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Brass Balls achievement in BioShock Remastered

Brass Balls

Complete the game on Hard difficulty without using a Vita-Chamber.

Brass Balls0
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How to unlock the Brass Balls achievement

  • cooper101183cooper101183
    28 Oct 2016 26 Oct 2016 26 Jul 2018
    This achievement essentially means Play The Game on Hard WITHOUT dying. Vita-Chambers are only used to re-spawn after death so not using them means don't die. This means you need to continually save your progress. If you die you must load up an earlier save.

    There is a simple method for ensuring that you never use the Vita-Chambers. Before Starting a New Game, go to Gameplay Options, Scroll Down to Disable Vita-Chambers and make sure it says On. This ensures ALL Vita- Chambers are disabled in the game, this is really important and means every time you die you load a previous save. I highly recommend doing this.
    Also this achievement is for HARD difficulty only; there is a higher difficulty called Survivor but this unlocks on HARD only.

    Two Methods to Obtain this. A legitimate and an Exploit.

    THE EXPLOIT
    Start a new game on easy. Again either disable the Vita-Chambers or ensure that you never die. Reach the final boss. As you are taking out the final needle of Adam press pause, and change the difficulty to Hard. Then complete the rest of the scene as normal and the achievement will unlock.

    Legitimate Method
    With Vita chambers disabled your new best friend will be the Save option. Make sure that you save every few minutes, particularly at the start of the game when you lack plasmids and your health is low. etc. Later in the game you will be much stronger but still save often, its quicker to save than replaying sections of the game.

    Check all crates, trash cans, dead splicers, etc for extra first-aid and eve items. Turn on item Glimmer in the options, you will be able to spot loot much easier. Also increase the brightness a touch this will allow you to survey your surroundings.

    Most guides advise you to stick solely to mission objectives, however I believe I benefited from scouring the environment. My ammo was always full and I always had reserve health/eve packs.
    Buy Health/Eve Upgrades and Tonic Slots ASAP
    Upgrade your weapons wisely. Leave the pistol until last
    Purchase/ collect as many Tonics as possible.. Unlock all Tonic Slots as soon as you can. Engineering tonics are a massive help for hacking and getting reduced prices. Physical/Combat tonics can make this playthrough a doddle. Make sure you equip the scrounger perk

    Buy Target Dummy ASAP. Ignore all other Plasmids and Plasmid Upgrades until later in the game. (Dont waste ADAM on Plasmid Upgrades etc, Plasmids like Insect Swarm/Cyclone Trap are pretty useless anyway. As long as you have Incinerate, Electro Bolt, Telekinesis + Target Dummy you will be fine.) You will notice that as you progress in the game the upgrades that were once costing a fortune are now majorly discounted. Eg Electro Bolt 2 was 120 Adam in Neptunes Bounty by the time I reached Fort Frolic is was 20.

    Make sure you photograph each enemy and gain the max research bonus, this unlocks unique tonics but also gives great damage bonuses. The auto turret hack is a great help and the Big Daddy damage bonuses turn a 5 minute battle into a 2minute battle.

    Rescue every Little Sister in the Game, not only will you get the ADAM but after every 3 you rescue you get a bonus of 200 Adam and after every 6 you recieve a unique Tonic.
    Save Electric Buck and Grenades for Big Daddy battles. Upgrading your shotgun and Grenade launcher are a massive help

    On a sidenote people have reported the achievement not unlocking, this was an issue on the 360version and occurs because all of the game completion achievements are unlocking, all you need to do if this happens is load up the final boss fight again and defeat it, with all of the other achievements already unlocked their is nothing to obstruct this achievement.

    Guide not helping? View 4 more guides for this achievement.

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    BobaOnMyFettKilled fontaine 15 times on hard difficulty with vita chambers disabled and didn't die throughout whole game no brass balls achievement and reset cache and played on new game plus nothing has worked
    Posted by BobaOnMyFett on 01 Oct 22 at 21:56
    RangerTXSbro wtf this achievement dive, i literally play on the survivor (without knowing about i would need to play on hard to unlock this one) i though playin in survivor would unlock this damn achievment. lucky i save my game a little before the fight with the Atlas, but still.. bruuhhh...
    Posted by RangerTXS on 03 Mar 23 at 03:15
    Dviking89Can also confirm the exploit still today works on June the 20th 2023 as I got both hard and survivor difficulty achievements done in 1 go... so good luck fellers
    Posted by Dviking89 on 20 Jun 23 at 14:08
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  • Removed Gamer
    Gamer has been removed
    play on easy too you stick the last needle in fontaine and change too hard remember too disable vita chambers before u start a new game, but i did it on easy up too i stuck fontaine with the last needle so it works
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    Warboy925REALLY weird!!!! I beat Atlas the 1st time, switched it to Survival.....unlocked Seriously Good at This, Little Sister Savior, and Defeated Atlas........Brass Balls didn't pop, tried it again 2 more times, same thing.....Brass Balls didn't pop both times, then I saw what N3croscop3 posted above, switched to to HARD instead of survival, and it finally popped.......
    Posted by Warboy925 on 25 Jun 17 at 06:39
    Leo Ascendent"Who downvotes this? What else do you need to know? ^^"

    - Well, you need to set the game to HARD and not SURVIVAL, which many do.
    - You must also disable vita chambers BEFORE you start on the title menu.
    - Many people appreciate decent grammar and sentence structure, as it makes solutions clearer.
    - Some might be upset there's a spoiler.

    Honestly, I gave a - due to the first three.

    For those asking, all you need to do, while on the title screen (Load Game, New Game, Options, Additional Content, etc), go to Options, and disable vita-chambers. Start a new game, just to be safe, start on HARD. When the game lets you move around, pause and go to Game Settings (or something like that), change to EASY.

    Play as normal, and when you get to the final boss, you'll know it, before stabbing him the last time, pause and switch to HARD (NOT SURVIVAL), finish boss.

    If it doesn't unlock, reload and try again. Unlocked first try for me, but some say it doesn't, most likely due to them setting it to SURVIVAL.
    Posted by Leo Ascendent on 13 Jul 17 at 16:07
    AaronWi60Can confirm it still works. :)

    Started on Easy and turned the vita chambers off. Sped through the game without dying and switched difficulty at the final adam injection.

    However this did take me 3 attempts. I tried it before I put the needle in and it didn't work. I tried it the second I hit the button to inject and that didn't pop either. On my final attempt I waited as long as I could before it went to the final cutscene to pause and swap difficulty, then it popped as it went to the cinematic. Thanks, this got me this last achievement! :D
    Posted by AaronWi60 on 20 Jul 17 at 22:03
  • Removed Gamer
    Gamer has been removed
    Just an addition to the previous solution. The game has to be completed (or glitched) necessarily on hard, can't be on Survivor. toast
    Also, even with patch the glitch still works (june 23,2018)
    Showing only comment.
    Nick J at NiteThank you for clarifying this
    Posted by Nick J at Nite on 16 Mar 21 at 20:20
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