Limewater wrote:Maybe if I had the manual it would make more sense.
Back then I had borrowed and friend's copy. I was playing without a manual as well. I picked up a copy once I started collecting again, but I have a box and cart with no manual.
The trick is that there is the outside area with all the annoying broken ledges. There are 7 towers if you keep going north. Each tower has a boss and a bell. Collect the 7 bells to finish the game, but if you rush there with your crappy starting equipment, you're gonna die as it would take a million hits and you can't take damage.
In the outside area with all the broken ledges, there are the hidden teleporters, usually at the dead ends if I recall. You can't see them, but they're always in the same spot, and they always take you to the same place. So it is possible to map it out. A trick to not falling off ledges is to be facing them when attacking things outside. You usually get knocked backwards if hit. Once in a dungeon, you no longer have to worry about falling off ledges, so that helps a lot. Kill stuff and get money while you go around mapping. Yes its easy to get lost, but since not every room has 4 exits, you can map it as long as you don't lose your place. Adding markers when you find a room with the rotating slime towers and the circles on the floor helps.
In the dungeons, there are hidden shops, although if there is a shop in a room, the spot to enter is always in the center of the room on the floor circle. Once you do find a shop, mark it on your map and write down what was sold and how much it costs. That way you know when you can go back and buy.
Other than obvious things like better armor, there were items that let you walk faster (and maybe a pair of boots that kept you from getting knocked around), throw swords faster, stronger swords, and double up your sword throws. There were two of these, one that let let you throw swords one after the other, so 2 could be on the screen at the same time. Handy if you missed. The other let you throw 2 swords side by side, which gave you a nice wide shot making it harder to miss. Autofire was also a big help, especially when your sword sucked at the beginning. As long as you didn't miss, if you closed in on an enemy, you'd fire so fast it would paralyze the enemy until it dies.
