Lest we forget?

[murphbri]

I'm hoping to get some advice on how to unlock this. From what I've been able to find online, you have to fight skirmishes over and over again to get the letters, but nobody seems to know for sure how many letters there are. Also apparently you can only get some letters by fighting near certain locations. Enemy units don't respawn from what I can tell, so if you kill them too quickly it locks you out of the trophy.

 

I have played through the campaign twice on standard and once on hard and no luck despite fighting every skirmish manually,

 

 

[Ghost-TeamX]

On 18/07/2023 at 9:08 AM, murphbri said:

I'm hoping to get some advice on how to unlock this. From what I've been able to find online, you have to fight skirmishes over and over again to get the letters, but nobody seems to know for sure how many letters there are. Also apparently you can only get some letters by fighting near certain locations. Enemy units don't respawn from what I can tell, so if you kill them too quickly it locks you out of the trophy.

 

I have played through the campaign twice on standard and once on hard and no luck despite fighting every skirmish manually,

 

 

Hey mate, I saw you got the platinum recently. How did you solve it and could you find any pattern behind getting new letters? Or is it really just random and "play till it pops"?

[SoroSuub1]

This is really killing me and I'm nervous of having to play the Italy campaign. Again. And still not receive the trophy.

[murphbri]

On 7/21/2023 at 8:57 AM, Ghost-TeamX said:

Hey mate, I saw you got the platinum recently. How did you solve it and could you find any pattern behind getting new letters? Or is it really just random and "play till it pops"?

The key to unlocking the trophy is the difficulty. I had to play on "extra hard." On that difficulty enemy units will retreat and heal themselves after a skirmish. They will also aggressively attack once healed. I stayed in the starting area, capturing only the ammo dump and one other location before pushing east to Potenza. Then I parked my units at choke points on the roads and the enemy attacked over and over while I sat there and defended. I was able to get 29 pairs of letters this way. Then I had a long stretch of ten skirmishes in a row with no letters, so i pushed further east and captured Bari. Then three more skirmishes with no letters, then finally two skirmishes in a row with letters and the trophy finally unlocked on the 68th turn with 31 pairs of letters collected in that run, my fifth playthrough overall (which of course I didn't finish because I am never playing this game again unless they do dlc )

 

Hope this helps anyone struggling to get this game platted!

 

On 7/24/2023 at 1:07 PM, SoroSuub1 said:

This is really killing me and I'm nervous of having to play the Italy campaign. Again. And still not receive the trophy.

 

Believe me when I say I feel your pain, I fought every skirmish while getting the other trophies on my first four playthroughs of the campaign. It took somewhere between 50-60 skirmishes on my "skirmish only run" before I was able to unlock the trophy. Just don't kill any units, play on extra hard, and you should get it eventually. It's strange trying to plat a game without any trophy guide or vids on YouTube, for me it's like being back in my x380/ps3 days when I didn't know about awesome sites like this one and YouTube that have trophy guides and vids.

 

Hang in there and good luck getting it! I never thought I would be on a leaderboard for top 50 to get a plat so that's another cool thing to look forward to when you get it.

Edited July 27, 2023 by murphbri
typo

[Gumble_Monkey]

Do letters carry over for saves or have to do it all in one goM? 

[murphbri]

Letters carry over across multiple playthroughs. When I was scouring the Steam forums for tips some people were reporting as many as 34 pairs of letters and still not getting the achievement iirc. The run I got it on the trophy unlocked after the 31st pair, but there were others I had seen on my earlier playthroughs that I didn't get yet in my platinum run.

[JH12410953]

The conditions for obtaining this trophy are very confusing

It can be confirmed that there are about 80 letters that can be inherited multiple times

Some of these letters have a low probability of appearing, such as following Caesar's footsteps, with five sets of letters, which are ten letters

You must fight the most difficult difficulty so that an enemy unit can brush at least three times to avoid omissions

[Gumble_Monkey]

Contacted sega support this is what I got as a reply:

Hi Gumble_Monkey,

 

To unlock the achievement you need to play as many campaign battles as possible and every time a loading screen is present you have a chance to see a letter to or from a soldier. You need to see all of the letters and after that is done the achievement is yours.

 

The letter appearance is random so it can take some time to unlock the achievement.

 

If there's anything else you want to point out or have any feedback, let us know.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Patryk

SEGA Support

Just now, Gumble_Monkey said:

Contacted sega support this is what I got as a reply:

Hi Gumble_Monkey,

 

To unlock the achievement you need to play as many campaign battles as possible and every time a loading screen is present you have a chance to see a letter to or from a soldier. You need to see all of the letters and after that is done the achievement is yours.

 

The letter appearance is random so it can take some time to unlock the achievement.

 

If there's anything else you want to point out or have any feedback, let us know.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Patryk

SEGA Support

Also followed up about difficulty and received this :

 

Patryk (SEGA Support)

 

5 Sept 2023, 15:33 BST

 

Hi,

 

No the difficulty level does not impact the achievement.

[SoroSuub1]

Ok, that's helpful thank you.

 

Any thoughts on cheesing the skirmishes in the campaign? I've been rushing M8 Greyhounds with success (except for the skirmish mission where the optional objective is to capture anti-tank guns lol), but hoping that others may have suggestions to blaze through skirmishes faster.

 

Rushing the HQ directly seems to sometimes spawn a wave of reinforcements (often including a tank).

 

Edit2: I found this site that lists about 76 letters (and apparently that's not all of them).

Some letters come from doing different things, they mention bombing Monte Cassino vs. saving Monte Cassino for example.

 

Edit: It appears you get different letters if you lose battles, according to this forum.... some of them are "well-hidden". Ugh.

 

https://community.companyofheroes.com/coh-franchise-home/company-of-heroes-3/forums/1-general-discussion/threads/2272-company-of-heroes-3-telling-soldier-stories

 

Quote

 

Some of the stories change dynamically depending on your performance. Win a skirmish and the medic you’re following will talk about the friends he’s making on the battlefield. Lose and he’ll be more focused on the soldiers’ lives he’s been fighting to save. 

[...]

For those expecting a bustling capital, Potenza may seem sedate, with small churches and alleys too narrow for vehicles to traverse. Yet, after a day in its company, one realises that they have judged it too quickly. Its retiring countenance unfurls into the region’s best-kept secret. The streets encourage a refreshing stroll, and the intimate cafes provide a reason to linger, if not overstay one’s welcome.  

A single playthrough won’t be enough for you to see all the Soldier Stories. Some of them are very well hidden and will only happen under certain circumstances (keep an eye out for the tank hoarder when you’re playing the game). 

We’ve already got over 100 letters in the game with more going in every week. If you have any suggestions for cool stories or people that could act as inspiration, please let us know.

 

Edited November 1, 2023 by SoroSuub1

[SoroSuub1]

Finished a second playthrough on 'Very Hard' and the only additional tips I have is to screenshot everytime you get a letter.... and to do the opposite for Monte Cassino (bomb vs save). The letter related to Monte Cassino pops up in a later skirmish.

 

I'm done for now. Maybe I'll pick this game up again in a year or two.... there's some big updates with QoL coming down the line, but console updates come several months after PC updates. Unfortunately none of these updates include a letter tracker.