Hi All,
I made an account just for this.
I believe I am the first person to publish a map of MNOG 2, at least a rough one, and do some math on the game. I haven’t seen anything like this in any google searches. I was inspired by “Indigogeek”'s map for MNOG1 and “CatMatt_”'s VNOG map. I’ve linked my notebook sketch below, and typed some elaborations. Feel free to correct or edit!
Nireta 2
Notebook sketch of Math and MNOG2 Map.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/7e1HH36y4Yg1Gnb49
I also want to show how impossibly grindy this game is.
BASE MATERIALS NEEDED TO BEAT THE GAME Bamboo: 75 for tools, 750 for flags, “2500” for discs. Cowrie: 68 Harakeke: 300 for tools Widgets: 500 for flags, “50” for discs, 50 for kohlii balls, 2 for ferry trips, 5 for a map, 25 for air bladders (last two optional) Seaweed: 50 for flags.
Quotes are because training in Le Koro needs discs, which can be either method.
ESTIMATES After dimensional analysis with hopefully accurate estimates, it takes around 16,225 harakeke, 2,705 bamboo wood, 2,722 cowrie, and 50 seaweed to beat the game as intended (No Po-Ta Koro exploit).
Farming Ga Koro only, one gets ~100 Harakeke, ~40 Bamboo wood, 6 cowrie, and 7 seaweed per pass. I can do this in about 4 minutes. This means it takes at least 11 hours to farm everything (16,000 Harekeke/100 Harakeke per pass * 4 min/pass * 1 hour/60 min).
Then there are ~171 locations total. At perhaps a casual 7 seconds per location for reading and trading, assuming no backtracking (an underestimate) that’s around 20 minutes of just walking and talking.
Then there are skills to farm. Each skill is cumulative, so they take longer each time. Getting to 50 skill points in swimming, boulder, and willpower can maybe take an hour each. 50 skill in Mahi, discs, and kicks might take 30 min each. That’s 4.5 hours of skill grinding.
Overall that’s about 17 hours of just grinding. No atmosphere, no sitting and enjoying the music or scenery. No planning your next trip around the island or researching on BS01.
WITH EXPLOIT Using the Pa-To koro exploit will save you about 16,000 of harakeke and 2654 cowrie worth of flax/string/nets. It takes 48 locations round trip to double your widgets. It takes 30 locations round trip to farm all of ga koro and get 3 widgets (2 rope 1 cloth). The intersection of y=2^x and y=3x is (3.3,9.9), so after 9 Ga Koro widgets, do the exploit. That means it will take 3min * 3 + 27 trips * 48 locations/trip * 3sec/location * 1min/60sec = ~73 minutes. So inflate the value of the widget for an hour and you’re set!
One hour as the matoran of Widget Street beats 11 hours of “Farming, really?”
Notes
I assumed no backtracking for the 171 locations outside of Ga Koro. Add another ~50 for Le Koro charm and Ta Koro ending, and it’s more.
I assumed one only goes to 50 skill points instead of 100. For my 4hr play through, I set my stats to 10x whatever I earned, plus 100 extra to win kohlii (y=10x+100). Run possible at perhaps 100 max (BS01 has player stats. I note that kohlii kicking at Ta Koro caps at 100 because the gauge moves off the meter after that, so I assume 100 was the intended max.)
Flags are the hardest part of the game. It takes me like 25-50 flags to go through the drifts. Interestingly, using the “click only in the direction Hahli faces” from BS01, you can reliable get to the crystal and out in exactly 16 flags. I did this 4 times perfectly. I tried going “click always to the right of what Hahli faces” which got me to all 3 locations in 25 flags, but only once. I don’t know the strat for that. I thus estimated 50 flags for a play through, which is 500 widgets, by far the largest expense. If someone can find the code for the drifts, one could use significantly fewer flags and widgets.
I assumed 5 airbladders to get to about 10 speed points to beat Onu Koro. Stamina could also be trained at Onu Koro first.
CONCLUSION This game sucks. I love the atmosphere, but it’s all volume and no substance. MNOG1 had a new puzzle for each village, multiple routes, fast travel, short travel times at each screen, and an overarching plot. Here it’s fewer characters, more walking, and entirely repetitive grinding. Content drops significantly after Ga Koro. Even the Crystal Temple had a puzzle. Po Koro is just 12 linear locations. Teasing the Rahkshi powers as opposites of the principles is cool though.
If someone can figure out the Ko-Koro drifts, this will reduce the grinding down significantly, from 7 hours to maybe 4 if you can reliably use 20 flags or less. Current run estimates 50 flags.
If anyone has a list of all MNOG2 locations (somewhere in the BMP file?), one could make a fast travel directory for the game.
Feel free to check my math or make a better map. This is the first time I’ve actually beat this game, with mild cheats ofc, and am glad I did it.
Nireta 2
In case the link doesn’t work.
EDITED FOR DOUBLE POST - Spiderus Prime