Castlevania Circle of the Moon Tips & Tricks

[benjymlewis]

I love this game, so I thought I'd share some knowledge with everyone here.


1) Dashing Tips

When you get the Dash Boots extremely early in the game, you will notice that you have to double-tap to use them. Yes, you have to do this for the entire game.

But here's a little bit of knowledge to help you move more smoothly.

- When double-tapping, the two taps don't actually have to be in the same direction. If you press "left right" or "right left" quickly enough, it registers as a double-tap dash.

- You can keep your dash through room transitions and after jumping. You don't need to double-tap after every single jump.

- If you press the attack button while dashing, you can keep your dash after the attack is finished - even when doing the whip spin for as long as you like. You can even hold the other direction during your attack and start dashing the other way without having to double-tap. As long as you entered the attacking animation in a dash, you can leave it in a dash too, as long as you're holding a direction as the move ends.

- The same applies for the Tackle (obtained after Necromancer) and the Roc Wing (obtained after Camilla) actions too. You can even change direction during these animations and still keep your dash once your move is finished.

- The same also applies for getting flung by an enemy attack. If you get hit while dashing, then you can just hold either direction to run away without needing to double-tap.

If you feel like you don't have the finger dexterity to double-tap to run away from an incoming attack in time, then you may find it easier to do a slide attack (Down+Attack) for an instant burst of speed.

In the very short section at the start of the game before you obtain the Dash Boots, Nathan's fastest form of movement is repeatedly performing slide attacks.


2) Slide Attack Tips

Your slide attack (Down+Attack) does as much damage as your weapon, but comes out quicker and moves you forwards. However, if you use it on an enemy, you will take contact damage, unless it is the final hit.

So to take full advantage of your slide, you should count how many hits it takes to beat an enemy type, and then use the slide only as the final hit. This can be useful for situationally positioning yourself amongst a group of enemies, or killing an enemy quickly before its next attack comes out.

The Tackle (obtained after Necromancer) is also useful as a single-hit finishing blow, however its use is more situational than the regular slide due to the long tumbling animation.

It should also be noted that your slide and Tackle damage is EXACTLY the same as your current weapon's damage - even when powered up via DSS cards. This means you can increase the power of your slide just by activating a Mercury or Mars combination, and it doesn't cost any MP to use the powered-up slide. The most extreme use of this is in the Mars+Black Dog combination, where your slide becomes ridiculously powerful with no downside.

Sliding and Tackling is your only form of dealing damage while you are cursed. Obviously using a Cure Curse potion is the better option, but if you've run out, then using these moves to deal with any Bloody Swords or Marionettes that are harassing you is a good option.


3) Breakable walls

Circle of the Moon has by far the most secret rooms hidden behind breakable walls of all the Castlevania games - there are 37 of them! Compared to Aria of Sorrow that has 13, Symphony of the Night that has 11x2, and Harmony of Dissonance that has zero.

Breakable walls in Circle of the moon only require one hit to reveal themselves, and ANY source of damage will do this. Jupiter+Serpent and Jupiter+Manticore are very good at revealing the breakable walls passively. I also recommend just attacking any dead ends you come across.


4) Subweapons

By FAR the most useful subweapon is the Cross. The most easy-to-reach cross in the game is in Triumph Hallway, right at the castle gate, in the courtyard with a Flame Armor.
If you don't have a Cross by the time you are at Iron Golem, however, there is one very close by, in a secret room between the save point and the boss room.

The Cross is best for large, slow moving or stationary targets, making it the perfect weapon for Iron Golem, Adramelech and Camilla. It is also fairly useful on Dragon Zombie, though they are trickier to hit with it.
The trick is to space yourself properly so that the cross's turnaround occurs on top of the enemy, which will deal many hits of damage.

Axe is useful for Necromancer, though Cross is still probably better actually. Axe can also be useful for enemies that fly overhead in annoying ways such as the Succubus.

Holy Water is useful for slow ground enemies such as the various Armors, though Cross is also good against them, so I barely bother swapping to it.

Stopwatch can be surprisingly useful too! The first Stopwatch you can find is in the Machine Tower. Use it for an easier time in areas where multiple enemies can overwhelm you, for example the Eternal Corridor or Chapel Tower.


