Achievement/Java Edition

The popup that would appear when an achievement was earned.

The achievement interface with the first achievement done.

The entire achievement tree, completed.

Interface

The Java 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.

In this screen, achievements had hover-text, which became 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.

Achievements were earned on a per-player, per-world basis: each new player in each new world had the potential to fill out a new achievement tree.

When an achievement was earned, "Achievement Get!" and the name of the achievement would be broadcast in chat to any players in the world. "Achievement Get!" was a reference to a decade-old 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.

Achievements could be obtained in any game mode. Because of this, it was possible to achieve more difficult achievements such as On A Rail, When Pigs Fly, and Sniper Duel, and others by switching into Creative mode.

• Return to Sender was an exception to the above, because it required a ghast fireball, and ghasts attack the player only in Survival, Hardcore, and Adventure mode, although it could still be obtained through the /achievement command.

There was an /achievement command that could give and take achievements. When using this command to give an achievement, a player would receive all previously-required achievements in addition to the one being given.

One way a player could reset all achievements in a world was by deleting the "stats" folder in the world file, which would also reset statistics.

When Pigs Fly required Cow Tipper, as cows drop leather, though there was no crafting recipe for a saddle.

List of achievements

The Java Edition had a total of 34 achievements:

Icon	Achievement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Resource location
	Taking Inventory	Press 'E' to open your inventory	—	Open your inventory. The description matches the configured inventory key.	openInventory
	Getting Wood	Attack a tree until a block of wood pops out	Taking Inventory	Pick up wood from the ground.	mineWood
	Benchmarking	Craft a workbench with four blocks of planks	Getting Wood	Pick up a crafting table from your inventory's crafting field output or a crafting table output.	buildWorkBench
	Time to Mine!	Use planks and sticks to make a pickaxe	Benchmarking	Pick up any type of pickaxe from a crafting table output.	buildPickaxe
	Hot Topic	Construct a furnace out of eight cobblestone blocks\Construct a furnace out of eight stone blocks	Time to Mine!	Pick up a furnace from a crafting table output.	buildFurnace
	Acquire Hardware	Smelt an iron ingot	Hot Topic	Pick up an iron ingot from a furnace output.	acquireIron
	Time to Farm!	Use planks and sticks to make a hoe	Benchmarking	Pick up any type of hoe from a crafting table output.	buildHoe
	Bake Bread	Turn wheat into bread	Time to Farm!	Pick up bread from a crafting table output.	makeBread
	The Lie	Wheat, sugar, milk, and eggs\Bake cake using wheat, sugar, milk, and eggs!	Time to Farm!	Pick up a cake from a crafting table output.	bakeCake
	Getting an Upgrade	Construct a better pickaxe	Time to Mine!	Pick up a pickaxe from a crafting table output that is not a wooden pickaxe.	buildBetterPickaxe
	Delicious Fish	Catch and cook a fish!	Hot Topic	Pick up a cooked fish from a furnace output.	cookFish
	On A Rail	Travel by minecart at least 1 km from where you started.	Acquire Hardware	Travel by minecart to a point at least 1 km from where you started. Distance is measured in a straight line.	onARail
	Time to Strike!	Use planks and sticks to make a sword	Benchmarking	Pick up any type of sword from a crafting table output.	buildSword
	Monster Hunter	Attack and destroy a monster	Time to Strike!	Kill a hostile mob or one of the following neutral mobs: enderman, zombie pigman, spider, cave spider.	killEnemy
	Cow Tipper	Harvest some leather	Time to Strike!	Pick up leather from the ground.	killCow
	When Pigs Fly	Fly a pig off a cliff	Cow Tipper	Be riding a pig (e.g. using a saddle) when it hits the ground with a fall distance greater than 5.	flyPig
	Sniper Duel	Kill a skeleton with an arrow from more than 50 meters	Monster Hunter	Use a launched arrow to kill a skeleton, wither skeleton, or a stray from 50 or more blocks away, horizontally.	snipeSkeleton
	DIAMONDS!	Acquire diamonds with your iron tools	Acquire Hardware	Pick up a diamond from the ground.	diamonds
	We Need to Go Deeper	Build a portal to the Nether	DIAMONDS!	Enter a nether portal, and be teleported to the opposite dimension.	portal
	Return to Sender	Destroy a Ghast with a fireball	We Need to Go Deeper	Kill a ghast using a ghast fireball.	ghast
	Into Fire	Relieve a Blaze of its rod	We Need to Go Deeper	Pick up a blaze rod from the ground.	blazeRod
	Local Brewery	Brew a potion	Into Fire	Pick up a potion from a brewing stand potion slot. An already-created potion placed and removed qualifies.	potion
	The End?	Locate the End	Into Fire	Enter an end portal.	theEnd
	Free the end.	Defeat the Ender Dragon	The End?	Enter the end exit portal.	theEnd2
	Enchanter	Use a book, obsidian and diamonds to construct an enchantment table	DIAMONDS!	Pick up an enchantment table from a crafting table output.	enchantments
	Overkill	Deal nine hearts of damage in a single hit	Enchanter	Damage can be dealt to any mob, even those that do not have nine hearts of health overall.	overkill
	Librarian	Build some bookshelves to improve your enchantment table	Enchanter	Pick up a bookshelf from a crafting table output.	bookcase
	Adventuring Time	Discover all biomes.	The End?	Visit these 36 biomes: Beach Birch Forest Birch Forest Hills Cold Beach Cold Taiga Cold Taiga Hills Deep Ocean Desert Desert Hills Extreme Hills Extreme Hills+ Forest ForestHills FrozenRiver Ice Mountains Ice Plains Jungle Jungle Edge Jungle Hills Mega Taiga Mega Taiga Hills Mesa Mesa Plateau Mesa Plateau F MushroomIsland MushroomIslandShore Ocean Plains River Roofed Forest Savanna Savanna Plateau Stone Shore Swampland Taiga Taiga Hills Other biomes may also be visited, but are ignored for the achievement. Biomes are counted as visited even before The End? is achieved.	exploreAllBiomes
	The Beginning?	Spawn the Wither	The End.	Be within a 100.9×100.9×103.5 cuboid centered on the Wither when it is spawned.	spawnWither
	The Beginning.	Kill the Wither	The Beginning?	Be within a 100.9×100.9×203.5 cuboid centered on the Wither when it drops the nether star.	killWither
	Beaconator	Create a full beacon	The Beginning.	Be within a 20×20×14 cuboid centered on the pyramid when the beacon block realizes it is fully powered.	fullBeacon
	Repopulation	Breed two cows with wheat	Cow Tipper	Breed two cows or two mooshrooms.	breedCow
	Diamonds to you!	Throw diamonds at another player	DIAMONDS!	Drop a diamond. Another player or a mob must then pick up this diamond.	diamondsToYou
	Overpowered	Craft/Eat the Notch apple	Getting an Upgrade	Craft/Eat an enchanted golden apple.	overpowered

