If you are here, it means :

1. You are trying to complete the Power doesn't reside in the barrel of my gun achievement, which requires you to complete the game without firing a single shot.
   
2. You are still sane and wish to preserve your mental health by avoiding to do this achievement the legit (a.k.a. impossible) way.

And you're in luck, because this guide will save whatever is left of your sanity. INDUSTRIA is a great game, albeit poorly polished. Some achievements were unfortunately thrown in with total disregard for their feasibility, and are made even harder by a few unavoidable game-breaking bugs.

Credit to Foxxert for the video demonstrations of the skips.

Some bugs will make your task hard. It's good to have them in the back of your mind to avoid wasting time and energy for nothing. They are the following :

The game has a frustrating tendency to brick some of your saves. This is apparently due to some entities in the scene not saving correctly, making the loading screen stuck until you kill the game. I have not been able to fix this through save-editing unfortunately.

This will generally not affect the autosaves, but it is hard to predict which of your saves will be rendered unusable without loading them, and therefore losing your current progress. There is not much you can do about it aside from saving strategically and creating backups of your save files (located in %appdata%/Local/Industria/saves).

Your pickaxe can sometimes disappear for no reason. Always keep an eye on whether you still have it, as you will be soft-locked if you lost it, and will need to load an earlier save. The combination of this bug and the one above can lead to extremely infuriating situations, as you can imagine. But please persist, as we will do our best to mitigate these issues by traversing the game as fast as we can.

Not really a trick, more of a reminder :

• Avoid fights if you can. You can actually run through most combat encounters without taking too much damage.
  
• You can cause extra damage at the price of slower attacks by charging your pickaxe attacks (simply hold the left-click then release).
  
• To avoid taking damage, walk back immediately after hitting an enemy to avoid getting hurt in return.
  
• Try to confuse enemies by hiding behind something while still being able to hit them. You can sometimes kill them in place with this technique.
  
• Run away from exploders as soon as they trigger their explosion sequence to minimise the damage they cause you. It is generally not possible to take 0 damage from them.

There are three techniques we will use to get the achievement, which are described here in order of difficulty :

This trick allows you to partially avoid enemy gunfire by holding a moderately-sized prop between you and your attacker. It won't absorb everything, but it should be enough to comfortably survive the long street section of Chapter 2 : Old Streets. Note that ammo crates will break after taking a few shots, but they can still help.

We are now entering glitch territory, although this glitch is fairly simple to perform. You simply need to grab any prop, then jump off a ledge before repeatedly clicking "Rotate object" (right-click by default) and walking in the direction you want. You will glide in the air while slowly falling, allowing you to bypass entire areas. This is mainly useful to skip the area between the castle and the train station at the end of Chapter 2 : Old Streets.

You can find a video demonstration of this glitch here.

The hardest of the three due to its unpredictability, prop jumping allows you to skip high obstacles. It is useful in two situations : the plaza section of Chapter 2 : Old Streets, and for skipping the entirety of Chapter 3 : Canal. It works by positioning two props on top of each other, standing on the top prop, then grabbing the bottom prop, which should catapult you into the air while moving forward.

You can find a video demonstration of this glitch here and here.

• Try to save as many health vials as possible. One vial restores half of your health, therefore only use them when your health is 50% or lower to maximise their effect.
  
• When climbing props you stacked, look down and away from them while walking backwards. Nora climbs easier that way, and any prop you are holding will not destroy your construction.

Note: All sections in the Library are ignored here, as they pose no risk to fail this achievement.

Just play the game normally.

Just play the game normally.

There is apparently a wall-clipping glitch using a crate that allows you to bypass the entire chemistry/engine room/fight section, as shown here, but I have been unable to reproduce it. The section isn't too hard anyway, so you shouldn't have too much trouble going through it by fighting cautiously.

Stick to the right, climbing over the energy balls and staying away from the wall with the sentinel so that it doesn't shoot at you. You can save inside the building, and there is a vial on the ground next to the generator that must be deactivated. Turn off the generator, let the two robots come at you to kill them, then move towards the newly opened path while crouching, then attack the sentinel. You will probably get shot at point blank once or twice in the process.
Let the exploders come to you and run away as fast as you can to minimise the damage they inflict to you. Not much more you can do against them.
Either fight the robots inside, or dodge past them, whichever works best for you.
Here we will perform our first big skip. Grab two ammo crates on the right side, one near the wall and the other past the door that leads to the side area on the right. Bring them to the area exit then perform a prop jump, as shown in the video :

• Health vial in the offices

Again, try to make the exploders blow up while being as far away from them as possible.

