Powering Up

Pit begins the game with a single bar of Endurance, a Strength rating of one arrow, and a bow capable of short-range attacks. Luckily, there are several ways to improve Pit’s combat abilities as you progress through the game.

Increasing Endurance

Pit’s Endurance meter starts out with only one bar, but you can unlock up to four additional Endurance bars by reaching various score thresholds. The more enemies you defeat, the faster you add new bars to Pit’s Endurance meter.

Endurance Levels

Each time you reach a checkpoint, all the points you earned in the previous stage are added to your total score. Each time you earn a new bar, it’s automatically added to Pit’s Endurance meter.

Increasing Strength

When the game starts, Pit has a Strength rating of one arrow. To increase this rating, you must earn and collect new arrows from Sacred Chambers. There are several factors that determine whether or not a god appears in a Sacred Chamber; some of the actions you take improve your chances of receiving an arrow, while others count against you.

High-skill actions include:

• Defeating enemies that award points
• Collecting Hearts
• Collecting Mallets
• Earning or recovering an enchanted Weapon
• Purchasing inventory items

Note that some high-skill actions carry much more weight than others. In most cases, defeating an enemy worth 500 points is deemed much more impressive than defeating an enemy worth 100 points; earning an enchanted Weapon is far more impressive than purchasing an Angel’s Feather. Put simply, the more high-skill actions you perform before you reach a Sacred Chamber, the better your chances of boosting Pit’s Strength rating.

Low-skill actions include:

• Taking damage from enemies
• Firing arrows
• Breaking Treasure Chamber containers

Obviously, it isn’t practical to avoid all low-skill actions. The idea is to weigh any risks against potential rewards. It’s well worth raiding a Treasure Chamber if you emerge with a nice haul of items, and if a few arrows allow you to defeat an enemy, don’t hesitate to shoot. Just remember to make up for each low-skill action with plenty of high-skill actions.

Activating Weapons

You can earn enchanted Weapons by completing challenges in Sacred Training Chambers. Each time you succeed, you can choose one of three powerful items: Flaming Arrows, the Sacred Bow, or the Protective Crystal. However, acquiring one of these items is just the first step—each Weapon you collect must be activated before it can be used.

Weapon activation is tied to Pit’s Endurance meter. A newly acquired Weapon remains dormant (grayed out) until Pit’s Endurance meets or exceeds a specific number of full bars. The minimum amount of Endurance needed to activate a particular Weapon depends on the order in which the three Weapons are chosen.

Weapon Activation

Once a Weapon has been activated, it no longer carries any Endurance requirements. Weapons can’t be used in fortresses, so all Weapons are deactivated when Pit enters one of these stages. Once the fortress has been conquered, any previously activated Weapons automatically regain their power.