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Pillars of Eternity 2 Deadfire Achievement Guide

Achievement Walkthrough for Pillars of Eternity 2 Deadfire. I will explain achievements in order so you wont accidentally miss one.

Pillars of Eternity 2 Deadfire Achievement Guide

This guide is a walkthrough to get all the achievements in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire with minimal spoilers. Read it as you play and don’t jump too far ahead or some plot character names or location names will be revealed.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire has 55 achievements. 37 of those are related to the base game and 18 related to DLCs. You can get all achievement on a single playthough if you follow this guide. Unlike Pillars of Eternity this game has no difficulty based achievements so you can choose your own challenge level freely. I chose veteran and it took me 137 hours to get all achievements, write this guide and explore pretty much every place and do every quest I could find. I guess it was around twentyish hours to write this guide and to check wiki/other guides so you might want to subtract that from the total.

This guide follows the main quest line for a bit and then there will be some free exploration until we hit the DLC level requirements. Keep in mid that there are four major factions in this game and a few faction related quests that can lock you out of getting all the other factions achievements but I will warn you of those so don’t worry. Just remember the name ‘Crookspur’. Don’t visit it until I instruct you to.

This guide expects that you have all the DLCs. If you don’t have those, just ignore all achievements that have a tiny bit brighter gold frame on them. First DLC achievement will be in the first major settlement where you can modify your pet looks & stats.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / Walkthrough base game achievement – darker gold frame

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / Walkthrough DLC achievement – brighter gold frame

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughMark of progression 0/100 – I will mark progression on an achievement like this.

This guide is written while playing the final patch 5.0 and with all DLCs. Consult the Mods section if you want to check what mods I was using during my playthrough.

Enjoy your journey!

Beginner tips

This section has some beginner tips for you. You can freely skip to the next section if you want to find out how the game works by yourself.

Real-time with Pause or Turn-Based

Your first selection is important. Make this decision based on how much time you have to play this game and what do you enjoy more: puzzles or action. Turn-Based is more tactical but the fights last longer you can realistically expect to fight a single combat for 45 minutes and lose and need to start again. Real-time with Pause is much more faster but chaotic and most of the time your party members are AI controlled with you having no idea what skills they are using and what they have left.

There is no right answer here: Pick what suits your style more. There is so much satisfaction when you pull of an incredibly efficient turn in Turn-Based but you will get bored to tears when you have to wait 15 monsters to do their 30 second turns each and you know you can only kill two or maybe three during your turn.

One option if you are really on the fence is to do the first island on both modes. Just be aware that this game really likes its massive combats. You will often meet 10+ monsters.

Your selection will ultimately affect some skills in Character Creation like Rogue ability Escape which is really good in TB but completely useless in RTwP. I won’t go through them all as there are too much to cover. Just be aware of any skills that lasts only for few seconds. Those won’t be good in RTwP.

Character creation

  • Single class vs multi class
    Main difference is that multi class cannot have the power level 8 and 9 abilities and when leveling up single class character will get to higher power levels faster than multi class character. Some classes have really powerful stuff in the PL 8/9 tier like Wizard and some can build around not having those.
  • Class
    Most of the classes are perfectly viable. Some are better Turn-Based, some Real Time with Pause but it isn’t a huge difference. Just pick what you want – there is no more (game version 5.0) one best option as the patch balanced most classes. You might want to check a few youtube videos how your class plays out and if it’s better for turn based or not. I picked a Single Class Cipher. Hint: You will get companions very early and each companion gets three different class options for you to choose. Your first two companions are a possible tank (Fighter/Rogue) and a priest (Monk/Priest) and both can be just dps if you select so.
  • Attributes
    The stars next to stats should tell you enough what to focus. READ what the attributes say! This is not Dungeons & Dragons so your Wizard spell damage comes from Might. Remember that unlike in other games your attributes do not change when you level up. So you are pretty much stuck whatever you picked from the beginning. You should spend quite a lot of time figuring out how you want to play your character in this screen. Consider this: if one of your stat is going to be bad anyway, why not lower it a bit more to get the important stats higher. During my playthrough I found out that Perception was the most common stat check. In the early game most of the checks were against 12 or 13 and gradually rising from thereIf you are into min-maxing I was able to lower my constitution and resolve to 3 and have pretty much no consequences during my playthrough. I was playing a ranged character so dropping constitution was an option for me.
  • Weapon Proficiencies
    Every class can use whatever weapon they wish even if they are not proficient with them. You only miss the on/off weapon ability of that current weapon type. If your wizard wants to two-hand a great sword go for it. Since you cannot know (without wiki) what loot you are going to get don’t fret too much about weapon proficiencies.
  • Build guides
    There are hundreds of build guides for classes for this game. Most of them are outdated for current version so when you have found the class you want to play you can search for builds with keywords ‘Pillars of eternity 2 5.0 build <classname>’. Remember that the game changed quite a bit between the launch and the final 5.0 patch in 2019 so guides and builds published 2020 and after should be good. If you cannot find up-to-date guide for your class you can use the old guides but be aware that some skills might be nerfed or changed. I used this Single Class Cipher guide for my playthrough and it was pretty fun.

There are also few good character creation videos for you to check like this

Leveling up

You should pick an active and a passive skills for yourself and a different ones for your companions so that you can cover most of the available skills between your party. Of the active skills Sleight of Hand, Alchemy and Explosives are least useful.

  • Once you have picked one active and one passive skill for a companion always raise them and nothing else.
  • Athletics comes up all the time so keep it high.
  • Mechanics is a good skill to keep up because you will disarm traps and open locks with it.
  • Try to keep one or few of the talking skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight, Intimidate) as high as possible.
  • Active skills Explosives, Sleight of Hand are very situational. There are not many cool stuff to bomb or steal in this game. (For Sleight of Hand you can check my Pickpocketing Guide if you really insist). Stealth can be useful if your play style supports it.

Items

There are often stat checks that can be done with items. Try to keep at least one of these with you all the time

  • Rope and Grappling Hook
  • Torch
  • Flint and Tinder
  • Lockpick
  • Hammer and ChiselThere is one more useful item to have. Since the game is all about sailing a Spyglass is very much worth it once you can acquire one. You can see further in the map while sailing and can use it in many encounters. It’s an expensive but very useful tool.

About companions & factions

Companions and sidekicks

There are 7 companions and 6 sidekicks to recruit. How they differ? Companions have their own quests that you can complete and sidekicks don’t have any quests. Companions have more unique dialogues and a bit more personality.

You are expected to recruit all of the companions and four of the six sidekicks but you don’t have to complete their quests (unless you wish to see all of the content) for any achievements. The achievement for ‘Recruiter’ (for the sidekicks) says that you have to recruit all of the sidekicks but it seems you only need to recruit four. I got mine after the fourth.

