Achievement Guide - Chemophobia in Rogue Legacy

This achievement is for defeating Ponce de Freon, the remixed version of the game's third boss (in the Tower area of the map).

To unlock this boss fight, you must defeat Ponce de Leon and then obtain Ponce de Leon's Obol, which is a random item you might receive when praying at a shrine.

One of these things.

The next time you try to enter the castle, Charon will comment on the Obol and take it from you.

Next, you need to find the Tower boss room.  Usually the doors to boss rooms will be closed after you defeat the boss, but once you give Charon the corresponding Obol, the room will reopen.  If you enter, you'll be taken to this special remixed boss fight.  Failing one of these fights will drop you back outside the boss room, so you can retry immediately, making it very easy to practice until you can get them all done.

The remixed bosses are the hardest challenges in the game by far.  In each, you'll play as a special character, so you can't just grind out gold to get a better dude.

A shot of about one quarter of Ponce de Freon's arena. It is as wide as Ponce de Leon's arena, but missing most of the platforms.  There are, however, a few platforms along the top of the area.

For Ponce de Freon, you get Sir Dovahkiin, a level 0 Barbarian King with OCD and Dementia, neither of which make any sort of difference here.  His basic stats are:

495 HP
60 MP
176 Strength
75 Intelligence

and he comes equipped with several runes:

6 Vault (a bunch of air jumps)
Sprint (dash)

Here's a screenshot of his stat page, if you'd prefer:

It feels like there's a reference in here somewhere...

Basic Strategy
Ponce de Freon's moveset is identical to his brother's, though the fire trail he leaves takes longer to dissipate and the fireballs may be a bit closer together.  As such, the best strategy is basically the same: try to lead him around the stage so that the first fireballs start disappearing by the time you return to that part of the map.

One boon in this particular fight is that you don't have to contend with anything else in the arena - the spike balls from the fight with Leon are absent here.  That means you can comfortably focus on avoiding Freon's attacks without worrying about ramming into an off-screen enemy.

Another important note: you have to perform a series of air jumps to reach the floating platforms and circle the stage.  When you get pinned against a wall, jump up to the ceiling and continue looping.

Because Sir Dovahkiin is a Barbarian King, you can use his Barbarian Shout to clear lingering fireballs.  You only have enough MP to use this ability three times, so you need to be somewhat conservative with it, but it can get you out of tight spots when you really need it.

Unfortunately, there's not really much else to say about this particular fight.  Here's the video of my successful fight against him to give you an idea of how it goes:

Let me know if you have any questions about any of these tips or if you have any suggestions of your own.

Good luck!

Achievement Guide - Scotomaphobia in Rogue Legacy

This achievement is for defeating Neo Khidr, the remixed version of the game's first boss (in the Castle area of the map).

To unlock this boss fight, you must defeat Khidr and then obtain the Khidr Obol, which is a random item you might receive when praying at a shrine.

One of these things.

The next time you try to enter the castle, Charon will comment on the Obol and take it from you.

Next, you need to find the Castle boss room.  Usually the doors to boss rooms will be closed after you defeat the boss, but once you give Charon the corresponding Obol, the room will reopen.  If you enter, you'll be taken to this special remixed boss fight.

The remixed bosses are the hardest challenges in the game by far.  In each, you'll play as a special character, so you can't just grind out gold to get a better dude.

A shot of the arena. It's much smaller than the area where you fought Khidr, and there are more spikes along the floor.

For Neo Khidr, you get Lady McSwordy, a level 0 Spellsword with ADHD (so she moves faster) and Vertigo (though she's wearing Nerdy Glasses to cancel that effect).  Her basic stats are:

248 HP
50 MP
35 Strength
232 Intelligence

and she comes equipped with several runes:

Vault (double jump)
Sprint (dash)
Siphon (gain MP for kills - totally irrelevant here)
Bounty (more gold from drops - also irrelevant)
Haste (moves faster)

For the more visually inclined, here's a screenshot of her stat page:

Lady McSwordy in all her glory.

