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No-Damage Run
A variation of the
where the goal is to win with no damage, or at least no deaths (which is commonly referred to as "Hardcore Mode" and is sometimes directly supported as part of the game's coding). This usually requires a lot of experience with the game in question, and due to the randomness/unpredictability of many games it can be very challenging, if not impossible. Virtually impossible in
and ), for example, and exceedingly difficult in the higher levels of
(where someone is bound to hit you once with a ) and .
games required the player to perform No Damage Runs as a matter of course. This also boils down to making your run entirely of .
Many tool-assisted
are also No Damage Runs, since the player can control the character precisely and manipulate random events in his favor. You'd think it would be "most", but taking damage or even dying actually saves time in many games, thanks to
and the often-resulting knockback from taking damage which usually ends up being the fastest way to move or respawn points strewn across long travel distances, so they can be used for .
A variation common among
in particular is the 1CC, or "1 Credit Clear", meaning that the game is completed without continuing (dying is still permissible). Given that Shoot-em-ups will often provide the player with infinite continues, and that each credit has finite lives, most fans agree that to claim to have beaten a shmup requires a No Continue Run. A No Death Run (aka 1LC, "1 Life Clear" or "No Miss Clear"note&) is even more impressive, especially considering that most Shoot-em-ups have the player as a . This is where most
games get their .
In , hitting successive
thus, a No Damage Run of a whole stage is known as a "Full Combo", or FC.
If a No Damage Run is too much for you, you can instead strive for a No Death Run or a No Continue Run, or select
as a difficulty level for an in-game No Death Run. If the goal is to deal no damage, see .
In , each boss yields a special
if defeated without taking any hits, making this a game-encouraged challenge. It's even easier when you get the Death Ring, which boosts your stats absurdly (meaning less hits needed to kill a boss), but kills you if you take even a single hit while it's equipped (which makes retrying easier).note&
This is part of the reason why the Combat School missions are hard in
7: In order to get the best possible score, you not only have to clear the challenge in the fastest time, but do it without dying once. In a
where your character is a .
games, where the characters are , impose this in order to view any secrets at all. And the first secret is 20 rounds away.
awards you with the Platinum Ace medal if you go through the story mode and avoid any damage.
has the "No Lives Lost" challenge available in all levels, also known as "acing" a level. Get through an entire level without dying once (including use of the Retry command if you get stuck in a level), and you get some extra
at the Scoreboard. Required to get
in Story Mode, because completion is measured by how many items you've collected in all levels, and items given by No Lives Lost definitely count. Some levels, like Survival Challenges, are literally impossible to do this, because to finish you MUST die somehow (usually part of the challenge, like collect Score Bubbles while staying out of the ), but these aren' you just have to complete the Survival Challenge levels to add to your completion percentage. Player-made levels have this option, so the creators can give extra gifts to players who are really good at their levels, but these aren't required for 100% completion.
Clearing the entirety of either Classic, Adventure, or All-Star modes without taking damage gives you a special bonus. If you're going for the Diskun trophy that requires earning every bonus, this is gonna be one of the . Luckily, all three modes grant the same bonus, so you only have to do it once.
There's also two bonuses for clearing a single round without taking damage — Impervious, if you dealt damage to any enemies, or Switzerland, .
These types of runs are frequently required to unlock
modes in the various installments of the
franchise.
Required (until one reaches the secret boss, at which point it's lifted) to get each character's second ending in .
have separate achievements for doing a run with no continues, no deaths, and no damage. A no death run can actually be easier than most expect by using a lot of items, but good luck doing a no damage run!
If you don't die any time during , it is revealed that Marin escaped the .
actually requires this for one of its sidequests, carrying an exceptionally fragile barrel across monster-infested Hyrule Field. In addition to the barrel breaking if you so much as look at it funny, it's a : wait too long, like, say, killing the monsters, and it cools down to uselessness.
games have traditionally made no damage running part of the requirement for getting some . A bonus mission in DMC 3 requires you to defeat a patch of enemies untouched to receive one . DMC 3 also has a difficulty based on this, Heaven or Hell where both the . DMC 4 has two, the aforementioned difficulty from 3, and Hell and Hell where
but the enemies don't .
