A solid Valor Mortis trophy roadmap saves you from wandering through the same Act twice, watching the notification banner stay silent while your friends brag about their platinum pops. With 39 trophies spanning combat feats, exploration milestones, and a few well-hidden secrets, the order in which you tackle them directly affects how many hours you spend on a second playthrough. This guide lays out the recommended progression path, flags the achievements most likely to glitch out, and walks you through the cleanest fix when a trophy refuses to unlock.
Understanding the 39-Trophy Structure
Before you start chasing any one achievement, it helps to know what kind of list you're dealing with. Valor Mortis ships with 39 trophies on PlayStation and 39 Steam achievements on PC, and both lists mirror each other almost perfectly, according to community data compiled by players working through the early-access patch.
The trophy pool splits into four rough categories: story progression trophies that pop automatically as you complete chapters, combat trophies tied to specific enemy types or weapon categories, exploration trophies for finding hidden areas, and a small cluster of miscellaneous feats that require deliberate setup. Knowing the ratio helps you plan a route that front-loads the easy wins before you commit to the grind-heavy entries.
| Trophy Category | Approx. Count | Difficulty to Pop | Typical Trigger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Story / Chapter | 8 | Trivial | Auto on chapter end |
| Combat Feats | 14 | Medium | Specific kill conditions |
| Exploration | 11 | Medium-Hard | Hidden areas, optional bosses |
| Misc / Setup | 6 | Hard | Pre-mission preparation |
| Total | 39 | — | — |
The story trophies are essentially free — you'll never miss them on a normal run. The combat and exploration buckets are where most players stall, because two or three of them carry conditions that aren't clearly telegraphed in-game. The miscellaneous six are the real time sink, and they're also the cluster where a Valor Mortis achievement bug is most likely to surface.
Why Order Matters
Trophies that require you to be in a specific build, location, or pre-fight state are much easier to grab when you know they're coming. If you burn through the first three acts without ever swapping to a specific weapon archetype, you may lock yourself out of an achievement that only checks your loadout at the moment you kill a certain enemy. The recommended order below front-loads setup-dependent trophies into Acts 1 and 2, so you never have to replay a chapter just because you forgot to swap a perk.
Recommended Valor Mortis Achievement Order
The fastest path to a clean 39/39 isn't a straight line — it's an L-shaped run that pushes all setup-heavy trophies into the first two acts and reserves the late game for natural combat and exploration pickups. This section walks through the phases, and pairs each with the trophies you should expect to see pop.
| Phase | Act / Location | Trophies Targeted | Avg. Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Act 1 (Catacombs) | 9 story + combat | 3-4 hours |
| Phase 2 | Act 2 (Sunken City) | 11 mixed | 4-5 hours |
| Phase 3 | Act 3 (Spire) | 10 combat + exploration | 5-6 hours |
| Phase 4 | New Game+ cleanup | 9 misc + secret | 4-5 hours |
Phase 1 covers the Catacombs, where eight of the nine story trophies pop automatically. The ninth is a setup-dependent combat trophy: Bone Collector, which only triggers if you kill 20 skeleton enemies with a specific blunt weapon before leaving the area. Pick up the Macerator from the first optional mini-boss chest, equip it, and grind skeletons in the side corridor until the counter ticks over. Skipping this is the single most common reason players end up with a Valor Mortis achievement not unlocking until much later.
Phase 2 is the Sunken City, and it's where the Lantern Bearer trophy lives — one of the trickier exploration entries because it requires lighting all 12 lanterns in the flooded district. Community reports on the official forum show that two of those lanterns sit behind breakable walls, and a third is on a roof only reachable through a grapple point. Players tackling the hidden path guide alongside this trophy tend to clear both objectives in a single pass instead of running the map twice.
Phase 3 and Phase 4 Priorities
In the Spire, the combat trophies start stacking up because every elite enemy type has its own counter. Stormcaller's Bane wants you to parry a lightning elemental 10 times, while Unbroken requires a no-damage clear of the bridge gauntlet. Save Unbroken for last in the act, because attempting it early means replaying the section every time you mis-time a roll.
Phase 4 — the New Game+ cleanup pass — is where you mop up the misc trophies that don't fit anywhere else. Pacifist's Mark is the most infamous of the bunch: kill fewer than 5 enemies across the entire final mission. You can't do this on a first run, because the fight is balanced around using your full kit, so it has to wait for a New Game+ with optimized gear. If you want a deeper look at how New Game+ scaling interacts with the trophy list, the achievement guide breaks down each entry in detail.
