Message-ID: <1994Feb27.202831.1173897@bmug.org> Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Distribution: world From: Rick_Talcott@bmug.org Organization: BMUG, Inc. Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 20:28:31 PST Subject: PID Ascension 1 of 3 Lines: 60 Okay, it's 8:37 Sunday morning. I've just finished Ascension (the top level of the pyramid) while still shooting at 100% accuracy and taking no damage. Here's how I did it from the save rune on the top floor on. For convenience sake, let's label the rooms as follows: The Save Room The Entry -- this is the room immediately south of the Save Room. The doors by which you entered this room will close once you have passed completely through them. The Hall -- to the west of the Entry. This room has three pillars on each side thus restricting your ability to dodge left and right. The Corner -- after the Hall and before the Chamber. A bit of a breather. The Chamber -- the last room before the L shaped room that holds a huge number of monsters and the Alien Pipes. Your job is to figure out how to have most of the fighting take place here rather than in the Pipe Room. The Pipe Room -- The design for this room was obviously stolen from a 1950's ranch house built in Columbus Ohio. Your typical L shaped living - dining room where it's up for grabs who is going to eat whom. For sure there are 2 Banshees (or Phantasms), and about 12 Headless and 16 or so Zombies. At the end of the Pipe Room is a door that opens back onto the Save Room. Okay, now that we have our locations straight, here's how to do it: 1. While still keeping the door between the Save Room and the Entry open, make sure that the Entry room is devoid of monsters. Switch to your knife and save the game while looking directly at the doorway leading to the Entry room. That way, each time you get wiped out and then restore, you can look to see if a Headless has materialized in the Entry room. If so, lure it out of the Entry room into the Save room, dodge the spitball, and kill it with your knife. Then save the game on top of one of the two save game positions that you are working from. (Yes, work from two mostly alternating positions. That way if you inadvertently save a position an instant before a ball of spit is going to crash into your head, you won't have to start all over.) If any other kind of monster, other than a Headless, materializes when you restore, simply restore again. It took me a huge number of tries to get all the way through this floor without getting hit while maintaining 100% accuracy. By killing the Headless interlopers with my knife, I was able to up the cumulative body count without using any bullets. If you start killing the Zombie interlopers and then saving, you'll slowly use up ammunition without advancing your position. 2. So, once you see that there isn't a monster in the Entry, hit "2" on your keyboard to switch to the Walther P4. Proceed due south into the Entry room letting the doors close behind you. In the middle of the room, turn west (right) and look through the doors that lead to the Hall without advancing toward them. At the other end of the Hall -- actually beyond the far doors in the Hall -- are a bunch of monsters that are hanging out in the Corner room just waiting for you to walk into the Hall so they can take their shots at you. So, there you stand in the middle of the Entry looking at the doors that lead to the Hall. What you are looking for is to find out whether or not two spit balls come flying at you. cond Message-ID: <1994Feb27.203115.1173902@bmug.org> Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Distribution: world From: Rick_Talcott@bmug.org Organization: BMUG, Inc. Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 20:31:15 PST Subject: PID 2 of 3 Ascension Lines: 82 2 of 3 If so, it means that this time only two Headless are going to make the first appearance. Slide out of the way (using the 7 or 9 keys on your keypad) of the spitballs and pick off the two headless. Personally, I shot them both, making sure that they were close enough to dispatch with one shot each rather than two. Alternatively, I suppose I could have shot the first and knifed the second in order to save the ammunition. I just plain don't have the skill to use just my knife on two Headless in tandem. What is important, however, is to keep sliding (or dodging as the manual calls it) into a position where the monsters appear to be in a straight line, one behind the other. That way when the back ones fire, they will hit the front ones rather than making you choose between dodging and getting hit. Also, it's a nice touch if you can avoid killing the front one after the back