The Started a Token achievement is unlocked after you finish the game. No tricks, no fuss, just beat the game one time and you got it. If you’re going for a few of these other achievements, you will absolutely get this one.

Know About Burst Mechanics
Burst isn’t explained too well during the in game tutorial so I’m gonna give it a more in-depth explanation.

• You get Burst whenever you Fight or React to an enemy.
• When you get hurt, you lose a small amount of Burst.
• You can only use one Burst ability per turn, so use wisely.
• Burst carries over between fights and doesn’t recharge at a save point.

Use Your Companion
Your companion’s Burst Abilities may be expensive or bad…but you should still switch to them in battle if you’re in a pickle!

Companion can let you tank up to 30HP (Level 5) if your level is high enough, and they can tank super powerful attacks like Meesha’s demon screech.

DON’T heal with Items if you can help it
It’s way better to use Heal Up for 30 Burst than wasting a turn to heal 10 hp. Using Items ends your turn, while healing with a Burst ability lets you Fight or React afterwards for extra progress and Burst.

Fill your Burst BEFORE the fight!
Rigatoni is an item you can buy from the Dog Pizzeria for 25G. It changes your burst by 30 and you can use it outside of battle for an advantage! If you save the game after eating a bunch of Rigatoni, you’ll even respawn with the Burst you had before saving.

1. Get Sap from the orange-leaved tree to the right of the HELP station.
2. Go inside the grey house in the top right corner of Gooberville.
3. Speak to the white eyes in the shadows and begin the fight.

Meesha is the hardest boss out of the 4 bosses in Gooberville, and it’s all because of one attack.

In order to defeat Meesha, you need to survive 8 attacks.

• Fishbone Spit
• Bite Attack
• Demon Screech

The best way to dodge this attack is to stay near the bottom of the screen. If you’re near the bottom, some of the fishbones lobbed high in the air will pass right over you.

Meesha will turn gigantic and stand behind your dodge box, If you see a tooth appear above or below you, move out of the way before she bites down. Usually it’s a good idea to stay near the middle since that’s where most of the blind spots will appear.

Meesha will change to a disturbed face

After the dialogue with this face is over, Meesha will let out a loud screech and fire a line of very fast-moving projectiles directly at you. Since TGPD doesn’t have invulnerability frames, this attack can easily one-shot you if not dodged properly.

The easiest way to avoid this attack is to hurry to the bottom left corner and then walk all the way up to the top left corner. Alternatively, you can use a speed up, or sacrifice your companion.

Demon screeches happen on attack 6 and 8, so be ready

After the second Demon Screech, Meesha’s pink bar fills and you may choose to either kill or befriend her

1. Find Flipper in the Real Estate Building. He will tell you to find someone who wants to sell their house.
2. Go to the house right under the clothing store and speak to the Green Fish.
3. Return to Flipper and begin the fight.

Flipper is an incredibly easy bossfight. In order to defeat him, you must survive 7 attacks.

• House Attack
• Rival Realtors
• Bank
• Money Stealers

Stay close to the bottom of the screen, but don’t get too close to the border or you’ll get hit when the house under you bobs up.

The rest of his attacks can be easily beaten by spamming the shoot button. Even if you get hit, you get 1 Burst for every enemy you destroy with the laser gun.

After he finishes his attacks and his pink bar fills, you can Befriend him, or Fight him to Instakill him.

1. Talk to The Fly next to the Sap Tree and get him to follow you.
2. Talk to the red NPC outside Meesha’s house in the top right of Gooberville
3. Talk to The Fly again at his spot and start the fight

The Fly is second place in terms of challenge for the 4 Gooberville Bosses.

To defeat him, you must survive 12 attacks

• Pellet Spam
• Wheel Attack
• Arrow Spam

The Fly will spin around the dodge box, shooting pellets at you. The best way to dodge this is to stay close to the middle, that way you have the maximum amount of time to react from all angles

For this attack I recommend staying low. When possible, get inside the bullet circles. When you’re inside a circle, it’s much harder to get hit by the spinning bullets.

Incredibly similar to the Pellet Spam attack except the shots only come from the top and bottom of the screen. Stay close to the middle and you should be fine. The shots curve slightly so be careful.

