Last night I had the greatest run of my entire Spelunky career!
After a night of failures and bullshit. Two shitty Daily’s and a buttload of crappy No Gold and Speed Run failures. I jumped right back in and had the best time ever. I was all worn out from failure after failure I almost didn’t even want to. I had just failed the Daily and was just going to do some silly runs. I ended up only doing one run and it was glorious.
Got a cape from a Vampire in the 2-1 Restless Dead level. Went into the 2-2 Castle with my shotgun and took out everything. (Oh shit. I forgot about letting the helper out of his coffin to sacrifice him… oh well. It’s for the best considering what happened last time.) Got myself a Kapala. Immediately into 2-3 a frog decided to feed itself to a Man Trap standing on an altar which saved me the trouble of having to sacrifice it myself. That was nice. Especially since I wasted way too much time trying to find the Black Market entrance in the wrong place. But I got into the 2-4 Black Market and skillfully tore it up. Got a Jetpack and the Ankh. Made it into the Ice Caves. Ghosted a hell of a lot of jewels. In 3-3 an inconvenient mammoth decided to drop down on me for killing his friend and made me die, completely ruining my plans to drop the dog in the door and ghost the level. But oh well. It just happened to be the level with the Moai Head. Made it into the Temple. Took out Anubis and got the Scepter. Took it into the second level and went into the City of Gold. Got the Book of the Dead from Anubis II. At this point entering Olmec’s lair I had $380,825. Jetpacked up to the ceiling and my god, it was full of gems. A few bombs but not many, but enough to get me through to the lava below. Into Hell I go! No bombs to spare to get the rest of Olmec’s treasure. I have to save them.
All I have left in my Journal at this point is a Devil. But I don’t have a shotgun and can’t spare any bombs. I used a few to get the Amulet and take out both Vlad and his bedside companion hanging from the rafters. (They were so adorable together. I hated to interrupt their sleep.) Now it was just up to me to take out the shopkeepers between me and Yama. Three to go. The first two were really tricky. Especially the second. He just wouldn’t die. Eventually I had to take a chance and land on his head. Whomp! Knocked him out good. But no time to get the shotgun. One more chance left. Not that I would have needed it. But it could be useful. 5-3. Here we go. Wait. Hey. Well, it looks like the shopkeeper just decided to take a nap on that bed of spikes over there. I guess he won’t mind if I take all his gold and shotgun. At this point I had 2 bombs left. Can’t use them because I will need them for Horse Head and Ox Face. Into 5-4 I go! Boom. Boom. Take them out. BUT, oh no! The bomb boxes flew into the lava. I could only save one as it slowly sank into the molten rock like the Terminator. 12 bombs. I will need them.
Before I went up to Yama, a Devil decided to pay me a visit. Finally. I have a chance. Shot him up real good. Achievement unlocked! Seen it All! I fly up to the overhanging bricks. Bomb and put a rope up like all the big guys do and fire my gun repeatedly until Yama bites it. Success! Now to gather my prize! After a few layers of rubies I finally reach $500,000 and unlock the achievement!
After my victory swim in the lava pool I exit to claim my reward. Up out of the volcano I go and just as the total screen comes up I want to prepare to take a screenshot. But I was too early, and just as I have done many times I let go of Command too soon. Now a little back story, I’m on a MacBook running Parallels, which assigns Command as the Windows key. And we all know what happens when the Windows key is pressed. It minimizes the game. Well, the game decided it didn’t want to come back and crashed out. I don’t use Steam’s screenshot function.
My heart stops. I very calmly relaunch the game and make my way into the Stats screen. *phew* Thank goodness. The game records your score as soon as you exit the door. So it even included the $100,000 reward and marked me as having finished the boss. So I didn’t get to see the victory parade. Oh well.
Final total: $715,550
I now have two achievements left. Low Scorer and Speedlunky. Both of which are near impossible! But I’ve been trying! Speed running alone is soooo hard. No Gold at least lets you take your time. But speed running can end so abruptly and usually does.
Hope someone finds this enjoyable and educational.
