On February 8, 2022, after nearly five years, Metanet pushed forth a silent update for N++ that fixed every broken achievement in the game. Now that Steam recognizes the brilliant players that have put in the hours to 100% this game, the time seems right to help others learn what goes into a completion of N++.

It's easy to make a guide like this seem exclusionary due to the unrelenting nature of the game, though I'd like to keep my writing supportive for players who are up to the challenge. So, let's get the obvious spiel out of the way: N++ is an absurdly difficult game to complete. It takes the average 100%er a thousand hours to reach this point, and only 23 people have done it as of the time I'm writing this. Chances are that words aren't necessary to convey this, and you'll know whether you want to bother going the distance within a few hours of playing.

I'm not writing this guide to encourage nor discourage players from attempting 100%. Rather, I'm encouraging you all to play as much as you're comfortable with. Any milestone in a game this long and multi-faceted is an achievement, and the journey unfolds in a way that you can start, stop, and continue wherever you like. Whether you stop after beating the Intro tab or go the full distance, any place you choose to rest is a summit in its own way.

Now that you've all skipped over reading most of that, let's skim over some general tips before diving into the details of all 33 achievements in N++.

Before we begin, allow me to toss around a few tips for common issues people experience with the achievements and/or with N++ as a whole. You could consider this part of the guide as a troubleshooting column, a section for FAQs, and a motley of assorted guidance that doesn't fit anywhere else in the guide.

• If an achievement/funlockable doesn't unlock after you've fulfilled the requirements for it, try beating a random episode. This is a somewhat well-known bug that has been confirmed to persist after the patch, and it occurs most commonly for the achievements "Golden" and "Achieve Enlightenment." If beating an episode does not fix the issue, try restarting the game, check to see if you have properly met all the criteria for the achievement/funlockable, and ask for help on the community Discord if all else fails.

• Though it may be tricky, it's entirely possible to earn all the Co-op and Race achievements by yourself. I'll go into specifics when talking about those achievements, though the general method is to control two players on your own, which isn't as hard as it sounds on the right levels. With that being said, if you plan on going for 100%, you will need a second player to complete all of Co-op. Yet again, the community Discord[discord.gg] is a fantastic resource for this. There are tons of players around the world willing to hook up via remote play and burn through Co-op with you, regardless of your skill level.

• No

• While this issue isn't related to any achievement in particular, I see it brought up often in Steam Discussion posts and elsewhere. To give you a rather blunt answer, move on and humble yourself. The game is largely non-linear by design, and forcing yourself to complete things in order is a bullheaded and shortsighted endeavor. If you can't beat or collect all the gold in a level, move on and revisit it once you've learned more about the game. You will get better over time.

• To condense what the devs themselves have said in various posts about N++, you should approach the game in layers. Try unlocking as much as you can first, seeing which levels, palettes, and options you prefer over others. If you can do that, try beating as many levels as you can, in as many game modes as you like. If you can do that, try collecting all gold in as many levels as you can. As mentioned earlier, don't force yourself to complete everything; treat the game as a friendly competition with yourself, taking breaks whenever you like and rewarding yourself for milestones. Also, don't feel shy to try out activities that aren't related to completion; challenging yourself to try userlevels, highscoring, or speedrunning can help you become a better player before you continue pushing toward completion.

• Yes! There are a bunch of video guides, practice maps, spreadsheets, and seasoned players with a wealth of knowledge to share about the game. I'll stuff plenty of helpful links at the end of the guide, and you can find all this sort of stuff on the community Discord, though I recommend trying things out for yourself before immediately diving for a resource. There's a lot tucked beneath the surface of this game, and it's a lot more thrilling to figure that sort of stuff out yourself instead of relying on someone else to tell you. Still, don't let anybody shame you for following a guide; I do it all the time.

Alright, let's dig into the meat of this game's achievements. "Base completion" refers to the act of beating a level or episode with no stipulations; simply hitting the exit switch and getting to the door. All of these achievements refer exclusively to the N++ and Legacy tabs; I recommend playing through the Intro before tackling these tabs, and saving Ultimate for later since it's quite a step up in difficulty.

Novice
Beat the entire top row of Solo Episodes

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This achievement requires you to beat every episode in the A-row of the N++ tab. This row can be considered an unofficial extension of the Intro tab, and it shouldn't pose much of a threat if you're familiar with hardcore platformers. Don't feel bad about dying a lot; it's all part of the learning process.

Adept
Beat the entire middle row of Solo Episodes

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This achievement requires you to beat every episode in the C-row and, by extension, the B-row of the N++ tab. These rows aren't a whole lot more challenging than the A-row, but the game starts to dish out a few nasty levels here and there (B-19 and C-18 come to mind). Stay determined, but don't feel bad about saving tough episodes for later.

