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Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link is a game that many people have played, but few have beaten. There is a great deal of sentiment about this game. Some say that the game is not a ‘true’ Zelda adventure due to its primarily side-scrolling nature. Others say the 2D action/RPG elements were just too darn hard. Albeit this game is much more quick reflex and dexterity challenging compared to the First and Third installments of the Zelda series, it is not an impossible game to beat. There are some strategies and tactics that will help you beat the game, they include proper leveling techniques for rapidly getting the MAX 8 attack / 8 Magic / 8 health defensive rating, strategies for combing for powerups such as heart and magic containers, the strategic use of game mechanics to optimize gameplay without cheating, and optimal sword combat tactics versus different enemy types.

When you start the game you will notice that you already have a sword so you won’t have to borrow one from an old dude in a cave. Also that green billy club in your hands is actually your shield and it plays a much bigger part in Zelda 2 than it does in pretty much any of the other Zelda games I’ve played. You get the spell called, “Shield” early on, but it doesn’t do anything to your shield. It actually doubles your current defensive rating. It is one of the best and most used spells in the game. The spell that affects your actual shield in your hands is called, “Reflect” and that comes much later. We will discuss that in a few paragraphs, when it is more appropriate for the palace you will be on.

The biggest mistake I made when I tried to play through the game a few years ago for the second time, was that I rushed into the first palace too soon. Try and level up  a few times in the forest. You’ll notice that some of the monsters don’t give exp when you kill them, like the bear creatures with the spears if you get hit by the more dangerous overworld monster activation shadow. But if you kill these spear bears over and over again, they often drop 50 exp ‘P’ bags. These drop quite often and sometimes you get more than one per forest encounter, so practice your skills and level up for a bit.

When you finally do make it into the first palace, do not use the “JUMP” spell that you may have learned from the town to the north-west. The jump spell will make it hard for you to hit the horse head boss in the face. So just use your “SHIELD” spell and smack him 8 times or so and he should explode quite dramatically. I’d recommend having your sword attack skill at least at level 2. So your stats should be at  (2/2/2) or better for you to easily defeat the first palace.

REMEMBER: Everytime you defeat a boss and replace one of the crystals in the third eye socket (yes, I just noticed that this time around. These statues look like elongated faces with a third eye and a long nose) you will get enough EXP to level up your current EXP maximum. So if you have 0006 / 3000  EXP. Or six out of three-thousand exp. Then you will get 2994 exp from replacing the crystal jewel into the statue.

BUT if you have 2900 / 3000 EXP and you replace a crystal, then you will only receive 100 EXP for replacing the crystal. This being known, you should try and level up in this latter circumstance before fighting a boss. This way you can maximize the amount of bonus you get from defeating a boss and replacing a crystal.

Also, once you get the secret item from a palace, and kill the boss, and replace the crystal in the palace…the palace itself will be destroyed and turn to stone. You will not be able to visit it again. But if you beat a boss and replace a crystal but don’t take the special item hidden in the palace, then you can still go inside.

Early in the game you will notice some over world extra lives in the form of little “Link” dolls. I recommend that you don’t pick these up and diligently remember their locations. Link dolls will help out tremendously when you try and defeat the final palace.

The first of these free life dolls is in the first swamp zone near a boulder.

When fighting most monsters with shields there is a trick to pretty much getting a guaranteed hit instead of playing guess the shield location all day. If you jump and attack as you are starting to come down and aim for the monster’s head…you will pretty much get a hit every time if you do it right. Of course, this technique can only be done if you are not in an enclosed space.

NOTE: This technique will not work when fighting the final boss, it will actually get you killed.But we will discuss the final boss in more detail later.

Near the first swamp zone there is also a big forest, this is where you need to get into the habit of combing entire map areas and remembering where you’ve explored in between monster encounters. This will help you level up and you will also learn how to fight like a pro.

When you are in the forest you will eventually find a log cabin and a guy will give you the password for you to access the bridge that is guarded by the soldier.

Also I recommend taking the south bridge that is on the east side to get to the town, this is because there are less bottomless pits and it is easier.

