Just out of curiousity, I am wondering who can beat the first castle (without killing Richtor) in Castlevania SOTN (PS1) with the least kills (as indictated by the kill counter in the start menu). My first try yielded 37; can you do it with less? I bet you could knock 7 kills off that, maybe.
In case anyone is wondering, I was lvl 24 when I smashed shaft's orb.
It's probably possible to clear it without killing anything but the bosses that you have to kill to proceed. And maybe the Wargs in the very beginning, some could probably be skipped by just going through them, but I don't know how much HP you start with/how much damage they do to you, so I'm not sure if you could skip all.
There has to be some way to get money (for the Open Jewel, or whatever the name is) without killing enemies. Candles and stuff.
Det man inte har i begåvning får man ta ut i energi.
"I think I need to get to Snoop Dogg's level of high to be able to research this post." -Samsara
Read my fanfic, One Piece: Pure Corruption
the thing is, there are times where you just dont have enough hp to go through all the monsters, and there isnt enough room to get past them. But my question here is not what is the lowest possible number, but rather, how low can you go?
I honestly dont think people can go the lowest possible number. Because you are killing as little as possible, you're going to have crap for HP because of your low level. I want to see just how low people can go though. And you don't fight dracula on the first castle. I wont bother including the second castle, because you can have the power of mist form and skip all but the bosses and fight the minimum there easily.
But I would be impressed if you can get the leap stone without killing those annoying flea riders.
EDIT: For the record, I beat the entire game with 44 kills + dracula.
I've got 7 after breaking shaft's orb, I believe that is the absolute minimum that can be gotten up unto that point. It can be a little difficult at points (hardest part for me was getting up to the third maria meet, where you see her after killing that bird type thing), but with good timing, a good weapon/subweapon for the situation and some spells, its possible. mind you, i dont believe shafts orb/doppelganger10 count as kills.
edit: after beating the game, it's 14+ dracula in total.
Wow, I didnt realize I killed 30 regular enemies.... but neither doppleganger counts as a kill, fortunately. How about using a potion so you dont need to get the spike breaker armour? That saves you from killing cerberus.
I assumy the bird type thing you are talking about it the Hippogriph? Yeah, it was a bitch to get by there (I had to kill a few myself). You remembered to get the lifeup along the way, right?
Wow, I didnt realize I killed 30 regular enemies.... but neither doppleganger counts as a kill, fortunately. How about using a potion so you dont need to get the spike breaker armour? That saves you from killing cerberus.
I assumy the bird type thing you are talking about it the Hippogriph? Yeah, it was a bitch to get by there (I had to kill a few myself). You remembered to get the lifeup along the way, right?
I used that trick anyways, so it wouldn't have shaved the count (and it meant i could skip practically the whole caves/mines sections) :P
Yeah, i considered going through the clocktower route, but given that you need double jump to get across (or use soul of wolf, but that needs a run up, thus you have to kill enemies) made it a bad idea, not to mention the enemies there are stronger.
Overall, the following things helped me out the most:
fireball teleport: allowed me to skip killing some enemies early on, in particular, the two stone roses in the area after the gallery, given they were too high to jump over with one jump.
the lightning subweapon: far better than i had ever thought previously, using this helped me beat many a boss unharmed, and even death (both forms in total) fell in a mere 15 seconds using this and a few physical attacks when it ran out.
blood cloak: lots of hearts for lots of damage taken.
...when combined with...
soul steal: take damage to recover hearts, cause damage to recover health, a very good combo (given i could perform it 1-3 times per battle after i got enough mp for it).
form of bat/power of mist: self explanitory.
shield rod/alucard shield: again, self explanitory.
still, it's pretty hard early on, given that you take a fair bit of damage up until you get a decent bit of armor (and you have no weapon, so you have to get the baselard which was actually decent given its fast attack speed).
I had forgotten about hellfire...
I found that the shield rod + knight shield was a very effective boss weapon before I could get the Alucard shield. Because it moves relative to scrren position and not map position, you can scroll to the side and make it stay in place. I also killed death about as quickly as you did, but using this method.
