·-------------------------------------------------------------------· | Gauntlet FAQ - NES | ·-------------------------------------------------------------------· vBeta – Started 12/30/00 Written and maintained by Dragooneth Copyright ©2000 Dragooneth (Dragooneth@hotmail.com) An 8 bit NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) game presented by Tengan and developed by Atari. Gauntlet is a registered trademark of Atari. ·-----------· | IMPORTANT | ·-----------· WEBMASTERS : FEEL FREE TO POST THIS GUIDE ON YOUR SITE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO ASK. This guide is always available at http://www.gamefaqs.com It's the one stop for your gaming needs. This guide © Dragooneth. All rights reserved. All lefts are available. I need more info on this game. If you have something to contribute (anything!) please email me!!! ·-------------------· | TABLE OF CONTENTS | ·-------------------· Copywrite Special Thanx Introduction Story Characters Warrior Valkeryie Wizard Elf Basic Gamplay Enemies Special Items Maps Secrets ·-----------· | COPYWRITE | ·-----------· WEBMASTERS : FEEL FREE TO POST THIS GUIDE ON YOUR SITE. YOU DON'T HAVE TO ASK. This guide © Dragooneth. All rights reserved. All lefts are available. I don't know why I even bother with this part because if you're gonna steal my guide a stupid little warning isn't going to stop you. And if you have no intentions of doing so you'll skip this section anyways. But if you do happen to read this have a little respect ok? Don't take this and say you wrote it or plagerize any part of it. If you are going to take it though, at least do a good job. Nothing is more annoying that seeing someones name at the top of a guide and then on the very last page or in the middle of it you see the original author's name with a copywrite. So to all the low life scum out there, make sure you do a good job when you steal, damnit! Oh, yea and feel free to distribute this guide any way you like. All's I ask is that you simply leave the whole document intact. Oh and if you paid money for this guide then you got ripped off because its available for free at http://www.gamefaqs.com and god knows where else. :) ·---------------· | Special Thanx | ·---------------· CjayC – For running the best gaming site on the net and hosting all of my guides Atari – For making such an awesome game!!! Tengen – For making the game come to the nes. TSR - The manual god. I don't know who you are but you are a life saver. You saved me from having to type out a lot of stuff from the manual. Thank you so much! The game manual – Man is this thing ever packed with information. It helped so much in making this guide. Me - For making this guide, hehe. ·--------------· | INTRODUCTION | ·--------------· Gauntlet is one of the coolest games ever made on the NES. It has so many secrets and is just an all around awesome game. I can't believe no one has made a faq for this game yet. I've looked everywhere on the net for a guide but I just can't find one. So I decided to make my own. Ya I know its going to be a lot of work but since I love this game its going to be a lot of fun as well. If any of you care I just got all four of my wisom teeth cut out of my mouth about 4 days ago. I was asleep when they did it but man does it hurt like crazy now. Hopefully this guide will keep me busy and make it so I can concentrate on something other than on the pain. ·-------· | STORY | ·-------· (Taken from the manual) The story of the Sacred Orb The black clouds swirled over the heads of the chosen ones. Four has come this far, but only two would continue. The portal to their deadly challenge awaited. Foreboding screams rose up from the Gauntlet. Morak the Evil One cackled in glee as he watched the intrepid warriors prepare to enter his most terrible Gauntlet. He knew they would never reach their goal. The Sacred Orb would remain forever imprisoned at the lowest level of the Gauntlet. Without the Sacred Orb, Morak knew the mortals that inhabited Rendar would be helpless against his evil magic. Morak had plundered the lands and hidden his booty in the Gauntlet. He garrisoned his henchmen in the Gauntlet to guard it. There were ghosts, grunts, demons, sorcerers, and even incarnations of death itself. But could the Sacred Orb be in the Gauntlet? No mortal knew for sure. If nothing else, the warriors could retrieve the treasures of Rendar that Morak had plundered and stored in the Gauntlet. If only all four warriors could all continue, on this, the last leg of their quest. Alas, the portal only allowed passage of two mortals. The warriors need your help. Choose from among them the two that shall continue: Become Thor the warrior, Thyra the valkyrie, Merlin the wizard or Questor the elf. The fate of Rendar is in your hands. ·------------· | CHARACTERS | ·------------· (also from the manual. handy little tool isn't it?) So who's it gonna be. The "me strong, you not, I kill"- warrior? The sexy, speedy and good all around valkyrie. The all powerful mage? Or that speedy little bastard? Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses. The key to playing any character is to use thiers honed skills to you advantage. Table of abilities for the four characters (5 is the hightest rating) *********** * Warrior * *********** My opinion: This guy absolutely sux. He is terrible. He can't shoot through diagonal sections of walls! He also is freaking retarded with potions. You will get your but kicked if you use him. Overall: 1/4 Starting power : 980 Armor strength : 4 Shot strength : 5 Magic strength : 1 Fighting ability: 5 Player speed : 1 ************* * Valkeryie * ************* My opinion: She is good. No overall weaknesses. Fast, good firepower, good defense. I used her a lot. Overall: 3/4 Starting power : 900 Armor strength : 5 Shot strength : 2 Magic strength : 2 Fighting ability: 3 Player speed : 3 ********** * Wizard * ********** My opinion: Hmm... Not good not bad. Just kinda soso. He has potential because of his good magic and firepower but his defense just isn't good enough. Overall: 2/4 Starting power : 800 Armor strength : 1 Shot strength : 4 Magic strength : 5 Fighting ability: 1 Player speed : 3 ******* * Elf * ******* My opinion: This guy rules!!! If you are playing alone play the elf. He is so freaking fast you'll love it. He has no weaknesses whatsoever. Once you get a power up shot you'll be doing as much damage as a warrior and when you finally pick up that extra armor power you'll be almost invincible. I'm telling ya this guy is the man. He is awesome in the treasure rooms and because of this your HP will grow very quickly so you don't have to worry about dying very often. With his speed you'll be able to outrun anything, including death, and you'll be able to complete levels faster so you lose less energy. Overall: 4/4 Starting power : 820 Armor strength : 2 Shot strength : 2 Magic strength : 3 Fighting ability: 1 Player speed : 5 *************** * At a Glance * *************** Ability Warrior Elf Wizard Valkyrie Armor 4 2 1 5 Fight/Shot Power 5 3 3 3 Magic 1 3 5 2 Player Speed 2 5 3 3 ****************** * Basic Gameplay * ****************** Ok. The whole idea of the game is too get through each level and find the exit to the next level, all the while trying not to get killed. Sounds easy enough right! Well, you'd be surprised how hard that simple little concept is. Here's what you need to know to be able to identify: Exits - Little black square that says "exit"(DUH!!!). Step into this and you go to the next level. Some levels have no exits! Others have multiple ones. Sometimes they are hidden and somewhere in the dungeon there is an exit that will automatically kill you. Walls - Various colored...eh... walls. You can't walk through em so go around em. Some walls look solid but can be destroyed. Any suspiscious looking wall is usually a fake wall and can be destroyed. These walls lead to the really good stuff in the dungeons and secret exits! Doors/Keys - You need keys to open doors and you need doors to use keys. Don't open every door you find as there may be no need to. Save those keys for when you need them. Potions - The "kill everything on the screen with a push of a button before i die and have to start all over life saver". There are two types of bomb potions: Destructible and indestructible. Destructible bombs will activate when shot and indestructible bombs will not. Beware of bottles that look like potions but aren't they are poison and will take away 100 HP. Treasure - What good is risking your neck if you can't get rich?! Pick up all the loot you can carry and reap the benefits! Literally. The more treasure chests you pick up the more your maximum HP will go up. Can't beat that! Beware of being too greedy though. Because after you pick up too much treasure you password will stop working! Bags of Jewels - OO . Now that's what I'm talking about. These are pretty rare in the dungeon but they're worth 3 regular treasures so they are worth the extra effort to find. Food - Those adventurers are braver than I am. If I found a bowl of food or cider sitting in the corner of a dungeon with the symbols "XXX" on it I doubt I'd eat/drink it... Oh well they seem to like it just fine and it restores 100HP. Movable Walls - Pretty self explanatory here. Their walls but you can move 'em. They don't just move up down left right either. They can move in digonals and all whichways, so you don't have to worry about getting stuck. Stun Floors - These things are nasty. Sometimes on the floor of the dungeon tiles are placed randomly and when an unexpected victim walks over them they are frozen in time for several seconds. Enemies instinctively know where these are and won't walk over them. The "careful" adventurer will avoid them if possible. (they are easy as hell to spot) ·---------· | ENEMIES | ·---------· Oh yea there are plenty of em in this game. TRUST ME. I would love to know how many enemies you have killed by the time you beat this game. It has to be in the 100,000's if not 1,000,000's. Anyone wanna keep track for me? 1...2...3.. Hehe. ******************** * Enemy Generators * ******************** Some enemies just occupy the dungeon and have always been there. More than likely though if there are monsters around there are also monster generators around. These hand dandy little contraptions spew out monsters-NONSTOP-until you manage to destroy the things. They come in 3 flavors. Easy, medium, and hard. How do you tell them apart? Easy if they look small or kinda simple in construction then they are easy. If they look big or pretty elaborate or big in construction they are hard. If you're not sure it's probably the medium one. So what does each one do? Welllll, the easy ones produce monsters that take 1 hit to kill, the medium one produces monsters that take 2 hits to kill, and take a wild guess at what the 3rd one does. Yep. Produces monsters than takes 3 hits to kill. Note that the 1,2,3 hits are just easy ways of explaining how hard guys are to kill. Depending on the your characters strength you maybe able to kill a level 3 monster in 2 hits rather than 3. It just depends. ************ * Bad Guys * ************ (Courtesy of the manual and my added insight :) Ghosts: They attack once, and vanish taking some of your power as they go. Easy to kill not much of problem. Grunts: They continuously pound on you with their clubs. You really don't want to get surround by these guys or your butt will be toast. They aren't that tough though. Demons: Their are two kinds of these. The ones that shoot and the ones that don't. The ones that shoot are deadly. Take care of them ASAP. They hurt bad and they shoot almost nonstop at you. The other kind is the ones that don't shoot. These are easy. Nothing to worry about. Death: This evil black creature will chase you and drain 200hp before vanishing. Your shots have no effect on Death. I hate these guys the only wasy to kill them is to use a potion. I say run from them and just avoid them all together if at all possible. Acid puddles: They wander randomly. Stupid monsters if you ask me. No real threat. You can't kill them with attacks so don't bother. Potions take care of them but you can avoid them pretty easily. Sorcerers: They have the power of invisibility. They blink onto the screen and thenblink off. They are tough to destroy since they cannot be shot when they areinvisible. Super sorcerers: They vanish, appear behind you and shoot you. Then they vanish again. These things are freaking awful. Lobbers: They run away from you, but then they turn around and throw rocks at you - even over walls. More annoying than anything, as their rocks really don't hurt that bad. ·---------------· | SPECIAL ITEMS | ·---------------· (Again from the manual) Magic potions are hidden in the rooms. If you collect these potions, you can increase your abilities. Each time you collect an extra ability, it is shown in the Pause Screen with your statistics. You have it for the rest of the game. Extra abilities only work once for each player. Potions Extra armor : Reduces the damage you take. [shield] Extra magic : Increases damage a bomb can do. [little bottle] Extra shot power : Increases the damage your shots do. [black spot] Extra speed : Increases your speed. [arrow] Extra melee power : Do more damage in hand to hand fighting [knife] In addition to the extra ability potions, you can also collect temporary abilities. These last only a little while and are not shown in the Pause Screen. Temporary Invisibility: Enemies cannot find you. [white box with three lines] Temporary Repulsion Amulet: Enemies run away from you. [orange box with three lines] Temporary Reflective Shots: Your shots bounce off walls [white box with arrow] Ten Super Shots: Your shots destroy everything, including doors. [orange box with arrow] Temporary invulnerability: You have perfect armor for awhile, but your hp goes down twice as fast. [black box] ·------· | MAPS | ·------· (Thanks to TSR for this) As you play the game, a map of each world is shown between rooms. You can chart your progress and see which rooms are conected together. Some room shave more than one exit so you may want to record which exits lead to which rooms. The treasure rooms are shown with a $ in the map. Clue rooms which contain a clue to the final combination are shown with ?. The final conbination is explain in the Collected Wisdom of World Five. These maps are considered accurate. Merlin's apprentice acquired them from Vellum the Mapmaker - the very same mapmaker Morak used to chart his Gauntlet. Map of World One: The Castle Your journey begins in the Castle World. Since it exists on the edge of the Veil, other mortals have ventured into the Castle. Many explorers have risked life and limb to bring back what little we know about the Castle. $19 - L18 - L17 | | | Hint: In room 16, try shooting solid ?16 - L15 - L14 walls - one might disappear | when shot. $08 - L09 - L10 L12 - $13 / \ / L07 - L06 - L05 - $04 L11 | \ L01 - L02 - L03 Map of World Two: The Dark Forest The dark reaches of this Forest world are unknown to mortals.. Rumors and fables abound. Most of what is known comes from the tales told of the ancient time when chaos rules. L20 L37 - L38 - L39 Hint: The clue is in a | | \ | treasure chest. L21 $36 L40 - $41 | \ | L23 L22 L33 - L34 - L35 | / | | | $24 ?20 L32 - L30 - L31 | / | L25 - L27 - L28 - $29 Map of World Three: The Lost Caverns The cave-like rooms of the caverns are haunted by many of the horrendous fiends from the Unseen. L56 - $55 - ?54 - L53 | \ | Hint: You may find a room L59 - L60 - L57 L52 - L51 in world three with \ | | treasure and bombs $62 - L58 L50 - $49 - L48 that you cannot get. \ | | | L61 L45 - L44 L47 | | | L42 - L43 - L46 Map of World Four: The Unseen The world of the Unseen holds a formidable challenge. Could you possibly be blind? The walls are not there yet they are in this watery world. L63 - L64 | L65 Hint: Invisible walls may be / | destructible walls as well. $78 - L77 ?66 - $67 | | \ | L74 - L75 - L76 L68 | | | L73 - L72 - L71 - ?70 - L69 Map of World Five: Volcana, Lair of the Guardian Lava flows on all sides. You know this is the last leg of the journey, but the Guardian awaits. ?90 - L91 - $92 - L93 | / | Hint: You have to find L88 - L89 L95 - L94 - L97 your way to room 94 | | | | which leads to the L85 L86 - L87 L96 L99 L98 Guardian. | / | L84 L82 - ?81 L100 | | | L83 - L79 - L80 ·---------· | SECRETS | ·---------· Haven't even scratched the surface. Lvl 1 - In the upper right hand corner (by all the ghosts) their is a secret exit to level 5. Shoot the walls to find it.