Just on a side note the overworld encounters with the monster shadows reminds me of PAC MAN. munch…munch…munch…

There are a great deal of fire/lava pits in palace number 2. So you might want to venture into the caves near the water town in order to finish leveling up instead of risking loosing all your EXP if you have to continue. Inside these caves you get the hammer which is necessary for finding some awesome heart container/magic container powerups as well as making traversing the over-world map tremendously faster.

Here is a pro tip that I haven’t heard anyone else talk about yet. If you have a medium amount of magic energy left in your magic bar, but you don’t have enough magic to cast, “LIFE” but you come across a red magic potion, you may have an inkling to collect the red potion, wait for your magic to refill and then cast LIFE and regain some health. Well, here’s a trick that will impress your friends. Before collecting the red potion, activate your start screen and prepare LIFE to be cast. Then collect the red potion, but while your mana is being refilled, constantly press “select” on your controller. What will happen is that you will regain your life but the potion will still give you magic energy. And you will end the transaction with more magic energy in your bar than you would have than if you had just sat there watching the bar fill up and then cast your spell. This happens because you are using your remaining magic in part before the magic bar refilling potion finishes its process.

QUICK TIP: Monster strength varies for enemies equipped with shields varies from YELLOW (weak) RED (somewhat strong) BLUE (adept soldiers bent on your demise).

Once you get your attack strength to level 5 you can kill the yellow axe wielding alligator soldiers. And the amount of EXP from battling in the mountains is excellent so there is no reason to wait till later to at least get your bearings there and enjoy the well crafted mountain maze.

Another thing that will make fighting palaces more fun is that once you have your sword skill at level 5 and if you have the DOWN THRUST sword ability that you get from spending some time at the church. You can effectively kill the flying skull things that drain your magic power that live in the palaces. You need to just time it so you jump straight up and down and land with a down-thrust right on top of it. If you keep holding “down” you will bounce on top of the thing until it blows up and give you 50 EXP. (This reminds me of the unlimited life trick in super mario brothers part one on stage 2-3 ??)

If you visit the water town in Sarira you will notice there is a sleeping slime that says, “…zzz…” I believe this was the first time I ever saw “zzz” used in popular culture that made its way into American mainstream in order to denote that someone was sleeping/bored. Why was that slime so tired?

To save the little kid that people want in Sarira, you need to enter the mountain maze by exploring over and over again. You will fight a lot of monsters in the process and will get a lot of EXP for doing this. Eventually you will find the missing child.

THE HEART CONTAINER IN THE WATER: This one is tough. You need the walking boots to walk on water to the level 5 palace. But you need to walk until your path is blocked in the water to the north keep moving east and then check north every time. About 5 steps or to the right, you will be able to walk
north a few steps. Then keep heading east and you will reach the place where the heart container is kept. You will need enough magic for a jump spell to get to the heart container. (is it just me or does link look extremely excited and joyous about finding heart containers?)

All right, you’ve heard enough basic stuff, it’s time for some pro tips.

When you are in the green palace, you will notice that there is an EXP bag above an elevator near some poison water dispensers. Even with the JUMP spell you won’t be able to normally get the bag. The way to do it is to preferably have “SHIELD” spell activated as well as JUMP and then time your jump precisely so that you will get hit by the poison water exactly when you are at the apex of your jump. This will trigger your damage-hit response and you will be pushed up onto the ledge and be able to receive the P-bag.

The fire spell is MUCH better than it was in the first Zelda game. It makes it so your sword launches fire that will stay on the screen to the end. You can have two fireballs on the screen at once and can make then follow extra length if you have somewhere to run to that triggers the screen scrolling animation. These fireballs can penetrate most enemies and actually pierce directly through them and carry on to damage more enemies. But what you might not have known is that the FIRE spell is directly related to the Sword Skill rating that Link has at the time of the cast. So if you have sword skill level 8 your fireballs will do serious damage.

The REFLECT spell is excellently effective versus magic wielding and fire breathing enemies. REFLECT will make it so you can defeat the enemies that disappear and also the ghost boss of one of the palaces. But it will also make it so your shield will block fire attacks. Normally fire based attack will penetrate your shield even if you line yourself up properly. And since reflect doesn’t cost that much magic in order to cast, it can sometimes can a good magical investment in situations that normally may require you to take damage that would have you end up casting a much more expensive LIFE spell anyway.

The hidden town of Kasuto is extremely tricky to find. You have to use your hammer in the forest that you can only get to by entering a cave to the East. This forest has about 20 – 30 forest squares and if you diligently chop down all the trees that you can and remember which ones you chopped down before getting hit by the shadow overworld monsters, then you might find the hidden city.

Within the hidden city, there are many secrets. So be more diligent than ever when listening to townsfolk, in this town especially. There is a magic container a special item and a magic spell in this town. So don’t miss out.

The final heart container is actually in the desert to the far east of the triple rock formation. If you search long enough you’ll find it. At least you don’t have to chop down trees in order to find it.

Once you defeat all the 6 palaces and put the crystals in the eye socket of the statues, then go to the dead city that used to be the original hidden city. You need to also make sure that you have the Cross Item or else you will get your face beaten by flying invisible monsters that do critical damage. Once within the city enter the first house and talk to the old man. If you did all the above things, he will give you the Final Spell of THUNDER. This spell is important for the second to last boss battle of the final palace.

THE FINAL BATTLE: You will engage in hand to hand combat with your shadow self. This is what puts Zelda 2 above many games I’ve played. The technique of jump-attacking to get free hits simply won’t work. You need to stand your ground. But first make sure to cast shield and that’s it. Don’t use jump. Actually, jumping around too much isn’t a good idea, it makes you very vulnerable. Save your magic for casting LIFE when you need to. Remember that you need to prepare LIFE by pressing start every time you want to cast it. You can’t just press ‘select’ twice and heal yourself twice.

When fighting you should try and force your shadow to jump at you. Then attack him at his legs or body. This will get you a nice hit. If he isn’t jumping at all then go ahead and do your leap attack that I mentioned before, or else play more defensive and move away from him. Eventually he will get greedy and jump at you. Be careful not to have him fight off the screen, I don’t think your hits register properly if you do this…but unfortunately his attacks will definitely hurt you. Hold your own and try and push him back with the force of your sword and determination. Eventually he will get impatient and try and jump attack you. Be on the lookout and take advantage of his hubris. Also, you can occasionally get lucky with a basic attack while you both are standing at his upper or lower body. But this is a lot harder to do than hitting him while he is jumping.

You may have just saved Hyrule. But from now on…you rule.

-Tyler

In playing the game, Words with Friends the user usually has access to the internet. You can’t play the game without it. So there is a temptation to look up words before actually placing them. That is actually bad Words With Friends etiquette and my friend Brandon and I call that, “You using googlebro?” But since there is an automatic feature to see if what you placed is actually a word, there is no problem with experimenting and going on the fringe of one’s vocabulary limits. Once you place a word that you may only know 60% or so because you heard it briefly in a movie or in a book or article, then look it up and try and memorize the meaning. This will improve your vocabulary and will help you recognize even better word patterns later on. This is especially a good strategy to use when a friend plays a word that you don’t know, look it up and try and remember the word. Remember, a good vocabulary can help out in many professions as well as in school.

The first board strategy that people need to know is that the bonus point tiles are king. It doesn’t matter how snazzy your word is, if someone uses the bonus tiles they can clobber you point wise if you’re not careful.

The best way to play the game I find, is to maximize your own points rather than trying to limit the points of your friend. This means, try and avoid “blocking” expensive tiles and instead use them yourself.

You can combo letter and word bonus tiles. So if you see a triple letter score and a triple word score…try and make a word that uses both of them. Recently, I placed the word, “Azure” on the board. The ‘a’ was already there, the ‘z’ was a triple letter score and the ‘e’ was a triple word score. I ended up getting 30 points for the Z and then the entire word was tripled so the word, Azure in this case was worth 105 points. Not bad…sorry Krystal, I had to use it.

