Stupid but Fun Ways to Boost Player Statistics (Multiplayer/Combat Simulator) GAME: Perfect Dark for Nintendo 64 AUTHOR: Hyena Last Updated: 2002/May 19 ________________________________________________________________ ================================================================ Table of Contents: I. Updates II. Introduction III. Increase Distance IV. Increase Kill Count V. Increase Accuracy VI. Increase Head Shots VII. Credits VIII. Contact IX. Disclaimer ________________________________________________________________ ================================================================ I. Updates 2002/May 19 -- Started and finished first revision. ________________________________________________________________ II. Introduction In the Combat Simulator, you can save player statistics either on the game pack, or a memory card. After playing for a while and having difficulty with challenges, you'll notice your stats will start to become a little disappointing. Many of the challenges can be quite difficult and your stats can end up going really downhill. Your accuracy can go down from 74% to 35% before very long. Luckily, there are some stupid but fun ways to raise these stats. Now, in a way, you can consider this to be cheating. But player statistics aren't really a huge part of the game, and it doesn't really give you any sort of an edge against other human players. Really the whole statistics thing has nothing to do with gameplay. It's just a fun way to waste your time. That being said, allow me to enlighten you in ways in which I've wasted mine. :) ________________________________________________________________ III. Increase Distance Okay, this is one of the most worthless statistics to bother with, but if you're in the mood for it, that's what this is for. The "Distance" in your player statistics refers to how much your player has walked, ran, jumped, and etcetera while playing in the combat simulator. If you feel like showing off that your player has walked for over four thousand kilometres, here's how you can accomplish that little feat. It's actually rediculously simple. Enter the combat simulator's "Advanced Setup". (Remember to load your player before doing anything) You should pick an arena that doesn't have pits. I would recommend the Car Park or Skedar arena. Weapons are not important. Make sure there are no simulants. Change the limits to something reasonably long. 10 minutes is usually fine for a quick run. I'd recommend 60 minutes, or unlimited. (Just remember for the latter that you have to quit the game yourself. And you may get bored of playing for 60 minutes, so you'd probably consider quitting again after a while.) Now, before you actually start the game, unplug your controller. Hold the analog stick to the very bottom-left and hold it there. Plug the controller back in with your other hand before you release the analog. If you did it right, the cursor will move continually up on the menu screen. Press start. Now your player will move around continuously in a circle. Leave the game running and come back when it's over. Your character will have walked the entire time and earned you a lot of distance with no effort whatsoever. ________________________________________________________________ IV. Increase Kill Count This one makes a little more sense than distance. "Kills" in your player statistics refers, of course, to how many times you've killed another player in the combat simulator. If you want to boost this, there's a really fun way to do that. Enter the combat simulator, and advanced setup. As always, remember to load your player or your statistics won't change. Pick "Temple" from the list of classic arenas. If you don't have temple yet, then pick something wide open. Skedar is reasonable, but Temple is preferable. Next, set weapons to all mines. Proximity mines and timed mines will work the best for this, but remote mines work well too. ----- Example set-ups: A B C 1. Proximity Mines 1. Proximity Mines 1. Timed Mines 2. Proximity Mines 2. Proximity Mines 2. Timed Mines 3. Remote Mines 3. Proximity Mines 3. Timed Mines 4. Remote Mines 4. Timed Mines 4. Timed Mines 5. Timed Mines 5. Timed Mines 5. Timed Mines 6. Timed Mines 6. Timed Mines 6. Timed Mines ----- Now, add some simulants. You'll need PeaceSims. These guys won't shoot. They collect weapons, and they chase you and try to disarm you. Pick as many as you can. Usually the limit is eight, but if you haven't progressed very far in the challenges you may not be able to add so many. And make sure to go to each one afterwords and set its difficulty to "meat". A meat PeaceSim will chase you all over the place but due to its short range will never quite catch up unless it traps you in a corner. That's partly why you want a wide open area. Set the limits high. Time limit shouldn't matter much, but make sure you set score and team score really high (preferably unlimited) If you play long enough, you could get hundreds of kills. Now start the game. Find the most wide-open, easily accessible area in the arena. If you're playing Temple, that will be the main area on the second floor, just above the skylight. There should be plenty of mines lying around, but don't worry if there aren't. The PeaceSims won't attack you unless you're armed. Once you've got some, let the nearest sim chase you. Don't kill it. Just run circles around it. This can be done the most easily by strafing or sidestepping. For instance, hold the analog stick left, while holding down the right C button or hold the analog right while holding down the left C button. If you do it right, you should be circling the sim but constantly facing it. Keep this up for a while. Soon enough, more simulants will enter the room and start chasing. Your