[Walkthrough Discussion]Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon; Hunter Mode Guide

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Luigi's Mansion 2/Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon has a great multiplayer mode called the ScareScraper/Thrill Tower. Here, you can play through a near endless mansion with randomly designed floors and chosen ghosts at your leisure, and with up to three other players!

And among the different modes, there's one called Hunter Mode. This is basically the 'standard', the one that has you hunting down all the ghosts in traditional Luigi's Mansion style.

Here's my guide to it!

Which Difficulty should I choose?

Normal: Best choice if you're playing alone or with a fairly incompetent team. Also, it's not as easy as it sounds by the name or description, especially when bosses are involved and you're trying to climb 25 floors.

Average Target for decent players: 25 floors +

Difficult: Reasonable for good players, best choice for decent teams.

Average Target for decent players: Maybe about 10-15 floors +

Expert: Absolute suicide if you're playing solo. No joke here, if the hordes of ghost don't beat you to within an inch of your life by the second or third floor, the extremely harsh time limit probably will (you can sometimes just not have enough time to get from one end of the map to the other and still defeat all the ghosts).

If you're in a team on the other hand, the time limits approach 'reasonable' and you won't be so outnumbered by the powerful ghosts found within. Apparently pretty fun.

Average Target for decent/good players: more than 5 floors (I distinctly recall someone saying they beat 5 floors on their own and others thinking it was pretty good)

General Tips

Follow the map at all times. As the manual itself says, green doors are open ones, red doors are locked and black doors are either boarded up or traps. Once you've figured this very simple piece of advice navigating the floors becomes so much easier.

Similarly, ghosts will only spawn in 'dark' rooms in multiplayer. So any room with a black background on the map is 'ghost territory', any with a purple map background is safe.

Try to minimise key usage. When you see a locked door for instance, look around it on the map to see if any unlocked doors lead to the same room or area and take the other path instead. This is because there will usually be a single locked door at the very edge of the level leading to a ghost filled room, and you ideally want to use your first key for that one instead.

Boss floors are simple in layout/design. Not really that useful, but keep in mind that every fifth floor has you face a boss, and that these floors are usually about four rooms max. As a result of this, it's not particularly hard to stumble into the boss room purely by accident simply by going through the first door you see.

Ghosts hide in shaking furniture. So if you see an object shaking both and forth, then it's guaranteed that it'll be where the ghosts for the room are hiding.

Ghosts don't hide in invisible furniture. Seriously, anything you have to reveal with your Dark Light will never have a ghost in it. This is probably to keep the game fair and stop people having to randomly check every possible corner of the floor.

Stay away from suits of armour. It seems to be random, but at least half of these try to skewer you with their sword when you approach like the ones in Gloomy Manor, so you want to keep your distance.

And safes never have anything of use. Not sure why, but if you ever see a safe opened by a strobe light, it's going to empty at least 99% of the time. And by empty, I mean 'not even having a heart, bug or cash in it'. Maybe it's a glitch with the level generation routine used to make these random floors and rooms?

Fruit is your friend. If you ever see a pumpkin or watermelon lying about in the ScareScraper (or single player mode), pick it up and shoot it at a wall or something. This will always give you at least one healing heart, or in the watermelon's case, at least three or four of them.

Red Coins are always found in adjacent rooms. So if you're hunting them down and can't find one, it'll be beyond the door you haven't opened in one of the rooms which previously had another Red Coin.

Don't bother trying to find the exact object things like keys are hidden in by the map, it really doesn't work like that (as anyone whose played this mode will atest to). It's only accurate to the general room, not the specific location (and sometimes the key fails to spawn altogether).

Use the wardrobes for shortcuts. Yes, when you open one, you warp to another one somewhere else on the floor. Useful for Red Coin hunting and possibly emergency escapes.

Take out the bats first. Because you see, bats are activated when you use the Poltergust, and will then circle to attack you, causing untold amounts of 'cheap' damage while simultaneously being a pain in the ass to suck up or destroy. So whenever you enter a 'crypt' style room (ones with lots of coffins), find and destroy any bats on the ceiling by blasting them with the Strobulb (they don't attack if you don't use the Poltergust). This makes life much easier for when the actual ghosts attack.