Trophies Most Likely to Bug Out
Even on a clean run, a handful of trophies in Valor Mortis are known to fail to pop. Community data collected across the 1.2 and 1.3 patches shows that six trophies account for roughly 70% of all "achievement not unlocking" reports. The table below lists them, what triggers the bug, and the most reliable workaround.
| Trophy | Trigger Condition | Common Bug | Fastest Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bone Collector | Kill 20 skeletons with Macerator | Counter resets on death | Avoid death before counter hits 20 |
| Lantern Bearer | Light all 12 lanterns | Lanterns 7 and 11 sometimes don't register | Reload checkpoint, re-light the two flagged lanterns |
| Stormcaller's Bane | Parry 10 lightning attacks | Counter desyncs after phase transition | Save before boss, retry from autosave |
| Unbroken | Bridge gauntlet no-damage | One-shot kills from off-camera enemies reset run | Restart from chapter checkpoint, not autosave |
| Pacifist's Mark | <5 kills in final mission | Counter carries over from earlier fights | Confirm counter on mission start screen |
| Iron Will | Complete Act 2 on Hard without dying | Hard-mode flag doesn't persist after crash | Always save manually before boss rooms |
The pattern across these reports is consistent: most bugs aren't about the trigger condition being wrong, they're about state persistence failing at a checkpoint or autosave boundary. A Valor Mortis achievement fix that works in 80% of cases is to fully quit to the title screen, reload the last manual save, and re-perform the trigger. If the counter still doesn't tick, you may be looking at a genuine save corruption, and the cleanest path forward is to load an earlier save from the same chapter.
When the Standard Fix Doesn't Work
If reloading doesn't help, the next step is checking whether the trophy is tracking at all. On PlayStation 5, you can open the trophy tracker overlay during gameplay to see live counts. On Steam, the in-game Achievements menu shows the same data under a "Progress" tab for most trophies that have incremental counts. If the counter is moving but the trophy never pops at the threshold, that's a server-side sync delay — wait until the next chapter transition, then quit to the title screen to force a sync. The Steam achievement sync usually catches up within 2-3 minutes, while PS5 trophies can take up to 24 hours to register, according to player reports.
Hidden Trophy Locations You Might Miss
The hidden trophies in Valor Mortis aren't documented in the in-game menu, and several of them require you to find objects that don't show up on the main map. The table below summarizes the six most commonly missed entries, with the exact location and trigger.
| Hidden Trophy | Location | Trigger | Map Hint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whisper in the Dark | Act 1, optional catacomb | Read all 4 tombstones in order | Side path behind the second lantern room |
| Tide Turner | Act 2, flooded district | Drain the water before the boss | Switch on the bridge, 30 seconds timer |
| Spire Cartographer | Act 3, top platform | Stand on all 4 corner stones | Optional aerial grapple path |
| The Forgotten Letter | New Game+, hub area | Find item on the tavern table | Resets every playthrough |
| Silver Tongue | Any chapter | Convince an NPC instead of fighting | Available from Chapter 2 onward |
| One With the Fog | Act 2, mid-mission | Avoid detection for 5 minutes straight | Stealth section, no kills allowed |
Two of these — Whisper in the Dark and Spire Cartographer — are the entries most players stumble on by accident while chasing the mobility abilities guide objectives, because the grapple points that unlock those abilities also reveal the hidden paths. The other four require deliberate setup, and they're best tackled on a New Game+ run where you've already seen the main story and can afford to take the time.
Where the Hidden Trophies Actually Come From
The secret trophies (those that don't show their description in the pause menu) make up roughly 15% of the list. They're all flagged in the table above, and they all share a common trigger: a specific environmental interaction that the game never explicitly tells you about. The fastest way to find them is to interact with every readable object in a new area, even if it looks like flavor text. A few of them — notably The Forgotten Letter — are tied to objects that respawn on each New Game+ cycle, so you can farm them across multiple playthroughs if you miss them on the first pass.
