Items

Almost every Arkham Knight collectible guide sorts Gotham by island and then by type. That tells you where things are, and it never tells you when to go or what you have to be carrying, which is why people finish the story and then discover a gadget they can no longer pick up and a set of interiors that closed behind them.

This guide sorts the same material by when it opens and what it needs. Three tracks run through it: the Riddler collection, the militia trackables from the Most Wanted board, and gear and cosmetics. They are all on one timeline here, because in a playthrough they arrive on one timeline.

Everything in this bucket, and when it opens

Gear you need before you collect anything

Half the collectibles in this game are locked behind a gadget rather than a location, so this section comes before any map. Gadgets live on the Gadget Wheel now, held open with the d-pad down on a controller or the middle mouse button on PC, and PC players can skip the wheel entirely with the number keys.

One line from that table is worth acting on immediately. The Remote Electrical Charge is sitting in the GCPD Evidence Locker from the moment you can walk into the building, held as evidence from Arkham City. The game will eventually send you to collect it, but there is nothing stopping you smashing the glass and taking it hours earlier, and it makes bomb rioters trivial. Our gadgets guide covers all twelve and their quickfire inputs.

The one thing you can permanently miss

Freeze Blast is not on the story critical path and the game never insists you collect it. It is in the Quarantine Cells under Panessa Studios, in the northeastern corner of Bleake Island. Ride the VIP Elevator at the building's south end, which looks shuttered but opens to a voice command, ride it down to the basement, and turn left towards the corner with the warning sign. It is on a small stool of a table.

Get it, because some Riddler Trophies cannot be reached without it, and those trophies are part of the hundred percent run that the true ending needs. It has unlimited ammunition, sticks to whatever you throw it at, and double tapping throw quickfires it, which matters against groups: anyone standing near the blast is slowed even if they are not frozen solid. The Freeze Cluster upgrade later handles several targets at once. The full route is on our Freeze Blast guide, and the best window is right after you escape Ace Chemicals, when the hideout opens up for free exploration.

Militia sweeps, in the chapter they unlock

Two Most Wanted missions turn the map into a checklist, and both pay WayneTech Points per target, which makes them the most efficient collecting in the game.

The watchtowers arrive near the end of Chapter 3 and four of them stay locked until the GCPD showdown, so expect to come back. Do them early anyway, because the points compound into everything else. A few have specific answers rather than general tactics: blinding the sentry gun on Bleake's third tower buys you sixty seconds to deal with three brutes, two enemies on Bleake's fourth wear optical camo and simply do not appear in Detective Mode, and the ninth Founders' tower behind the Fire Station stacks gun emplacements with three medics. The first Founders' tower next to Airship Alpha is the one that starts the mission and opens the airships, so it is effectively a prerequisite for a whole trophy set.

The road checkpoints open at the start of Chapter 7 and are the blunter of the two. One point each, twenty of them, and our page warns that a checkpoint on Miagani sometimes fails to appear on the map, which is a bug rather than a missing target. Finishing the set unlocks Streets of Gotham, and it is a prerequisite for the Deathstroke fight at the end of the mine hunt.

Investigations, where the method matters more than the map

Bomb rioters

Six looters in Gotham have a bomb in their head and do not know it, three on Bleake and three on Miagani, marked with a green brawler icon. The setup is always the same: the crowd stands near a green Riddler pressure plate, usually above street level, and stepping on the plate starts the clock on the encounter.

Throw a Remote Controlled Batarang through the group and it scans them in passing, painting your target red. Then you need an EMP hit that does not turn into a fight. You can steer the batarang through an electrical arc in the environment to charge it and then into the target, shoot them from a distance with the Remote Electrical Charge, or, easiest of all, drive into the crowd in Battle Mode and let the Batmobile electrocute everyone at once. What you cannot do is start a brawl, because the bomb goes off if you attract attention and you will not knock them all down in time. Coordinates for all six are on our bomb rioters guide.

The Perfect Crime

Start this by talking to Officer Aaron Cash after Poison Ivy is delivered to GCPD, about a body found on Merchant Bridge. Six victims, two per island, and only the first is marked for you. Find Anthony Lund before the others or Batman will tell you at every single site that this is not the victim Cash mentioned.

Each corpse takes three Deep Tissue Scanner passes, one each through skin, muscle and bone, switching layers with Aim Gadget and Crouch. Our page gives the scan points from the corpse's own perspective, so its right thigh is on your left. Two field cues save a lot of wandering: opera music playing means a body is somewhere close, and the body itself is always lit by a spotlight. All six analysed points you at Professor Pyg in the underground Pretty Dolls Parlor in Ryker Heights, where the Dollotrons need beatdowns or environmental takedowns and Pyg himself throws cleavers you counter to stun him. Names and scan points are on our Perfect Crime guide, and the victims are named after the Rocksteady developers who made the game.