After the 12 attacks are over, The Fly’s pink bar will fill, and you will have the choice to Befriend or Fight him.

Befriend The Bedtime Boy

1. Go into the house leaking Cream Cheese through a pipe and talk to the man in the bathtub.
2. Go down to the previous area and talk to the plumber
3. Go back to the house and talk to the plumber. You’ll need to pay him $63 (You can easily get this money by touching poop)
4. Go into the house and let the cutscene play, then go back out of the house.
5. Go to the bottom left and you will see Bedtime Boy near some TVs. Talk to him to start the battle.

Bedtime Boy is the shortest fight out of the four Gooberville bosses, only lasting 5 attacks.

• Falling Moons
• Bedtime Snack
• Intersection
• Eating Attack

On the first attack, crescent moons will fall from the top of the dodge box and break upon reaching the bottom, making extra projectiles. Then, Bedtime Boy will ask you for your favorite bedtime snack, and the snack you chose will replace the moons on all following attacks.

To dodge this attack, stay a bit closer to the top of the screen. That way you won’t get hit by the fragments when the moons/snacks break

Cars will spawn all around the dodge box. Dodge this attack by circling around the dodge box without stopping.

Bedtime Boy inhales a bunch of food. To dodge it, just stay at the bottom of the box.

After Bedtime Boy does his eating attack, attack him to instantly kill him.

IF you want to befriend him, go into the React menu and use the Rub Belly action to make him fill his pink bar.

The Ultimate Wizard is the final boss of the Genocide/Lullaby route. Since it’s part of the achievement, I’ll write down the steps needed to qualify for a Genocide run.

To activate a genocide route, you must kill every enemy you come across. No exceptions!!

If you’re doing it right, the area before Gooberville should turn to night. After the Moon Diety talks to you, it will be IMPOSSIBLE to befriend any enemies for the rest of the file.
After that, you’ll need to kill all four bosses in Gooberville.

After that, proceed to Thunder Goober’s chamber as usual. There, you’ll fight teh Ultimate Wizard.

The fight is quite similar to Thunder Goober in the sense that you need to play nonsensical minigames during the fight

There are 6 trivia questions and 5 typing minigames

If we count each trivia and typing minigame as an attack, the fight lasts 22 attacks

Which of these is impossible to eat for breakfast?
– Eggs
Which puppy is the cutest?
– Hotdog
Select the image which is different from the rest!
– Poop on the right
Cornball, do you think it’s funny?
– Yes
Is it really that freaking funny [PLAYER NAME]?
– Not at all
Are you scared of me? Yes am I a big scary thunder baby?
– I’m foolish

• Lightning Spam
• Split Lightning
• Ball Lightning
• Shadow Lightning

The Ultimate Wizard will spam lightning strikes on you. These can go horizontally or vertically and will always happen right on top of you.

The best way to dodge this attack is to never stop moving

The Ultimate Wizard will send a vertical lightning strike on top of you with a delay. After the initial strike, two more lightning strikes will come down to the left and right of it.

This attack is not that hard, and the main thing you need to watch out for is getting cornered.

The Ultimate Wizard will spawn 4 bouncing balls inside the dodge box. The balls do not disappear until the attack is over.

The easiest way to dodge this attack is to dodge while staying at the bottom of the screen.

Identical to the Lightning Spam attack but with black and white colors and with a much larger area.

The first Shadow Lightning attack will work normally, while the second will never end, causing a scripted death.

After the scripted death cutscene, you will become unkillable. Ultimate Wizard will do two more attacks, and then you will win the battle.

• Heavy Sword (switch to the Light Spear for quest-specific challenges)

• Heavy Armor
• War Horse
• Melee Resistance

• Challenge the Snake God
• Challenge the Falcon God
• Challenge the Wasp God

Could add another (especially if shooting for Quest F – 12000pts).

This will build your character to be a major combatant in your fights. Trample damage from War Horse, coupled with being more resistant and durable will ensure you can survive getting hit and pulling aggro from your buildings. This capability will be improved later throughout the level.

• The closest Gold Mine
• Spearmen from the Barracks
• The closest north farm and a field

You will have to use the Spearmen and yourself to stop the cavalry coming from the south. Easy peasy.