circle motion will soon have all of them bunched together. Once you have three or four (or all eight if you have the patience) bunched together, it's time to throw a mine. Toss it right into the crowd. It should land right on one of the PeaceSims and fasten in place. The Sim will continue chasing as if nothing's wrong. Back up. You should be able to get a safe distance before a proximity or a timed mine will go off. If its a remote minee, detonate it once you're far enough not to get killed. The explosion should kill most if not all of them. If some remain, just continue the same procedure. The regenerated sims will come right back into the same room without too short of a wait. Don't worry about running out of ammo. There's plenty. And when the game ends, you can a "Quad Kill" award. ________________________________________________________________ V. Increase Accuracy This one can be pretty fun too. "Accuracy" in your statistics will be the percentage of hits to number of shots fired. This can be tricky to gain because it means you have to miss very few of your shots. And this includes punches, mines, grenades, etc. Every punch you miss will have a negative effect on your accuracy. So you need some very accurate semi-automatic weapons. I think by now, you'll have gotten the hint that you need to remember to load your player settings so this will be the last time I mention it. Enter Advanced Setup. First pick the "Complex" arena from the Classics. It needs to be the complex, so if you don't have it, you'll need to unlock it before this will work. Set Limits high. I've done 60 minutes before. It can get really boring, but if you really want to boost your stats, this works the best. But 20 minutes is a good all-around alternative. As for the simulants, put the maximum number of PeaceSims and change their skill to "meat" And finally, change the weapons. You'll need lots of Falcons. Preferably with scopes. A couple of other decent weapons to toss in can be proximity mines and the sniper rifle. ----- Example set-ups: A B C 1. Falcon 2 (scope) 1. Falcon 2 1. Falcon 2 (scope) 2. Falcon 2 (scope) 2. Falcon 2 2. Falcon 2 (scope) 3. Falcon 2 (silenced)3. Falcon 2 (silenced)3. Falcon 2 (scope) 4. Falcon 2 (silenced)4. Falcon 2 (silenced)4. Falcon 2 (scope) 5. Sniper Rifle 5. Falcon 2 (scope) 5. Falcon 2 (silenced) 6. Proximity Mines 6. Falcon 2 (scope) 6. Falcon 2 (silenced) ----- And before you start your game, you'll need to go up to "options" and select one-hit-kills. This works best if you can get double falcon 2 with scopes. The Complex has one area over in the corner that you can find without too much exploring. There's a metallic grating floor and a ramp that leads up to a somewhat thin ledge, also metallic grating. There are a few crates scattered around. On the ledge, in the corner furthest from any of the entrances into the room, there's a bit of an alcove with a metal texture. You can climb it onto another ledge for the room's third floor. There's a weapon and ammo on top of it, so it's not particularly secret. The PeaceSims flock to this area. And because there's only one way in, it's a fun and easy place to pick off helpless victims. At the part of the ledge where you first climb up, you have to make your way to the first corner and turn around so you're facing the place where you climbed up. Take out your pistol(s) and aim for it. The scope really comes in handy here. Keep it just a little bit above the floor and centred between the wall and the edge. PeaceSims will keep climbing directly into your crosshairs. A quick squeeze of the trigger will drop them back down as quickly as they come. This will be very comical for a while, although it will get boring fast. Heads will pop up and get blasted down again. It's essentially the Perfect Dark equivilent of whack-a-mole. It's especially fun watching the simulants' guns splatter all over the place. And they never quite learn from it either. As for the proximity mines, you can place them near the weapon and ammo that the sims are trying to get to, on the third floor. The point to this is that occasionally you can accidentally miss and sometimes the PeaceSims will get close enough to disarm you and run away with your guns. If this happens, they'll walk right into your mine and you can quickly sweep it all up again. As for the sniper rifle, you can use this instead of the falcon. But if you zoom in too far, they'll move too quickly. If you keep this up long enough, you should hit them about 75% of the time. If you're really good, you can go the whole twenty minutes without missing a shot. And that will be a serious boost to your stats. Keep in mind, it's generally a good idea to have more than one type of weapon. If you get disarmed, you need to have a backup. ________________________________________________________________ VI. Increase Head Shots This is one of the weirder ones, but it works very well. It also will do wonders for your accuracy, although it's not as fast-paced as the one mentioned (ie, it will take longer) "Head Shots" refers to the number of times in the combat simulator that you have hit another player in the head with a projectile weapon. As far as I know this does not apply to rockets, grenades, or mines. Throwing knives and crossbow bolts however, do count. Enter advanced setup again. This time, make sure "one-hit-kills" is *off*. This is very important. It takes two head shots to kill an opponent when this is off and that means twice as many as otherwise. You can find this under "options" For the arena, pick the Grid. This should work with any arena but Grid is the best. If you can't pick it, go for a small area. For weapons, pick all sniper rifles. A falcon 2 with scope can work well too, but