The servers will be closing on May 1st, 2019 so get your skates on if you want to get the remaining online trophies before that date.
Roadmap:
Overview:
- Estimated trophy difficulty: 10/10 (Trophy Difficulty Rating)
- Offline trophies: 8 (5, 3)
- Online trophies: 4 (2, 1, 1)
- Approximate amount of time to 100%: 2.5-3 months (Estimated Time to 100%)
- Minimum number of playthroughs: 1
- Number of missable trophies: None
- Glitched trophies: Yes, 1 - Competitive spirit is unobtainable due to no more challenges being made available.
- Does difficulty affect trophies?: No
- Do trophies stack?: No
- Do cheat codes disable trophies?: no cheats available.
- Additional peripherals required?: No.
Walkthrough:
The main focus of this roadmap is to ease the long wait to get the Coloniser, Tough Guy, and Competitive Spirit (Unobtainable) trophies. Certain aspects of the game related to the trophies will be listed with the respective trophy. This roadmap only serves to highlight the most efficient way of going about things without dependence on paid content and does not explore elements of the game in-depth. Please pay attention to the tutorial for gameplay basics.
This game is free but supports purchasing content with real money. Many trophies are much, much easier if you do so but this guide is written with the intent of avoiding that.
Singleplayer:
The game begins with one Tutorial area, one open Ecosystem to develop, three Challenge areas, two locked Ecosystems and one Online Challenge ecosystem. The two locked Ecosystems cost one million and two million Ecopoints respectively, and the Online Challenge is free. Due to a lack of funds and resources, these will be almost unapproachable for quite a long time.
Do the tutorials - they provide basic insight on the game and the Step by step trophy.
As for the free Ecosystem, if desired, add a single Maanhare and a single Corporeus plant. The Maanhare will have it's needs sated but the Corporeus plant will eventually wither and die, so it is likely that it eventually need to be replaced. However, this is cheaper than adding creatures to balance the system as more advanced plants will render the Corporeus useless for our purposes due to it's low production and high upkeep. This is solely to get a head start on the Tough Guy trophy and can be left to later, if desired.
Begin by completing all challenges. Due to the real-time aspect of the game, this will take 2 to 3 weeks, regularly checking and micro-managing the challenge Ecosystems. This will unlock a number of low-level purchasable creatures, all purchasable plants, slightly less than 1.6 million Ecopoints and Against wind and tide.
Go back to your initial ecosystem and purchase another Maanhare to create a breeding pair, as well as two more pairs of creatures. You need one from the 2nd Tier and one from the 3rd, these serve as a cheap and easily replaceable food source for higher-ranking carnivores and omnivores. Once done add your newly unlocked Tarphusi and Irvicaria plants until vegetation and moisture requirements are sated. Though expensive, these plants provide better production and have lower requirements than other plants, while taking up the same space. Avoid purchasing Fungi, as their Mineral production is better gotten from creatures.
Purchase high-value creatures through the Auction system. Remember to purchase pairs of creatures, for breeding, preferably without paying too much. Ideally purchase Gold-rank or Platinum-rank creatures, of the 3rd and 4th tier. These will provide a great deal of Ecopoints and can reproduce to grant even more. Add them to your initial ecosystem.
You may need to add more creatures of the species you previously added to the system to supply the carnivores with more food, but avoid adding creatures of different species for the moment. This ecosystem, thanks mostly to the Rank 4 and Rank 3 creatures, will supply a good deal of Ecopoints. The main goal is to keep the variety to a minimum, to get your ecosystem's creatures up to their Optimal Population, which gives the best supply of Ecopoints it can - a single creature requires 9% of your maximum space, but each additional creature only requires .5% extra on top of that. As a result, 20 Maanhare costs 18%, but together, 10 Maanhare and 10 Hikeshi cost a substantial 27%. However, it may be desirable to add a few more creatures to get the variety up for Variety is the spice of life and a higher variety bonus - though you should then dispose of any unnecessary creatures or add a Terraform type artefact to increase your population limit. If you understand this (and feel safe) then add additional species as you want, to increase your Ecopoints growth even further.
Much of the next step is waiting as your ecosystem supplies the Ecopoints necessary for other trophies and your added creatures slowly Adapting to their environment. Make sure you check your ecosystem every few days to avoid the Ecosystem falling out of balance or creatures falling extinct. When a herd/pack of creatures reaches their population limit, feel free to auction one or two off - if they sell, they will provide more Ecopoints and so long as there is at least two, they will reproduce and supply more. The Ecopoints gained from doing so can be quite significant - any Species only available through Emblems will have a minimum sale price much higher than the number of Ecopoints lost while waiting for the new birth.
Eventually you'll have a million Ecopoints, enough to buy the second ecosystem. Repeat the same process as with the initial ecosystem but perhaps with a different variety of creatures, to give you even greater Ecopoint growth or save up for the final ecosystem and Coloniser. Either way, you will most likely be done several weeks before you acquire Tough Guy.
Online Challenges:
Warning: There have been no online challenge competitions since October 2015. As a result, Competitive Spirit is no longer possible to achieve.
Online Challenges are held very uncommonly, every 4 to 5 weeks, or more, and last for two weeks of competition. However, only the top 100 competitors win prizes and more importantly, the trophy Competitive Spirit. With the low success rate, and the number of players purchasing creatures through the Playstation Store, this will likely be very difficult to achieve, though as weeks pass you will have less competition.
The goal is simple - gain as many Ecopoints as possible in the time limit. This means you want as many high ranking creatures as you can get your hands on, to supply the best result. Two free methods exist - purchase creatures from the Auction and, the slightly less fair option, use the Auction to convert the creatures in your Ecosystems to Emblems. The second method is to sell your desired creatures for a very high price. Either someone will buy your expensive creature, giving you a substantial windfall or it will not sell and you can collect your creature from the auction as an Emblem, which can then be placed in any Ecosystem. Alternatively, you can purchase a large number of creatures from the game's store, though it is far more unreliable about giving you matching creatures than it is to take two and breed them and the Platinum pack may not give you many Platinum creatures at all.
By placing a great deal of high-quality creatures in the Online Challenge ecosystem, you will earn a great deal of Ecopoints. If your final Ecopoint total is among the top 100, you will gain the trophy and a few prizes. Make sure to log into the game to update your final score to the leaderboard, then after the final scores have been tallied to collect your trophy and prizes.
If you feel concerned about your chances, you can use the Vita's backup feature or PSN Plus' cloud save feature to retain any emblems you plan to use by copying the save back to your Vita after the end of the challenge. However, remember to put your game into Pause mode, otherwise the game will run through any missing time, often resulting in a loss of balance, or loss of species, in your ecosystems. There will also be a 12 hour window where auction functions will be disabled after you restore your save.
Warning: Failure to collect your prizes within the two days after scores have been tallied will result in the trophy being lost and needing to win a second Online Challenge to acquire it.
[PST Would Like to Thank MrSP for this Road Map]