These Salamanders are beautiful and tricky beasts indeed! I sailed through the Tutorial, struggled through the First Level and am now working on the Second Level.
Tutorial
Beethro as test dummy. That plot's been done before, but not like this... I'll note that sometimes the characters have completely empty lines of speech. While this might add clarity and organization to a written script, it does not look good on the game screen.
1N1W - A nice zoo exhibit. "
When you're ready to proceed, move to the southern door,"
would add clarity here.
2N1W - Not only does this room show what floor types the salamanders can move on, it also shows that their movement is more like "
flexible beelining"
.
3N1W - The first time I tried this room, I tried only the pressure plates on the grass. When I came back to it a second time, I tried both. It might be nice to force me to try both ways of leading a salamander.
4N1W - The next level shows the value of this room. Orthogonal sword directions do indeed work best. Particularly north, it seems, or that may just be a coincidence related to which puzzled I've tried so far.
5N1W - This was even more like what I ended up doing on the next level.
6N1W - The point about invisibility was not really made here, as I waited before the invisibility potion until the skipper came around to a killable position. It doesn't matter much, as calamarain has already taught us about custom monsters, brains, decoys, and invisibility with his warbas.
7N1W - I kept trying to time things to save the stalwart, and it didn't work. TCB has trained us to do the wrong thing. What worked better was using a salamander to ... uh ... get the stalwart's sword out of the way.
First Level
Aiee! The two horde rooms in the tutorial level left me feeling completely unprepared for this level, particularly 1S and 1E, which took me hours of trial and error.
1S - I tried and tried and tried to find a way to get both wubbas and the orb to protect me orthogonally... but then you've got both white and black salamanders here. I ended up treating this like a brained roach horde room, backing into a corner with one wubba to protect me.
1S1E - Manipulating salamanders from a distance was much more my speed. It's possible to make small mistakes without dying. And it gave more practice with predicting their "
flexible beelining"
movement. I liked this room.
1E - This room took me hours, even after Chaco told me which sword direction to start with. I ended up solving it in the editor with UU, writing down each of my moves on a piece of paper, and finally solving it in game.
1N1E - This room I liked. I used the lines of roaches to prevent the salamanders from walking into traps. It showed their non-response to invisibility much better than the tutorial.
1N - This is a very clever room. I found the second part of your hint completely unhelpful, though, as I think both decoys helped to block both kinds of salamanders. I used the fact that
Click here to view the secret text
×salamanders can't go through one square wide passages that are at least two squares long.
What was the water skipper nest for?