one has fired but before the shot has hit the front one. I don't know how many times I dropped the front monster only to have a ball of spit, or whatever, come popping out without leaving me enough time to dodge. Under ideal conditions, what you do is slide to where the monsters are lined up and only dodge from that position when the front one fires, and then immediately slide back to the same relative spot. All the while, watch for your shots to pick off the front guy and shorten the line. Okay, so if two Headless attack this time, and you succeed in picking them off, then go almost (but not quite) through the doors into the Hall. Sometimes, more Headless and even a Zombie or two will come out at you. If so, retreat. Hit 5 on the key pad to back up through the door and then 7 or 9 to slide over and let the shots miss. Slide back and forth in front of the door to pick off whatever monsters have emerged this time. Repeat this process until the monsters stop coming but you haven't yet entered the Hall to such an extent that the doors have closed behind you. Now, you will need a series of alternative tactics for what exactly happens. There are a limited number of scenarios and you will need to discover an attack line that meets your skills. here's what worked for me. A. Only two Headless come out before they stop coming. -- I charged straight down the Hall to a point about halfway down and picked off the two remaining Headless that were sort of stuck in or near the doorway. Then I slid over to the right as far as the pillars would let me and dodged back and forth, far right to far left, while trying to pick off the remaining monsters. B. If only two Headless came at first and then two more later and then maybe a zombie or two after that -- I picked them off from by sliding back and front behind the door frame with me on the Entry side of the doorway and them in the Hall. After the monsters stopped volunteering, I followed plan A above. C. If four Headless (the most likely probability) came all at once, I made sure to duck over to the door frame and miss all the goo. Quite often a Zombie bone would also come flying too. The Zombie wouldn't come up the Hall, but he would send the bone up there just in time to catch me when I poked my nose around the doorway to look. -- I backed up a bit, slid over to where the four Headless were lined up and proceeded to pick them off, one shot per Headless. Then I entered the Hall to the point where I heard the door close behind me and slid far left. I waited for one of the Zombies to throw a bone and begin his approach. I slid enough to the right to dodge the bone, centered myself in the Hall and picked off the Zombie with two shots. Stay in the back of the Hall sliding far left to far right to dodge bones and goo while picking off from a middle pause while you are sliding. D. Three Headless come all at once. -- I had the most trouble with this scenario. Sure it's no trouble to pick off the Headless who put in an appearance, but the reason the fourth Headless didn't show up is that he's stuck in the doorway at the far end of the Hall with two Zombies. After you pick off the easy three, enter the hall and dodge left as soon as you hear the door close behind you. A Zombie bone will be thrown at you immediately. Dodge right and left trying not to get hit in the cross fire from the monsters stuck in the doorway. Meanwhile do some long distance shooting and break the log jam. From this distance it may well take three shots to kill a Zombie. Good luck. Eventually, you will kill off all the monsters in the Corner room before you leave the Hall. At that point, pause in the doorway between the Hall and the Corner rooms and rotate 90 degrees to your right so that you are looking at the door frame. Now slide left over to where your gun is pointing about one third of the way across the open door that leads into the Chamber. There will be a Zombie, Headless, Zombie in the Chamber (plus interlopers). You should be lined up to shoot the first Zombie if he puts in his usual appearance. (Sometimes he tosses a bone just barely around the edge of the door. Usually, it's about one third over.) You know you're getting good if you can pick off the first Zombie and the Headless behind him with three quick successive shots before the two of them can fire. cond. Message-ID: <1994Feb27.203138.1173906@bmug.org> Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Distribution: world From: Rick_Talcott@bmug.org Organization: BMUG, Inc. Date: Sun, 27 Feb 1994 20:31:38 PST Subject: PID Ascension 3 of 3 Lines: 77 3 of 3 Pick off the last Zombie (and interlopers, if any) and type an underscore (shift dash) to pause the