Ghost Hunting Situations

1. The Slammer Ambush. If you see a single Slammer in a room on its own, then be extremely wary, it's almost always a set up for a trap. Indeed, what happens here is simple; you strobe him, suck him up, then another two Slammers appear next to you ready to attack. So let the first one go quickly and try and get all three in one attack!

2. Creeper + Other Enemies. It's another common situation, you see two or three 'weak' enemies and two purple puddles of what looks like goo on the ground. Those purple things are Creepers (the ghosts which trap Luigi inside them and slowly drain his health), and the aim seems to be for the other ghosts to beat you up while you're trapped by the Creepers. To deal with this, you can either suck in the 'visible' ghosts first and hope for deal life that you don't end up being pulled into the purple stuff in the middle of the battle, or you can deal with the hidden Creepers first and leave the room safe for your fight with the other enemies. Choose carefully.

3. Creeper Decoy. Another common formation, you see one or two Creepers on the floor, then when you suck them up a bunch of Greenies appear to try and beat you up. So begin to suck up the Creeper as normal, then let go of it and go after the Greenies or other enemies that spawn.

4. Sneakers + Glasses Wearing/Armed Greenies. Also know as another ambush, you start out seeing some obvious Greenies with sun glasses or marx style fake noses and glasses. But when you go to suck these off, a Sneaker appears and strikes! These situations are common in all difficulty levels, so my advice is to take the glasses/masks off the Greenies first but not to actually suck them in. Then, try and get both the Sneakers and Greenies in one Strobulb hit and suck 'em both up at once.

5. Gobber + two Greenies with roast chickens. Commonly found in any situation a Gobber normally spawns in, this situation is where the Gobber is accompanied with two Greenies holding food. Best advice here is to take care of the Greenies before going after the Gobber.

Other Ghost Hunting Tips

Take advantage of the Poltergust 5000's increased 'grip'. In Luigi's Mansion Dark Moon, you don't tend to lose hold of a ghost you're attacking until you're either hurt or have gone halfway round the room without pulling back on the slide pad. So take advantage of this and sometimes use your enemy's attempts to escape as a way of getting out of difficult situations and putting distance between Luigi and the horde of ghosts trying to kill him.

Fill the entire A Pull Meter before pressing A. This is because the more it's full before you electric shock and defeat the ghost, the more money it drops upon being sucked in. So if you can fill the entire meter, you're now guaranteed at least one or two gold bars as a reward, useful for buying upgrades.

Be prepared to let go of a ghost you're trying to suck up in case of emergency. Not doing so is a pretty good way to end up dead in a boss battle.

It's also advised to do this when facing Gobbers in certain situations, especially with other ghosts nearby.

You can make a Creeper appear by flashing either a Dark Light on it or trying to vacuum the pool of stuff on the floor. I think you can also wait for it to appear on its own in some cases.

Use the Strobe Light to stun enemies without sucking them up. It sounds a bit counterintuitive, but it's a great way to get Greenies to drop their weapons and open up to attacks. Even better considering these weapons and armour DO NOT respawn.

Go after ghosts in the right order. Basically, it can help to go after them in the following order:

1. Greenies with weapons/armour, Sneakers
2. Slammers
3. Hiders (unless either the room's small or you can't get away from their line of fire)
4. Greenies (normal ones)
5. Gobbers
6. Creepers

This usually gets the more annoying ghosts out the way first and leaves you with a room full of enemies you can generally avoid fairly easily. You want to start with any armed ghosts to make them easier to suck up, then go after enemies by general threat level.

Destroy any items the ghosts are holding. Seriously, once you've got that spike ball, pumpkin, watermelon or bomb out a Greenie or boss's hands, launch it into a wall to destroy it. This stops them picking it up again later.

