Heh. I just noticed that the Holds
overview page has probably not undergone a major revision since 2005. What is more surprising is that since then, no-one else appears to have spotted this or made any comments about it.
I guess it speaks for the page's ease of use; who needs a manual?
But it seems the page needs an update; feel free to use (or ruthlessly edit) the text below if you think it's suitable.
So, what are holds, you ask, with a slightly pointed expression? Good question!
A hold is a set of levels, like King Dugan's Dungeon, that represent a complete DROD dungeon. A couple are made by the designers of DROD, but most are made by DROD players, and a fair few are even better than King Dugan's! (Naturally, we kidnapped the designers.) You can make your own hold to play yourself, with time and effort, but then you'd know all the solutions, which does get in the way of the fun a bit.
The holds you see below have been uploaded to CaravelNet by members for other fans to play - if you'd like to try one out, click on the hold's name to download it. If you are planning to download lots of holds, it might be a good idea to create a special folder to put them all in.
It is then a simple matter of importing the hold into DROD. If you're using DROD: Architect's Edition, click the "
Where"
button, then click "
Import"
. If you are using DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold or DROD: The City Beneath, click "
Play Game"
then "
Change Location"
and then "
Import"
. Navigate to the hold file, press "
Okay"
and you're ready to go!
The rest of the information on the page describes various aspects of the hold in more detail. Most important are the difficulty and fun ratings, which are represented by the brains and yellow bar on the right side. The more brains there are, the harder players consider the hold, and the bigger the yellow bar, the more enjoyable it is to play. If you're unsure exactly what value the yellow bar is trying to show, you can hover your mouse over it to see the exact number.
If you want to see what comments players have made about the hold or leave your own, you can click the "
Discuss"
link (it's the small icon that looks like a speech bubble) to go to the hold's topic. You can also rate the hold yourself here if you've played it.
Not sure what to play? No problem! You can sort the table by clicking on the columns to sort them in ascending order and again to sort by descending order. Clicking several times might be fun if you're bored. You can navigate to different parts of the list by pressing the numbers at the bottom of the page, or if you're feeling lucky, you can also click the "
Show 10 random holds"
button for a random selection of 10 holds.
With all the versions of DROD floating around, you should pay attention to the version icon in the second column, which tells you which version the hold was made in. DROD: AE holds are marked with a blue icon with a sword; these can be played in all versions. DROD: JtRH holds are marked with four brown tiles below a sword and are not compatible with AE. DROD: TCB is the latest version; TCB holds can only be played in TCB and are marked with a picture of Beethro on a grey background. While AE holds may seem old and limited, don't let that put you off; even the oldest holds have some truly great puzzles that are definitely worth playing!
If you're building a hold of your own, do stop by the
Architecture forum where there are lots of helpful people that want to help you get the kinks out of your hold and make sure it's ready for prime-time. A team of friendly
hold administrators will be on hand to help review your hold when it is finished before you uploading to the site.
And finally, if you haven't registered,
you might want to. Because, you know, we like new people, and we kinda need people to have registered to post... yeah. (The worst that will happen is that you'll occasionally get CaravelNet news, but you can opt out of that in your profile.)
What are you waiting for? Get smiting!
____________________________
Resident Medic/Mycologist