• Health vial in the saving area

If you have tried and failed this achievement before, this is probably where you gave up. This area is nearly impossible to fight through. To solve this, we make use of some prop shielding. Grab a crate and run the whole stretch in one go. Try to keep the crate between you and the closest-ranged enemy. Pass to the right of the last crate stack and jump over the railing of the first stairs, then continue.

With one health vial and health over 50%, you should be able to make it with plenty of health left. Note that this technique relies on the randomness of the enemy shots, meaning this will likely take several tries, but you should succeed fairly quickly regardless.

NOTE : Do not try to collect the health vial located in the building on the left, as you will get cornered and sustain more damage than it can restore in the process.

• Health vial on the bar
  
• Health vial in the room down the stairs outside

To bypass this area, we will perform a prop glide. Just grab a book from Rosendal's desk, jump over the railing, then glide towards the train station. The trick is performed in the video below :


Note that enemies will not spawn at all if you pass over the bridge. If you pass under, they will spawn. Take the train and proceed to the next chapter.

It is possible to combine a prop jump and a prop glide to directly access the controls for the gate and end the chapter prematurely, but this is quite hard. The trick is illustrated in the video below :


Do not attempt to build a stack of boxes to reach the top of the ladder at the start. The door that leads to the gate controls can only be opened from the inside, unfortunately.

The easier but longer option is the go through the chapter, albeit in an accelerated manner.
Nothing special about this area, but you can prop glide your way down with a piece of ladder to save a few seconds.
We skip most of the enemies of the building using barrels. Once you enter, grab the three barrels you see then stack them near the locker in the corridor on the right in the following manner :

• Place one next to the locker
  
• Climb onto it then place the second one on top of the locker
  
• Climb onto it then climb onto the pipes above
  
• Go to the pipes that go perpendicularly to the ones you climbed on, then place the third barrel there
  
• Climb onto it then climb over the railing to gain access to the floor above.

This trick allows us to skip the spawn trigger for most of the enemies of the area, meaning you will not have to face the taser robots or the robot dogs. However, an exploder will appear at the next doorway, so be ready.

• Health vial on the table to the left after the door

Proceed downstairs.
Once you arrive downstairs, you will see three robot dogs.

• Health vial on the crates

You can rush directly to the scripted fall. However, if you want to fight the dogs, just let them walk around until the path to the catwalk slope is clear, run there, then kill them one by one as they come to you.
After you recover from the fall, you will arrive to a control room through a gap in a wooden barricade.

• Health vial after the barricade

Open the rolling shutters with the lever, but remember to not open the door with the key, as there are enemies behind it.

NOTE : In the case you loaded a save and your pickaxe disappeared from your inventory, just know that you won't need it anymore as the remaining segments can be navigated by running past all enemies, and there are no more obstacles to break.
The easiest way to go through this area is to rush it. Start with the lever on the left, run down and back up to the lever on the right, then run down again. The elevator will be slow, so you will have to outrun enemies for a little while. Running up to the train track, running along the train then falling down, twice or three times should be enough for the elevator to arrive. I cannot confirm whether the enemies never follow you in the elevator, but they did not in my case.

NOTE : There is probably a way to use prop glide to fly to a safe heightened area that enemies cannot reach while you wait for the elevator, but I have not experimented with that.

• Health vial in the desk left of the elevator

The ranged enemies will be gone even though you didn't kill them, however three normal robots will await you. They are fairly easy to run past, so simply go to Brent's building.
There are some enemies inside, but you can easily run past them in the staircase, most likely without taking any damage.
Just play the game normally.
Same as going up, just run past the enemies in the staircase, then past some more enemies on your way back to the train. Close the door of the gate control room behind you. Open the gate then head back to the train. You are now out of harm's way ; there is no more combat from this point onwards.

Just play the game normally.

Just play the game normally. Congratulations! The achievement will trigger shortly after the credits start rolling.