There are even better strategies that I can tell you. Most people play the game by using a letter that someone else used and then starting a new word. That’s normal right? Well, if you create a new word out of someone’s existing word by using only one letter and then make a new word in another direction based on that letter, you get the points of the original word (without the bonus tiles on that one of course) plus the new word that was created in the other direction including the newly activated bonus tiles. The next paragraph will explain this in more detail.

Let’s say someone plays the word ‘frog’ horizontally on the board. But you have a bunch of letters including an ‘s.’ You can place the ‘s’ to make frog into ‘frogs.’ Then you can write the word, ‘seven’ using the new ‘s’ in frogs that you just put down. This will give you all the points for the word frogs and the word seven, plus any bonus tiles you acquired in the word ‘seven’ …pretty cool huh?

Here’s some secret hints with playing with random people you don’t know. Sometimes people that you randomly join a game with like to talk in the chat zone. But other times they can be really shy. One time some guy played a word that was pretty good and I said in the chat, “Do you really think you have what it takes to go against the webmaster of Overidon.com?” Then a few minutes later the guy said, “I’m not sure. I may die of old age before we finish this game because it takes you 5 – 10 hours in between each turn.”

I laughed when I read that and a few minutes later I placed a word that combo’d one of his words and also received a triple word score. He immediately resigned the match after that and then didn’t want to play again. So I recommend being nice and non-taunting towards people who don’t necessarily understand your sense of humor or personality.

-Tyler

When I first heard about the Vectrex system from my friend Brett, I was extremely excited. The concept of having a vector based home video game system had some serious sizzle. Everyone remembers the game, “Asteroids.” That’s an example of a vector based game. The big difference between vector games and pixel games is that vectors use lines. Pixels are the constant in most home video game systems because pixels are tiny square dots that have the color information. The end result with the Vectrex is that the images are extremely crisp and easy to see. You can quickly discern targets and objectives. The sound quality is great too on this machine. The music, albeit generally simple, is clear and good. Big thanks to Brett for allowing overidon.com to check out this astounding technology. Star Trek the Motion Picture the Game was intense, but we didn’t read the manual first. So we ended up getting being blasted by Romulans and Klingons in the beginning.

Here’s how to play: Button 1 doesn’t do anything. Button 2 is for the tractor beam. This let’s you lock onto a space station to refuel or it also locks you into a black hole which will take you to the final stage called, ‘Sector 9.” Button 3 is a temporary shield that will draw an X on the screen. If an enemy torpedo is fired at you and you time it right, it will deflect the torpedo. This is interesting because I don’t remember torpedoes ever bouncing off of shields in any of the movies, so maybe this is an original series thing that I haven’t seen yet. Button 4 fires the guns and it is pretty intuitive…besides for the whole button 4 thing.

What is so superb about this system is that the analog control for the movement is beyond excellent. The analog sticks on even the latest systems are not as accurate as the Vectrex controller. It has a truly visceral and responsive feel. It is easy to aim the joystick and take down targets.

Another cool thing about the Vectrex is that it comes with its own little vector based TV monitor. It is heavy, so I wouldn’t consider it to be portable. But it is convenient that you don’t have to plug in anything besides the power cord to get it to work.

After we played the Star Trek game for a few minutes we decided to read the manual to find out what was going on. It turns out that the strange glowing box is actually a black hole. And if you press button 2 on the black hole you will be transported to the final battle with the Klingon Mothership. I actually did that after a few tries and I was able to defeat the mothership by pummeling it on its nose over and over again. After it was destroyed the game took me back to sector one to start the whole process over again.

 

This is a build for an offensive Puppet Master in HoN. It isn’t a ‘carry’ build in the purest sense, but it is highly effective and I’ve used it in the latest patch last night. The most important thing to realize is that you start by putting on point into the puppet strings skill. This may seem counter-intuitive because you might want to pump the whiplash skill for the crit and splash damage. But the first point in puppet strings can save you or a laning partner early game and can help in getting an early bloodlust.