• Buy up Farms and Fields (Improved Plow)
• Level up the Castle with Royal Training

In this early period, prioritize getting the stable income of 2 farms and some fields going as well, with leftover money. Your spears will help protect the south, where you can put a single wall and a tower to block the fast-movers.

Between these very light defenses, you, and the upgrades, things are starting to look pretty. Don’t be scared to use the arrows from your castle in this early period if you need to, though it shouldn’t be necessary.

By the top of Day 5, you should have 2 goldmines, 2 farms, Spearmen, several towers (2 at the north), a south-western wall, an upgraded castle giving you more potency in combat, and enough gold to upgrade even more.

At this point, with 20 knights and 5 exploders coming from the south, I used my 16 gold for the following:

• Upgrade both farms (4gp each), and add 2 fields
• Buy a tower right next to the castle
• But the southern wall

The wall and tower mainly give the exploders something to run into, don’t worry if they get broken. Remember, you are a frontline tank. Charge the enemy and run into them for more damage, and aggro them on you to slow them down!

Day 6 allows you to get the 3rd northern farm, make more upgrades, add a field. At this point I also buy a wall to the north, a tower upgrade, and buy the 3rd tower in the middle of the farms.

This strategy relies on you keeping the farms up so you can buy the last gold mine for another eco spike, while placing your Spearmen in places you can’t be to slow the enemy down. Using this strategy it’s common for your soldiers to lose a fight, and for you to have to run back to where they were defeated to clean up the mess.

Fortunately, your economy will still be protected if you choose your fights right, as the farms are protected by multiple towers and a wall.

It’s very important now to get Magic Armor for 20gp from the castle, as your southwestern wall is about to be hit with exploders, giants, and some archers. On Day 7, you should also have enough to get a couple more fields to the north.

I never bother with the southwestern farm + fields, that area is too difficult to wall off. Instead, with the last 3 gold, I buy a single tower facing down at the exploder entrance, and place my Spearmen to the south in the pass to the bottom-right of the castle to protect against the fast-moving cavalry.

Magic Armor is what kicks this tanky build into high gear, massively increasing your damage output as long as you keep getting hit. Your perks, resistances, etc., should all start really coming into play here and your soldiers and defenses are there to stall in places you can’t fight on your own.

Using your own tankiness, you should be able to nearly solo the giants and archers without too much help from the tower and wall.

Remember to keep running into, in circles, all over the place on top of your enemies using this build, you will damage them just by moving. Your sword’s active ability is another area-of-effect attack, so you should be doing plenty of damage to keep up with these enemies.

Upgrade 2 farms again. Buy the upgraded wall to the northeast of the farms (prioritize the farms — you NEED to keep the farms going. Handle the fights there before moving on to other places.

To the northwest, we’ve so far bought nothing. Buy a cheap wall and tower with your last 6 gold and call it a day. Those two defenses won’t hold forever, but it’ll be just enough for you to finish the fight near the farms and return to save the day.

Running this, I went into the night here with 0 gold.

You should be at the Day where 3 groups of 35 cavalry are charging you from 3 different directions. Playing through this level as I made this guide, I had 33 gold to work with here.

Cavalry if left to their own devices will utterly destroy your economy, going out of their way to target it and the Castle.

• Upgrade your Barracks to get another group of Spears, place them to the southwest.
• Upgrade the wall there.
• Send 4 Spears to the Southeast/South (right below the castle) pass
• Upgrade the wall there also.

You should now have about 10 gold left if you haven’t made any massive eco losses. I used my last bit here to buy another upgraded tower to the northeast and buy some fields. This should be some of the last eco we buy.

You’ll take the fight to the north by yourself for PART OF IT. You can stay there for about half the battle’s worth of guys, then leave your upgraded walls and towers to handle it. As you come back to your castle, you may see that the southwestern gate has already gone down, and cavalry are coming in. This is okay, just aggro them by charging in, and do your best to keep them away from your farms, castle, etc. They’re fast, but you should be able to catch them and get them (or at least some of them) to chase you.

Your 4 Spears should be able to handle the fights to the south, or at least stall long enough for you to be able to return.

Doing this, I lost no economy buildings on this night.

