Are achievements retroactive?

Do you need a new save?

No. Both official sources say the same thing.

The FAQ answers it plainly: you will not need a new save, and players retroactively earn achievements for things they have already accomplished.

The patch notes go further and add the opt-out. Achievements populate from your existing save data, and if you would prefer to start fresh without receiving them retroactively, you start a new save file.

How many achievements are there?

1. That figure comes from the Steam store page and matches the Steam achievement statistics page.

If you see a lower number quoted elsewhere, check the source. The community wiki currently lists only 60, which looks like an incomplete page rather than a real disagreement.

Why does the unlock rate look broken?

Because the game had only been out a few days, not because anything failed.

A player posted on the Steam forums on 8 August saying every achievement showed a global unlock rate of about 0.01%, including one for finishing the prologue. They had deliberately started a fresh save to avoid old-save problems, so it looked like the retroactive system had misfired.

The replies explained it. Achievements had only just been added, most returning players had not loaded their saves yet, and the game sold in very large numbers at launch, so the denominator was enormous while the numerator was still tiny. The original poster accepted that and dropped the bug report.

This is worth knowing because it looks exactly like a broken feature and is not one.

Has any achievement actually been broken?

One, and it had nothing to do with retroactivity.

Patch 1.0.2 fixed the Time Flies achievement so that it works as intended. Patch 1.0.1 contained no achievement fixes at all.

We could not find a single verified report of the retroactive system itself failing.

Which achievements are the rarest?

The Steam statistics page gives real global unlock rates, and the progression ones sit at the bottom.

• Mistril Star Rank, for reaching town rank 100: 1.4%
• Ringing Ovation, for repairing the Bell Tower: 1.3%
• Diamond Star Rank: 3.5%
• Gold Star Rank: 4.7%

Those numbers say something useful about the game. Town rank 100 is a genuine long haul that very few players have finished, so if you are chasing it you are in rare company.

What happens if you play on both a new and an old save?

Achievements are account-wide on Steam, so anything unlocked on either file stays unlocked.

Starting a new save to earn them in order only works if you do not load the old one, since loading it grants the retroactive batch immediately.