DescentBB

Hi everybody! I'm new here.

I had a little problem.
In Descent 2 level 16 (Terrafrost Catacombs, I think...) I can't beat the boss robot. I've tried
about 30 times already, but always unsuccessfull.

Is there any strategy to beat him (or her )?

Sorry for my bad english...

Escorter,

Sadly to say our Single Player aces have all seemed to turn up MIA.

Hopefully someone here can help you!

I know Moon used to run a site called the descentarium and he was one of the original moderators for this forum.

KB

But looks like Moon's Descendarium is down.

If you use the Wayback Machine, you should have no problem accessing his site. As for the level 16 boss, it's been years since I've played through D2 SP (that really needs to change, come to think of it...), and the only advice I can give you is to avoid getting hit by his flash missiles at all costs. As I'm sure you've discovered, they hurt not only your ship but also your retinas. I seem to remember that this boss was invulnerable to a certain class of weapons; it may have been energy-based, but I'm not entirely sure. Moon's site should have more info.

Hmmmm... The archived page is fucked up. It says:
"Path Index Error". So, I take your advice, and try to avoid the boss robot's magnesium missile. And I trying to fry him with Gauss cannon.

I've heard that if you get hit by a flash missile and the screen goes white, you can press the tab key to go to the map and the screen clears up for a moment. So you can see where you are going. Haven't actually tried that, though.

What I usually do is stay behind the door that's on the side of the boss's room. (Not the entrance, which is on the top, iirc). I open the door and shoot a guided missile to flush out the boss and when he appears, I hit him with a mega. Repeat if necessary. There's a secret room on the floor by that door, btw, that leads to the exit.

I just noticed that problem with the archive myself. It was working fine for me just a few days ago; the Archive might be having some troubles.

KoolBear wrote:Escorter,

Sadly to say our Single Player aces have all seemed to turn up MIA.

im a D3 SP Ace

Which is kind of like being a crack shot with a water gun.

Anyway, there is a really cheesy way to do this one: go find the Limefrost Spiral secret level and grab the Earthshaker (it's not too easy to get to mind you). Then, upon reaching this boss room, when you're just above the hole going down into the main room, go up instead - I believe there's a cloak there.

Ignore everything but the boss. When you see him, fire off the shaker to a wall as near as possible to him (most bosses tend to instantly cloak on first sight; if you want to be sure, land him a gauss shot first and shaker him wherever he reappears). Then switch to megas and gauss, and pump as much as you can into him.

This way you may not even need to keep moving, but it does help; the flash missiles do not track a cloaked ship, but the boss will tend to fire directly at you regardless, so if you move you won't take much damage from him. And the earthshaker alone will nearly kill him, trust me on that - provided you land the shot cleanly anyway.

You don't need to use a shaker killing him, though (you may not have them anyway). If you choose not to, again grab the cloak, switch to megas (hopefully you have a few!) and unload. Once you run out of megas, use Gauss and Mercury Missiles and just fire like hell. If your cloak runs out, head for the little door inside the boss room and grab the powerups there. There's some nice stuff in those back hallways.


Finally, if you just feel lucky, rip out the Gauss and mercs and just dodge everything he throws at you. Even if you do run out of mercs, you won't run out of Gauss ammunition if you have any reasonable amount, and he probably only takes 20-odd seconds to die that way. Problem is, you pretty much have to be a hotshot multiplayer dogfighter to do that.

I don't think he takes any damage at all from energy weapons, sadly. A lot of D2 bosses are like that.

Oh, and here is the method I used (.dem, about 470KB, recorded at 30 fps). Since I was either invulnerable or cloaked for most of it, it probably isn't too hard to emulate (although you'll likely want to use megas before mercury missiles). Trick is to stay at decent range of the boss so you have room to evade the missiles - but preferably reasonably far from the walls.

Thanks everybody!
I'll beat him. I didn't notice the "show robots on radar" and "show powerups on radar" in d2x-w32.
And I found the Mega Missile and the cloak.

I noticed something weird... After I beat the boss, my energy in 200 and the shield in 182. When I arrived to Baloris Prime, both energy and shield in 100. Is this a bug in d2x-w32? Or is this a feature?

I would say that's a bug, unless there's some terribly obscure rule that I've missed all these years.

It's a bug. I remember quite clearly that not happening to me in most versions of the game. Oddly, I didn't realise D2x-W32 did it...

Escorter wrote:I noticed something weird... After I beat the boss, my energy in 200 and the shield in 182. When I arrived to Baloris Prime, both energy and shield in 100. Is this a bug in d2x-w32? Or is this a feature?

When I got to that point using d2x-w32, it wouldn't even load the next level. It just crashed to the desk top. Diedel could't reproduce the problem.

Sorry, guys, but I have another problem.
In level 18, how can I disable the forcefields blocking the reactor room? I destroyed the cloaked robots behind the forcefield, but nothing happens.

I think there is a switch in the ceiling . . . somewhere. If I'm thinking of the right level.

Just a little advice - destroying robots will never actually do anything, unless it's a boss or contains a keycard.

In this case, yes, look in those little holes in the roof and floor. You'll find a control panel in one of the (I think in the roof); it will open this forcefield.

Thanks! I found the switch in the celinig of a hole.

Oh, by the way: after I destroyed the reactor, Wingnut tells me he finding exit, but he stuck behind a fence in the reactor room. He does the same thing on level 17. Does he do same weird things in the original DOS Descent 2?

(The DOS version doesn't run in my main PC: it's too fast for DOS games, and I don't have enought disk space in my old P1 to install Descent 2)

Almost certainly yes. I don't recall Diedel doing AI programming.

Hmm...

When I play Descent 1 with d2x-w32, I discovered two weird things:

1, After I exited the mine, a window says: "Warning! Unknown size for Descent.pig"

2, The Medium Lifter's AI is stupid.

Any sollution for the problems?

Send that off to Diedel - he might not read these forums much.

What is his e-mail adress?

Uhm... well, you could always post it in this thread:
phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=5893
I know he checks that regularly, for obvious reasons. (Actually, it's nearly every day I think.)

I probably have his e-mail somewhere but he doesn't seem to have it published anywhere around here, and there may be a reason for that.