Achievement

Achievements are a way to gradually guide new players into Minecraft and give them challenges to complete. There are currently 30 achievements.

In an interview by Gamasutra before February 25, 2011, Notch said: “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."

He also said: “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.”

Finally, asked if such a move would risk leading players down a preset path, rather than encouraging exploration and invention as Minecraft does in its current state, Notch said: “Definitely not. I’d want these achievements to feel like things you can try, rather than these are things you have to do. People can follow them, but only if they want to.”

Achievements can be completed in any game mode, including Creative.

Some of the achievements are available in the Xbox 360 Edition, totaling 400 gamerscore. Notable differences include On A Rail, which requires 500 m of track instead of 1 km (due to smaller world size at the time of release), and some new achievements. The achievements are independent of each other, so you can, for example, get Getting Wood before Taking Inventory. Achievements will also not be obtainable in Creative Mode, or if the map has been edited in Creative Mode. Enabling Host Privileges in multiplayer will also disable achievements.

List of achievements

 * Notes
 * For achievements which may be obtained by picking up items, transferring an item from a chest to your inventory does not qualify; you must throw the item on the ground first.

Interface
Minecraft's achievement system involves a tree composed of achievements, some of which must be completed before others can be. 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 now simply shows the tree. The background of the tree mimics the world with sand at the top with dirt spanning below, bedrock at the bottom, and ores distributed as they would be in the world.

Test achievements can also be found within Beta 1.4's source code before the 1.5 release, and on the test video posted by Notch. Among these are opening the inventory, mining wood and building a workbench.

The Xbox 360 Edition uses the standard Xbox 360 achievement interface instead of the tree display.

March 18th update
On March 18, 2011, Notch talked about achievements and statistics on his blog. He said the following:



Also, he added that achievements will not be chores:



It could be argued that some of the achievements, such as On a Rail and Leader of the Pack, require grinding, however.

Preview video
On April 8, 2011, a video was uploaded to YouTube showing weather, statistics and achievements.

Bugs

 * The achievement Overkill actually requires to deal nine (and not eight) hearts of damage in a single hit (verified from source code).
 * Statistics and achievements sometimes reset for no reason at all.
 * Statistics and achievements reset when you update your minecraft.jar such as adding or deleting mods.
 * The achievement The End? cannot be obtained properly in 1.4 or in 1.5.
 * It is possible to obtain it (?) by pressing "r" many times while entering the nether.
 * GUI will not use custom textures from texture packs.

Trivia

 * The Lie achievement is a reference to the Internet meme "The Cake is a Lie", which itself is a reference to the video game Portal.
 * Another reference to one of Valve's games is the achievement name On A Rail, which is the title of one of the chapters in Half-Life.
 * You can reset all of your achievements by deleting the "stats" folder in the .minecraft app data folder. Beware that it also resets statistics.
 * "Achievement Get!" is a reference to a decade-old proto-meme: early screenshots of Super Mario Sunshine used the Japanese localization, and featured Mario grabbing a Shine Sprite with the prominent text "Shine Get!". Due to the prominence of the game and the attention given to these screenshots, "[noun] Get!" subsequently became a popular term used on image boards as post count benchmarks, which Notch occasionally visits.
 * We Need To Go Deeper is a reference to the movie Inception.
 * Return to Sender refers to a message often written on non-personal letters, usually in case that a letter ends up at an incorrect address. It is also the name of a song by Elvis Presley.
 * 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 for the above. It requires a Ghast's fireball, and Ghasts only attack the player in Survival mode or Hardcore mode.
 * When Pigs Fly is a reference to a well known saying meaning something absurd that would never happen.
 * "Monster Hunter" is the name of a series of games created, developed, and owned by Capcom. The series is considered to have a very high difficulty curve. The basis of these games is hunting Wyverns and Dragons, Carving and Tranquilizing them, making them into armor and weapons, then hunting even stronger Wyverns and Dragons, in a very Macabre Fashion Show.
 * The achievement "When Pigs Fly" requires Cow tipper. Cows drop leather, but there is no crafting recipe for a saddle.
 * The Cow Tipper achievement can be obtained on the 1.6.1 update by killing a horse.