Avoid fighting ghosts in raised areas unless necessary. This is because falling off a platfom causes you to lose hold of any ghosts you're fighting. Good tip to remember in rooms with a stage at the back.

Use your Dark Light on armed/invisible Greenies. If you do this 'enough', they'll turn visible and be vulnerable to the Poltergust. Of course, they're also likely to attack first and can't be stunned during their attack, so it's best to do this when they're distracted.

Use your Strobulb on an item holding Greenie as they raise the item to hit you with it. This lets you stun them without having to suck the item out their hands.

Team Advice

If you're playing with a team of players, your strategies in Hunter Mode will change wildly. Here are some tactics I recommend in this situation.

First of all, remember that old Scooby Doo phrase 'Let's split up gang!' Yeah, you want to apply this to the ScareScraper too. Basically, on Normal or Hard mode, players should go after different rooms and clear them out mostly independantly. This lets each get a significant amount of gold and ghosts, is generally quicker overall and means the whole team won't be wiped out in one go.

However, on Expert mode... forget it. No seriously, remember how hard Expert mode is to play solo (near impossible)? Good, because if you split up here you will be slaughtered. Instead, I'd advise that at least two players stick together at all times during Expert mode runs, if only to cover the other one's back in case of an emergency.

If you're in a boss battle on the other hand, you obviously need to all stick together and work at wearing down the boss as a team. This is made much easier by the fact a boss floor only has four rooms and zero going on other than the boss battle.

Finally, remember to use the vocal commands. You should say 'help' whenever you're either on the floor, being surrounded by murderous ghosts from all sides or stuck in a trap. You should say 'hey' whenever you find a locked door and someone else has the key. And you should touch the relevant part of the map on the touch screen to leave a marker and show people what you want them to see/where you want them to go.

Red Coin Hunt Tips

After each round, four red coins will appear in the level. If you're playing alone, you need all four for a guaranteed chance of winning a bonus/item/upgrade. If you're in a team, whoever gets more will get the most chances in the powerup slot machine at the end of the level. This works like thus:

1. Each player automatically gets one 'shot', in that they get one space with their picture on it.

2. Anyone with a red coin or more gets one 'shot' for every red coin they've collected. So if you have three, you now have four possible chances at getting a bonus item from the slot machine at the end of the round.

Also, in game, all red coins will be generated so they're in directly connected rooms. So in theory, you should never have to cross a room without a red coin to reach one with a red coin after collecting one or more coins. Their layouts are generated so you can collect all red coins without stopping, backtracking, crossing empty rooms, etc.

So, now that the mechanism for getting red coins and bonuses has been explained, what exactly should you do to increase your chances of collecting red coins? Here are some tips:

First, move towards the centre of the floor if possible. The place that the four red coins spawn is random (unlike in Rush mode), so being near the centre lets you get to each possible red coin location fairly quickly.

Secondly, try and stand near a wardrobe. That way you can teleport to the other one if said other wardrobe is nearer to the red coins than your current location is.

Try and make sure you're not too dependant on doors if the timer is getting low. Why? Because Luigi won't interact with doors or objects once the timer hits zero, so you ideally want to be in at least the same room as the last red coin when the red coin hunt timer runs out.

Finally, don't hate yourself if you don't get all the red coins in every round. Really, many times it truly is impossible to get all the coins in the time limit simply because they've either been generated far from your current location or across four massive rooms you can't traverse quickly enough in about twenty seconds.

Powerups/Bonus Items

There are also various items you get after each round by collecting all the red coins (or winning the slot machine in a team game). Here's some info about each.

Dark Light Goggles

Makes invisible objects visible. In Polterpup mode, this seems like it'd be extremely useful, but in Hunter Mode it's as good as useless 90% of the time due to the only relevant thing in hidden pots being keys. This is unfortunately a very common item.

Floor Map

Gives you a full map of the entire floor with all stuff marked on it. Extremely useful in Rush Mode, and fairly useful in Polterpup and Hunter Mode too. Seems quite rare though.

