ETS2 Secret Locations & Easter Eggs: UFOs, Ghost Towns, Hidden Roads

SCS Software has been quietly stuffing their map with easter eggs since 2012. Some are obvious if you pay attention. A lot of them aren't — you'd need to drive off-road at 3 AM in specific weather conditions to stumble across them. I've been cataloging these for years, mostly by reading forum threads and then verifying things myself.

The Norway UFO

This is the most famous easter egg in the game and it's absolutely real. On the E6 highway north of Oslo, roughly between Oslo and Hamar, there's a wheat field with a lone barn and a windmill. At exactly 3:00 AM in-game time, a UFO appears above the field. It hovers for about 30 seconds (game time), then shoots straight up and vanishes.

I've confirmed this three times. You need to be parked nearby before 3 AM — if you arrive after the trigger window, nothing happens. No achievement tied to it, no reward. Just a weird thing that exists because the developers thought it'd be funny.

Ghost Towns: Fully Modeled, Completely Useless

Several entire towns and even microstates are modeled in the game with no functional purpose. No depots, no jobs, no reason to visit except curiosity.

Liechtenstein (Vaduz) is the most complete example. The whole country — all 160 square kilometers of it — is rendered in the game. Roads, buildings, traffic. But there's nowhere to pick up or deliver cargo. You can drive through it in about four minutes. SCS added the first functional depot in 2024, but that's one depot for an entire country.

Andorra la Vella is the same deal. Fully modeled microstate between France and Spain, zero gameplay function. Monaco too — the coastal road passes through it, but there's nothing to do there.

I kind of love that these exist. It's the kind of detail that makes the game feel like a real world rather than a theme park of depots and garages.

Hidden Roads and Scenic Viewpoints

Hidden roads show up as dashed gray lines on your map after you discover them. They don't have GPS routing and don't count toward map completion, but many lead to scenic viewpoints that unlock the Pathfinder achievement.

Notable ones: west of Bergen, Norway, a dirt road leads to a waterfall viewpoint. Sardinia (Cagliari) has a coastal cliff road ending at a hidden beach. Corsica has a mountain pass with a panoramic Mediterranean view. Romania's Transfagarasan highway — the one Top Gear called "the best road in the world" — is fully drivable in the Road to the Black Sea DLC.

Finland's Lapland region (Beyond the Baltic Sea DLC) has a Northern Lights viewing spot that only activates in winter months. You need to be there at night with clear weather. I drove up there three times before getting the conditions right.

Developer Easter Eggs

In Prague, there's a building labeled "SCS Software" — the developer's actual office. If you park nearby, the GPS voice says something like "You have arrived at your destination. Now get back to work." Cute touch.

Rare AI trucks with "BETA TESTER" license plates occasionally spawn in traffic. These are shout-outs to the community members who test patches before public release.

Seasonal Events

The Christmas event runs December 15 through January 15. Snow appears across the map (yes, even in southern Spain), and special gift cargo spawns between major cities. Completing deliveries during the event unlocks cabin accessories like Christmas trees and snow globes. These are account-bound, so they persist across profiles.

The Halloween event (October 25-31) adds pumpkin cargo. Five pumpkin deliveries unlock a Halloween-themed paint job.

Secret Achievements

Pathfinder requires discovering 100% of base map roads. This takes 100+ hours and is genuinely difficult — some roads are tiny offshoots that barely register on the map.

Test Driver unlocks when you visit the Scania Demo Center in Sodertalje, Sweden. It's not marked as a dealership so most players never find it. You can test-drive every Scania model there for free.

Night Owl requires 10 deliveries completed entirely between midnight and 4 AM. Gullible unlocks when you follow GPS directions into a dead end — which happens more often than you'd think, especially in older map sections.

Trucker's Dream requires driving on all three famous roads: Romania's Transfagarasan, Norway's Trollstigen, and Italy's Stelvio Pass. All three are in DLC areas, so this is a late-game achievement.

I'm still missing Pathfinder on my main profile. At some point I'll spend a weekend driving every gray road on the map. Probably not this weekend though.