Nuntar wrote:
Are you sure you made the king weaker? I just downloaded the latest version, and his DEF is still 600. Altering the other stats makes no difference; if his DEF is higher than the highest ATK you can possibly get, you cannot even hurt him. My ATK is 452 and I'm sure the only boosts I missed in the entire hold were the seep ones on Level 4. (Yes, I did get the adder's cache.)
The King's DEF hasn't changed, no. But there's another hidden change nearby that does make the hold able to be completed. (
EDIT: Did another check, and looks like you do have all the available power gems besides those you mention. But yes, the hold's possible, but you may need to start this level again...)
Nuntar wrote:
What difference does it make whether you sell your keys or lose them for nothing? There's nothing in the hold, nothing, that you can spend that amount of greckles on. (For reference, I have 35,931 greckles before fighting the Empowered Goblin King.)
There's two things that sap your greckles by a large amount. But one is percentage based, so it can't really be counted as a reasonable expenditure. And the other is after the Empowered Goblin King... with little point in it, since there are no further challenges, and no further Score Checkpoints. (I was able to go Serpent smiting after it though, and racked up another 80k greckles....)
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It's definitely possible to reach both Pirate Tolls with no keys and not having to sell any. (You also don't need to sell a key to get the Wooden Shield, but you'll have to fight a monster or two to get a few extra greckles first.) It does mean having to leave certain bonus areas until later (like the hidden room in FF3), but it's generally worth it. (Green Keys get used up easily by the way, so you don't have to waste them or avoid picking them up... well, I say that, but there is a trick to avoid using two Green Keys earlier, so probably worth doing that instead)
The problem with these tolls though, is that (1) it punishes the player for picking up lots of keys early and (2) it means there are *FAR* too many keys around. I had almost 70 Yellow Keys from cleaning up just before killing the Empowered Goblin King.
Anyways, as for general comments about the hold itself... it's an interesting hold, but it still needs a fair bit of work and polish.
* It'd be nice to have some sort of consistency in level naming (especially with regards to capital letters), and you've got a mistake in FF1's level name.
*
FF3:1N1W: I don't really understand what the secret wall north of the Goblin is for - you can't break it without being hit by the Goblin, and there's no benefit to skirting around the Goblin, unless you're *really* desperate for health potions and can one-hit Rock Golems.
*
FF4:3N1E: As has already been stated, there's no point in this room - key merchants aren't all that great if you do the sensible thing and don't pick up all that many keys, and this guy buys keys for exactly the same amount as the one in FF1, but is *much* more costly to get to.
*
FF5:1S4E: Absolutely no point in this room. You need to be swimming in health in order to deal with the Rock Giants/Hot Tiles, and you will never have four Blue Keys at once. And you get a Hook really easily on the next level anyways.
*
FF5:4S: No real point to this room either. Charging through that many Pirates is foolhardy, and you won't be able to kill them easily until much later, and the reward is inconsequential. And you still won't have two Blue Keys to waste to go the other way.
*
FF5:4S5E: You never need to enter this room for anything, especially given you can grapple hook across 4S4E to 3S4E without seeing this room.
*
FF5:1N1E: You never need to open the Yellow Door here, since you can just backtrack.
*
FF6:2N3E: Despite there being a Briar Hacker here that costs 3 Yellow Keys, none of the areas with briar in give access to anything interesting if you cut them.
*
FF7: There's a few scripting errors here, like the technician teleporting while you're heading for the RBS. And there's no real indiciation of what you're meant to do here - sure, you're directed to pick up the RBS and Oremite Shield, but you never get at the source of the problem, and you're never told "
you're done, you can leave now"
. It's exploration only that takes you back to FF6 and the Empowered Goblin King, but it doesn't really feel finished.
* And as I noted previously, there's no Score Checkpoints at all after FF4, and absolutely *no* point in the stat bonuses available after the Empowered Goblin King. It's just stats for the sake of it, which feels messy.
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It's not a bad hold overall, and I did have fun playing with it. But it doesn't feel finished yet.
EDIT: For the record, I just went through once more trying out another route, again with a focus on optimizing keys, making sure none were sold or taken by the Pirates. Not sure how much better it can be optimized in this version, but I got to the Empowered Goblin King with 55339 HP, 750 ATK, 451 DEF, 26251 GR, 73/4/0 Keys for a total of 7296 Score. I then finished the hold with 60739 HP, 952 ATK, 554 DEF, 100832 GR, 73/4/1 Keys for a total score of 8780. Of course, it takes pretty heavy optimisation to accumulate this much, as well as finding all the hidden rooms, but this is the amount of leeway we're dealing with.
[Last edited by TFMurphy at 01-03-2009 06:10 AM]