The UFOs and spaceships disappear at around 600,000 km. So concentrate on grabbing as many of those as you can before then. There are two sets of 3 UFOs and probably 6 spaceships.

(Then be aware that the Black Hole might be hard to roll up once you're over 1.5 mil km! Whatever you do don't touch the center of the Black Hole - roll around the edge, and if you can't get it roll away and try again from another angle. I try to have at least a minute left to try to grab the Black Hole, just in case. (but the Black Hole can still be picked up in the final seconds if necessary))

Concentrating on UFOs and spaceships has taken me from ranging 1.579 - 1.586 to consistently reaching right around 1.590. The little shooting stars that also disappear don't seem to make much difference if you grab them. And it doesn't seem to make much difference in what order you grab the stuff after you're done hunting spaceships. Just make sure you get all the stars off the King's back, and make sure you grab all the stars right around the black hole while you're a million km or less so you don't grab the black hole by accident. But do those things after you're done collecting all the spaceships and UFOs.

edit: And one of the little glasses mini-planets is extremely hard to grab when you're big, so get all of the glasses planets while you're hunting spaceships.

thanks! :)

If you can make it into outer space with 9-10 minutes left (edit: 9-10 left after receiving the 2 minute bonus that is), then hunting spaceships and UFOs will almost certainly mean a bigger final diameter than trying to grow as quickly as possible. To get started, you can grab three of the UFOs right away if you start by grabbing the Moon and then roll more or less forward from there (if you skip the King's "woo, you're in space" speech by pressing Start).

I'm bumping this one more time now that I made a video, and I wrote a short strategy guide ... Vix, if you want you can add this to the katamari database as a Schloss Kosmos diameter strategy guide:



..........................

video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMzAKdBk2dM


To earn a diameter of 1,590,xxx km in Schloss Kosmos:

1. First you should have 10 of every kind of planet in the Cosmos. This means play normal mode in every normal level 10 times, every downloadable level 10 times, and every Co-op level 10 times.

2. Learn a nice fast route through the pre-space part of Schloss Kosmos. A video that can help is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1TymxWrTJE

If you have a "9" or higher showing as your time remaining after you are in space (including the 2 minute bonus), then you are fast enough.

3. Once you're in space grab the Moon, then (this is important!!) concentrate on grabbing all the Astro Jets and UFOs before you reach 600,000 km (at which time they disappear). This is what separates the 1,590,000s from the 1,579,000s. There are two groups of three UFOs, and probably six Astro Jets if not seven. Make sure you get them all before you start grabbing big stuff.

4. (optional) Early in the process of going for Jets and UFOs grab the whole circle of little glasses planets. If you don't do this, one of them is very hard to get when you're big. Try to get the glasses planets when you're under 200,000 km, because if you're much bigger the one is very hard. But you can ignore this step entirely if you want, because the hard to get planet is only worth 200-400 km of your final diameter.

5. After you've got the glasses planets, UFOs and Astro Jets, before you reach a million km, grab all the stars from right around the Black Hole, as well as all the stars off the King's back. These will be hard to get later if you don't.

optional: Ride on the King's back and grab Bright Shining Stars. This can take a 1,590,300 to a 1,591,300 and probably more! But riding near the black hole is extremely dangerous; the hole is likely to suck you in.

6. Finish off the stage! It's finally time to grab the Sun, the King and everything else. edit: If you have a lot of time left try to grab most of the little colored stars (not "Bright Shining Stars") before you grab the final planets, because the stars disappear at about 1,450,000 km.

Be willing to spend a minute or more searching for stardust even after you can't see anything left except the Black Hole. If you make it to over 1,519,025 km before getting the Black Hole, then you'll be 1,590,000 km afterward.

7. Obviously, grab the Black Hole. I try to do it with at least 50 seconds left, just so I have time left if I can't get it right away. When you're this big it will probably be hard to grab, so roll around the outside edge of it (the accretion disk :D), avoiding the sphere in the center, since if you touch this you just plug the Hole and don't earn the Hole's diameter.

Actually, in the video it was lucky that I couldn't grab the Black Hole right away, because while trying to grab it I got a pesky Bright Shining Stars that's very hard to get, hiding right over the Black Hole. Lucky me!

I actually started working on this very same technique a week or 2 before the last batch of DLC came out. I probably had no chance of catching you on account of not knowing about the spaceships disappearing, but I was in a solid second.

