Video game lessons learned the hard way

Dawn Of War: Dark Crusade:

• When the display says "Enemy has two bases", it means there are actually two enemies on the map. With each their own squad cap. Don't go there without a full honor guard, and use it to rush one of them immediately when the mission starts, or you're toast.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance: Maybe it's just me, but the PSP version seems oddly prone to freezing and crashing after several hours in operation. So, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D

• Goron Link is not immune to fall damage unless he curls up first.
• Fight Real Bombchus using your shield. Not your sword.
• Hitting a ramp, bump, or so forth will slow Goron Link's roll down if he isn't at top speed already. Also, during the Goron Races, another Goron landing directly on top of you will always knock you out of your roll.
• The 3DS's 3D effect is almost essential to properly jumping out of the water with Zora Link. Stick that landing, por favor~
• Shiro's location has moved in the 3D remake. He needs something to heal him, too, so make sure you have that if you don't want to do a lot of backtracking through the fortress.

cont. 11/20/15

• Real Bombchus can run across water. You are NEVER safe from Real Bombchu.
• When you shoot a smaller enemy with the Hookshot, you reel them in towards you instead of just stunning them.
  • On that note, shooting a Real Bombchu with a Hookshot makes it explode in your face. So, uh, don't do that.

edited 20th Nov '15 10:00:42 AM by NesClassic

Telltale Games

• Just like in real life, if you act angry all the time, people will hate you.
• Seriously, if you act angry all the time, people will hate you.
• No wonder all your friends are online IRL, if you act angry all the time, people will hate you.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey

• While they are helpful, don't stress out too much over demon co-op attacks and pass over potentially-useful demons just because they're of a different alignment.
• Take things slow and steady when exploring new areas; rushing in can be fatal.
• Dark demons can be recruited on a full moon if you have the Lunatic app installed.
• Kill Pretas, or anything else with Macca Beam or Wastrel Beam immediately.
• It's a good idea to talk to a demon in battle if you're hurting and have a duplicate already in your party as you may get a free heal out of it.
• This is the big one: unlike every other Megami Tensei game I've played, the compendium does not automatically save custom demons upon fusion, it just registers its default. If you wanna keep that custom moveset for later, you have to register it manually.

Persona 3 is the same way. I think P4 is too.

Yup, P4 does the same thing.

Three on Hyperion Peaks. I dug into the game files to confirm, three AI players are activated on that map.

Wow. This mission (Note: It's the infamous "forward base" mission) is really a work of the Warp.

I know there are several campaigns where I managed to conquer every area but this one, and I was playing in Normal, which might have been the lowest difficulty.

edited 24th Nov '15 2:56:53 AM by Medinoc

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate

• Evasion +2/3 is extremely good for Garuga if you got the reflexes to see the Shrek Super Slam coming.

• Garuga's tail flip attack can damage you before the animation for it starts.

Pokemon Heartgold

• This game is not for Nuzlocking unless you want to be driven to tears by the raw grind.

• Seriously the final dungeon has enemies that only give out about 1/15th the amount of experience to level up as a rare encounter.

• That being said Clair is easily dunked on by a combination of a Mantine and a Magneton/Magnezone

• Sudowoodo is an amazing pokemon you should all use it.

I've been trying to complete that mission on Hard over and over again, but couldn't do it with any race. Ultimately, I wrote a small mod that makes some of my units invulnerable and resorted to sending these units in to occupy the orks while the rest of my army inches forth and annihilates everything bit by bit. It usually results in the invulnerable units' entire sight range being covered in orks.

It's cheating, yes, but the way I see it, the odds are already unfairly stacked in the AI's favor, so the devs aren't in a position to complain.

I've also been writing a non-cheat mod for making the mission easier. I can't nerf the AI, but I can definitely change your starting army and resources, possibly also limit the AI's tech tree. Have any suggestions?

edited 24th Nov '15 7:04:50 AM by amitakartok

Sounds like that area might have been designed so that you can never truly clear out the enemies. This especially fits the modus operandi of the Orks as a whole.

As for making it easier, how about limiting their economy by moving or removing requisition points from either the map or their control. Or will they just cheat around that (I only have cursory experience with the series, so I'm not sure how underhanded the AI is)?

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky

• The "Item" option being disabled at the start of the first Special Episode means that there's no items in the bag, not that Bidoof doesn't have access to any items. Stealing stuff from the main game's stash could have served to make the dungeon less RNG. Otherwise, the dungeon's design can be really obnoxious, as there's lots of CC spam and Bidoof's Special Defense is garbage. His offense isn't great, either, but at least Defense Curl lets him laugh off the half of incoming attacks that are pure physical.
• The boss or at least the first one, is designed to waste all of Bidoof's Reviver Seeds because it's a difficult 3 on 1. Not only that, but winning results in a lame "but thou must lose" scenario. This is followed up by a tanky second boss who can two-shot Bidoof with Confusion because, once again, garbage Special Defense).

This is how the map is arranged. The three pits in the middle each contain an ork base, each a separate player with a separate resource pool and income.

The map is gimmicky but possible on Easy, challenging on Medium and impossible on Hard. Lower difficulty levels give all of your units a maximum HP bonus and all enemies a maximum HP debuff. On Hard, everyone has as much HP as in a standard skirmish or multiplayer match, so it should be an even fight - except this map is 3-on-1. No matter what side you play as and no matter if you control all requisition points outside the pits, they still crank out units faster than you can kill them. You simply cannot kill all of them fast enough to avoid being ground down little by little from sheer numbers.

And this is without the AI being given a resource production cheat. Company of Heroes uses the same game engine with the same rules and on the highest difficulty level, the AI's resource income is quadrupled. Even multiplayer tournament champions are reportedly incapable of defeating the CoH AI on Brutal.

edited 24th Nov '15 8:36:55 AM by amitakartok

Heh, reminds me of the C&C3 Brutal or the SC1 Insane AIs where it was almost impossible to take them down without very specific unit setups in the first and specific terrain advantage in the latter.

