The Gauntlet 2 Play List and FAQ by Kathy Lew version of August 5, 1993 1. What's the best character to play? The elf, because his magic can be built up to that of the wizard's and he gets plenty of food. The valkyrie isn't too bad as long as you get extra magic power quickly. The wizard and warrior make great partners together or with the others in multiplayer games but don't get enough food in most cases to go at it alone. 2. What are each character's attributes? The same as in Gauntlet: The warrior has good fight and shot power but almost no magic or shot speed (but he can't shoot through cracks like he could in Gauntlet), the valkyrie is about average for everything except for good armor, the wizard has excellent magic power but no armor (and his shot speed's been slowed down in Gauntlet 2), and the elf is about average for everything except that he moves fast. 3. Does this play list apply to all versions of Gauntlet 2? This list is for the arcade version of the game. I don't know how well it works for other versions. 4. Why don't you pick up the treasures? I get asked this ALL THE TIME, so here it is: If you get in the habit of not going out of your way to get treasures, you'll always be able to do one of the secret room tricks without even thinking about it (described in more detail later). Besides, there are better ways to score points. BASIC TRICKS FOR GAUNTLET II 1. +200 food: You can get the food marked with a question mark to award you +200 health every time if you watch the last two digits of your health. If the tens digit is odd, wait for the ones digit to be 5. If the tens digit is even, wait for the ones digit to be 7 ("odd five, even seven" is a convenient way to remember). 2. Scoring: The amount of food you receive is inversely proportional to the rate your score increases, and the higher your score gets, the less food you will have until there aren't any left. The rate of monster production from the generators will get faster with the more points you score. To extend your game, avoid racking up points quickly. 3. Controlling your rate of score increase: The score value of the deaths is of utmost importance; shooting death changes the score awarded for potioning him. The pattern is 1000-2000-1000-4000-1000-6000-1000-8000 (repeat). Keeping the deaths at a low point value gives you a long game but no points, setting them high gives you a short game, but a nicer score. 4. Monster management: You can make the monsters stop their weaving motion by shifting position slightly in many cases, or by standing next to a wall. If you are dealing with the monsters that walk funny (the ones that are always trying to go around you), shoot them diagonally because they aren't wacky on the diagonal. Keeping the generators off screen as much as possible prevents excess monsters from coming out. 5. Blocking the thief or mugger: Without crossing over your most recent pathway through the maze, push a moveable block into your path. The thief/mugger will get stuck on the block. Don't shoot the block since it will disappear after about 30 hits. The thief/mugger can also be stopped by placing some object (yourself, moveable block) over the place where you first started in the maze. Shooting the thief when he first comes out will leave his treasure, producing the same effect. 6. Stalling long enough causes 1) doors to open and 2) walls to turn into exits, but it takes about twice as long in Gauntlet 2 than in Gauntlet. For best results if you want to stall: don't shoot monsters/generators, don't get hit, don't use a transporter and don't pick anything up. It takes about 18 health (without keys) and 36 health (with keys) to stall the doors and about 325 health to stall the walls. 7. Using a transportability amulet: Walk diagonally against the perimeters of the maze. You will not transport and can pick up foods, potions, etc. To get stuff in the inside of the maze, you must transport on top of it. 8. Super shots: These will go through everything in their path until they hit a solid wall or go off the screen. Ordinarily indestructible potions and food can by destroyed by super shots but will give you no benefits (the potions will just disappear). Shooting death with about nine super shots will kill him, but you won't get any points. If you also have reflecting shots, be careful not to shoot yourself with a super shot (-10 health/hit). 9. Acid puddle and super sorcerer control: Using two potions back to back will eliminate acid puddles. Super sorcerers will come out behind you; wiggling the joystick back and forth will make them emerge in a predictable fashion. The double potion thing works for super sorcerers, but only if the first potion makes them appear on screen (often it doesn't). 