Phasmophobia‘s gameplay requires players to visit a location, decipher the ghost haunting it, and escape with the information before being taken down. Although it may sound easy, it is anything but, as demonstrated by the numerous achievements that people can opt to acquire. While a good chunk are simple enough to get, some require players to do things that can make haunting investigations much harder than necessary, which often leads to failure. Out of all the achievements in Phasmophobia that are touted as difficult, one in particular seems to be the bane of many players’ existence, simply because the conditions required to obtain it are so extreme.
Challenging as it may be to figure out the type of ghost doing the haunting and making it out alive, especially on higher difficulties, there is one achievement in Phasmophobia that takes that to the next level. Its name is Gold Apocalypse, and it is known as the hardest to obtain in the game. While there are players who have managed to achieve it, the process of doing so was likely very grueling, anxiety-inducing, and frustrating, as making even the simplest of mistakes could lead to having to repeat everything from the beginning.

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Why Phasmophobia’s Gold Apocalypse Achievement Is So Difficult to Earn
Out of all the challenges that people can try in Phasmophobia, earning the Gold Apocalypse is likely one that many people will constantly fail at before they get their reward. It’s touted as being extremely difficult because of the few factors that have caused the deaths of many players:
- Players must set the job’s difficulty multiplier at 15x, which means more frequent and longer-lasting hunts, ghosts moving at insane speeds, and multiple other handicaps that impede one’s ability to finish the investigation
- It requires playing within Phasmophobia’s Sunny Meadows Mental Institution, the largest map in the game, with two floors and 69 rooms that ghosts could be in, making it difficult to locate clues and the entity itself
- The achievement can only be earned by playing in single-player mode, which makes scouring the map and identifying the ghost much harder
- Optional objectives have basically become mandatory, which means that simply finding out what the ghost is won’t be enough to earn the achievement
- Players must be able to take a photo of the ghost before leaving, a difficult task considering how fast and aggressive the entity is compared to how it would usually be
Given the many things that must be taken note of, it’s easy to see why people would opt not to attempt the Gold Apocalypse achievement. It’s possible to acquire it, but only if someone puts in the time and dedication needed to do so.
What Players Can Do to Make the Gold Apocalypse Challenge Easier on Themselves
Even knowing how hard it will be, there will be people who are more than willing to take on the challenge. For those who decide to try and earn the Gold Apocalypse achievement, know that there are a few things that can be done to make it more doable:
- Learn everything needed to identify all the ghosts of Phasmophobia, including how they would move, their level of aggression, each type’s quirks, etc., to waste as little time as possible during the investigation process.
- If the objectives are too difficult in the current investigation, practice on lower Apocalypse difficulties.
Phasmophobia is one of the best horror games that plays into people’s fear of the unknown, and the Gold Apocalypse achievement helps in emphasizing that, given that there’s no telling what could happen when trying to earn it. Even knowing how many failed to obtain it due to its difficulty, there are those brave enough to try, and they may just succeed, so long as they completely understand what they’re getting into.

Phasmophobia
- Released
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October 29, 2024
- ESRB
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T For Teen // Blood, Use of Drugs, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Kinetic Games
- Publisher(s)
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Kinetic Games
- Engine
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Unity