Peaks of Yore - Free Solo Mode with Avian Chaos clear (Skyborne Achievement)
8This achievement was a bit grueling to do but I stopped procrastinating on it after pouring several hundreds hours into this game.
Free Solo Mode is an optional gamemode that forbids you from using a vast majority of items, most importantly being the very beneficial chalk and smoking pipe. It also includes perma-death in the case you take a lethal fall, which will delete your save file the moment you die. On top of this restriction, Avian Chaos is an extra difficulty modifier you can apply that has two birds permanently attack you on every mountain. Both birds will constantly attempt to attack your hands to make you briefly lose your grip which can easily become lethal if it happens at a particularly crucial moment.
This final Steam achievement I was missing took me many attempts even after pouring roughly 600 hours into the game and enjoying it casually. Most attempts would either fail at Old Grove's Skelf, Eldenhorn, or Solemn Tempest for their own reasons. Typically you'd do the hardest mountains as soon as possible when you unlock them, then save Solemn Tempest for last and play it slowly and carefully. I got tired of doing this after many failed attempts climbed all 36 other mountains just to die at Solemn so I instead prioritized doing Solemn Tempest as fast as possible. After beating it, I then clear the mountains I left behind which were mostly safe thanks to water being present or the mountains being hard to have a lethal fall, such as Ymir's Shadow.
0:00 Start
0:12 15 Fundamental Mountains
9:22 5 Intermediate Boulders
11:26 Eldenhorn
16:00 Walker's Pillar
17:14 Great Gaol
20:37 The Great Bulwark of the North
26:06 The Great Solemn Tempest
57:53 St. Haelga
1:01:51 Ymir's Shadow
1:07:07 Fundamental's Cleanup
1:11:27 Boulder's Cleanup
1:13:25 Credits
This video is unedited raw footage for the sake of legitimacy as it is not unheard of to save scum perma-death achievements in games.