Lemmings hints
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Climber
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A lemming that has become a Climber will keep this skill
through the rest of its life. The only other skill that will allow
that is the Floater. In the versions that show you what
kind of lemming you’re highlighting,
a lemming with the Climber skill will always appear as “Climber” no
matter what it’s doing, unless it has also been given the Floater
’ll be an Athlete.
A Climber has the ability to climb up any completely vertical wall, or anything slanted towards the direction the lemming is moving in, in which case he’ll actually just be both walking and climbing. The moment the Climber hits any obstacle during its vertical climb (this can be just one pixel sticking out), he will turn around and fall down. If it’s a long fall, and he’s not a Floater, he’ll splatter to death.
It’ll rarely happen that there’s a level in which you have to make all lemmings Climbers. Instead, Climbers are mostly good for getting past an obstacle other lemmings can’t pass, and preparing the rest of the route to the exit for them to follow once he’s
done.
One thing you’ll have to keep in mind is that the Climber will
continue climbing wherever he can, up anything that’s perfectly
vertical. Ways of preventing this are by making him a Builder either at
a place with low headspace (once he reaches the ceiling, he will turn
around), a wall (as long as he’s not ran out of building blocks
by the time he gets to the wall) or by making him dig to a point where
he can’t climb upwards anymore. A Miner or Basher would probably
be best (make him a Builder in the end if otherwise he’d dig on
to certain death, or let him hit metal so he’ll turn around by
himself), as a Digger would still just climb upwards once hitting metal
(though the builder trick would still work, if he’d
dug far enough).
Another function for a Climber is to make a hole up a wall by being made a Bomber, set to explode at the right moment. This isn’t always easy to time, but for some levels it’s necessary to get passed a wall. While climbing a wall, the Bomber and Floater skills are the only things you give to a Climber. Of course if there’s just the tiniest bit in which the lemming will just be walking, you can give any other skill at that point.
Something else interesting worth noting, in some versions of Lemmings,
if a lemming somehow gets completely stuck (with nowhere to move) making
him a climber will allow him to slowly climb upwards until there’s
space for him to walk anyway.
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Floater
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Floaters are the second type of lemmings that will keep their skills
for the remainder of the level. When given the Climber skill, Floaters
become Athletes.
The Floater skill is given to lemmings for the purpose of letting them survive all falls, no matter from how high. In some Lemmings versions you can give the Floater skill to lemmings at the very moment before they’d splat on the ground, in others they’d actually have to have their parasol appear first.
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Bomber
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Making a lemming a Bomber gives him five seconds left to live, after which he'll blow up, leaving a crater behind. Bombers are usually assigned to Blockers to get rid of them, or they can be given for the purpose of making the crater. Often a Bomber must be well timed if you need to have it explode at an exact point. If you have other skills to spare (like a blocker or builder), you may want to give one of these to the lemming to keep him at that point.
Always remember the crater a Bomber will cause, as these may be fatal to other lemmings when, say, you blow up a Blocker on a thin surface. All other lemmings would then just fall off the screen.
Note that when you make a Blocker a Bomber, there’ll be about a second in which he will stop Blocking, just before he leaves a crater. This can be important to remember when the lemmings need this crater to, say, survive a fall, as some lemmings might still just walk through the ex-Blocker (at his level), rather than walk through the crater he’s caused.
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Blocker |
Blockers will make any lemming that walks
into it turn around. A Blocker can be removed by either
making him a Bomber to blow him up, or by removing
the ground under him (using a Miner, Basher or Bomber,
or a combination). Doing the latter will turn the Blocker
back into a walking lemming, moving
in the direction it was going when originally made into
a Blocker. This is sometimes necessary when you can’t
afford this lemming to die.
An alternative way of getting passed a Blocker is by building over him.
One Builder will never be enough for this (when at the same height of
the Blocker), though two will, assuming there’s initially enough
distance between them.
If a Builder is building too close to the Blocker (rather than building over him), he will continue to build in the opposite direction.
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Builder |
Builders will build a diagonal stairway
(about 22 degrees upwards) using 12 stepping blocks. Once
the Builder runs out, he will shrug, and continue
walking. At this point you can assign the Builder skill
to him again, giving him 12 more steps to build. The lemming
will also stop building
once he’s hit a wall or his head hits the ceiling.
The Builder skill is a very useful tool for several different purposes.
The first, used mostly, is to build over a gap which lemmings could not
normally walk out of. The next would be getting lemmings to a higher point,
often through use of multiple stairways. If you’re building your
lemmings out of a narrow gap, you can let your bridges zigzag upwards,
by making a new Builder build in the opposite direction from the top step
of the first bridge.
If you wait a slight moment when a Builder is done with his stairway,
you can let him start his next one closer to the end of his last step.
This can be useful when you want to span a larger distance with your total
bridge. Alternatively, it is possible to start a bit sooner on the last
step (though the lemming will have to start from the bottom of the first
stairs to get there), and that way create a narrower bridge, in case you
need to end up a little higher.
It is also worth noting that a Builder will always put down one step,
wherever he is. Even though he will stop building after this first step
if he has no head room, it may allow you to add just a few steps more
if you need them.
Other uses for Builders actually don’t have much to do with the building itself…they are mainly to stop the lemming from what he’s doing (like a digging skill), or making him walk in the opposite direction (which will only work if he’ll bump his head against something).
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Basher |
Bashers will dig perfectly horizontally.
Make sure you give the skill at the right moment (when
he’s next to the wall), else he’ll
just make one bashing motion, and will continue walking
again. A Basher will continue bashing until he hits air
or metal. There needs to be a
certain amount of material for him to bash through (about
half the size of a lemming or more) for him to continue
bashing.
Other things to note about Bashers:
When you have a Builder building into a wall you want him to bash through,
it is possible to do this in one go. You have to make sure you make him
a Basher after the second tile touches (actually goes through for a few
pixels) the wall, if you do it at the moment of the first one, he will
bash away this tile, and fall right in front of the wall. If you wait
until after the second tile, he’ll just turn around. Sometimes
this is okay and you can bash again on the way back, but other times you’ll
want to bash straight away.
The “single bash” that a Basher does when he doesn’t have enough material to bash through can actually be useful too. For one thing, he’ll still bash away some material (depending on how close it is to him) which can sometimes be all that you need. Also, if you have enough Bashers to afford it, you can make a lemming bash to put him behind a little, if you’d like to give the Basher in front of him more time, or to separate him better from another lemming.
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Miner |
Miners will dig diagonally downwards, at
exactly the same slope as the Builders build upwards. This
makes the Miner skill very useful as an alternative
way of getting lemmings safely down somewhere or up somewhere.
Down, because a lemming going diagonally downwards will
never need to fall the distance,
risking death. Up, because any lemming will be able to
walk up a “mine” a
Miner as dug out, without a needing to be a Climber or
having a Builder build this way up. Of course, a lemming
will have to get up there in the
first case to be able to dig downwards.
When a Miner’s hacking away, he removes a couple of pixels above his head too, which can be useful to either get to a slightly higher point (you’ll have to make him a Builder after the first hack, of course) or to remove the ground under a Blocker, thereby making him a walker again.
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Digger |
Diggers dig perfectly vertically. This can
be dangerous, because if a lemming’s dug too far,
he might dig off the screen or into water/lava. Another
problem can be digging far enough to make any lemmings
that would fall in the hole die from having fallen too
far. The digger himself could survive a fall from wherever
he’s dug from, as he won’t
need to fall the distance from where he started digging,
unlike other lemmings.
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