Master
Beat the entire bottom row of Solo Episodes

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"Bottom row" isn't quite accurate, as you'll soon find out. This achievement requires you to beat every episode in the E-row and, by extension, the D-row of the N++ tab. The game stops playing nice around this point. Episodes like E-08 and E-14 stand out as ruthless avoidance tests, though E-19 takes the cake as one of the biggest difficulty spikes in the game. If you beat all the levels up to this point, I believe you'll have the conviction to see this through.

Ninja
Beat the entire expert row of Solo Episodes

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This achievement requires you to beat every episode in the X-row of the N++ tab, which unlocks once you've beaten every other episode in the tab. Turns out too much wasn't enough, and now we've got 100 more levels that make the rest of the tab look like preschool. X-09, X-13, and, of course, the infamous X-19 pose some of the biggest threats we've seen yet, pushing the player's endurance and skill to their limits. Good luck!

Nostalgia
Beat an entire column of Solo Legacy episodes

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Unlike with the N++ tab achievements, you can beat any column — not row, column — you like in the Solo Legacy tab to unlock this achievement. It's easy enough to do this with the 00 column, as long as you're not going for all gold. Also, doing this will get you the "classic" palette, which paints the game in the same colours as the original N on Flash.

Achieve Enlightenment
Explore the options menu

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This is the big one. You unlock this achievement by turning on "Enlightenment" in the Options menu, which is unlocked once you've beaten every episode in the Intro, N++, and Legacy tabs. Yet again, Ultimate is not included in this achievement. I haven't mentioned Legacy much, though it follows a similar difficulty curve to the N++ tab, complete with an X-row once you've beaten everything else in the tab. In my opinion, it's slightly easier overall. This achievement would likely take a new player 50 to 100 hours, depending on their skill, and many consider it the first major milestone toward completion. I wouldn't blame you for stopping here, though; beating this many levels is a huge accomplishment.

Gold is the primary collectible of N++, and the game makes it clear as early as the third Intro level that, while you can get all of the gold in every level, actually doing so is an uphill battle. Still, if you've beaten every main tab and find yourself craving more, all-gold is the next logical step for the completionist's journey.

All-Gold Novice
Earn an all-gold badge in an episode from the top row

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This achievement requires you to earn all the gold in an episode from the N++ A-row. For these achievements that don't specify which tab to play, it's safe to assume they're talking about the N++ tab. For this achievement, A-00 is a pretty safe bet to choose, though you could probably get all gold in over half the episodes here without much resistance.

All-Gold Adept
Earn an all-gold badge in an episode from the middle row

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This achievement requires you to earn all the gold in an episode from the N++ C-row. Gold traps and lengthy detours have become more commonplace by this point in the tab, though you should still be relatively safe picking C-00 or a handful of other episodes for this achievement.

All-Gold Master
Earn an all-gold badge in an episode from the bottom row

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This achievement requires you to earn all the gold in an episode from the N++ E-row (again, not actually the bottom row). I actually wouldn't recommend E-00 — the last level there throws a bunch of extra evil ninjas at you if you go for all gold. Go for E-13 instead; getting all the gold there is hardly any different from beating the episode casually.

Tutorial Master
Get all the gold in the Solo Introduction

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This one spells itself out: get all the gold in every level from the Intro tab. The existence of this achievement may tempt you to go for it right away. Don't do that. Focus on beating levels in the other tabs until you have a firm grasp of concepts like momentum and routing. Gold in episodes like A-00, C-02, and E-04 can be pretty mean if you don't understand the game. Still, this is far from being as hard as "Ninja" or "Achieve Enlightenment," and you can consider it a taste for whether you'll enjoy gold hunting in the other tabs.

Golden
Get all of the All-Gold badges in every page of Solo

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Alright, alright. Let me lay out what this achievement entails before we talk about anything else. Beyond earning "Tutorial Master," you must now earn all the gold in the three main tabs of Solo. That includes N++, Legacy and, yes, Ultimate as well this time. In case that didn't quite register, that's 1,925 levels you have to earn every piece of gold in. This achievement is insane. Having completed the likes of Celeste, Hades, and Katana ZERO, this is still the hardest achievement I've earned in any game, and it's not even remotely close. This is where the scope of completion in N++ extends past what any sane player would put themselves through. Still, let me try to put things into perspective.

