Tips for what might seem like Spark 2’s most daunting achievement, every diamond score medal, with both general advice and stage specific tips!
Contents
Getting Score Medals
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Intro
One thing I think Spark 2’s got over Spark 3 is how much more fun the score medals are. Things ramp up massively exponentially and the time penalty mechanic keeps you on your toes AND encourages you to play fast in some longer levels, like a weird version of a speedrun!
But it understandably seems like a very tough task to get some of these requirements (9 million in Floresta Blanca?), especially if you’re coming off of Spark 3’s score system where you can pretty much just walk around for an hour grabbing everything and end up with 20 million or so. Thankfully, once you’ve got a grasp on how this works – and how the game works in general – it’s not so bad! This guide compiles a bunch of advice that’s conducive to getting those nasty diamond score medals, as well as general gameplay tips for sharpening those Spark skills.
Overview of Scoring Mechanics
This game has a few mechanics tied to score and points to make it a bit more in depth than “walk around and get stuff for points”.
Multipliers
Score multipliers are the most important thing for racking up a bunch of points fast. You can see these listed under your current score, and there are two different values;
Score Multiplier is its own value which increases as you do things that net you points. The higher your Score Multiplier is the faster you can increase the score multiplier, which can lead to a very fun positive feedback loop, but when you get hit you will decrease your score multiplier. Dying and respawning at checkpoints do not count as taking hits!
Attack is the value associated with your energy meter and damage multiplier. Plenty of ways to increase it – energy bubbles, energy capsules, parrying, enemy damage etc. Like the normal Score Multiplier, dying and respawning don’t decrease it, but taking hits will, as will charged attacks with your right bumper.
What’s important to note here is that these two values multiply each other, so a Score Multiplier of 20x with an Attack multiplier of 3x is an effective 60x* improvement over how much score something would normally award. As such it’s very important to keep these up as much as you can, especially since both will degrade over time!
Important note (spoilers!): The Score Multiplier is kind of a lie, since what is listed as “1x” is actually 2x the base score of something, and what a hypothetical “0x” would be is the base value. For example, at 1x a bit is worth 200pts, and at 2x 300pts, 3x 400pts etc, where it should be 200, 400 and 600. Attack multiplier isn’t affected by this, though, and will properly multiply values by the number it says it will (i.e. a Bit at 1x S.M and 2x ATK multiplier is correctly 400pts).
Time Penalty
After 5 minutes on every stage (no matter how long the stage is), time penalty will kick in and your score will start to rapidly drop. This creates an incentive to work quickly toward the end of a stage while still being efficient on your route to the goal, or if you’re very gutsy ramping up an insanely high buffer of score very fast so you can afford to lose some points on your way to the goal (but this isn’t recommended). TL;DR, you’ve only got 5 minutes to get points.
How to Really Get Score
Now we know how score works, these are some tips that’ll help get plenty in most stages.
- Do speed medals first. The knowledge of how to play the level fast will help when the timer’s pressing you, and you might find hidden shortcuts with plenty of points to nab as you explore looking for routes.
- Power Armor is hilariously overpowered in one-on-one enemy encounters, and you can reduce anything to pieces with one light attack chain at 3x attack. Given the additional air mobility, this is the best power to have on in most situations, since you’ll be in combat a lot, unless you’re very adept at swapping powers on the fly.
- When you’re just moving around, Plasma Jester’s great for increased mobility AND a speed boost you can use with your charged attack (hold right bumper!). Very nice for long paths with no enemies, like in Floria Highway or Castela Blanca.
- Getting Attack multipliers up before anything else is often a good idea where feasible. Repeatedly blocking stage hazards can be very easily abused to this end.
- As a rule of thumb, the bigger an enemy is, the more points they’re worth. With this in mind, take out the small enemies first where possible to get a bigger multiplier for the big guys.
- Say hi to Beddle! You’re going to be killing a lot of these.
These things are worth an extraordinary amount of points for the low, low time to kill (one hit from any attack). Jester Dashing will hurt, but you can shield before you hit them, and if you time it well the resulting parry will kill any weak enemies around it too and keep your attack multiplier high! Incredibly useful (Get in the habit of pushing the shield button when Jester Dashing into enemies in general, since sometimes even the “safer” ones will still hit you as you fly toward them.).
- Also say hi to Coppe!
These are pretty beefy, but it’s nothing Power Armor won’t chew through, and they give you an absolutely huge amount of points. Definitely go for these where you can, with a high enough multiplier these can net you all the points you need for a medal.
- Ignore Hacklement.
In my experience these just despawn before you can kill them and don’t award any points, so ignore them when they start bugging you.
- End of stage mini-bosses, where they exist, give a bunch of points, so if you see yourself near the medal requirement, there’s no shame in beelining it to the end and making up the remainder of the points from the mini-boss. Terminal Dragon is the exception, for… whatever reason.
