Achievement



"I like achievements. I know a lot of people don't, but I like them. I've had the idea to make achievements kind of like the in-game questing. So you'd be able to see the first achievement in a tree of achievements, and you unlock the top ones first before you can unlock the ones further down. So the first one might be to chop down a tree, or kill a chicken, and then these branch into more things you can do. Hopefully it would encourage people to try new areas. It could converge into a big task, like kill a dragon or something, which would put a kind of narrative into the achievement tree."

- Notch

Achievements are a way to gradually guide new players into Minecraft and give them challenges to complete. In the computer edition, a system of advancements accomplishes this instead.

Obtaining
Achievements can only be done in Survival mode, and if the game is switched to Creative or host privileges are enabled, they are permanently disabled, so that going back to Survival or disabling host privileges will not re-enable them. Achievements are independent of one another, allowing players to get them in any order.

There are 80 achievements in the Xbox 360 Edition, Xbox One Edition and Wii U Edition, 79 achievements in the Pocket Edition, and 81 trophies in the PlayStation 3 Edition, PlayStation 4 Edition and PlayStation Vita Edition.

Usage
When an achievement is obtained, a message is broadcast to the server declaring the player who earned the achievement.

In the Xbox and Pocket editions, achievements grant the player gamerscore, totaling 1,855 on Xbox and 1,750 on Pocket.

The achievements in the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita editions act as trophies.

Computer edition interface


The computer edition achievement system involved a tree composed of achievements. Originally the interface showed the achievement tree on the left, and a 'mini-map' of the tree on the right. The mini-map was removed in the final version, which then simply showed the tree. The background of the tree mimicked the world with dirt at the top with stone spanning below, bedrock at the bottom, and ores distributed as they would be in the world. By clicking and dragging, one could view different branches of the achievement tree. Using the scroll wheel on the mouse zoomed in and out of this display, making it easier to see, at a glance, what had been achieved and was still needed to achieve.

Achievements had hovertext, which are more detailed the closer the player was to achieving them:
 * Attained achievements were given as "Name/Description/Taken!" (for instance "Getting Wood/Attack a tree until a block of wood pops out/Taken!").
 * Unattained achievements for which the player had achieved all the prerequisites were given as "Name/Description".
 * Unattained achievements for which the player was one or two prerequisites away were given as "Name/Requires X" (for instance "The End./Requires 'The End?'").
 * Unattained achievements for which the player was three prerequisites away were given as "???/Requires X" (for instance "???/Requires 'The Beginning?'").
 * Unattained achievements for which the player was four prerequisites away were not given; there was just an icon, no hovertext at all.
 * Unattained achievements for which the player was more than four prerequisites away were not shown, even as an icon.

Trivia

 * When an achievement is obtained, it is announced to all players in chat.
 * On PC version, achievements can be obtained in any game mode. Because of this, it is easy to get more difficult achievements such as On A Rail, When Pigs Fly, and Sniper Duel, and others by using creative mode.
 * Return to Sender is an exception to the above, because it requires a ghast fireball, and ghasts only attack the player in survival, hardcore, and adventure mode, although it can still be obtained through commands.
 * Achievements such as Delicious Fish cannot be rewarded if you hook up the furnace to a hopper, as you are not getting the item directly from the furnace.
 * When using to give an achievement, a player will receive all previously required achievements as well as the one being given.
 * You can reset all of your achievements in a world by deleting the "stats" folder in the world file. Beware that it also resets statistics.
 * Sniper Duel became much more difficult when monsters started despawning depending on their distance from the player. 50 blocks is far enough that skeletons will despawn fairly quickly (usually within a couple of minutes or less), and will not move around.
 * When Pigs Fly requires Cow Tipper. Cows drop leather, but there is no crafting recipe for a saddle.
 * A player can get both Time to Mine! and Getting an Upgrade at the same time by crafting a stone, iron, gold, or diamond pickaxe before crafting a wooden pickaxe.
 * "Benchmarking" is called "Benchmaking" in Pocket Edition.