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The Stew Boy
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File: Unfriendly Islands.drh (33 KB)
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icon Unfriendly Islands (+5)  
Edit: Latest version has been attached here.

A hold I have been working on here and there (mostly there) for about half a year.
Hope you enjoy.

[Last edited by The Stew Boy at 04-08-2010 04:01 AM]
01-28-2010 at 07:51 AM
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Blondbeard
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (+1)  
I'm in 6S1E, and everything seems very well-balanced and fun so far :) I'm very pleased to see some activity at the RPG boards.
01-28-2010 at 11:06 AM
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Budja
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (0)  
Hard and fun. Might take me a while to finish this one.
01-28-2010 at 01:22 PM
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (+1)  
Very enjoyable hold so far! Only had to restore once, but that's OK.

Stats:
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01-28-2010 at 02:28 PM
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Blondbeard
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (+1)  
Pirate Defeted: 83/270/167/18/2

Edit: Serpent Defeated: 2470/518/487/11/3/1. Really nice job so far!

Edit: I like choclate, but I don't have a cat :P Really nice hold! And huge! Perhaps you could add markers for where the teleporters go? Just to make it more convinient. What kind of feedback would you like?

[Last edited by Blondbeard at 01-28-2010 08:56 PM]
01-28-2010 at 04:10 PM
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The Stew Boy
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (0)  
Thanks guys!

What kind of feedback would you like?
Basically, any bugs/annoyances you might find.
01-28-2010 at 10:59 PM
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deftriver
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (0)  
Wow, +4 in less than a day! We really want more RPG holds, especially fun ones like this that you have to figure out...
01-29-2010 at 04:15 AM
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Blondbeard
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (+1)  
Guardian Defeated: 8793, 580, 529, 25/4/1, 23258 GR.

About minor anoyances:
1) The Greckle Gate system didn't really work. Sure, it worked in the beginning, when I didn't have enough greckles, but later on I opened everything as soon as I encountered them. As you can see I still ended the game with 23258 greckles to spare.

2) Hot Tiles and Aumtlichs. It always anoys me to have to leave health behind. Especially Hot Tiles irritates me. They are hardly ever worthy of avoiding, so you constantly have to have a low amount of lives. This is a personal taste, though.

3) The red door closing system in 7S8W. Why? You can easilly grab everything. The closing of the red doors is just an inconvinience.

4) 9N10W. Highscore wise the reward is way to low considering the number of keys you have to let go in order to get the potions and gems. Especially since you reach this so late in the game.

5) As you can see I have many lives and many keys left. There is room to tighten the hold some. However I really don't encourage you to do this until others have completed the hold, and reported similar things. Perhaps it was just me being effieient :P
01-29-2010 at 07:30 AM
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The Stew Boy
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (0)  
Blondbeard wrote:
About minor anoyances:
1) The Greckle Gate system didn't really work. Sure, it worked in the beginning, when I didn't have enough greckles, but later on I opened everything as soon as I encountered them. As you can see I still ended the game with 23258 greckles to spare.
I noticed that too but I didn't see much I could do about it. Late in the hold I guess I was just putting them in for the sake of it (I didn't really think that one through). I'll probably get rid of the most unnecessary greckle gate chains.

2) Hot Tiles and Aumtlichs. It always anoys me to have to leave health behind. Especially Hot Tiles irritates me. They are hardly ever worthy of avoiding, so you constantly have to have a low amount of lives. This is a personal taste, though.
I guess I'll get rid of some of them if other people complain.

3) The red door closing system in 7S8W. Why? You can easilly grab everything. The closing of the red doors is just an inconvinience.
You're supposed to get one group of items to start with, then spend a green key for each extra group. I guess you used the island tunnels to navigate so that you could get the rest with only one key? That's a bug, and one which I didn't spot. :(

4) 9N10W. Highscore wise the reward is way to low considering the number of keys you have to let go in order to get the potions and gems. Especially since you reach this so late in the game.
Well, I found it useful, myself, but I haven't actually tested going through the hold without grabbing some of those items. I didn't really think of the hold in terms of highscores in general, since I don't tend to care that much about getting a high score, just as long as I manage to complete the hold :)

5) As you can see I have many lives and many keys left. There is room to tighten the hold some. However I really don't encourage you to do this until others have completed the hold, and reported similar things. Perhaps it was just me being effieient :P
Well, you did get through the Nameless Fortress levels rather quickly, with much better stats than I did, and that was before they were made easier for me. :(
Out of curiosity, what did you spend your first 10 GR on? I haven't really thoroughly tested using it on anything apart from getting one yellow key in the first room.
Thanks for your feedback!
01-29-2010 at 10:18 AM
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Blondbeard
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Ah! I never used the green door in 7S8W. I killed the Pirate in 1S3W and got the ATK gems that way, and got the DEF gem in the same time (I guess). Then I just had to pick up the last thing after opening the blue doors. I used my first greckles to get the ATK gem in 1N2W.

[Last edited by Blondbeard at 01-29-2010 11:14 AM]
01-29-2010 at 11:05 AM
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The Stew Boy
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You're not supposed to be able to kill the Pirate before you get to the SW island. :(
I'll make it so that going through that room from either direction has the same effect.
01-29-2010 at 09:33 PM
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Chaco
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File: unfriendly_islands_scores_Chaco.txt (779 bytes)
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (+1)  
Attached are my score checkpoints for my run through this hold.