The start items are dependent on whether or not you have to get courier or wards. But I recommend that if you have a partner that gets wards than you get the courier and vise-versa. If nonone gets courier or wards the guess what? Yep, you’re getting both be because it’s about winning and teams that have map control win and others get ganked it’s that simple.

Other items should be some runes of blight and minor totems. If you have tons of money to spare you can always get a pretenders crown for even more stats.

The cool thing about puppet master is that he can lane with almost anyone. His puppet strings work great with Swiftblade because they can drag someone right into the whirlwind.

The second skill you get is the puppet show. This is basically a confusion skill. You want to max this as fast as possible. It can turn the tide of a battle quite easily. It makes an enemy hero attack whoever is closest. But they may even attack someone on their own team. So it is great to cast this on a high damage ranged hero. The reason why you rush to max it is because the duration of the confusion goes up. I personally this this spell is better than a stun. This skill can be used in conjunction with his ultimate as well, which is awesome.

While working on maxing the puppet show, just put one point in the strings and a couple in the whiplash passive. This passive will give you critical strike and can do area of effect damage. What is interesting is that the crit is charge based rather than percentage chance. So the faster you attack, the more splash crates you will have.

This is why you get steamboots on puppet instead of any other boots. The increased attack speed will be monster. The second item to make is Alchemists Bones. This item is made of two pairs of gloves and a recipe that is 900 gold. The gloves only cost 500 each and they add 15% increased attack speed each and that will help you last hit in order to make the money for the recipe.

The reason why Alchemist Bones is great on puppet is that you get triple the gold for creep and neutral creeps that aren’t reds. So if you use the Alchemist Bones on a Vagabond Leader you will get 300 gold! That is a lot of money early game. And you get a charge every minute and a half with a max of two charges. The cool thing is that I instantly kills the creep without you needing to weaken it or anything.

The next item I build is the whispering helm. It adds damage armor and lifesteal. Make sure to by the helm of the victor first. That gives armor and Health regen. The lifesteal piece by itself isn’t good to get first.

Now you can farm like a pro. The next item I like to get on him is millstone. People like to do crowd control direct damage spells on puppet so millstone can absorb a spell every 20 seconds. After that, any item that uses a warpcleft is a good choice. Either that or Behemoth’s hearth for survivability. If you go tank get hear first then upgrade your helm to the savage mask, the heart is a superior tank item.

A lot of people go shroud on puppet. But I think it isn’t as good long term as bones for how expensive it is. Also if you get the bones then you will be able to quickly farm whatever else you wan either in a lane or jungle. Also Puppet can easily be a toe to toe player and he really doesn’t need to hide like a wuss. That and people in better games use eyes and dust so I look down upon stealth late game.

Here’s how to ruin teams in team battle. If you are close to an enemy use your ultimate voodoo doll. Then cast your puppet show and there is a chance they will attack their own voodoo doll which will hurt them a ton of pain.

Meanwhile use your strings on anyone that tries to move or blink or teleport because the puppet strings disable teleportation. When attacking, try and aim for the center of the enemy pack of heroes that way you will hit everyone with your splash damage.

You should be leeching some health but when you get too low run away and let your millstone heal you up a bit and get back in the fight. Using your strings is a good way to avoid being chased from a teamfight.

Your splash damage makes you kill creep waves very fast so late game you will be able to destroy towers and push back waves wig ease.

Since you have a whispering helm make sure to mind control a wolf leader. This will give you a 30% base damage bonus which stacks with your passive whiplash bonus. At level 4 your passive gives 20% base damage bonus. So combined with the wolf leader there is potential for excellent damage. Minotaur champions are good also, they give 15% attack speed bonus. But they also give 150 gold with your alchemist bones so the choice is yours.

Savage mace is an awesome item late game because it does true strike which punctures through evasion. Plus it gives tremendous bonus damage as well as 15% attack speed. Go ahead and sell your alchemist bones late game if you need money or room for this item.

-Tyler