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02-13-2006, 9:22 AM Lance Way Joined on 02-11-2006 England Posts 148 Collecting blue chips as Claris / Elliot This is one of those things that isn't an obvious thing to do at all, but it can help your scores quite a bit, so I thought I'd post a quick explanation. If you'd like a visual example, both of tabitha's level videos (Soft Museum and Splash Garden) on the site show this strategy. Basically, the time limit (for the first course of a level) only starts counting down when you actually become NiGHTS, so doing stuff as the kids before becoming NiGHTS can be a good plan. In most levels, the first course is pretty short, and you often have to go all the way to the second lap before you have enough blue chips to destroy the Ideya prison. However, if you collect just enough blue chips while you're Claris / Eliot so that when you become NiGHTS, you can break the Ideya prison on your *first* lap, you'll have effectively bought yourself an extra lap in bonus time. (Remember that after destroying the Ideya prison, you enter bonus time and all points you get are doubled, so having an extra lap in bonus time rather than normal time is A Good Thing!) One important thing to note, though: although the main time limit only starts counting down after you become NiGHTS, the bonus you get for destorying the Ideya prison in the first course becomes less and less based on the real, overall amount of time that's elapsed, so you should still try and collect chips as Claris / Eliot as quickly as possible. If you use this method then, you'll typically get a lower bonus from destroying the Ideya prison (a few hundred points less than normal), but you'll gain many more points back from the extra bonus time (usually several thousand). Exactly what route you should take to collect chips as Claris / Eliot is slightly tricky to work out though (at least, if you want to get enough chips collected as quickly as possible), so I guess this topic could be used to discuss chip-collecting methods for the various levels, to try and work out what's fastest. I'll post all my current strategies a bit later on, but right now I have a question for tabitha: your score on Soft Museum 1 is quite a bit higher than mine, so how did you go about chip-collecting there? Did you use the same strategy as in the video...?    Report

02-13-2006, 10:03 AM tabitha Joined on 01-22-2006 Posts 536 Re: Collecting blue chips as Claris / Elliot This is a fine idea, I think the fastest route to the chips is a very imprtant score issue. Good topic. To be honest I have never been quite happy with the route I took in the SM1 video I acctually shaved a little time off it by ignoring the three chips immediately behind Claris and making a be line directly for the chips near the door to the museum. There is one lone chip on the way near the set of three rings which you can grab. Get the group by the door then follow the same route as the video. Its not a huge improvement but its get you there a little quicker. You might want to share your SV1 route, its a huge time saver and not easy to work out at all.    Report

02-13-2006, 10:51 AM Lance Way Joined on 02-11-2006 England Posts 148 Re: Collecting blue chips as Claris / Elliot OK, here're my strats for the Claris levels (I've really got to get some work done right now, so I'll post the Elliot ones later - they take quite a lot of effort to explain)! All references to "north", "east" etc. assume that "north" is the direction you were facing when you started the level. The only real way to measure how good one of these methods is is by seeing how big your bonus is from destroying the Ideya prison (the bonus counts down), so I've included my best Ideya Prison bonuses as a reference. Right: Spring Valley Need to collect 10 chips as Claris to open the prison on the first lap. 1) From the start, go west down the hill and collect the 3 chips floating above the stone bridge. 2) From there, go north-east until you find a flattish stone floating above the ground, right next to the base of the big hill. If you stand on this stone and do a tripple-jump, so that you move north slightly on the final, highest jump, you should snag a group of 7 chips floating in the air. 3) Then go back up the hill to NiGHTS' palace, become NiGHTS and you should have just enough extra chips to free the Ideya on your first lap. Highest "Ideya prison destoryed" bonus I've achieved with this method: 10,000 points. Mystic Forest Need to collect 13 chips as Claris. Probably the hardest method to explain well: 1) From the start, head north-east past NiGHTS' palace and go down the hill. You're looking for an area with two stone blocks floating next to the side of the hill like "steps", with a boost-ball right next to them. If you stand on the higher of the two stone blocks and look around, you should be able to see a group of 7 blue chips floating just to the south-east of the block; you can grab them all with a jump from the block (though you might want to double-jump to be safe). 2) From there, go back up the hill and round to the north of NiGHTS' palace. Just to the north-east of the palace, there's a thick log with 3 blue chips on it. Also, if you stand on the end of the log closest to the palace and do a tripple-jump on the spot, you should be able to reach 3 blue chips floating in the air above. Highest bonus I've achieved with this method: 9,400. Soft Museum Need to collect 12 chips as Claris. 1) Go west and a little bit north until you reach the Ideya Prison; you'll notice a little hillock directly to the south of it with a blue chip on top. If you walk on to this small hill, it'll squish under you and you'll collect several chips that were hidden "inside" it (7 overall). 2) From there, head north, under and beyond the Ideya prison, and collect the 5 chips floating above the ground. Highest bonus I've achieved with this method: 10,100. EDIT: Oh yeah, this assumes that you're going to break the chip cage directly above-and-to-the-left of NiGHTS' palace as soon as you become NiGHTS.    Report

02-14-2006, 9:44 PM tabitha Joined on 01-22-2006 Posts 536 Re: Collecting blue chips as Claris / Elliot This is a really handy thread. I knew about your SV strat from back when and your MF is identical to mine. I think you may have the better of me for Soft Museum though.    Report