program while you get your breath. While you are paused, note the body count so that you can then compare it as you fight the next phase of the battle. It helps to have some sort of idea of how many monsters are still hiding in the Pipe room while you are trying to lure them into the Chamber. When you are ready, go to the door between the Corner room and the Chamber. Either nothing will happen or a Headless and (usually) two Zombies will let fly. If so, back up into the Corner room, slide back and forth and pick off the group. Watch out for flying bones from the second Zombie. Once the volunteers have been wiped out, you're ready for the parade. (I always found myself humming 76 Trombones during this part. It's my absolute favorite part of the upper pyramid.) Charge straight down the Chamber room until you can see the Headless through the door in the Pipe Room. (If no volunteers came when you were looking into the Chamber from the Corner room, you'll see a Zombie in front of the usually first Headless.) Let the Headless come, just barely, into the Chamber room before you pick it off. That seems to make it a bit less likely that the parade will get jammed up at the start. Once you pick off the Headless, an number of monsters who were in the Pipe room and in the vicinity of the door to the Chamber will start parading through the door to get picked off. It's fun, difficult, but not impossible, to slide back and forth and pick them all off without either missing a shot or taking any damage. On occasion, go up to the door or slide from right to left past it to see of all the visible monsters have come out yet. If so, go on to the coaxing maneuver. If there are monsters stuck in the Pipe Room but within sight of the door, there are two possible maneuvers. First, you can start coaxing. Alternatively, you can go for the 45 degree slide, fire and retreat. It's dangerous but exhilarating. The stuck monsters will be on the right side of the doorway. That's where you start from too. Turn yourself about 45 degrees. Actually you have to adjust the angle so that you can slide on an angle past the right side of the door frame and have the Walther exactly lined up on a monster. One or two bones will get thrown at you while you are fine tuning the angle. Slide back to the right to get away from them. Wait for all bones in the air to land. Then slide left. When you clear the doorframe a monster will be lined up, and you can fire one shot (MAYBE two) before sliding back. The biggest danger in this maneuver is wanting to hang around and fire while bones are flying. It'll probably take three shots to kill a Zombie at the distance you're working from. Be patient. After picking off a monster or two, the log jam will break up, in whole or part, and the parade will continue. Eventually you will have cleared out all of the monsters you can see from standing in the doorway between the Chamber and the Pipe room. Next comes the part I hate. Coaxing. It takes both patience and you can get nailed at the same time. What you do is walk around looking at the back wall (or the right rear side wall) long enough for some of the monsters to forget that you are out there. What has happened in the part of the Pipe room that you can't see is that the remaining monsters are jammed up. When some of the monsters forget that you are there, the monsters who remember can get around them and come after you. So, you have to look at the back wall long enough to start this process in motion, but not so long that they come into the Chamber and splat you in the back. I also tried turning off my flashlight and moving to see if this would speed up the process. I'm not sure if it helped or not. In any event, I always turned it back on to fight -- seemed more cozy that way. So, keep coaxing until the number of monsters remaining in the Pipe room gets down to a level you can handle. (i.e. stop and look at the body count frequently -- shift dash, remember?) For me, I needed to lure both Banshees plus all but about 4 or 5 monsters out before I could handle it without missing my shots or taking damage. By the way, the first time I made it all the way through without damage, just before I opened the door to the Save room, a Headless materialized behind me and splattered me before I knew it was even there. Be careful out there. Watch out for monsters after you open the door to the Save room, and kill them off before you save. Good luck and good hunting! Rick Message-ID: <1994Feb28.133059.1175846@bmug.org> Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Distribution: world From: Ron_Hunsinger@bmug.org Organization: BMUG, Inc. Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 13:30:59 PST Subject: Re: PID Ascencion Lines: 124 >Okay, it's 8:37 Sunday morning. I've just finished Ascension >(the top level of the pyramid) while still shooting at 100% >accuracy and taking no damage. Congratulations! I read your description with interest, and got a few strong hits of nostalgia. Mostly I did it the same way. I finished the whole top part (including the Ground Floor) by 8:13 am Sunday, also taking no damage. But, I missed once with the P4, and nine times with the knife. So we did better at different things. A few comments: >if a Headless has materialized in the Entry room ... kill it >with your knife. Then save the game ... If any other kind of >monster, other than a Headless, materializes when you restore, >simply restore again. Why bother to save? My strategy was to kill any interlopers if I could, but if I couldn't I just restored. By not saving, there was no cumulative loss of ammo or time. >It took me a huge number of tries to get all the way through >this floor without getting hit while maintaining 100% accuracy Oh, I see. But you still have a cumulative time loss. I'm undecided what to do about body count. I'm going to try to get to the end as quickly as possible, but I think it might be a good idea to set the timer on the bomb very large, and spend 4 days or so just looking for interlopers. You get a +1 bonus for each 10 hours before the deadline, and +1 for each 250 bodies. If you can find 25 interlopers per hour (giving you more than 2 minutes to find each one), you come out ahead wandering around looking for trouble. But I don't want to waste time upping the body count until after setting the bomb, because I am also curious how soon I can get out. >Personally, I shot them both, making sure that they were close >enough to dispatch with one shot each rather than two. >Alternatively, I suppose I could have shot the first and >knifed the second in order to save the ammunition. I was using almost exactly the opposite strategy. Because I had started the game using only the knife, I was up here on "Ascension" without having quite earned my Expert rating, and I didn't want to enter the "Pipe room" without it. So I was carefully shooting the monsters from far away so it would take me two shots (earning me more damage credit) instead of one. (Two shots together do more damage than one, even if they individually do less.) I was usually earning my expert rating Message-ID: <1994Feb28.223854.1177928@bmug.org> Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Distribution: world From: Rick_Talcott@bmug.org Organization: BMUG, Inc. Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 22:38:54 PST Subject: Re: PID Ascencion Lines: 53 Rick >if a Headless has materialized in the Entry room ... kill it >with your knife. Then save the game ... If any other kind of >monster, other than a Headless, materializes when you restore, >simply restore again. Ron: > WHY BOTHER TO SAVE? MY STRATEGY WAS TO KILL ANY INTERLOPERS IF > I COULD, BUT IF I COULDN'T I JUST RESTORED. BY NOT SAVING, > THERE WAS NO CUMULATIVE LOSS OF AMMO OR TIME. I saved after killing a headless with my knife because I knew that I wanted the body count to be has high as possible, but I didn't have nearly as much ammo as you did. I must have racked up 10 or so headless while I was making the 500 or so attempts to finish the floor error free. They got added to the body count and since they were picked off immediately after restoring, I doubt that killing them added more than a couple of minutes of time to the score. Seemed like a worthwhile investment. Rick >It took me a huge number of tries to get all the way through >this floor without getting hit while maintaining 100% accuracy Ron: OH, I SEE. BUT YOU STILL HAVE A CUMULATIVE TIME LOSS. Yes, but it's an efficient use of time traded for bodies without the cost of ammunition. If I knew for sure how much ammunition I was going to need, I could have picked off the Zombie interlopers in the Entry room as well, but I was afraid to chance it. As it is, I got down to the bottom floor, blew the alien pipes and cleaned out all the gouls and zombies with the following stats: Dead: headless 191 Knife 177/177 Phantasm 10 P4 470/470 Goul 13 Zombies 136 Remaining Ammunition: 150 bullets + 1 x 32 MP41 Total 350 I remember you had way too much ammo at 340 or so, but I wasn't that confident that I had extra bullets to spare. Message-ID: <1994Mar01.203821.1181301@bmug.org> Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Distribution: world From: Ron_Hunsinger@bmug.org Organization: BMUG, Inc. Date: Tue, 01 Mar 1994 20:38:21 PST Subject: Re: PID Ascencion Lines: 79 Rick Talcott@bmug.org writes: >As it is, I got