talund
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 95
Registered: 05-17-2005
IP: Logged

The earlier post about the location of the secret rooms is on the mark. I can't for the life of me figure out how to find the Secret Rooms on Sence and Thrice. I have a feeling that the stair in Quarce 2S, 2W comes into play.

I also can see the egress from the secret room on Thrice but again not how to get there.

And the rooms on Ascension - are they reachable from this level or do you need or is access from a different level?

OKAY - POST AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE - I figured out Thrice.

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[Last edited by talund at 10-05-2007 05:54 PM]

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3659
Registered: 10-06-2005
IP: Logged

It is impossible to go down those stairs if you are Beethro - they are where Chaco comes from when he taunts you in 1S2W.

If you see a staircase that looks impossible to go down in this hold, and you think Chaco may have come from the direction of those stairs, it's probably a safe assumption that you aren't meant to use that staircase.

All staircases that Beethro needs to master the hold are accessible.

This is the type of hold that makes me jealous that I did not create it.

In particular, Twice descended, 2S 2E really wowed me:

Thanks. The original inspiration for that room was for me to make a room that really brought focus to the serpent preferential movement.

____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):

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[Last edited by Chaco at 10-05-2007 08:01 PM]

Zarvok
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 13
Registered: 09-29-2007
IP: Logged

Well, finally finished it, with a little prodding on my last secret room. The hold was really great all the way through. I don't have a ton of experience with user-made holds, mostly because the ones that I've tried haven't been anywhere near as good as this one. I gave it a 10 with 8 brains.

Now, onward through the hall of mastery. Some of these puzzles are tough!

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3659
Registered: 10-06-2005
IP: Logged

I've watched some of the demos from the hold.

It looks like some of my strategically placed speed potions (particularly those in The Egress: 2W and Hall of Mastery: 1N1W) didn't work to discourage highscorers from taking "the easy way".

Perhaps next time I'll need to use master walls, such that any demo going beyond them to access a decoy potion or somesuch is automatically invalidated.

In any case, great job all of you. You're all beating the rooms much faster than I normally do them.

____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):

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[Last edited by Chaco at 10-10-2007 12:33 AM]

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1917
Registered: 12-09-2004
IP: Logged

Having completed most of 6 levels I can safely say I love this hold. Great job Chaco!! I wish this had been made a SmS..

The sad part is that there are a good number of unintended solutions (L4:2E, L4:1N1E, L4:1N1W, ..).

Now to follow the hints since I'm lost as usual in your holds.

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3659
Registered: 10-06-2005
IP: Logged

Aw, no

The earlier drafts of 1N1W and 1N1E had force arrows beneath the bombs. I had to remove them for 3.1, and then people went and went where they weren't supposed to.

Obviously it'd be very easy for me to fix these unintended solutions, but it's a bit late now.

I'm A-OK with the way people are solving 2E though.

____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):

schep
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 865
Registered: 03-01-2005
IP: Logged

Chaco wrote:
I'm A-OK with the way people are solving 2E though.

Really? My solution felt extremely unintended.
Edit: And now that I actually tried to exploit it, the room becomes far too boring.

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[Last edited by schep at 10-12-2007 05:32 AM]

Tahnan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2460
Registered: 11-14-2005
IP: Logged

larrymurk wrote:
The sad part is that there are a good number of unintended solutions (L4:2E, L4:1N1E, L4:1N1W, ..).

Really? I didn't find those rooms in any way trivial; I wonder what the intended solutions were.

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3659
Registered: 10-06-2005
IP: Logged

schep wrote:

Chaco wrote:
I'm A-OK with the way people are solving 2E though.

Really? My solution felt extremely unintended.
Edit: And now that I actually tried to exploit it, the room becomes far too boring.

I'm currently unable to watch your demo, since you have 3.1 and I don't.

However, I can tell you that Tahnan, (who is ranked above you as of this post) solved the room in the intentional manner.

Tahnan sez:
I wonder what the intended solutions were. [for Quarce Descended 1N1E, 1N1W, and 2E]

1N1E:


1N1W:


2E:


____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):

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[Last edited by Chaco at 10-12-2007 11:01 AM]

Tahnan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2460
Registered: 11-14-2005
IP: Logged

Perhaps someone could PM me, so as not to give anything away, to tell me what the unintended solutions were, since I seem to have found the intended solutions.

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1218
Registered: 05-12-2005
IP: Logged

Well, you should be able to work that out from Chaco's challenge.

Tahnan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2460
Registered: 11-14-2005
IP: Logged

Oh, those unintended solutions. Wow, that never even occurred to me.

As it happens, my original solution to 1N1E was also apparently not what Chaco had in mind, insofar as I...

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[Last edited by Tahnan at 10-12-2007 06:40 PM]

NoahT
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1139
Registered: 06-17-2003
IP: Logged

I got a different unintended solution for 1N1E, but for the other two it didn't look like there were any alternative solutions. Perhaps someone could PM me about those as well?

In my solution to 1N1E:



Well, as long as I'm posting, I'll add my comments . This hold contains plenty of fun rooms and puzzles with well-hidden lynchpins. Quince Descended: 1N2E and Ascension by Confrontation: 1N2E in particular were real "a-ha" rooms for me. There were a couple of adder rooms (Thrice Descended: 2S2W and Quarce Descended: 1S2W) in which it seemed hard to get the adder (and the wubbas, in the case of the former room) to do what you wanted without some trial and error, but those rooms still contained good concepts, and they hardly made a dent in the hold's quality.

Overall I give it 9 for fun and 8 for brains. Keep up the good work, Chaco!

(BTW, I haven't mastered it yet, but I have reached all the secrets and solved about half of them. Just to let you know.)

-Noah

____________________________
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

My stuff:

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[Last edited by NoahT at 10-12-2007 09:10 PM]

JoMax
Level: Delver

Rank Points: 65
Registered: 12-28-2005
IP: Logged

Finally Mastered

Completed a while back but was stuck on 2 secret rooms....

A very good hold - the puzzles were just the right difficulty for me (with a little bit of lurking on H&S) and very enjoyable

7 brains and 10 for fun

Another brilliant hold from Chaco

Keep up the good work and looking fwd to Kenundrems when it's released

Yur-Val
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 66
Registered: 12-21-2009
IP: Logged

File: TR.jpg (112.4 KB)
Downloaded 87 times.
License: Public Domain

this room could be difficult if combine it this way.

martz
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 416
Registered: 08-19-2005
IP: Logged

This is another high-quality hold from one of Drod's foremost architects.

Lots of brilliantly-constructed and intricate puzzles, a good story with some amusing moments and the usual polish that you come to expect from a Chaco hold.

Some of the rooms have multiple solutions which is generally caused by having lots of elements but from reading some of the posts on this hold Chaco seems happy to allow these.

If I'm going to be nit-picky there can be some toing-and-froing to solve all the rooms (not that this isn't a feature of most non-linear holds) and there's a few repeating scripts but these should not in any way put you off from playing this.

If you want something post-TCB with a bit of a challenge then you should definitely try this hold.

Difficulty: 7
Fun: 9

____________________________
Without struggle, there is no progress, so get up, get out, and go make the rest of your life the best of your life; you deserve to live the life that YOU want to live...

Progress - Gavin G

OneMoreNameless
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 131
Registered: 07-31-2010
IP: Logged

I'm probably not going to play this enough for a proper review, I just think it should be noted that this hold has serious tonal issues ... The dialogue frequently babies you about eg. what oremite is or that you can't open a hub door from this entrance, but by the second level the hold already expects you to solve highly difficult golem placement / pathing puzzles with advanced serpent mechanics thrown in for good measure.

Bent
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 92
Registered: 12-11-2015
IP: Logged

The first word that springs to mind with this hold is consistency: Almost every room feel like they belong in their respective levels, both thematically and architecturally. Aesthetically the levels are similar enough to each other that they don't seem disjointed, but unique enough to not feel repetitive. Level layouts are nicely done, and the levels themselves are more interconnected than in most holds. The story, while nothing spectacular, also does a good job at binding the whole thing together. All of this makes the hold pretty immersive.

I found the puzzles to be of varying quality. Some I really liked (Twice 2S2E; Quarce 2S2E; Quince 1N2E, 1N3E; Egress 1N2W). A couple of rooms had neat tricks to them, but were a bit too obvious (Quarce 2S2E; Quince 2N1E). The hold also has loads of pleasant, perfectly enjoyable, but not very memorable rooms. A lot of them are of the "journey"-type, where the room is packed with small challenges that you complete one after the other.

My biggest gripe with the puzzles is that they frequently are of the "information-overload"-type, where the solution is relatively trivial, but you have to filter through a lot of noise to get there (, I still thought Quince 1N1E was pretty clever).

The hold wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. While the in-game Chaco is a real villain, I get the impression that the real-life Chaco just want people to enjoy themselves, and while it was challenging at times, I only felt somewhat stuck once; Sence 4S was the most frustrating room in the hold for me,
I thought the visuals was somewhat mediocre. For starters I had to turn off alpha-blending for this hold, because many of the levels were too dark in general, and had too much contrast between the light and dark areas. Many rooms also looked a bit unpolished to me, sometimes appearing messy, other times breaking symmetry in an unappealing way, or going for the ”worn down dungeon”-look without quite pulling it off.

All in all this is a decent hold. It was probably more memorable at the time it was created (shortly after the release of TCB), but still has enough going for it to be worth playing today.