In the past, we’ve written several guides on how to 100 percent complete certain Nintendo games. Side Order was actually one of them! While it’s entirely possible to 100 percent clear Side Order as well as the main story mode, it’s pretty much impossible to truly 100 percent finish Splatoon 3 itself. This is thanks to its Badge system – there are several tasks in the game that you can complete to earn them to display on your profile. Several Splatoon 3 Badges, however, are incredibly difficult to earn. They’re also incredibly time-consuming – we’re talking thousands of hours here – and today we’ve written a list of some of the toughest Badges to earn in Splatoon 3.
Splatoon 3 Badges: Ranked Modes
One of the most popular categories of Splatoon 3 Badges is the weapon freshness category. There are a few available for each weapon in the game, and when you max out a weapon’s freshness, you’ll receive a 5-star Badge that corresponds to it. Generally, weapons that quickly ink lots of turf accumulate freshness a little bit faster. No matter what kind of weapon you use, though, you can expect a few months of grinding Ranked Battles before you get its treasured 5-Star Badge. To truly 100 percent complete Splatoon 3, you’ll need to do this with every single weapon in the game – and at the time of writing, more are being added! That’s going to take a really, really long time.
You’ll also need to accumulate 1,200 wins with every Special in the game. This includes the more recently added Triple Splashdown and Splattercolor Screen Specials, too. Furthermore, you’ll need to get 1,200 wins in Turf War plus 1,000 wins in all four Ranked Modes. There are also brand division Badges, and there’s even one for being in the top 10 of the X Battle mode. If you’re thinking of 100% clearing the Badges, you’ll need to be one of the best players in the entire community. There’s also a Badge for reaching Level 999, which would take thousands of hours of playtime all on its own.
More recently, however, one of the new Splatoon 3 Badges involves the new Tournament Manager mode. To truly clear the game, you’ll need to host your own 1,000-player tournament via Tournament Manager on Nintendo Switch Online. It’s sort of doubtful that a normal player would be able to put something of that scale together, so this Badge alone disqualifies a huge number of players from obtaining every Badge Splatoon 3 has to offer. As we’ll soon discuss, though, there are several other Badges that serve as major roadblocks in attaining that goal anyway.
Salmon Run Badges
There are more than a few problematic Salmon Run Badges. To get them all, you’d have to splat 10,000 of every single Boss Salmonid in the game. That goes for Flyfish too, who generally take more time to splat than other bosses. Furthermore, it’s not enough if you bomb one of their baskets but not the other – you have to be the one to actually defeat the Flyfish to raise your KO count. This also goes for Big Shots, who only have a 50 percent chance of spawning on non-special, non-high tide waves. This category of Badges will definitely take you a long time!
Additionally, one of the required Badges here asks that you get top 5 percent in an Eggstra Work event. These events are rather rare, and it’s incredibly tough to get top 10 percent, let alone top 5 percent. You’ll almost certainly need a full team of experienced Salmon Runners with voice chat to stand a chance here – random teammates via Freelance likely aren’t going to cut it. Another one of the trickiest Splatoon 3 Badges is getting 9,999,999 Grizzco Points.
Finally, you’ll have to defeat every King Salmonid 1,000 times for each of their corresponding Badges. This includes Cohozuna, Horroboros, Megalodontia, and any other King Salmonids added to Splatoon 3 before the game stops receiving content updates. Considering it takes more than a few waves of Salmon Run to attract a King Salmonid – not to mention Freelance teammates are a bit too inconsistent to guarantee a splat on the King – these Badges will take you a long time, too.
Miscellaneous Badges
Fortunately, we’ve gone over just about all of the most difficult Splatoon 3 Badges. There’s one more major roadblock, though: the Level 999 Tableturf Rank Badge. Only two players are confirmed to have ever reached Level 999, and it took at least several months of grinding. Overall, there’s one major issue with Splatoon 3 100 percent completion: you have to do several months straight of grinding on three different modes. By the time it’s realistically possible to obtain all of the Splatoon 3 Badges (several years from now, most likely), we’ll no doubt have a Splatoon 4. The good news is that Badges are cosmetic only, so you’re not missing much other than a shiny indicator on your Splashtag.
Which Badge in your collection are you most proud of? Which did you work the hardest for? Let us know in the comments down below!
We’ve only discussed a small percentage of the Badges available in Splatoon 3. If you want to learn how to get a whole bunch of them in one fell swoop, check out our Side Order 100 percent guide. There are a bunch of exclusive Badges you’ll unlock by clearing the mode.
Splatoon 3 and its DLC is available now on Switch. The official site is accessible here.