5) Elements

Each enemy has one of the ten elements associated with it. However, there isn't any kind of Pokémon chart of weaknesses and resistances - the only thing you need to keep in mind is that an enemy attacked by its own element will take half damage. All other elemental damage is neutral.

Knowing an enemy's element, however, is necessary to make proper use of the Neptune card combinations.

It can be a little tricky to determine which element a monster is. You may have noticed that the Bomber Skeleton's bombs causes Nathan to briefly turn red, and the Electric Skeleton's attack causes Nathan to briefly turn bright blue. All elements have a colour associated with them like this, though not all enemies have an attack that will actually show the colour.

If an enemy doesn't have an obvious element, then it is most likely Dark element. For example, Axe Armor's axes causes Nathan to turn dark green when hit. This is the colour a Dark element shows.

When determining which elemental DSS power to use, especially with Mercury and Mars, you shouldn't concern yourself too much with which element it is, as it doesn't make a difference most of the time. Rather, the things to look out for are the animation speed, hitboxes, and the change to your STR each DSS combination provides. And additionally, Cockatrice and Serpent card powers have the ability to petrify and freeze enemies. Those Brain Floats do look very freezable, don't they?


6) DSS Info

To activate a DSS ability, you need to select one Action card and one Attribute card in the DSS menu, and then during gameplay, press L to activate the power.

Mercury and Salamander are very common drops from Bone Head and Skeleton Bomber at the start of the game. This combination will get you started with a cool flame whip. But all other cards will take a bit of luck or a bit of grinding to acquire.

A DSS combination's description will be "???" until you personally witness the effect take place. In the case of Mercury+Salamander, this means you just need to see the cool flame whip. Some other card combinations have more specific effects that may take some experimentation, however.

Regarding the Apollo and Uranus cards, it is rather unlikely most players will figure out their effects without help. ...For these, you need to perform a half-circle motion starting from down to up, and then, while still holding up, press Attack. Yup, the game doesn't tell you how to do it until you've already done it once.


7) Acquiring DSS cards

The cards are rare. This is well-known.

Here's a tip about acquiring cards.

If you still do not have Venus and Mandragora by the time you beat Necromancer, there is a long corridor nearby filled with nothing but Slimes and Axe Armors, located across the way from the local save point. This is the best place to get both of these cards.

Venus and Mandragora together provide a very useful "Luck increases by 25%" effect. From now on, this is the card combo you will be using when you're grinding for the rest of the cards. Luck in this game affects enemy item drops.

If possible, you can also equip yourself with Luck-boosting gear, if you've found any. Try getting some Luck Rings from the Zombie Thieves in the passageway that leads to Machine Tower.

When going for the cards, it is important to have patience. Sometimes they really just don't want to drop. In these instances, it may be better to come back another time, as your Luck stat will naturally increase as you level up.

Additionally...... there exists a popular glitch that allows you to use any DSS card combination, even when you don't have the cards yet. It's really easy to perform, but some players don't like to abuse such developer oversights. I won't mention it here, but feel free to look up "DSS glitch" on Google.

[HeraldOfOpera]

In the context of this collection specifically, DSS combinations are also in the in-game Encyclopedia accessed via the F1 key (I don't own a relevant controller but you still have a keyboard),

[UXM266]

Great guide! I’d like to add that a easy way to get DSS cards is to use and abuse the rewind system.

If the card doesn’t drop, then rewind before the final hit. And go again. The drop rate takes effect on death not on monster spawn.

So for those annoying candles or enemies that take a while to kill, just rewind and voila! It still takes farming and well luck. But a lot less time and aggravation.

[Eleveneleven]

Protip to destroy all tips for this game: Use the DSS glitch. Takes two seconds. Probably the easiest and one of the most gamebreaking bugs in all of gaming history. The most hilarious oversight M2 could have spent 10 minutes fixing.

[benjymlewis]

Originally posted by Eleveneleven:

The most hilarious oversight M2 could have spent 10 minutes fixing.

I wouldn't be all that surprised if M2 were fully aware of the DSS gitch, but chose to leave it there for authenticity's sake. It is after all a very well-known aspect of the game, and leaving it in would not disrupt anybody's enjoyment of the game nearly as much as patching it out would have.