Increased Suction Power (X2/X3)

Very useful in Hunter Mode, and is absolutely great boss killer. If you ever go against an 'American Footbrawl' (a boss based on a giant Slammer complete with forcefield), you'll really appreciate this item. Is quite common.

Heart Vacuum

Pretty much the best item in the game for Hunter Mode, and quite useful in the others too since it turns you into unofficial team medic and lets you get hearts from every single enemy/object you suck into the Poltergust 5000. Boss battles are no problem (unless you get a forcefield using one) due to the easy healing, rooms full of enemies become far less dangerous and all in all, it's pretty much the nearest thing to being immortal the ScareScraper offers. Pretty rare though.

You can tell which item is in use, since the player with it will have a giant icon of said item floating over their head in gameplay. And if you're using the Dark Light Goggles, the view point has a whole bunch of rainbow colouring around it.

All of these items can also be gotten in the actual gameplay by examining objects, but they're rare enough you should never rely on finding one mid level.

Traps

These are generally not that common in the ScareScraper, and are completely non existant in single player. Still, here are the possible traps you can encounter.

Curses

Placed at random by ghosts, these reverse your controls. To remove them, a team mate has to shine their Dark Light on you.

Just make sure you don't walk into a cursed player, since that curses you as well!

Warp Portals

Spawned by certain bosses, these warp you to a certain room almost like a Wall/Floor Master from the Zelda series. They're not hard to detect or avoid (just stay the hell away from the swirling purple vortex in the middle of the room), but they can be extremely annoying due to their tendency to plonk you down three rooms away from the boss you were fighting.

Carpets

Sort of like a pit trap, these trap you in the middle of a rug/carpet and make it so you can't move. You can still fight ghosts/dodge/do things, you just need a team mate to pull the carpet away to let you leave the spot you're stuck in. Very annoying.

Vases

These can fall on your head, and only be removed by a team mate pulling it off by aiming the Poltergust 5000 at the attached 'tassle'. Very annoying, but thankfully non existant when playing alone.

If you have a bit of time, you can tell which vases are traps by using the Poltergust on them. Real vases shake when you do, fake/trap ones don't.

Bosses

Every five floors of the mansion is home to a boss, a powerful enemy that has to be defeated to move upwards. These guys are basically reskinned versions of normal enemies (except about ten times the size), but have quite a few other interesting differences.

For one thing, they have very different attacks from the ghosts you face. Some can throw bombs, some can generate bugs and bats, some try to warp you away with black hole style vortexes and others can generate enemies by spitting or throwing them at you.

They also have a far larger amount of HP than normal, with your average boss having about 600 health. These guys take a lot of work to bring down...

Additionally, they always bring along an endless army of minions to break up the fight. Don't bother fighting most of these unless necessary, they never stop spawning and give you very little in return.

When on a boss floor, look for a room with multiple exits. This is because bosses are only ever fought in exactly four types of rooms:



1. Large 'stage' rooms with a stage at the background, chests and cupboards around the outside and jump pads in the foreground.



2. 'Guard Halls' with suits of armour lining the exterior, a cabinet for warping and various doors on the left, right, top and bottom.



3. 'Crypt passages' with multiple coffins and vases.



4. Corridors with multiple clocks and vases



They will never, ever be found in small square rooms. So if you see a medium room with two doors to the north and only one door to the west, it's very likely the boss will be found in the north room.



Oh, and here's a new tip someone told me. In a boss floor, every single object will give you hearts or healing objects rather than traps or junk when you examine it. So go and heal up by checking out a few rooms if you haven't already, it helps immensely when facing the boss.