History

February 25, 2011					In an interview by Gamasutra, 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. „ “ 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. „
March 18, 2011					Notch talks about achievements and statistics on his blog. He says the following: “ I worked on the achievement and stats system. One design issue was dealing with offline mode and syncing the achievements once you get a connection again, but that's been solved. We've got a couple of people in the office who don't like achievements in games at all, so the goal is to design something that they're fine with. „ Also, he adds that achievements are not chores: “ Achievements will NOT be chores like "cut down 10000 trees", but rather challenges like "ride a pig off a cliff". Stats, however, will be used to keep track of how many trees you have cut down. The long term plan is to show achievements and stats from the profile page on minecraft.net as well, in case you want to brag. „
April 8, 2011					Notch uploads a video to YouTube showing weather, statistics and achievements.
Java Edition Beta
1.4					Test achievements can be found within the source code, and on the test video posted by Notch. Among these are opening the inventory, mining wood and building a workbench.
1.5					Achievements added. Initially intended to be released in Beta 1.4 it got pushed back as it was not yet functional. The first achievement confirmed by Notch was When Pigs Fly, although it was more explained than named.
July 13, 2011					Notch tweets about wanting to add an achievement to shoot the moon with a bow.
July 13, 2011					Notch tweets about adding the Sniper Duel achievement.
1.8		Pre-release			Added the Sniper Duel achievement.
Java Edition
1.0.0		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 5			10 new achievements have been added: Overkill, Enchanter, Librarian, DIAMONDS!, We Need to Go Deeper, The End?, The End., Local Brewery, Into Fire, and Return to Sender.
		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 6			The icon used by The End. changed from to .
1.5		13w04a			Achievements no longer reset when downgrading Minecraft.
1.7.2		13w36a			Updated the Achievement system, now stored per individual world/server.
					Added more achievements: Adventuring Time, The Beginning?, The Beginning., Beaconator, and Repopulation. Adventuring Time was unobtainable.
					Achievements can now be used as objectives in the Scoreboard system.
		13w37a			Time to Mine!, Time to Farm! and Time to Strike! are now also obtained when crafting the tool from a material other than wood. Similarly, Getting an Upgrade is now obtained when crafting any pickaxe other than a wooden one, while it required crafting a stone pickaxe before. If the player’s first pickaxe crafted is not a wooden one, they get Time to Mine! and Getting an Upgrade at the same time.
		13w38a			Added the achievement Diamonds to you!.
					The icon for DIAMONDS! was changed from to . The former icon is now used by Diamonds to you!.
		13w39b			Diamonds to you! can now be obtained by throwing a diamond at a zombie, making the achievement available in singleplayer mode.
1.8		14w06a			Added the achievement Overpowered.
		14w17a			Adventuring Time is now available without commands. Before, the 38 biomes had to be visited without visiting any other biomes, which made the achievement unavailable because the End has to be visited for its prerequisite, The End?. The "no other biomes" restriction is now lifted.
					Visiting the Frozen Ocean and Extreme Hills Edge biomes, which no longer generate since Java Edition 13w36a, is no longer required for Adventuring Time.
		14w32a			Corrected the description of the achievement Overkill to say that the player must deal nine hearts of damage. Previously it said that the player must deal eight hearts of damage.
1.9		15w44a			Enchanted golden apple recipe was removed, making the Overpowered achievement unobtainable.
		15w45a			Changed the description and requirements of Overpowered from "Build a Notch Apple" to "Eat a Notch Apple."
1.10		release			Hot Topic is now described as "construct a furnace out of eight cobblestone blocks," was previously "construct a furnace out of eight stone blocks."
1.12		17w13a			Achievements have been removed and replaced with advancements.

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  An achievement in chat.

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  An achievement in the achievement tree.

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  The "Overpowered" achievement.