Quake 100% guide

• 38 achievements, 1,600 Gamerscore. The original list has 35 achievements for 1,000 Gamerscore. The free Dawn of the Machine episode, added on August 6, 2026, brought 3 more worth 600 Gamerscore.
• Nothing is unobtainable or discontinued (as of October 2026).
• Online: none required. The only multiplayer achievement is Discharge, and you can earn it offline in a local Deathmatch against bots.
• Missables: none permanent. Level Select lets you replay any map, so a missed secret exit, the Well of Wishes, the Tur Torment message, Slipgate Pacifist, and the Shambler achievements can all be cleaned up later.
• Playthroughs: one Nightmare run of each campaign: Quake, Scourge of Armagon, Dissolution of Eternity, Dimension of the Past, Dimension of the Machine, and Dawn of the Machine. A Nightmare clear also awards that campaign's normal completion achievements, so you never need a separate lower-difficulty run.
• No achievements for Quake 64, Honey, Horde mode, co-op, or Capture the Flag. Skip them, or play them for fun.

• Always start from Single Player, then New Game, then the campaign. Episode completions, Indigestion, the Nightmare completions, Disillusioned, and True Sight do not unlock from a run started through Level Select. A save made in a Level Select session is also tainted. This is behind almost every "my Nightmare achievement didn't pop" report.
• New Game campaigns never offer Nightmare in a menu. Each campaign hides a Nightmare portal or button in its start map, and every section below explains where it is. Level Select does let you pick Nightmare directly, but only for single-level cleanup such as Slipgate Pacifist, never for a full campaign run. Enter Nightmare at the start of the run, and don't change difficulty partway through, because it isn't confirmed whether a mid-run change voids the achievement. Dawn of the Machine is the one exception: its hub has a supported way to switch to Nightmare, covered in its section.
• Quicksave constantly. Saves made during a New Game run are safe for achievements. Nightmare caps your health at 50, so treat every unexplored room as a quicksave point. In the older campaigns you can still start a level at 100 health on Nightmare. The cap only shows once you've taken damage and picked up health. In Dawn of the Machine you start at 50 health on every difficulty, so there your health doesn't tell you which difficulty you're on.
• Secrets matter more than usual. Armor, Megahealth, Quad Damage, and the Pentagram of Protection make Nightmare manageable at 50 health.
• Level Select is your cleanup tool. Secret exits, the Well of Wishes, the Tur Torment message, Secret Sleuth, Friendly Fire, both Shambler achievements, Slipgate Pacifist, and The Painless Maze all unlock normally from Level Select.

You can earn every achievement by playing normally, and the main walkthrough below does exactly that. Two optional shortcut systems can speed things up a lot.

• Cheats menu (Xbox and Windows): added on August 6, 2026 and expanded on September 15, 2026. Open it from the pause menu in any single-player game; it works with a controller.
• Developer console (Windows only): the Xbox app / Microsoft Store / PC Game Pass version shares this achievement list. Open the console with the ~ key. Its typed commands, including map warps that jump straight to a campaign's finale, are covered in the Windows PC Console Route section near the end. They don't exist on Xbox consoles.

Cheats menu options that matter for achievements:

• God Mode, No Death, Fly, Noclip, and No Enemy Targeting toggles.
• Give All Weapons, Give Quad, Give Super Axe, and Infinite Ammo.
• Give Rune and Give All Runes.
• Kill All Enemies. It clears every monster on the map, and on Dawn of the Machine's final boss it has ended the campaign and triggered completion for some players. It isn't guaranteed to finish every boss encounter cleanly.
• Dawn of the Machine extras: grant upgrades, Bloody Nightmare, New Game+, the Super Axe, and the Bloody Shotgun/Super Shotgun.

How shortcuts interact with achievements:

• Cheats and console commands are reported not to block achievements, and many players have finished the list with them. Results aren't perfectly consistent, so nothing here is guaranteed for every achievement or platform. Keep a save before each trigger.
• Campaign completion achievements still need a run started from Single Player, New Game. The Level Select menu can't stand in for that, with or without cheats. PC console map warps are different, because they're entered from inside a New Game run. They're covered in the PC route.
• Nightmare achievements still need Nightmare set: the campaign's hidden portal or button on any platform, or skill 3 in the PC console.
• Slipgate Pacifist and The Painless Maze have documented PC console solutions using god mode and noclip. Doing the same with the Cheats menu's God Mode and Noclip on Xbox is likely to work, but it isn't confirmed. The legitimate methods in the walkthrough remain the safest.

