Timberborn Achievements Guide: How to Unlock All 59 Steam Achievements

Timberborn 1.0 launched with 59 Steam achievements that challenge players to master every aspect of beaver colony management. These achievements span a wide range of activities, from building your first shelter and surviving your first drought to managing massive populations, unlocking faction-specific technologies, and completing obscure hidden objectives. Whether you are a completionist aiming for 100% or just curious about what milestones lie ahead, this guide breaks down every achievement category and offers practical tips for unlocking them all.

Achievements in Timberborn are tracked globally across all save files and map types. Progress on cumulative achievements (such as total beavers born or total buildings constructed) carries over between playthroughs. Some achievements can only be earned with a specific faction, while others require particular map conditions or difficulty settings. There is no in-game achievement tracker beyond Steam's overlay, so keeping this guide handy can help you plan your path to full completion.

How Achievements Work in Timberborn 1.0

Timberborn uses standard Steam achievements. All 59 achievements are visible on your Steam profile, though several are marked as hidden until you unlock them. Achievements trigger instantly when their conditions are met during gameplay, and there is no need to finish a session or return to the main menu for them to register. You can earn achievements on any difficulty setting and on any map unless the achievement text specifies otherwise.

Some achievements are one-time events (survive your first drought, build a specific structure), while others are cumulative and track totals across all your playthroughs. Cumulative achievements include milestones like reaching a certain total number of beavers born, trees planted, or buildings placed over the lifetime of all your colonies. This means that even short or failed colonies contribute to your long-term progress.

Achievements do not grant any in-game rewards or bonuses. They exist purely as a record of your accomplishments and as personal challenges to push your colony-building skills further. That said, pursuing specific achievements can lead you to experiment with mechanics you might otherwise overlook, making achievement hunting a great way to deepen your understanding of the game.

Getting Started: First Colony Milestones

The earliest achievements you will encounter revolve around establishing the basics of your colony. These include placing your first buildings, assigning your first workers, and keeping your beavers alive through their initial challenges. Expect to unlock achievements for constructing your first Lodge or Barracks (depending on faction), building your first water storage structure, and harvesting your first crops. These milestones require no special strategy and will unlock naturally during the opening cycles of any new game.

Surviving your first drought is one of the earliest significant achievements. To prepare, stockpile at least 5 to 7 days of food and water before the first dry season hits. Build multiple Water Tanks early and keep them filled. If you are on a map with a short temperate season, prioritize fast-growing crops like Carrots (Folktails) or Kohlrabi (Iron Teeth) to build a food buffer quickly. Once the drought ends and your colony is still standing, the achievement triggers automatically.

Other beginner achievements include reaching small population thresholds (such as having 20 or 30 beavers alive at once) and completing basic research at the Inventor's Hut. These will come naturally as you expand, but you can speed them along by ensuring your beavers have good wellbeing (which boosts breeding rates) and by keeping your Inventor's Hut staffed and supplied with Science points from day one.

Population and Colony Growth Achievements

Several achievements track your colony's population size and growth milestones. These range from modest targets (reaching 50 beavers in a single colony) to ambitious goals (maintaining 200 or more beavers simultaneously). Population achievements require sustained food, water, and housing infrastructure. The key to hitting high population numbers is ensuring that breeding is not bottlenecked by housing shortages or low wellbeing.

To reach the largest population milestones, focus on building multiple districts connected by District Crossings. Each district operates semi-independently with its own workforce, so spreading your colony across the map allows for parallel food and water production. Assign breeding pods or lodges in each district and maintain at least 4 food types for strong Nutrition wellbeing, which directly increases the breeding rate.

There are also achievements tied to establishing new districts themselves. Creating your second and third districts, transferring beavers between districts, and having multiple districts operating simultaneously all have associated achievements. Plan your expansion carefully: each new district needs its own water source, food production, and housing before you transfer workers there. A poorly supplied new district will drain your main colony without contributing anything back.