Basic Strategy
This fight is brutal.  While Neo Khidr's attack patterns are the same as the original, the smaller arena and more aggressive attacks (less downtime between attacks, more projectiles when he does attack) make survival tricky.

The most basic element of the strategy is to spam the "Empowered" version of her spell.  empowered spells are cast using the "Special" attack for the character ("Y" button on Xbox One).  Each use costs 30 MP, but hitting him with your sword recovers 10 MP.

For reference, however, a regular attack deals 35 damage; the empowered spell deals 232 damage 6 times.  You're only using normal attacks to get the MP necessary to use the empowered spell.

Also note that the normal version of the spell only deals 116 damage 6 times.  You could use it, but it'll take twice as long to defeat him.

So, the plan is to jump around the stage dodging projectiles and hit him with your empowered spell.  Use regular attacks to recover MP.

Attack Patterns

Now, the Khidrs have three basic attack patterns:

First, he'll fire his projectiles out in a spiraling pattern, either moving clockwise or counterclockwise.  Once you get the hang of it, this is actually the easiest attack to dodge.  The basic plan here is to dash over the spikes on the bottom of the stage or over Khidr itself to make it to safety.  You'll have to play around with it a little bit to get a feel for where you should stand and how you should move, but it will mostly screw you up when you're not in a good position when he starts this attack.

The reason you may not be in a good position is that you may have been dodging his second attack pattern - firing projectiles outward in a uniform pattern.  The problem here is that the projectiles start close enough together that you're going to need to be in one of the corners of the room to avoid them.  The easiest place to do this is in the upper corners while standing on one of the floating platforms, but if you're up there when he starts the spiral attack, you're almost certainly going to get hit.  You'll need to use the double jump ability to maneuver around this pattern.

The best attack pattern is the one where it fires projectiles outward in a random pattern.  This is the best simply because it has the largest gaps between projectiles, meaning you're most likely to be able to get in some good damage.  In fact, you may occasionally not need to move off one of the floating patterns during this attack, allowing you to do some serious damage.

In the end, dodging Neo Khidr's attacks takes some mastery of both double jumping and dashing.  I actually found that the controls were a little too sensitive at times, so I was accidentally dashing at really bad times.

You'll have to practice to get the controls and important moves down.  I recommend waiting until you've completed a New Game +; at that point, you will likely be pretty adept at dodging attacks, so you won't have as big a gap to cross to be able to beat this thing.

Furthermore, I recommend practicing this fight repeatedly until you get there.  It's a quick one, and if you die, the game drops you right outside the room again, so you can retry very quickly.  Obviously you should take a break if you're getting overly frustrated, but keeping at it will get you there eventually.

To show some of these ideas in action, here's a short clip I recorded using the default Xbox One DVR.  It shows some of the maneuvers, but I only got the second half of the fight.

If I can figure out how the DVR thing works, I might go back and try to record a full run.

Quick Summary

• Spam the Empowered Spell ability, as that's what will deal the most damage.
• Use regular attacks to regenerate MP.
• Survival is the most important thing - focus on dodging its projectiles, and only attack when you get a brief opening.
• For the spiral attacks, dodge with combinations of double jumps and dashes, going either over or under its body as appropriate.
• For the uniform outward attack, try to get into one of the corners and double jump to avoid projectiles.
• For the random outward attack, try to get onto one of the floating platforms and attack as much as possible.

Let me know if you have any questions about any of these tips or if you have any suggestions of your own.

Good luck!

Achievement Guide - Inherit the Earth in Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015

Inherit the Earth in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015.

To earn this achievement, you need to use Mentor of the Meek's ability to draw 3 or more cards in a single turn.

Mentor of the Meek's ability triggers any time you get a new small creature: "Whenever another creature with power 2 or less enters the battlefield under your control, you may pay 1.  If you do, draw a card."  We just need to have lots of little dudes enter the battlefield once the Mentor is in play to get this one!

