LUIGI'S MANSION 2 / DARK MOON STAR RANKING GUIDE BY STL /***************************************************************************** ******************************** INTRODUCTION ******************************** *****************************************************************************/ Welcome to the star raking guide! This guide will explain how the ingame ranking works and gives you the basics for planning and obtaining 3 stars in every mission. I have personally always been interested in figuring out the game mechanics. The star ranking caught my attention considering it is unexplained in the game, so naturally I had to figure out how it works. At first, I assumed there was a specific target for each of the 4 objectives which you need to reach in a single run, or that every objective would be translated into an amount of points depending on the targets for the mission. For example on a scale of 0-100 with a bit wiggle room to get the 3 stars. But as it turns out neither were correct. This is the first guide I have written for GameFAQs and I hope it will be helpful. /***************************************************************************** **************************** INGAME SCORING SYSTEM *************************** *****************************************************************************/ For every mission you are given a rank between 1 and 3 stars. Your rank is calculated from the results of a single run, not your individual bests. The game calculates the mission score using the following formula: Ghosts captured * 120 + collected treasure - time in seconds - health lost * 6. Let's say you finished a mission in 4:00, captured 6 ghosts, lost 10 health and collected 600G. Your mission score would be: 6 * 120 + 600 - 240 - 10 * 6 = 1020 Every mission has different target scores. A-1 will give you 3 stars if you get 1000 or more points and 2 stars for 0-999 points. Negative scores are possible as well, the most obvious being E-4, where it is impossible to capture a ghost or collect any treasure. E-4 also has one of the hardest if not the hardest 3 star rank with a target score of -200. This means that, for a 3-star rank, you need to beat the mission in 3:20 without taking any damage (or, alternatively, in 1:20 or less if you took 20 damage...) /***************************************************************************** ************************* MISSION SCORE REQUIREMENTS ************************* *****************************************************************************/ I collected the results of several hundred runs to reveal the minimum score requirements for 3 stars as closely as possible. If you think you can pinpoint it further, contact me and I will include it in the next update. If there is interest I could include 2 star score requirements in a future update. If you want to see them, you can help out by sending me your results of runs ending in 1 or 2 star ratings. (Note: They must be from a single run, individual bests are not going to help) Below is a table of the info I obtained so far: Mission 3* Requirement A-1 1000 A-2 1700 – 2000 A-3 500 – 800 A-4 1300 – 1400 A-5 900 – 1000 A-Boss -200 A-Bonus 2100 – 2400 B-1 1100 – 1400 B-2 1800 – 2200 B-3 500 – 600 B-4 1500 – 2000 B-5 1400 B-Boss -600 – -200 B-Bonus 1400 – 1500 C-1 1900 – 2000 C-2 2700 – 2800 C-3 1200 – 1400 C-4 200 – 500 C-5 2900 – 3400 C-Boss 2100 – 2500 C-Bonus 2000 – 2300 D-1 2200 D-2 1400 – 1500 D-3 1000 – 1300 D-Boss -100 D-Bonus 2000 – 2100 E-1 1900 – 2300 E-2 2500 – 2900 E-3 800 – 1600 E-4 -200 E-5 6400 – 7000 E-Boss -400 – -200 E-Bonus 2100 – 2600 F-1 -200 /***************************************************************************** ******************************** TIPS & TRICKS ******************************* *****************************************************************************/ - The most important factor for a 3-star ranking is capturing all ghosts and taking as little damage as possible. Capturing 1 more ghost or taking 20 less damage is equivalent to clearing the mission 2 minutes faster (or collecting 120 more G). - Having Creeper split up into 2 parts is actually beneficial, because it will count as 2 ghosts. - Boos do not count towards the captured ghost total and the coins they leave are not really worth it either. (Not to mention that you can't capture a boo again that you've already captured before, besides the A-4 and E-2 boos) - Always try to defeat ghosts with a power surge. Using a red surge will leave 3 gold bars per ghost (Green will leave 1 gold bar and blue will leave 3 coins). Keeping as much health as possible is important here too. If you aren't on full health, then ghosts may drop hearts instead of money. - Sucking up multiple ghosts at once will leave an additional gold bar per ghost. Unlike the first game, you can only get up to 3 ghosts at a time. Combined with a red surge you can get up to 80G per ghost. - Collect a golden bone in every mission (except for boss missions where they can't appear) because it grants an additional 200G provided you still have one at the end of the mission. Once you have collected at least 200G, they can be found in any object that can be examined with X. However, they can only appear in an object if you examined it for the first time that mission. You can also only have one golden bone at a time… /***************************************************************************** ****************************** CREDITS & CONTACT ***************************** *****************************************************************************/ I would like to thank the people who contributed info for this guide, that includes: sausage948, Capndrake, Vallu and zaldor. A thanks also goes out to the people who helped indirectly. Those who uploaded Let's plays and walkthroughs to Youtube, posted their 3 rank details on IGN and to LucasClaus from GameFAQs. For questions, contributions, complaints or anything else about this guide, contact me via julian_korten@freenet.de Copyright (c) 2013 Julian Korten