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Caravel Forum : DROD Boards : Holds : Palace of fine dream (puzzles)
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1.7/10 (21 votes)
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Author Name:Vladislav
Submitted By:Vladilav
Hold Name:Palace of fine dream
Theme:puzzles
Author's Difficulty:
Number of Levels:12
Number of Rooms:119
Number of Monsters:7479
Version:DROD: The City Beneath (3.2)
High Scores:View High Scores
Hold Karma:0 (+2 / -2)
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File: Palace of fine dream.hold (55.3 KB)
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License: Other
From: Unspecified
icon Palace of fine dream  
B55t=ro quietly ate in the hall of warriors. Suddenly he heard two soldiers whispered about what - the Palace ... He asked me what they are ... and they have responded to the palace of dreams ... a beautiful place, no one could dobrtsya .. according to rumors there arose killer .. and the King of the Deep moguschenstvee empire! Is there country .. which is a lot of them ... operidila B55t=ra said it was nonsense and that will bring the head of the king for 100,000 gremlins! In this transaction, and zaklyachili.
07-03-2012 at 07:44 PM
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Jatopian
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icon Re: Palace of fine dream (0)  
07-04-2012 at 12:48 AM
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Chaco
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icon Re: Palace of fine dream (0)  
I can't pretend to understand the story of this hold, especially since there's very little dialogue inside the hold itself.

Never fear though! There actually is a level called "Palace of fine dream" that is reachable in-game, through some effort. So presumably that's the goal of our hero.

...I'd write a review of this hold, but I think it's something the reader may have to experience for themselves.

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07-04-2012 at 01:02 AM
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Tahnan
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icon Re: Palace of fine dream (+3)  
In some ways, the most frustrating holds are those that leave you conflicted: the ones where the story is clever but the puzzles are boring, or there are really good rooms connected by long slogs through empty corridors, or there are really clever ideas hampered by stilted dialogue.

This is not one of those holds. There is pretty much nothing good in here to make me feel conflicted about the bad parts.

Where to even start? Among other things:

What text there is reads as if it were translated out of Russian; and out of fairness, it presumably has been, but having that excuse still means it's incredibly hard to comprehend.

Navigation is something of a chore, since there are rooms that are clearable only when you find a staircase back to them much later, and there are a number of places where you can't backtrack. Not in a hold-breaking way, because you can get back to the room by going forward until you reach the beginning and then looping back through. You merely can't walk back the way you came. There are also many, many rooms with edge spaces that don't correspond to entrances in the next room over: the rooms in the 6E column of "The travel beginning", for instance, are entirely empty (except for staircases blocked by arrows), making it look like there are more rooms beyond them; but, no, just invisible barriers at the edges.

Within-room navigation is often no better. Several rooms in "The travel midle" are darkened for no good reason, to the point that I had to turn off alpha blending to save myself from squinting. Others are merely irritating: a room full of fegundo where you just have to stand around waiting for enough of them to die that you can navigate around them, or long, needless walks through twisting corridors. (A secret room near the latter room consists of nothing but a 91-move walk to a conquer token, followed by the same walk back out.)

The rooms themselves vary a fair amount, but mostly have a sort of war-series sense to them--lots of arbitrarily placed monsters, but without war's sense of whimsy. Many of the rooms seemed more irritating than anything else--when it wasn't the navigation, it was having to deal with brained waterskippers ("really?"), or else a single goblin or three lone rock giants ("really?!"). In some rooms, I went back to optimize, but in many I decided that whoever came along next was welcome to the #1 score because replaying would just be too tedious to be worth it.

Some days I wish I weren't such a completist that I had to play holds simply because they're there. This was one of those days. Perhaps if you play this you'll find something to like in this hold, but if you don't, don't say you weren't warned.
07-08-2012 at 02:00 AM
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mxvladi
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icon Re: Palace of fine dream (+5)  
I've noticed that so far, noone has all scores for this hold. Max amount of scores people have is 81... out of 84.

I haven't played this, but apparently, three rooms in this hold need to be marked unscorable.

I don't want to ask architect to do this, since he probably doesn't understand how highscores work too well... so, may someone with required powers please mark the following rooms unscorable:

the travel beginning: Entrance


the travel beginning: 1E


the travel beginning: 1W

(note: there're two levels named "the travel beginning" in this hold; I mean one which ID is 3439)

I apologize if I'm wrong and it's actually possible to get scores for them - I assume that it isn't judging by other people's scores. It would be helpful if someone who played the hold could confirm that it's not possible to get scores for those rooms.
08-15-2012 at 12:55 PM
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Schik
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icon Re: Palace of fine dream (+2)  
Thanks, mxvladi. Done.

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08-15-2012 at 01:07 PM
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Trickster
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mxvladi wrote:
I apologize if I'm wrong and it's actually possible to get scores for them - I assume that it isn't judging by other people's scores. It would be helpful if someone who played the hold could confirm that it's not possible to get scores for those rooms.
Schik just implicitly confirmed this, but yes, these are all unscorable (to the best of my knowledge). There are only those three rooms in that level, so there's no non-scripted way to get to the roaches (or to leave the area after killing one, if an entrance leads you there).

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08-15-2012 at 01:56 PM
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Trickster
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icon Re: Palace of fine dream (+1)  
Tahnan wrote:
Some days I wish I weren't such a completist that I had to play holds simply because they're there. This was one of those days. Perhaps if you play this you'll find something to like in this hold, but if you don't, don't say you weren't warned.
A actually loved this hold for the very reasons you hated it. Something about the surreal quality of a-world-unto-itself where the rules are bent and searching is part of the game, appeals to me.

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08-15-2012 at 01:58 PM
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bomber50
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icon Re: Palace of fine dream (0)  
Am I the only one who gets severe lag playing this hold even with Alpha Blending off?
09-13-2012 at 02:25 AM
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Briareos
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bomber50 wrote:
Am I the only one who gets severe lag playing this hold even with Alpha Blending off?
Signs point to "no"...

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09-13-2012 at 02:53 PM
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