Time: the conventional Nightmare route takes about 30 to 45 hours. With the PC console route, TrueAchievements estimates roughly 1 to 2.5 hours for the full list. Expect longer if a trigger needs retrying. On Xbox, the optional Dawn of the Machine cheat route cuts that episode from several hours to well under one.

1. Quake on Nightmare, collecting every base-game achievement along the way.
2. Scourge of Armagon on Nightmare.
3. Dissolution of Eternity on Nightmare.
4. Dimension of the Past on Nightmare.
5. Dimension of the Machine on Nightmare.
6. Dawn of the Machine on Nightmare, including the Death Knight's Head.
7. Cleanup: anything missed via Level Select, then Discharge against a bot.

The expansions can be played in any order, since none depends on another. This order simply follows release order, so the difficulty ramps up gently. Some add-on campaigns may ask you to sign in or be online the first time you download or launch them.

Choose Single Player, New Game, Quake. In the start map, step through any of the three difficulty slipgates to reach the episode hall, then follow these steps:

1. Go to the Episode 4 entrance and jump into the water there.
2. The pool hangs in midair. Swim back under the ledge you jumped from, stop swimming at the wall, and let yourself drop.
3. You land on wooden beams. Follow them to an opening in the wall and through the tunnel to the Nightmare slipgate.
4. Enter it. Nightmare is now set, and you're returned to the episode hall.

Play the episodes in order, 1 to 4. Once all four are done, the final slipgate to Shub-Niggurath opens in the start map.

E2M3: The Crypt of Decay holds two achievements. Do both on this visit, in this order: open the secret exit first, then take the Well of Wishes, which comes out right beside the open exit.

With all four episodes complete, take the final slipgate in the start map. Shub-Niggurath can't be damaged by weapons. A spiked sphere, the exit point of the arena's teleporter, keeps moving along a path through her. Quicksave, watch the sphere, and step into the teleporter just as the sphere passes inside Shub-Niggurath. That telefrags her. Get the timing wrong and you can land in the lava, so reload and try again.

Start from New Game, Scourge of Armagon.

1. Take the left corridor marked EASY.
2. Follow it to an EXIT sign that points at a second EASY sign. Don't enter it. Continue straight on to the right.
3. In the crate storage room, squeeze through the gap to the middle, climb the smaller crates, and ride the elevator up to the Nightmare portal.

Start from New Game, Dissolution of Eternity, and step through any difficulty portal.

1. Turn around right away and shoot red switch 1, behind the teleporter at the end of the room.
2. In the next room, ignore both episode doors. Go left and shoot red switch 2 at the top of the wall, then cross to the opposite side and shoot switch 3.
3. Two small lifts rise beneath the suspended lava in the center and carry you into the Nightmare teleporter.

This campaign has no secret-exit achievement, so play straight through and keep up your quicksaves.

Start from New Game, Dimension of the Past, and step through any difficulty teleporter. Go left past the red slipgate, drop into the shallow water, and turn left into a hidden corridor that leads to the Nightmare portal.

This campaign has two secret levels, and only the second one counts. E5M3: The Dark Days leads to The Forgotten Castle, which isn't needed. Play it if you like.

Start from New Game, Dimension of the Machine.

1. Move into the large room and head right toward the Hard portal, without entering it.
2. Look at the wall to the right of the Hard portal for a dark hole. Jump in and follow it to a platform.
3. Make the long running jump over the lava pit to the Nightmare portal.

Quicksave before the jump, and expect a few attempts.

You pick your difficulty in the start map, The Gateway, which leads to a hub called The Machine. The hub has portals to five realms, each two or three levels long: the Machinists, Blacksmiths, Stonemasons, Cultists, and Astrologers. Each realm awards a rune. With all five, the final realm opens, and it ends at Chthon's Vengeance. Start with the Realm of the Machinists, because its first level holds the secret exit.

Expect this to be the hardest of the 2021-era campaigns on Nightmare. Hunt secrets for armor and powerups, and quicksave aggressively.

Start from Single Player, New Game, Dawn of the Machine. The first map, The Thirtieth Passing, hides an NM door that sets Nightmare. The difficulty takes effect when you leave the level.

1. On the big bridge, climb the right-hand chain to a ledge with the Silver Keycard.
2. Come back down, climb the other chain, and open the Silver Keycard door.
3. Past the first door, look right for a broken pipe. Jump in, and it blows you up to a ledge. Drop onto the giant Quake symbol and take the Biosuit.
4. Drop into the slime pool below, swim through the tunnel, and ride the elevator up to the NM door.