Required to beat
on the highest difficulty, since you're a
and can't save your game. You will not want to try this, as
and the NES version of , force this on Hard mode by making the player a .
has "Daredevil Comets", requiring you to complete one of the level's challenges (often a ) as a . The game's , , and the Daredevil run through
has the Daredevil Comets back, and then takes it
with the very last star, a challenge called .
One of the bosses in
gives you a
when killing it with no damage taken. Of course, no damage runs are fairly common in that game. Especially in the Wii version's "Hard" mode which removes all
from the game, against enemies that do increasing amounts of damage.
To get the 'I Will Survive' trophy/achievement for
Re-Shelled, you are required to play "survival mode" where you only have one life to get through all eight levels of the game.
have this. There's an achievement for doing this in one level of , and achievements for EVERY level in
II: The Original Trilogy.
has this as an optional card condition for Orphanage, the first level in the expansion pack Battle Out of Hell.
give you a lot of bonus points at the end of level for performing these.
The Papillion suit in
turns Vanessa into a
- completing the game while wearing this means never taking a single hit.
In , you can take optional boasts during quests (which gives extra Renown if you succeed in completing the boast), one of which is taking no damage. It's incredibly easy to pull this off once you get the
Mana Shield spell, since taking a hit with the shield on doesn't count.
It is possible in some
missions, and you even get a nice medal for it, however, in the course of the single player game any pig that dies in more than two invidual battles is . It's nigh impossible to finish the entire game without losing at least a few good pigs.
Subverted in , if you got to the final form of the
on one credit, , and you'll get the special
where you submarine doesn't escape the exploding enemy headquarters (after beating said boss). If you want the good ending, you'll have to .
In order to reach the true ending of , the player must complete a No Death Run with at most one ring out.
Completing
with no lives lost, AND no bombs used, AND at least 120 million points, grants you access to a harder version of the second loop.
Futari Black Label has a
that can only be challenged by completing the entire game on God Mode () up to that point on a single life.
which require this.
Required in
for a series of achievements titled "Iron Boy" runs, which require you to complete an entire world without dying. The achievements start out relatively easy with the first few worlds, but eventually get harder, going all the way up to Impossible Boy, which requires you to beat
without dying, which is somewhat of an inhuman feat, considering the game's difficulty. Only 0.1% percent of all Steam users who have the game also have this achievement, and a good majority of them are cheaters. Depending on the world that is being played, the game will let players use alternate characters (with the exceptions of
and Meat Ninja) for the run, and let players play levels out of order, so it's more flexible with this trope than other games.
has achievements for it, and you get a notification in-game in the form of an unlock. They also have "Boy" titles: Basement (Basement/Cellar floors with no damage), Spelunker (Caves), Darkness (Depths/Necropolis), and
Momma's (Womb/Utero) Boy for each chapter. Darkness is currently the hardest to get. It's practically game-imposed with Judas, Samson, ??? and
The Lost in Rebirth: the first two only have one heart to start, the third has no natural health and must live off rarer heart drops that always stack but never refill, meaning that during a run of bad drops you can take very few hits, the final one can't collect any hearts whatsoever, turning him into the game's only .
games reward the player with a flashing rainbow PERFECT! on the high scores table for not missing a single beat or other collectible (later games add the requirement of not getting hit by specific projectiles). The difficulty of such a run depends on the game, but they are notoriously difficult, enough that
In the very first , beating all 70 stages of Expert, Expert Extra, and Master in a single no-death no-warp run would actually be acknowledged by the game with a special message during the credits (which varied depending on which monkey you chose to play as). In addition, the Play Point values were set up so that such a feat would net you exactly 9,999 Play P die once or use a single warp to skip a level and you'll end up with less.
unlocks a No Death Mode, which challenges you to play through as much of the game as you can on a single life. All checkpoints are removed, you can't save,
you no longer need to die to nab the Shiny Trinket in it, and dying ends your game and kicks you to a results screen. Successfully completing the entire game in No Death Mode awards you a .