In my guide detailing the journey toward Golden (which you should totally read; I had a lot of fun writing it), I talked about every level that took me over 100 attempts to earn all gold in — a total of 61 levels. On top of that, there were probably just as many levels that didn't make the cut but gave me plenty of trouble through their length or design. That's around 120 exceedingly difficult levels to struggle through for this title. That's not to mention the titans of this challenge — levels like "go fish," "destroyer of worlds," "robot heaven" — levels that took several hundred attempts, hours of runs that wreaked havoc on my emotions. Here's the best part: this achievement in its entirety, beating each level and earning all the gold, encompasses a little over a third of the game's total completion points. You still have two thirds to go.




Clever
Get all of the All-Gold badges in every page of secret levels

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We're extending past what I've accomplished in this game, though I'll explain this achievement to the best of my ability. To earn this achievement, you must earn all the gold in every level from the ? tab and the ! tab. To unlock those levels... well, you have to do a lot.

First, you have to know about secret challenges. By beating the first five rows and all-golding 25 episodes in the N++ or Ultimate tab, you will be able to view secret challenges in that tab. I won't go into detail about challenges themselves; all you have to know for now is that the first (and sometimes only) challenge in any level is designated by exclamation marks between brackets. By completing two out of five of these challenges in an episode, you will unlock a secret level tied to that episode. There's a secret level for every episode in the N++ tab (correlated to the ? tab) and the Ultimate tab (correlated to the ! tab). That's 240 secret levels in total.

Although you have fewer levels to worry about than for Golden, not only does it take a heap of time and effort to unlock every secret level, but the levels themselves are much harder, especially when it comes to the ! tab. I won't detail which levels stand out the most, though I'd say there are 5–10 on the same plateau of difficulty (if not higher) as "go fish" for all gold. Aside from the two completion achievements, this is the highest accomplishment in the game, being enough of a threat that plenty of top players push it toward the end of 100%, if they bother with it at all.

Thankfully, the no-death achievements are a lot more simple than the others, with there only being a "Novice-Adept-Master" trio to worry about.

No-Death Novice
Beat an episode from the top row without dying

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This achievement unlocks when you beat all five levels in an N++ A-row episode without dying. You won't be able to see whether you've done this anywhere in-game (yet), but the achievement should still pop if you've done it properly. Like before, A-00 or virtually any other episode from the row can help you get this done.

No-Death Adept
Beat an episode from the middle row without dying

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This achievement unlocks when you beat all five levels in an N++ C-row episode without dying. Not much to say here; you could target C-00 like before, or you could prove me wrong about C-18 and pick that instead. I wouldn't recommend it, though.

No-Death Master
Beat an episode from the bottom row without dying

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This achievement unlocks when you beat all five levels in an N++ E-row episode without dying. E-00 should be a safe bet this time since you can avoid the extra clone spawners in "clairvoyage," making it a lot easier. It may seem daunting, but if you can beat the episode casually, you can do it without screwing up.

Thank god, we can stop talking about Solo for a while. Co-op and especially Race mode hardly get enough love; they're full-fledged campaigns with a ton of creativity poured into them. Still, I understand that not everyone wants to recruit a second player to complete the floaty stickman game, so I'm going to give y'all some tips on how to earn these achievements on your own.

Co-operation Makes It Happen
Beat an entire column of Co-op episodes

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To earn this achievement, you must beat any column of episodes from the Co-op N++ tab. You can pick any early column with relative safety if you have a second player, but if you're tackling it by yourself, the 01 column will be your best bet. You're going to have to control both players at once — a feat more easily achieved on a keyboard, with one hand controlling each ninja. This is possible but not easy, and I wouldn't recommend trying it unless you're confident in your skill. Levels like "givens rotations" and "coordination problem" (both in E-01) will test your ability to multitask and problem-solve around your limitations. I included a route for "givens rotations" at the bottom of the guide for those who need it. If it's too hard for you, you could consider playing up to D-01 and then having a friend remote play with you for the last five levels.

Good Times
Beat an entire column of Co-op Legacy episodes

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To earn this achievement, you must beat any column of episodes from the Co-op Legacy tab. Thankfully, it's much easier to do this one by yourself. The 00 column in this tab never requires you to control both ninjas simultaneously, only using the co-op aspect to separate the players or force one of them to sacrifice themselves. I managed this in less than ten minutes.

Speedy
Beat an entire column of Race episodes

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Moving on to Race mode, you have to beat any column of episodes in the Race N++ tab to unlock this achievement. This is even easier than Co-op since you don't actually need a second player. That's right, you can race all on your own. You sad, strange little man. If you want to make this achievement even more of a joke, turn the "You Suck Timer" down to 0, and the obstacles will gradually disappear from the level the moment you start it.

