Mein Leben - The Infamous 'Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus' Achievement

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus had been sitting in my Steam library imperfect for good many years. One reason for that was missing the DLC. Bethesda's pricing policy had made the Deluxe Edition cheaper than the Season Pass -- it felt stupid to pay for the base game "again" for the DLC. But eventually I did do just that. The other reason -- and why I had 49/50 on the non-DLC achievements -- was 'Mein Leben'. I was saving it for last because I predicted it would be the hardest one to unlock. And damn if I was right.

One of the hardest achievements of all time

"Mein Leben" means "my life" in German. I believe it's a reference to enemy death screams in some older Wolfenstein game but the name also works in the sense that you pretty much have to dedicate your life to unlocking the achievement -- unless you're a god among gamers, I guess. I saw a comment suggesting the achievement should be called 'My struggle' instead. That might make too spicy of a name in German, though.

What the achievement entails is simply beating Wolfenstein II on its Mein Leben difficulty. But in actuality, that's anything but simple. Mein Leben has the same challenge level as the second hardest, 'I Am Death Incarnate!', with the exception of there being no saves of any kind: when you die, the game goes back to the start menu. You have to beat it in one sitting -- or leave the game running when taking a break.

The trophy has been hovering at 0.1% unlock rate on PlayStation and the Xbox app states a similar 0.13%. On Steam, it has a suspiciously high 1.1%. However, playing on mouse & keyboard and having access to the Advanced Options mod do help on PC. What the mod does (among other things), is add the option to fast forward cutscenes: as if Mein Leben wasn't challenging enough already, you'll also have to endure long-ass unskippable in-engine cutscenes repeatedly when attempting the achievement. Unless you have the mod, that is. (Pre-rendered cinematics can be skipped even without mods as soon as the level has loaded.) I also think the players, who play the Wolfenstein games on PC, tend to be rather dedicated, probably being pretty good at them.

Takedown for this guy

Including my practice runs and save points on Death Incarnate, it took me more than 40 hours and nearly 30 failed attempts to unlock this single achievement. The game's platinum trophy on PSN truly deserves the 10/10 difficulty rating it's been given.

I discovered that Mein Leben is the embodiment of Murphy's Law: if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. And often it's something that has never happened before. Permadeath being so punishing also adds an additional stress element. You often panic upon making a mistake and botch a situation that would have been completely salvageable if you had kept your calm. Practicing alerted status on stealth-preferred sections might help with that. The annoying thing with that, though, is that stealth tends to be much quicker than killing 20+ enemies in all out chaos. Thus one would rather execute their initial approach perfectly than spend hours sitting at dead ends and practicing shooting gallery.

Watching people's attempts at Mein Leben on YouTube can be deceiving due to them serving you survivorship bias: how are these people unlocking it in so few tries, and while playing with a controller? What you're not seeing is their practice runs and -- most importantly -- the thousands of players who have failed to achieve Mein Leben or have never even tried it. The success videos are the rare exceptions.

Hide and seek champion

Research required

I mainly used 100PERCENTWILL's guide to aid me. Eventually I had to deviate from it slightly because there were parts I could not repeat reliably. When a successful full run takes 3 to 4 hours, you very much want reliability. The biggest change I did was going with pistols as the initial stealth weapon. I don't know if a controller makes the spraying SMGs more desirable but I found the hitscan pistols far superior to the slowly traveling nail shots. Even in the guide, he does switch to pistols for certain parts later where the SMGs don't cut it.

Using accurate single shots also affected enemy behavior at few sections: I guess all the sprayed (suppressed) projectiles make enough noise to attract nearby enemies. For instance, not using SMGs to kill the very first enemy in the Manhattan mission (I switched to stealth takedown for him, in fact), left the second guy oblivious unlike in the guide.

Casual out-of-bounds swim

And at the end of the Manhattan bunker much later into the game, taking the first guy out with a pistol headshot would not invite the second guy to investigate. That discovery led me to accidentally walk into the guy's field of view and alert the commanders inside. That is really bad because they both carry a grenade launcher pistol, which will kill you instantly even from full health and armor. That's how one of my attempts ended. Also: don't drop down to the inner circle where the first soldier is; stay on the outer one. I got a flashback of learning that when I played the game the first time over 7 years ago. It's much safer for stealth.