In , completing a level or defeating a boss without any Kirby getting hit earns you a gold star. You can't use a mid-level shortcut, however.
A requirement for most of 's H while you still have infinite lives and can take a few hits, dying/continuing places you back at the beginning of the game or your last save (thus undoing hours of progress), there are no checkpoints note&, the game is permanently stuck on the hardest difficulty (very strong enemies and few items), everything from your inventory (including upgrades) cannot be carried over through
and you can only save three times over all 15 chapters. And all you get is the same unloc .
And a novelty foam finger with "#1" on it for a gun.
combines this with . You get a pacifist bonus at the end of a level if you complete it without getting hit, AND not firing any shots. Very hard to pull off, especially in later stages.
Completing a mission map in
without taking any damage earns you the "Fly like a Butterfly" medal, which boosts your maximum HP by 100 points when equipped.
. Typically, the sorts of people who do this also import the
games, and play them on . Blocking is mandatory.
mode where your save is erased when you die. It also has an
for finishing all the quest lines in DiD.
has Strict Play, which is basically the same minus the achievement.
Finishing the original NES version of
Completing it in a single life is widely considered one of the hardest gaming challenges you will ever undertake in your gaming career.
To obtain the perfect ending in , you have to break all boxes in every stage without dying. This gets
hard in the . Some levels in the sequels require you to go up ot a certain point without dying to unlock a . Also,
introduced the time trials, where there are no Checkpoints but more Aku Aku crates to make up for it.
makes it so that it's only the colored gems that you can't die to obtain in the first game.
Some of the more recent
games have an achievement for this:
has one for beating the final boss without getting hit. In addition, the Challenge act that rewards Modern Sonic's Endless Boost skill requires one, as the skill turns him into a .
The 2011 port of
has one for defeating
without getting hit.
: Episode I has one for beating the E.G.G. Station Zone with no damage.
Some of the Treasure Hunt challenges on
require beating a specific chapter without taking any damage at all.
has an achievement for beating the game in Gauntlet mode without continues, called "" There are two more achievements for doing so on Divine and Judgement difficulties, and another two for doing it without taking a single hit on those difficulties.
Some screens in
award you one of the three stars for reaching the finish point with no damage to your vehicle.
In order to get the "" achievement in , you must complete a level in the final chapter without getting hit at all. Fortunately, it isn't that hard to do in the first stage of the chapter as long as the player is careful.
has Full Contact Challenges for the various songs. A single "Harsh" ranking results in you failing the song.
has a Hardcore Mode that deletes the entire game world if the player dies. Since the entire point of the game is to explore the world and shape it through building, mining, and crafting, this can be a very painful experience if the player has been working on a world for a while, and has grown attached to it. Hardcore Mode also locks the game on the highest difficulty setting, maximizing the amount of damage dealt by monsters, and otherwise making survival as difficult as possible. As an extra kick, the game forces you to press the button that irrevocably deletes your world yourself, rather than doing it automatically upon your death. Hardcore Mode was eventually made available for multiplayer servers in addition to single-player gameplay. In multiplayer, Hardcore Mode means that a player is permanently banned from the server if they die.
has an alternate ending for a No Damage Run, where the culprit is never discovered. Then the game .
quests, there are achievements for completing them without taking any damage, such as a quest in which you must retrieve an item from a collapsing and booby-trapped ruin. These are fairly challenging, but not quite as difficult as some of the examples listed above, since they tend to be shorter and the dangers are telegraphed more (such as a shadow where a rock is about to fall, or a red circle around an enemy area of effect attack).
Sporcle has
which expect you to do this: type (or click) a wrong answer and it ends.
features an achievement for getting through the entire bar brawl without a single hit landing on 47.
In , you can only get
by scoring lots of combo, finishing the level fast, and most importantly, dodging everything the game throws at you. A scratch will instantly drop you to a mere Platinum.
In , a Virtual Reality MMORPG, the main character is perfectly capable of this because of his relentless training as a martial artist and sword user, and it is in fact necessary in serious battles, as his melee class is a bit of a . However, he often spends most of his time when fighting ordinary battles with little to no HP, dodging and parrying (not an in-game skill) all attacks... because that is the game's condition for raising the endurance stat (the endurance stat reduces incoming damage).
