darkSpyro

So I'm starting to do Score Mode in the first level and I've collected nearly everything including multipliers I can but I still don't have enough to get three stars. Am I doing something wrong? Does difficulty have a factor?

Quote: digiharrison

So I'm starting to do Score Mode in the first level and I've collected nearly everything including multipliers I can but I still don't have enough to get three stars. Am I doing something wrong? Does difficulty have a factor?

Yep, difficulty is almost the main factor, you get much higher base points for beating enemies and such the higher the difficulty. I think you basically need to do it on at least hard mode to get 3 stars, and nightmare to guarantee/overshoot combined with a decent performance and multipliers.

Also personally I was a bit confused on how the scoring worked until recently, so I'll leave an explanation in case it's helpful for anyone else.

Your total score is displayed and ongoing. It ticks up each time you do something that awards base XP, like defeating an enemy or picking up gold or I think completing objectives. The difficulty you set bumps up these base points as a multiplier.

On top of this, you can build up another displayed multiplier capped at 30x by landing hits and building up the meter and collecting X1 combo tokens that are always around where you would normally find treasures and things, and also randomly spawned sometimes in destructible scenes/enemies you defeat. This combo gets reduced when you take hits (so you also get to collect the defense tokens that give you a one hit shield) and totally reset if you lose a Skylander, however since the combo is applied each time you get a base point tick, it's not like your running total score will ever shrink. So if you mess up towards the very end it won't impact your end score that much.

Hopefully that made sense. For some reason I assumed the score as calculated and multiplied at the ending screen, and freaked out when I lost my combo stack near the very end of a level, but I kept most of my points and finally figured out how the scoring works late

Difficulty level does it all. It's pretty much impossible scoring 3 stars on easy. On medium you can earn 3 with time bonus, but I would advice playing hard or nightmare earning "easy" stars.

Example
Chompy challange score 560 000 playing hard mode
Chompy challange on nightmare scores in the million region, that's how much difference you get.

Difficulty may play some in building the multiplier up and scoring.

I've merely done score mode in medium setting so far but my proudest moment was getting over 900,000 on the Tower of Time and only needed 250,000 to get the 3 stars. The swap zones seemed to have boosted the point gain(especially the spinning zone).

I'm doing hard mode now in story line. Looking forward to another round of scoring though.

Nightmare should throw your score through the roof - check out the leaderboard topic to (//forum.darkspyro.net/spyro/viewposts.php?topic=97595) to see some of the scores people are getting.

i got 3 stars on my first try on normal, but that was because i was using magma charge and doing it co-op.

What you should do it play through all the levels on nightmare with Magna Jet. Magna Charge's magnetism help a lot when it comes to killing smaller enemies. If you have the rocket path and the Soul Gem for Boom Jet's bottom path, his Soul Gem gives about 135 to enemies when pressing A rapidly. This is a great combo for when it comes to area challenges, bonus missions, time attack, and score mode.

Wait, does throwing in a 2nd player in Score Mode give you a noticeable boost?

Don't forget about the Elemental Gates and Swap Zones. You'll have more chance of scoring higher enough to get all three stars.