I found an old TG thread where it seemed the thought was that after you break into the 500s a few times, a KS starts becoming a reasonable possibility. I'm hoping for that to be the case...after my first man, my confidence in actually being capable of doing it in the near future is much higher. I like the idea of just trying to hit a score/level vs thinking KS each game, and think there may be a psychological advantage to that approach.
Anyway, good luck to everyone ITT...maybe we can use this thread to update on our progress, share tips, etc.?
This seems on to me about the range. I had a few games in the 500 Ks then a breakout 700 K game (I ended that on a self death because I had to take my daughter to a birthday party). My next big game was a KS.
If you haven't seen this: it really breaks down a very safe and sound strategy for dealing with barrel boards. When I came across it, the barrels quickly went from okay to basically danger free.
Yeah, I found that vid extremely helpful. Even after watching it 2-3 times, I felt like just replaying a 5+ barrel level a few hundred times in a row helped to recognize various subtleties that you have to deal with. I think I'm pretty solid on barrels now, although I sometimes die when rushing the 4th girder and the transition to the 5th. Right now, dumb deaths on pies seem to be getting me quite a bit...I probably need to just replay that level 100x in a row. Otherwise, it's just the various random mistakes...getting a foot caught on a ladder, missing a jump, straight jumping when I mean to direction jump (or vice versa), etc.
I figure if I lose a life in levels 1-4 (which I don't always), then I need to pass about 6 levels with each of my remaining 3 lives to get a KS. But making it through 6 levels on average per life at this point is not typical for me at all. Right now, 2-3 levels (at levels 5+) per life is more typical. I'm not sure how to work on avoiding all those little mistakes aside from just continuing to put in play time to get the experience.
If pies are your issue:
Are you straight jumping for the hammer?
Are you going back down to the bottom and standing still? In most cases they will go up and leave you alone. They aren't actually programmed to home in on you. Stay right also, you can outrun them going left.
If you see two freezers come down left, free pass up the right.
Are you paying for a split second at the top of the second to last ladder to see if a pie spawns?
Do all of the above and report back.
A piece of advice I remember seeing that really helped me with pies is that if you are only trying for a KS, most of your pie deaths should be time outs or very low time panic runs. If you are mostly killed by fireballs/pies with tons of bonus timer left, you could be less aggressive and probably survive some of those boards. Retreating to the very bottom of the board at the first sign of danger is what you want to be doing. The goal on pies is to get a very safe free pass and when that doesn't work out everything else is just safely buying time and hoping the fireballs go up top and get stuck. Once 2 are stuck up top, the board becomes much more manageable.
Not sure if this was already mentioned, but there's also a better chance going up the top left ladder when the fireballs are up top since they tend to gather on the right side of the screen. That's when you can't get a free pass anyway.
I try for the immediate free pass, and sometimes get caught trying to hang out on the ladder up from the first conveyor hoping the approaching fires might turn around and let me sneak past.
After that I drop back to the conveyor and grab for the hammer...not straight jumping (and sometimes missing), so will start doing that.
If I can't get the first hammer because the fireballs are too close, or if they are sticking around after the hammer runs out, I try to get to the far right bottom ladder and hang out near the top of that. If fireballs come down to the very bottom and close in, I get up on the conveyor and keep an eye for an opening to go up...this is often where I goof up by not looking at Kong and getting caught in a direction change. If the fireballs close in on the conveyor, I drop to the very bottom and try evading the best I can.
I'd say most of my pie board deaths come between the time the initial free pass gets thwarted to whenever I can make my way back to the level above the first conveyor...during the evading, and trying to work back up. I'm probably do too much aggressive/nervous jumping around when I have lots of time left, but there are other times I am just barely getting to the top with a few tics left on the clock. I haven't had too much trouble once I get past the fires and near the top in terms of getting caught by pies there on the side, and I definitely look to go left since there's always seemingly a pausing fireball on the top right once the initial free pass is gone.
Do you guys generally try to grab the 2nd hammer if you can when there's a fire still in that area? Like to try and speed it up a bit and see if it'll go up? Or just wait it out and try to possible sneak up if it comes down toward the center?
I really appreciate all the advice from you guys, and will try to incorporate these ideas more into my game!