Resource and Production Achievements

A significant portion of achievements revolves around resource gathering and production milestones. These track cumulative totals of specific resources produced, such as total Logs harvested, Planks manufactured, Gears crafted, and Metal Parts forged. Because these are cumulative across all saves, every game session contributes. However, if you want to accelerate progress, dedicate a playthrough to maximizing production of the resource you are targeting.

Specific production achievements include milestones for processing food (total meals cooked or fermented), generating power (total hours of mechanical power produced), and manufacturing advanced materials. To hit the power generation achievements quickly, build large battery arrays of Water Wheels or Windmills connected to Power Shafts, and keep them running continuously. Even if you do not need the power immediately, the hours accumulate toward achievement progress.

Tree planting achievements deserve special mention. Timberborn tracks the total number of trees you plant across all playthroughs, with achievements at several thresholds. Since Foresters plant trees automatically when assigned to Forester Flags, the easiest approach is to keep multiple Foresters active throughout every game. Plant a mix of Birch (fast growth), Pine (medium), and Oak or Chestnut (slow but high yield) to maximize both the tree count and your lumber supply.

Water Management and Drought Survival Achievements

Water is the lifeblood of every Timberborn colony, and multiple achievements test your ability to manage it effectively. Early water achievements include building your first Dam and your first Levee. Intermediate achievements challenge you to create a reservoir of a certain size, redirect a river using Dynamite or Floodgates, and survive progressively longer droughts without losing any beavers.

The drought survival achievements are among the most challenging in the game. Surviving a drought that lasts 10 or more days requires extensive preparation: large water reserves in Deep Water Tanks, enough food stockpiled to last the entire dry period, and irrigation systems that can sustain at least some crop growth during the early drought phase. On harder difficulty settings, droughts arrive sooner and last longer, making these achievements significantly more difficult.

Advanced water management achievements include using the Water Dump to irrigate dry areas, building a complete closed-loop water recycling system, and maintaining positive water flow through your district during a drought using stored reserves. To tackle these, invest in the Deep Water Tank early (it stores far more than the basic tank) and build redundant water infrastructure. Having two separate water storage areas protects you if one section of your colony loses access due to terrain changes from drought or badwater contamination.

Faction-Specific Achievements: Folktails vs Iron Teeth

A handful of achievements are exclusive to each faction, requiring you to play as both Folktails and Iron Teeth to reach 100% completion. Folktails achievements tend to focus on their unique mechanics: using Beehives to boost crop growth, building the Irrigation Tower complex, harvesting aquatic crops from the Aquatic Farmhouse, and using natural decoration buildings to raise wellbeing. If you are playing Folktails, make sure to experiment with every unique building they offer.

Iron Teeth achievements center on their industrial and mechanical strengths. These include building and operating the Hydroponic Garden, running a Food Factory at full capacity, constructing a Bot Assembly and deploying mechanical beavers, and building large-scale power networks with Engine buildings. Iron Teeth also have achievements related to their unique Dynamite production, which lets them reshape the terrain. Blasting a certain number of terrain tiles with Dynamite or creating a new river channel both have associated achievements.

To efficiently collect faction-specific achievements, consider running one dedicated playthrough with each faction on a forgiving map (such as Plains or Meander) with a long temperate season. This gives you plenty of time to build up to the advanced structures required for the later achievements without the pressure of frequent droughts. Once you have the faction-specific achievements, you can return to more challenging maps and difficulty settings for the remaining goals.

Building and Construction Achievements

Construction achievements track both the quantity and variety of buildings you place. Cumulative placement achievements reward you for placing a total of 100, 500, and 1,000 buildings across all playthroughs. Since every building counts (including simple Paths and Platforms), these accumulate quickly in any active colony. More specific achievements require you to build particular structure types, such as placing your first Roof, constructing a multi-story building using Platforms, or building a bridge across a body of water.

Height-related achievements challenge you to build tall structures. Timberborn allows stacking buildings on Platforms, and there are achievements for reaching certain height levels (such as building 4 or 6 tiles above ground level). To unlock these efficiently, find a cliff edge on your map and build Platforms outward and upward from it. Each Platform layer adds one height level. Stack Lodges or other small buildings on top of your Platform tower to hit the required height.

