How to Unlock Everything in Wireworks — Tinker, Hunter, Difficulties & Achievements

Short answer: unlock the Tinker by clearing (beating) the base game's 30 waves with any character; unlock the Hunter by buying 10 Pets total across all your runs; and unlock each of the 5 difficulty tiers by clearing wave 30 on the tier below it — as of Balance Update 1.4 (May 11, 2026) and confirmed by solo dev JJJ on the JJJ Games Discord.

how do i unlock the tinker

You unlock The Tinker by beating (clearing) the base game — wave 30 — with any character. There's no requirement to use a specific starter, hit a particular difficulty, or complete any side objective; a single clear on Difficulty 1 with the Goblin, Wizard, or any other launch character is enough. Dev JJJ confirmed this directly on Discord: "Tinker is beating the game with any character and Hunter is buying 10 Pets throughout your runs" (JJJ, Discord #general, May 9 2026).

The Tinker was added in the Major Content Update (v1.3, May 1 2026) alongside the new Tools item type (Use-triggered items). The character's kit is built around Tools, so if you're planning ahead, a good first pick after unlocking is the Golf Club — a popular Tool-build anchor players reset the shop for on Difficulty 5.

how to unlock the hunter character

You unlock The Hunter by buying 10 Pets cumulatively — across as many separate runs as it takes, not in a single run. Every Pet purchase counts toward the total, win or lose, so grinding it out over several early attempts on Difficulty 1 works fine. This is the same dev-confirmed rule as above: "Hunter is buying 10 Pets throughout your runs."

The Hunter is the second character added in v1.3. It's a pet-focused class that starts with a special companion beast and a pet-scaling ability — worth prioritizing Pet items (Fish, Penguin, Dog Whistle, Beehive, etc.) once you're a few purchases away from the 10-Pet threshold.

how do difficulties unlock (difficulty 5 / level 5)

Difficulties unlock sequentially: beating (clearing) wave 30 on one difficulty unlocks the next tier. There are 5 difficulty tiers total — internally numbered 0–4, referred to colloquially as "Difficulty 1" through "Difficulty 5" (some players also say "level 5" to mean the same thing: the hardest, fifth tier). To reach Difficulty 5 you need four consecutive wave-30 clears, one on each prior difficulty.

A difficulty indicator was added to the UI in Gameplay Update 1.1 (March 19, 2026) so you can always see which tier you're on. Note the demo used a lower bar — only wave 10 needed to be cleared to progress — which is why demo save data doesn't map cleanly onto full-game difficulty unlocks (see the note below on saves).

For players building toward high-difficulty clears specifically with the Tinker, the wiki's Best Builds — Late Game page and Tips & Strategy cover viable openers and skill-less Difficulty 5 approaches.

"i beat wireworks with the goblin but the tinker didn't unlock, is that a bug"

Almost certainly not a bug in the ordinary sense — the most common cause is that the game defines "beating" the game as clearing wave 30, and a run that ends in a loss (or a partial clear before wave 30) doesn't count. Double-check that your run actually reached and cleared wave 30 rather than ending on it. The Goblin's economy-heavy start (see below) makes early waves feel "won" quickly, which can make an earlier loss look like a completed run in hindsight.

If you're certain you cleared wave 30 and the Tinker still isn't showing in your character select, the one documented edge case is timing relative to the v1.3 patch: players who had already met the unlock condition (a prior wave-30 clear, or 10 Pets bought) before the Major Content Update shipped on May 1, 2026 had Tinker/Hunter unlock automatically the moment the patch installed — no new run required. One player asked exactly this on Discord and confirmed it: "I beat the game once, immediately unlocked both [Tinker and Hunter]" (edamametv, Discord, May 9 2026), to which JJJ replied with the unlock conditions above. If your unlock still isn't registering after a genuine wave-30 clear post-patch, that would be worth reporting on the Steam Community discussions or the Discord #feedback channel, since it isn't a documented behavior.

list all characters in wireworks and how to unlock them

As of Balance Update 1.4 (May 11 2026), Wireworks has four confirmed characters — two available from launch, two unlockable.

(The wiki's Characters page notes other launch characters may exist beyond these two, such as a melee/knight-style starter — details are unconfirmed publicly and contributions are welcome.)

Achievements for Tinker and Hunter

New Steam achievements were added in v1.3 specifically for winning with the new characters. Clearing Difficulty 5 with the Tinker, for example, awards its own achievement — separate from simply unlocking the character. In other words: unlocking a character just requires meeting the conditions above, but the associated achievement requires actually winning a run (clearing wave 30) with them, and the harder achievements are tied to winning on Difficulty 5 specifically.

A player named DiddyBop shared a Difficulty 5 clear with a Goblin start shortly after Update 1.1 shipped the difficulty indicator — a good illustration of what a difficulty-tier win screen looks like:

Save files and unlock state

Unlock progress — including which difficulties are unlocked — lives in your local save file at:

Wireworks/Wireworks_Data/UserData/{SteamID}/save.json

The relevant field is the maxDiffUnlock variable, confirmed by JJJ on Discord (March 18 2026). This is the same file referenced on the wiki's Save Files, Demo Progress & Technical FAQ page. Editing save files is unsupported and done at your own risk — it won't retroactively unlock Tinker or Hunter, which are tracked separately from difficulty progress.

Unofficial, community-compiled. Balance numbers drift between patches — trust in-game tooltips. Sources: developer answers on the JJJ Games Discord, Steam patch notes.