Line of Duty

Also unlocked by Aaron Cash, also early, and the one that comes in instalments: three of them during the first chapter, two more in the second, and everything else in Chapter 5. Every rescue is a small predator room, and the firefighter cannot be untied until the area is empty, so survey from a perch first. The last one you save reveals Chief Underhill on the top floor of the City Vision Building in Ryker Heights, with sixteen thugs patrolling and three more on him directly. Our Line of Duty guide has the enemy composition for each.

Gunrunner

The Penguin is shipping weapons in from Bludhaven and it starts on its own once the Arkham Knight takes Oracle, with Nightwing waiting on a rooftop above the Ranelagh Ferry Tunnel. Five caches, each one found by following a refrigeration truck home. Clear the guards, tag the truck with the Disruptor, knock on it to spook the crew, and then follow from the air only, because they will spot the Batmobile. Grapple Boost is what keeps you in range without being seen. When they think they have shaken you they drive straight to the hideout, and Explosive Gel finishes the cache in the vault. Keep the mission selected in your menu or Nightwing will not call with the next location. Our Gunrunner guide has all five in story order, including the tag team takedowns that drop armoured and electrified enemies in one hit.

Riddler trophies: where the 179 are

This is the only place geography leads, because trophies are the one set where the region genuinely is the organising fact. Every one of them has to be collected before the Riddler boss fight, and by extension before the true ending.

Four mechanics repeat often enough to be worth learning once rather than reading seven times. Riddler robots are tools, not enemies: the Voice Synthesizer walks them onto pads and has them pick up caged trophies. Scanner trails start at a green circular pattern on the road, which you follow in Battle Mode to a second pattern and shoot with the 60mm cannon. Car sized pressure pads want the Batmobile parked on them while you shoot the lit question marks with the Vulcan gun. And the timed runs all want the Afterburner going in and a Grapnel Boost coming out, with the eject timed just before a ledge so you leave with height as well as speed.

Terminal passwords and puzzle answers, collected

These are buried inside three separate trophy pages, which is exactly where you do not want them when you are standing at a terminal.

Breakable objects: 90 things, 18 challenges

The maths here confuses people, so it is worth stating plainly: only every fifth breakable object clears a Riddler Challenge, which is why smashing all 90 marks 18 of the 243. They also change type by area, and the type tells you which gadget to bring.

Our breakable objects guide has coordinates for the three open islands and room by room directions for the interiors, and recommends finishing the story first, since several of them sit in places the campaign has not opened yet.

Costumes, sorted by what they cost you

Costumes are equipped from Main Menu then Showcase, and whatever you have on shows up in the cutscenes too. The list is on our costumes guide.

The Thomas Wayne Flashpoint skin gets its own page for a reason. It has never been sold separately, which is why the PlayStation Store and Xbox listings for it read as unavailable, and the only route to it is the Season Pass, priced at twenty dollars on Steam, or the Premium Edition that bundles it. Buying the pass does not download it for you either; you have to pick it out of the add-on list. Our Flashpoint skin page explains the storefront confusion, including why the Steam listing never mentions it.

Batgirl: A Matter of Family

A prequel set before Arkham Asylum, played as Barbara Gordon with Robin, in Seagate Amusement Park rather than Gotham. It sits outside the timeline above, but its collectibles are not optional if you want the true ending.

The tapes are the interesting part. Four puzzles sit around the park and each one turns a red light green on the map inside the central offices; all four green opens the office door and the fifth tape. High Striker in the northwest wants the hammer raised with the Remote Hacking Device and then a dive bomb onto the pad from as high as you can get, which means launching off the furnace behind you. Dynamic Duo near the Ferris Wheel is twelve targets flipped in pairs, with the three green lights counting how many mistakes you have left. Bumper Cars in the southeast is a sliding puzzle where every car moves back and forth only and the pink one has to reach the door. Fish in a Barrel by the Great White Shark coaster runs on a ten second clock where green fish add three seconds and red ones cost two, so aim manually instead of quickfiring. If the office stays locked after all four, that is the known bug: play more of the base game and come back. Solutions and locations are on our A Matter of Family guide.

If you only do the sensible things

Take the Remote Electrical Charge out of the GCPD evidence locker in your first hour. Pick up the Freeze Blast the moment Panessa Studios opens, because it is the only item here you can lose. Sweep the watchtowers as Chapter 3 closes and the roadblocks as Chapter 7 opens, since those thirty seven targets pay for the upgrades that make everything else quicker. Then leave the 179 trophies, the 90 breakables and the 40 riddles until the credits, when the whole map is open and nothing is behind a mission you have not done.