The other guide is great but I wanted to add a few suggestions. I was able to unlock this achievement solo in round 16 or 17.
Prep workMake life easy on yourself and wait until you've unlocked Director's Cut to attempt this. Finishing the Easter Egg gets you the katana weapon and unlocking Director's Cut will get you 25000 to start with, allowing you to purchase the katana early. You will also have perks like fast running which makes training much more manageable.
GourdsThere are four gourds you have to level up. I don't remember their exact names but will instead refer to them by color: red, blue, green, yellow. The level up process for each is exactly the same:
- Step one: Get 15 melee kills
- Step two: Get 25 shuriken kills
- Step three: Get 50 chi power kills
Step one is pretty self explanatory. Drink the gourd, melee down 15 zombies, done. You should be able to complete this step with one gourd drink.
Step two requires you to kill 25 zombies with the shuriken. This is done by pressed RB. However, you should never, EVER, just press RB. You should hold down RB until the star starts glowing with the color of the gourd you drank. At this point, the shuriken becomes a heat seeking missile that will split and hit up to three zombies. Even if there is just one zombie remaining, I would recommended charging up the shuriken so you don't miss. Which I did. A few times.
Step three will be the most time consuming. To activate a gourd's chi power, press LB. This is where the gourd colors start to matter as each gourd has a different chi power:
- Red: Summons a circle in the air that pulls in zombies and kills around 7 or 8. Good.
- Blue: Freezes a number of zombies in their tracks and kills them. Hits around 7 or 8. Good.
- Green: Summons a skeleton that will go on a zombie killing spree. Can kill 10+ zombies. Awesome.
- Yellow: Summons a tornado that sucks in nearby zombies and kills them. Hits 5. Garbage.
You can usually get four uses of a chi power per gourd drink meaning you'll need two or more gourd drinks per gourd to complete step three. For the green gourd, just press LB and let the skeleton go do its thing. For the other colors, train some zombies behind you, turn around, and then press LB to multi kill a few.
TipsDon't worry about unlocking the entire map. You can if you like, but I opted to just train the zombies in front of the dojo.
Don't worry about the mystery wheel. The only weapon you will need is the katana.
Take your time. I cannot stress this enough. This is a time consuming achievement for sure as each run took me somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour and fifteen to an hour and thirty minutes.
There are two ways to refresh your gourd. If you are not currently under the effect of a gourd, you can drink a new gourd at the start of every round. At the end of each round, you will see a +###XP indicator. This means the round is over and a new one is about to begin. If you are still under the effects of a gourd, quickly press right on the D-pad to end the effect so you can drink another gourd at the start of the round.
The second way to refresh your gourd is to wait 5 minutes after the effects of your gourd wear off. This will be frustrating and time consuming but I found it easier to do this than to just get a new one at the start of every round.
DO NOT KILL ANY ZOMBIES WITHOUT YOUR GOURD. The higher the round, the more challenging it is to train. You have more zombies spawning and blocking paths or spawning right in front of you so getting as many zombie kills with the gourds as you can is essential to doing this. Even if you have just one or two zombies left, wait to get a new gourd before killing them.
When you are training waiting on a gourd refresh, keep the katana as your active weapon. There may be times as you are training where zombies block your path and you can't get around or go through them. This is where the katana shines. Slice and dice them to keep going and then continue your train. It's not ideal but it's better than dying.
The skater zombie rounds are garbage. There are not a lot of zombies that round and they will explode on you, ensuring you do not get a gourd kill with them. For these rounds, simply do your best.
StrategyFor rounds 1 - 4 you cannot drink gourds yet. Instead you need to do the following:
- Turn on the power to get out of the subway
- Open up the path to the roof of the building across from the dojo
- Open up the path to the alley next to the building across from the dojo
These extra paths will help with zombie spawning. Once you have done these things, go on a zombie killing spree until round 5.
As soon as round 5 starts, talk to Pam in the dojo. This will allow you to start drinking gourds. Drink one and start meleeing down zombies. Be sure to look in the tips section about the proper way to do each of these steps.
Instead of fully leveling up one gourd before starting on another, I recommend completing rank 1 of each gourd and then rank 2 of each gourd. This is because the chi powers really shine with a lot of zombies and saving them for last in the higher rounds means it will be easier to train them as you will be killing several at once.
For ranks 1 and 2, the colors do not matter as the melee attack and shuriken function exactly the same for each. Once you are ready to do rank 3 of each gourd, I recommend starting with the yellow gourd. The yellow gourd chi power is the worst and hits the fewest number of zombies. Therefore, it is better to get that one completed as early as possible in as early a round as possible.
After you have fully leveled up the yellow gourd, do the red and blue ones next. The order of these do not matter because while they do different things, they functionally kill the same number of zombies.
Save the green for last. The skeleton will just wander around and kill zombies. You can keep the train going and not worry about turning around to pop zombies as the skeleton will do it all for you.
Good luck! Don't get discouraged. It may take a few tries but just keep improving and you'll eventually get there. If you have any additional tips or tricks, or if I missed something completely or stated something incorrect, leave a comment and I'll correct it.