02-16-2006, 10:55 AM Lance Way Joined on 02-11-2006 England Posts 148 Re: Collecting blue chips as Claris / Elliot As advertised: Splash Garden Need to collect 13 chips as Elliot. 1) From the start, head east (and slightly north) down the hill to a paved area with water, and jump into the two floating speed-boosters to propel yourself forward. If you landed on the boosters from above (i.e. with a tripple-jump), you should be shot straight into one of those orange switches that'll give you 6 blue chips; if not, you'll probably be too low and miss the switch. If you miss it, it doesn't matter much, but you'll have to hit it "manually" in a second. 2) After being fired through the boosters you'll land very close to a group of 9 blue chips sitting on the ground, which you should pick up. 3) If you hit the chip switch in step 1, you're done, so head straight back to NiGHTS' palace, which will be west (and slightly north) of where you are now. If you didn't hit the switch, you'll need to do it now: turn straight around and double-jump to hit it, then go back to the palace. Highest bonus I've achieved with this method: 9,600. Frozen Bell Need to collect 16 chips as Elliot. 1) Walk through the snowy trees to the right of NiGHTS' palace; when you walk through four of the trees, a pair of blue chips will drop out of each. (Try to memorise which trees!) You'll end up with about 8 chips overall. 2) If you stand amongst the trees at the northern end of the tree-patch, and tripple-jump straight up into the air, you should be able to collect a chip or two from a group of stars and chips floating above. 3) When you have at least 10 chips from steps 1 and 2, head directly north-east down the hill and jump into the big igloo to get the last 6 that you need. Highest bonus I've achieved with this method: 8,600. Stick Canyon Need to collect 12 chips as Elliot. 1) Head north past NiGHTS' palace and you'll come to a lumpy, reddish hill with some metallic stuff on it. Towards the right-hand side of the hill (looking straight at it) there's a lumpy outcrop of rock; if you stand on it and tripple-jump straight upwards, you should snag 6 blue chips floating in the air. (Some exploration may be in order to work out where I'm talking about...) 2) Head south-west from there. Your next objective is to collect the 3 blue chips floating in front of the "1 MARE" sign near the hill, which you can do by either double-jumping off the hill or tripple-jumping off the ground under the sign. 3) If you head directly south from there, you should find another "1 MARE" sign with 3 more blue chips which you can also collect with a double-jump. You should then be right near the palace again, too. Highest bonus I've achieved with this method: 9,500. Elliot's Spring Valley (from Christmas NiGHTS) I'm "still working on" this one. :) As I said in another thread, I've really not put much effort into this level in the past... And Random Tips - Regarding the "you go faster while chain-jumping" thing I mentioned elsewhere: I've just noticed while writing up these descriptions that the speed boost seems to occur more regularly if you only tap the jump button to do multiple jumps, rather than hold it down. (Turns out I was subconsciously doing this anyway.) So, doing lots of quick, low jumps along the ground should help your speed. - And always, *always* use L and R to keep the camera behind Elliot / Claris so you can tell exactly where you're going - working through these methods again just reminded me how vital this is...    Report

02-16-2006, 8:58 PM tabitha Joined on 01-22-2006 Posts 536 Re: Collecting blue chips as Claris / Elliot I think I might have your frozen bell strat beat there. From the start walk directly south away from the ideya palace to the thicket of 5 trees in the corner of the playing field, The trees hold 2 cheaps each giving you a total of 10. Walk to the right just past the trees there are 3 more. Up towards the ideya palace and grab a final three chips from the trees to the north. This will get you a bust time of 9 200 after breaking the link ball. On Stick Canyon you can acctually get 3 chips before getting control of Eliot back. Its a little hard to pull of but immediately the level starts walk south a couple of game meters and jump just as the maren grab you. They will push you up a little enabling the well timed jumpers among us to grab the three chips above Eliots head. Takes some good positioning and well timed jumping but iven if it doesnt work you can triple jump yourself 3 chips without going anywhere. I still havent worked out a strat I am happy with for SC1 though, I will continue experiementing. I have been heading west after these three chips and going over the wierd magnet generator thing with 3 more chips floating above it. , then collect the four from inside the litle aquare of cactuses then the last 3 from the mare 1 sign near the palace. This is giving me about 9200 or 9300 but I am not particularly good at it yet.    Report

02-17-2006, 8:51 AM Lance Way Joined on 02-11-2006 England Posts 148 Re: Collecting blue chips as Claris / Elliot  tabitha wrote: I think I might have your frozen bell strat beat there. Definitely, that's much more straightforward than the method I was rambling about, good job! Using that approach, I can even scrape a bonus of 9,500 while breaking the link ball, so it's about a whole 1,000 points better than what I was doing (and not as annoying to perform). Your overall Stick Canyon method seems slightly better than mine too, as I can just manage 9,700 with it, though that requires some careful jumping (i.e. double-jump to get the first 3 chips with a "boost" from the enemies hitting you, tripple-jump to get the 3 chips on top of the magnet, walk off the magnet to get the 4 chips below the speed-booster, then get yourself over to the final 3 chips with low, quick jumps to increase your speed a little).    Report

02-17-2006, 10:02 AM tabitha Joined on 01-22-2006 Posts 536 Re: Collecting blue chips as Claris / Elliot Yeah, I like the Enemy boos strat as its just so cheeky. I have been playing a litle more to kind of get my hand back in after months of inactivity but I have been feeling pretty under the weather this week (hence the scant updates) and my game just isnt there. I am packing it in for today and trying again next week. I had an attempt with your strat for the SV1 course an manged to break my own record inspiste of totally screwing up one lap which was nice.    Report

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