There are also achievements for demolishing buildings (useful when reorganizing your colony), for using the Dynamite to remove terrain tiles, and for placing decorative structures that improve beaver wellbeing. The decoration achievements are easy to miss if you focus purely on functional buildings, so remember to place Shrubs, Statues, and other aesthetic items once your colony is stable. These decorations also provide wellbeing bonuses, making them useful beyond just achievement progress.

Bot and Automation Achievements

Bots are mechanical beaver workers introduced as a core feature in Timberborn 1.0. They require construction at a Bot Assembly (Iron Teeth) or Bot Workshop (Folktails) and consume power instead of food and water. Several achievements are dedicated to bot usage, including building your first bot, having multiple bots active simultaneously, and assigning bots to specific tasks like logging, farming, or hauling.

Advanced bot achievements may require operating a colony where bots handle the majority of labor, or reaching production milestones using bot workers exclusively. Bots do not need housing, food, or wellbeing amenities, but they do need Charging Stations and a reliable power supply. Build a dedicated power grid for your bots with surplus capacity so they can recharge quickly and maintain high uptime.

To efficiently pursue bot achievements, set up a strong power infrastructure first. Water Wheels, Windmills, and Engines all contribute to your power network. Then build a Bot Assembly or Workshop and start producing bots. Assign them to repetitive tasks like hauling and basic resource gathering, freeing your living beavers for skilled work. As your bot fleet grows, you will naturally unlock the associated achievements. Keep in mind that bots have limited task flexibility compared to beavers, so plan their assignments carefully to avoid bottlenecks.

Hidden and Secret Achievements

Several of Timberborn's 59 achievements are marked as hidden on Steam, meaning their names and descriptions are not visible until you unlock them. These hidden achievements typically involve unusual or unexpected actions that most players would not stumble upon during normal gameplay. While their exact names remain concealed until unlocked, the conditions for triggering them generally involve interacting with the game world in creative or unconventional ways.

Common categories for hidden achievements in city-builder and colony management games include: allowing a specific negative event to occur (such as letting all your beavers go thirsty simultaneously), building something in an unusual location (like placing a structure at the highest possible point on the map), or reaching an extreme state (such as having zero food and zero water stored at the same time while still having living beavers). In Timberborn specifically, hidden achievements may involve scenarios like surviving a drought of extreme length, flooding an area you previously built on, or having a beaver population crash and then recovering.

To hunt hidden achievements, try experimenting with edge cases. Build on unusual terrain, push your colony to extremes, and test interactions between systems that you would normally avoid. Save your game before attempting risky experiments so you can reload if things go wrong. Checking community forums and the Steam achievement global statistics page can also reveal which hidden achievements have the lowest unlock rates, giving you clues about which ones involve the most obscure conditions.

Tips for Efficient Achievement Hunting

Planning your achievement runs can save significant time compared to hunting them randomly. Start by sorting the achievement list into categories: those you can earn on any faction, those requiring Folktails, and those requiring Iron Teeth. Plan two primary playthroughs (one per faction) on an easy map with a long temperate season and short droughts. This gives you maximum building time and minimizes the risk of colony collapse interrupting your progress.

Use the Plains or Meander maps for your primary achievement runs. These maps have generous water access, flat terrain for building, and moderate drought cycles. Save frequently using multiple save slots so you can branch your progress. If an achievement requires a risky action (like intentionally letting your colony nearly fail), load a backup save afterward to continue your main progression without setbacks.

For cumulative achievements, remember that every game session counts. Even short sessions where you experiment with new building layouts or test a new food chain add to your lifetime totals for buildings placed, trees planted, and resources produced. Do not feel pressured to grind these in a single marathon session. They will unlock naturally over time as you play more of the game.

Finally, prioritize wellbeing in every colony you build. High wellbeing increases breeding rates, which helps with population achievements. It also keeps your workforce productive, which accelerates resource production achievements. Build decorations, provide food variety, ensure short commute distances, and construct leisure buildings like Campfires and Carousels. A happy colony is a productive colony, and productivity is the engine that drives nearly every achievement in Timberborn.