Upgrade the 3rd farm because there is no attack coming from the north here. After this, I had 32 gold left. Again, we’re basically maxed on economy now, so this is a case to prioritize defenses. The wave is also coming from the opposite direction, which has been a little neglected.

To remedy this:

• Buy 2 towers
• Upgrade both towers behind the wall (should be 5 gold each)
• Buy Fire Archers to the southwest, have them hold position behind the wall
• Buy Berserkers to the southwest, have them charge out at the catapults that are about to come
• Last 3 gold, buy southernmost tower

Remember, you are the fighter here. You’ll have to face tank a lot. I immediately rushed the catapults this night, and then go back to clean up the other stuff. The giants are important to take out next.

Always remember to try to aggro enemies off of structures, clump them up in a group around you, and then charge through them with your AoE attack, your trample damage, and your AoE Special Ability. Not to mention Magic Armor kicking in here, so everything attacking you is hurting itself.

This wave is actually pretty easy since everything is coming from the same side except the fast-movers to the north. Put half your spears up there, the other half to stall the exploders and other fast guys southward.

Actually forgot to get the last gold mine here on Day 11, whoops. So I bought it real quick. It’ll give you your money back + 1. Feel free to find a better spot to put it somewhere else earlier on.

You’ll have to tank the 12 giants to the north on this wave, but don’t worry. We’re getting our first Ballista to help out. Upgrade one of those towers to the north to a Ballista.

Send your spears south to deal with the 35 fast movers, and if you’re worried throw down the Barricades to slow them down further.

With my remaining 17 gold, I bought the row of towers along the cliffside next to the Castle, and bought the wall south immediately south of the farms (just in case something breaks in from the south). This might be overkill, but we’re swimming in money right now.

But the final tower on the little precipice to the right of the castle, and you should be out of money.

From here, I send my Berserkers and fire archers to the north to help me with the giants. Note that because of the help from the Ballista, and your upgrades from earlier, you should be able to tank all 12 giants and charge directly into them without dying.

• Bought final upgrade for Spearmen (up to 12)
• Upgraded the lone tower to the northwest once (5gp)
• Upgraded 2 ridgeline towers (5gp each)
• Spent final 16gp to upgrade the southwest Barracks and Archery Range

Split 12 spearmen across southeast and northwest where some real fast guys are. You can go half and half.

Berserkers and Fire Archers are going to have to stay to the southwestern wall.

This fight is long and staggered. The catapults to the southwest are important to kill, but don’t come out for a while, so you can spend your time switching between fights as needed. You want to move back and forth, killing a few, removing pressure from the walls which need to stay up. I started the early part of this wave southwest and northeast often.

The walls on the northwest and southeast (next to the castle) are likely to go down first, but if you are doing a good job alternating between fights, your defenses can otherwise take care of themselves for the most part.

If you’ve had a good run up to this point, it’s chill. Make sure to focus the catapults, giants, and exploders when you see them. Other enemies can be handled by defenses, except when there’s a LARGE mob piling up. That is a good opportunity to rush in with your tank build and wrack up AoE damage.

On the Durststein run I did as I was writing this guide, I achieved a score of 11601 using the following modifiers:

• Challenge the Snake God
• Challenge the Falcon God
• Challenge the Wasp God

I’ll do future runs with it, or maybe throw in Challenge the Tiger God, to achieve 12000 for Quest F.