The "no deaths" version is required in
to fight Shadow Man in Wily Stage 4.
In 's Mii Force game, one of goals in each level is beating it without taking a single hit. In order to obtain all the
you need to do this in every stage. Additionally, the unlockable Arcade Mode has a Hard difficulty, where you only have a single weapon, and thus only
to get through every stage in the game in one run.
Old Taito arcade game Raimais allows you to skip levels if you beat all the previous without dying.
In , the only way to make the Cannon fully destroy Eurasia (thus saving you the trouble of going through the remaining four stages, and also giving you bonus exposition on the Zero Virus) is to complete the first four levels and the Dynamo battle without using a single continue.
Much like 's Impossible difficulty,
has "YOLO" difficulty. The same restrictions apply - in short, this is required for that mode.
Not a strict requirement, but if you want to make three stars in any of the combat challenges in
or , especially the so-called Insane challenges, you really can't take damage. (The game does not specify that you can't, but taking damage resets your combo meter, and you essentially need to be flawless to win most challenges.)
This is the basis of some of the challenges in .
Some of the challenges in
fit this, as they require the Super Acorn to use - getting hit means losing your gliding/flying powers, and almost immediately the game kills you for it.
Completing every stage in
Maximum Tune 2 and its successors without a single defeat grants a few bonuses. First, you get a special title: "Undefeated Winner of the Highway" in 2, or "Undefeated Highway Dominator" in 3. Second, in 2, you get two final tuning blocks instead of one (if you lose, you simply have to finish Story Mode and then drive 5,000 kilometers), and in 3 you unlock the Wangan Midnight R soundtrack.
The true last challenge in . Mario has to complete a , but he has to do it without power ups.
A variant used among the
community is the "Maximum Minimum Health" run, where the player attempts the level on . Their score is the lowest health they had at any point in the level, or, if they didn't take any damage, their final health at the end of the level. There's also the unofficial "Reality" challenge: finish a level without ever taking damage (the reasoning being that in real life you die when shot), and without using the plasma rifle or the BFG (since these weapons don't exist in real life.)
There is an achievement for a No Death Run in . Given that ending the game with a triple digit death count is downright easy, this generally considered , only possible to achieve through . Better yet, the Definitive Edition adds , which enforces this by immediately deleting your save when you die as well as disabling save copying.
has this as one of the special challenges to complete in each level. On a larger scale, completing all 20 rounds of Service Mode in one go, without a single game over, is one of the ways to .
Technically speaking, "Don't get hit" in
brings you down to a quarter of a heart if you get hit, and you can recover health to get another hit without having to restart. Aceing a level, however, requires you take as little damage as possible and getting hit on these tends to pass the C rank requirement, which means an A rank requires this.
Beating each of the bosses without taking a hit in
grants you an achievement.
Spoofed in
3: at the beginning of the game,
has taken away the heroes' ability to do literally anything, including move left and right. A minor enemy then bumps into them, causing Jerry to complain about how cheap that was and Chao to laugh that No Damage Runs have now been rendered impossible.
Chronicle Saviours awards 3 million points for completing a Zone witho this includes shield damage. AC Mode, a port of Dariusburst Another Chronicle, has achievements for completing the hardest routes of Original and EX modes without taking any damage. Another Chronicle itself has a 10 million point award for beating the game with no ships lost between all participating players, although that one allows taking damage, just not losing any lives.
series has these as requirements for some of Skill Points, which can turn them into
if they're put into one of more tedious locations. From
onwards they're also condition of winning some of . Funnily enough in second game you can use
to cheese them up. Not so much in , since developers wised up and your Shield Charger/Tesla Barrier ammo gets emptied at the beginning of challenge having this as requirement.
has the "Dodge Master" series of achievements, which require the player to beat each boss without taking a single hit, something easier said than done in a
game. Some of the later bosses are
fights, and allow the player to take one to three hits before failing the achievement. There's also an achievement for clearing the entire game without taking any damage from .
Alternative Title(s):
No Death Run,
No Continue Run
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoDamageRun