Brass Balls Achievement Strategy Guide

[jaysfan14]

OMFG!!! I have just spent the last couple days/week working on this game. I started a game on hard and immediately switch the "disable vita-chambers" to on (so they are off). I just beat the game and didn't get either of the achievements! I am considering shoving this disk into my wall! Is there any reason this would happen?

[Goujon]

Here's how I got "Disable Vita chamber" option appear:

1. Clear system cache;
2. Go to System, select HDD, select Games. Find Bioshock folder and delete plasmids add-on from it;
3. Start the game and agree to install the update;
4. Quit the game, go to downloads section for Bioshock and download Plasmids add-on;
5. Start the game, enjoy!

This method was confirmed as working by 2 friends of mine. Hope it will work for you guys too.

BTW I'm not sure but if add-on is installed correctly then on the difficulty level selection screen will be different slogans for each of the difficulty level. For hard it reads now "You've played a LOT of shooters" and it was like "The veteran who seeks a challenge blah blah...".

[Jobbenar]

I have recently read online that you can turn the vita chambers off, play the game on easy, and as long as you dont die, you can change the game to hard before the last boss fight and you'll get the brass balls achievement, can anyone confirm this before i start a run through again?

[Corallion]

Originally Posted by Jobbenar

I have recently read online that you can turn the vita chambers off, play the game on easy, and as long as you dont die, you can change the game to hard before the last boss fight and you'll get the brass balls achievement, can anyone confirm this before i start a run through again?

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/f...ad.php?t=92961

[veece16]

Originally Posted by Corallion

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/f...ad.php?t=92961

I did it a couple days ago. I switched vita chambers off after the plane crash and played through on easy without dying. At the end AFTER YOU STAB ATLAS for the last time, press start and switch the difficulty to hard, PRESS THE START BUTTON again to resume the game and not b. After the little girl gives you the key, both or one of the achievements should pop.

[KanjiKoka]

Wow people, wow...

Do not even bother with the stress of Vita-Chambers being disabled. I JUST completed the game to earn the full 1100 on my first play-through and never bothered with turning them off. Playing on hard is not HARD AT ALL. It is more fun and seriously, since all these games require hard completion for achievements you'd think we would've stepped up our skills/tolerance by now.

Save...saVE...SAVE! Is all I have to say. Heed the advice to save after and before "battles" or when collecting stuff for the "cheevos". I die- I'd reload my last save, which should have been a few seconds or a few minutes before I died. It did not affect my save file and the dang thing unlocked when the Lil' Sis handed me the key.

When you die, you have no choice but to let the game load you into a chamber. I wasted no time, each time it happened, to pause the game and load my last save. By the way, I only had my save and the auto save file (for safe keeping) the whole play-through. Not sure what you'd need multiple saves for...

I do find it humorous and heartbreaking that folks who had them turned off had to either A.) Restart the system B.) Go to dashboard or C.) Get sent back to the main menu. Talk about time consuming! I thought reloading my save was bad!

Whether you're playing on hard and grabbing every achievement in one run like I did or just having to face off against Big Daddies period, I found that the best strategy is to not have him aware that you're out to hurt him and set up four or five trap bolts (amazing weapon!) in his path and lay two proximity mines and/or if needed blast him with any type of grenade launcher ammo to finish. This is on hard remind you .

Sorry if I sound harsh...I tend to be aggressive at times. Best of luck!

[bejaroo15]

I started the brass balls achievement at my friends house the other night. I disabled the vita-chambers and everything went smoothly until I decided to go back to my house to continue playing. Apparently when I switched xbox's, the disable vita-chamber option on my xbox got turned off without me knowing. I fought a Big Daddy and got killed...and was respawned at a vita-chamber. I saved before this happened though. If I go back and reload my save from before I was revived at a vita-chamber, is it going to be like it never happened or is it going to prevent me from getting the achievement. I'll be pissed off if I go all the way through the game and the achievement didn't unlock.

[Corallion]

Originally Posted by bejaroo15

I started the brass balls achievement at my friends house the other night. I disabled the vita-chambers and everything went smoothly until I decided to go back to my house to continue playing. Apparently when I switched xbox's, the disable vita-chamber option on my xbox got turned off without me knowing. I fought a Big Daddy and got killed...and was respawned at a vita-chamber. I saved before this happened though. If I go back and reload my save from before I was revived at a vita-chamber, is it going to be like it never happened or is it going to prevent me from getting the achievement. I'll be pissed off if I go all the way through the game and the achievement didn't unlock.

There has been some debate on this. I personally played through the entire game and beat the last boss without even having the option. Once I re-download the DLC and beat him agaim, I got the achievement. I did die a couple times and reloaded from an earlier save and it didn't count against me. There have also been reports of people dying, reloading a save and not getting it. How they went about it (whether glitching or legit) I don't know.

[Mgetter]

does this get easier as the game goes on? im only on medical pavillion but man, its tough/ its not so much hard as it is resource depleting. plasmids take half my bar, ammo is scarce and i dont have enough money to buy more health/eve. does it get eaiser as you progress and upgrade? cause right now, all im worried about is getting to atlas. beating him on difficult is super easy.

[Incompl33t]

Originally Posted by Mgetter

does this get easier as the game goes on? im only on medical pavillion but man, its tough/ its not so much hard as it is resource depleting. plasmids take half my bar, ammo is scarce and i dont have enough money to buy more health/eve. does it get eaiser as you progress and upgrade? cause right now, all im worried about is getting to atlas. beating him on difficult is super easy.

Yes, it will get easier, but the Big Daddies won't. You need to be very strategical with the Daddies, just remember, on Hard, Security Bullseye and the Research Camera are your friends.

[DogPoloni]

Originally Posted by Mgetter

does this get easier as the game goes on? im only on medical pavillion but man, its tough/ its not so much hard as it is resource depleting. plasmids take half my bar, ammo is scarce and i dont have enough money to buy more health/eve. does it get eaiser as you progress and upgrade? cause right now, all im worried about is getting to atlas. beating him on difficult is super easy.

The wrench is your best weapon. Find all the tonics to beef yourself up in conjunction with the wrench, wrench lurker 1 & 2, sportboost 1 & 2, wrench jockey 1 & 2. Then you should go for the plasmids, the best being the target dummy which doesn't take much EVE away and is used to distract enemies whilst you can wrench them to death, earlier in the game when you acquire the appropriate tonics it takes only one hit to kill splicers, but whilst progressing it takes anywhere from 2-4 hits, which isn't much considering you can get sportboost which increases the speed of the swing by 25%.

[bejaroo15]

I ended up restarting the game to be sure. I finally got the achievement last night, along with seriously good at this, for a total of 140 points. Everytime I died, I just reloaded from a previous save point. I thought hard was pretty easy. I used the wrench most of the time, I just stacked tonics like wrench lurker and wrench jockey. The big daddies ended up being kind of a joke after awhile. At first they may seem difficult, but they really weren't. Especially since later on you get trap bolts. I'd set up a group of trap bolts and then fire an incendiary bolt at the big daddy. He'd then chase me through the bolts, killing himself. Fontaine was really easy too. His attacks are all in slow straight lines. Just step to the side and gun him down with an opposing element.

[Ozbaab]

Hm I've never ever used the trap bolts tbh.. But I'll try for sure now

[Mahtan Tinuviél]

Thanks for the information.
It is also valid the third post with extra advice...

Abuse save!!! Its better than having to go all over again the same part....

[Mgetter]

Originally Posted by DogPoloni

The wrench is your best weapon. Find all the tonics to beef yourself up in conjunction with the wrench, wrench lurker 1 & 2, sportboost 1 & 2, wrench jockey 1 & 2. Then you should go for the plasmids, the best being the target dummy which doesn't take much EVE away and is used to distract enemies whilst you can wrench them to death, earlier in the game when you acquire the appropriate tonics it takes only one hit to kill splicers, but whilst progressing it takes anywhere from 2-4 hits, which isn't much considering you can get sportboost which increases the speed of the swing by 25%.

thanks to both of you. ill keep those ill in mind. i just gotta remember where to find them... i cant remember. im just ready to finish this before bio2. however, what did you guys do with the little sisters? harvest or save? dont you get more for saving but you have to save more to do it?

[DogPoloni]

Originally Posted by Mgetter

thanks to both of you. ill keep those ill in mind. i just gotta remember where to find them... i cant remember. im just ready to finish this before bio2. however, what did you guys do with the little sisters? harvest or save? dont you get more for saving but you have to save more to do it?

Save them. Even though you get more ADAM for harvesting them you get other rewards for every three you save. The extra ADAM isn't necessary either, I finished the game with plenty of ADAM left over. All I bought was every single health & EVE upgrade, target dummy and electro bolt 3, I might have bought other things but I can't remember.

[noobie2games]

Too difficult for me I gave up The game is fun, but I'm happy already with the amount of achievements I already got for this game. I'm just looking forward to the 2nd one @ this point

[Ozbaab]

Beat the game last night and got the full 1100/1100!