If you miss it, you can still set Nightmare later from the hub (see The Runic Nexus below). Switching to Nightmare there after the first rune is reported to still count for True Sight. Setting it here is simpler.

Play straight through the main path: MAP1: Through the First Arch, MAP2: Dawn of the All Mother, MAP2B: Into the Abyss of Time, MAP3: Veils of the Old Ones, MAP4: Of Shattered Minds, MAP5: Requiem, MAP6: The Matriarch of Decay, MAP7: Revelation of the Arcane, and MAP8: The Sacrifice.

• Hunt secrets for the permanent upgrades as you go.
• In MAP4, you'll come back later for the Death Knight's Head. You don't need to do anything special on this first visit.
• At the end of MAP8, sacrifice the Rangers and return to the altar to take the Rune of Sacrifice. You're then sent to The Runic Nexus.

The hub's slipgates send you back into earlier maps. With the Rune of Sacrifice, the sealed Rune of Sacrifice doors in those maps now open, and behind them are the secret exits to the three rune levels. The Rune of Sacrifice is the only rune you need to reach all three. This order works, and none of them depends on the others:

1. Rune of Chaos: revisit MAP1. The Rune of Sacrifice door is by the pipes after the shallow water, and the secret exit to SECRET1: The Sundered Column is behind it. Clear the level for the rune.
2. Rune of Madness: revisit MAP3. In the strange ruins, shoot the three red buttons to reveal a teleporter, then find the Rune of Sacrifice door on the side of the castle. The secret exit to SECRET5: The House of Delusion is inside. Clear it for the rune. Then take the Death Knight's Head on this trip (see Bloody Nightmare below).
3. Rune of Sorrow: revisit MAP5. From the upper outside area, take the stairs to the right of the leafy ruined building down to a Rune of Sacrifice door. A Rune of Sorrow door inside stays shut for now. The secret exit to SECRET3: Mist of Torment is in the lower part of this area. In Mist of Torment, if a rune door blocks the way to the rune, stand on the throne opposite that door to work the puzzle. Make sure you're holding the Rune of Sorrow before you leave the level.

Each rune level's exit returns you to the hub. Expect revisited maps to have new or extra monsters.

The hub basement has a difficulty room.

• The Nightmare button there looks broken. Shoot the red pentagram on the ceiling to open a door to a working one.
• Don't press the other difficulty buttons in this room, because they change your difficulty.
• Difficulty checkpoint: health won't confirm your difficulty in this episode, and some players who believed they'd taken the NM door turned out not to be on Nightmare. The first time you reach the hub, go to the basement, open the pentagram door, and press the working Nightmare button. Switching to Nightmare here after the first rune is reported to still count for True Sight, and it has rescued some runs. It costs nothing, but it isn't proof that every earlier stretch was recorded as Nightmare.

With all four runes, the sealed door in the hub marked with the four rune symbols opens. It leads to SECRET2: The Nightmare Machine, then BOSS: The Sleeper Awakens, where you fight Chthon.

Second difficulty checkpoint: before you enter that door, go back to the hub basement and press the working Nightmare button again. Some players report their difficulty unexpectedly reverted partway through the episode, and pressing the button again is a cheap fix.

Then keep two manual saves on separate slots:

• Hub save: in The Runic Nexus, right after re-pressing the Nightmare button.
• Pre-boss save: at the start of The Sleeper Awakens, before the fight.

Keep both until both achievements unlock.

This route is optional, and it's based on community reports rather than a confirmed method. It skips the rune hunt by noclipping past the four-rune door. Normally all four runes are required, and the legitimate route above remains fully supported. Using cheats is reported not to block these achievements, but results are inconsistent, so keep the saves below.

