DescentBB

Where does it say the warnings and specifications for the big fusion cannon firing bots and the triple concussion missle firing bots on the first secret level?
I need to know this because I am on that level!

I don't know.... but I know how I handled them. Keep moving, and keep changing direction- try to stay away from walls... but then, that's about how I handle just about everything in D3.

I don't think there is any... what level are you in anyways?

Fusion Hulks and Missile Platforms are never formally introduced in the game's briefings.

Watch the walls, keep your ears open. If you start hearing robot noises and weapons fire OR see random flashes coming from a certain area...get moving. You're about to get hammered with fusion and concs!

Duper and Snoopy: I think he means D1.

Definitely D1; that secret level still gives me nightmares.

I hate that level!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The first time I found the exit door, I was like lemme go try it (I was like 10 years old, im 15 now, LOL) and I killed the reactor and went into the level, opened the door, and the two fusion bots scared the crap outta me!!! Im like what the heck!!!. Im with Top Gun on that, It gives me nightmares!

Top Gun wrote:that secret level still gives me nightmares.

*shudders* Uhhhg, me too!

Well i guess your in for a coronary when you get to secret level 3

Two most dangerous normal enemies in the game, by quite a distance. The Class 2 Platform may not have homing missiles, but the concussions it fires are VERY punishing, and it tends to offload when you barely have room to dodge them.

Generally, for BOTH mechs, kill them from as far away as you can. If you have Vulcan, use it. Charging in and dogfighting them is not recommended unless you're Superman.

If you can't keep outside of their weapons range, just duck around a corner, fire some quad lasers off (fusion will do more damage but you're more likely to miss, and it doesn't fire as fast), and duck back just after you see it fire.

If you have any spare smart missiles, and would rather not take chances in plain sight of the mech, then fire some of those off. Or homing missiles, if your position is good.

For all its new weapons, Descent 2 didn't really bring in any new bots that were close to this deadly. Sure, the Boarshead can knock you around a bit, but smart missiles... they just aren't as good unless they happen to hit you.

Well, there WAS that green Class 1 Heavy Driller. With the homing missiles. I hate those things.

I never had too much trouble with the D1 bots except when it came to the Vulcan droid. Iâ??ll never forget that day when I blindly entered that room in level 6. Next thing I knew the walls opened, and I was ambushed by 4 or 5 of those things. They maybe easy to kill but if just one ever got on your blind side youâ??ll take some serious damage.

The Class 1 Drillers (Vulcan dudes) had the advantage that they took one sole homing missile to destroy, so you could nab them from around corners or just start lobbing homers if you had no idea what was happening!

Yeah. It was a nasty room, I'll say that; but I did figure out an 'optimal' way to beat it... just trichord as fast as you can to the other end, take the cloak in the secret door behind the red key, come back, find the invulnerability near the entrance, and then just blast away.

Of course, if you wanted it to last, homing missiles would help immeasurably.

That's Level 6 in the room with the red key. There is a room in the floor under the key. There is also an invincibility in floor just inside the door.

The second time around youâ??ll know better not to make the same mistake twice. I wonder how many people foolishly flew in there before they realized it was too late.

TigerRaptorFX wrote:I never had too much trouble with the D1 bots except when it came to the Vulcan droid. I’ll never forget that day when I blindly entered that room in level 6. Next thing I knew the walls opened, and I was ambushed by 4 or 5 of those things. They maybe easy to kill but if just one ever got on your blind side you’ll take some serious damage.

Yeah...

Try doing it with only about 45 shields (and no easy way to get more). I was on that level today (Finally got DOSBox to run Descent at a decent speed, W000000000T!!!) and a few dozen deaths later I noticed the Invulnerability in the floor (I'd forgotten about it, it's been too long). That made short work of that. Then came the three red dudes guarding the reactor...

Tried a similar thing yesterday... except I had something seriously cheap like quad vulcan...

Mind sharing how you tweaked DOSBox, Admiral LSD? I've only been able to get D1 to run at an extremely slow speed in it, and since my USB stick doesn't play nice with D1X, I haven't been able to go back and give D1 singleplayer another try.

LSD, Save the invul for when you assault the reactor. Stick your nose a up the to the room and let some homers fly ....carefully.

*doublepost*

I just beat secret level 1 and am most of the way through the next level. They don't introduce the bots that are in secret level 1 till much later in the game. The spot I hate the most is where the two robot centers are when you get the yellow key, one side spawns laser platform bots, other side spawns conc platform bots. I took out all the conc platform bots with the two mega missiles I had, took care of the laser platform ones with two or three shots from my trusty fusion cannon.