I don't have a lot of detailed notes or problems, but I will mention one problem which you should probably fix right away - in Sence South, the rightmost black gate is set up backwards, so it's unlocked from the East rather than the West. This lets the player unlock the gate if they defeat the Tar Mother in Septence South, Once East, and then proceed onwards to the northern bridge in Quince South. This ultimately makes the blue door in Septence South, Once West not worth opening.

If you set that gate up the other way, then there won't be a surplus of one blue key from that point forward, and the player will have to spend the blue key there in order to progress. Adding some more score checkpoints at key chokepoints (possibly when opening blue doors or killing powerful enemy midbosses?) would be good.

Also, I would recommend you add more autosave points, probably at all equipment pickup events and score checkpoints, and possibly one for each bridge, not just the ones you've marked already.

Also I don't know why you gave the Guardian a portable orb and put the hold exit all the way in the NW corner behind an "unopenable" black door, instead of just putting the hold end *behind the Guardian*. (I did find it somewhat funny that the Guardian has the statistics of the Archivist from Tendry's Tale, essentially forcing us to fight those statistics as the final boss... but with a much higher attack and defense cap)

This is a huge hold, so I'm not sure if I'll go over it again for more errors. What I will say is that I like the difficulty progression a lot, from an optimization viewpoint - there's a very appropriate amount of room for optimization, health saving, and resource scrounging. I never felt like the hold was lacking enough exchanges, only that I didn't plan ahead well enough.

Also, most importantly, I think this is a really good-quality and well-made hold. Good job! :)

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[Last edited by Chaco at 01-30-2010 03:56 AM]
01-30-2010 at 03:55 AM
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Blondbeard
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The Stew Boy wrote:
You're not supposed to be able to kill the Pirate before you get to the SW island. :(
I'll make it so that going through that room from either direction has the same effect.

I don't get it... You have to defeat some pirates in 8N3W (and possibly in 8N2W) before you can get two blue keys to get to the SW Island that way. Why not defeat just one pirate first?
01-30-2010 at 07:39 AM
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The Stew Boy
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File: Unfriendly Islands_v2.drh (32.8 KB)
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (+1)  
Thanks!
I've fixed 7S8W and 6S (by 'fixed' I mean 'made them work vaguely like I intended them to in the first place'), removed/changed some of the unnecessary greckle gate chains late in the hold (changed the gates in 8N1W to a script that hopefully does the same thing), added a couple more autosaves/score checkpoints, moved the hold ending spot, gave the final boss a bit more HP, and changed a couple other small things. The boss having the Archivist's stats was a complete accident on my part, I didn't think of it that way.

Edit: Just saw this:
Blondbeard wrote:
The Stew Boy wrote:
You're not supposed to be able to kill the Pirate before you get to the SW island. :(
I'll make it so that going through that room from either direction has the same effect.

I don't get it... You have to defeat some pirates in 8N3W (and possibly in 8N2W) before you can get two blue keys to get to the SW Island that way. Why not defeat just one pirate first?
You're not supposed to defeat the pirates, you're supposed to drop the trapdoors by stepping onto their swords.

[Last edited by The Stew Boy at 01-30-2010 08:05 AM]
01-30-2010 at 07:42 AM
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Blondbeard
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The Stew Boy wrote:]
You're not supposed to defeat the pirates, you're supposed to drop the trapdoors by stepping onto their swords.
Ah! Never thought of that.

Edit: and without those black doors in 7S8W it is possible to sidestep the two blue gates compleatly. The SW island is now more accessable.

[Last edited by Blondbeard at 01-30-2010 08:48 AM]
01-30-2010 at 08:37 AM
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The Stew Boy
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File: Unfriendly Islands_v3.drh (33 KB)
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (+1)  
I made a small change to 1S6W which means you can't use the middle->west entrance until you've gone through the SW island.
01-30-2010 at 10:03 AM
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Blondbeard
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Yes, that ought to work. Maybe the hold becomes more balanced... On the other hand it becomes more linear. Should I try to replay the affected portions of the hold?

[Last edited by Blondbeard at 01-30-2010 11:25 AM]
01-30-2010 at 11:24 AM
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Blondbeard
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Yes, I think the hold is more well-balanced now. Ending stats: 10560/578/529/16/6/0. One input: Since you do have aumtlichs and hot-tiles it would be nice if the player could choose wich potions to pick up, and which to leave for later to a higher degree. Quite often you have to pick up a potion in order to get to an ATK or DEF gem. Look at 7S4W for example. It's not a big complaint though.
02-03-2010 at 07:55 AM
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The Stew Boy
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File: Unfriendly Islands_v4.drh (33 KB)
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icon Re: Unfriendly Islands (0)  
I made minor changes to about half a dozen rooms.
Should I submit it to the Hold Administrators yet, or should I wait for more people to test it?
Also, I saw in the rules topic that no copyrighted materials are allowed. I searched for relevant information on this but it was a bit confusing. Am I allowed to use recoloured (via _MyColor) monster graphics as custom monsters (eg, the 5 wubbas)?
02-03-2010 at 10:33 AM
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Blondbeard
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I don't think there's any problem with the wubbas. If you want to you could write what you have changed. About sending it to the HAs: Do what you want. More testing doesn't hurt though, and since you already have spent so much time on this some aditional feedback definitly couldn't hurt.

[Last edited by Blondbeard at 02-03-2010 11:01 AM]
02-03-2010 at 10:54 AM
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