So, correct me if I'm reading the map wrong, but each Ork base appears to have 3 requisition points inside the pits proper. What if you took one of them away from each pit?

The AI instantly nabs the point right back once none of your units are in sight range of the point anymore.

Splitting your troops up to attack multiple bases at once so that they can't reinforce each other won't work because you won't have the firepower to do permanent damage. Keeping your troops together to concentrate firepower won't work either because attacking any of the AIs instantly aggros their teammates and you get attacked from behind. Due to the map geometry, each base has only one entrance, connecting to the central area. Descending there will have you surrounded.

Oh, and as you can see from the map, one of the bases has a relic at the very rear, so they continuously build a Squiggoth until you take them out. The other two bases instead spam Killa Kans and Leman Russes, while you get extremely limited anti-armor firepower.

Hey, I'm having trouble beating SC1's AI regardless of difficulty level. It was okay way back when, but then one of the official patches buffed the AI up to tournament-level, making it nigh impossible to beat for a beginner player like myself.

edited 24th Nov '15 9:14:39 AM by amitakartok

Er, I meant deleting the requisition points from the map entirely so that the Orks cannot physically acquire them. Or is that not a possibility for what you're doing?

And wow, never heard that about SC1. Granted, I haven't played the game in forever, but still. Sounds kind of unnecessary to buff the AI when Insane was already an option.

Even I only noticed because I spent years playing Starcraft's unpatched retail version.

Plus I have the Gundam total conversion mod for it, which used the old 1.06 version. Starting the mod with its old executable and playing a custom match gives a much easier AI than otherwise; when I ported the mod over to the most recent version, custom games suddenly becomes so hard that, despite the fact that the mod buffs up both the terrans and the protoss and consequently leaves the zerg severely nerfed, a zerg AI can still wipe the floor with me as terran (or rather, Federation), despite having an inherent disadvantage! Like, me cranking out two full control groups of GM Customs for an early rush, only to be met with twenty-something hydralisks - and by the time I kill those and start hurting the base seriously, they already have an expansion. By the time I find that, the AI is on its second expansion. This is fucking ridiculous for a beginner player. I can't even train against this because it requires a minmaxed build order to effectively counter, and following rigid build orders isn't my idea of fun in an RTS game.

And earlier this year, I found out that someone else also ported the mod over to 1.16 and put in a fanmade tournament-level AI on the basis that the original is too easy. I'm seriously getting "Stop Having Fun" Guys vibes here.

edited 24th Nov '15 10:39:31 AM by amitakartok

FFXIV:

• When playing unsynced extreme trials, it's okay to bring in an under levelled DPS. You have to take more notice of mechanics, but you're at the level the trial was designed for. It's not okay to bring in under levelled tank, because you won't be able to keep up with the incoming hate, or an under levelled healer, because you can't keep up with your friend's higher health pools.
• Lootmaster groups will always disband just when it becomes your turn.
• Titan Extreme's second landslide can actually be survived. If you run directly towards him, the knockback won't send you over the edge.
• You still shouldn't aim to be hit by Landslide.
• Try not to break Titan's Heart during upheavel. It won't stop him from using his 5-way landslide, but now you don't have the knockback from upheavel giving you room to move.
• Don't break Granite Gaols that are in the middle of a landslide. It can be rather precise whether the person inside gets the knockback or not.
• DO break Granite Gaols when he goes to Earthen Fury. If you've only got one healer, make sure that you prioritize them over the DPS, as revivals outside are almost non-existant
• Ifrit Horns do exist. I've only seen them once, but they exist.

If you are a mobile game player who is active on several games, manage your gaming time right or be prepared to sacrifice at least one in-game event when all of them have event times clash.

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm:

• T-80B1s have to get within point-blank range of Challengers to do any damage, so don't be afraid to use the "assault" command. Also, when possible, try to throw two companies against one platoon. (Oh for T-80Us...)
• Those ATGMs on the BMPs are purely decorative.
• Forget finesse when playing as Warsaw Pact. Your smallest unit of maneuver is the company. Find a place to sledgehammer, and then sledgehammer it. Also, you can expect to lose most of your artillery to NATO 155s firing cluster shells.
• Thermal imaging is a Very Big Deal and you will cry salt tears of despair when NATO tanks blast your vehicles out of a bank of fog and smoke. Again, Assault is your friend.

Minesweeper: Don't get too excited when flagging. Be sure to check that you've flagged the correct number of mines next to every number before uncovering a tile.

The only way to ensure this will never happen is to play only one game that has a scheduled event mechanic.

edited 27th Nov '15 1:17:30 AM by Malco

Dungeon Of The Endless

Once you find the exit to a floor, there's no shame in running for it early. In later levels, you'll never have enough resources to survive opening every single door. You're more likely to die that way.

Final Fantasy Adventure:

• The internet was not kidding when it says pretty much everywhere that you should ALWAYS have a lot of keys and Mattocks with you.
• The "Kett's" dungeon entrance gets closed off if you show the guy blocking the door to the west the Mirror, so buy everything you need before you start said dungeon, as you cannot leave until you're done with it

Undertale:

• Buy something from the spider shop in Ruins. That isn't a trap, that's a shop.
• Make sure you pay for an inn room before you buy a bunch of healing items. The one at Snowdin will give you a full refund, but you can't get in without the money to pay for the room.
• If there's a wall of spears that you can't get past, that tends to mean you got lost, and wandered back to the start of the area.
• When you see Flowey save a file, it means that you had a very close shave, and if you stop moving in that direction, he'll load it up again to damage you.