Avoiding Soft-Locks and Save Corruption
Save corruption is the silent killer of any 100% run. Valor Mortis uses an autosave system that triggers at chapter boundaries and after boss kills, but manual saves are not automatic. Community testing on the public beta branch suggests that the game writes to the save file roughly every 90 seconds during gameplay, but only on the main thread — a crash during that window can leave a partial file that the game refuses to load.
| Save Action | When to Use It | Risk Level |
|---|---|---|
| Manual save | Before any setup-dependent trophy attempt | Low |
| Autosave (chapter) | After every boss kill | Medium |
| Quick save | During long exploration sections | High (can desync) |
| New Game+ import | Only after all trophies are confirmed | Low |
The cleanest habit is to save manually right before any trophy you're worried about. That way, if the achievement doesn't pop and a reload doesn't fix it, you have a known-good state to fall back on. If you're planning a Pacifist run, save before the final mission starts, and again at each of the three mid-mission checkpoints. The trophy checks against the counter on the mission-end screen, not during gameplay, so any of those three checkpoints will give you a working retry point.
Players chasing the platinum trophy on PS5 report the smoothest experience when they combine this manual-save habit with a periodic full restart of the game client. Closing and reopening Valor Mortis once every 2-3 hours clears a memory leak that, left alone, can cause the trophy counter to silently desync from the actual trigger state. On PC, the same effect is achievable by closing the game through the Steam overlay and waiting 10 seconds before relaunching.
Final Preparation Checklist
Before you start your first trophy run, run through this list to make sure your save file and account state are clean. It's a small amount of setup that pays off in fewer failed pops later.
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Verify platform sync: on PS5, confirm you're signed in to your PlayStation account before launching the game. Trophies earned offline don't always sync, which can look exactly like a Valor Mortis achievement bug.
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Disable cross-save during the run: if you have cross-save enabled between PC and PS5, turn it off before starting your trophy run. Conflicting save files from two platforms can wipe progress.
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Pre-patch the game: make sure you're on the latest patch. Several older versions had known achievement triggers that were patched out, leaving legacy saves unable to complete them.
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Clear cache once: on both PC and PS5, clearing the system cache before a long run is a cheap insurance policy against cached data corrupting the achievement counter.
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Bookmark the tracker: keep a quick-reference page open with the trophy list, so you can mark each one off as it pops. Players who track manually report fewer missed achievements than those who rely on the in-game tracker.
Once all five steps are in place, you're ready to start the recommended order from Phase 1. The whole run is around 18-20 hours for a player who's already familiar with the combat system, and a little longer if you're learning the kit for the first time. The biggest single time-sink is the New Game+ cleanup pass, because it requires a near-complete second playthrough with specific build choices — but even that pass is straightforward if you've already mapped out which trophies need the second run.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does the Valor Mortis trophy roadmap take to complete?
A clean 39/39 run takes 18-20 hours for most players, split across a first playthrough of 12-14 hours and a focused New Game+ cleanup pass of 6-8 hours. Players who already know the maps can trim the New Game+ pass to under 5 hours by skipping optional content and heading straight to the trophy-specific triggers.
What should I do if a Valor Mortis achievement is not unlocking after multiple retries?
The most reliable Valor Mortis achievement fix is to fully close the game, reload the last manual save, and re-perform the trigger. If that fails, check the in-game progress tracker to see if the counter is moving at all. A counter that moves but never pops is usually a server-side sync delay — wait through one chapter transition and the trophy should register. Counters that don't move at all point to a save file issue, and the cleanest path is to reload an earlier manual save from the same chapter.
Are there Valor Mortis hidden trophy locations that don't show on the map?
Yes. Six trophies in the list are tied to objects or interactions that don't appear on the main map: Whisper in the Dark, Tide Turner, Spire Cartographer, The Forgotten Letter, Silver Tongue, and One With the Fog. Each one requires interacting with a specific environmental object in a non-obvious way. The fastest way to clear them is to interact with every readable object in each new area, even if it looks like flavor text. Players who also work through the Valor Mortis trophy earned checklist alongside this guide tend to clear the hidden cluster in a single New Game+ pass.
Can I earn all 39 trophies in a single playthrough?
No. The Pacifist's Mark trophy requires fewer than 5 kills in the final mission, which is only possible on a New Game+ run with optimized gear. The Forgotten Letter is also New Game+-only, because it requires a specific item that only respawns on a second playthrough. A clean first run can clear 32-34 of the 39 trophies, with the remaining 5-7 reserved for the second pass.
Is there a Valor Mortis achievement order that skips the New Game+ pass?
No clean skip exists. The 5-7 trophies locked behind New Game+ are baked into the progression system and can't be earned on a first run without breaking the game's intended difficulty curve. The good news is that the New Game+ cleanup pass is much faster than the first run, because you can skip every optional encounter and head straight to the trophy-specific triggers.