. I tried it twice without success, and went to the other method because reloading the mission each time was a PITA. gamefaqs swears it works though.
Wow for once I was such an over achiever that I completely missed what that was for. I had already restarted the game to get to the point above because of my missed achievmement.
Huzzah! The planets finally aligned in Venice/San Marco. Two smoke bombs with a couple of disarms and a death thrown in between, with just enough guards outside the smoke perimeter to keep the conflict timer going.
Kinda anti-climactic to get all of the achievements it seems. You’d think they’d at least throw in the ability to actually hire the concubines or something.
Definitely anti climactic… I enjoyed the game so much I want to have a reason to keep on playing, but just going around and beating people up gets old (OK, it’s still fun). It seems like it’d be pretty easy to generate a random assassination task or something.
Is there a quick dirty way to get more cash? I’m still in Florence and I’m piss broke.
Tackle/kill the messenger who shows up as a white arrow…loot boats…run through crowds picking their pockets.
If you don’t want notoriety simply chuck a throwing knife at them, works the same as a tackle without the lethality of… anything else. Works at range too!