Cronos: The New Dawn Is a Terrifying Treat for Trophy Hunters

Cronos: The New Dawn is the latest horror game from the great minds at Bloober Team. In this 2025 title, you play as a traveler, a time-traveling agent collecting the essence of important Polish figures of the past while seeking answers to the cause of the worldwide calamity. Along the way, you learn some startling secrets, and get some unexpected aid from feline friends.

For trophy hunters, Cronos: The New Dawn is a respectable platinum trophy to go for. It requires two playthroughs, and includes both difficulty and collectible trophies to boot. Nothing here is exceptionally challenging, but it can be a scary game if you’re not familiar with the genre. Join me as I, one such non-horror fan, step outside of my comfort zone to tackle this trophy set. The number of times I got grabbed by the wall Orphans and nearly screamed was outrageous.

In this article, I’ll share my recommended route to earning Cronos: The New Dawn’s platinum trophy, offer advice for some particularly tricky trophies, and reflect on the experience from a trophy hunter’s perspective. This isn’t intended to be a comprehensive trophy guide, but rather a roadmap to help you tackle the hunt yourself.

• Difficulty: 4/10
• Time to Platinum: 30 hours
• Missable Trophies: Yes; you must have certain essences when you beat the game
• Overall Recommendation: Yes

Why Cronos: The New Dawn?

Set in a grim world where Eastern European brutalism meets retro-futurist technology, Cronos: The New Dawn lets you experience a gripping story that straddles the line between past and future.

In the past, you will witness a world in the throes of The Change, a cataclysmic event that forever altered humanity. Meanwhile, in the ravaged wastelands of the future, every moment is a fight for survival against dangerous abominations that will test both your reflexes and your tactical thinking.

— PlayStation Store

My motivation behind playing Cronos: The New Dawn is simple: it is Halloween time and I wanted something fit for the season. It may be surprising to hear this, but I usually do not play horror games. My partner is the bona fide horror aficionado between the two of us. It’s not that I dislike them, but rather that my bread and butter tends to be RPGs, platformers, and looter shooters. There are very few game genres that I would generally refuse to play, though. Racing and sports games come to mind.

I decided to go out of my comfort zone and try trophy hunting in a horror game of my own. Cronos: The New Dawn appealed to me for a number of reasons. The trophy set seemed very reasonable by my standards. It was also developed by Bloober Team, and I’d seen my partner play their earlier works plenty enough to know their games are quality. Last, the game itself did the heavy lifting of convincing me.

The setting for Cronos: The New Dawn was very compelling to me. It was very clear to me that the developers put a lot of effort into making the game authentic in its Polish representation, which was something I had not seen much of in any other game. I am usually the type of person to skip most audio and text logs in games, but in this case I was interested enough to actually go through them all.

The game was incredibly spooky to me, and there were a few moments where I needed to take a minute to go collect myself before returning. Wearing headphones while playing definitely elevated the experience, immersing me in every little sound whether it was for atmospheric effect or legitimate danger.

Now, would I recommend Cronos: The New Dawn to other trophy hunters? Absolutely. I think it is an excellent title for just about anyone. It’s not so difficult as to lock anyone out from completing it. Horror fans will almost certainly find something to enjoy here (my partner certainly did). This game is a great entry point for non-horror fans as well. You’ll feel even more accomplished by going out of your comfort zone like I did!

The Trophy Hunt

First Playthrough

Cronos: The New Dawn is the type of trophy hunt that is incredibly front-loaded. Your first playthrough of the game is going to be the hardest and most time-consuming part of the experience. You will have to play the entire game with a guide out to get all the required collectibles, have no idea what to expect, and be on the backfoot on all your encounters.

To give you an idea, you must collect: all cats, comic books, travelogs, weapons, and traveler essences. You also need to find a significant number of valuable items to sell alongside cores for upgrades. Finding everything is virtually impossible without a detailed collectible guide. I would recommend this guide for its detailed descriptions.

