The Top 10 Most Challenging Achievements: Xbox 360

09. Assassin's Creed II: In Memory of Petruccio (30G) Collect all the Feathers.

It has been our experience that this one (both this specific Achievement and this sort of collections Achievement) is of a type that falls into two basic categories: it is either wicked easy for you, which means you are one of the rare breed of gamer who just does collections intuitively and well (like the rare breed of scholar who tests well), or you really suck at this and it is one of the most challenging sort of Achievement in modern action-adventure games.

We fall into the second category - as this sort of collections based Achievement does not come naturally to us, and we consider it to be among the more challenging (but also entertaining) sort.

In the case of the In Memory of Petruccio Achievement it is very much challenging and entertaining because it has us crawling through every district and some rather odd places indeed, as we seek out the feathers which we use to honor our fallen brother.

Actually unlocking this can happen as early as DNA Sequence 11 - if you are really good at finding and collecting the feathers that is...

Warning: If you are NOT the sort of gamer who prefers to have locations revealed to them in order to facilitate completing this sort of collection DO NOT view the video embedded above. Instead view the one that is embedded below to refresh your memory about why you are collecting feathers in the first place!

You can make this as simple or as complicated as you like, but at its very essence this Achievement consists of a total of one hundred (100) feathers that are scattered throughout the five cities in the game. They are distributed as follows:

x04 in Monteriggioni

x12 in Romagna/Forli

x11 in Tuscany/San Gimignano

x46 in Venice

While many of these are in plain sight, some of them are hidden - but even the hidden ones are not so well hidden that you don't have a chance. Finding them just requires taking the time and effort and getting comfortable switching in and out of Eagle Vision.

The Secret to Your Feather Success

There are three types of gamers in the world of Assassin's Creed:

The Accidental Tourist who collect their Achievements because that is what happens as a byproduct of play and who will never score a perfect 1000G from any of the games because they don't actually look for the means to unlock Achievements because, well, they don't care.

The Purist Players (we think we are one of these) who do actively work towards unlocking the Achievements but we have not actually unlocked them all because we have not yet managed to find all of the feathers - though we are still looking! And finally;

The Achievements Whore - the sort of gamer who has 1000G in more games than they don't. They unlock the Achievements because they are willing to use any means at their disposal to do so - becuase Achievements are not just a good idea, they are the way that they keep score!

OK here is the thing - we don't think any of those are preferable or not. We don't have an opinion on the matter. But we can tell you this: we started playing AC2 and unlocked our first Achievement in the game (The Birth of an Assassin) on 4 December 2009, and as of 5 Dcember 2015 we are missing exactly

Chances are you are returning to unlock this - so you will need to know where your gaps are in the collection. To determine that, hit the pause menu once you have loaded your save, and then select “DNA” and then use the D-pad to move to the right all the way to the FEATHERS section of the DNA Menu.

You will see a count here of how many you have out of the 100 possible feathers. That is what you have left to collect to unlock this - for our game the number is 95/100 so there are 5 very elusive feathers that are still waiting for us to find them!

Of course knowing that number really doesn't help you - so hit the action button to open the Feathers Menu by city, and you will then see how many you need for each city by noting how many you have in each city! You can even drill down deeper by hitting the action button again to see how many in each of the Districts you have.

Here is the thing - there is no in-game map you can unlock to show you where the feathers are that remain for you to collect.

So the secret to your success is going to come down to making the decision: what sort of gamer are you?

If the Achievements do not matter to you, you would not be here, reading this, so we know you are not an Accidental Tourist. The question is, are you a Purist or are you an Achievements Whore?

If you are the former, then you can just make a note of the Districts you still have feathers in and go looking for them. That is what we do - and is largely why in the almost six years since we started to play this game we are still missing five feathers

If you are an Achievements Whore, you probably already HAVE this one unlocked - but if you don't have no fear - there are plenty of videos and maps online via Youtube and Google that will reveal them to you!

The important thing to remember is that hunting down these feathers is your opportunity to fade into the woodwork, listen to the random conversations that take place around you, take advantage of any random challenges and events that spawn around you, and otherwise have loads of entertaining fun as you seek out those elusive feathers!

On the plus side though, once you actually do unlock In Memory of Petruccio you can then obtain the Auditore Cape by deposit the 100 feathers in the chest at the Villa - you can then wear the Cape in each of the five cities, which will unlock the Achievement Show Your Colors (10G) Wear the Auditore Cape in each city.

Posted: 15th Jan 2015 by CMBF
Tags: