Gauntlet Legends

Table of Contents
Title:         Gauntlet Legends (Midway) Platform:      Nintendo 64 Genre:         Action/RPG Released:      9/22/99 Players:       1-4 Expansion Pak: Required for multiplayer game. Memory Pak:    Required to save games/characters (4 pages each) Gauntlet Legends is a 3D Action/RPG game based on the original arcade game that everybody played in the late 80's/early 90's. You have a choice between 4 basic characters; Warrior, Valkyrie, Archer(read “Elf”) and Wizard. There are bonus characters attainable in the game. You save your games and characters on the Memory Pak. The game supports up to 4 people, but the it is completely playable by 1 player. The game is broken up into 5 "worlds" with several levels in each world. Your goal is to find obelisks and rune stone use to restore the power of Sumner, so he can defeat the evil demon Skone. You gain levels by killing things, and with each level your stats improve.

Items
There are many items collectible throughout the game. Most of the time I don't keep them, instead I sell them back to Sumner to buy stats. The only ones I keep around are keys and potions.

Compass You start the game with the compass, you can toggle it, and it’s infinite. It’s good to help you navigate. Key The keys are used to unlock gates with locks and treasure chests. Any key works in any gate/chest. Keys can be carried between levels, so if you find yourself short, you can always go back to a previous level and pick up more (or even buy them from Sumner). Potion The potions are the magic attack. They come in different "flavors" (Light, Fire, Ice, Electric), but they're all basically the same. There are several different methods of using them; MAGIC starts a  blast centered around the character, ATTACK+MAGIC throws it like a   grenade, TURBO+MAGIC activates it like a shield, and shooting them before picking them up has the same effect as just pressing MAGIC, just centered over the potion, and much weaker. The strength of the potions depends on the characters magic rating. Acid/Electric/Fire Breath These give you a limited number of breath attacks. You basically exhale the element of choice from your mouth for several seconds while sweeping your head back and forth. Light/Acid/Electric/Fire Amulet Applies the element to your primary weapon, increasing damage. Electric/Fire Shield Give you a shield, similar to the potion shield, that harms enemies and protects the character Invisibility Makes the character invisible to enemies. It’s only partial, because I still get attacked with it on. Levitate Pretty useless, but it lets you float over ground based traps. Speed Boots Give you a surge of speed, great for making getaways. 3/5 Way Shot Give you X projectiles for each shot you take. All shoot to toward he direction you're facing, just spread out. Rapid Fire Increases your rate of fire. Reflect Shot Your projectile attacks bounce off the walls Reflect Shield Bounces attacks at the character back at the attacker Super Shot Give you a limited number of attacks simulating a L3 turbo. Timestop Pauses enemies, generators, traps, and the like. Incredible potential for abuse (See Cheap Tricks below) Phoenix Familiar Gives you a limited Phoenix familiar, that acts like an extra weapon (plus, it looks cool) Player Growth Makes a player the size of a golem/elemental Shrink Enemies Reduces the size of all enemies Thunder Hammer A large hammer with limited shots that you swing overhead down onto enemies (Flying Circus anybody?) Anti-Death Halo Rare item that makes Death flee from you. If you can corner him, you can drain life from him. After you beat the game, you get a  permanent halo. Invulnerablity There are two levels of invulnerability. Silver blocks damage to you, and gold has you gain health instead of losing it. Treasure Chests Open with a key and can contain virtually every powerup item, along with a few other things, including Gold, Death, and scrolls Barrels Breaking barrels with your weapons will reveal the same variety of  items as treasure chests do, or nothing at all. There are also green barrels which, when hit, release a small poison cloud, and red barrels which explode when they’re shot. Red Switches Red switches control the environment (raise platforms, open doors,   etc.)  There are three types, the first is a standard switch. Step on it, and it lowers a gate, or whatever. The second type only are active when you’re standing on them, as soon as you get off, whatever changed reverts to what it was. These are usually associated with bridges. The third works like an elevator call button, and brings an   elevator to your level. Gold You pick up gold from the ground, barrels or chests, and can use it  to buy stats and powerup items from Sumner. Food Found on the ground and in barrels/chests. Fruit restores 50 health and meat restores 100 points. Scrolls Scrolls are notes from Sumner(?) that give you tips along the way. They will often give you a cryptic hint about how to proceed, or   where to find items/runes/etc.
 * Powerup Items ***

General
1. USE YOUR TURBOS!!! I can’t stress this enough. Many, many people only use their turbos when they’re overwhelmed. You have as many as you want, all you have to do is let them recharge. Looking up a blind ramp? Fire off a L3. The L3’s penetrate walls for quite a distance, so you can clear out areas behind gates _before_ you unlock them. (If you want an idea how far they reach, fire one at the beginning of a level, toward where you know the rest of the level is, and listen as it destroys stuff.)

2. Shoot relentlessly. It never hurts to fire a couple blind shots every now and then. Also, if you see enemies keep popping up from a particular spot off the screen: unleash on that spot. There’s probably a generator just out of sight, and you can pick it off before it’s a problem. Also, shooting up a ramp as you’re ascending can take care of any pesky suicide bombers that may be coming down to “greet” you.

3. Pressing the ATTACK button repeatedly will result in faster attacks than holding down the button (from David(Hurkyl@msn.com) for this one)

3. Fight according to your character. If you’re the Wizard or the Archer, keep your distance, take them out from across the screen. If you’re the Valkyrie or Warrior, run right into the middle of things swinging like mad. Remember to adopt the correct fighting style if you switch to a bonus character.

4. Don’t forget your potions. If you’re being swarmed use TURBO+MAGIC to create a shield out of a potion. Then just walk out, the shield will take care of the enemies. This tactic also works if you want to run in and strike at a generator or two. Also, using ATTACK+MAGIC if you have to clear out a distant group and are out of Turbos. The Shields also work the same way, except more plow-shaped.

5. A little trick that works will for those bridges that only appear when you’re on the switch: Usually you’d use Turbo, or the speed boost, but sometimes it’s still tough. All you need to do is lure an enemy onto the bridge while you’re standing on the switch. Then you can get off the switch, and the bridge will stay as long as there’s something on it.

Leveling Up
1. For easy level ups, find a spot where the enemies bottleneck, and are forces to come through a small gate/portal. Also, it helps if there's a couple of generators nearby. Then just keep shooting from a distance, picking them off. When the flood dies down, just run to where the generators are, hit them once, and run back out. This will restart the stream of enemies, and you can keep going.

2. You can always go back. If you think you’re a bit soft for a new level, head back to an easy one you’ve already beat. You can grab more experience, and even stock up on goodies.

Stats
1. The stats are: Strength = better melee damage Speed = faster movement Magic = increased potion strength, radius and ranged attack damage Armor = decreased damage from attacks Health = more health (duh!) (Thanks to David (Hurkyl@msn.com) for pointing out the oversight in       the damages)

2. Go back through easy levels, or use Cheap Trick #1 below, to collect a whole bunch of item (Mountain Cavern is good), then sell the to Sumner and buy stats.

3. Leveling up increases your stats.

1. HAVE THE LEGEND WEAPON, it makes things a whole lot easier Mountain Dragon = Ice Axe from Castle Treasury Castle Chimera = Scimitar from Mountain Cavern Ice Yeti = Fire Scroll from Town Spire Town Plague = Javelin from Ice Fissure Skorne = Soul Saver from Battlefield Fortress
 * Bosses ***

2. Multishots, Reflect Shields, Speed Boots, and Rapid Fire make them almost simple.

Experience
This is a general list of the experience required to gain each level. The number may not be exact, but will give the general neighborhood of each level. .===================. .==================.
 * Lev | Experience | | Lev | Experience |

