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File: Arena 3.hold (4 KB)
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Can you complete this linear journey through 9 puzzle rooms and conquer Arena 3?

Tested by wallu.

Swivel
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 236
Registered: 09-14-2005
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Whoa! Are you alive out there, wallu? Ask you still sane after testing this hold?

(Thump) I think I have a headache. Great hold! I'm missing something in the arena, though.

____________________________
"Write a wise saying and your name will live forever."
-Anonymous

Swivel
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 236
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wallu wrote:
Yep. And I have a flu.

The flu? Hope you feel better soon. Hope it's not serious.

You have to get past that roach, right? How could you do that?

The roach only steps onto a corner scroll when I enter facing South, move diagonally towards it, move orthagonally towards the center of the screen, and move diagnally Southward with the roach at my side. It's difficult, that's for sure.

____________________________
"Write a wise saying and your name will live forever."
-Anonymous

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[Last edited by Swivel at 01-24-2006 10:56 PM : *sniff* I forgot an ']

bandit1200
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 290
Registered: 10-29-2003
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I'm stuck on the second one as well, well, third actually, but the second with a puzzle in it. I get 1 roach stuck every time.

The high scores show me as tying for first place with Wallu for 1S. Not so. That was after I looked at his demo and was just going through the motions. My best is actually 100 moves and done a different way.

Blondbeard
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Ahh!!! This is exactly the kind of romes I love, but I have to wake up early tomorow. Needs my sleep! From what I've seen so far the hold appears to be another nice little challange for the brain

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[Last edited by Blondbeard at 01-25-2006 12:34 AM]

kzc
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 212
Registered: 04-21-2005
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Blondbeard wrote:
Ahh!!! This is exactly the kind of romes I love

I second that. These puzzles are sharp and clean, the rooms are not too busy, and they all (well, to the point I've played so far) have that "aha!" moment where they go from looking impossible to being reasonably straightforward.

That it's still possible to achieve that last quality after many thousands of rooms published is one of the things which make this game great.

Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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kzc wrote:
That it's still possible to achieve that last quality after many thousands of rooms published is one of the things which make this game great.

Well, it does help that there still haven't been nearly as many 2.0 holds made as ones from AE. Granted, there aren't as many new 2.0 elements as there were in total in the original game, but the more elements you have, the more options there are. I really can't wait to see what people do with some of the 3.0 elements.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

kzc
Level: Master Delver

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Oneiromancer wrote:
Well, it does help that there still haven't been nearly as many 2.0 holds made as ones from AE.

But this hold doesn't really use them aside from a couple of rock golems on level 3. The original elements still have a lot of play in them (in the right hands, natch).

Oneiromancer wrote:
I really can't wait to see what people do with some of the 3.0 elements. :)

Ugh. I worry that they will be just more stuff for people to throw at the wall in lieu of designing elegant, spare, thoughtful puzzles.

Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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kzc wrote:

Oneiromancer wrote:
Well, it does help that there still haven't been nearly as many 2.0 holds made as ones from AE.

But this hold doesn't really use them aside from a couple of rock golems on level 3. The original elements still have a lot of play in them (in the right hands, natch).

Ah, I had only seen the one hint from this room with the rock golems, so I assumed that 2.0 elements were more represented.

Oneiromancer wrote:
I really can't wait to see what people do with some of the 3.0 elements.

Ugh. I worry that they will be just more stuff for people to throw at the wall in lieu of designing elegant, spare, thoughtful puzzles. Hmm. Well, I suppose that is a valid concern, but it seems to me that if you like a particular type of puzzle, then the architects who make those puzzles will still make them the same way, but with different elements, and so you will still enjoy them. Whereas those architects who make puzzles in a way that you don't like, probably won't change their style suddenly and so you still won't like them. In any case, when I made my previous statement, I was mostly thinking of our master puzzle-builders like Larry and Wesley, and everyone that's thought up really innovative rooms with any element.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Doom
Level: Smitemaster

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What I thought of the rooms:

Level 1:
1S - Simple. Nothing too special.
2S - Seems pretty familiar after there have been so many rooms with very similar theme (Also in larrymurk's holds). Nothing too special compared to the others.
4S - Okay room. Not a new trick, though.

Level 2:
1N - So... Saw the trick instantly after entering the room. Wasn't that hard to do either. Might be the easiest room in the hold.
2N - This was the first hard room. It was quite clear what had to be done, but it took me quite a while to get the eyes where I wanted. (Sword orientation was my biggest problem)
4N - I started to get annoyed at this room, because I didn't see where to kill the first goblin safely. After that was realised, the room wasn't so bad. It might be an interesting variation to modify the bottom area and increase the serpent length to three tiles. That's how I tried to clear it first, but it obviously doesn't work with a 2-tile serpent.

Level 3:
1S - Insanely clever room. I found the 2 "almost" solutions myself, but used the hint topic to get the correct solution in the end. I wonder how long I would've spent time with that otherwise... This one gets the hardest room of the hold sign from me, because of the good red herrings.
2S - Pretty obvious, I think, because there aren't really many things to try. It's still a nice trick, though and it was still fun to figure it out.
4S - Is this some kind of joke? Wasn't that hard. Got it on the first try after beginning with the correct sword direction.

