/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25546248/STK169_Mark_Zuckerburg_CVIRGINIA_B.jpg "Mark Zuckerberg wants you to know he has a big AI data center, too")
Mortal Kombat 1’s big Conan the Barbarian update launched this week and with it came the arrival of a secret fight with Floyd, the pink ninja developer Ed Boon had been teasing for years. Not only that, but if you defeat Floyd you unlock cool exclusive rewards, including a coveted new stage.
But how exactly do you trigger the secret Floyd fight? Players are working together to try to crowdsource the answer. This community effort, led by Mortal Kombat modder and dataminer thethiny, has done much to unravel the mystery, but the exact process remains unknown.
Here’s what fans have worked out: a number of Floyd challenges must be completed before the fight with Floyd triggers. How many, no-one knows. Which challenges must be completed, and in which order? No-one knows that either. Worse, it appears different for each player. That’s not much help, is it?
What is helping is thethiny’s Google Doc that lists the various challenges players have discovered and the requirements for each. When you’ve completed a challenge the Floyd icon will pop up on the left of the screen and you’ll hear a guitar riff. Requirements include taunting four times in a match, winning without jumping, and winning using sweeps only. Some of these challenges can be completed using any character, some with certain characters only. 37 Floyd clues have been discovered so far. Maybe there are more!
It appears to be the case that you do not have to complete all 37 Floyd challenges to fight Floyd. It also appears to be the case that players have different “active” challenges, so there isn’t a single process fans can rely upon. It’s all a bit confusing, but the best advice right now is to do as many of these challenges as you can, and eventually, hopefully, you’ll fight Floyd.
Occasionally, Floyd himself will appear at the start of the match to give you a clue (klue?) to one of your active challenges. Thethiny’s data suggests it can take hundreds of ladder matches to get one of these clues from Floyd to pop up. Players are working through all this right now, and some are spending a lot of time doing so. Some are trying to increase their chances by restarting matches, but that comes with the risk of missing the Floyd clue because they only appear at the end of the match.
What is clear is that the Floyd fight has breathed new life into Mortal Kombat 1. The new stage, the field seen in Mortal Kombat 1’s announcement trailer, is gorgeous, so the reward for all this effort is a good one. And Floyd himself is sparking a deeper dive as modders try to work out the details of his moveset and which characters from the Mortal Kombat games have inspired it. It’s just a whole lot of fun to be a part of and watch unfold.
Meanwhile, we’ve got the T-1000 guest character to look forward to, and potentially more DLC to come, although NetherRealm has yet to confirm that. Hopefully whatever happens, the developer will throw in more secret fights over time, perhaps with Mortal Kombat’s iconic Pit stage as a reward.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