If you want to role play your character there are only two achievements you need to keep in mind: You need to max your reputation with someone and ruin it with an another. We will do the latter in the very beginning of the game with save file so don’t worry too much about it. The first one will most likely come naturally at some point. Just in case you want to know want to know how close you are to max relationship it takes a bit over 20 positive pips (the triangles in the reputation chart). In any case once you have both achievements reputation achievements and recruiter achievements you can make a custom group if you wish. You will miss a lot of unique dialogue though.

In the guide I will mark companions and sidekicks like this:

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGathering the Party 1/7 – Edér
Gathering the Party 2/7 – Xoti

Factions

There are four major factions in this game and you need to complete specific set of the quests of a single faction to get the achievement for that faction’s questline. Once you finish one faction questline you cannot continue with other factions! We need to create a savefile where you have all faction quests done except the last for each faction and then do them one by one reloading the save after getting the achievement leaving the one faction you like the most to be the last you finish.

Also your actions during each faction quests can hinder your advancement with the other factions unless you can talk yourself out of trouble. So keep your diplomacy, intimidate and bluff scores high or you might need to do another playthrough / load save. Usually try to avoid killing other faction members or destroying their assets.

Do note that while all of the required faction questlines are in the journal under the corresponding faction name, not all quests there are counted for the faction questline. For example there are smaller one shots and bounties which do not count. While writing this guide I was not sure which ones you actually needed to do. I’m 90% sure that the only quest that matters is the very last one, but of course to access it you need to do prerequisite quests. I will try to mark the faction quests when you can complete them but few of them span over many areas and have different outcomes / approaches so it won’t be totally accurate.

Short summary of the four factions:

Vailian Trading Company: The Vailian Trading Company is a powerful merchant consortium from the Vailian Republics. They are primarily interested in expanding their economic influence in the Deadfire Archipelago. Think of East India Company.

Principi Sen Patrena: The Principi are a loose coalition of pirates and smugglers who control the seas of the Deadfire. They value their independence and freedom above all else and are known for their cunning and ruthlessness. Think of bickering band of pirates.

Royal Deadfire Company: The Royal Deadfire Company is a colonial power from the Aedyr Empire. Led by Governor Clario, they seek to establish a strong colonial presence in the region, which often puts them in conflict with the native Huana people. Think of gun wielding conquistadors in South America.

Huana: The Huana are the native inhabitants of the Deadfire Archipelago. They have a deep connection to the land and water, and their culture is based on tribal and animistic beliefs. Think of native Americans.

These are the last quests / points of no return for each faction.

  • Principi – Last quest ‘A Dance with Death’
  • Huana – Last quest ‘Taking Out the Traders’
  • Royal Deadfire Company – Last quest ‘The Final Maneuver’
  • Vailian Trading Company – Last quest ‘Sabotage at the Brass Citadel’

DLCs

There are three main DLCs in Pillars of Eternity 2

Beast of Winter
4/5
Suggested level 14
Suggested companions: Ydwin & Vatnir

  • Starts when you activate a wax-sealed letter in your ship.
  • The first DLC is all about winter, freezing, entropy and the god of endings, Rymrgand. There is a new sidekick available: Vatnir the Endings godlike.
  • Two very enjoyable, tough, but avoidable, fights plus lots of lore.
  • You get a nice frosty armor set and a mace.

Seeker, Slayer, Survivor
2/5
Suggested level 16
Suggested sidekick: Konstanten

  • Starts when you have completed the story quest ‘He Waits in Fire’ and interacting with a crate in your ship.
  • Combat heavy DLC as is suggested by the title. Up to twenty four challenging arena battles.
  • All about unlocking unique fights in the new DLC mechanic: Pool of Memories
  • Unlocking new memories will send you all around Deadfire returning to places you visited long time ago

The Forgotten Sanctum
5/5
Suggested level 18
Suggested companions: Aloth, Fassina. (Fassina speaks a lot but I found Ydwin spoke more than Aloth)

  • Starts when you have allied yourself with one of the factions and are ready to enter the last mission.
  • (Not recommended) Can also be started manually if you really want the loot here ASAP. Just go to the Halls of the Unseen in the Black Isles once you have completed the second last story quest (The one with that rhymes with ‘Vagrant’s Cheek’) or done the SE Deadfire uncharted island mapping quest.
  • All about magic and mysteries
  • You meet some all-star mages of this world. Many of your spells got their names from them.
  • Non-linear
  • Cool gear and spells for magic users

There are also four optional megabosses for people who really want to challenge themselves in combat and a a cool trade ship. Look for the name ‘Captain Thaenic’ roaming the seas and interact with them.

Part 1 – Early game (lvl 1-5)

Beach area

Once you have created your character and played a bit you will find yourself on a beach. Talk to the guy next to you and recruit him to your party.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGathering the Party 1/7 – Edér

Explore the beach area freely but don’t leave the map before heading to a cave. Inside the cave you find someone trapped. Edér should have enough mechanics to disarm all the five traps that surround the poor person. Guess how many traps we need for our first achievement? Yup. Create a quicksave (F5), drag the traps from your inventory to your quick slots and place them on the ground. Notice you can only have one trap on ground per person. That is useful information for harder difficulties. After the achievement you can reload your quicksave with (F8) to keep the traps.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughTrapper – Place five traps

You can keep exploring but before you leave the map (the beach area) create a manual save file named ‘Negative Eder’. We will reload this save file a bit later after you have explored the first island and beeline to certain places to get max negative reputation for Edér. After you leave the map I suggest you explore a bit but still head North towards the main objective – Port Maje. Eastward there might be too difficult combat scenarios/stat checks for your two lvl 2 characters (on harder difficulties)

Port Maje

Explore freely but grab the priest girl next to the tents early for more companions

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGathering the Party 2/7 – Xoti

At some point you probably want to check the Kraken’s Eye tavern. Quicksave your game, go chat with the barkeeper and select the recruit adventurers option. Recruit a level 1 Adventurer and create whatever. After you have created it you will get an achievement

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughMolded to Perfection – Create an adventurer at an Adventurer’s Hall.

Reload your quicksave (unless you want to keep your new adventurer) and continue the story up until you enter the digsite.

Engwithan Digsite

Once in the digsite and after you clear the middle you can chat with some people and will find a familiar face from the first Pillars of Eternity.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGathering the Party 3/7 – Aloth

Continue exploring the whole island and come back to this guide once you have acquired your ship and can sail with it.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughA Sailor’s Life – Repair your ship and prepare to sail the seas.

