Level 5
Level 5 is the most aggravating level to try to optimise. Firstly, there are eighteen populated rooms. And I believe that with three of those rooms it's faster in the long run not to conquer them on the first time through (1S is cleared only on the third time that it is entered).
This wouldn't be quite so bad but the theme of the level is wraithwings and evil eyes.
What's wrong with wraithwings and evil eyes?
One wraithwing is fine. It's nice. It's easily predictable. Two wraithwings are tricky to predict but it's possible, as long as you know which one moves first. With a hoard, it's extremely difficult to see even one move ahead. Because of their behaviour, even one square difference in Beethro's position can have a big difference in where the wraithwings end up - one advances instead of retreating, so that makes another retreat instead of advancing, but now a third is blocked and so doesn't move.. etc, etc. This chaotic behaviour not only makes it hard to see what's happening, it means that when you do have a fast solution, a lot - if not all - of the moves are important and non-intuitive.
Roaches are nice. From the moment you are in the room they all head towards you. Wait a number of turns and they'll be bumping into a wall or breathing down your neck. Evil eyes are not nice. You have control over whether they're awake or asleep. Now, if you want to kill them all quickly, it's nice if they're all moving towards you and your sword. But too many towards you at once is bad. Finding which happy medium is happiest is difficult because of the number of ways to wake them. Which eyes do you wake, and in which order, and when? There are potentially countless combinations and it's not always obvious which ones are going to be fast and which will be slow.
In short, I take this too seriously and have given this too much thought.
old - Time: 32:55 Moves: 4595 Rooms: 47/22
new - Time: 32:26 Moves: 4162 Rooms: 43/22
