×
First Delver! (I was the first non-tester/dev
to conquer TCB.)
d/dy

×
I have been continually playing contest on the forum since Dec 2004. Having often been addressed as a he my new avatar shows that I am a "Lady". And one with a very sharp sword, too.

I love the monthly contests but it took me a long while before I even placed. 21 contests in fact.

Virtual Burning Man was the first contest I took any place in and I got 1st, wow!. Yes, I have received my prize, a sweatshirt from the DROD store, and I love it.

It took 14 more contest but next I took 1st prize in Media of the Eighth Nov07, followed by a win in the Secret Santa 2007. Check out my entry: http://www.gailswebplace.com/NightSky/index.html

Suddenly I was a winner but, still the goal of a winning hold based contest eludes me....

I keep trying so come and join me.
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewboard.php?BoardID=83

×A nice entry, with a very pleasing way of presenting the room choices. The rooms weren't as similar as I would've liked though. In the end, however, both rooms are possible.

The intended "possible" room is quite trivial: the bombs hinder you slightly but all you need to do is wait until you're allowed to get Halph to open the door, at which point killing the roaches chasing you is easy. A little extra luring to bring some more roaches out of the Stalwart's way finishes it off. Nothing too difficult.

The "impossible" room, by comparison, is a lot more involved, so guessing which is "impossible" isn't too difficult. It's an efficiency room requiring a great deal of tasks to be completed, and this is compounded by the fact that the diagonal stabs of Mud must be completed before the corresponding orthogonal stabs. And given the small but inevitable roach invasion, you have your hands full. There doesn't seem to be enough time....

...but efficiency in the early stage can have you clear all but the northernmost Mud blob by Turn 65, and be in perfect position to lure a single roach up... just as far as the arrow so it can get stuck there. With this roach out of the way, the Stalwart's success is delayed a few more turns, which is 1 turn more than you need to clear the last Mud blob and escape.

×A very clever implementation, with only one difference between the rooms. It's nice that the seemingly more "helpful" room is actually the one that ends up hindering you the most, especially given how many players loathe Slayers.

My reasoning for the impossible room is as follows:

* The only thing that opens the 2nd door for the roaches is the orb in the far NE corner. The only way to get at that orb is the orb just south of it, past the Force Arrow. But the pressure plate between the two blocks off the orb again. So you need something depressing that plate while the orb is hit.

* The only things that open the 1st door for the roaches are the two orbs in the NW and SE corners of the room. You cannot use Halph to trigger these orbs because you can't touch the 2nd door yourself. Triggering these orbs personally gets the roaches stuck in a formation that causes them to all move vertically in a line: you can't get them out of that formation unless the orbs are triggered by something else.

* Once both 1st and 2nd doors are open, the roaches need to be ferried all the way over to you in the NE chamber. In the "wrong" formation, one roach will get stuck in the entrance corridor. The only way to prevent that is to have something blocking that corridor, and the only thing you can block it with is Halph. (Trying to keep the adder in that chamber definitely doesn't work.)

* However, you either need something depressing that pressure plate to open the 2nd door, or you need something to trigger the orb while you're on the plate. Only Halph can trigger the orb, and you need him blocking the roaches. The adder can't hold down the plate because it's blocked from getting there. You can't use a tar baby either since there's no way to convince it to *stay* on it long enough for you to get over there (and getting one on the plate in the first plate is a little crazy anyways). With Halph occupied elsewhere and no other way of opening the 2nd door, the room would seem to be logically impossible.

×This is another hold which didn't work so well - but it did keep its difference minimal, which I can definitely respect. However, the difference is merely an out-of-the-way Rock Golem, which was located as such to be a tool, not a hinderance.

And so, the room without the Rock Golem became a challenge: "Can you do this room without a helpful Rock Golem?"

And the answer was, unfortunately, yes: it's fairly easy to get your hook back as soon as the Rock Giants are freed, and then make a complete barricade around yourself with dead Rock Golems. The freed Aumtlich soon lights the fuse and the bomb explosion sets you free to kill the rest.

×Another small difference. Again, though, it felt kinda obvious which room was intended to be impossible: having a tool earlier is often better than not having it. In this case, the Power Token being moved further away hinted strongly at the impossibility of that room.

So whether the "impossible" room was actually possible boiled down to efficiency. I'm happy to say that I couldn't find any unintended solutions for this, so the hold was a success. I would've appreciated some more thought given to the Fegundo section though, such that having the Power Token early might've felt more of a hinderance. Maybe some water in strategic places to better dictate when you should turn your sword?

×An interesting room, but could've done with more testing. I'm not entirely sure which room was supposed to be the impossible room, other than working on the basis of what rooms were changed over the course of the contest.

However, the basic solution to both is the same: lead the aumtlich to the eastern side of the room, place it in a position such that you can freeze it with your sword and have a clear run to the arrow, get on to the arrow, and then let the Stalwart's proximity do the rest. The only tricky part is choosing a location for the aumtlich such that the Stalwart will be close enough, but that makes 1S slightly more difficult than 1S1E (which I believe was the new "impossible" room).

×A very *VERY* involved hold, with a lot of tricks involved. Despite that, its symmetry made it rather coherent, and there was a key logical element flowing through the puzzle. I did conquer it and completed all the rooms except those intended to be impossible. So, a rousing success there. I felt the difference between the two rooms could've been a bit more subtle, and that the impossible room seemed to be more restrictive rather than offering different choices to hang myself with. However, it was nice working through how possible they both were.

My reasoning for the impossibility of the intended room is as follows:

* To conquer the room, among the enemies in the room, you must kill the four Eyes in each quadrant, as well as the eight goblins near the center. There is no way to kill the goblins without triggering the plate they're on: this locks the west and east exits. Delaying killing any of them isn't possible either, as we'll see later.

* This leaves you with two escape routes: up through the tar blob to the north, or through the secret exit to the NW. The secret exit is inaccessible: to get to it, either the Black Gate must be open (in which case you went through the tar blob to the north already and don't need the secret exit), or the Red Gate must be open (in which case there are no more trapdoors, and no way to get to the secret exit).

* To get to the tar blob, the green door must be open. That means no more Tar Mothers. If that tar blob is the last bit of tarstuff in the room, then you'll be locked in, and be forced to kill a bunch of tar babies with no room to retreat. So either it must not be the last bit of tarstuff, or you need a Speed Potion, or you need a Mimic next to you in order to help. Option 1 is out though: there are no places to park any bits of extra tarstuff whilst also killing all mothers (pity it wasn't Mud).

* The only Speed Potion in the room is under the brain. The Speed Potion is destroyed if any bomb goes off and hits the tile it's on. However, in order to start the room, you need a Mimic Potion. The only available Mimic Potions are first unlocked by standing on the pressure plates at the west and east sides of the room. But the ones they unlock are those in the *opposite* section of the room you start in. There is no way to get past the bombs to the unlocked Mimic Potion. This forces you to blow up some bombs immediately, and with only one Arrow Rotator token available to you, you cannot protect the Speed Potion. This leaves one final option to deal with the tar blob: Mimics.

* You need to kill the four eyes, so that means you need a Mimic to kill them for you. There is no way to get a single Mimic to kill the two northern eyes, since the crumbly walls need to be destroyed from the inside. That means one Mimic per eye. The only way to get them out of the chamber after this is to drop the Red Gate... but that closes the Red Sister Gate, which locks them in to the Tar Mother chamber. So there is no way to both kill all the eyes *and* get a Mimic into the center with you.

* Since all three valid methods of making your escape are impossible, it follows that escape itself is impossible. As such, the room itself is impossible.

As I said, this was a very involved room, with a large amount of elements to consider. I admire the simplicity in the differences of the other holds, and as I said, I thought it'd be nicer if the difference in this one was more subtle... but the way this room has managed to sidestep what could be a mess of unintended solution shows a great deal of effort going into it.