Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes – “Bears. Beets…” Achievement Guide

This is a guide for how to get one of the more obscure and tricky achievements in Scattered Hopes. The method to unlock this achievement was discovered by Gorkster from the Alt Shift Discord server only after extensive trial and error on his part. Huge shout out to him!

There are three conditions that must be met in a single run in order to unlock this achievement:

• You must have 100 or more supplies by the end of the run.
• You must have a hero with the nickname “Bear” by the end of the run.
• You must win the run.

The first condition is fairly straightforward, but it can be a little tricky to stockpile so many supplies. If you’re struggling, here are my recommendations:

• Play on easy difficulty with extinction modifiers disabled.
• Bypass every crisis; don’t waste supplies trying to resolve them.
• Don’t waste supplies in early sectors trying to uncover your Cylon traitor, as using them to unlock clues starts off extremely expensive. Always remember to keep at least one of your heroes in the brig before jumping, which gives you free clues at the start of the next sector.
• Don’t spend supplies buying heroes from shops, especially not before the Cylon Among Us crisis begins. Only heroes who were recruited before the start of the crisis are suspects, and having fewer suspects means that it will take fewer sectors to uncover your traitor (which also means less supplies wasted over time on the Cylon’s repeating sabotage situations).
  Note that that having only your starting heroes does make it more likely that the hero you’re attempting to unlock the nickname for will end up being the traitor themselves; more on this later.
• Aim to get the “trophy hunter” trait on your squadron-assigned hero if possible, and then assign that hero to your highest DPS squadron. This trait gives +1 supplies every time that squadron takes down a Heavy Raider.

If you follow the above steps, you should have well over 100 supplies by the end of the run. If you do particularly well, you may also be able to unlock the achievement “Prodigal” which requires simply reaching 200 supplies at any single point in the run.

The second condition is much more difficult and requires you to take very specific steps. Your goal is to get a hero with the nickname “Bear”.

As a quick rundown, there are a couple of different ways to unlock nicknames in the game. Nickname events happen when visiting the bar, and they unlock based on a hero’s lifetime stats, which can be checked by selecting them from the menu, and then hovering over the bar graph symbol.

The “damage dealt” nickname event is what we’re looking for, which is the only event where the nickname “Bear” appears. The basic requirement is that one of your heroes needs to deal at least 12,500 damage* across all battles.

*More testing is needed to determine the exact damage amount required to unlock the event; it could be as low as 10,000 or as high as 12,500.

This threshold is very high, and while it is possible to reach with a high DPS squadron, the much more reliable method is to use a hero assigned to a Nuke Launcher. Here are the steps I recommend taking:

• Play on easy difficulty with extinction modifiers disabled.
• Choose either the Wanderers or the Vanguard fleet.
  These two begin the run with a nuke launcher already equipped. I recommend Vanguard because it comes with an Industry Ship, which has a 25-75% chance (depending on level) of giving you a nuke after each jump.
• Assign a hero to your nuke launcher.
• Always jump to sectors with nuke-increasing POIs when possible. Your goal is to create a stockpile.
• If you have excess scrap, you can also buy nukes at shops. But remember that you’re also going to need to win this run, so don’t neglect your fleet upgrades.
• Prioritize getting a hero with the “advanced trigonometry” trait, or any of the other traits that increase the radius of AOE weapons.
  I recommend using your rerolls to get one of these traits onto your hero of choice. Unless you’re very early into a run or haven’t yet started accruing damage, don’t bother swapping to another hero who has the trait, since the damage dealt does not transfer.
• Traits that increase cooldown and weapon range are also useful.
  Damage dealt towards a Cylon capital ship will contribute to the “damage dealt” stat, but is frankly unnecessary if the rest of this guide is followed. I don’t find damage-increasing traits to be too effective either, since adding 20% to a nuke’s base 1000 damage only matters when nuking a capital ship.

Your task here is simple: whenever possible, nuke large groups of enemies, and hit as many enemies as you can per nuke.

A good rule of thumb is that you should only be nuking groups of 5 or more enemies; any less isn’t worth it. Since the earlier sectors have less enemies and are much easier, I’d recommend holding off until around sector 3 or 4.

Additionally, remember that your own squadrons will automatically target enemies that enter their range. Keep them away so that they don’t steal kills from your nukes.

There are a few encounters that are ideal for our purposes because they include large groups of Cylons:

• The second boss fight (sector 8) has multiple waves of Cylons that spawn bunched up.
  If possible, time your nukes so that they hit these large groups and the annoying beacons that the boss spawns (damage done to the beacons also counts).
• If you’re lucky, you will encounter a battle where a Cylon minefield is present. Damage dealt towards mines also counts. If you time it right, you can nuke a large cluster of mines AND multiple incoming Cylons at once.
• If you’ve already identified your Cylon traitor as a hostile Cylon, you can interrogate them to occasionally trigger the Resurrection Ship event. Damage towards the Resurrection Ship itself counts, and there are a ton of enemies always swarming around it.
• The formation the Cylons use to jump in after the jump countdown reaches 0 is random. Some of these formations (even as early as sector 1) have many Cylons packed into a group, in which case you can hold off on jumping and get one last nuke off. However, this serves no tactical advantage and it risks exposing your civilian ships to incoming fire, so do it with caution.

Once you’ve reached the damage threshold, next time you enter the bar the nickname event should begin– and if you’re lucky, your other crew members will suggest the nickname “Bear.”

Unfortunately, the 3 names that are randomly chosen are drawn from a pool, and “Bear”: doesn’t always show up. If it doesn’t, there is nothing you can do except start another run and try again.

Once you have the nickname, just complete the run, and make sure that your supplies don’t go below 100. If you’ve done so, you will earn the achievement!

I still haven’t addressed what to do if your nuke-launcher assigned hero turns out to be a Cylon, or if you suspect them to be a Cylon, which I’ll cover in the final section. This last section can be skipped entirely if your chosen damage-dealing hero was recruited after the Cylon Among Us crisis began (or if they have been cleared of suspicion).

If you begin accumulating damage before the Cylon Among Us crisis begins, there is a decent chance that the hero you’re trying to get the achievement with will be the Cylon, and if they are identified as such, there is a 1/2 chance that they are a hostile Cylon. If they turn hostile, all your progress towards getting the nickname event will have been lost.

One option is to not pursue the damage nickname event until the Cylon Among Us crisis has already started– once it begins, recruit another hero, assign them to the nuke launcher, and then get to work on building up their damage stat. This leaves fewer sectors to accrue damage, but you won’t have to worry about the traitor blocking you from getting the achievement.

The other option is that if you suspect that your chosen damage-dealer is the Cylon, and is close to reaching the damage nickname threshold, simply postpone further investigation until they have unlocked the name. A hostile Cylon in the brig with the “Bear” nickname still counts towards the achievement, so long as you do not airlock them before the end of the run.

It is possible, though currently unconfirmed, that an unrevealed friendly Cylon cannot receive the Bear nickname event. In one scenario, my nuke-assigned hero ended up being the Cylon traitor. However, he was friendly, so I released him. The following jump, the nickname event immediately triggered. It is unclear if this was a coincidence.

It has also been confirmed possible to get the Bear nickname on a hostile Cylon, but I’ve only been able to do so through a glitch I’ve been unable to replicate.

That about covers everything. Thanks for reading and good luck!