1. Start from Single Player, New Game, Dawn of the Machine. This step is required.
2. Set Nightmare through the NM door in The Thirtieth Passing, using Clipping or Fly to reach it faster if you like.
3. Move through MAP1 to MAP8 with Clipping, Fly, and Kill All Enemies as needed. Take the Rune of Sacrifice at the end of MAP8 to reach The Runic Nexus.
4. In the hub basement, shoot the ceiling pentagram and press the working Nightmare button. Make a hub save.
5. With Clipping on, pass through the sealed four-rune door into the finale slipgate. Get through The Nightmare Machine the same way.
6. At the start of The Sleeper Awakens, make a pre-boss save. Then try Kill All Enemies on Chthon. Disillusioned and True Sight may unlock when the episode ends, but results are inconsistent. Some players have had it fail, or have died to the boss. If so, use the fallback below and kill him normally.
7. Instead of noclipping through the four-rune door, you can try the menu's Give All Runes. It isn't confirmed to open that door, so keep noclip as the fallback.
8. Bloody Nightmare isn't covered by this skip. You still have to pick up the Death Knight's Head in MAP4, following the route above. Clipping makes the trip faster. The fastest reported method uses Level Select, which is fine here because the head is a pickup, not a campaign completion. Pick Level Select, Dawn of the Machine, MAP4: Of Shattered Minds, then turn on God Mode and Noclip. Go straight to the end of the corridor at the map border, turn left, and head for the corner. The head is in the lowest part of the map, in a room with corpses and a pillar, behind bars. Turn Noclip off, use the pillar, and grab the head. The menu's Bloody Nightmare cheat only changes difficulty. It isn't confirmed to award the achievement, which comes from picking up the head.

If the achievements don't unlock:

• Reload the pre-boss save, check Nightmare at the hub button, and try again. You can also kill Chthon with weapons instead of Kill All Enemies.
• If cheat-assisted kills keep failing, finish the episode with the legitimate four-rune route. Your New Game run and saves stay valid for it.

Use Level Select for anything you skipped. Easy is fine unless the achievement names Nightmare. Each of these unlocks from Level Select:

• Any secret exit: Vertical Vengeance (E1M4), Nevermore (E2M3), The Hot And Winding Road (E3M4), Into Sandy's City (E4M5), Military Complex (HIP1M2), The Gremlin's Domain (HIP2M1), A Long Yard (HIP3M3), The House of Doom (E5M6), Sandy's Room (MGE1M1). Make a manual save just before the exit, enter it, and reload if you want to retry anything.
• The Well of Wishes (E2M3) and You're not supposed to be here! (HIP3M1).
• Slipgate Pacifist (E1M1 on Nightmare).
• The Shambler Dance and A Close Shave: any level with a Shambler. On Easy, E1M5: Gloom Keep is the classic spot. Take the Quad Damage secret and the Gold Key slipgate, and the Shambler appears.
• The Painless Maze (E4M6 on Nightmare). It unlocks from Level Select, but you start with only a Shotgun and no armor, so it's much harder than during the main run.

Episode and campaign completions, Indigestion, and all Nightmare completions can't be fixed from Level Select. They need a New Game run.

Press ~ (the key below Esc, or the same spot on your layout) to open the console, and type each command followed by Enter.

• sv_cheats 1: enables cheat commands. Type it first. God, noclip, notarget, fly, give, and the cheat impulses won't work without it.
• sv_cheats 0: turns cheat permission off. Effects you've already switched on are reported to stay active.
• god: invulnerability. Type it again to toggle it off.
• noclip: fly through walls and floors. Toggle.
• notarget: monsters ignore you until you attack. Toggle.
• fly: free flying movement without passing through walls. Toggle.
• impulse 9: all weapons, ammo, and the gold and silver keys.
• impulse 255: Quad Damage.
• impulse 11: one rune per use.
• give H 100, give S, give N, give R, give C followed by an amount: health, shells, nails, rockets, cells.
• skill 3: Nightmare. Use 0 to 2 for Easy to Hard.
• map name: loads that map, for example map e1m7. You lose the items you were carrying.
• kill: restarts the current map if you get stuck.

1. Start the campaign from Single Player, New Game. Step through any difficulty portal and into an episode or realm portal, so you're actually playing a level of that campaign. A warp typed from the main menu or a Level Select session won't count for completion achievements.
2. Type sv_cheats 1, then skill 3, then the map warp. Setting skill 3 before the warp means the new map loads on Nightmare.
3. You don't need the physical Nightmare portals on this route, since skill 3 is reported to count for every campaign. The base game is the least-documented case. If Shub's Bud doesn't unlock, start a new run, take the hidden Nightmare portal from the walkthrough, and repeat the warps.
4. Turn on god and noclip as needed. As a harmless precaution, many players then type sv_cheats 0 before reaching the trigger. Some reports say leaving cheats enabled can void the achievement, though many successful runs never did this. Turning cheats off doesn't remove god mode or noclip once they're on.
5. Turn noclip off before stepping into an exit portal or onto a trigger. Portals need you to walk in normally. Turning noclip off while you're inside a wall can respawn you somewhere else, so do it in open space.
6. If an achievement doesn't unlock, retype skill 3, warp again, and repeat the trigger. If it still fails, quit to the menu, start a fresh New Game for that campaign, play into its first level, and redo the steps. Dimension of the Machine's Machinehead in particular has needed several tries for some players. Entering one realm portal before warping has helped.