Yeah this brings back memories, like the level 7 boss, first time I beat him took hours (on tranee!), this time around the invul I picked up from the room near the red door hadn't even worn off yet, less then 20 seconds and he was already blowing up, and thats after I took care of the two vulcan bots and 3 red hulks that were left in that room. Talk about weak, compared to playing online that boss is pathetic. So much for "Insane" skill.

Oh well, it things were ok up to level 10, then I got my Fusion, now its really fun.

Top Gun wrote:Mind sharing how you tweaked DOSBox, Admiral LSD? I've only been able to get D1 to run at an extremely slow speed in it, and since my USB stick doesn't play nice with D1X, I haven't been able to go back and give D1 singleplayer another try.

First up, depending on your machine, you're probably not going to get outrageously fast performance out of it. Even with my settings, the best I can get is "good 486" to "medium Pentium" performance. While it gets annoying at times it brings back memories of playing on the networked 486s at school so it's not so bad. Not to mention that running D1 fairly slowly does have it's advantages with controller sensitivity.

Now, with that out of the way what I did was I set the CPU core in DOSBox to "dynamic" and set the emulated cycles to something stupidly large like 40000 (You'll have to experiment a bit to find an ideal number for your machine). Now, Descent or more accurately, the DOS/4GW DOS extender it used doesn't like the DOSBox dynamic CPU core. The trick here is to replace the DOS/4GW extender with a more modern one like DOS32A.

Simply download the binary package, unpack it to a folder, copy the DESCENTR.EXE executable over to the folder containing the "sb" program (which should be <wherever you d/l'd DOS32A to>\binw) and running:
and then moving the new exe back into the main Descent folder. It's not perfect, I occasionally get a situation where the game will act as though one button is held down continuously (particularly annoying when it's the right mouse button you have your secondary weaps mapped to) for instance, but it's a lot more reliable than messing around with D1x. I've noticed you can alleviate the "continuous button press" problem by reducing the number of emulated CPU cycles but you have to balance that against having enough to run the game at a decent speed.

Duper wrote:LSD, Save the invul for when you assault the reactor. Stick your nose a up the to the room and let some homers fly ....carefully.

The problem was that I only had a handful of homers and to trigger the door opening you have to be right above that lava pit in the centre. What was happening before I noticed the invuln was I'd get pulverised by the vulcan dudes before I could pull back to a safe distance. Besides, the reactor wasn't terribly difficult once I said "Ah, ★■◆● it!" and stopped trying to be a hero by atempting to clear the mine out 100%. I perched myself on one side of the entrance and took quick potshots at the reactor until the "LOCK!" indicator popped up which was my queue to pull back into the corner (the missile then proceeded to hit the wall). Once the reactor blew I just flew up and out the exit.

Kroms right about that level 7 boss though. A few years back I'd never be able to beat him without losing most of my accumulated lives - even on Rookie - but this time he went down without all that much of a fight at all. Oh how times change...

Lobbing a few homers into the Boss chamber as you open the door is a good idea. it gets those drillers by the door ...eventhough you are invulnerable ..or should be.

If you aren't, Then I recommend hanging out, outside the door killing what you can with homers first. chicken?? YOU BETCHA! ;D

Yeah, multiplayer does that to you. You need much more tough AI enemies to actually be challenged by them...

...although it is possible to go too far.

Duper wrote:Lobbing a few homers into the Boss chamber as you open the door is a good idea. it gets those drillers by the door ...eventhough you are invulnerable ..or should be.

If you aren't, Then I recommend hanging out, outside the door killing what you can with homers first. chicken?? YOU BETCHA! ;D

I've always done that, what used to get me were those motherfscking smart missiles the boss would lob at you. This time though, I just stuck to the inner column like glue and was able to ward them off. I read that technique in the FAQ years ago but it never used to work even half as effectively then as it did now. It's like these skills just came out of nowhere. I never play multi and upgrading to Win2k and later, XP - not to mention never being able to get a hold of D3 - severely curtailed my ability to practice. I never even got that far into Forsaken. Frankly, I'm at a loss

Duper wrote:Lobbing a few homers into the Boss chamber as you open the door is a good idea. it gets those drillers by the door ...eventhough you are invulnerable ..or should be.

If you aren't, Then I recommend hanging out, outside the door killing what you can with homers first. chicken?? YOU BETCHA! ;D

I used the same approach until I couldnâ??t hit my enemies from that position any more. Then the next alternative was to fly in hit a few more enemies and fly out before the door closed. After all that the boss was just a big easy target.