How long to beat All Hail the Orb depends on whether you want the story ending or the full 46-achievement run — and whether you played before or after the April 22 patch changed how completion works.
Short answer: the story takes about 3 hours. Full completion is 4–4.5 hours if you're efficient, or 5.5 hours if you go back for cleanup after the ending. The game's average playtime across roughly 30,000 players is 4.1 hours.
The longer answer is more useful, because there's a routing decision the April 22 update created that no guide has fully mapped out yet.
Key takeaways
- Main story (1 billion Devotion Obelisk): ~3 hours
- Fastest tracked Steam completion: 3 hours 8 minutes
- 100% achievements, managed in-run: 4–4.5 hours
- 100% achievements, story-first then cleanup: 5.5–6.5 hours
- PlayTracker average across all players: 4.1–4.3 hours
- Average achievements earned per player: 22.6 out of 46 (49%)
- No fail states — you can't permanently lose progress
How long is the main story?
The story ends when you power the Devotion Obelisk to 1 billion. Everything between the opening click and that moment is the main run: recruit cultists, build the automation chain, explore dungeon rooms, push Devotion to the threshold.
Most players hit the ending somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 hours. The fastest tracked completion on Steam is 3 hours 8 minutes — a straight playthrough, no optional rooms. If you explore everything, add 30–40 minutes.
You can't lose progress in this game. There are no fail states, no death resets, nothing that sends you backward. If you're slower than average — reading the dialogue, sitting with the automation for a while before moving on — four hours is a safe ceiling for a first run.
GODEEPER: The automation chain is more nuanced than it looks once you hit the mid-dungeon stage. All Hail the Orb Tips Guide — 100% Completion →
The two 100% routes (post-April 22 patch)
Before April 22, finishing the Obelisk building with more than 3 achievements uncollected ended your run permanently. You'd have to start over. The April 22 patch — titled "The Devotion Continues" — removed that hard stop. Post-story cleanup is now possible.
That created two real routes for 100%:
Route A: in-run management (4–4.5 hours total) Track achievements during the main run and stay within 3 of completion before triggering the final Obelisk stage. Faster, requires some planning. Read the All Hail the Orb achievement guide before you start so you know which rooms are tied to specific unlocks versus which ones fill in passively through automation.
Route B: story-first, cleanup after (5.5–6.5 hours total) Finish the story without worrying about achievements, then use the post-story window. Lower stress, more time. Players reporting 5.2 and 5.5 hour completions on Steam were mostly doing this. The Duuro reviewer logged 6.6 hours across two sittings — story-first plus unhurried cleanup.
If you've already finished the story: Route B is your only path. If you haven't started yet, Route A saves an hour or two.
GODEEPER: Understanding the ending before you reach it helps with achievement routing. All Hail the Orb Ending Explained — What Happens After →
What the average player actually does
PlayTracker puts the average at 4.1–4.3 hours across roughly 30,000 players. Average achievements earned: 22.6 out of 46.
Most people finish the story and stop. The first half of the achievement list fills in passively during the automation phase — once cultists are running, you've probably hit 22 or 23 achievements without trying. The second half is tied to intentional dungeon exploration, and that's where most people trail off.
The dungeon split is the crux of it. Once automation runs you can sit and wait, but if you go idle during that window instead of exploring rooms, you leave 20+ achievements on the table. Most players don't notice they're done until the Obelisk ending screen. By then, cleanup adds an hour or two rather than 20 minutes.
If you're reading this, you're probably not the average player. But knowing the split helps plan your run before you start rather than reacting to it after.
April 26 performance patch
The April 26 patch delivered roughly 60% better frame rates in late-game states. Before it, players on handhelds (the Duuro review flagged significant slowdown on a ROG Xbox Ally X) hit real chug during the mid-to-late automation phase when multiple systems were running at once.
Current build runs meaningfully better. Doesn't change completion time, but it changes whether the last 30 minutes feel smooth.
Step-by-step: efficient 100% run
- Read the achievement guide before starting. Flag dungeon rooms tied to specific unlocks, especially ones that require certain automation states to access.
- Don't skip early cultist tiers in a rush. Some automation milestones unlock achievements passively — rushing past them leaves gaps you'll need to clean up later.
- When dungeon exploration opens up, go wide before following the Devotion path. Every room is an achievement opportunity.
- Before triggering the final Obelisk stage, check your achievement count. Three or fewer remaining: you're clear to finish. More than three: keep exploring.
- Post-story cleanup is a real fallback, but if you use it as your primary strategy you're adding an hour or two to the total.
Tips
Find the duck early. It's in a room that's easy to walk past, and it's one of the most searched-for secrets in the game. The All Hail the Orb tips guide has the location. Don't reach the Obelisk without having found it.
Stop clicking once the automation runs. The game is built to not need you after cultists take over. Manual clicking doesn't meaningfully speed things up after that point.
Watch for achievement notifications during the automation phase. The first 22 come in passively as cultist tiers chain through — you should see them populating without doing anything intentional. If you're 30+ minutes into automation with fewer than 15 achievements, you missed an early milestone and should check which tier you skipped.
Don't treat the dungeon map as optional. Room exploration is the entire second half of the achievement list. Treating it as optional and planning to clean up after the Obelisk is technically fine post-April 22 patch, but it costs real time. A single exploration pass before the final stage takes 20–30 minutes and pays off more than any optimization elsewhere.
$6.99 for 4 hours. Whether that's "too short" depends entirely on how you value your time. It's roughly a movie ticket — same price, about the same length, and it either lands for you or it doesn't.
References
Frequently Asked Questions
See frontmatter FAQ entries.