I'll provide the deck list that I used, but first I'll outline some basic strategic considerations so that you have an idea of why certain things are included, both to help you use that deck and to allow you to make changes as needed if you're finding that it doesn't quite work for you.

Deck Strategy:

A single-colored deck eliminates any concerns about having the right kinds of lands and generally makes life a lot simpler and more consistent.  Seeing that the Mentor is white, a mono-white is the way to go.

As you might imagine, the Mentor's ability can easily get prohibitively expensive.  You'll have to spend three mana drawing cards, leaving less mana to actually cast those creature spells.

As such, in addition to the Mentor, we want lots of cheap ways of making little weenies to trigger his ability.  Fortunately, white has a bunch of 1-costing creatures in this game.  If you can hold on to three of those while building up to 6 total mana, you're good to unload them all at once to nab the achievement.  Don't overlook spells like Raise the Alarm, which also generate creatures for one mana each (essentially).

The Convoke mechanic is a nice way around the cost problem, too, as your creatures (including Mentor of the Meek himself!) can allow you to cast some spells.  Triplicate Spirits is perhaps the best spell for this task, as it already creates three little spirits to trigger your Mentor.  If you can get six creatures in play, you'll only need three open mana to draw your cards.

As always, we'll want to devote some of our resources to staying alive.  I'm partial to straight kill spells like Divine Verdict.  Resolute Archangel is also very nice for prolonging your life, as it can negate all the damage you take over several turns.  Since we're looking to make tons of dudes anyway, Seraph of the Masses is excellent on defense.

Deck List:

After each card name, I'll list the area that you can find that particular card (i.e., if you don't have the listed number of copies, which plane you should explore to earn more).

1 Elite Vanguard (Shandalar)
4 Selfless Cathar (Innistrad)
2 Trained Caracal (Ravnica)
2 Loyal Pegasus (Theros)

2 Ajani's Pridemate (Theros)
2 Lone Missionary (Zendikar)
3 Raise the Alarm (Shandalar)
1 Brimaz, King of Oreskos (Theros)

2 Mentor of the Meek (Innistrad)
1 Banisher Priest (Zendikar)
4 Attended Knight (Shandalar)
2 Divine Verdict (Theros)

3 Angelic Edict (Ravnica)
2 Triplicate Spirits (Zendikar)
1 Resolute Archangel (Innistrad)
3 Seraph of the Masses (Innistrad)

24 Plains

Technique:

Because there are only two copies of Mentor of the Meek in the game, the trickiest part about this achievement is surviving long enough to draw a copy.  If you're patient, you can cast every creature spell you draw to hold the line until you draw the Mentor, at which point you just sandbag creatures until you can make three enter the battlefield in the same turn.  It's definitely doable, but it might take well over 20 turns to make it happen.

An alternative is to restart your duel until you have the Mentor, a couple cheap creatures, and a few lands in your opening hand.  This plan is a little bit more dangerous, as you won't be able to defend yourself during the first few turns of the game, but it'll get you there a lot more quickly if it works.

This deck obviously works best against creature-heavy decks without many removal spells.  I tried it in a few different cases and it seemed to work pretty well, so you can reasonably expect to win with this deck while trying to unlock more cards.  It does work particularly well against the "Tangled Growth" encounter on Zendikar, as 6-10 weenies are usually enough to hold the AI's forces back.

Let me know if you have other insights into earning this achievement!

Achievement Guide - Defensive Line in Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015

It's not often that I can come up with procedures for earning video game achievements before a multitude of guides are available online, so I'm excited to share my solutions when possible.  The next few posts will focus on various challenges in Magic: The Gathering -  Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015.

Defensive Line in Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015.

To earn this achievement, you must deal 20 damage with Vent Sentinel in a single game.

Vent Sentinel is a red defender with a unique activated ability - 1R, Tap: Vent Sentinel deals damage to target player equal to the number of creatures with defender you control.  Obviously, the key to dealing 20 damage with Vent Sentinel is to have a bunch of defenders in play, and you probably want to make Vent Sentinel your win condition so you know you're not going to fall a couple points of damage short.