Your own ship

After getting your ship and sailing a bit you will be caught and have a discussion with a captain from Principi faction. Accept his quest as we need it for achievement and accept the companion that he offers.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughConduct Unbecoming – Accept the ‘Blow the Man Down’ quest from Captain Furrante. It will take us little bit until we can complete the quest so you won’t get the achievement yet

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGathering the Party 4/7 – Serafen

After you get Serafen you are free to roam the seas. Before you do that let’s return to that save file we made earlier. Save your current game with manual save and load ‘Negative Ered’

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughBurning Bridges – Once you have loaded your save go towards the Ilonet’s Fork where you saw the wagon being stuck. Aproach them openly and ask about ‘Dreams?’ then threaten them (even if you have 0 skill, Edér has 1). After they give you stuff attack them. This fight can be hard on Veteran and PotD difficulties but I managed to win it by focusing on the caster first and then kiting the rest (RTwP mode). If you have lots of trouble you can change difficulty or create a new game with the easiest difficulty and speedrun the game until you wake up on the beach. After the battle Edér will confront you but just say that you will not change and you will lead by your own way. After Ilonet’s Fork continue to the Upoho Wharo Woods area where you met the druid and his pigs. Call out the druid and first say that you just want to talk, then say that you just want to pass through the forest and lastly pick the threaten to kill the pigs option. It wont work but you can continue with the survival option and after this the achievement should pop.

Exploration towards Neketaka

Now comes the part where the linear path breaks. You are free to explore everywhere and this guide cannot cover your exact journey. That’s fine though. I expect that you explore a bit around the original island and then head towards the main objective city Neketaka North to North-West stopping by every time you find something cool.

There are multiple achievements that you could get right now but I’m only telling that they exists instead of expecting you to pursue them:

First you need to gather 15 bounties out of the 28 available for an achievement. While traveling towards Neketaka I managed to find two. It doesn’t matter that we don’t have the corresponding quest yet. I’m going to keep a soft counter for bounties I have found but your mileage might vary.

Second you need to visit all the six major ports. You have already been in Port Maje and next one is Neketaka. I won’t keep count on these because we will visit them all.

Third you need to chart twelve uncharted islands. One of them is right between Port Maje and Neketaka. Once you name your first Island you get an achievement. I suggest you don’t search or look for any maps that spoil them. Exploring the unknown is fun and there are sidequests which vaguely point you to right direction. So don’t worry about these.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughMaking your Mark – Name your first Uncharted Island.

Lastly if you want to do some naval combat ( and win ) you will get experience and an achievement for that. I escaped all other ships & fights because of my chosen harder difficulty. You will get ‘Sailor’s Tale’ achievement for gathering enough xp to get a new rank.

Whether or not you want to explore less or more this guide expects you to go towards Neketaka and pause just before entering.

Just before you reach Neketaka (basically right in front of it) make a manual save and name it ‘Mutiny’. We want a mutiny achievement before entering Neketaka because our crew morale probably is pretty bad and they are low level. Lets drop our morale as low as we can and then start sailing in the hope of getting a crew mutiny random event.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughInfamous Captain – Survive an attack from a mutinous crew. I removed all water and food and used the ‘Wait’ for few days until I reached 1/100 morale. Then I started circling the island in fast mode (F) hoping for random events. The second one I got was the one I wanted. The crew demanded to get paid because they were hungry – instead of diplomacy I attacked them. The resulting fight was pretty easy but if you have trouble with it you can probably continue the story in Neketaka a bit and sell your extra crew members to the shipwright. You get the achievement after you have killed all your crew members.

Reload your mutiny save and enter Neketaka. Once there you will get an achievement

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughHeart of the Deadfire – Reach Neketaka.

Bounties 2 / 28
Uncharted Islands 1 / 12

Part 2 – Neketaka (lvl 5-9)

Queen’s Berth

Welcome to Neketaka! The main hub for your quests for a while. There are plenty of stuff to do and places to explore but let’s cross few achievements of our list immediately after entering and before exploring the first area, Queen’s Berth.

You probably found during your exploration a cannon or two for your ship. You might’ve even equipped them (Go to the ship view and drag-drop the cannon to it’s place). But if you don’t have a cannon yet go to the Shipwright, quicksave, and buy one from him and equip it for an achievement. You can reload your save afterwards.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughShip’s Carpenter – Attach your first ship upgrade.

Next we will craft some stuff. After my explorations I had enough materials to create three different scrolls. Note that you need only one of each but it has to be three different scrolls. Quicksave and create three different scrolls.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughScribe – Create three or more different spell scrolls.

Then we craft some potions. Now it’s five different potions.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughAlchemist – Create five or more different potions.

I didn’t have enough ingredients for bombs or money for enchantments at this point, but if you do. Great. We will go to an alchemist soonish where we can buy some missing ingredients. In any case you might want to reload your quicksave now. Continue exploring the area. Once you visit The Wild Mare tavern in the upstairs you can recruit your first sidekick.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughRecruiter 1/6 – Konstanten

It’s up to you in which order you want to explore the areas. I’m writing this guide in a way that we can acquire our companions & sidekicks first and then start to introduce ourselves to the four different factions. So my suggested route is Queen’s Berth -> Periki’s Outlook -> Serpent’s Crown -> The Sacred Stair -> The Brass Citadel -> The Gullet. Do note that you will travel between the areas much more than just once, I just explain the achievements in order of that suggested route. I also suggest you explore Neketaka to the fullest before heading back to the ocean. Remember also that you need to complete all of the four major faction quests so try to keep your reputation with them all on the plus side.

Periki’s Outlook

In Periki’s Outlook there are few shops where you can buy some ingredients for your explosives. Do the same as we did earlier – quicksave, buy ingredients and then craft five different bombs. You can reload your save after you get the achievement

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughExplosives Expert – Create five or more different bombs.

I had 5000 gold and enough resources at this point and was able to enchant five items to ‘Fine’ quality (1000 gold and few ingredients each) for the last crafting achievement. *Note even though I enchanted six different items to Fine quality, the achievement didn’t pop for me. Hopefully you got it with no problems. I got it later ( I tried periodically and it was my third try in the Gullet )

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughEnchanter – Enchant five items.

Our first DLC achievement. In The Dark Cupboard use the Critter Cleaver to chop two pets and then create a new one (it costs 2000 coins so you probably want to reload quicksave afterwards)

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughCruelty to Animals – Create a pet using the Critter Cleaver.

Make a mental note of the magic shop (The Dark Cupboard) seller Fassina. She is a sidekick that you can recruit but first you need to complete few quests. At this point just accept her quest.