Thanks for the tip about those ships. I'm back to second in the US and 7th overall on Schloss Kosmos. Finally got myself into a legit top ten, WOO! Get to work, Kt and Thinker! :P

My gosh, at GameFAQs MattCruea was only trying to get tips on getting big enough to roll up the Royals in Chateau Notre Desir, but in the process he gave me a tip that improved my best Schloss Kosmos diameter by 1,000km.

He said that he was climbing onto the Queen's and Grandpa's heads to grab Bright Shining Stars. And it works! I sat on the King's back from shortly after he passed the Black Hole until he got close to it again, and I got quite a lot of Bright Shining Stars.

I was too squeamish that try to sit on the King while he passed the Black Hole; that's very dangerous (it sucks in the katamari even when on the King's back). So my new best is beatable for sure.


That method does not add as much diameter as the spaceships and UFOs though. Here are my estimates of what each strategy adds:


UFOs and Astro Jets: 10,000-12,000km
Bright Shining Stars while riding the King: 1,000-(1,500? 2,000?) km
the hard to get glasses planet: 200-400km
Having 10 of each planet: many hundreds of thousands

You can get to 1,590,000 ignoring the middle two if you want.




By the way, Maritimus Rain, yeah, I saw your 1,551,000 before the new dlc came out. Good job. At that time I didn't know about the spaceships/UFOs, I just thought that rolling around a while before getting big helped and I didn't know why. Now I know :S

edit:

Yeah :bleh I'd love to see 4 or 5 Westerners right near or at the top. Course Japanese people are free to read this thread and use it too, and people are more than welcome to kick my best diameter's butt without using my help.

I was so close!

I just rolled that 1,589,000 earlier tonight. I wish I had known how close I was, since I had a minute and a half left on the clock. Maybe not enough to leapfrog your score, but maybe enough for second. I've gotta keep working at it, I was fairly comfortable in the teens on Everyone's Katamari, but Frosty's coming up fast and there's a couple other American players right behind me. Looks like I'm shooting for the top ten.

I tried to get 1,590,000 myself tonight too, but once I got passed 1,450,000, it wouldn't let me roll-up the black hole; just plug it. I was robbed, I tells ya!

The black hole is harder to roll up once you're big. Make sure you don't touch the sphere in the center, because that's how you plug it. Roll around the edge, and if you can't get it roll away and try again. Sometimes you can grab it and sometimes you can't, but usually within the first 3 or 4 tries you'll get it. I try to have at least 50 seconds left when I start trying to grab the Black Hole, just to be safe. If I'm lucky then I can't grab it right away, because sometimes rolling around the edge I grab an elusive Bright Shining Stars or two :woot though not as often anymore because now when I'm about 600,000km I roll around touching the edge of the Black Hole once in order to grab those stardust clusters.

For some reason, usually when I grab the Hole I am just barely touching the outer edge.

...

I am almost certain 1,592,000 is possible, without learning any new strategies. I've got to balance on the King all the way by as he passes the Black Hole (Not recommended if you're just going for 1,591,500!! It's dangerous.). The rainbow can be picked up at about 1,050,000km by the way, which is useful to know if you're trying to get as big as possible before riding the King to try to grab stardust.

I finally got the roll I wanted and I'm now in second on SK! Woo!

The frustrating part is that, right before that roll, I had a power flash in my place that erased two SK rolls I hadn't saved. I was just starting another one, too. I was so mad afterwards that I focused so hard on rolling perfectly on SK and I wound up finally bumping up to second on the boards.

Frosty, if you're trying to roll a katamari this big, keep in mind that you need to have a katamari at least 1,519,000km in diameter before rolling up the black hole. That's every planet, satellite, whatever x10, every star, every comet, every constellation, and every space shuttle and UFO, plus a heck of a lot of stardust.

Also, in case you haven't seen this noted elsewhere, once you've pick up all the planets and such, the stars will disappear. By stars I mean the little multi-colored ones like around the black hole. If you haven't gotten them all by the time you pick up everything else, you're out of luck. I usually save Earth, the Sun, and the King (taking care to pick up the royal rainbow beforehand) until I'm sure I've picked up every star. However, you're probably fine just saving the King.

Awesome! I had no idea the stars went away like that. Congratulations!!!

w00t!
Thanks to this guide, I finally broke top ten in SK!
Thanks SloBro !