I'll provide the deck list that I used, but first I will outline some basic strategic considerations so that you have an idea of why certain things are included, both to help you use that deck and to allow you to make changes as needed if you're finding that it doesn't quite work for you.

Deck Strategy:

The basic plan is to play a deck with a bunch of defenders and various other ways of keeping yourself alive.  Black and blue are good choices for survival, as both have relatively cheap responses to whatever your opponent may be doing and have a fair number of defenders.

From black, I'm a big fan of removal like Tribute to Hunger for the extra life gain, and from blue, I find counterspells like Dissolve and bounce spells like Voyage's End to be really powerful, in part due to their Scry effects to filter out things you don't want to be drawing.  Extra card draw from blue is also a plus.

With at least three colors involved, you'll also be looking to fix your colors of mana to ensure you don't get stuck with a hand full of uncastable spells.  The Traveler's Amulet artifact is useful in this regard, but green also excels at finding good sources of mana.

As such, I settled on a four-color deck: Red for Vent Sentinel, Black for removal, Blue for counterspells and removal, and green for mana ramp/fixing.  The ramp and fixing are certainly the most important part of the equation, so the deck is a little heavy on Forests to make it more consistent.

Deck List:

After each card name, I'll list the area that you can find that particular card (i.e., if you don't have the listed number of copies, which plane you should explore to earn more).

Blue
4 Doorkeeper (Ravnica)
2 Voyage's End (Theros)
1 Dissolve (Theros)
2 Thassa's Bounty (Theros)

Black
3 Tribute to Hunger (Innistrad)
3 Corpse Blockade (Ravnica)
3 Ogre Jailbreaker (Ravnica)

Red
4 Vent Sentinel (Zendikar)

Green
4 Grave Bramble (Innistrad)
4 Cultivate (Theros)

Artifacts
2 Traveler's Amulet (Theros)
3 Gargoyle Sentinel (Innistrad)
1 Avarice Amulet (Theros)
1 Meteorite (Shandalar)

Land
6 Island
4 Swamp
3 Mountain
7 Forest
1 Gruul Guildgate (Ravnica)
1 Simic Guildgate (Ravnica)
1 Golgari Guildgate (Ravnica)

Technique:

The plan as described above is to survive long enough to get Vent Sentinel in play with 4+ other defenders and start shooting your opponent.  The Avarice Amulet is in there just to help you draw more cards if you don't hit a copy of the Sentinel quickly enough; the Meteorite helps with color problems and can occasionally kill a pesky creature when necessary.

With four colors, it's important to be careful when choosing which lands to tap to cast spells.  Make sure that you're always leaving the lands that you'd need to cast the next spell you want for that turn.

Using this setup, I was able to get the achievement on my first try.  I didn't worry about what deck I was playing against (I used this as an opportunity to unlock some more cards by exploring Zendikar), but it's definitely stronger against more creature-heavy decks.  Stay away from decks that run a lot of spells that will just kill your creatures outright.

Let me know if you have other insights into earning this achievement!

Achievement Guide - Seriously Unstoppable in Serious Sam: Double D XXL

This post is a little different from any of the others that I've written because it's a (somewhat) detailed guide for earning an Xbox Live achievement.  The achievement in question is "Seriously Unstoppable" in Serious Sam: Double D XXL, which I'll get to in a moment.

Before then, though, I'll mention that I won't be doing an Achievement Report this week, as the GTASC was suspended while TrueAchievements updated its formula for calculating DLC TA Scores.  It led to many big fluctuations in TA Score that weren't related to earning new achievements, so the powers-that-be opted to delay a week and eliminate six teams next Saturday.  Anyway, I didn't earn any Xbox achievements this week because I was focusing on other stuff.

Now for the achievement guide:

To get this achievement, you first have to unlock all of the challenge levels by finding all the MBG pies throughout the story mode.  Then, you actually have to complete each of the challenges, which is undoubtedly the toughest part of the game.