Once you enter the Watershaper’s Guild you will recruit your fifth companion

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGathering the Party 5/7 – Tekēhu

Serpent’s Crown

Continuing our main objective of meeting the Queen we will go towards the palace. Once you enter the palace in the cutscene / dialogue you can recruit the last two companions. That is depending how you selected / played Pillars of Eternity I history. For me I was not able to recruit Pallegina here. No worries though – she can be easily found in the Vailian Trading Company Headquarters.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGathering the Party 6/7 – Maia
Gathering the Party 7/7 – Pallegina (possible that she is not here for you. Can be recruited in the Vailian Trading Company Headquarters later)

The Sacred Stair

On top of Spire of Soul-Seers you will find Ydwin. Recruit her as a sidekick. Talking to Flaune here will start ‘A Glimpse Beyond’ quest which for harder difficulties includes quite hard fight and no way to retreat from the quest. So if you want to try that now make a manual save. You can come back later if it’s too challenging. It’s the first Vailian Trading Company faction quest so I will mark it done here.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughRecruiter 2/6 – Ydwin

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughA Brighter World 1/4 – ‘A Glimpse Beyond’

The Brass Citadel

Remember to continue Fassina’s quest in here so we can recruit her as a sidekick later.

You can finish Royal Deadfire Company faction quest ‘The Brass Empire’ here

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughHostile Takeover 1/6 – The Brass Empire

The Gullet

You can complete Huana faction quest ‘Trade Secrets’ here

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughMaking Waves 1/4 – Trade Secrets

In the Old City Ruins you can find your first Soulbound weapon, Modwyr, a sword that can be only worn by the Watcher. We need to be bound to & upgrade a soulbound weapon to the max level for an achievement. Sadly this sword was not easily usable or upgradable for my ranged watcher. There are total of 13 soulbound weapons to be found so we don’t need to fret on one.

Finishing Neketaka

Finishing the most of the on-level Neketaka quests I was around lvl 9 at this point and just finished Arkemyr’s Vault quest so that I could get Fassina.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughRecruiter 3/6 – Fassina

Before heading out you probably managed to recruit few crewmates. We want to fill all our ship’s slots with crewmates for an achievement. If you don’t have enough head to the shipwright in Queen’s Berth and purchase missing ones. Do note that you need crew members in those three open slots in the bottom right corner.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughFull Complement – Assign a crew member to all slots on a single ship.

We can now either explore the island or head towards the next objective. First we explore the island a bit (at least for the bounty, I left the hard marked places alone) and then we will head out towards the objective. At this point my main character was tiny bit over level 10 and others under 1k exp away from level 10. My reputation with the four major factions was between 0 to +3. I had to skip one quest (giving luminous adra to Mad Morena) as the thugs were aggroed in Undercroft because I opened the boar pen. Killing those thugs would’ve made my reputation with Principi to lower to -5

Bounties 3 / 28
Uncharted Islands 1 / 12

Free roam notes

After Neketaka the game opens a lot more. There is no more a linear path or quests you should do first. Everything you do now is up to you. If you want to follow my path you are free to do so. If you do your own route the achievements will come at different order than in this guide but that’s ok. Note that if you want to do all quests you will be overleveled for most content from here on. I’m no longer putting suggested levels on the section titles.

If we take Neketaka as the center point I will do a route in this guide starting from the East and then pretty much explore the South-East quadrant followed by South-West quadrant of the map and after that the two Northern quadrants. I’m using the red lines in the map as soft guidelines for quadrants. Following my route is completely optional as you might want to head to Fort Deadlight or Hasongo immediately if those interest you more. If you want – you can free roam as much as you want from here on until about level 15 when we start doing the first DLCs. Once you hit around level 15 check the Part 5 – Northern Deadfire section and the DLC sections.

If you want to follow the guide continue to the next section.

For those of you who want to free roam here are the things you need to do while exploring

  • Collect bounties for the 15 Bounties achievement. (Bounties do not seem to lower your reputation against any faction so you can fight those naval battles too.)
  • Name uncharted islands for the 12 uncharted islands achievement. There is a cartographer in Neketaka who gives quests related to where these islands are.
  • Find either of the last two sidekicks (one in the East – see next Section, the other in the Fort Deadlight)
  • Find a soulbound weapon and start upgrading it for an achievement. There are five in the base game and eight more in the DLCs
  • Fight some naval battles to earn captain ranks. I found it easiest just to board every ship immediately instead of doing the text based combat.
  • Complete story quests and some marked quests like ‘Blow the Man Down’. There are few end-game quests too that are not story related that grant achievements like ‘Berkana’s Folly’ which you will get following the Arkemyr’s (Archmage in Neketaka) questline.

And most importantly

  • Keep doing faction questlines (quests under faction tabs) and keep your reputation high with each faction. Check the ‘About factions’ section in this guide to see the final quest for each faction AND DO NOT COMPLETE IT or reload a save before after getting the achievement. The four factions have each a final mission which will fail all quests from other factions so you will lock yourself out of faction achievements if you finish one faction questline completely. All the factions have a quests Crookspur and the results can block advancing each other. Check Part 5 – Northern Deadfire the North-West Deadfire part for more details.

Part 3 – East and South-East Deadfire

Now that we have spent plenty of time in Neketaka let’s do some ocean exploring. Questwise we have quests which point us to either West towards Hasongo (the main questline) or East towards Tikawara (faction quests). I went East first but it’s up to you what you want to do. Right now we want to complete faction questlines and gather the last sidekick floating on a floatsam in the very Eastern part of the map and explore Uncharted Islands and collect bounties. Remember that you don’t have to return the bounty immediately but rather keep them and return them in bulk.

Suggested path leads us East so head towards Tikawara and explore a bit while doing so

Tikawara and East Deadfire

The small island North of Poko Kohara has another Soulbound item for you within the Subterranean Temple. This time it’s a mace for ciphers, monks and fighters. You need pretty high intelligence and resolve (14 & 15) to lift it up. My resolve was 3 and I was only able to boost it to 12 so I had to leave the mace behind.

Now from that last island let’s go get the last sidekick, Rekke. Before that level up your sidekicks & companion to your current level. You can switch your party when you are on your ship & then go to the Subterranean Temple to level them up. It’s silly that you can’t level them up while sailing. Anyways, where we go next there might be naval combats and you probably need to board to win those fights. Having your companions and sidekicks at the same level as you instead of level 1 will help you a lot. You can give them some basic gear too.

Now check your map. See that red line near Neketaka? You want to follow that red line until you hit the Eastern map border. So from Neketaka following the red line sail towards East until you cannot travel no more. From here you want to sail North – North-West until you see a floatsam – some planks in the water. I had a pirate ship patrol near that floatsam and it might be the same for you too. After fighting the pirate via boarding (I was level 10, they were level 7) and winning you will probably get the Sailor’s Tale achievement. It’s possible you fought someone much earlier so you already had it. You get it depending on how much xp you have gathered. You can check your current rank from the ship screen. There are tiny blips under the Watcher portrait.

Here is the floatsam location if you need visual guide:

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / Walkthrough

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / Walkthrough

If you fought anyone while sailing you should get

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughSailor’s Tale – Acquired First Captain Rank. This means you have gathered enough experience for a new rank. You get xp from exploring the seas, random events and winning fights.

