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Gauntlet 2 tricks


Falkentyne

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This was in my old Faq I had written on gamefaqs (possibly as Antos), and full courtesy to Eric Crabill, and many of his friends for the information originally or I never would have known anything.

 

Note: this one thing was found by me back in 1988 (I don't even know if Eric Crabill knew about it), but on Gauntlet 2, the fight power ability was partially broken, and tied to the player color position!

Red, Blue and Yellow players gained "basic" fight power with no half bonuses (this was an unintended, unintentional nerf to Warrior and Elf), while the Green player gained 0.5x bonus fight power (which was an unintended buff to Valkyrie and Wizard, while Warrior and Elf functioned as they were "supposed' to. So if you're playing the Elf (or Warrior), ONLY play the GREEN version!

 

 

1) The game increases the difficulty internally every 16,384 points (2 to the power of 14). This is significant for a reason you will find shortly. The difficulty counter is score divided by # of coins inserted for that player.

2) The game starts increasing monster generation rate and removing maximum allocated food based on the internal point counter of 16,384 per). Allocated food is based on who is playing, number of players playing, and score as above. Note that this applies to Gauntlet final revision also.

3) The game ACTIVELY discriminates against the Wizard. Do not play him solo. He has the lowest "luck", highest stun tile stuns, extra food is removed from the level if the wizard is present. On difficulty level zero (easiest) at least one food is removed if a wizard is present. Warrior has some discrimination, but relatively minor. Repulsiveness runs out fast on him though.

4) Valkyrie gets food bonuses and perks. Lowest stun times, extra food is added on some levels if Valkyrie is present (usually 1 extra if playing solo). Even on difficulty level 7 (hardest), she doesn't seem to be penalized food, while Elf is.

5) Wizard and Warrior were already "slightly" nerfed in Gauntlet 1 final revision: Warrior: Extra shot power=0.5x increase instead of 1x increase (=2.5x normal power max). Wizard=extra shot power=0.5x increase (=2x normal power). In intermediate release 7 and older, they gained 1x increase (the versions which gave you full food every level). Wizard gained another big nerf in Gauntlet 2. His shot speed is reduced to warrior's slow speed. In Gauntlet 1 (including final revision), it was -much- faster (probably as fast as the Elf).

 

Note that Gauntlet 1 did not discriminate on which character was playing. However intermediate release 9 and final revision would remove 1-3 food on levels 1-7 even if your score was less than 16,384, and 1 food on level 8 even on difficulty (service menu)=0=easiest, and at higher difficulty levels set in the service menu, much more food removed!. Food was increased if more players were playing. Due to already absurd difficulty even in the "infinite food" versions, you would not get very far as Valkyrie in G1 final revision, unless you exited directly to level 8 on level 1, the difficulty level were set to 0, health per coin were set to a generous amount, and you got Extra Shot and Extra Magic power on the first two hidden potion rotations.

 

Gauntlet 2 reworked this completely, at the expense of the Wizard (RIP).

 

8) The maximum number addressable by a 32 bit processor was 2 to the 31st power -1 (2,147,483,647). The game would remove extra food by a percentage, based on your score increasing every 16,384 points. However if your score exceeded the 32 bit number space, the monster generation would still be at maximum speed, but the calculations would act as if your score were zero due to an overflow (which is handled differently than monster generation speed), causing you to receive all of the possible food drops available for that player (with wizard still being discriminated against). At 4294967296 points (2 to the 32's power -1), which his the absolute maximum unsigned addressable number, the game difficulty would refresh completely, and your score would actually be addressed as a score of "0" and increasing internally again. Monster spawn rate would be like you were starting a new game, food would get allocated and slowly removed again as if 2^32= "score 0".

 

The best way to do this is to get your health to above 6000. Keep the points per killing death at 1000 (check a faq on the point cycling system for "shooting" death), and avoid picking up ANY unnecessary treasure or shooting unnecessary monsters, before doing the trick. And don't do it if your score is too low; monsters will respawn MUCH slower when other players join, but don't wait until you start dropping from starvation, also!

 

Note: after you pass the first food starvation stage and get past 4.2 million points, if your health is above 15,000, you should be able to survive the next starvation phase (4.2 million points + 2.1 million points is when the next unlimited food overflow occurs), by saving up a lot of potions, then when you start getting starved, set the DEATH point total for using magic, to 8000. On any level with no Death to potion off, stall at the beginning and wait for walls to turn to exits and leave the level so you only lose 400 health maximum unless the main exit can be reached without pain. Then use potions on any deaths you run into (try to group them together).

 

Various faqs explain how to get your score up to 2.1mil on one credit, but the easiest way is to find a level with a LOT of ghosts and treasures (they don't have to be tier 3 ghosts, just a lot of generators on screen at once), have the three other players join in, pick up treasures for 8x multiplier on the main character, stall and have the other three characters exit the walls=exits change, and shoot 8x multiplier ghosts until your score is 2.147,483,647, then exit the level and kill off the other players.

 

On an unthrottled emulator, this would take about 10 minutes to do. On a real machine, this could take 1-2 hours, depending on if you found a good or bad level to do it on (3600-7200 health). It's possible to do it on 3000 health cost on a very good level.

