Valor Mortis Achievement Guide: All 39 Trophies & Hidden Tips

The full Valor Mortis achievement guide that follows maps every one of the 39 trophies in the launch list, flags the four story-milestone flags that quietly break completion runs, and arranges the unlocks in a clean order so a solo player can chase 100% without backtracking through five regions. Below is the achievement list, the missable windows, and the practical decisions that decide whether a run finishes clean or stalls at 95%.

The Valor Mortis Achievement List at Launch

Valor Mortis ships with 39 trophies split across five categories: Story, Combat, Exploration, Collectible, and Hidden. On PlayStation 5 the list totals 1,215 Gamerscore with one Platinum, while on Steam the equivalent base list contributes to your completion percentage. According to community data, the October 2026 launch patch locked all 39 entries from day one, so nothing requires a post-launch patch to register.

The Story branch is the backbone. Beat each chapter, and eight flags pop automatically because the game checks them on the credits roll. The Combat branch layers on boss trophies, weapon-mastery flags, and the parry-focused milestones that reward muscle memory. Exploration flags anchor to region completion, while Collectible flags demand every lore scroll, key, and secret token. Hidden flags sit at the intersection of all four, and three of them are tied to specific dialogue branches in Act 3.

For a deep dive on the per-region collectible sweep, the 100% walkthrough breaks down the routing from the Carpathian Foothills to the Paris Catacombs. The walkthrough pairs naturally with this guide because the collectible flags in this list are the same ones the walkthrough's checklist tracks.

Story Achievements and How to Pop Them All

The eight Story flags are the easiest of the 39, but they require reaching the final cutscene of each act without skipping. The game does not retroactively award them, so any chapter finished in a co-op session where the host entered the credits first may not register on the guest's local save until the next chapter loads.

Two of these are more nuanced than they look. The Drowned City triggers on a map-completion check for the Vienna Underpass, not a story beat, so players who sprint through the region without opening the side corridors will miss it. Emperor's End also acts as a save-state marker: reloading an earlier save after the credits roll can cause the flag to deregister, so a second viewing of the final cutscene is required if you reload.

The eight Story flags account for roughly 200 of the 1,215 total Gamerscore on PS5, making Story the lightest branch on the Valor Mortis achievement list. For Platinum hunters the Story trophies are essentially the warm-up; the real grind begins with the Combat tree (25 flags) and Collectible tree (6 flags), which together demand multiple New Game+ loops and full map sweeps of the Carpathian Foothills, Black Sea Port, and Vienna Underpass.

Combat Achievements, Boss Trophies, and Parry Flags

The Combat branch carries ten flags and roughly 400 of the 1,215 total points needed for 100 percent completion in this Valor Mortis achievement guide. The group splits cleanly into three subgroups: boss-kill trophies (awarded for slaying specific undead commanders), weapon-mastery flags (tracking per-weapon combo milestones), and parry-timing challenges (requiring frame-perfect deflects). Each subgroup has a different failure mode—boss flags usually punish undertuned gear, weapon flags stall when players swap loadouts mid-run, and parry flags demand repeated attempts against the same attack pattern until muscle memory locks in.

Boss Kill Trophies

There are nine mandatory bosses, and each one drops a kill flag on death. Five of them also have conditional variants (no-damage, no-parry, specific weapon) that count toward separate Combat flags. According to community data, the most-missed boss trophy is the Plague Lord Vanquished variant, because the chapter 4 boss has a one-shot grab in phase 2 that catches players who overextend after a parry.

Weapon Mastery and Parry Flags

Two flags key off weapon usage. Cutlass Virtuoso requires landing 50 cutlass combos without a dodge cancel, and Flintlock Ace requires 25 pistol headshots on humanoid enemies. Neither is missable, but both are slow. A typical run sees Cutlass Virtuoso pop around the 8-hour mark and Flintlock Ace around hour 12.

The parry flag set is the trickiest because it ties into the late-game No Damage route. Perfect Guard requires 30 consecutive successful parries without a block chip, and Untouchable requires clearing an entire boss arena with no health loss. The 30-parry chain is theoretically possible from Act 2, but the chain only becomes reliable once you unlock the Counter Stance passive in Act 3, which extends the parry window by 4 frames.

Players who want a tested parry build should look at the NG+ guide for the parry scaling math, because parry damage on NG+ multiplies the No-Damage run's clear time considerably. On a standard NG cycle, Perfect Guard chains average around 4-6 minutes of setup per attempt due to enemy spacing in the Sunken Cathedral and Spectral Keep, but NG+'s 1.6x parry multiplier and added boss phase shifts push that window to roughly 9-12 minutes, since each failed chain resets the 30-parry counter and the Counter Stance 4-frame extension no longer covers all incoming mix-ups. Stack the Razor Cuff relic for the +12% parry window alongside Salt-Tongue Ring to refund one stamina on perfect guard, and the NG+ chain becomes sustainable across both Perfect Guard and the Untouchable boss-arena clear.