I only missed the final traveler essence near the end of the game in the Police Station. Do NOT go into the hallway from whence you came with the six cell blocks, but rather the cell along the same wall after unlocking all the doors. The cell on the other side has a hidden Arbalest round for your trouble as well. If you enter the wrong cell, the door will lock behind you, forcing you to progress.

The other thing that you should be aware of is which essences you choose to keep in your Phylactery. You can only have three at a time. For your first playthrough, you should make sure to get Lidia, Marcel, and Krzysztof together at once. The collectibles guide above reminds you when the time comes.

There are two different endings you can get in your first playthrough. You should do both now before moving on to your second playthrough.

In general, it is recommended to play slow and steady. Follow the guide to get everything, but also check around for extra goodies as well. The linked guide does not mention every item you can find, so it is in your best interest to explore and find resources on your own too.

Second Playthrough

If you had a clean first playthrough, your second playthrough in Cronos: The New Dawn will be very straightforward. There are only three things you really need to worry about:

1. Complete the story in hard mode
2. Finish the game with only the story-related essences: Edward Wisniewski, Artur Baryka, and Dawid Zybert
3. Level up your gear

It is completely fine to pick up other essences along the way, so long as you complete the game with the three listed above. This is required for The Orthodox achievement.

Once you have enough energy to level up one of your guns fully, you should refund your points and go down the list to upgrade every gun one at a time. Thankfully, you don’t need them all upgraded at one time to earn the relevant achievement. If you were thorough in your initial playthrough, you will likely be able to knock out this trophy very early in your second playthrough. Don’t forget to also finish upgrading your suit for that trophy as well.

The second playthrough is, ironically, much easier than the first playthrough. By this point you should be well familiar with the various areas in the game and therefore be able to predict enemy encounters with relative accuracy. Additionally, the upgrades you’ve earned thus far greatly outpace the enemies’ upgraded stats in the harder difficulty.

Clean-Up

There are a lot of trophies in Cronos: The New Dawn that are combat-related and may or may not be missed depending on your playstyle. While I did not have any trophies I personally needed to go back for after my two dedicated playthroughs, below are the trophies that may have been missed by other players.

• Better Than One: Defeat 25 enemies with a headshot
  • This trophy is exactly how it sounds on the tin. Most players who play shooters will naturally aim for their enemies’ heads and have no problem earning this achievement without going out of their way to do so. If you’re struggling, I recommend using the starter pistol and charging your shots. Getting upgrades for stability can also make this a bit easier as well.
• The Anvil of the Collective: Defeat 4 enemies with a single Hammer shot
  • The Hammer is Cronos: The New Dawn’s version of a shotgun. This trophy may seem intimidating, as much of the game introduces enemies in small clusters rather than large ones. If you haven’t gotten this one naturally, the best place to get it is in the Church area near the end of the game.
  • There is a big ambush in the courtyard where you can easily group enemies up. Failing that, the Eliza boss fight concluding the Church section is also a great place to do this. There are several segments where she will spawn in lots of weak Orphans that you can dispatch easily.

• Don’t Let Them Merge: Burn 25 dead Orphans
  • Fairly early on, Cronos: The New Dawn teaches you that you can use the Torch to burn enemy corpses to prevent living ones from merging and getting stronger. You may feel worried about holding onto your Torch, as you can only hold one at a time at the start. However, you get a free one every single time you enter a safe room, and you can even craft them. You can also upgrade your suit’s capacity to carry two at a time. Don’t be stingy with your Torch, and you’ll get this one in no time.
• Raging Bull: Defeat an enemy with a melee attack
  • This trophy is an interesting one. Attacking enemies with melee attacks is laughably inefficient in Cronos: The New Dawn. You may need to punch the Orphan four times to get the equivalent of one bullet’s worth of damage. Many players may not ever engage an enemy in hand-to-hand combat as a result. However, this trophy is very easy once you know it exists. You can either weaken an enemy until its health is in the red (shown by your weapon’s tracker, received early on) and then get the last hit with your melee. You can also specifically target the Orphans with less health as well for an even easier time.
• Efficiency Discipline: Defeat 2 enemies with a single Sword projectile
  • The Sword is Cronos: The New Dawn’s naming convention for the pistol. This trophy is one that may be earned by many players incidentally, as the enemies can often stack up in later areas. If you somehow have not earned in naturally, I would recommend the same approach as with the Hammer trophy earlier. Upgrade the Sword’s power and go to town on the enemies in the Church ambush or during the Eliza boss fight and you’ll be set.
• To Pave the Path: Fabricate all item types
  • You can craft a number of items in Cronos: The New Dawn. For this trophy, all that matters is what is available for crafting in an initial playthrough. That includes three types of ammo for your weapons, three tiers of healing items, Torch fuel, and lastly Pyre mines. You do not need to craft Arbalest rounds for this achievement.

