What's the easiest way to get "With Your Nose So Bright..."?

Question

The Jamestown achievement for the Steam sale is to play a level with the Red Charge ship.

What's the easiest way to get this from the start of the game? I'll also note that I'm terrible at this genre, so any sort of 'newbie' guide would be welcome.

Answer 1

To unlock the charge ship, you must do the following:

• Beat the second level of the game
• Accrue 8,000 ducats

I started by playing the first level on Normal with the only ship you have. Most of the cannon enemies at the start won't hurt you if you touch them, but watch out for the flying enemies and the "drill" nose enemies, as these will hurt you. The default ship has 2 attacks, one that is relatively weak but rapid fire, and can damage things off your axis, and the second which does constant, high damage, but makes you slower and only fires straight ahead. Don't worry about using your "Vaunt" power, as it charges quickly and can give you a pretty good score boost.

The boss of the first stage is a squid-like thing with a giant TV in it. Focus your fire and you should take it down quickly. At about half health it will change its attack pattern.

The second stage takes you into a swamp with many enemies that pop up out of the water. Again, on normal you shouldn't have much trouble as long as you fire pretty much constantly and you're using Vaunt when you can.

Once you've completed both the first two levels, it's just a matter of gaining 8,000 total ducats. The factors involved in your Ducat haul are:

• How much of the level you completed
• What the difficulty is (x1 for normal, and higher multipliers for higher difficulty)
• Whether or not you finished the boss (x2 in my case for beating it)

Thus, the easiest thing to do is to replay the first mission. You can increase the difficulty if you think you can handle it, which will yield a higher multiplier and therefore more ducats per trip through it.

Once you've got 8,000, visit the shop and buy the Charge Ship. You then have to complete an entire level, so go back to level 1 on normal and play it all the way through. The Charge ship has a standard attack that only fires in front of it, and a "special" move that charges over time, until a large orb is out in front of the ship. This attack does high damage and pierces enemy forces in front of you.

Answer 2

Play the first mission on normal difficulty multiple times until you have 8,000 credits. Now go into the shop and buy the red charger ship. Play the first mission again with your new ship and complete it.