MBG Pie Locations:

First up is the list of pies and brief explanations of how to find them.  It’s structured as:

“Challenge name – Level containing the pie – explanation.”

The list is arranged according to the order on the challenges page, not the order in which you can actually find them.  If you’re missing a few, look at the challenges you have available and find the missing ones in this list, choose to start at the appropriate level, and work your way towards the pie.

Kleer Karnage – Pyramid Looting - near the beginning of the level, there’s a room where the path splits: you could go down to the right (towards a switch that opens a door) or climb up a series of platforms.  Go up the platforms and into the little alcove on the right side, walk through the wall, and there’s your pie.  (It’s right across from the Secret Gunstacker Stash.)

Gnaarmageddon – Egyptian Assault - in the middle of your path in the level, shortly after seeing the Kamikazes for the first time.

Dino Destruction – Flying Reptiles – this pie is hidden right above the Secret Rock ‘n Hard Place Connector (it’s to the left after dropping down a long shaft with several flying dinos and logs).  Use the jump pad to wall jump up the hole in the ceiling, and you’ll get your pie.

Caterfighter Chaos – Pompeii Pyromania – this pie is in the Red Light District secret area.  After leaving the underground area and passing a shop, drop straight down, and you’ll find the secret area and this pie.

Biomech BBQ – Dinoo Switcheroo – right in your way during this level, immediately after the second time you have to climb up a bunch of missiles.

Vuvuzelator Vendetta – Dark Harvest – it’s the reward for surviving Mental’s Secret Closet.  It’s right after seeing a vuvuzelator for the first time; instead of climbing up to the vuvuzelator, continue to the right and you’ll find the closet.  You’ll have to survive against a series of Kleer skeletons in a small room, which can be tough, but if you come back after getting more powerful weapons, it shouldn’t be much of a problem.  The pie will be right in front of you as you’re leaving the area.

Kamikaze Kill-fest – Jurassic Reckoning – when you first see the kitten enemies, continue walking right (instead of dropping down).  After a Rejuvenative Flask, there will be a log covering a gap; drop into that gap to grab the pie.

Monkey Mayhem – Amesthystine Depths - in your path near the beginning of the level, before you encounter any enemies.

Skyline Speedrun – Tube Town – while not particularly hidden, this pie is tricky to get because the level is so complex.  If you follow the path near the ground, you’ll come to a place where a blue tube is angled up to the right at about 45 degrees.  Under that tube is the pie.  It’s almost directly below the Secret Celestial Connecter area.

Volcanic Violence – Vesuvius – in your path halfway through the level, right before a shop.  I don’t think you can miss this one.

Lava Death Race – Fireball Fury – visible on a ledge after traveling under the first Flea.

Tomb Stone - Long, Hard Road – in the Secret Lasergun Left Under a Building area; when you first exit the cave and start running over rooftops, continue to the right.  The pie is in a little alcove at ground level on the right side of this area.

Challenge Level Tips:

Once you’ve found all the challenge pies, you’ll have to complete the challenges.  In each, it’s important to get a feel for how the challenge works – what stacks you have, what enemies you’re up against, and how the stages are set up.  In some challenges, just playing through them a couple times may be enough to get it done.  If not, here are some additional challenge-specific tips:

Kleer Karnage: Start by jumping up to the ledge to the right with the yellow armor.  This challenge isn’t timed, so you can sit up there comfortably killing enemies as they gather on the starting platform.  When you need more ammo, run to the opposite ledge on the left side and grab some.  If the enemies stop spawning, you’ll have to jump down and kill some that are running around the lower levels of the stage.  Stay on the starting platform and shoot down and retreat to the upper right again if dudes start to swarm you.  Be careful not to over-extend yourself; hold back and keep grabbing armor if your health is getting low.

Gnaarmageddon: Your biggest threat here are the beheaded soldiers.  Keep sweeping the chainsaws around to kill Gnaar, and focus on chasing the beheaded down, dodging their shots as you go.  Run back and forth across the bottom of the stage to line the enemies up behind you to make it easier to mow them down.