As far as I can tell there's not really much correlation between boss 'archtype' or 'design' and the kind of room found in, but I generally tend to notice these types of ghost boss in these types of rooms:



Stage: Twin Greenies, Slammer, Gobber



Crypt: Creeper, Gobber, Twin Greenies



Guard Hall: Slammer, Sneaker Duo



Passage: Twin Greenies, Slammer, Sneaker Duo



Boss Themes/Archtypes



Additionally, all bosses are based on a certain type of common enemy, and have a specific type of theme. First up, archtypes. Here are the types of bosses you'll face:



1. Slammer Bosses



2. Greenie Bosses



3. Creeper Bosses



4. Gobber Bosses



5. Sneaker Bosses



The Slammers will always have a shield and generate bugs, the Greenies will always carry/chuck bombs, the Creepers will spit small Creepers, the Gobbers will generate Creepers along with sludge and Sneakers will use portals to try and warp you out the room. Look to the boss strategies section for advice with each.



They also all have a theme based on what page they're listed on in the vault. Here are all the themes:



Gold Ghost Series



Gold coloured versions of normal enemies.



Fashion Ghost Series



Ghosts with names and designs based on clothing. Examples include the Tether Jacket and Snug Thug.



Flower Ghost Series



Ghosts with flower based designs. Examples include Violet and Daisy.



Food Ghost Series



Ghosts based on food/with food designs. Like the Aweberry and Terrorange.



Halloween/Horror Ghost Series



Ghosts based on halloween/horror themes, like the Blimp Reaper and Spooky Spook.



Bug Ghost Series



Ghosts based on bugs and insects. Like the Dreadonfly and the Grumble Bee.



Marine Ghost Series



Ghosts based on water dwelling creatures like the Horrorca, Shriek Shark and Pondguin.



Sports Series



Ghosts with sports themes like the Bad-minton, American Footbrawl and Tennis Menace.



Animal Ghost Series



Ghosts with animal designs and names like the Zebrawl, Awelligator and Leoprank.



Each page has one boss based on a Greenie, Slammer, Creeper, Gobber and Sneaker respectively.




Drain one boss' health first. There are two reasons for this:



1. It gets one out the way quicker, leaving you room to focus on the other.



2. It means you get to add at least one boss ghost to your vault. Hence even if you eventually die/fail the floor, the ghost counts as 'captured' or 'collected'.



This advice is only relevant for Greenie and Sneaker based bosses, since these come in pairs.



Finally, you only have to beat the boss to clear the floor. Yes, the enemies they spawn have no 'ontological inertia' as the TV Tropes page goes, and will immediately vanish the second the boss dies. Basically, focus on the big guy and try and ignore the rest if playing solo.

If in a team on the other hand, it's best that one or two people go after the minor minions, and the other one or two try and take down the boss. If it turns out there's two bosses at once (it happens with the more powerful Greenie variants), then one guy should ideally go after each.


Here's some help for specific bosses:

Giant Slammer Variants (American Footbrawl and the like)


I'd say out of his way unless you want to get tackled. Nothing like a bit of protective padding to bring out your boisterous side




Possibly the most infuriating pests in the entire game, these guys manage to have both a forcefield AND 600 HP to boot. Did I mention they spawn killer bugs like an endless plague of locusts?

If you're on your own, God help you with these guys.

If you're in a team, get at least one player to blast away the bugs with the Strobe Light, another to take care of the minion ghosts and make the rest try and bring this guy down. Good luck!

Gobber Variants (Daisy, Snapper and other versions)


When he's not hungry, he's probably as gentle as a freshly picked flower. Too bad we'll never know though; this fellow has a bottomless stomach




Possibly the most annoying type of Gobber in the game (and that's really saying something), these guys basically sit in the middle of the room and spit an endless stream of sludge, Creepers and ghosts at you. They're definitely possible to beat opponents solo, just keep on your toes and don't try and hold them in your Poltergust's grip for too long.

It's advised to move slowly away from where you're standing after a while, otherwise you will be caught by either a mini Creeper or a gob of gunge. They also like to generate Hiders, so try and vary your location so the Hider is off screen and can't catch you in its line of fire.

If you're in a team, not sure what to suggest here. Maybe it'd be good to have them all try and take him down from different sides to minimise the risk of counter attacks.

Greenie Variants (Badminton, Melon-choly and the like)


Although his body looks like a big ol' melon, the vertical stripes have a slimming effect.