down to the bottom floor, blew the alien pipes and cleaned >out all the gouls and zombies with the following stats: > >Dead: > >headless 191 Knife 177/177 >Phantasm 10 P4 470/470 >Goul 13 >Zombies 136 Remaining Ammunition: 150 bullets + 1 x 32 MP41 >Total 350 By way of comparison, I got to the same place at 8:13 am Sunday, with: Dead: Headless 193 Knife 97% (291/300) Phantasm 13 P4 99% (373/374) Ghoul 13 Overall 98% Zombie 126 Total 345 Remaining ammo: 38x8+6 = 310 P4; 1x32 MP41 My P4 total (374 shots fired + 310 left over = 684 bullets found) is greater than yours (470 + 150 = 620), probably because I went far enough west on "Evil Undead Phantasms Must Die" to get the bullets from Claude (the dead German on that level). I did that mainly to boost my proficiency, but also because I knew it was profitable ammo-wise to do so. Boosted my body count, too. I went on to finish the entire west wing, and was ready to enter "Feel the Power", at 10:01 am Sunday, with: Dead: Offense: Nightmare 70 Knife: 98% (475/484) Headless 193 P4: 99% (815/816) Phantasm 13 MP-41: 100% (80/80) Ghoul 111 Zombie 161 Ammo: P4: 42x8 = 336 Ooze 10 MP-41: 13x32 = 416 Total 555 >I remember you had way too much ammo at 340 or so, but I wasn't that >confident that I had extra bullets to spare. As you can see, I made a net profit of 26 P4 bullets in the west wing, but I was still using my knife a lot (184 times). Considering that the P4 does considerably more damage than the knife (16 vs 7 points at point-blank range for an expert), I could probably have dispensed with the knife at a cost of about 92 bullets, for a net loss of 66 bullets. You, ready to enter "Wrong Way" with 150 bullets, could dispense with the knife and probably still reach "Feel the Power" with a margin of 80 or 90 P4 bullets. You might want to consider doing that. If you don't want to be burdened with extra ammo, it boils down to this: would you rather use your P4 bullets on Ghouls, or on Oozes? A ghoul can hit you while the P4 is reloading (which is why the knife works so well against them - it doesn't have to reload), but on the other hand oozes move pretty fast, so you have to backpedal a lot while killing them with the P4. (I suppose you could use the P4 on Wraiths, too, but they move even faster than oozes.) On the other hand, before unloading all my P4 ammo I went down and got the Cedar Box. So all the time I was backpedaling from oozes with my P4, I was busily making lots of MP-41 ammo. That in turn gave me more time to make HE Grenades. And I discovered that killing the flame- throwing meanie on "Want a Light?" without taking damage means that you have to hit him from further away. It took me 20 HE grenades to kill him, instead of 18 at point-blank range. (That despite the fact that this time I was also hitting him with the blue crystal, which is other- wise useless from this point on.) So you want to have a few extra grenades when you get there. -Ron Hunsinger From: Adam Lang <thalen@cs.pdx.edu> Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Subject: Re: PID Ascencion Date: 10 Mar 1994 02:17:42 GMT Organization: LAP Technologies Lines: 28 Distribution: world Message-ID: <2lm006$mnl@hearst.cac.psu.edu> References: <1994Mar01.203821.1181301@bmug.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp4.cac.psu.edu X-UserAgent: Version 1.1.3 X-XXMessage-ID: <A9A3EE65C6044904@ppp4.cac.psu.edu> X-XXDate: Wed, 9 Mar 94 02:21:41 GMT First of all: How long does it take on average to finish this game, in GAME time? It had been a while since I'd read the manual, and I started thinking that I had to be done by TUESDAY night. Scared me to death, but I managed it. And then I pick up the manual and shot myself. *chuckle* Second: I've no idea what ANY of the jewelry does. Anyone want to enlighten me? In article <1994Mar01.203821.1181301@bmug.org> , Ron_Hunsinger@bmug.org writes: >time to make HE Grenades. And I discovered that killing the flame- >throwing meanie on "Want a Light?" without taking damage means that you >have to hit him from further away. It took me 20 HE grenades to kill >him, instead of 18 at point-blank range. (That despite the fact that >this time I was also hitting him with the blue crystal, which is other- >wise useless from this point on.) So you want to have a few extra >grenades when you get there. I'm really not sure what was so tough about this fellow. I ran up to him and just started plugging away with the MP-41, and dodging back from the fireballs. I got hit twice, I believe. And he stopped far enough away from me that he didn't do any damage to me when he died. (Does he normally?) (Please respond via e-mail, I don't have much of a reliable news-host.) --Adam Lang