• Antecrypt isn’t a twin stick shooter, you can’t control the visor to shoot enemies: the visor actually moves by itself, bumping on walls exactly like a ball in a Breakout game. This means you have to move your character around the visor to aim. It’s a surprisingly original idea which may sound weird or irritating on paper, but proves to be brilliant in practice, creating many fresh game mechanics.
  To make the experience well balanced and interesting, there is also a battery mechanics: when you fire, it drains a battery, which you can recharge by holding fire while staying close to the visor. This creates a dilemma: you can choose to follow the visor around to change your aim and recharge your battery quickly (you’ll also be protected by your bombs, since you can throw them where the visor is), but the visor may go to dangerous areas and get you killed – or you can stay farther from the visor, which helps to keep a steadier aim and lets you free to zigzag around enemies and bullets, but your battery can be drained very fast and leave you defenceless. Choosing which tactics to use and when is the core of Antecrypt.
• The “autonomous visor” mechanics is exploited by clever enemy behaviour: Antecrypt has ten different enemies, one mini-boss, and one end boss. They may look like standard twin stick shooter foes, but they all have interesting subtleties that you must learn to survive in hard or cryptic mode. We’ll get to that in the section further below.
• On top of this, beating levels sometimes allows you to upgrade character properties: carrying extra bombs, making more damage with your weapon, having a bigger battery, expanding the recharge zone, etc. When this happens, you have the choice between two upgrades – you can’t later correct your choice, so be careful.
  In my opinion: POWR > ZONE > BATT > BOMB > VRAM > SCAN in normal mode. In hard or cryptic mode, BOMB and VRAM are a bit more important, you have to have at least one rank in both.
• When it doesn’t allow you to improve your character, beating levels unlocks extra weapons or abilities: you can use as much abilities simultaneously in a level as ranks you have in VRAM, but after beating a level with some abilities, those get locked. To get them back, you have to beat the level again without them, which creates an interesting gameplay loop: when a level is too hard to beat without weapons/abilities, you can use some of them, then you’ll later upgrade your character, which will make earlier levels easier and allow you to get back weapons/abilities that you used there, to later use those abilities again in even harder levels.

As you can see, the game has much more depth than a simple Robotron: 2084 clone. The visor mechanics, properties and abilities are well explained in the game, but not enemy characteristics, reason why the next (and final) section is entirely devoted to them.

• 6QID: the 6QID is the most basic enemy in the game, slowly moving toward you and without much endurance, but it’s subtler than the grunts from Robotron: 2084 – they move in groups forming a long line, making it hard to go past them. It’s important to anticipate their line pattern to avoid being surrounded.
• Mindsucker: those also move simply toward you, but they have more endurance than the 6QID, and they go much faster when your battery is full (they can go very fast). A good strategy when you see them is to fire immediately to drain your battery and slow them down. They’re very vulnerable to bombs.
• Cyclop: Cyclops stick to walls, walking endlessly in circles and shooting bullets. They’re hard to see, hard to aim, and treacherous.
• Canonhead: those also shoot bullets, but they can move freely in the arena, and shoot only horizontally or vertically. Important: they curl into a ball and stop shooting when you’re close to them, so getting near is actually a good defence strategy – they have more endurance when curled into a ball, though.
• Spiderbot: those four-legged spiders attack in group – when they get in the arena, they move toward you and… stop. At first, they even flee when you approach them! But when their horde is numerous enough, they get very dangerous, surrounding you and getting more aggressive.
• Polymorphic Vine: those flowers with one tentacle also move in group, like seaweed following the sea currents. Watch out: they can grab you with their tentacle, trying to get you closer to their flower to kill you. Stay away from the “currents” they follow.
• Corruptor: those are living computer bugs, their main task is spreading on the arena to corrupt its floor tiles. A corrupted tile appears to be glitching, then reverts back to normal eventually. When you step on a glitched tile, you move slower, and all Corruptors suddenly stop what they were doing and head toward you, which can be a good opportunity to throw a bomb at them.
• Ghost: ghosts look exactly like Pac-Man ghosts, and behave like Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 ghosts – they move slowly toward you until you try to damage them, then they bounce back, get angry, and move much quicker. They have more endurance when they’re calm than when they’re angry. They’re extremely annoying.
• Shield Generator: probably the most obnoxious enemy, the Shield Generator cancels your fire if you’re too close to it. Thankfully, they use a battery with limited energy: the perimeter of their shield gets smaller the more it’s used. They stand still when the shield is on. When the shield is finally cancelled, they run amok, spiralling and bouncing in the arena and firing bullets. They’re very vulnerable to bombs.
• Beetle: by default, beetles walk around slowly wings closed, minding their own business, but if you get too far from them, they spread their wings and fly quickly toward you. They’re more vulnerable when they fly. It can be a good strategy to stay in the centre of the arena so they never spread their wings.
• Giant 6QID: this mini-boss fires bullets and lays 6QID eggs. Be careful: just after it lays its eggs, it charges quickly toward you.
• Queen: I won’t spoil this end boss, but remember that bombs are very useful against shields.