just make sure that all the weapons are the same. They have to be. ----- Example set-ups: A B 1. Sniper Rifle 1. Falcon 2 (scope) 2. Sniper Rifle 2. Falcon 2 (scope) 3. Sniper Rifle 3. Falcon 2 (scope) 4. Sniper Rifle 4. Falcon 2 (scope) 5. Sniper Rifle 5. Falcon 2 (scope) 6. Sniper Rifle 6. Falcon 2 (scope) ----- Of course, you can do this just as well if you set only one weapon and leave the rest empty, but it just means you'll have a harder time hunting down your weapon at the beginning, or finding ammo later. And finally, add some simulants. As many PerfectSims as you can. No, I'm not crazy. PerfectSims work the best for this. I'll show you why in a second. Now, set some limits. Don't put any score limits or you'll be doing this all night. (Explain why in a second) Definitely put a time limit, but give yourself plenty. Once that's all done, you need to pick "teams", and here's the odd part. Set all the sims to the same team. And put yourself on this team as well. Just so there's no confusion, it should look something like this: ----- Player 1 Red PerfectSim:1 Red PerfectSim:2 Red PerfectSim:3 Red PerfectSim:4 Red PerfectSim:5 Red PerfectSim:6 Red PerfectSim:7 Red PerfectSim:8 Red ----- Once this is done, go ahead and start the game. The simulants have a built-in function that sets priorities for them. Their first priority is to gather some shields, weapons, and ammo. Then they have to go looking for the nearest enemy. If they can't find an enemy, they'll follow their nearest friend until they can find one. They also try to strengthen their position by heading to the largest group of allies they can find and help defend. Now, because everyone is all on the same team, the sims will get confused. Their objective to find the nearest enemy will leave them aimless. After snatching up all the ammo they can eat and surrounding themselves with their friends, they won't have a single thing to do. So they'll stand around motionlessly and wait for an enemy to somehow materialize. They're sitting ducks. Now, you won't get any points for kiling teammates. But you'll still get points for accuracy and headshots in your stats. It's impossible to win, of course, because every kill will take your team's score down. The end score will be a negative number. The reason you want them to be PerfectSims is because they will move faster. The faster they gather all their ammo, the faster they'll be ready to sit around and invite a head shot. And the reason you need to make all your weapons the same is because it will mean less for the sims to gather. Once they get a sniper rifle (or falcon 2) they'll have nothing more to look for except ammo and a couple of friends to hang around with. While they're doing this, go to the Grid's elevator. You can't do this in any other arena, but don't say I didn't already warn you. Sims will run in and out of the elevator all the time and they're easy targets once inside. 80% of the time, they'll get inside and then stand still until the other door opens. Wait inside the elevator. Once they're perfectly still, aim your scope at their head. Fire. Adjust aim if necessary and fire again. Two shots will do it and they will not fight back. Keep an eye on your radar. If a lot of the little dots are stationary it means that some of the sims have run out of things to do and are sitting still. You'll probably find a group of four to seven of them, standing there. Eerily enough, you'll find the sims start copying your actions as you get closer. They'll look in whatever direction you look and move wherever you move robotically precise. They won't shoot, though, so don't worry about that. Aim for someone's head, shoot twice. Now turn your gun to the next closest. Sometimes you can kill the whole bunch of them without any of them moving. Other times they'll suddenly decide to go look for more of their friends and will head out single-file in search of whatever it is they want. It takes a while to get anywhere, but remember that you have to wait for them to be motionless or close enough. You want to use only head shots and you want to improve your accuracy while you're at it. If the game doesn't end before you get sick of this, just quit. Your stats will be saved. And although your score might be -300, your team will still win. :p ________________________________________________________________ VII. Credits Thanks to Metalhead for initially coming up with the way to boost accuracy. Everything else is original work. If I have inadvertantly left someone out, e-mail me plase. See contact info for details. ________________________________________________________________ VIII. Contact Info My e-mail address is Feel free to contact me about anything, but I should warn you that I'm likely to ignore any of the following: 1. A two-page message that explains to me why I'm stupid. 2. A link to a site that has no relevance to Perfect Dark, porn banners, ten pop-ups, a request to vote for a top 100 video game site that is required to proceed, and a bunch of broken links to x-rated fanfiction. 3. Leetspeak, excessive acronyms, or insanely bad grammar. Example: "ur WWW r0><0r5 3y3 wlil mail u a TFAR XPO opkay" ________________________________________________________________ IX. Disclaimer Okay, I'm not a nazi here, people. If you want to use it for something, go ahead. All I ask is: A. Credit me B. Keep it completely intact C. Tell me about it. You can do it after you've already put it up on your site if you want, but as long as I find out from you before someone else, I'll be 100% fine with it. D. Buy me something nice (optional) Thank you. Tom "Hyena" White ________________________________________________________________ ================================================================