Each episode achievement has to be triggered on its own: warping to a campaign's final map awards only that map's achievements. Run these in order within one New Game run per campaign, with skill 3 set:

• Quake: map e1m7, take the rune, and exit (Sink the Horror Electric). Then map e2m6: kill the two monsters guarding the rune, take it, and exit (Bottom of the Well). Then map e3m6, take the rune, and exit (Beneath the Blue Chambers). Then map e4m7 and finish the level (The Last Unexplored Path). Finally, map end: telefrag Shub-Niggurath as described in the walkthrough (Indigestion and Shub's Bud).
• Scourge of Armagon: map hip1m4 and exit (Gateway Traveller). map hip2m5, then hit the red button by the arch and exit (Dominated Dominion). map hipend and kill Armagon (Arma-gone and Scourge Done Slick).
• Dissolution of Eternity: map r1m7, then use the teleporter inside the red-grey tomb (Overlord Overdone). map r2m8, hit the four switches, and kill the final boss (Dragonslayer and Rogue Ranger).
• Dimension of the Past: map e5end. Kill the enemies in the room to drop the barrier, then take the exit portal under the QUAKE lettering (The Year Zero and Otherworldly).
• Dimension of the Machine: map mgend. Take the exit portal down and to the right of the boss arena, east of the lava pit (Vengeance Denied and Machinehead).
• Dawn of the Machine: map boss, then open the pause menu, choose Cheats, and select Kill All Enemies. This is a reported but inconsistent way to trigger Disillusioned and True Sight. If it doesn't end the campaign with both achievements, reload and kill the boss normally with god and impulse 9. The Optional: Cheat-Assisted Route section above has the saves and fallbacks.

These achievements don't need Nightmare, and they also unlock from Level Select, so a console warp is just faster. In each map, use noclip to reach the spot, turn noclip off, and walk in. The achievement unlocks when you enter the secret exit itself.

• Secret Sleuth: map e1m1. Shoot the wall on the ledge just past the first room.
• Vertical Vengeance: map e1m4. The secret portal is at the edge of the map, left of the Silver Key dock, in a small underwater room.
• The Well of Wishes and Nevermore: map e2m3. Fly to the underwater blue wall with the painted green fish and turn noclip off; The Well of Wishes can take up to a minute to pop. Then noclip through that blue wall and up a little to the secret portal for Nevermore.
• The Hot And Winding Road: map e3m4. The portal is at the very bottom of the level, below everything else.
• Into Sandy's City: map e4m5. Go through the Silver Key door beside the main exit arch to the secret portal.
• Military Complex: map hip1m2. The teleporter is at the map edge, roughly northwest of the start.
• The Gremlin's Domain: map hip2m1. The secret portal is ahead of and below the start.
• You're not supposed to be here!: map hip3m1. Fly to the highest point above the Silver Key, the top of the cliff path. Turn noclip off there and the message appears.
• A Long Yard: map hip3m3. Drop down a little and go through the back wall behind the start to the secret portal.
• The House of Doom: map e5m6. The secret exit is right next to the main exit, turned 90 degrees, facing west.
• Sandy's Room: map mge1m1. Find the barred underwater pipe in the round area, pass just through the bars, and turn noclip off.

• Slipgate Pacifist: sv_cheats 1, skill 3, map e1m1. Then noclip to the level exit, the red-lit door, without firing a shot. The Axe and monster infighting are allowed.
• The Painless Maze: sv_cheats 1, skill 3, map e4m6, then god and noclip. God mode is reported not to register as damage. Circle around outside the map until you see the exit archway, turn noclip off, and walk through.
• The Shambler Dance and A Close Shave: set god, then impulse 9 and impulse 255 for Quad Damage. On any Shambler map (for example e1m3 on skill 3, or e2m4), shred one with the Super Nailgun before it casts for The Shambler Dance. For A Close Shave, wear another one down, then finish it with Axe hits while it's nearly dead.
• Friendly Fire: map e1m2. Fire one shotgun shot to wake the Grunt and Ogre near the start, then let the Ogre's grenades kill the Grunt.
• Bloody Nightmare: use the Level Select MAP4 method in Optional: Cheat-Assisted Route. It works the same on PC, or with noclip from the console.
• Discharge: whether cheats work in local Deathmatch isn't documented. Use the normal bot method in the Cleanup section.