Now check the floatsam and find a peculiar character – your last Sidekick Rekke. Your achievement should pop right now even though the achievement description says you need to recruit them all. If the achievement didn’t pop, there are still two more sidekicks available to recruit. I will keep marking the achievement for you until we have found all of them.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughRecruiter 4/6 – Rekke

Poko Kohora

Next up head to Poko Kohora. Explore the ruins and you can finish two faction quests here and find another Soulbound item. This time it’s a dagger for Paladins, Priests and Rogues. It’s in the level two (look for some barrels..)

Make a manual save here before the decision just in case so that you can come back if your faction quests fail because of your actions.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughHostile Takeover 2/6 – ‘Dim Prospects’

At this point I started my return trip to Neketaka with ‘a small detour’ around Port Maje to do the mapping quest around there. That gave me the fourth uncharted island.

Bounties 3 / 28
Uncharted Islands 4 / 12

Back in Neketaka

When I came back to Neketaka I returned the faction quests, did a new one in Periki’s Overlook and did a few other quests that were too high level when we last were here. You should probably grab the next mapping quest just for some indication where to find more uncharted islands if you have mapped around the same as I.

South Eastern Deadfire

If you don’t care about sailing and exploring and you have already one soulbound weapon that you’re upgrading – you can safely skip this chapter.

(Optional) At this point I didn’t want to continue with the main story or faction quests yet and I was bummed that I couldn’t get the soulbound mace from that Subterranean Temple earlier. I did some math and turns out you can boost level 3 Resolve stat to level 15 with gear, pets, temples and consumables. Anycase I managed to get the weapon at this point and you might’ve gotten it much earlier. After that I explored the whole South-Eastern Deadfire (box inside the red lines) in my mace-wielding frenzy, fought a few naval battles, found the missing Uncharted Island for the mapping quest, and found a new soulbound weapon. This time the weapon was a pollaxe for Barbarians, Druids and Fighters. There is still one more soulbound weapon available in the base game. DLCs have 8 more after that.

I mapped the three islands near Tikawara and explored the whole South-East region of the map. After clearing all fog of war I went back to Neketaka, got a new mapping quest and rewarded myself a new ship (Dhow) not because I needed one but because I had enough loot to sell to buy one. And because we need to buy all the ships for an achievement.

With our new ship let’s continue with the main story and the Western part of Deadfire

Bounties 3 / 28
Uncharted Islands 5 / 12

Part 4 – West and South-West Deadfire

West Deadfire

At this point if you are over level 10 you are overleveled but that’s just what happens if you explore everything and complete quests. I was level 12 in Hasongo and nothing could stop me there.

Let’s continue exploring the Western part of Deadfire. Again you might want to go by your own route and that’s fine. Just remember the three things we need to do: complete faction quests, level up your soulbound weapon if you have one (we have found three if you have followed the guide exactly) and collect bounties & uncharted islands.

Hasongo

From Neketaka to Hasongo and in Hasongo you can do the ‘A Matter of Import’ quest and the next story quest ‘A Distant Light’. The latter granting you an achievement.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughHostile Takeover 3/6 – ‘A Matter of Import’

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughEstablishing a Link – Establish a link with Eothas to track his movements. (Complete ‘A Distant Light’ quest In Hasongo)

After completing Hasongo I was able to get two of my companions to max positive relationship. Do not worry if you haven’t done it yet. Just see which companion like you the most and check what kind of topics & talk they like and keep at it – you have been improving them already.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughSteadfast Ally – Maximize positive relationship with a Companion. (It took me about 22 of those positive triangles for Eder and 26 for Maia)

Neketaka

After Hasongo (and Neketaka for quest reward) you will get a quest called ‘The Shadow Under Neketaka’ from the Huana queen. Completing that quest (no matter the outcome) and dealing with a similar situation later in the next story quest will get you an achievement. I won’t spoil which achievement yet.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughMaking Waves 1/3 – Complete ‘The Shadow Under Neketaka’

Fort Deadlight

Anyway after the previously mentioned quest I went after Principi faction quest ‘Blow the Man Down’ in Fort Deadlight. Before completing that quest (and if you haven’t gotten your recruiter achievement) in Fort Deadlight go to the Court and chat with Mirke and recruit her as a sidekick. If your reputation with Principi is bit low you and you don’t want to fight the whole Deadlight you can sneak up to Belwath and make a diplomatic deal with him to buff your Principi reputation ..and after looting and exploring the whole Fort Deadlight come back and teach him a lesson. Just an option for you – you won’t lose your reputation but there might be consequences.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughRecruiter 5/6 – Mirke

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughConduct Unbecoming – Complete the “Blow the Man Down” quest.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGold, Greed, and Guts 1/5 – ‘Blow the Man Down’

While exploring around Fort Deadlight you should be able to map two more Islands for the cartographer quest. I also had leveled my soulbound mace enough to get the final form of it. Achievement unlocked. If you haven’t gotten yours yet or don’t even have a soulbound weapon – there’s still plenty in the DLCs.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughSoulbinder – Unlock all powers of a Soulbound item.

Dunnage

Next up: Dunnage. While doing Principi quests and exploring the Western Deadfire we might as well go here. The Principi leader, Captain Furrante will give you a new quest ‘Symbols of Death’ which you might’ve already done. I will mark it done here whether or not you did it already. Just go to Neketaka and come back if you haven’t done it. It’s a short trip. There are few bounty quests to pick up in Dunnage. Don’t leave before taking them.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGold, Greed, and Guts 2/5 – ‘Symbols of Death’

After Dunnage we could go to the last two major ports Sayuka or Crookspur to get the achievement for visiting all the major ports. Instead of visiting those return to Neketaka to get the next mapping quest and clear few bounties. I think I did somewhere close six or seven naval combats by this far and my rank was very close to being the max. At max rank you get an achievement.

At this point I was level 15 and if you have followed my route we have explored all of the SE and SW quadrants of Deadfire but haven’t touched NE or NW quadrants much.

Bounties 8 / 28
Uncharted Islands 7 / 12

Part 5 – North-Eastern Deadfire

Being around level 14 or 15 at this point we get to make a decision again. Do we want to do the DLCs now or do we want to follow the story & explore the Northern Deadfire. If we do DLCs, we can use the cool gear (plenty of soulbound gear) and extra sidekick we get from those, but the main story would be a cakewalk and we would be pretty much max level once we continue exploring the Northern Deadfire. On the other hand if we continue with the main game and do DLCs once we are near the end of the game we won’t be using the soulbound stuff or sidekicks much or at all as the game will be over soon. You decide which sounds better for you.

