So, you’re looking at that achievement list in War Thunder and thinking, "How hard can it be?" Honestly, it’s a trap. Most players look at the Steam percentages and see 0.1% or 0.5% on things like "High-precision strike" and think it’s just because the game is free-to-play with millions of idle accounts. While that’s partly true, the reality is that completing every single achievement in this game is a mountain that most people shouldn't even try to climb unless they have a decade to spare or a very specific kind of patience.
War Thunder isn't like a standard RPG where you just "beat the game" and the trophies pop. It is a living, breathing grind machine.
The Absolute Wall of Time
Let’s be real for a second. If you want to know how hard is it to complete all thunder achievements, you have to talk about the clock. You aren't just playing for 100 hours. You aren't even playing for 1,000. To hit the "Legend" achievement—which only 0.6% of players have—you need to spend 1,000 hours in actual battle. Not sitting in the hangar looking at your tanks. Not waiting in queue. In battle. For a normal person with a job or school, that’s years of gameplay. And that’s just for the time-based ones.
The "Collection" achievements are where the soul-crushing part starts. You need to order 50 vehicles for almost every major nation. This sounds easy until you realize you have to research them first. By the time you get to the Israeli or Chinese collections, you’re looking at millions of Research Points. The goalposts move every few months, too. Just when you think you're close, Gaijin drops a "Rank VIII" update or a new sub-tree like the Belgian or Dutch lines, and suddenly your 100% completion is gone.
The Achievements That Are Actually Impossible (Almost)
There are a few achievements that are less about skill and more about the stars aligning perfectly while you’re holding your breath. Take "High-precision strike" for example. You have to destroy a player vehicle with a guided bomb from 20 km away or more.
Think about that.
The game’s rendering distance usually gives up long before that. You are basically dropping a bomb on a pixel that hasn't even loaded yet, hoping the guy doesn't move his tank three inches to the left during the 40-second flight time. Most people who actually have this did it by "lobbing" a GBU-8 or a Paveway from a high-altitude climb and then burning away in the opposite direction to stretch the distance. It's more of a physics experiment than a game at that point.
Then there’s the "But... how?!" achievement. You have to shoot down a plane with a tank cannon in Simulator Mode. If you’ve played Sim, you know it’s already hard enough to find the enemy, let alone lead a shot on a moving aircraft with a sluggish turret. Sure, you can "cheese" it by using an SPAA (Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft) with HE-VT shells because the game technically counts those as tank cannons, but doing it in Sim without icons or easy aim is still a nightmare.
The Skill vs. Luck Divide
It’s a mix. Some of these are pure skill, and some are just... weird.
- Ultimate (Mission Maker): You need to get both the first and the last kill of a match 10 times. This is mostly luck. You can be the best pilot in the world, but if a teammate sneezes on the last AI bot before you get there, you've failed.
- Doomsday!: Making a nuclear strike and winning. This requires a massive amount of Spawn Points in a single match. It’s the ultimate "sweat" achievement.
- Peaceful Atom: Shooting down a nuke carrier. This is probably the most toxic achievement because you’re essentially ruining someone else’s once-in-a-lifetime moment just to tick a box.
Honestly, the "Ace" achievements (killing 100 players with a specific nation) are the only ones that feel like a fair progression. They just happen while you're playing. But "Kraken"? Sinking 5 aircraft carriers? Unless you're specifically hunting for those in naval maps that rarely show up, you might never see that pop.
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Why the Numbers Are So Low
Don't let the 0.2% rarity on Steam fool you into thinking you’re a god if you get one. A huge reason the "Thunder achievements" look so hard is that Gaijin added a massive batch of them in 2023 and 2024.
Players who had 5,000 hours in 2018 and then quit don't have these new achievements. They are part of the "total player base," so they dilute the percentages. But even for active players, the "Israeli Collection" or "South African Ace" are rare because, well, who wants to grind the Israeli ground tree for fun? It’s a lot of Magachs, man. A lot of Magachs.
Is It Actually Worth It?
If you’re a completionist, War Thunder is your final boss. It’s hard because it demands total mastery of three different games: a flight sim, a tank brawler, and a naval strategy game. Most players specialize. They’re "tank guys" or "pilot mains." To get 100%, you have to be everything. You have to suffer through the Coastal Fleet grind (the "Piranha" achievement is sitting at a miserable 0.2% for a reason) and spend 500 hours in Simulator mode.
Basically, if you want to keep your sanity, don't aim for 100%. Aim for the ones that actually reward you with cool titles or medals.
What You Can Do Right Now
If you’re serious about hunting these, stop playing Arcade. Switch to Realistic Battles (RB). The multipliers for your "Ace" and "Win" achievements are better, and you’ll earn more Silver Lions to actually buy the 50 vehicles you need for the collection trophies.
Also, start carrying a heavy bomb or a guided missile in your plane lineup. If you see a match ending and you're near an enemy AI ship or a stationary bunker, take it out. That's how you chip away at "Thunderer" or "Antimech" without having to go out of your way and ruin your win rate.
Focus on one nation at a time. Trying to jump between the US, USSR, and Sweden will just make the "Collection" achievements feel impossible. Finish the 50 vehicles for one, then move on. It’s a marathon, not a sprint—and in War Thunder, that marathon is usually uphill, in the snow, against a Ka-50.