karlpopper
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 263
Registered: 03-28-2009
IP: Logged

File: moar-guide-v4.jpg (2.3 MB)
Downloaded 521 times.
License: Public Domain

You're about to play one of the finale levels of The Second Sky. You'll be needing to hone some lesser used skills here.

The first thing you'll probably do is wander round the whole level and marvel at the mini-map, and then wonder where to start.

The map embedded in the secret tag below indicates how difficult I found various rooms, and may give you a way in if you're stumped because you chose the really tough rooms first.

General Pointers

Babies on the run Queens do not spawn on the square they moved from: an importance consequence is that a queen in a cul-de-sac may be persuaded to turn round without spawning a roach, just at the 30 move point.

No babies on doors Queens do not spawn on certain surfaces: open doors and trapdoors are used a lot in this level

Monster movement order is predictable, but hidden to the casual observer. This is heavily exploited in this level and you will not defeat some rooms unless you take careful note of it (with the right click).

Embrace the Roach A queen and a roach can become locked in a loving embrace: the roach is trying to get to you, whilst the queen is fleeing. This is a an effective way to halt a queen,
right in the middle of a room.

Which Order? You can see the order that the queens will move in my right clicking on them.

Symmetry | ytremmyS is important, or rather the lack of it. There are some rooms here that look symmetrical at first, but turn out not to be.

Parity Queens generally move diagonally, unless something blocks them, and when it does a queen may move from black squares to white squares. Keep an eye out for parity, several puzzles within rely on flipping it around.

CTRL-5 You'll be waiting around for queens to spawn; this key helps.

Brained queens it is beyond my wit to figure out exactly how this works, but there is a sequence of rooms in the middle of this level that take advantage of surprising consequences of the algorithm.

Unlimited Undo (UU) if you've survived this far without it: well done. Now might be the time to treat yourself to it; delicate manipulations of exactly when to spawn roachlings can benefit from the precision timing that UU affords.


Here's the annotated map: Green rooms are easy, Yellow medium and Red hard. A couple of rooms are tagged as warm up.



I used the amazing Caravel facility here that lets you see a medium sized map for any rooms you've visited.


Note1: I'm posting this before I'm done to see how it looks on the forum site. Feedback welcome, and I will revise the map and this post.

Note2: I've not seen a general level guide like this before, and I realize some folk might not like it, because it looks ahead too much. I took the view that this level makes no effort to hide any of the rooms themsleves, so it was ok to reveal the (rather beautiful) level map.


____________________________
76th SkyWatcher
When the only tool you have is a Really Big Sword, all problems start to look like Giant Roaches

---

[Last edited by karlpopper at 10-28-2014 12:34 AM : Formatting]

Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1638
Registered: 09-04-2014
IP: Logged

Well, I don't know how others feel, but I really appreciate what you did here. I only took a cursory glance because I don't want spoilers for the rooms I haven't completed yet, but I think having an overall strategy guide for certain levels like this would be nice. I would have certainly loved something like this for Experiment of Ages (I took me forever to "get" some of the basic ideas on that level, like trapping Gentryii by the tail, etc, which get used in one room after the next). It's also nice to have a large map like this to give you an idea of what rooms might be good ones to start out with and so on.

By the way, brained queen movement is one of the more confusing monster behaviors, (and I don't claim to be an expert with brained queen manipulation) but I understand it MUCH better after having played through the Advanced Concepts hold. If you haven't played Advanced Concepts, I highly recommend it. It's a great advanced tutorial which somehow pulls off the trick of being both a movement tutorial, and being extremely fun and challenging at the same time. The "Advanced Brain Movement" level from that hold (which is accessible right from the beginning) goes over in detail how brained roach queens work and has a few fun rooms for you to test your understanding in. I can't possibly recommend it enough!

____________________________
Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:

karlpopper
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 263
Registered: 03-28-2009
IP: Logged

Thanks for the feedback, Insoluble, and anonymous for the rank points (correlated with mrimer's presence on the board....).

I've now completed the level, and it was excellent: thank you Larry Murk, I believe.

I feel it would have benefited from a little guidance to the explorer as to which rooms to tackle first.

I updated the guide attached to the original post with my view of the difficulty level of the rooms.

Game On.

____________________________
76th SkyWatcher
When the only tool you have is a Really Big Sword, all problems start to look like Giant Roaches

cinera
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 34
Registered: 01-08-2015
IP: Logged

I am done with the level but of the 3 secrets I could only get the 2 obviouse ones.Any hint for the 3rd one?? I did the challenge of the force arrow in Rm 1N,5W
Thank you

---

[Last edited by cinera at 08-08-2018 04:49 AM]

Dragon Fogel
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2434
Registered: 06-21-2014
IP: Logged

Do you mean finding it or solving it?

If you mean finding it, there's a map of the level, secrets included, in the first post of this thread.

cinera
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 34
Registered: 01-08-2015
IP: Logged

Thank you.I found it using the map. Let see if I can solve it. did not find any hint to solve it

---

[Last edited by cinera at 08-08-2018 05:47 PM]

cinera
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 34
Registered: 01-08-2015
IP: Logged

Never mind Thank you for your help