10: If accidentally poisoned: Eat food and you will be cured, otherwise you'll be dizzy for 10 seconds (poisoned food) or 20 seconds (poison potion). Shooting poison slows the monsters down. 11. Several of the dragons in the mazes can be shot using reflecting shots. There is one level in which you use invulnerability for the dragon, and another in which a moveable block can be a shield (the dragon cannot destroy moveable blocks). SECRET ROOM TRICKS AND TIPS 1. The 30 level rule: To get a secret room you must 1) have an opportunity for one, and 2) if you got a secret room clue before the level started, it must match the correct trick for the level. An opportunity arises about every 30 levels at most and carries over from game to game (i.e., if someone dies right after getting a secret room, you will have to play 30 levels before you can get one). 2. Generating a secret room clue for the next level: Shoot secret walls (the ones that pop open giving you stuff) or kill a dragon. 3. Meaning of secret room clues: Don't Be Fooled--don't touch fake exits, Don't Be Greedy--don't pick up some/all treasures (could also refer to keys in some levels), Don't Use Invulnerability--don't get hit while using invulnerability, Don't Hurt Friends--don't hit your partners with super shots (has some other meaning that I can't figure out; probably not to allow your partner to lose too much health), Don't Get Hit--(probably) by lobbers, Try Transportability--transport onto death, exit, acid puddle, or 2 secret walls (depends on level), Try Pushing a Wall--push a moveable block down exit, It Could Be Nice--pick up the "It" ball and don't tag anyone else, Save Super Shots--pick up at least one set of super shots and don't use them, Go On a Diet--avoid some/all food, Watch What You Shoot-- shoot two secret walls, Be Pushy--exit maze quickly. 4. Paths in the secret rooms: One room has the fight power potion up in a corner with a bunch of destructable walls. The other room has the magic power potion in a seemingly impossible location, but if you hit a trap and go over to the grunt generator, there is a corridor that will take you around to the potion. The other potions in both secret rooms are easy to get. 5. Contest: Atari had some contest attached to Gauntlet 2 when the game first came out. If you follow the instructions the game gives you before going into the secret room (it had things like using 5 transporters before exiting, removing all treasures, being It, shooting 3 secret walls, or just plain exiting before the timer runs out), you would get a screen showing that you'd been awarded some extra points and also to enter your name. Then it would give you a code to put onto a contest entry form. Machines can also be set to suppress this screen, in which case you would get a screen saying "5000 points x coins = _____" after doing the secret room. The contest ended in 1986, so it's almost funny to see the contest screen today. ADVANCED TRICKS, BUGS, ETC. IN GAUNTLET 2 1. If you have a transportability amulet, you can stop the thief/mugger like this: Without crossing over your most recent path in the maze, transport diagonally over a gap between two walls. The thief/mugger will bounce around the maze after you, but get stuck at the gap where you went through. 2. All the characters except elf with extra speed can "train" lobbers to throw rocks onto monsters, generators, or whatever. This is done by wiggling around in the direction that you want the lobbers to throw in and comes in handy on several levels for eliminating ghost generators (the lobbers cannot eliminate monster generators but can weaken them). 3. For a really high scoring game: Start a game with the deaths at 1000 points. Build up as much health as you possibly can (I like to get at least 5000 health) on one quarter. When the food supply begins to run low (at about 250,000 points) send the deaths to 8000 points and leave 'em there. Hope for some megadeath levels. . .You can get over 1,000,000 points on a quarter with some practice. 4. The treasure rooms begin to wrap around themselves horizontally and vertically after about level 40. In multiplayer games, players can go off the screen in treasure rooms beginning at about level 80. All mazes wrap around horizontally and vertically beginning at level 104. 5. Exception to secret room rules: One level, which I call the Brown Fuzzy Walls Level, has the trick of Don't Be Fooled, but if you have an opportunity for a secret room, the clue generated before the screen may say Try Pushing a Wall. If you do the Don't Be Fooled trick, you may still obtain the secret room even though the clue did not match the trick. This is the only exception to the secret room rules that I know. 6. Messing up the demonstration screen: If you die just before your character lets out a shot, the machine may save that shot for the demo screen. Since all the characters must pause before shooting, the timing error produced causes the demo to mess up in some pretty strange ways. Doesn't do much for your game, but funny to watch. 7. Dying by poison: If you have less than 50 health remaining and you eat poison, you will die. The next character played off the same joystick will start out dizzy unless the entire attract mode of the game has run through itself once. 8. When the thief/mugger is able to transport, occasionally they will transport onto your character, in which case your character looks like the thief/mugger or has funny colors. If you're lucky you will still be able to play normally, but if you aren't you will not be able to move, get stuck inside of a wall, or get thrown off screen somewhere (and you will have to stall for 325 health to exit). 