Destiny of an Emperor: Destiny of an Emperor Challenges

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While it seems more and more people are discovering and playing the old gem of a game known as Destiny of an Emperor, many of the people who enjoy it have beaten it many times before. As one of them, I presented a challenge in our forum, and at lordyuanshu.com, that turned out to be so much fun that I’ve decided to share it with all of you. Basically, the challenge creates rules that must be observed while playing the game in order to make it much more difficult. Other Destiny of an Emperor challenges created by people will also be added to this page.

Lowest Level Challenge
Alternative Officers Challenge
lordyuanshu.com

Lowest Level Challenge

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The ‘Lowest Level Challenge’ is the challenge from our team here at Kongming’s Archives. The basic objective is to complete the game at the lowest level possible. This makes the challenge rules rather simple, as you are to avoid nearly every battle that can be avoided, but below in the rules you will find an outline of the specific requirements. For someone who has played the game many times, this is actually very fun to experience!

What You Need

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Here you will find the rules for our own Destiny of an Emperor challenge! As you can see, there are some slight variations which you can enjoy in order to increase or decrease the challenge difficulty. Decide on what variation of the challenge, if any, you will play before you start your game.

A copy of Destiny of an Emperor (either cartridge, or the ROM).
Download the ROM file, Destiny of an Emperor (English), or…
Download the ROM file, Destiny of an Emperor (Japanese)
Advance knowledge of the game, Destiny of an Emperor, or…
a whole lot of determination and a walkthrough, or…
time to share ideas or get feedback on a forum.

The Rules

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Challenge Rules:

You must not fight any battles that can be avoided.
(No hiring officers, no saving up experience.)
You can choose between the two different Zhang Jao battles.
You can hire Han Zhong.
You can hire Lü Bu.
You should execute Yuan Shu.
You can fight and hire Pang Tong. *
You can fight and kill Lü Bu in Ba-Shu. *
You must not fight the Pirate Force in Wu.
You must not fight special in-city battles (e.g. Ma Yuan Yi or Lü Meng).
If playing by emulator, you cannot use emulator features.
(e.g. freeze, defrost, field saves, rewind, cheats, etc.)
Play the game as you would on the console itself.
You can save states with an emulator in the event of major mistakes.
(e.g. this allows you to restart if you can’t buy the Silver Key.)
And of course, no cheat codes (e.g. Game Genie).

* Though these three choices are available for this challenge, doing so may not allow you to reach Sima Yi at the “lowest possible” level. If you wish to reach Sima Yi at the lowest possible level, you should skip these events—or at least the Pirate Force, which provides the most experience.

Decrease Difficulty:

You may fight three field battles to hire three officers.
(You must restart if you don’t hire the officer in question.)

Increase challenge to greater difficulty:

You cannot use Power Pills.
You cannot use Pang Tong.

Increase challenge difficulty even more:

You cannot use any shops, ever.

Advice: To succeed, you must be careful. Your gold is precious, so spend it carefully. You won’t have enough to buy everything you want, and there will be a few necessary items that you won’t be able to buy if you get too much equipment (like the Silver Key, which you buy before Yuan Shao's area for 4000 Gold). Plan ahead. If you know an item can be found in caves (e.g. Spears), don't spend money on them ahead of time. Buy items that provide a strong bonus for a small price (e.g. the Wood H). Think of creative ways to arrange your party (for example, it may be a good idea to use Xu Zhe in battle and as your strategist, or to avoid hiring Zhang Bao so you can use Zhuge Liang and Jiang Wei in battle simultaneously). See the screenshots section for what to expect.

Forum Links

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There are a few threads on this challenge at a few forums which are frequented by many Destiny of an Emperor fans. If you would like feedback or suggestions while playing the challenge, or simply want to chat with other people who enjoy Destiny of an Emperor as much as you while you are going along, these are the best places to go.

Screenshots

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To give you an idea of what you are up against in accepting this challenge, here is a collection of screenshots taken as I went through the game myself. I played under the basic rules, but didn’t allow myself Power Pills for some extra challenge (and trust me, it adds plenty of challenge).

Zhang Jao

Dong Zhuo

Yuan Shu

Xu Shao

Yuan Shao

Han Xuan

Pang Tong

Liu Zheng

Zhou Yu

Chen Pu

Sun Quan

Cao Pi

Sima Yi/Xu Zhu

Sima Yi/Yang Xiu

Final Battle

Final Battle II

Final Battle III

Final Battle IV

Victory!

Victory! II

Level 39

Final Party

Recorded Victories

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No challenge would be complete without immortalizing the people who have emerged victorious over it, right? Do you have what it takes to beat the challenge, and want to be listed here? Either participate in one of the forum threads as you play, or send a collection of game screenshots when you are finished (either verifying that you completed the challenge without another person’s saved state) and we’ll add you too! To reach us, please use our email form.

Player: Lord Yuan Shu
Date of Victory: May 09, 2006
Victory Screenshots
Saved State (FCE Ultra, Win)

No Power Pills
No Pang Tong

Player: James
Date of Victory: May 10, 2006
Victory Screenshots
Saved State (Nestopia, Mac)

No Power Pills

Player: Zhang Lu
Date of Victory: May 31, 2006
Victory Screenshots

Three Optional Officers

Alternative: LordYuanShu’s DoaE Challenge

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Here’s a very fun alternative challenge created by Lord Yuan Shu. Though a thorough explanation of the challenge can be found there, along with a number of screenshots, we’ll provide you with a quick overview. If you are interested in the challenge, we definitely suggest having a look at the official challenge page.

Introduction from Lord Yuan Shu: “Everyone knows Destiny of an Emperor is the best game ever made. Now for veterans like myself, it can be easy to speed through with all the characters who gain levels. However I decided to present a bunch of conditions upon my quest and came up with something like this, and it made me enjoy the game in an entirely different way, and that's saying something for someone who's played through this game for what seems like 100s of times.”

Challenge Rules:

At every opportunity possible, do not use characters that level up. Now you start with Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, so they'll be in your party until after Shu. You can't do anything about them so use them, the harder parts are later in this quest anyway. Do not pick up their sons. Do not pick up Huang Zhong, Ma Chao (reject his plea after the Luo battle), or Jiang Wei. Send Zhao Yun to the billetting as soon as you get him. Make sure you have 7 members when you recruit Zhuge Liang at Gui Yang before you set off for Shu, so he ends up in the billetting. After the Shu campaign, Liu Bei will order you to put him in your party; do so, but leave him in the 7 slot and never use him in battle or as a tactician. This leaves you with six spots to go through the game with all recruited generals. Playing under these conditions alone tremendously increases the difficulty of some battles (The Zhou Yu gate battle and Sima Yi battles come to mind).
Do not recruit Lu Bu or Pang Tong.
Do not use any of the weapons made by the swordsmith OR Power Pils (this includes the Halberd).
Do not use An Sha.
DO NOT CHEAT WITH YOUR EMULATOR. I don't care if you can save state/load state until your balls fall off to make sure every tactic you attempt succeeds. Be honest or the Lord will lock his brain onto yours and manipulate you like a dog.

* Challenge created by Lord Yuan Shu. Presented here to help introduce it.

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Destiny of an Emperor: Challenges