Drizzo
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 179
Registered: 03-03-2004
IP: Logged
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Re: begginning of a hold (+2)
Considering you claim to only have beaten the first 5 levels of Dugan's when you made this, I'm impressed, and if you were able to beat your own hold, that bodes well for your success later in the dungeon... That being said, some general criticism... A lot of rooms could benefit from some aesthetic enhancement... add some decor and such, so as to make the rooms a little prettier, there's a lot of unused space. First floor, 1n & 1e in particular stand out... Also, if you can get your "point" across with less creatures, it can often make for a better puzzle...
On to the room by room remarks...
FILLED WITH SPOILERS, but far too long to be all secreted, and the hold isn't too difficult anyway, but if you're a beginner and want to try it out you may not want to read this
First Floor
1n is a pretty decent little room, good practice for early goblin management skills, especially at the beginning, but as I said before, I think it's ugly. It could use some more texture to improve the appearance, and also to get the beginner goblin managers to work out their brains a little more with the terrain.
3w isn't bad either, I think some walls to the right of the green door wouldn't be bad, thus forcing you to maneuver around them, slightly increasing the difficulty of the puzzle, or perhaps a rightward facing force arrow on the top and bottom of the green door, with a 1 square wide corridor leading up to them, thus sending two tar babies out to you every spawn, nothing too difficult, but keeps it mroe interesting.
2w is another room that I find unattractive, but it has potential... working with the trapdoors and wraithwings while avoiding the snake is one option, but when I saw it, I immediately wanted it to be a more timed puzzle... this could be done by eliminating all the trapdoors in the big red square, and just leaving those near the snake's exit... if you reduce the number of wraithwings slightly, this could force beethro to deal with the wraithwings quickly then go close the trapdoors before the snake escapes that passage (of course this would also require sealing up the 1 square wide passage in the bottom and putting a force arrow on the passage the snake starts off going through, so that he couldn't go through it again). As the puzzle stands the snake is extremely easy to deal with by just a couple of diagonal steps.
1w needs a checkpoint shortly after the passage, first of all... I made a typo twice, because I'm a careless DROD player, and was pissed about having to go back through the passage and cut through the roaches, other than that the roach buildup that you generate by forcing the player to walk through that long passage is quite easy to deal with, as you have only a one square entrance to the room, thus making it a matter of tedious slashing... there's a number of ways this room could be made more interesting (add some roach queens so that in order to kill enough of them you'd have to back up a little so that you could kill a roach every turn... have to modify the passage a bit. Or you could take out the crumbly walls, then the roaches would come to you as you went down the passage, still easy, as the passage would be 1 square wide, but would eliminate the tedious slashing when you got there, and would force you to be careful around the corners, a couple more roach queens would be interesting there too.) the texture on the left half of the room though, does help to keep finishing off the roach queens more interesting.
1e doesn't really have anything going to make it interesting, although it could certainly be quite challenging if you don't know anything about goblins... maybe... do something different with it.
1s has a lot of small gaps, you just stop at any of them and the roaches all die... if you added a lot more roaches or replaced all the roaches with roach queens, or just opened it up a bit this level could have something, as it is it's a very very quick stage.
1s1e Ok, so if you wanted to do what I think you wanted to do, this is my favorite board in the hold... I assume you wanted to force the player to get the goblin into the passage before the snake left it. That's a great idea for a beginner goblin fighter, forces them to pay attention to the basics of goblin control, without being too ridiculous about it. unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way as it is. That could be fixed somehow... quite complex of a fix, but as it stands, you can easily lure the snake into the passage it came out of again after you deal with the goblin.
Second
1n1w doesn't have all that much going on, but it certainly has some challenge, the eyes can add to the difficulty, forcing you to pay attention where you move while you deal with the rest of the threats... could use some decoration in the unused areas, and I didn't really understand the tar in the lower left.
1n isn't at all bad, certainly a neat little mimic stage... I think you might not have your orbs do exactly what you want though... or maybe the one in the upper left is supposed to be a decoy... one of the prettier stages...
1w needs decoration badly... a lot of space in the right half could be prettied up... that being said, the enemies coming from both sides actually gives this board one of the more interesting challenges in the hold, so thumbs up to you for this one...
1e needs a Brain in it, otherwise the snake dies immediately and the roaches get trapped and there's nothing to it... a brain a good ways into the maze would make you flee from the snake for longer while fighting off cockroaches and really increase the excitement level of the board... depending on where you placed the brain, you could adjust the difficulty level... I myself would recommend placing it up by the roach queens or in the upper left, Beethro could still survive by going to the square on the bottom where you can only reach by stepping diagonally, and then have to deal with the rest of it... anyway... I can't emphasize enough how much this stage needs a brain to make it work, the only other way would be a reworking of the maze, but that's much closer to a new room entirely, and a brain does that with a lot less effort.
1s1w has an AWESOME beginning, I love the way you have to not open the gate till after you hit the top orb. I also so wanted to make this a timed room, because I got down to the roach mothers right as the second spawn was coming, though the first one was blocked by the snake (although I definitely could have been more efficient to be there earlier) if you put some force arrows so that Beethro had to be down there before the second spawn or the roaches would get trapped behind the arrows, forever inaccessible, that would make for an excellent bit of puzzle, without being too difficult. Unfortunately, after this, the level became quite tedious, I got sick of killing the tar babies in the alcoves, and they didn't pose much of a threat to anything except typos, and the eye part just further increased my fear of typos especially because that was after a whole lot of alcove clearing... But the first part of the room is the best designed part of the entire hold, if the last part were different, (and you had to get down to the queens before the second spawn) it would be a room I would be proud to put in my own hold...
1s has too many wraithwings... it's far too easy to just duck to the left and cut back and forth, then step out to lure more up to you, and cut back and forth... Easy isn't necessarily bad, but it's also tedious... something needs to be done to make this room less tedious or more challenging...
Anyway, I know I was full of criticism and harshness, but given your inexperience with the game, it is definitely a good effort, and as you learn more and more about how the game works you'll think of more and more ways to make things better, keep up the effort, and I look forward to seeing your next hold, and hope that you continue creating, and continue to enjoy DROD... =)
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"Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government
and business." - Tom Robbins
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