Dino Destruction: This is a survival challenge, so don’t worry so much about killing enemies.  I stick with the rocket launcher stack, killing dinos until there’s a nice pile of corpses in the middle of the arena.  When the pile gets high enough, you’ll start seeing some flying dinos – if you can get on their backs, the others can’t reach you very easily, making it a lot easier to survive for two minutes.  If not, you may be able to build a corpse wall on one of the sides; if there’s a big enough pile of bodies, you’ll be able to hide at the bottom beyond the reach of the dinos (they’ll be on top of the corpse-pile).

Caterfighter Chaos: This challenge is undoubtedly the hardest of the bunch.  My winning strategy was to drop down to ground level but stay in the middle of the area (so you can jump up and grab more ammo as needed).  The real problem here is the rocket-launching spider, so you need to position the laser shields to block those missiles.  I would alternate shooting right and left, trying to place the shields up angled at about 45 degrees.  Moving slightly to the right when shooting to the left and slightly to the left when shooting the right would give me a little shield wedge that I could stand under to protect against those missiles.  It’s really frustrating, so you’ll need a fair amount of luck to get past it, so just keep at it.

Biomech BBQ: Your biggest asset in this challenge is the fact that the flamethrower blocks enemy fire.  Constantly hold the trigger, sweeping the flamethrower around to protect yourself from the lasers and missiles from the biomechs.  Make that your focus – survive and you’ll get the necessary kills in time.  To make things easier, head to one side of the map so you can only get attacked from the other direction.  When you get overwhelmed with numbers, run to the other side (and grab more ammo along the way).  If at any point you don’t need to block shots, try to cover the ground with butter; knocking the biomechs down is always advantageous.

Vuvuzelator Vendetta: This one’s like Kleer Karnage – jump up to the highest level of the stage and kill vuvuzelators until no more are spawning around you.  Then, drop down until you find where they’re all getting stuck (probably the lowest level), and wipe them out.  After that, you’ll have to maneuver around a bit to keep from dying, but try to stay alive while getting back to the top to repeat the process.

Kamikaze Kill-fest: This challenge is surprisingly simple.  Run to the right and into the little alcove on the side of the stage (go into the middle one, not the highest one).  If you chill out in there, kamikazes will gather in the area below you, where you can quickly jump out and kill them.  A bit later, femikazes will actually do all the work for you, killing the kamikazes and bringing you closer to your goal.  As with the other challenges like this, you may need to jump out and find more kamikazes to kill if they stop spawning near you – I found that they tended to collect on a ledge on the left side of the stage.

Monkey Mayhem: This one will come pretty naturally if you keep moving.  Make sure to avoid kamikazes and try to stay away from exploding monkeys, and you should be fine.

Skyline Speedrun: The goal in this challenge is just to reach the end line. You only have one machine pistol, so you won’t be able to kill very much.  It does come equipped with Air Buffer, though, so use that to float along when you can.  Jump on monkeys whenever possible and try to get as high as you can and just float off to the right.

Volcanic Violence: Start by braving the lava and heading to the next platform to the left (it has an ammo backpack, which is really important).  Then, switch to the laser stack and use it indiscriminately.  One of the lasers will heal you, you’ll get automated turrets and rockets will lift enemies off the ground.  Grab the backpack when it appears and you should have an easy time finishing this one.  Watch out for the lava monsters, but otherwise it’s pretty smooth sailing.

Lava Death Race: Don’t worry about the enemies or even the lava in this race, just hop along to the right.  If you shoot continuously angled towards the ground, you’ll be able to incapacitate the enemies by lifting them, and you might be able to give yourself some impressive air if timed well with your jumps.  Try to grab ammo and health as it comes along, and you should be able to sail through this race.

Tomb Stone: Yet again, the best strategy is to head to the top of the stage.  There’s plenty of ammo and healing up here, so you should be set.  Switch to the second stack (the one with the laser) and just keep shooting.  Focus on taking out the spiders and dodge the missiles and you should survive for several minutes, finishing this survival challenge.