Re: Treasure Hunt W3D

[brian.hammack@rook.wa.com (Brian Hammack)]

 Rubywand raised the cup and toasted:

 R<|      Finally; someone cracked Treasure Hunt! Thanks for the
   | information.

My pleasure, as was the Treasure Hunt itself.  Seriously, after all the
crap I went through (and I thought Confrontation was hard because there
are two bosses at the end) the info bears sharing.  Of course I know
better than to give away ALL the secrets (there are probably some I
don't know about, judging by the less-than-100% in Hidden Rooms much of
the time) but it is probably kosher for me to share this much:

-- There's only one room confirmed to have treasure.  The file that
comes with the scenario pretty much implied it, that the Nazis had
treasure coves all over Europe and your mission is to enter one of
these strongholds and fight your way to the treasure room then get
back out.  Unlike the usual levels of Wolfenstein, you do have to fight
your way to that one goal then leave the way you came in... ergo some
memory of the geography as you go up will come in handy as you leave.

-- The file also said that there are some huge rooms which will slow
your game down considerably.  The first/last room is a major example.
The rest are usually pretty tolerable at 2MHz, or once you have taken
down that squadron of soldiers to cut down on CPU work anyway.  :)

-- This scenario makes more requirement of finding the hidden doors
than the stock scenes.  One example:  There's one level where you walk
out of the elevator and there's a door on the left.  Open, walk down
the hall, and there's a door.  Open it and you are standing in a hall
with barrels in a circle in front of you, so you can't go anywhere from
there, and dozens of Nazis on both sides of you.  That's it.  You
realize, after you back up three paces to get out of the line of fire,
that you do not see any other doors available to you -- there MUST be
a secret passage to get to the rest of the maze.

-- Bosses, you will encounter bosses a-plenty.  Two levels come to mind
as ones where you open the elevator door at the beginning and there's a
blond giant at the other end of the hall.  Ever tried to fight someone
bearing a rocket-launcher or a six-shooter when you're backed into a
closet?  Got my heart racing.  Here's a good place to mention that you
won't see a lot of medkits and food as the game progresses.  Also a
good place to say conserve your rocket and flamethrower resources if at
all possible because on the last few levels YOU WILL NEED THEM BADLY.
(Tip:  if you can spare a missile or two, when you find yourself facing
a rediculous number of grunts in a hallway, fire them down the hall
and back around the corner.  You may get lucky and take out half a
dozen soldiers PER MISSILE, making your job loads easier.)

-- I'm probably not supposed to say "On your way back down the rooms'
layouts may stay the same, but #1 they'll be empty but for the dead
bodies and #2 the hidden rooms are NOT in the same places, so you do
not need to waste your time going over the old terrain."  So I won't.
:)  Can say that when you enter rooms with live/reanimated soldiers you
are on the right trail toward the Out door.

-- And I repeat, far as I can tell the Kill ratio is wrong in some
levels so don't be surprised if you don't get 100% when you know that
nothing was left standing and you've been in every nook and hidden
room.  I don't play for the points, but I do try to get the ratios, and
I can only think of one level (repeated later in the game) where one
can escape without having seen the whole maze.  With the high number of
bosses in Treasure Hunt, you're practically required to kill everything
to get out unless you're dashing for your life, know right where the
elevator is, and have the proper key (mostly necessary) to get into it.

-- Three final level tips:  #1 - It's not the bosses that will do you
in, it's the few soldiers in white that hide between them that will
deplete your health with their random gunfire.  #2 - Hitler won't come
out of his hiding spot until that locked door is completely open; if
you hit Space again as the door is opening to reclose it before it's
all the way open you can postpone your doom if you need to.  #3 - There
are some boxes of missiles among the crates of bullets in one nook, so
if you're really down-and-out you still can take on Hitler adequately.

I'll be checking out another scenario in the near future...

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 * 2qwk! 2.04 * GUI:  Pronounced "gooey," like molasses; make it Mac-like.