Another change I did was the railing jump onto the rocket train in Roswell. I failed enough many times that I had to find something else. On their video, instead of going straight to the control room, Datalor3 goes around the left side, taking out two soldiers on the way, whose corpses will then distract the spawning enemies and allow one to make the jump at a different point safely and unseen.

The rocket train section is followed by a highly volatile funicular ride. It's quite possible to survive even if you have to fight a regular soldier, 2 super soldiers, and a robot soldier on it. But stealth is again much preferred.

Tried and true courthouse strat

The Penthouse and Courthouse can be extremely hectic on the hardest difficulty without cheesy strategies. But with those strategies, you can get through the former without even being seen if you manage to lie down properly behind boxes and let the VTOL crew laser all the enemies. And even with having been seen, the boxes will protect you enough to make the place easy.

In the courthouse, you grab the heavy weapon from the left side desk row and hide under the same row at the other end, slowly taking out enemies as they walk into your view. I failed a couple of runs thanks to the righthand super soldier in the second phase: sometimes he would round the desk corner too eager to fire. Thus I altered my strategy and instead, once the super soldiers were about to drop in, crept back where the heavy weapon had been. That allows you to get the drop on the first one every time. After he dies, you sneak back to the other end for the other super soldier and the dog that will rush in after the soldier dies. Then you sprint out of the room for the armories on the upper floor and it's relatively straightforward ride from thereon.

"Welcome to the Oberkommando. Population: shitload of assholes"

No hatchet for this guy

The first time I got to Venus on Mein Leben, a thrown hatchet failed me at the start. I suppose, unlike on all my practice runs, it hit torso instead of a leg. I had to throw another which caused me to panic and I failed at taking down the super soldier there silently. I had done one practice run there with the alarm on and it was doable, even if hell of a fight. But on Mein Leben, it tends to be different and I died to one of the at the speed of sound moving dogs. After that disaster, I switched to killing the guy with a pistol headshot instead of the game's occasionally failing hatchets. And do upgrade the pistols with the extended mags. It's terrible to go into a reload animation in the middle of a mag dump at a super soldier's ankles.

The guide has you kill the second commander there but I found no reason to do it. If you get to outside his room stealthily, you might as well continue past it. I think you will get the robot soldiers in the scientists' room upon an alarm regardless of whether the second commander is alive or not. The robots die easily and there will be no additional bonus opposition to hinder your sprint to the exit. One extra robot does tend to come after you when you're getting in the suit, though, so you have to take care of it first.

My next personal best got me to the final level -- where I failed the jump off the transport pod, of all things, and fell to my death. That was tragic. For whatever reason, I decided I needed to sprint there, which overshoots the jump so badly. Mein Leben makes you do the dumbest things.

Sometimes things are completely out of your control, namely when physics glitch. Wolfenstein II punishes you for that with an instant death. One of my runs ended on the up-and-down moving thing on the first level. At least it's early and you can avoid it by making sure the thing is properly down before trying to roll onto it. A way more annoying run-ender was the lift at the end of the Manhattan bunker. I had just killed the robot soldiers and Bombate was about to come closer when I dropped dead out of nowhere.

Maybe the game was taking its revenge on me for going out of bounds in the second Sektion F visit every time. That level skip isn't 100% safe either: I once somehow skipped the lever-pulling animation that is supposed to take you back in-bounds at the end. I managed to recover from that when I discovered that I can reach one of the charging stations too while out-of-bounds. Unfortunately my lasergun was at full charge so I had to first find solid ground somewhere to be able to fire it. I did, eventually, and using the charging station worked the same way as the lever. I had to fight two drones there and walk past a disinterest super soldier but got to the exit. That skip was such a mess and the run ended later in a failure anyway. But after that, I always made sure not to have the lasergun at full charge on the level.

When I first played Wolfenstein II in 2018, I wrote that I didn't experience technical issues. Since then the game has gotten more unstable, crashing sometimes when loading a save. That you don't have to worry about on Mein Leben, though. There was one out-of-nowhere crash once in Area 52 but considering the 107 hours I've put into the game, that's a rare occurrence. After a point, upon loading a level, the game now also complains about video driver having run out of dedicated memory, suggesting a restart -- which is obviously not a thing on Mein Leben. The error message never seems to actually lead to anything, but I played the game on lower graphics settings, in case it would keep it stable.