[schorpioen]

The game isn't that hard to get the full points. You only have to be carefull and take the time for it.

[Mgetter]

just got brass balls. i was incredibly nervous it was going to glitch. i dont have the time or patience to go through it again (esp. with the sequel being released in a few days) so im super glad it didnt glitch.

i did use vita chamber at one point but i reloaded a save prior to that so i can confirm that doing that will not disable the save completely.

also, it gets much, much easier the further you get. to put it in perspective, i started last sunday, by friday, i was just before peach wilkins. friday, i beat him, played through to fort frolic, then today, after finishing up fort frolic, i played through to the end. the beginning was by far the most difficult. by about arcadia, i started having full EVE/first aid and around $500 most of the time.

hope this helps other people.

[Vicktacular]

I feel dumb. I just played through the game again on hard and rather than turning vita chambers off I just reloaded my saves. Only after I defeated Atlas twice with no achievement did I bother to read this thread. O well, Bioshock 2 at midnight! Playing through the game again got me back in the Bioshock mood.

[valeo1993]

really man i went through the whole game and didn't die at all and i never had to go back and save and i didn't get the acheivement could not turnin off the vital chambers be it

[Muhnamana]

Where do you disable the vita chambers? I went to the options but seeing nothing listed for this.

Can someone let me know if I'm looking in the right place?

[FritzMaster]

Hey guys!

After finishing the game all the way through without using the Vita-Chamber, I didn't get the Brass Balls achievement. But, after messing around a bit I managed to unlock it without having to play the entire game all over again!

I'll let you all know what I did and you can figure out how to make it work for you.

First off, I played the game ALL the way through (beating Fontaine) WITHOUT the Vita-Chambers option turned off (it didn't even turn up in my options). I died plenty of times, resurrected in the Vita-Chamber, then simply loaded the previous save.

After completing the game in this fashion, and not getting the achievement, I downloaded the Tonic Pack online. I then loaded the game I saved right in front of the elevator that leads to Fontaine, and before going in to kill him I turned the "Disable Vita-Chamber" option (which had now appeared) to ON. I went in the elevator, killed Fontaine, and voila!

Hope this helps!

[garageinc]

this brass balls achievement gave me a real headache when i tried to do it as for some reason the disable vita chambers option was not there for me. now this may have been covered already but i found a easy solution on another site to fix this if you are having the same problem. its a weird one but it does work even when i downloaded the plasmids content it still did not appear so what i did was erase the content, set up a new silver account for live and downloaded the content with this new profile then changed to my main profile and bang the option was back in the pause menu. hope this helps others who are having the same problem.

[CHARIZARD o]

i just got mine a few days ago. It was a lot easier than i thought it would be. you just have to remember to save, save!, and SAVE!!!

[CHARIZARD o]

Ive also heard that beating it on the easiest difficulty without dying and then switching to hard difficulty right before you drain the last bottle of ADAM from Fontaine will get you the achievement

[GaTechGrad]

I haven't played Bioshock since 2007, but I played through it again this week on Easy to get the tonic, historian, inventor, weapon upgrade, etc achievements. I never died, and I downloaded the DLC and disabled Vita Chambers shortly after I started by playthrough.

After I defeated Fontane and a few seconds into the cutsence, I swtiched the difficulty to Hard (I believe I used "B" to return) and the achievements (BB & SGaT) DID NOT unlock.

I pressed Continue on the title screen, defeated Fontane again, and then IMMEDIATELY pressed start when the cutscene started. I changed the difficultly to Hard and used START to return to the cutscene, and both achievements (2 for 140G) unlocked once the scenery in the cutsence changed (when the little sister is handing you something).

[stevie vip 99]

finally got the full 1100 now

[AHCIJUNKIE620]

Ok i found the brass balls glitch fix!!! Step 1. If u have any bioshock data delete it. Step 2. Download the dlc and then restart ur xbox or it wont work and it wont give u the opion for the via chambers if u enter the game from the dashbord. Step 3. Pick hard mode and when u r in the water, press start and go to opions to see if u have the via chamber opion. Step 4. Turn it on and then save and play the game. Step 5. Always save the game urself and nerver quit the game or shut off ur xbox after an auto-save...always save it urself when u r about to shut off u xbox..if u quit the game or turn ur xbox off after an auto-save..ur data will be ruined and the via chamber opion will disappear!!!!!!!! Also it could disappear if u sign out of ur profile. So ur best bet is to play and play and play until u beat it. Play no other game until u do! If u follow this, the glitch wont happen to u. Good luck. Text my gt if u have any question.