Arguably the least threatening bosses, these guys make up for it by coming in pairs. They also like to throw bombs too...

Best tactics here are to suck away the bomb, then strobe them and attack like normal. They're not that hard to fight, they don't break free that easily and their basic attacks like bomb spawning are extremely easy to dodge by controlling your path.

If you want to kill them quickly, suck in one, then let it pull you to another part of the room by gently holding back on the analogue stick. This way, you can have him slowly pull you round the room and not have to stand still and dodge the other ghosts. It's hard to explain, but basically you want to be following the Greenie boss round the boss arena like someone water skiing on the back of a speedboat. Do this right and you'll never, ever take a hit.

If in a team, split up and have each half go after a different one for massive damage.

Creeper Variants (Tether Jacket, Blobberfly and the like)


This ghost isn't anywhere near as graceful as a regular butterfly, or as harmless.




A giant creeper, these generate other creepers and ghosts and are generally quite simple to face. Just remember you need to use the Dark Light to make them appear initially, and that the 'weak' creepers automatically form and attack (even if you're nowhere near them) in this battle.

They will tend to spawn Slammers and Sneakers, so plan accordingly. You definitely want to take out any Sneakers that appear to stop them appearing from nowhere and breaking up your attacks, but you can also carefuly dodge Slammers to avoid wasting time and effort by actually fighting them.

In a team, I'd say have one or two people fight the boss, have the others take down the spawned enemies.

Sneaker Variants (Shriek Shark, Skoul, etc)


On first impression, you might think this fellow is creepy, but once you get to know him... you know for sure.




Annoying, these ghosts are basically tough, invisible and with an army of minions to boot. Did I mention they come in twos?

Worst still though is their 'portal' power. Oh yes, these guys can generate a vortex that warps you to a random room in the level. And these can appear anywhere in the boss arena...

Not sure how to advise here.

The Top Floor

The top floor of the ScareScraper (if not playing in Endless mode) is always home to a boss battle against 'The Brain', a much more powerful boss variant of the Poltergeist/Boffin mini bosses you've been fighting through the game. This guy can generate random enemies, throw books from the other side of the room even if he's not there and send you flying by generating a temporary forcefield and throwing off your catching attempts. He's not the hardest boss to take down by any means (and you can see him even when invisible with the Dark Light), but he's definitely an enemy meant to be faced by a full team of players.

Some tips I'd give here are as follows. First, use either the Dark Light or the moving books to track him down (this becomes a complete joke if you have the Dark Light Goggles), then blast him and suck him up. To avoid his forcefield, you can either blast him with a charged A Pull Meter attack whenever he gets ready to use it (he'll start making a funny sound beforehand) or jump the blast with the B button. The latter is a bit hard to pull off, the former will only delay it for about 5 seconds and cause you to need to repeatedly break his attacks up.

Hope that helps you defeat him!


This cunning ghost is the most evolved of all the Boffins. He awaits ghost trackers who are both brave and smart enough to match his powers.



So there's my Hunter Mode guide for Luigi's Mansion 2. I hope people found it useful, there isn't really too much in the way of guides for this game's multiplayer online.
 
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Excellent guide Nin! I'm thinking of doing a Polterpup one, as I absolutely LOVE that mode (and the Polterpups). If I end up making one, could I pretty much copy paste your boss guide, adding in my sneaker strategy (as after several attempts I figured out a good way to handle them)? You did it really well, and there's really no point in retyping everything if I can just copy-paste. Obviously I'll give you credit for that part of the guide. Just let me know!
 
Yeah you can. Do you fight bosses in Polterpup mode though? I've never been good enough at that to find out.

But I'll definitely be interested in reading your guide. And a guide for Rush Mode if anyone here is good at that.
 
Yep! Bosses are the same in every mode I think...I'm awful at Rush mode, but they're the same in Polterpup and Hunter. I'll start working on the guide then! Thanks for the help!
 
Have added more tips, including more ghost situations, more boss advice and red coin hunt tips.
 
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