Gauntlet/Strategy

Dealing with generators
Generators are the bane of your existence in gauntlet. Enemies can be defeated easily in most cases, but generators can make a never-ending stream of enemies that block your attacks on the generators themselves.

The following are some methods of dealing with them:


 * Inch your way forward while destroying enemies that get close. This assumes that you are only dealing with one source of enemies, and that either generation rates are low or you are fighting primarily in a chokepoint. As you get closer to the generator, the distance your shot must travel to hit the generator is shortened, and fire-rates will be kept high to eventually pierce through the enemies and hit the generator.


 * If the generator is off of the screen, it can't produce enemies. Fire shots at the generator offscreen, walk forward at the last instant, then walk back after hitting the generator. Done correctly, the generator won't have a chance to make any enemies. You may need to attract existing enemies away from the generator to destroy them first.


 * Create traffic jams. Sometimes you can get a monsters halfway over a chokepoint, blocking access to other monsters. If you can maintain this with careful positioning, you may be able to mount an attack from safety.


 * Attack from in between corners of objects. If you're dealing with anything other than demons, you can attack with impunity from the other side. Any kiddie-cornered objects will work, including items such as treasures.


 * Speaking of which, keys can be attacked through, but monsters cannot pass through them.


 * Melee the monsters (or use point-blank shots). You can make progress while denying the monsters any ground - unless the monsters are ghosts. Melee is sometimes ideal for demons, since their shots from afar hurt worse than their bites.


 * Simply run through. Sometimes you can make it through before the area can fill up with monsters, especially if your name is not Thor. Obviously Questor is best at this, even better with Extra Speed.


 * If a demon happens to be in-line with a generator, let it shoot the generator from behind, while you deal with the enemies coming out of the front.


 * Train lobber shots onto generators. It's a difficult thing to pull off sometimes, but timing and spacing are key. Lobbers will always throw their rocks wherever you'd be if you kept moving in a straight line.


 * Use a potion if a room is simply too full of generators to take them on, and other methods cannot be used without taking great amounts of damage. Good luck, Thor.

Team Strategy

 * Have one person, perhaps on the other side of a wall, hold the monsters attention, while the other person attacks the monsters and generators from afar.


 * If you're not dealing with ghosts, you can use the "battering ram" melee trick. Have the faster character go behind the slower one (if they are both the same speed, it will still work). Simply have both players push toward the monsters or generators, and the front character will deal melee attacks every single frame (normally it takes about 8 frames to perform). Even weak melee characters will wipe out monsters quickly (although they can't damage generators).


 * Less magical characters (Thor, Thyra) should pick up keys, leaving potions to magical ones (Merlin first, then Questor).


 * You can anchor the screen by having one character hold position. With this trick, you can sometimes obtain items without having to deal with monsters waiting on the other side, or make potions more effective by careful positioning.

Conditioning the game
The level that you die on, past level 7 at least, will become level 8 when you start your next game. The default levels past 7 are generally very damaging and have less food than others. It may be in your best interest to get to a specific level with credit feeding and die there.

That said, most record keeping organizations, including Twin-Galaxies and Mame Action Replay, require a "cold-start", requiring the player to wipe out this data and play the default level order.