This is a guide to completing all 23 achievements in Helium Rain. This guide applies to Helium Rain version 1.3 / Feb 9 2019.

It took me approximately 40 hours (in game 6 years 125 days) to get all the achievements.

Most achievements will require you play Sandbox, but Skirmish is useful for some of the combat achievements.

No Time for Caution
Dock at a station using manual controls


You can get this by following the orbital navigation tutorial. You will be docking at stations frequently with manual controls until you unlock the Auto-docking technology.

Show Me Your Wares
Complete a resource trade


Buy or sell resources at a station.

Lab Rat
Unlock a technology


Recommend unlocking science stations and then instruments first. There is further information about research under the "We Have The Technology" achievement in the Long Term achievements section.

Shipwright
Build a ship


You can follow the ship-building tutorial for this or you can visit the shipyard at Blue Heart, Night's Home or Boneyard to purchase a ship. Once purchased construction of the ship will take a number of days. The shipyard will first need enough resources to start building you ship (Steel, Plastic, Tools and Fuel) and other companies may have orders in front of you in the queue that will be built first and will need to be completed before construction of your order commences. Each shipyard has three production lines for light ships and one for heavy ships.

A Space Odyssey
Build a space station


You can follow the station-building tutorial for this one. Different types of stations can be unlocked via research. I recommend building a research station first to help reach the long term achievement "We Have The Technology". Typically most stations cost 40000 credits and 100 units each of Steel, Plastic and Tools to build. Research stations only require 50 units each of Steel, Plastic and Tools to build.

It's Something
Don't be the lowest ranked company


Do haulage, delivery, destocking and VIP transport contracts to increase your company's credits. Build Omen or Solen light transport ships and setup a few trade routes. See the monopoly achievement for further info about increasing your company's value.

The following combat/war related achievements can only be completed in Sandbox:

Armageddon
Destroy a meteorite


Take on a contract to defend a sector from meteorites or check the events list under the Orbital Map to see if any sector's are threatened by meteorites. Personally pilot a combat ship, fly to a sector where meteorites will arrive and shoot down the meteorites when they arrive. Recommend not leaving this to AI ships as they don't seem to be able to defend sectors from meteorites.

Traitor
Attack a company you were not at war with


Pilot a combat ship and attack the ships of any company you are not at war with.

Questionable Ethics
Destroy an enemy freighter


Be at war with another company or declare war on another company. Fly a combat ship, attack and destroy one of the freighters of the company you are at war with.

Art of War
Win a battle


When at war with another company defeat all of their ships in a sector and then go to the next day to get this.

Legitimate Salvage
Capture a ship


Pilot a light combat ship equipped with light or heavy harpoons, you will need to research Pirate Tech first. Light harpoons capture light ships and heavy harpoons capture heavy ships. Damage the ship you want to capture until it loses control. Get close to the ship and hit it with the light or heavy harpoons. Wait one day and it should be captured.

It's a Trap
Travel with a heavy ship to a sector with enemy forces twice as strong


This one can be a bit tricky to get. Pilot the lowest combat value heavy ship, i.e the Dragon has a combat value of 60 when it's equipped with the Artemis turrets that it comes with after it's built. Have no other ships in your personal fleet. Declare war on companies with the highest combat value or wait for the Pirates to declare war on you. Fly to a sector that has enemy forces that have a combat value of 120 or more. If you look at the Orbital Map and click on a sector you can see the combined hostile combat value of all enemy ships in that sector. The enemy ships may leave the sector you are flying to so you may need to try flying to a few different sectors to get this achievement.

I recommend that the following achievements be completed in Skirmish. Some could also be completed in Sandbox, but I think avoiding war in Sandbox is best in order to grow your company more easily.

Barrel of a Gun
Destroy an enemy fighter



Lord of War
Destroy an enemy heavy military ship



Cannon Fodder
Destroy an enemy fighter with a turret in manual mode


Pilot any heavy combat ship (Dragon, Kami, Invader, Leviathan or Anubis) against a light combat ship (Ghoul, Orca or Phalanx). Manually control the turrets to defeat the light ship.

Blunt Trauma
Destroy a ship by colliding with it


Pilot an Anubis cruiser against a smaller heavy ship such as the Dragon. Wear down the enemy a bit with your turrets and then ram them at high speed.

Escape Velocity
Evade an incoming missile


Pilot a light ship, such as a Ghoul, against another light ship . Set the enemy light ship with Sparrow guided bombs. Wait for them to target you with the guided bombs and launch them at you. Once they have been launched at you fly at high speed in the opposite direction or at 90 degrees from the direction the guided bomb is travelling in. You should get the achievement once the enemy guided bomb has run out of fuel and flown out of the map/combat area.

Needle in a Haystack
Hit a light ship with an unguided bomb


Pilot a Phalanx light ship set with Wrym bombs. Fight against another light ship, you can also set them up with Wrym bombs. Fly as close to the enemy ship as possible and launch your bombs until you hit them.