I chose to do the DLCs first and accepted being very overleveled and overpowered for the rest of the main game. We have only one thing to do. We must complete the next story mission to unlock the second DLC (Seeker, Slayer, Survivor). So Instead of exploring the North I’m going to beeline to Ashen Maw, do the quest and then start with the first DLC in SE corner (in Harbringer’s Watch)

While you do the next story quest ‘He Waits in Fire’ you will be able to chat with a dragon and no matter how you resolve it, if you have done the Neketaka ‘The Shadow under Neketaka’ you will get an achievement for resolving the issue with the dragons and then the achievement for completing the story quest

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughDragonbane – Deal with two Dragon dilemmas – you can resolve these in any way. Peaceful approach or aggressive one matters not.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughExplosive Confrontation – complete ‘He Waits in Fire’

— go to first DLC section and return here once you have done the first two DLCs —

If you don’t have the DLCs or don’t want to do them now – that’s fine. I’m continuing this guide section expecting that you have done the Ashen Maw story quest and got the above achievements.

If you did the first two DLCs you might be very close to max level and have a lots of money.

Before we continue to explore the North let’s do one more area in the South East – The Splintered Reef. It’s a weird island with a unique story and it has a quest ‘A Paradise of the Mind’ (acquired from the local tavern) that gives an achievement similar style to ‘Berkana’s Folly’ & ‘Blow the Man Down’. The quest is level 15 one and it has one or two tough fights against multiple fampyres so bring your best crew. If you have trouble you can always come here later but I will mark it done now.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughParadise of the Mind – Complete the ‘A Paradise of the Mind’ quest.

I was scared of the bounty quests that were against ‘named’ faction captains sailing on the sea. I had totally disregarded them earlier and started really doing the bounties at this point. You don’t lose faction reputation fighting against captains who have bounty on them. This meant I did somewhere around twentyish naval battles (counting my earlier battles too) and managed to both get the Master Captain Rank achievement and the bounty achievement.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughOld Salt – Acquired Master Captain Rank. This is hard to track but if you look at your own portrait in the ship management view you can see tiny box that has triangles or stars. That’s your rank and you cannot hover over it to see your rank which is dumb. I was at five stars, one in the middle and four around it, for ages and it took me like ten more ‘x has gained a rank’ to get to the max rank. So just keep doing naval battles and don’t give up.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughBounty Hunter – Finish 15 Bounties.

I had enough money to buy all the rest of the ships: I was missing Galleon, Junk and Voyager. Without discount those cost 240000 coins. I also bought items for all upgrade slots (anchors, lanterns, etc..) for these two achievements. If you don’t have enough money yet just keep that sum in mind, collect bounties and sell stuff from your stash. For example at this point of game you shouldn’t need any Fine quality gear so you can safely get rid of them.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughA Fleet to Call My Own – Acquire each type of ship in the game. Go to Neketaka Queen’s Berth shipwright and buy Voyager (20 000), Dhow (35 000), Galleon (100 000) and Junk (120 000).

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughDecked Out – Attach each type of upgrade on a single ship. Fill all the gunslots with guns and buy helm, anchor, lantern, menagerie and the captain’s quarters upgrades from Neketaka’s shipwright. If you are missing hull and sails, those too probably.

You should be very close or already max level at this point if you did the DLCs.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughMax Level – get to level 20.

North-East Deadfire

In Motare o Kozi you can find a soulbound arquebus for chanters, rangers and wizards if you still need to upgrade your soulbound weapon.

Let’s do Bekarna’s Folly now.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughConstellation Prize – Complete the ‘Bekarna’s Folly’ quest.

Explore the North-East Deadfire. There are two Uncharted Islands and few bounties here if you need those. Beware of the ‘Briny Grotto’. There are four optional megabosses in the game and there waits one. Enter only if you are prepared. You can’t enter the Offechia channel either – that leads to the end of the game and we need to do more before that. Instead go return your mapping quest once you have completed it.

Uncharted Islands 9 / 12

Part 6 – North-Western Deadfire

North-West Deadfire

We should have plenty of faction quests in Sayuka, Ori o Koiki and Crookspur. Let’s go do those. Sayuka first. Avoid entering Crookspur for now until we have gathered every faction’s quest there.

In Sayuka you can do the ‘Overgrowth’ Royal Deadfire Company faction quest.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughHostile Takeover 4/6 – ‘Overgrowth’

Before tackling Crookspur you should clear the whole North-Western Deadfire from fog and map the remaining uncharted islands. Beware of ‘The Crystal Desert’ as it is a home to one of the optional four megabosses in the game. After the last three uncharted islands you get:

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughExplorer – Name all of the 12 Uncharted Islands.

You can start the Huana quest ‘Fruitful Alliance’ and go talk with the Wahaki tribe in Ori o Koiki island. They want the slavers be gone from Crookspur.

You will find Junvik island in the very North-West corned of the map. There’s an unique quest that grants an achievement. You can either fight or obey – it matters not.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughNew Gods of Deadfire – Complete “Nemnok the Devourer” quest.

Neketaka

Sail to Neketaka to get the second last Royal Deadfire Company quest ‘Clearing Out Crookspur’ and do the Vailian Trading Company quest ‘Skipping Ahead’ which leads to a new VTC quest ‘A Vote of No Confidence’

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughA Brighter World 2/4 – Complete ‘Skipping Ahead’ quest

Make a manual save here. You can now start ‘A Vote of No Confidence’ quest where you decide who will lead Vailian Trading Company from here on. Finishing the quest will immediately begin or fail the last VTC quest. If you start the last quest Maia will leave your party and parts of Neketaka will be locked in a point of no return kind of way. Whether you want to ally yourself with VTC or not you can complete the faction questline now. Reload the save if needed.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughA Brighter World 3/4 – Complete ‘A Vote of No Confidence’ quest

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughA Brighter World 4/4 – Complete ‘Sabotage at the Brass Citadel’ quest

After reloading your save you should still have four different faction quests all pointing towards Crookspur. Huana quest ‘Fruitful Alliance’, RDC quest ‘Clearing Out Crookspur’ and VTC quest ‘Of Like Minds’ and the Principi quest ‘A Shrewd Proposition’. The Principi under Furrante and VTC want to to keep the slave trade going and The Principi under Aeldys, RDC and Huana want to stop it. Now the thing is you can only pick one outcome there and it will block advancing with the factions who wanted the other outcome.

In summary the outcomes are.

Kill the Slavers:

  • Principi under Aeldys
  • Huana
  • Royal Deadfire Company

Aid the Slavers:

  • Principi under Furrante
  • Vailian Trading Company

So how are we going to do this then? First we make a manual save just before entering Crookspur. Let’s call it ‘Crookspur Slavers’. Then we decide which outcome we want to happen. Do we want to aid the slavers or end the slavers. Once we have decided that we do the opposite first. So if you want to kill all the slavers you first want to aid the slavers and advance the game until you have both the Principi and VTC faction achievements and reload the ‘Crookspur Slavers’ manual save.