Memories
Beat an entire column of Race Legacy episodes

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You have to beat any column of episodes in the Race Legacy tab to unlock this achievement. Same song and dance, different tab. I will say, it's a lot more fun if you play Race mode with a friend or three, but you can do it by yourself if you really want to.

Rocket Murder Time
Kill another player using a rocket 5 times in a single MP Race episode

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When you finish a level in Race mode with two or more players, you fire a single rocket at any players that have yet to finish. This achievement requires you to kill someone with that rocket in five out of five levels of an episode. It's actually much easier to do this by yourself — go in with two players as you would in Co-op, finish each level as one player, and blow up the idle second player. I recommend episode A-03 in the Race N++ tab for this, since the rocket can be finicky to aim properly, and the levels in that episode have plenty of open space for your ballistic blip of doom to navigate. Make sure not to max out the timer as player one, or else you'll be kicked out of the episode early. Avoiding the gold or turning down the Bonus % a little should prevent this.

EDIT: It's possible to get two rocket murders per level by starting an episode with four players. Two players finish each level, two players get blown up. I never considered doing this, but it makes the achievement feasible in multiplayer and gives the solo strat more wiggle room.

Hardcore is a pretty contentious mode. A lot of people don't like it, hence the exceedingly low amount of players that have earned these achievements, even though they aren't nearly as hard as, say, Golden or Clever. I won't pretend like it's an ingenious or even well-thought-out mode, but hopefully this information will incite more people to give it a chance, since it tests the player's endurance and grit in a way that not many other activities in the game do.

Hardcore Novice
Beat an entire Hardcore Story

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This one's as straightforward as it gets: beat one Hardcore Story from any tab except Intro. In case you don't know how Hardcore works, you have to beat an entire Solo column — called a "Story" in this mode — except your time does not replenish if you die. If you run out of time in any level, you're put into Sudden Death, and if you can't beat the level during that attempt, it's Game Over. It's a pretty harsh game mode, but the 00 columns in N++ and Legacy are breezy enough that you should be able to nab this achievement with either one of them.

Hardcore Adept
Beat 10 Hardcore Stories

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This achievement turns up the heat, requiring you to beat another nine Hardcore Stories. Yet again, none of these stories can be from Intro. For this, I recommend beating the first five stories, 00 to 04, of both N++ and Legacy. You can try out some stories later in those tabs if you like, but I don't recommend choosing 05 for either tab. Both of those columns end with a nasty level.

Hardcore Master
Complete All Hardcore Stories

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The most misleading achievement in the game. Firstly, "All Hardcore Stories" is a complete lie. This achievement only requires you to beat every story in the Intro, N++, and Legacy tabs. Considering Hardcore was released as part of the Ultimate Edition, it's a mystery why Ultimate doesn't count toward it, but don't complain. I said earlier that the Ultimate tab is a step up in difficulty, and that goes double for Hardcore mode. This omission makes the achievement significantly easier.

Secondly, you might think you have to beat every Hardcore Story without dying, since the achievement description has been reworded from "beat" to "complete". This also isn't true, though you'll have to do that eventually for Completionist. With all that said, this achievement is still tough as nails. N++ Story 17, N++ Story 19, and Legacy Story 19 are known for packing several tough levels back-to-back and ending with absolute run-killers. Attempts on these stories take long, and there isn't a lot of easy gold to keep you alive. More likely than not, you'll have to practice the individual levels in many of these stories until you're consistent at them. Gelaflax's guide on Hardcore isn't perfect in my opinion, but it's a great start for learning how to approach the tougher stories in this mode.

This is an obligatory section for achievements that don't fit under any specific game mode. Most of these achievements relate to dying a specific number of times or in specific ways, and you'll likely achieve most, if not all of them through natural play.

You Suck But That's Okay
Die during the solo introduction

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Die once in the Solo Intro tab. This will likely be the first achievement you get, assuming you start with Intro.

Practice Makes Perfect
Die 100 times

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Self-explanatory. I'm pretty sure this number tracks across all game modes.

More Practice Makes More Perfect
Die 1000 times

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More of the same thing. Keep dying; keep getting better.

Perfection is Overrated Anyway
Die 5000 times

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The last death milestone achievement. The number may seem like a lot, but you'll probably hit it way before Enlightenment.

Using Your Head
Die by hitting the ceiling too hard

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This will happen to you at least once during the Intro, and several times after that. Hitting the ceiling with too much momentum via launchpads, boostpads, and/or wall jumps will kill you.

Death from All of the Above
Die in every possible way

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You'll get this naturally over time but, in case you want it right away, there's a neat column under Profile>Stats that shows how many times you've been killed by each entity. If you're only missing one thing, I can almost guarantee it's the chaingun drone or shove-thwump.

