Part 11: Treasure Mountain! pt 2
Well, here's our clue. Starscream said to throw down a coin at the clue, and I'd never go against someone named "Starscream", so here goes.
It got us a key! Keys let us move up to the next level, but we won't be doing that just yet. If you see something that matches 2 out of the 3 clues, you can throw down a coin to collect a treasure. Unlike the previous games, we need treasures to rank up, not points. And since ranking up in this game is critical...
If you mash opposite directional keys while in the air, you can hover forever. It's so much fun! And sometimes it's almost useful (but not really)
Here are some small trees! Let's throw down a coin!
...Those apparently weren't trees. Coins make things disappear for a few seconds so anything hiding behind that object will appear. The elves like to turn and watch this happen
See that Nets 4 coins sign? Two things: It, obviously, gives you nets for coins. Also, the nets cost 4 coins. I hope you want to kill yourself after that visual pun because I sure do!
My coin went to the nets instead of making the small trees disappear and give me treasure!
There we go. Stupid fucking cave.
I got a lamp! That's one of the two treasures on this level - the diamonds indicate how many treasures are present and how many are left. Higher difficult = more treasure, but the amount of treasure/level scales linearly (2,3,4,5, I think the max might be 6) while the amount of treasure needed for the next rank goes up much faster (5, 20, 45, 45, 55, 60, 70). That means the total treasure per playthrough goes 6,9,12,15,18 per rank. So you can get the first rank in one playthrough, but after that you need to play at least 3 more times, then 4 times, then 3 times, then after that it's basically 4 times for each remaining rank. So in total you need to play the game about 20 times to get max rank? Which doesn't sound that bad, actually. If I screwed up my math or you have a more accurate memory regarding the max treasures per level, please let me know
Alright let's get some nets!
4 coins = 5 nets. You get coins for capturing elves. It's a fair trade I guess? Again if you ever use up all your nets and coins, this rock will move out of the way to get you free nets. You can move away from it and come back and it will have a price on it again! MAGIC
Alright, it's time for me to blow your minds. Let's go into this tunnel - it acts as a shortcut. The level loops around like a circle (because you're travelling around the mountain), and tunnels just travel the diameter of the circle.
I've never met anybody else who knows about this. If you come into my thread to burst my bubble I will fucking kill you.
See that second big rock right there?
Walk up to it, and press up...
The music stops. That arrow wasn't up there before... This is creepy as hell FYI. It's the only part of this game that doesn't fart rainbows and kittens.
Walk down a bit. See those gold things on the wall?
FREE COINS WHAT UP
This only works on this tunnel, and you can come here as often as you want but the coins are only here once per game, and when they're gone, they're gone. You get out the same way you get in.
Also, this never happened for me on a native DOS computer, but on DOSBox, when you come out the music is slightly messed up. I think one of the MIDI instruments gets another sound bank or something, it's really annoying.
These are small trees. Treasure?
Balloon!
We're standing in front of the keyhole.
Insert it, and the tree goes some ladder rungs for us to go up!