9. If you obtain a secret room after you have been playing a game for a while, a bug often occurs in which you get tons of keys (usually) or potions. The number of keys you get varies. If anybody knows how to control this bug I'd like to know. MULTIPLAYER TRICKS FOR GAUNTLET 2 1. You can control the screen's scrolling in ways that cannot be done when playing alone by having players go in different directions. People who have played Gauntlet probably know what I'm talking about. This can be used to keep generators off the screen longer. 2. Controlling the multipliers: If you don't want your game truncated by a rapid increase in points, multipliers can be eliminated by not allowing one player to have one. All the other players then exit the maze, leaving the multiplierless player to pick up treasures. As this player collects treasure, the other players' multipliers will go down and can be eliminated. This trick can be used in reverse late in a game to milk the game for points. 3. Fast fighting of monsters: In mazes with narrow corridors two players wide, a fighting character (warrior or valkyrie) can stand in the middle of the corridor and fight the monsters while being pushed by another player through the area, taking out a set of monsters quickly by hand-to-hand fighting. 4. Players who are stunned by stun tiles can be pushed by other players to keep them moving. 5. Shoot all the secret walls you can; the more players that are present, the better the things that will come out of the secret walls. 6. The thief is easy to kill if one person gets a straight-on shot onto him (which usually makes him dodge about) and another player gets a diagonal shot onto the thief. 7. The "It" ball is a wonderful thing on most of the levels with one. The player who is "it" can hide behind walls. Meanwhile, his partners can go over and clear out the area without the monsters even paying attention to them. This works well only if the person who is "it" is well protected by the maze walls and knows where to stand so that monsters don't flood onto his partners and if everyone else stays out of the monsters' paths. 8. Flaming the dragons: A dragon puts out small, long-range fireballs or large, short-range fireballs depending on where players are standing at. In multiplayer games, a player can force the dragon to put out only the large fireballs if they stand in certain spots near the dragon. The other players not doing the "flaming" can go over to the dragon and kill it easily (as long as they aren't within the dragon's range, of course). Unfortunately, this trick doesn't work for every dragon. 9. The cheesiest trick in Gauntlet 2: Start up a game alone. Build tons of health (you'll need at least enough to last you 45 minutes in real time; health decreases at about 1 health/second normally) on one quarter (I don't know if this trick works if you have inserted several quarters on one character). When you have your load of health on your quarter, insert one quarter into each of the other three slots and start up three more characters. Pick up treasures until you have an 8x multiplier. Then get everybody into a spot where you can shoot 30-point ghosts forever without killing any generators or getting hit yourself. Start shooting at the ghosts (let the three new characters sit around doing nothing). The walls of the maze will eventually turn into exits, at which you should exit the three new characters. Stay in the maze, shooting at the ghosts (you will still have your 8x multiplier) until you have gotten over 3 million points on the level (i.e., if you came into the level with 200,000 points, wait until your score exceeds 3.2 million). This will take, like, forever. When you have finally gotten your points, exit the level and on the next level kill off the other three characters. You will never run out of food for long for the rest of your game (I have been told it cycles through a feast-famine type thing) and can play forever if the full-speed generators don't kill you first. This trick works best on levels with lots of treasures and lots of ghosts so that it doesn't take all day to do. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Jim Connell for being my mentor and playing doubles Gauntlet 2 with me every day, despite the fact that I had PMS for as much as two weeks every month. Thanks also to David Northcliffe for letting me use his computer to type this whole thing (I can't believe it's this long) and for letting me play on his personal Gauntlet 2 machine. Thanks also to everybody else who played Gauntlet 2 and let me watch. Please don't be mad at me if I can't remember your name. To everyone who proposed to me: Sorry, I'm having too much fun being single. Enjoy this play list anyway! There's also a list of all the levels with the respective secret room tricks (if I know them) around somewhere on the net. This list will be posted simultaneously.