Comments on the race rooms, which I think guaranteed for a separate post:
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Overall: As I've said in chat, the three levels covers three different things: disoriented's Atoll is lynchpin-based, Xindaris's Preparation is simple and demands good execution, blorx's Frozen Abyss is about reading the confusing rooms and figure out what you should do in the first place. So I'd say they're well-balanced.
Atoll:
1N1W: So it's pretty clear you have to blow up 8 monsters with just one keg, and have to think about how to deal with the nest. The postmastery version is about the same difficulty? Except you have to know about stunning a monster stops it from spawning monsters (which was featured in one of the rooms in an optional TSS level), so the change is okay.
2N1W: On hindsight, this room is probably not suitable for a blind race because it requires the understanding of how bomb's blast range works. I played some AC so I knew how it works, but not many people have played (or want to play) AC, and it'll be a big problem because they'll take some while to realize you need to put cabers on those fuses to prevent cracked orbs from exploding.
3N: It's "the hardest" in this level because for a blind race, the racers are mostly rushing ahead and so reading the level more thoroughly to see that you can actually kill the two west eyes is unorthodox, given pretty much the rest of the rooms are very simple.
3N1E: Another one of the simple rooms that suits the purpose.
3N2E/1S2E: I like it that how you can parse the room in like 5 seconds before you scratch your head on it.
2N3E: This is one of the tough ones, because you can't get babies inside the plates or they'll be trapped. Incidentally, checkpoints are lacking here. If I press R it'd be very likely to send me directly to room start.
1N3E: An innocent-looking lynchpin room. It becomes easier if you know mimics can walk across potions (though you can certainly clear the room without it).
3E: It's okay I guess. Kinda looks like a filler room.
1S1E: Now this room is a thing. The sheer size of waterskipper horde means that if you're not doing it correctly (2 stick + 1 sword below, 1 stick up for the exit) you'd be spending 100+ turns doing nothing (but it's painful!) and then you have to do it again. So the time wasted per lynchpin miss is very high in this room.
1S: This room surprisingly stumped Doom for a whole while. I think the firetrap at 29,25 pretty much gives away the solution, but I guess not. By the way, all the mimic potions are not needed anyway, you can just use the clone alone to push the WW on the firetrap.
1N1E: So the plate is multi-use and actually toggles the door. I think it managed to trick many of us to think you can open the doors once only.
Also, not sure if the lynchpin is something that all racers will know, kegs/bombs on walls are not exactly a well-known behaviour.
Preparation:
Entrance: For some reason this simple room caught many people off guard. I didn't understand why, but I guess it's good then.
1S: This room is definitely much better than the original version (which requires you to stand on a door).
1S1E: Now this is also a room. If people aren't used to speedsolving techniques like pressing Ctrl+5 out of instinct, trial-and-error will take lots of time (this also applies to Atoll 1S1E). Another thing: I think we shouldn't put a challenge scroll in the main race hold, since me and mxvladi were tempted to go for it and wasted some time. It can totally be made into two separate rooms, one in the main hold and one in postmastery (postmastery 1E is empty anyway).
1S1W: This room is also pretty simple, the only difficulty is to find a way to be efficient enough.
2S: Yay?
Frozen Abyss:
Entrance: So it's another "protect yourself from explosion with a door" thing, which is not exactly well known. Construct reviving on a disabled firetrap is probably also a bit obscure. But otherwise, this room is solid.
1S: There are a few ways to do the thing required to solve this room, of varying difficulty. It's nice.
1N: The easier version is much more handleable than the original.
2N: I did it with Beethro. The difficulties between two player roles are about the same, probably?
1N1E: Wow, the original lynchpin is tough. Glad that I can choose one of the two lynchpins to use which came along to me much quicker than the other one.
2N1E: Now this is a trick room. It's a bit ridiculous since it's a meta-puzzle out of nowhere, and it involves non-player roles which is seldom touched in many holds. But that's what the two joker bombs are for, right? (Assuming haven't used all in advance)
The main theme here is that some of the rooms featured some interactions that experienced players will be familiar with, but newer players will have a hard time seeing them coming. So I guess if we want to improve upon this, we also need to think about what interactions the rooms require, and whether they're well known or not (which in this case, maybe workaround or an demonstration is necessary).
[Last edited by uncopy2002 at 08-20-2016 07:43 AM]
. There was small time loss like that all over the hold. I bet that's why LPers occasionally miss trivial stuff too, since some of your attention is split to commentary.