-SG

If you are on the Royal Rainbow when the King goes by the Black Hole, it is pretty easy not to get sucked in (unlike if you're on the King's back). The only problem is, there doesn't seem to be very much stardust available right while going past the Black Hole. So this isn't very helpful :heh

I didn't know about the stars disappearing when you get to a certain size. Thanks, I'll have to take a look at that.

SpasticGrandpa and Ktgogators and Maritimus Rain and Dr. Thinker rule! Nice diameters. Kt is soooo close to 1,590.

I've got a feeling that if Maritimus Rain took some serious attempts at Schloss Kosmos time attack he would go way below 8 minutes.


...

I thought I knew this stage pretty well, and then this happens :/ Yesterday, on a roll where I thought I'd end up 1,591,500km or so, I ended up 1,594,900. I don't know what I did (what I grabbed) that made such a big difference. Heh, for all I know it might have been some kind of glitch but I doubt it.

Here's what I did, in case it can help someone else figure it out (mostly the same I usually do but not entirely):

I grabbed the moon right away, and veered slightly to the right and grabbed the glasses planets. Then I hung around near the scorpion planets to grab all six UFOs. Next I ran around picking up Astro Jets.

I grabbed the small stars around the Black Hole and some other stuff. I was somewhere between 600,000 and 700,000 km, and I saw the King coming. I wanted to become bigger quickly so I could be a big target for grabbing stardust when I hopped on the King when he made it just past the Black Hole, so out of desparation I grabbed the Sun. That's the thing I know of that was different about this attempt; I grabbed the Sun about as soon as it would be possible to do so, at under 800,000km.

But I grabbed a bunch of other stuff too, and by the time I was in position to hop on the King I was 1,020,000km or more, almost big enough to pick up the Royal Rainbow (which would be too late to climb onto the King as far as I know). I climbed up and only rode one lap across space on the King (because I was too big to climb up at the start of the next lap), whereas I usually ride 3 laps in order to pick up stardust I missed the first lap.

I finished off the stage, and to my surprise I was 3,000km bigger than I normally would be on a good attempt, even though I probably got less stardust above the King's route than I usually do.

So there is still some way to up the diameters further. I doubt it is simply a matter of grabbing the Sun early; I tried that again but didn't end up with a higher than usual diameter.

By now I've got my techique down on SK that I've rolled into the cosmos with 10+ on the clock. I finally bit the bullet and I've been incorporating a few dashes into my routine, which helped shave a minute off my typical time on Normal. So yeah, I could probably jump up the time trial board from my current position. I just don't do them. Maybe I'll squeeze in some Katamari tonight. It's harder to make time for it since I fired up Dead Rising after it sat on my shelf for a year and I'm back into it, plus I got the full series of Arrested Development, and that' taking up some serious time too.

By the way, SK really helped my Dynaville technique too. On a whim I decided to shoot for a better Sun a few days ago and bested my previous high by like 300 meters. They're very similar stages if you can work out the kinks at the beginning. The end is a little trickier because you don't gain size the same way. Still, the basic framework is all there.

Well, I gave it a shot and I got my time down to 9:12 last night. Would have been faster, but the way the diameter displays completely threw me off. All my cues on SK for when to proceed to the next area are based on diameter. I know exactly how big I have to be before moving on. I had a rough time reading it backwards and rolled out of a few areas way too early. Then I got completely lost in the cosmos. I tried to find my Snowman path, but just ended up bashing into things and took at least 30 seconds to a minute more than I needed to get out of there. Still, not too bad for a real first attempt.

Yeah, unless you get a weekend where you can loaf on a chair for all day, rolling using muscle memory while watching movies on another TV like I did last weekend for size, the time cost is absurd! I know it's feasible now, at least.

If all that happened and you got a 9:12, clearly you can make it way up the leaderboard's first page with a few more tries. If you ever find the time and feel like trying it again, that is.

And thanks for the info about the disappearing colored stars. They disappear at about 1,450,000km. Concentrating on grabbing them once you're done riding the King's back does noticeably increase diameters, even though I don't think I ever grab them all now.

But I haven't gotten close to that one weird higher diameter I got once yet. My best is about 1,592,100, not counting that one attempt. Now I kind of wish I hadn't saved after I got that, since it may have been a glitch that gave me the mysterious extra diameter.