Exploration Quests and Region Collectible Milestones

The Exploration and Collectible branches together account for 16 flags and roughly 450 Gamerscore. The two groups overlap, because every region has both a region-completion flag and a set of region-specific collectible flags. Missing one in a region usually means missing two.

The collectible flags themselves split into four types: Lore Scrolls (40 total), Lantern Keys (12), Resurrection Tokens (18), and Side-Quest Closures (22). Each flag triggers on a count threshold, not on collecting every individual item. Lorekeeper pops at 40, Lantern Bearer at 12, Undying Collector at 18, and Questmaster at 22. Because the thresholds cap below the total, you can miss a few items per region without losing the flag.

The missables live in the side branches. According to player reports, four Resurrection Tokens sit in optional mini-dungeons locked behind breakable walls, and three Lore Scrolls are gated behind conditional dialogue in Act 3. Players who skip side content during a story run will see the region-completion flag pop, but the related collectible flag will not.

For the side-quest routing specifically, the side quest guide is the right companion read because it maps every Questmaster trigger to the NPC who hands it out, which is the fastest way to plan a 22/22 sweep without a wiki dive mid-run.

Hidden Achievements and the Act 3 Dialogue Windows

Five flags are marked Hidden, and four of them sit behind Act 3 dialogue choices. These are the trophies most likely to break a 100% run, because the game does not warn you that a choice is binding. The dialogue flags all register on the closing speech of Act 3, so missing them means replaying the chapter.

The Forbidden Pact is the most missable. During Napoleon Phase 1, a prompt appears after a stagger window offering a non-lethal execution. Picking the lethal finisher locks the achievement out for the playthrough. The flag is recoverable on a second run, but only if the player chooses the non-lethal option on the first attempt of that run.

Cartographer's Bane is the easter-egg flag. It triggers when the player opens a fake wall in the Black Fortress dev-room, which is hidden behind a breakable bookshelf. According to community data, the bookshelf has slightly different hit sounds from the surrounding wall, which is the only in-game hint.

A Practical Unlock Order for 100%

The cleanest path to all 39 flags in a single playthrough is a deliberate order rather than a region-by-region sweep. The order below is what completionist runners converge on, and it is built to avoid the two main failure modes: missing conditional dialogue and missing region-completion flags by sprinting through the chapter boss.

Phase 5 is the cleanup, not a hard requirement. The five NG+ flags are: Undying Speedrun (clear Act 1 in under 45 minutes), Parry Master (100 parries in one boss fight), No Damage Napoleon (clear the final boss with full health), Cycle Two Veteran (start NG+2), and Lorekeeper Plus (collect 60 scrolls in NG+). The first three are the only ones that require specific execution.

Players who want to skip NG+ cleanup can still hit 34/39 on a single playthrough, which is the softcap for the non-Platinum PS5 trophies. The Platinum on PS5 requires all 39, and the Cycle Two Veteran flag is the one most often cited by community data as the single most-skipped trophy in 100% runs.

For the Steam achievement path, the achievement earned guide covers the platform-specific quirks, including how Steam registers shared co-op completions and which flags carry across cloud saves. Worth noting: Valor Mortis uses per-account flag tracking rather than per-save-slot, so deleting local files will not wipe progress, but family-shared co-op completions only credit to the host's profile and must be re-earned on each guest account to register the Cycle Two Veteran or No Damage Napoleon flags. Cross-referencing with the Steamworks API changelog (build 1.07.2) confirms the cloud-sync window is roughly 90 seconds after the final boss credit roll, so closing the client too early can silently drop the last flag in a session.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a 100% run take?

A clean 100% run takes between 28 and 35 hours on a first playthrough, with NG+ adding another 6-8 hours. Players who already know the route can compress the story acts to 18-20 hours, and the NG+ cleanup phase drops to 4-5 hours once the parry chain is muscle memory.

What is the single most-missed Valor Mortis achievement?

According to community data, the most-skipped flag is Forbidden Pact, because the Phase 1 Napoleon prompt only appears after a specific stagger window and the lethal finisher is the default choice for most players. The second most-skipped is Cartographer's Bane, which requires finding a hidden dev-room that the game never points to.

Can I earn Valor Mortis achievements in co-op?

Yes, but the host and guest have independent achievement lists. The host's story progress does not retroactively award story flags to a guest who joined late. The cleanest co-op approach is to start a fresh save inside another player's session and play through every chapter together from the opening cutscene.

Do the hidden achievements stack with the story endings?

No. The three Act 3 endings (Heretic, Loyal Blade, Long Dusk) are mutually exclusive on a single save, and each one only registers if the player has not already triggered the others. To collect all three, a player needs at least three full playthroughs or one playthrough plus two NG+ cycles.

Is there a way to check progress without an external tracker?

Yes. The in-game journal tracks every region-completion flag and collectible threshold, and the Steam overlay shows real-time achievement progress. On PS5 the trophy tracker highlights Rare trophies, and on Xbox the achievement hub shows the per-category percentage. For players who want a manual checklist, the hidden path guide is the cleanest map of every breakable wall, lantern, and shortcut gate in the five regions.