Five perks at once on Ascension solo and how to do it...

[Archon]

I did a search and couldn't find anything on this, but accept my apologies if people have already posted how to do it. Hope this helps you guys!

----

I was a little dubious when I read on the CoD Wiki that it was possible to have all five perks at once, but I've just completed a monkey round perfectly with four perks and did indeed receive the fifth perk...

So, how to do it? First, you need a few perfect early monkey rounds. Well, you don't -need- multiple perfect rounds, but it saves money! This isn't difficult, especially if you have Claymores. It has a bit of a luck element to it... What you're hoping for is to be given perks at the end of a monkey round that you have not yet opened on the map. Trouble is to get the Claymores you must open up the Stamin-Up side of the map, and without them it is nigh on impossible to get a perfect round. The only perk you can leave indefinitely sealed without affecting your chances of a perfect monkey round is the Speed Cola, so you want to hope you get that one as one of your drops to make getting the perfect monkey round that bit easier!

Once you have four perks (hopefully one is Speed Cola as that's one less machine to defend), await your next monkey round. Place Claymores in front of and leading up to the PhD Flopper/Quick Revive/Stamin-Up and await the monkeys by the Juggernog. Juggernog is a good place to wait as it is extremely close to the Quick Revive and not so far from the PhD Flopper either. I had Juggernog, PhD Flopper, Speed Cola and Quick Revive at this point and had the Speed Cola part of the map shut, so I only had one "vulnerable" machine that was far away (PhD Flopper). This is what I'd call the "ideal" setup, but it wouldn't be impossible with other combinations of perks... Just more difficult. An even better setup to do this is if the Quick Revive is gone completely - That's one less machine for the monkeys to go for!

With this setup and with a bit of luck, the monkeys will mostly go for the first two perks you have (which will be Juggernog and Quick Revive, or just Juggernog if the Quick Revive is gone) and the Claymores will take care of the ones going for the other perks. If you do the round without a machine being touched while you have four perks, the monkeys will still drop a perk bottle and you will have all five perks. The big disadvantage of this is that leaving Speed Cola shut means you cannot access the Pack-a-Punch machine, as that is where the final lander is... But hey, it's not difficult on Ascension to survive without it before round 20.

Naturally, it's not easy to keep all five perks... Especially as the monkeys eventually become strong enough to resist multiple Claymore blasts. If you have four players, in theory the perks could be kept nearly indefinitely - Just make sure the one guarding Jug/Revive has the Thundergun or Ray Gun in later rounds. The machines can be damaged but you won't lose the fifth perk unless the monkeys actually destroy one of the machines.

Hope this helps you solo players!