Mario & Luigi: Brothership 100% completion checklist

Posted on December 8, 2024 by Ethan in Guides, Switch

At long last, we’ve finally 100 percent completed Mario & Luigi: Brothership – and if you’re looking to do the same, you can expect to spend somewhere around 50 hours clearing all of the game’s side content and optional challenges. Overall, it’s not too bad – there are a few tedious tasks you’ll need to complete, but all in all, fully completing this game is relatively easy as long as you’re willing to put the time in. We’ve put together a list of 100 percent completion criteria that you’ll need to complete in order to fully finish the game. Full game spoilers are contained within, so keep that in mind before you continue.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership 100 percent completion checklist

Before we begin with the criteria checklist, there are a few notes to go over. Normally, we’d count something like hitting all the question mark blocks for 100 percent. In this game, though, several of them are missable – the first two Great Lighthouse Islands, for instance, have certain parts you cannot revisit once you put the plugs into place. Likewise, Reclusa’s Mushroom Kingdom mirage cannot be revisited, so question marks and coins there cannot be recollected if missed. We’d also normally require getting at least one piece of all gear, which includes boots, hammers, wear, and accessories. Several of these are rare drops from very specific enemies. Other pieces of gear, however, are not actually recorded to exist in the game – either they’re such rare drops that no one’s seen them yet, or they’re present in the game’s files but unobtainable through legitimate means. And since you can just sell your gear anyway, we’ve decided not to include this as a part of 100% completion. You can still go for it if you like, though! Here’s the criteria we decided on:

Rainbow Rank reached with Mario and Luigi. In Mario & Luigi: Brothership, this entails raising both brothers to Level 43. You can level the pair beyond 43 (we finished 100% completion at Level 55), but there are no particular benefits other than increased stats and there aren’t any more rank-up bonuses.
All 29 Challenges completed. These are more tedious than they are difficult, but most of them are simple enough that you’ll clear them automatically as you play through the main story. For more info on challenges and how to complete them, check out our dedicated guide.
All 56 Side Quests completed. This number isn’t definite, mainly because a few specific side quests are mutually exclusive. These are tied to whether you connect Raynforest Island or Twistee Island first. We connected Raynforest Island first, which means Billdit comes to Shipshape Island to open a shop. If you connect Twistee Island, Maykit will set up shop instead, and both characters have different side quests. After completing all of Billdit’s side quests plus all of the limited-time ones, we came up with 56 of them to complete in total.
All 18 Grampy Turnips pulled. A whopping 8 of them are in a hidden room in the final area of the game. More specifically, it’s inside one of the leftmost challenge rooms on the lower level. In the southwest corner of this room, you can follow a wire off-screen to the left where you will find 8 hidden Grampy Turnips. The rest are scattered throughout the normal islands, and the gold Grampy Turnip on Shipshape Island can tell you where the ones you’re missing are.
All 46 Battle Plugs crafted. For the most part, this is simple enough – Sprite Bulbs are marked on the map. There is one easily-missed Battle Plug, however, called Seedleize. To get this, head to Allsand Island’s oasis and speak to the unseen character in the water. You’ll need to throw in a bunch of different items, but when you do, you will receive this secret Battle Plug.
All 20 Hidden Reefs found. These are simple enough as well! Even when you haven’t discovered the reef, its silhouette will appear on the ocean map.
All Islet Puzzles solved. Some of Mario & Luigi: Brothership’s mini-islands have puzzles to solve. We’d recommend giving them all a revisit before you’re done 100% completing, as some islets have puzzles you can only solve once you’ve unlocked all four of your overworld traversal moves, like the UFO and such.
100 Hits on Hammer Rally. This is where things get evil: endgame aside, Brothership’s performance isn’t too terrible. But its inconsistent frame rate really starts to get to you when you’re performing tasks that require consistent timing. The first Hammer Rally is on Twistee Island, and this is also the most graphically intensive area that houses the Hammer Rally. We’d recommend trying it on Slippenglide Island, which has a lot less going on, to maybe save a few frames. This one’s tougher than it sounds and will probably take you many tries.

Overall, not too bad – as long as you stick to it, you shouldn’t have much problems 100 percent completing Mario & Luigi: Brothership. Getting 100 hits on the Hammer Rally is more difficult than any boss you’ll face in the game (as long as you’re properly leveled, that is), so that should give you an idea on what kind of difficulty to expect. In the meantime, we have plenty of guides available for the game’s missable content and more.

To keep up to date with new content for Mario & Luigi: Brothership, check out our archive here. If you want to read more about the game itself, you can do so via the official website.