Perseverance
Triumph over adversity

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In other words, beat a level for the first time after 25 attempts. This has to be done in one sitting. 25 attempts is nothing, and it would be inhuman if you didn't get this naturally at some point.

Voyeur
Watch a highscore replay

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Press Tab on any level or episode, watch a replay from that list, and cry about how you'll never be as good as EddyMataGallos.

Finally, we reach the two rarest achievements in N++. Not only because they signify perfection at the game, but because they didn't even work until a week ago. I can't put into words the amount of skill and emotional resilience these achievements take — I already tried and failed to do that at several other points in this guide — so I'll stick to a numerical breakdown of each achievement, as represented on the Profile>Progress screen.


Ultimate Ninja
Get everything in Solo mode

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To earn this achievement, you must complete everything in Solo mode, resulting in a Solo Score of 7,280. Completion points are distributed as follows:

• Beat every level in the Intro, N++, Ultimate, and Legacy tabs. (1,925)
  
• Earn every all-gold badge in the Intro, N++, Ultimate, and Legacy tabs. (1,925)
  
• Beat every episode in the N++ and Ultimate tabs without dying. (240)

• Beat every level in the ? and ! tabs. (240)
  
• Earn every all-gold badge in the ? and ! tabs. (240)
  
• Complete every secret challenge. (2,710)

Completionist
Get everything in the Ultimate Edition of the game

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You earn "Completionist" by achieving 100% in N++. This requires you to fulfill all requirements listed for "Ultimate Ninja," as well as complete every other game mode, resulting in a Total Score of 10,565. Completion points are distributed as follows:

• All prior requirements. (7,280)
  
• Beat every level in Co-op. (980)
  
• Earn every all-gold badge in Co-op. (980)
  
• Beat every Race level. (1,195)
  
• Beat every Hardcore Story. (65)
  
• Beat every Hardcore Story without dying. (65)

A few extra notes about completion:

• By setting Numberwang to "1" in the Options menu, you can see an accurate representation of your completion percentage on the Profile>Progress screen. The left and right percentages represent content introduced before and during the Ultimate Edition, respectively.
  
• To complete Race mode, you must not skip levels via maxing out the timer.
  
• You cannot finish a no-death Hardcore Story in sudden death. The scoring system for this challenge uses the time you end the final level with, excluding any gold you collected in that level. Therefore, ending a run with zero seconds invalidates the challenge.
  
• You do not have to collect all gold in Hardcore mode. This feature was planned and coded by the devs but never made it into the game.

• Completed no-death runs and secret challenges count toward your score even if they have not yet been made visible.

Behind the minimalist exterior of N++ is a trove of detail and complexity, present throughout the game's stellar design and its abundance of content. I hope I managed to shed some light on this game's achievements and completion, and I also hope to have motivated at least some of you to fight toward that next milestone, however small or far away it may be. A ton of resources went toward making this guide comprehensive; here are a few you might find helpful or interesting:

• The official N++ Discord.[discord.gg] I can't mention this place enough; the community here is so unbelievably supportive and I doubt I'd still be playing this game, forget writing two guides for it, without them. They helped provide a lot of the information present in this guide, and they're probably gonna critique the hell out of this thing once I publish it. ;)
  
• The N++ Video Library.[docs.google.com] The most powerful resource for any player of this game. If you're stuck, the thousands of videos here will help get you unstuck. Use this spreadsheet with caution; it can ruin the fun of routing and discovering things for yourself. It's also chock-full of spoilers.
  
• The N++ Completion Point Breakdown.[docs.google.com] I pretty much transferred the data in this spreadsheet over to my guide when discussing the last two achievements. Again, this thing is littered with spoilers.
  
• golfkid's solo run of the level "givens rotations." [gamerdvr.com] Proof that one person can pull off the hardest level in the Co-op 01 column, even with controllers instead of a keyboard. Shout-out to golfkid in general; he's an insanely talented and dedicated member of the community.
  
• abho's fanmade NEOMETA tab. I used an animated gif by abho near the start of the guide, and NEOMETA is his latest project: a fanmade custom tab of 100 userlevels. Check it out sometime; the dude made some pretty banger levels if I do say so.
  
• Lucidium's "dunk" animation[www.thewayoftheninja.org], which I used as the branding image for this guide. Heck, shout-out to all the N fanart at thewayoftheninja.org.
  
• My "Golden Gallery of Pain" guide. Might as well sellout one more time, eh? I won't pretend this guide is all that helpful, but maybe it'll make you laugh or smile.