Crookspur

Once you enter Crookspur you should finally get the visit all major ports achievement unless you got it earlier.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughAny Port in a Storm – Sail to all major ports in the Deadfire.

Next we can get the Principi faction achievement. If you want to actually ally yourself with the Principi leave this to be your last faction achievement.

For the Principi you are now ready to complete the three last quests. For the very last quest, ‘A Dance with Death’, you have to actually land in Ukaizo for the achievement to pop. You can reload your save after.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGold, Greed, and Guts 3/5 – Complete ‘A Shrewd Proposition’ quest

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGold, Greed, and Guts 4/5 – Complete ‘Honor Among Thieves’ quest

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughGold, Greed, and Guts 5/5 – Complete ‘A Dance with Death’ quest

Let’s do Huana next. Complete the next two quests for the achievement to pop.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughMaking Waves 2/3 – Complete ‘Fruitful Alliance’ quest

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughMaking Waves 3/3 – Complete ‘Taking Out the Traders’ quest

Last we will do Royal Deadfire Company. Two last quests remaining until we get the achievement.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughHostile Takeover 5/6 – Complete ‘Clearing Out Crookspur’ quest

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughHostile Takeover 6/6 – Complete ‘The Final Maneuver’ quest

Congratulations! You have now done all the faction quests. Now you need to actually decide which one you like the most and reload the ‘Crookspur Slavers’ manual save. Or you might want to do as I did and ditch them all and sail to Ukaizo alone. All you need is to gather five logs of Blackwood and craft yourself an unique hull ‘Blackwood Hull’. I also bought the ‘Dragonwing sails’ in Splintered Reef.

You can now finish the last story mission. Or you can sail a bit and wait until you are cordially invited to the third DLC. There are also the four megabosses left. This guide will head to the third DLC section of this guide and come back here once we are done with the DLC and have only one more achievement remaining – beating the final story mission.

— go to the third DLC section and return here once you have done it —

So if you did the third DLC you should only have one achievement missing. That’s the ‘beat the game’ achievement. Completionists and challenge hunters can challenge themselves with the four optional megabosses. It’s up to you if you want to do them.

Gather your faction friends or go solo (for solo you need the blackwood hull & dragonwing sails)- it’s time to finish the game. Once you arrive at the next area save your game and prepare for a fight. After the fight continue the story. There’s not much left. Only the big decision.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughThe End of the Beginning – Complete the story.

Congratulations! You beat the game and got all the achievements. Well done! Thanks for following the guide.

First DLC (Beast of Winter)

So for the first DLC. Beast of Winter, you need to be around level 14 and have received the wax-sealed letter. That item should arrive in your inventory pretty much right when you acquire your ship. Ydwin is the suggested sidekick for this DLC and if you haven’t tried playing with her now is the perfect opportunity. Optional of course. There is also a new sidekick available very early so you might want to build your group with that in mind (Ydwin is rogue/cipher and the new sidekick is priest/rogue). You can find two soulbound items in the first DLC: A breastplate and a large shield. Both equippable by anyone.

Head to Harbringer’s Watch, an icy island in the South-East Deadfire corner. In the very beginning while getting introduced to the people you are interrupted by a fight with a Dragolich. Beat it for an achievement. If you have trouble first of all check your gear and think about your group – it’s not going to get easier. Once you chat with Vatnir again you can recruit him as your last sidekick.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughWell that was Easy… – Defeat the Messenger.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughRecruiter 6/6 – Vatnir.

Continue the story and before entering the portal you can interract with the frozen elf to find a soulbound item, heavy armor Guardian’s Plate. Also you can find the second soulbound item, a large shield called Wintertide Bulwark, in the Eastern Cavern. It’s in a sarcophagus. Next story achievement comes when you succesfully enter the portal.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughFollowing Certain Death – Enter the Beyond.

In the Shattered Passage, the place you entered, there will be three different realms you can visit before challenging the Dragolich. Each of them has an unique NPC whose destiny you can decide. Once you pick each of their fates (it doesn’t matter what you choose) you will get an achievement.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughTraveler of the Void – Decide the fate of the three people in the three different Realms inside Shattered Passage.

Continuing the story you will get these two achievements no matter how you resolve the issues.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughThis time with Feeling – Defeat the Dragolich.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughNull and Void – Escape the White Void.

And that’s the first DLC done. Congratulations! Did you fight the Dragolich or persuade it? I spent almost two hours there fighting it before I managed to beat the damn thing. Hard fight. I also fought the big icy cow and he was really easy. Let’s leave this icy place and head towards the next DLC.

Before we do that you might want to check that Splintered Reef island in the very South East corner of Deadfire. It’s a weird place but there is a quest there that you can do for an achievement. I will mark the achievement in the Nothern Deadfire section of this guide but you might as well do it now while you’re next to it.

Afer the Splintered Reef continue in the next DLC section.

Second DLC (Seeker, Slayer, Survivor)

Set sail to West Deadfire. There is an island North from the Principi stronghold Dunnage. Island Kazuwari. That’s where the second DLC starts. The DLC is very combat heavy. Suggested companion for the DLC is Konstanten who knows unique lore about the place. If you haven’t tried playing with Konstanten yet now is the opportunity to do so. Optional of course. I also brought Fassina with me as I hoped Konstanten and Fassina would some interesting dialogue between themselves. but that wasn’t the case at all. Ydwin had more to say than Fassina.

You might want to think about what skills you have in your group – you’re going to an island and the DLC title should hint what you’re going to do there.

The main story here is pretty linear. You need to prove yourself after landing on the island and quite quickly you find yourself in a temple where you need to fight in an arena against different opponents. No way of talking out of this. Once you beat the first four challenges you get the first achievement.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughThe Watcher’s Debut – Earn the title of contender in the Crucible by beating the four challenges.

Next you will meet Engari. He sends you to find artifacts for Pool of Memories to favor the three Faces. To progress in the DLC story you only need to find one but achievement wise we want to find nine extra artifacts. You get three different quests from Engari – complete them all and return with the three artifacts to the Pool of Memories.

So how does the Pool of Memories work? You search for artifacts and sacrifice them to the Pool to unlock more challenges. For each of the three artifacts you just got you will unlock three times three challenges. Once you have done one of the new challenges Engari will give you three new quests to find three new artifacts. Let’s call these extra artifacts. After you have found the first three extra artifacts you do it twice more for total of nine extra artifacts. Do not fight the other survivor groups yet so skip all challenges that are called ‘Contest of the <Face>’.

To complete the quest set Engari gave us we set sail to Neketaka & Port Maje. I suggest not to look for exact locations of each artifact in the wiki but to explore and search based on the quest hints as they are pretty good. You might find cool stuff you previously missed – I sure did. Just enable fast walk [F] and run around.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughArchivist of Kazuwari 3/9 – First set of three extra artifacts sacrificed to Pool of Memories.

After you have sacrificed the first extra set of artifacts to the Pool of Memories you need to do few of the challenges for each Face. Two should be enough for the Face to appear and talk to you. Repeat it for all the three faces and talk to Engari to get the next quest set for the next three artifacts. This time the hints are bit more vague. I’ll drop a spoiler for them if you don’t want to explore around this time: One is in Fleet Master’s Office in Brass Citadel, one is in the Dark Cupboard in Periki’s Outlook and the last one is in the Poko Kohara Ruins.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughArchivist of Kazuwari 6/9 – Second set of three extra artifacts sacrificed to Pool of Memories.

Now you need to choose one of the Faces and beat their survivor group. If you still need to upgrade a soulbound item there are total of three different soulbound items here, but you can only get one. Once you complete a ‘Contest of the <Face>’ challenge the other contest challenges will be unavailable as will their rewards. Contest of the Seeker rewards gives a rapier for ciphers, rangers, rogues and wizards, Contest of the Slayer gives a battle axe for barbarians and Contest of the Survivor gives a helm for chanters, druids, monks and priests. If you complete the Slayer challenge ‘Tactical Ogres’ you can get a hide soulbound armor for barbarians, ciphers and druids.

Once you beat one of the three ‘Contest of the <Face>’ challenges you get:

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughFacing the Faces – Become the chosen of the Seeker, Slayer, or Survivor.

After that there is one more challenge left. The Battle Royale. After you beat it you get:

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughYou are the Champion – Become crowned the Champion of the Hunt.

After being crowned as the champion you can use the Pool of Memories to meet with the Faces. You will again have a dilemma and it’s up to you how to solve it. Once you do you will get the next achievement.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughOpener of the Way – Repair the flow of souls to the Beyond.

There is one more battle in the Crucible – go and beat it for the final story achievement:

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughThe Greatest Opponent – Confront the porokoa.

Congratulations on beating the story of the second DLC!

We are not done here yet. One more achievement to get. The final three extra artifacts. Now that you have beaten the final battle you can talk to Engari again and get the last quest set for the extra artifacts. Again here’s spoilers if you don’t want to explore too much by yourself. One is in the Court Room in Oathbinder’s Sanctum (Island SW of Neketaka), one is in the Treasure Trove shop in Dunnage and the last one is in a place we haven’t explored yet in this guide – Motare o Kozi island

After you acquire them the last artifact you will get the last achievement for this DLC. No need to return to the Pool of Memories if you don’t want to.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughArchivist of Kazuwari 9/9 – Third set of three extra artifacts sacrificed to Pool of Memories.

Now you can either complete all the challenges or continue exploring the North Deadfire a bit (Part 4). I had no trouble beating the Seeker and Slayer challenges but Survivor challenges were really tough. You need lots of healing and because they’re so long you need to have patience. If you have trouble with them I suggest trying Ciphers with mind control (Ringleader skill) and for the ‘In Defense of the Written Word’ I suggest you bring lots of withdraw scrolls so that the tables are untargetable.

After doing all the challenges I was max level. Let’s explore the North Deadfire before we tackle the last DLC. Go back to Part 5 – Northern Deadfire. If you’re wondering why we don’t do the third DLC now the answer is we could manually go where it is now but it’s plot wise nicer to have the actual trigger/invitation/cutscene happen. We will trigger an invitation once we are ready to sail to the last story mission, ‘The Coming Storm’ but for that we need to complete our faction questlines. And we haven’t done those yet. So return back to the Part 5 section of this guide. We will continue to explore Northern Deadfire before the third DLC. (Read DLC section if you really really want to go there now)

Third DLC (Forgotten Sanctum)

Once we have dealt with the slaver situation in Crookspur and we have either allied with one of the four major factions or crafted ourselves the ‘Blackwood Hull’ and bought the ‘Dragonwing Sail’ we get invited to Hall on the Unseen in the Black Isles. We were here much earlier when we explored around but now we can go deeper.

If you are curious and want to come to the DLC earlier than supposed you can enter here once you have done the mapping quest for South-East Deadfire or done the second last story quest (in Magran’s Teeth). Just be aware that recommended level for this DLC is 18.

Fassina has a lot of dialogue here so bring her if you wish. Aloth is also a suggested companion but I found that he was pretty quiet. You will find pretty great gear for mages so if you want to kit Aloth there’s gear for him (or any mage using empowers and wand).

Achievement wise our goal here is to follow the DLC story, find a certain book in the Archives, open twelve prison doors in the Collections and find four items scattered in both of them. The order you do these two wings is up to you. I’m just listing them in the order I did them.

The Archives

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughOne of Them 1/4 – Weyc’s Wand can be found in the Quarantined Section

When you enter from the Quarantined Section to Restricted Section you can find a book called ‘The Alchemy of Imp Spray’. Return it to Fetid Spray, the Imp for an achievement.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughAn Incredible Smell – Discover the Secrets of Imp Spray. Once you return to Fetid Spray with the Imp Spray book.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughOne of Them 2/4 – Mask of the Weyc can be found in the Oratory

Once you complete the Archive Wing you get the next achievement

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughNo Card Required – Complete the Archives wing of the Halls Obscured.

The Collections

In the Enclosures open the seven prison doors.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughOne of Them 3/4 – Robes of the Weyc can be found in the Spun Terrace.

Open five prison doors in the Hall of Reconfiguration for the door achievement to pop.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughRescuer Down Under – Open all the cages in Collections. There’s seven doors in the Enclosures and five more in the Hall of Reconfiguration.

After you reach The Assembly of Echoes and deal the situation in there you will complete the Collections wing.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughA Day at the Zoo – Complete the Collections wing of the Halls Obscured.

Once you get in the Scriptorium again right click the Heldr’s Horn (Preferably while soulbound with Robes of the Weyc) and then toss the horn in the fires. Put the Memoirs of Heldr in the bookstand if you haven’t already. This will reveal the last Weyc’s item.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughOne of Them 4/4 – Weyc’s Oracular Focus in the Scriptorium once you use leave Heldr’s Horn and Memoirs of Heldr there

The Upper Bowels

The final thing to do here is to beat the last boss by jumping down into the depths. Prepare for a tough and long fight. I had to restart the fight over ten times. If you have hard time I suggest immunities against afflictions.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Achievement Guide / WalkthroughPerfect Vision – win the final fight and decide what happens in the end.

Congratulations! You have beaten all the DLCs and you have only one more achievement to get. Beating the game.

Return back to the Part 6 – The North-Western Deadfire section.

Written by Kruulos

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