Skylanders: Giants-Tips N' Tricks
Welcome, internet. More specifically, welcome, Hubbers! I'm sure others may have found it some other way, but you know the drill. Welcome anyway!
Now, There are a number of characters who sometimes get lost in the translation between consoles, generations, or just fall behind the times. On rare occasions, they are lucky enough to be picked back up and put back into their prime! Some such characters included Sonic the Hedgehog, and Rare(the company) characters like Banjo-Kazooie and Conker. We're looking into Spyro the Dragon, an iconic series from the Sony Playstation era. More so, we're looking into his most recent success. Skylanders has been a hit since it touched base at nearby stores. The idea of figures giving access to characters, as well as storing their own progress, was revolutionary a year or so ago, and still is today. The unique thing is that you can play as at least 32 different characters, depending on what figures you own. In the recent sequel, Skylanders: Giants, this was upgraded to a scope of over 50 characters, several returning from the previous game with new abilities and features. That said, let's move on to the reason I call myself the TNT Husky.
One of the biggest challenges early on in the game is saving up cash for upgrades, and at the same time, saving up cash for in game items, abilities, and generally progressing through the game. This can be especially difficult if you have many different figures, which, if you really get into the game, will happen almost undoubtedly. One solution to this us to do arena challenges. They offer different amounts of money, and are unlocked after completing chapters 3, 9, and 12. each chapter will unlock a different arena, and each of the seven challenges offer a different amount of money in each of these arenas.
Another way to go about getting cash involves the elemental doors found in the game room on Cap'n Flynn's Ship. Each door has an elemental symbol on it, in which it will only open if a skylander of the matching element attacks it. It only needs to be struck once before opening to the next door, in which you'll just need to switch out to the next element in line. The doors start out with three elements, and only reset by leaving and returning to the ship. However, this changes as you progress through the game. Eventually, the door will require a skylander attack from every element, and will reset as soon as you leave the game room, allowing you to immediately return to repeat the process. This doesn't begin until roughly chapter 9. also, if you don't do anything with these doors until chapter 9, they will still only have the first three elements, and as you open the doors, grab your gems, and leave, more will come in as you do until all eight elements are required. This can be a repetitive process, and isn't the best way to earn money, but if you want to get a few quick jewels without any real effort halfway through the game, this is the best way to do it. The best part to this is that the elemental doors always go in the same order: undead, life, air, fire, water, magic, tech, earth. This helps you to just line up your characters to break the door(s) down.
Other than money, there are other fun and interesting things to do in Skylanders, depending on who or what you have. For instance, if you series 2 Zook, you can go to the crane deck on Cap'n Flynn's Ship, and walk to the back of it, where the anchor to the ship lies on a crane. Make sure you have his wow pow ability “Target Lock!” and turn around to face the entrance, hold down the mortar button to bring up the target, send the target down and notice that it goes right past the entrance point of the crane deck, where you yourself actually came in. if the target goes far enough, you can see the end of the area, and fire mortars into the void outside the area, never to be seen again. This is 100% useless, but very interesting to notice, and a nice time killer for a few minutes.
While doing heroic challenges in Skylanders: Giants, you'll notice all water elements can surf on the water they may come across. But did you know this wasn't the only elemental quirk they put in? For example, all air elements can fly over water. Only lightning rod exists without a flying ability, but you'll still find he can float over the water. The only air element who can fly, but can't go over water is jet-vac. Also, do you notice the rocks that bombs break in certain heroic challenges? The very same rocks that appear in earth elemental zones, as well as the large crystals that sometimes rear their pretty faces in, can all be destroyed. Any earth element can destroy the rocks with their attacks, but only certain skylanders can break the gems. Flashwing is known to be able to break both of these, and a fully upgraded crusher can tear them up. I presume prism break can destroy the crystals as well, but since I can't prove it, I wouldn't want to give what readers I have any false information.
As far as unproven things go, you can sometimes find an interesting bug in the heroic challenge “Arachnid Antechamber.” in this challenge, you need to kill 8 Gargantulas, tearing through several other enemies in the process. But sometimes, when using a ranged character, or a character with a fast attack rate, such as Drobot, Flashwing, or Trigger Happy, you'll find that you can kill the spider from a large distance. This is great, until the actual bug comes up, and the counter to determine your completion doesn't count the spider you just killed, making it so you have to restart completely. And I believe I speak for all gamers when I say the worst thing you can be made to do in a game is restart entirely due to a single bug. Thankfully in our case, though, this bug doesn't happen often, and only comes up on the chance that the giant spider is killed off-screen.
This bug can sometimes become a good thing, as well. On occasion, and especially with a rapid fire character, the counter will count up twice for only one spiders fall. Zook's Floral Defender path has done this fully upgraded, and drobot on his Master Blaster path seems to run into this bug on occasion, as well. Neither of these are incredibly useful, but it feels respectively good and bad when you are faced with these two bugs in the challenge.
Now for a tip you guys can actually use. When going through your rank quests to unlock the bronze, silver, and gold top hats, you will eventually be faced with a quest called “Elementalist.” in this quest, you have to do a whopping total of 7500 elemental damage. This is the most time consuming quest, unless you have this clever tip.
For this tip to work, you need to have the the luck-o'-tron available with all four slots open, and you also need to possess all four of the red lucky wheels, the lucky wheels of power. These wheels give you the chance to do extra damage with attacks, but they also give you a chance to do elemental damage outside of your own elemental power zone. Meaning you could do elemental damage in a fire area with swarm, or in a life area with fright rider. The elemental damage will still correspond to the character's element, of course. But this greatly cuts out the time it takes to get the quest. This has another perk that can only happen when all four are used.
If you place all four red wheels in the luck-o'-tron, and then go do a level with plenty of turret challenges (I recommend Secret Vault of Secrets, which is chapter 6) your turret shots will do loads of elemental damage, making your Elementalist quest more like a cake walk!
Okay! My typing hands, also my ONLY hands, are cramping up. That means, unfortunately, that we're about done this time around. Skylanders is a wonderful game that does well to bring back Spyro, despite the hate it gets. It's an innovative game that, despite putting Spyro out more as a team member than a hero, has made tons more heroes for him to work with, and has added a new dynamic to the video game world. Anyway, the TNT Husky bids you farewell, and if you do like it, then tell your friends. See you guys later! ^^