• The Annihilator: Defeat 5 enemies with a single Arbalest round
  • The Arbalest is a very cool, very powerful weapon, that is unique because you cannot craft ammunition for it until you’re in New Game Plus. And even then, it requires valuable Cores to do so. That makes every bullet important. The best way to get this achievement is—you guessed it—during the ambush in the Church courtyard or during the Eliza boss fight.
  • From my time with the game, it seemed like the Arbalest could do an entire color’s worth of damage to boss level enemies with each shot. In other words, it would take three shots (green -> yellow -> red) to defeat a boss fully when just using the Arbalest alone.
• Fire. Spreading.: Set 5 enemies on fire with a single burst of the Torch
  • Unlike the earlier trophy requiring the Torch, this one necessitates that the enemies are alive. A less utilized feature about the Torch is that when you use it against living enemies, it stuns them. This can be very helpful if you get surrounded or need to get out of a corner. For this trophy, make full use of the Church area to get it easily.
• The Pyromaniac: Burn Biomass with the Pyre
  • The Pyre is the remote detonation device that you unlock in the Steelmill. It is incredibly powerful when used optimally against bosses and large groups of enemies. One way that you may not think to use it for, however, is to burn Biomass to enter hidden rooms. To do so, you just need to throw a Pyre near the Biomass and then shoot it to make it explode. This is the one trophy on this list that I had not even thought to go for during my initial playthrough.

The Necessity for Novelty in Horror

One thing that nagged at me during my trophy hunt in Cronos: The New Dawn was just how different my first and second playthroughs felt. My first experience with the game was incredible. It was atmospheric, scary, and kept me in a heightened state the entire time. There were moments where I completely froze and locked up when an enemy spooked me too badly. I got confused and died during nearly every boss fight. My heart was pounding and everything just felt so oppressive. The final battle was iconic.

Then, fast forward to the second playthrough. Suddenly, I was much more skilled at the game. I knew how every enemy worked, what strategies worked, and knew just about where every jumpscare and ambush were located. Suddenly, the game was not so scary at all. In fact, I mowed down everything with relative ease. Instead of walking down hallways with my head on a swivel, I started sprinting because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was safe.

It almost became a power fantasy rather than a horror experience. I’m not knocking that at all; it was quite cathartic after such an intense first look at the game. However, it does go to show just how much novelty impacts fear.

When a person knows a scary event is about to happen, they are far less likely to be spooked. If that person knows the exact tactic that will be employed, they are even less likely to be impacted. That’s what happened with Cronos: The New Dawn. I almost feel like the required second playthrough took away some of what made the horror so impactful.

If I were to make a recommendation to the developers, I think I would’ve liked to have seen a different approach for the hard difficulty. It may have been more work, but remixed enemies or spawning logic would have done wonders to bring back the scary feeling.

Additionally, I think it may have been a good idea to remove the enemy health indicator in the second playthrough. Having less control over encounters because you’re not sure how close an Orphan is to death would have added some much needed intensity.

Reflection

Cronos: The New Dawn was a surprisingly engaging title for me to play this year. I’m really glad that I ended up picking it for my Halloween piece. Will you be playing the Lazarus DLC when it releases? I know I definitely will be, especially if they release an additional trophy set to go alongside it.

Are you a horror fan? What horror game do you think comprised your favorite trophy hunt and why is it Resident Evil 6? If you enjoyed this style of post, check out my Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted video and article combo next. Until next time, happy trophy hunting!