 

Note: this trick also worked in Gauntlet 1 Intermediate release 9 and Final (Rev 14), but with the excessive food nerfs (that were toned down in Gauntlet 2 and turned into warrior (light) and wizard (heavy) discrimination), it was very difficult to gain enough health in time (Plus there were too many treasures and "Mega Death" which would inflate your health), so you usually needed the Warrior, Wizard (MAYBE the Elf), and only with difficulty=0.

Edited by Falkentyne
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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Ugh you're right.

It's 16384 x 128.

(or 2 to the power of 21)

2,097,152

 

Sorry.

For some reason I kept trying to apply powers of 2 relating to the maximum value in 32 bit cpus..wow....

 

At 16384 x 256, the entire full game difficulty hard resets as if you were starting over from a score of 0, except the level counter continues, and Thief still comes out every level.

4,194,304

(2 to the power of 22).

 

My god why have I been spreading around billions instead of millions? I've been typing 2 to the power of 31 for years....

Since when did 2.1 million points become 2,147,483,647? :/ I feel very bad right now. Very bad.

 

Thank you for correcting me on that. God, I feel horribly embarrassed now.....I hope others figured out it was 2.1 million and NOT 2.1 billion.

 

I knew it was 16,384 x 128...

 

I can't even edit my original post to correct this :(
Unless a mod can do it for me.

 

I'm going to go punish myself by playing my saved game of Blue Wizard on level 152 with 3.2 million points and 13200 health (I did the 4 player 8x score bug to bypass food starvation after getting 5000 health solo).

Edited by Falkentyne
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This is fantastic! Thanks for the awesome secrets, I'm going to be watching these carefully.

 

I still remember trying to figure out the "bonus" secret tricks that landed you into a treasure room. I think the only one we figured out was pushing one of the moveable walls into an exit.

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if you're going to do the "2.1 million point" score bug, do NOT go in the secret rooms if your score is higher than 150,000 points (or 4.2 million, the score raw difficulty / food reset point + 150,000).

There is a bug where the game gives you a certain # of "extra" keys, depending on your score. I think it goes up to +128 keys. This prevents you from picking up any potions and can get you killed quite quickly at the maximum monster generator spawn rate.

 

Certain levels have a certain secret trick to them, and I think a secret trick can only be performed every 40 levels or so.

 

There's a level with a dragon in the middle, only reachable by a transporter and an acid puddle right next to it. The trick for that level is to transport on top of the acid puddle. Another level has a dragon at the edge of a very long corridor, and you start off in the middle, around "spiral door walls" that you don't want to open, and there are many fake exits on that level. The trick for that level is to not get fooled.

And so on.

Edited by Falkentyne
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Final version of my old FAQ s updated and online. Pardon the tab errors, but most typos and other senseless errors are removed.

 

http://www.gamefaqs.com/arcade/583776-gauntlet-ii/faqs/73511

 

Note: In Gauntlet 1, you can limit ANY health loss on any level to 175 health, if you remain stationary and don't move, upon entering a hell difficulty level. This was changed to be painful for abusers of this trick in Gauntlet 2, as it now costs 400-450 health to do.

 

Gauntlet 2 still holds some fun and interesting play value today, in the age of action RPG's, especially if you use save states to save your progress. It's still basically a maze shooter, but is varied enough and has enough twists to never get old, especially when you get to level 200, and the monsters start getting random properties (like turbo speed or erratic movement and fake exits appearing). Gauntlet 1 is now boring by comparison and is just of historical significance.

 

Note: In MAME, do NOT save in a Treasure room in either Gauntlet. the next level will be bugged due to incomplete full save state compatibility. It's possible to "fix" it to get the proper next level, but this requires resetting the game and reloading the save at the correct time, and hoping you get lucky. Otherwise, you can save mostly anytime in Gauntlet II.

 

In Gauntlet 1, there is a save bug, possibly related to the Pokey or sound chip, with exiting a level. Saving mid level on some levels will cause the game to freeze and reset when you touch the Exit. However if you save as soon as you touch the exit, this bug seems to be avoided on loading saves as the Exit sound is already initialized. No idea why this doesn't affect Gauntlet 2, as the hardware is basically identical. Could be an issue with the Slapstic or some other emulation bug (this never happened in Neill Corlett's MGE).

 

Note: Thief and Mugger "freeze" and making them transport on top of you bugs don't work on emulators. CPU crash opcodes seem to be unemulated, preventing these exceptions from occurring, which would happen on the real machine. You can still make the Thief and Mugger go in a straight line by standing right next to it on the entrance (you don't want to do this with Thief, of course anyway. But doing this to the Mugger and leaving him there will prevent Thief from spawning).

 

If you do the 16384x128 score point bug to get infinite food drops, and you find the game too easy, enable CPU overclocking in your emulator and set the CPU speed to 200%. This will cause monsters to generate until the entire level is filled, when possible. The game had a limiter where if the speed drops too much from too many objects, monster generation would stop (e.g. when the entire game slows down). a 200% CPU overclock prevents this slowdown that the real machine had, and allows monsters to keep respawning.

Edited by Falkentyne
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