Elephant in a Corridor
Hit a heavy ship with an unguided bomb


Pilot a Phalanx light ship set with Wrym bombs. Fight against a heavy ship such as a Dragon. Set up another two allied light ships on your side so that the enemy ship has other targets to shoot at. Fly as close to the enemy ship as possible and launch your bombs until you hit them.

A Series of Tubes
Complete the Pendulum quest chain


The Pendulum quest appears in Sandbox mode in your list of contracts after 325 days have passed in game i.e. Year 1, Day 326. This quest will reward you with access to a new geostationary sector similar to The Spire. The following are the steps in the Pendulum quest chain:

1. Dock at a Habitation Center in Blue Heart
2. Visit The Spire
3. Analyse signals in The Spire. This is the same as scanning artifacts.
4. Dock at a Habitation Center in Blue Heart
5. Unlock the "Orbital Pump" and "Science" technologies
6. Build an Orbital Telescope Station
7. Bring ships loaded with the following resources to Blue Heart:

• 1000 Steel
  
• 1000 Plastics
  
• 500 Electronics
  
• 500 Tools

8. Reduce the Pirates to 0 combat value i.e. destroy or capture all their combat ships
9. Wait 30 days in game
10. Visit the new sector Pendulum
11. Build a Methane, Hydrogen or Helium Pump Station at Pendulum

Step 8 is probably the most difficult step, but you can use this Step as an opportunity to capture all the Pirate's stations in the Boneyard and other sectors.

The following achievements can take a lot of playtime to reach.

The Collector
Own all ships in the game


Build or capture all ships in the game. There are 5 types of light ships (3 combat and 2 freighters) and 8 heavy ships (5 combat and 3 freighters). Recommend capturing or building your own shipyard in order to get all the ships faster. With your own shipyard you can prevent orders from other companies and can supply it with your own resources. The NPC owned shipyards seem to either run out of resources and money quite frequently and may have many orders to be filled from other companies.

Monopoly
Be the highest-ranked company


To get this achievement your company needs to have the highest credit value out of all other companies. To increase the credit value of you company obviously you can trade goods and do contracts to increase your credit balance. You can also build stations, capture enemy stations, build ships and capture enemy ships to increase the value of your company. Capturing all the Pirate stations while doing the Pendulum quest increased the total value of my company by quite a lot.

I recommend building a Steelworks and Iron Oxide and Water mines. Steel seems to always be in short supply and there was high demand for water and iron oxide in the game I played.

I would also recommend setting up trade routes with Omen, Solen and Sphinx freighters to sell water, steel, plastic, tools, iron oxide, hydrogen and fuel in sectors where there is a high demand for these commodities. You can use the Economy tab to check what sectors have a large stock of or large demand for a certain commodity. The two largest capacity freighters can be used for one-off large bulk trades, e.g. sell a large amount of hydrogen to all the steelworks in a sector if they can afford it, or you can limit the amount of a commodity they can purchase when setting up a trade route. Be cautious about setting the two largest capacity freighters to automated trading as they can consume your supply of credits easily and may buy commodities in bulk and just unload them at stations you own instead of selling them to other companies!

It is also best to avoid war with any companies as you try to get the top company ranking. Enemy combat ships in a sector will disrupt your trade routes and attack your ships. Repairing and re-arming your ships can be quite expensive. Keep your reputation high with the other companies to avoid war with them by doing lots of contracts for each company. If anyone declares war on you then pay them a tribute immediately and settle for peace, though you may want to try capturing their stations later in the game. Also keep a high combat value for your company so that other companies won't declare war on you. I was only declared war on by the Pirates a few times.


We Have The Technology
Unlock every technology in the game


There are 20 technologies that need to be researched to get this. This one takes a while and was the last achievement I got. By the time I had researched every technology I had 3 level 10 research stations producing 30 research points per day.

Technologies in the upper levels are more expensive than the lower levels and can only be researched once a technology in the level below has been researched. Recommend researching Science first, to start producing your own research points, and Instruments second, to reduce technology cost increases. After purchasing Instruments each time you research a technology the cost of the remaining technologies increases by roughly 22%. Without Instruments they increase in cost by 30% each time. I would also recommend prioitising research of Auto-docking, Metallurgy, Fast Travel and Automated Trading.

Scanning artifacts also gives you research points. When I scanned the Pendulum it gave me about 2000 research points. When I started a new game and scanned the Docks at Blue Heart it only gave me 10 research points. I am unsure whether the research points from scanning artifacts scales based on how many technologies you have researched or other artifacts you have scanned.

There are 10 artifacts that can be scanned. They are located at the following sectors:

• Blue Heart x 2. The only sector with 2 artifacts, the Docks and the Radiators
  
• Night's Home
  
• Anomaly
  
• Boneyard
  
• Decay
  
• Colossus
  
• Pharos
  
• Daedalus
  
• Pendulum

If you have any questions or comments about this guide, please leave a comment below.