Heads Will Roll Downfall: 100% Achievement Guide

Welcome to my 100% Achievement Guide for Heads Will Roll: Downfall. This guide will contain spoilers and it is recommended to have played a bit to get used to the game mechanics and have a somewhat leveled up profile.

You can ctrl + f to search for the achievements by name.

There’s 29 achievements in Heads Will Roll: Downfall, most of which are missable other than 2.

The game consists of 4 Acts, each one featuring freeplay during which you’ll be in camp/town, and the finale in which you’ll have to survive a couple of combat encounters with options of skipping later parts of them (at a cost).

The achievements will therefore be ordered by Act, although later act achievements likely will require you to have done certain things in previous Acts.

Not a Scrub

This is a quest you are given at the start of the game by the sergeant. Essentially, the finale of act 1 consists of 3 battles, of which you can kill a total of 4 enemies. Kill two within the given time and you should get it.

York Can Sleep Peacefully
The marauder boss is the final enemy in the finale, which you need to challenge to a 1 v 1. You have two options in the Act 1 finale. First you survive the first fight, then you can choose to fight or retreat. You need to keep fighting. Then after that encounter you can choose to challenge the marauder boss or group up on him. Choose the latter for the achievement and a good starting chest armor.

WeSmart
For WeSmart, you need to have completed the Not a Scrub quest in the Act 1 finale. Then talk to the sergeant in Act 2 freeplay and he will give you a quest to scout for the Scots. Talk to Ruffin so you get Jones to help you. Then you can do reconnaissance from the travel screen. You can follow Jones’ suggestion to search for the scots in the south.

A Jones Special
If you choose to not search for the scots in the south, you can choose to avoid fighting them by hiding in the lake and get this achievement instead.

York Pocket
For the second encounter in the finale, you need to survive for 25-30 turns – which you need to do to progress regardless.

Broken Spears
If in the second encounter of the finale you manage to kill the spearmen instead of just surviving, you receive this achievement. This achievement can be somewhat challenging, make sure you bring tools to deal with shields and don’t come in fatigued from the first encounter.

Fat Loot Enjoyer
After you survive the encirclement, you can choose to attempt to pillage the Scottish camp. If you choose to do so, you need to kill a pavise crossbowman within a certain amount of turns. Doing so gets you this achievement. To do this, a similar strategy to Broken Spears is recommended, but you may want to do them at different times as you want to have low fatigue once again.

Coward
If you’ve helped Freya in act 2 by bringing her the alcohol from the smugglers, she’ll ask you at your first visit in this act to help her find Maria. If you choose to help her and go to the village, you can choose to “save yourself” at first glance and that will give you this achievement.

Not Really a Fairytale
If instead, you choose to Save Maria and chase after the cultists in the woods, you’ll receive this one instead.

Hot Pursuit
The finale of act 3 consists of 4 encounters, the Hot pursuit option is given when you choose to go do the 4th. Go fight the the courtyard and then chase the enemies to get this.

Freya
To receive this you need to hit 100 reputation with Freya, but also complete all her quests. You shouldn’t be able to reach 100 reputation with her without giving her gifts: You should need 2 gifts of 10 reputation each. The easiest one to get are the Golden Cross Pendants that you can get from the character creation and save them in your storage until you can give them to her. If you manage to loot the scottish camp from Fat Loot Enjoyer, you can also gift her the ring and the cloak instead. As for the quests: First you need to achieve bringing her the smuggler’s alcohol in act 2. Then you need to search for Maria in act 3, you don’t need to chase through the forest after her. In act 3 you should need to give her a gift to trigger the next event, in which you need to choose to help her throw out the drunks. After this event, you should give her one more gift and then trigger the last event which will give you the achievement.

Clean Hands
In act 3 freeplay, there will be an event that pops up around the half of the given time in town. In this event you can choose to torture or refuse to torture a scot. Refusing to torture will get you this achievement.