In summary the first level wasn't too interesting and would've gotten at most a rating of around 6 from me, but the rooms really got better towards the end. L2:2N, L3:1S and L3:2S were my favourites of the 9. Total time for all 9 was around 1 hour and 20 minutes, but a few of the easier rooms were cleared in just one or two minutes. There might be some misc. other delays, though.
Oh, and take a breath, Larry. There's no rush to make holds (Not that I'm complaining)

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[Last edited by Doom at 01-26-2006 09:52 AM]

stigant
Level: Smitemaster

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Ah, Larry's back to the hard lynch-pin type rooms (as opposed to the hard swarm rooms). Another great hold, though a bit smaller than some others.

My favorite room has to be L3 2S. I really enjoyed the subtle dead-ends. I identified the trouble spots quickly, but it took me 10-15 minutes just to figure out what to do, but even after I had the general solution, it took a number of attempts to get it just right.

Hardest room is L3 1S (clearly - I had the right idea on the configuration, but it took a while to find that configuration).

I also enjoyed very much L2 2N - again, it took a while to see what had to be done even after identifying the problem spots.

So great hold overall. Keep them coming.

____________________________
Progress Quest Progress

Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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I think my first post in this thread should have the hints you need. If not, ask there for more specifics.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

michthro
Level: Smitemaestro
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Another great larrymurk hold! Different from the longer Odd jobs/Fun Park type rooms, but just as enjoyable. My favourite kind of puzzles, in fact. It's amazing how the ideas keep coming, and apart from two golems, that's without using JtRH elements.
My only gripe is that the hold is too small, but then I'm so hopelessly addicted, no hold could be large enough. So much for resolutions not to play so much DROD...

jbluestein
Level: Smitemaster

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Registered: 12-23-2005
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Finished this one looking for a palate cleanser after a longer hold.

Arena 1 wasn't bad -- took me a while to get into the proper mindset for 1S, but after that I just breezed along until...

the final room of Arena 2. This blocked me for quite a while...then I solved it, stumbled down to Arena 3...

OK, Arena 3: 1S broke my brain. I watched Larry's demo and I understand how it worked, but wow...that's got to be one of the most painful and specific solutions I've ever seen. I am in awe of anyone who solved this without resorting to hints. (Anyone out there? I assume someone did...)

2S wasn't as bad, but still tough.

The final room was kind of a letdown -- after everything else, it took me about five minutes to solve.

I had fun with it -- probably a 7, with 8 brains of difficulty. (I was going to say 7.5, but then I thought of Arena 3: 1S again <shudder>.)

Josh

____________________________
"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

Mouse
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 246
Registered: 04-21-2005
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This hold was quite a lot of fun.

Hard, brain crunching fun - but fun.

And when you realised the solutions you usually went "d'oh" or "man, that was mean" (especially Arena 3:1S).

Ezlo
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Fun hold. I only had some trouble on Arena 3: 1S, but nothing that a little H&S couldn't solve. 8 with 7 brains.

____________________________
Call me Citrus.

Remlin
Level: Master Delver
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That Arena 3: 1S is probably one of the very evilest of Larry's rooms, and that's saying a lot. I was determined to not use any hints on it after reading the comments in this thread, but it broke me. Very memorable hold, I don't know why I didn't leave any praise for it until now.

Syntax
Level: Smitemaster
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Registered: 05-12-2005
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Finally completed! Those 9 rooms only took 4 years... Says it all really

Remlin wrote:
That Arena 3: 1S is probably one of the very evilest of Larry's rooms, and that's saying a lot. I was determined to not use any hints on it after reading the comments in this thread, but it broke me.

Broke me too... and seeing that the demo in H&S has been downloaded 146 times says it all (again).

Genius at work. Enough said.

da rogu3
Level: Smiter

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Excellent hold, but I definitely feel the difficulty is over-rated here (mabye because of the date, and pre-TCB era). I gave the hold 5.5 brains, it's one of the easier Larrymurk holds.

There were a few ridiculously easy rooms (Arena 1:1S, Arena 2:1N), which looked like they were supposed to have a trick, but didn't.

There were also the 'arena' rooms. I didn't like these much, but once I got into the correct mindset, I was able to solve them. (although the last one seems to be bordering on a cheap trick)

As for Arena 3:1S, I don't think it was as 'evil' as all the previous posters suggest. I looked at the demo in H&S, and I've done it a slightly easier way. Personally, I think the tar timer could have been tighter.

The only rooms which I took longer on were Arena 1:2S, which had a very nice trick, and Arena 2: 2N (the most difficult room, conceptually).

Which room haven't I mentioned, ah Arena 3:2S - nice red herring here, by putting it at the end I ended up thinking it would be harder than it actually was, and overlooked the obvious.

So, comparing this to Don't Kill The Messenger, which requires good sepernt and guard knowledge (I'm stuck halfway through), this is much much easier.

Any intermediate player should try this, it is probably the *best* example of easy lynchpins. Thanks larrymurk for the overall fun hold

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[Last edited by da rogu3 at 06-04-2011 10:16 AM]