Mom's spaghetti

It's hard to avoid the rising tension as you are nearing the end of the game. My palms started to get all sweaty and cold and my heart was racing every time. On my successful run, I came extremely close to dying when fighting the Zitadelle in the final mission: not due to the robot but because of the foot soldiers still about. You can despawn the soldiers by going through the vent and back there, and maybe I should have done that. But I considered it hazardous with the robot's bombardments still going about. And on my practice runs, no soldier had ever thrown a grenade into the room. Well, this time one did but I survived with whole 8 health left. Fortunately I had just managed to blow up the Zitadelle and could jump into the vent to get rid of the remaining enemies without risking it.

The final showdown has an alternative quick strategy and I see why it would be tempting. But I dismissed it immediately: losing your 4-hour run to something that can go wrong so easily is so not worth it. I'd rather take my chances fighting the around 25 soldiers below the deck and then the two Zerstörers atop, although on my final run I took out the first big robot right when it appeared and only then ran below as I had newly practiced. The slow strategy is far from safe either but -- at least for me -- staying on the move and being aggressive had worked (almost) every time when practicing. The armor regeneration from the ramshackles upgrade will kick in occasionally, increasing your protection.

We heard you like Mein Leben

If the main game's Mein Leben wasn't enough, each of the 3 pieces of DLC came with their own Mein Leben achievements -- though in my case, I did those before the main one. Luckily the DLCs are considerably less time-consuming: they're all episodic and you have to beat only the final episode of each on Mein Leben after having beaten the first two on any difficulty. They're still far from a walk in the park, however.

The first DLC, The Adventures of Gunslinger Joe, is hands down the hardest one. That is largely due to Joe not having any silent ranged weapons. He can throw a can hard enough to kill but it's not quiet. The final episode has one encounter that is extremely easy if you just manage to take out the initial adjacent two enemies without raising an alarm. Otherwise the place will end up being a massive fight. I figured out that a thrown can turns them both to face right, allowing me to use stealth takedowns on them unnoticed when starting on the left one.

Then there is a part outside where I initially tried to pull enemies to me but learned that it's simpler to just run through while shooting all the exploding things there.

The final encounter includes a Zitadelle and two commanders ready to summon more help. It took me a dozen tries on Death Incarnate to beat. For Mein Leben and 'All-Pro Warrior', I looked up a strategy of hiding under stairs. The stairs will shield you from the Zitadelle's flamethrower as you quickly destroy the robot. On my successful run, I managed to throw a lucky grenade at the start to take out one of the commanders to lessen the chaos after the robot.

I'd say the second DLC, The Diaries of Agent Silent Death, is the easiest one as a whole. Jessica Valiant (voiced by Claudia Black) is built for stealth and so are the missions. The episodes are short, including the final one, but it still took me a stupid many attempts to get 'Ultimate Spy' because things kept going wrong when taking out the final target, after which you have to rush to the exit before your health runs out due to life support having been shut down.

'Super Soldier' from the third DLC, The Deeds of Captain Wilkins, is the other arguably easy Mein Leben to unlock. You can cheese all the difficult encounters by sitting above the enemies, never getting shot, possibly even undetected. The final encounter on my initial Death Incarnate run was oddly easy too. Either something glitched or I managed to take out all the initial enemies completely undetected. The reinforcements never came and the mess hall never became the mess it's supposed to. Unfortunately the encounter returned in the challenge maps the DLCs come with and which you have to beat on Death Incarnate for achievements. You start the challenge down on the floor so no hiding in the ceiling vents.

7 out of 9 of the challenge maps require you to only get to the exit, making them quick and easy. The other two require killing all enemies first. One of them is the mess hall, the other is Joe's nightmare encounter which is like a mini version of the main game's courthouse. When playing the DLC normally, dying will continue the game the same way as beating the encounter. I feel that's how the main game's courthouse dream sequence should have been too: die to continue, survive for an achievement and maybe a special cutscene. Mass Effect 2: Arrival did it that way as well.

With Wolfenstein II having occupied my mind the past two weeks, I have still some more thoughts on the game and franchise. I shall continue those in another post because this one got rather lengthy.