Torturer
And if you choose to torture, you will get this one instead. You can also succeed in extracting information by doing neither! But that won’t get you the achievement.

Quest chain






The following achievements are part of a large quest chain that requires multiple things to be done in a single playthrough: In Act 1, you need to impress the sergeant by killing the two enemies from Not a Scrub. In act 2 and 3, you need to help Freya with the smugglers and Maria. In act 3, you also need to help Ruffin by giving him an level 3 (!) antidote (consider getting the trinket that gets you all crafting recipes). In act 4 you need to throw out the drunks for Freya and tell her the truth about your past. Lastly, you need to wait for the torture the prisoner event in act 4. You also need to prevent any options that may lose you reputation with the earl and keep your virtue low. At around ~30 reputation you should be promoted to a Man-at-arms. Hitting the prisoner before torturing him will reduce your virtue. Once you torture him and you have more than ~35 reputation with the earl and less than 30 virtue you will receive a new quest called A Strange Affair. If you didn’t receive the quest, then something went wrong. If you’re low on reputation with the earl still consider playing all finales through till end as that also gives you reputation.

For this quest you need to talk to the earl. If you choose to not accept a A Strange Affair from the earl, you’ll receive Soldier, Not a Murderer.

For A Strange Affair, you need to talk to Ruffin to get a squad together and move to the smuggler’s hideout again. This time you will fight them. Once you beat them, you can choose to inspect the goods. Doing so will give you the achievement A Strange Affair.

After finishing A Strange Affair, you should be promoted to a Sergeant.

Now if you’ve completed Freya’s part correctly as well, she’ll now give you a quest when you talk to her. After moving there, you can choose to either spare or kill the sheriff; giving you either Fugitive But Not a Murderer or Guilty as Charged. Regardless of your choice, after that you’ll automatically receive Love Hurts as well.

Pawn Takes King
The last boss of the game called “??”. If his hp runs out, you’ll receive this achievement.

I use wooden club btw
Beat “??” with the wooden club. Use trinkets that increase your damage and raise your weapon skill with Axe & Maces to at least 15+ through the game to make up for its low base damage.

Downfall
Given after the fight with “??”.

A Journey to Hell
I highly recommend playing this game on the “Heads will Roll” difficulty for the manual character creation regardless because it helps a lot. If you do so, you’ll receive this with Downfall.

The following achievements can be done in any act.

Brothers in Blood
Do everything that raises the reputation with your fellow soldiers, and avoid the opposite: Attack multiple times in a row, don’t lose reputation in combat from not attacking for multiple turns, help your fellow soldiers in every finale, fight the marauder boss in act 1 by yourself, don’t let Jones die in Act 2, etc. If it still proves difficult, you can choose the Lute trinket at character creation and use that instead of other fatigue recovery options for even more reputation in camp.

Dungeon Master
Get the Flargum trinket from character creation and it opens up the mortify flesh option next to pray option in camp. Doing so will give you way more virtue but at the cost of bloodloss (you can heal that).

A Virtuous One
Do everything that is considered pious, I just used the flagrum trinket to raise it to 100.

A True Villain
Lower your virtue to 0. Reputation with soldiers doesn’t necessary go together with loss of virtue but it generally does. Not fighting the marauder boss in a one-vs-one will lose you virtue. Killing the citizens in the act 2 event will lose you virtue. Abandoning your fellow soldiers to run in finales will lose you virtue. Looting after a battle will lose you virtue, etc.

Cravatta Italiana
Just finish a target with a neck crossbow bolt. In Act 1, side with the crossbowman. Vettori will thank you and open as a vendor for crossbow tools. Level up your crossbow skill to 6+ (it’s much less costly than other weapon skills) and talk to him. He’ll give you the quests – buy some bolts and a crossbow. All that’s left is waiting for an enemy to be tired and low hp before firing your crossbow at its neck and praying for RNG.