'===================’ '==================’ [Note] The blank ones I don’t have, either because they didn’t look right, or I couldn’t find where I wrote them down. They’ll be there in future revisions.
 * 1 | 0           | | 51  | 200000     |
 * 2 | 1000        | | 52  | 207250     |
 * 3 | 2000        | | 53  | 214500     |
 * 4 | 3250        | | 54  | 229500     |
 * 5 | 4500        | | 55  | 237250     |
 * 6 | 6000        | | 56  | 245000     |
 * 7 | 7500        | | 57  | 253000     |
 * 8 |             | | 58  | 261000     |
 * 9 | 11000       | | 59  | 269000     |
 * 10 | 13000       | | 60  |            |
 * 11 |             | | 61  | 277500     |
 * 12 |             | | 62  | 285000     |
 * 13 |             | | 63  | 294500     |
 * 14 |             | | 64  | 303250     |
 * 15 |             | | 65  | 312000     |
 * 16 |             | | 66  | 321000     |
 * 17 |             | | 67  |            |
 * 18 |             | | 68  | 339250     |
 * 19 |             | | 69  |            |
 * 20 |             | | 70  |            |
 * 21 | 42500       | | 71  |            |
 * 22 | 45000       | | 72  |            |
 * 23 | 49500       | | 73  | 387000     |
 * 24 | 53250       | | 74  | 397000     |
 * 25 | 57000       | | 75  | 407000     |
 * 26 | 61000       | | 76  | 417250     |
 * 27 | 65000       | | 77  | 427500     |
 * 28 | 69250       | | 78  | 438000     |
 * 29 | 73500       | | 79  | 448500     |
 * 30 | 78000       | | 80  | 459250     |
 * 31 |             | | 81  | 470000     |
 * 32 |             | | 82  |            |
 * 33 |             | | 83  | 492250     |
 * 34 |             | | 84  | 503250     |
 * 35 |             | | 85  | 514500     |
 * 36 |             | | 86  | 526000     |
 * 37 |             | | 87  | 537500     |
 * 38 | 118000      | | 88  | 549250     |
 * 39 | 123500      | | 89  | 561000     |
 * 40 | 129250      | | 90  | 573000     |
 * 41 | 135250      | | 91  | 585000     |
 * 42 | 141000      | | 92  | 597250     |
 * 43 | 147000      | | 93  | 609500     |
 * 44 | 153250      | | 94  | 622000     |
 * 45 | 165000      | | 95  | 634750     |
 * 46 |             | | 96  |            |
 * 47 | 172500      | | 97  |            |
 * 48 | 129250      | | 98  | 675000     |
 * 49 | 185000      | | 99  | 686000     |
 * 50 | 198000      | |     |            |

For those of you who care about such things, the equation of the trendline was: y = 61.285x^2 + 869.16x - 2016.6 I’m sure there’s actually a smoother line, but I only used the data points I had for sure.

Cheap Tricks
1.  Ok, the cheapest of the cheap to be sure. Make sure you have 10-20 seconds of Freeze Time or Shrink Enemies, then go into a boss fight. When you're almost dead, activate it, then let the boss kill you. Select "Continue" after you're dead. When you restart, any level you go into will have either no enemies (Freeze Time), or shrunken enemies(Shrink Enemies). This is a good way to go through levels and collect missed rune stone, and collect items to sell for stats. The frozen time/shrunken enemies will last until you use the corresponding item, or quit and restart.

2. Enemies perceive item as barriers, and will not walk past them. You can trap them on the far side of an item, and just pick them off, they’ll never get close enough. (I’m reminded of the sandbag trick from Command & Conquer)

10. GameShark Codes
[Enable code - Must be on!] EE00 0000 0000

[P1 - Infinite L3 Turbo] 810F D30E FF64

[P1 - Infinite L2 Turbo] 810F D30E 0043

[P1 - Infinite L1 Turbo] 810F D30E 0022

[Super Exp Gain] 800C 5C86 FFFF 800F D1EA FFFF 8013 6326 FFFF 8013 6326 FFFF

Note: The Super Exp Gain code will multiply the experience you gain. It basically boils down to 1 level per enemy killed. You can be level 99 before the end of the first level. Also, this code is a bit buggy, and can cause freezes for some reason. Best thing to do is turn it on, save the game, then turn it off and continue without it.

12. FAQ
Q: What does "Outed" mean? A: Outed is actually how I heard "is it." After consulting somebody with better hearing than me, I changed it. It means all the enemies will go after your first. Useless in 1 player, but can be used as a strategy device in multi (make everything attack the warrior instead of the archer)

Q: How do I get the nude Valkyrie/Archer? A: To the extent of my knowledge, you can’t. I’ve seen many codes for this, but none of them seem to work, so for now I’m saying it isn’t possible. (I’ve also looked through the code for the game, and I     can’t find anything that gives you access to any other skins aside      from the publicly known playable characters.)

Misc
It occurred to me as I was playing the game, there was a large number of Star Wars references. Here’s the list so far: -The tentacle things from the Castle Courtyard remind me of the creature from the garbage compactor on the Death Star. -The Ricochet noise sounds like the blasters. -The Ice Yeti looks alot like the Hoth Ice Creature -The scream of the suicide sounds like the Tie Fighter fly-by, lowered in pitch.
 * Star Wars Sighting ***