Dead Rising 3

Dead Rising 3

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Things I wish I knew Before attempting 100% achievements.
By Mr. Wolfwood
I have the habit of wanting to get all achievements in single player games that I enjoy, as long as there are no multiplayer achievements, since most of them are impossible due to my approach of waiting for the release of a complete edition and a good sale. However Dead Rising 3 has a few bugs that will make some achievements impossible to get, unless you start a brand new save file from zero. In this guide i will share some of the bugs that made me have to start a save file from zero, in the hope that you don't have to suffer to go to the trouble of beating the main game, just to find out that some of the achievements have long ago become impossible to get.
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Warning.
I will do my beast to keep spoilers out of this guide, to that order i will give you the name of the achievements and the description, as they are no hidden achievements in this game, so you can read them from the achievements section on steam.
“Prestige Hound: Completed all PP Trials”.
This will likely be the last achievement you will get, but it comes with the earliest game bug that will make it impossible to get. The PP trial “Drinking To Create”, requires you to create the Beer Hat combo weapon 50 times. The blueprints for this combo is not found in the world map as a collectible, but rather you unlock it when you purchase the second level of the Smarts Attribute, In the Player tab of the Survival Guide. There is a glitch that seems to trigger if you purchase more than one attribute when you unlock the second level, that will make it so you do not get the blueprints, and in that way you will be unable to make the combo weapon and complete the requirements to get Prestige Hound. The solution seems to be to save the game manually before purchasing level 2 Smarts, leave the pause menu once you only purchased the attribute, then open the Survival Guide again, to check if the blueprints for the beer hat have been unlocked in the weapon blueprints tab. If it does not then load the save file, and try again. I had the displeasure to only realize i had this glitch when I had already beat the main story.
“Ashes to Ashes; All Biohazards burned” and “Bootleg Operator: All Bootleg Zombrex collected”
The steam version comes with the DLC The Untold Stories, each episode has their own set of unique collectibles that have their respective achievements In the case of episode 4, there seems to be at least 2 glitches involving the collectibles. The collectibles should only appear in the map and be able to be collected after reaching a specific point in the story, however it seems that if you load a saved game, the collectibles will show in the map regardless of story progress, and one of the Bootleg Zombrex will be noncollectable, leaving you at 19 out of 20. To avoid this, you play the episode from the start without loading a save file (which will require not dying or failing an objective) and get all collectibles the moment they are available at their respective points in the story. Also there seems to be a different glitch that may or not be related to loading a save file, in with three of the Biohazards will not count as burned, leaving you at 37 out of 40. If you do happen to run into this predicament, you can copy your save file folder to a different a different folder in your computer, disable Steam Cloud Saves for the Dead Rising 3, reset progress inside the game, play episode 4 in this brand new save file, from level 0 since the episodes carry your character progression form the main story and vice versa, get the collectibles in one sitting without loading a save file, once you to unlock this two achievements, you delete the save file folder for Dead Rising 3, copy back your save file folder that you kept separate, enable back Steam Cloud Saves, and you will keep your progress towards other achievements, though you will not be able to get all the collectibles in episode 4 in your save file.
Special mention. “Be a D**k! Joined a Co-op game”.
This is the only multiplayer achievement in the game, I did not had any problem with this achievement, however, it was the first one i decided to get before dedicating my time to do 100% achievements Thankfully it seems like people still play the game with the co-op join in function enabled, so you should be able to get the achievement with relative ease. Also you don't need to do any missions or progression while in Co-op, just successfully joining will get the achievement to unlock in a few moments.
Conclusion.
Besides this glitches and the need to join a Co-op game, the only thing stopping you from getting all achievements, is the fact that you will need to kill at least 340,000 zombies to get a some of he PP trials. Hence why “Prestige Hound” will likely be the last achievement to unlock, on the good side unlike previous Dead Rising games, you don't need to do this in a single run of the game, as the progression for the PP trials carries over between play troughs of both the main game and the DLC episodes.

Hopefully this will help at least one fellow completionist out there from having to start the game from zero, after realizing that some achievements have become unlockable just after you finish your first run of the game. Good hunting.
7 Comments
SonofaGlitch 9 Jan @ 9:26am 
Oh, and one last post and piece of advice in going for 100% on this game revolving around the DLCs as well: you should definitely wait to do the DLCs once you've got most of your levels maxed.

Because in the 3rd DLC one off the tasks is to bring Torque a number of motorcycles scattered across the map. Most of them can be brought back relatively easily, even on a character with low mechanics. But a couple are in very weird locations that require driving them through some extremely zombie filled areas, and motorcycles have MUCH lower health bars than cars.

Without the Mechanics level up upgrades that increase vehicle health and/or make them indestructable, this achievement is at the least WAY harder to get, and you only get one shot at it per DLC progression, as the game saves your progress on the bikes, and they DO NOT respawn.
SonofaGlitch 9 Jan @ 9:20am 
I did encounter one bug with the bodies pile too: the pile you have to burn in the most northwest point in Ingleton, the Northwest quadrant of the map, didn't appear visually for me in my playthrough of The Last Agent DLC. It was there, and COULD be burned, but the body pile object was just invisible. I just went to where the marker was on the map and fired that "Slagshot" weapon they give you in this DLC around the vicinity of where I thought the marker was, and it eventually hit the right spot.

If I had to guess, the body pile object was placed wrong (maybe under the map?) but the trigger IS still in the right position, so just using some sort of method of shooting fire in its general location should trigger the completion of the pile there and remove it from your mini-map.
SonofaGlitch 9 Jan @ 9:17am 
As a follow-up to my prior post for anyone reading in the future: I WAS able to get the Bootleg Zombrex achievement after borking the collection of a few of the collectibles by doing what the usual fix to basic out of order scripting bugs is - resetting the system. I made a hard save at one of the in-game save points (a port-a-potty, since most of the DLC characters can't get inside the safe houses) and quit out to the main menu, then reloaded the save file.

Upon reload, the game recognized the Bootleg Zombrex collectibles I had already collected and removed the "ghost" markers of those pre-collected items from the map. The count was correct and upon picking up the final collectible, the achievement popped.
SonofaGlitch 8 Jan @ 7:13pm 
So, I'm not sure, but I think I know what the issue with Bootleg Operator is: In the DLC segment, you first collect one vial of bootleg zombrex as part of story/mission progress. Then after you return to the Hospital and Cora, you get the rest marked on your map. But BEFORE you get back to the hospital you can actually pick up some vials. They appear in the game world, but not on the map unless you're extremely close by to trigger their "search radius circles."

If you end up picking up any of these bootleg zombrex collectibles between when you pick up the first, story related one and return it to Cora, when the rest get marked on your map, you get the markers for them on the map, but they don't appear in the game world. Or at least, definitely the one in Alamuda Recycling doesn't seem to.

Obviously, I seem to be encountering this issue right now, myself. It's a pretty basic scripting/out-of-order progression bug, from what I can tell.
HHN Enthusiast 21 Nov, 2023 @ 3:12pm 
Extremely glad I found this before I reached these points of my run. Thank you!
Sir Nicklas 15 Nov, 2023 @ 6:55am 
Episode 4 is so glitchy, thanks for workaround with 40 burn places.
SchrodingersGun 8 Nov, 2023 @ 9:51pm 
Really helpful. Fuck CAPCOM btw