- Don’t sleep on Bits! They add up over the course of a run and they add a LOT to your score multiplier, plus they keep it from decaying in areas where there isn’t much to do beside run from point A to point B. Don’t go out of your way for one or two in most situations, but big bunches are usually very worth it.
- Nothing can resist stage hazards, not even enemies! If something falls off / hits a laser / lava etc it WILL take damage and most likely die, awarding you free points. If you’re going through an area where enemies are likely to do this, it might be best to not bother fighting and seeing if they just kill themselves for you.
- Basically just try to always stay in combat! Enemies are often the most profitable source of points and they’re also a good way to keep both score multipliers from decaying.
Level Breakdowns
This section will describe each level in context of aiming for a Diamond score medal, along with the required points to get it.
FM City – 1,582,050
A surprisingly challenging first level – larger enemies are scarce, and there’s plenty of sections in general where it’s hard to keep an Attack multiplier up. Racking up a decent multiplier for the Shen enemies (the wheeled enemies with swords?) near the end of the level will net you a good chunk of the necessary points, though.
FM Downtown – 3,034,803
Again, fairly challenging for a second level, but this one’s got enemies aplenty. Keep yourself in combat, remember to check the side areas where enemies can appear, and dodge those annoying fan blades. Getting to the large underwater part at around 3 minutes in is a good target to hit, and if you’re lacking points coming out of the water, remember there’s a few enemies and lots of bits surrounding the goal.
Floria Highway – 1,183,920
Pretty easy compared to the first two, just remember to pick up Bits while on the road to keep the score multiplier up, and that you can gain lots of missing score from the mandatory miniboss at the end. Using the speed boost from the Plasma Sword power will help minimize the time spent running between area to area, but make sure not to do it with too much energy or you’ll just use a charged attack instead and waste the energy.
Floria Plant – 1,009,857
Easier than the last one for such a dense, short level. ALWAYS abuse the broken shield on the lasers whenever you’re below a 3x multiplier, especially at the start of the level – this snowballs very heavily! Enemies will very often die on stage hazards like lasers and lava here so you don’t have to do an awful lot of fighting yourself to get to the score requirement, just make sure you don’t hit the hazards yourself.
Floresta Blanca – 9,334,950
By far the hardest score medal – but really fun. You can find yourself almost always in combat if you play well. The lava geysers that boost you up have a hurtbox at the bottom, and there’s one at the start of the level you can use to easily get a 3x attack multiplier. The miniboss at the end is worth a LOT of points here, so don’t be afraid if you’re even a couple million off of the goal when reaching it!
Castela Blanca – 699,220
Another easy one. Just take out any enemies you see along the path instead of running past them and you’ll be golden. If you get to the end after the long drop and aren’t at the score requirement yet, there’s lots of enemies, bits and bubbles in the area with the goal. I imagine the score requirement is so low to compensate for level length, but it’s still very easy to massively overshoot it.
Shantoria Town – 1,609,700
Laser at the start, easy 3x ATK multiplier, then run around the starting area for bits – this’ll get you a very nice headstart on the level. The two Big Coppes halfway through the level are your saving grace here, and can easily net you over half of the required score with a good multiplier.
Technoria City – 1,374,150
There’s a lot of downtime in this level, but thankfully the requirement isn’t very high, AND there’s three Big Coppes – two midway through that can net you all the score you need, and one at the end in case you didn’t quite meet the goal yet.
Terminal Dragon – 779.450
Nothing particularly out of the ordinary here. Farm attack multipliers from lasers as necessary, take out enemies, etc etc. Do note that the Terminal Dragon enemy itself hardly awards any points for defeat, though, so you’ll need to meet the requirement before starting the boss.
Scaria Stropolis – 1,535,968
Two Big Coppes at the first checkpoint, need I say more? The weird fire spitting things near the start and throughout the level can net you a very easy 3x attack multiplier as well.
Titanic Tower – 1,245,322
Another kind of tough medal, but the Big Coppes help if you know which paths to take to find them (if I recall, go left when there’s a choice you can make). No stage hazards either, so you have to farm Attack multiplier from enemies like some kinda caveman…
Planetary Stripe – 212,300
Just not fun. All the bits and bubbles are scattered around on the outer parts of the stage that you’d never normally visit. No enemies either, and no stage hazards, so your only form of attack multiplier will be very brief energy bubbles. Not a very high requirement, but kind of a chore. Plasma Jester’s your best bet here.
Hyperath Fleet – 390,500
The exact opposite of Planetary Stripe, where all there is is enemies. At least an attack multiplier is easy to get going… Your real enemy here is time – once you’ve gotten the requirement, just book it to the end. The Big Coppe early on will help a ton with this.
Apocalypse Thruster – 1,613,378
As is often the case with longer levels, time is the primary concern. The best way to start is to scale the geometry behind you, where you’ll find some Hellshades you can kill for both points and attack multiplier. Don’t be afraid to go off rails if something catches your eye, bubbles can sometimes indicate plenty of enemies to kill, but you’ll likely rack up the points along the main path provided you’re thorough with enemies.
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