Penwielder
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File: Archipelago.hold (19.1 KB)
Downloaded 53 times.
License: Public Domain

This hold has been published.

This is a hold of medium to ridiculous difficulty with a swordless player role. It's my third hold, and the one I've worked on longest and hardest.

In particular, look for:
-Unintended solutions (of course)
-Checkpoint placement tweaks
-Spots where unimportant, tiresome manipulation could be simplified
-Spots where orb/pressure plate functions could be optimized to make the puzzles less cluttered.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

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[Last edited by Penwielder at 07-19-2011 04:31 PM]

Blondbeard
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Seventh island seemed a bit slow. A bit trial and errorish. Am a bit too ill to say anything real constructive. Sorry!

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[Last edited by Blondbeard at 03-12-2011 06:42 PM]

Penwielder
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I've wondered about that one occasionally. The only goblin who ever annoys me much is the NW one, though I just realized that it's possible to get the NE one without moving it to the SE chamber first, which might have been a more tiresome task. After looking at it for a while, I've changed the wubba movement order to cause less trouble in the beginning (depending on what you choose to do first) and changed the north goblins' chambers slightly. I like it better now.

Changes uploaded.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

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[Last edited by Penwielder at 03-12-2011 09:24 PM]

Dischorran
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Currently on the eighth island, and just noted that there are eighteen instead of the nine that I had thought. Oof.

So far, really my only comments are that for streamlining playability, a vision token might be nice for 5 and some indication of where one can stand without releasing a goblin might be nice for 7. Otherwise, it's awesome.

Stuck on 8 - frakkin' double wraithwings. Getting the roaches out is one thing, but I'm having trouble getting the wraithwings to cooperate in making roast roach.

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Penwielder
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It's amazing to me how many little annoyances I just never took seriously. What you said about #5 and #8 happen to be precisely two of those things.

#5: Wish granted. I generally hesitate to add vision tokens because I prefer to keep my puzzles uncluttered, but it doesn't make a huge difference in this one, really--it's the plainest of them all, in my opinion. In this case, looking back, I know I've been slightly annoyed at having to relearn the eyes' lines of sight every time I replayed the room.

#7: That's a good idea. I had to sacrifice the floor decoration slightly to implement it, but I think it's a definite improvement even so.

#8: I've had exactly the frustration you mentioned. The only roach that gives me much trouble is the east one. I provide a little more room on the left side in this new version by moving that 2x2 bush up a square. It also provides a place to lodge the west roach now, if that one ever gave you trouble. Getting the roaches out was intended to be the main puzzle here--I don't really turn sadistic until island twelve or so, and even then I don't require precise use of things that I don't really understand, like double wraithwings.

Aside from #5, the only other islands on which a vision token would have any effect are #9 and #16. You're definitely not getting one on the latter; there's only one eye, facing in a cardinal direction over almost nothing. The former is up for discussion; one may like the reassurance of it, even though it's not too hard to see that what's under the mud is irrelevant because you can never cut it.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

Dischorran
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File: A Eleventh Island The Entrance Victory.demo (2.1 KB)
Downloaded 53 times.
License: Public Domain

Interim report; currently staring at island 12, but I can't really call myself "stuck" there yet since I haven't really tried to tackle it. I'm wondering if I've really done the right thing with the past few islands.

8: I only need one wraithwing for the western roach.
9: I need to let the mud grow once, but can avoid creating mud babies.
11: I do enough different things with the mirrors that chances seem good that at least one is unintended. But maybe not. Demo attached.

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Zorglub
Level: Delver
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6 : I did it using only 2 wubbas. I hope this is intended.
EDIT
8 : It took me a while to dispose of the WW. That's the third part of the puzzle.
11: I did things quite differently from Dischorran. The citizen activated the 9,11 pressure plate. In view of the 8,10 arrow, it's probably unintended. Demo attached - EDIT Removed

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[Last edited by Zorglub at 04-01-2011 03:39 PM]

Zorglub
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12: I feared complex snake handling, but it ended simpler than that.
13: OK
14: I did not use the top disarm token. US?

Zorglub
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15: OK.
16: would appreciate a check point in the right area (near the 26,17 light), where the final struggle took me quite some time to figure out. This one was a real nightmare (1377 moves victory)
17: Probable US: I did not use the 14,17 orb.

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[Last edited by Zorglub at 03-22-2011 04:45 PM]

Zorglub
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18: OK.
Still busy with the uncharted island.

Penwielder
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I'm rather busy this week until at least tomorrow evening, so I haven't had time to look over things beyond reading the posts here, but I appreciate your work on it. I really shouldn't even be taking this time right now.

#6: Uh, no. I'll have to mess with this a bit.
#8: Have you ever found a way to do the west one using both? I haven't.
#9: I think I know what you did, but I have to look at it again. The mud should have to trigger the pressure plate for the roach, but I must have left another way--decoy placement, I'm guessing? I'll check it out when I can.
#11: Will look at it when I can.
#14: Silly last minute mistake by me, putting in brier briar like that. Is the decoy protected from the brier briar? If not, try to conquer the room without the decoy being killed.
#15: This felt somewhat unintended, right? It should. Very much so.

Zorglub, if you could, I'd like a set of demos so that I can examine the later levels more closely with them and also see whether the "OK" ones were really what I had in mind. Thanks.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

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[Last edited by Penwielder at 03-24-2011 11:05 PM]

Dischorran
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File: A Ninth Island The Entrance Victory.demo (1.3 KB)
Downloaded 49 times.
License: Public Domain

<-- What I did.

Also, for 11, I'm clearly too used to having to be able to exit a room at the end to have thought to use the citizen for that pressure plate. Nice!

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Zorglub
Level: Delver
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I attached the demos of 8 to 18 except 11 which you already have. EDITED OUT. Might be interesting for a puzzle.

In the heading text of the uncharted island, you misspelled briar.

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[Last edited by Zorglub at 03-24-2011 04:37 PM]

Penwielder
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You're not supposed to use a citizen on a pressure plate in #11... well, not one that gets him stuck, anyway. (You are supposed to use him for the on-off one up top, though.) I might reconsider it at this rate, though.

Zorglub, the solution you just described for #14 is actually the intended one. I'm glad you like it, but clearly I need to fix it up a bit. Would you mind removing your remark so it isn't given away to casual readers of this topic?

Regarding those plants: I thought the game spelled it as 'brier', not 'briar'--in fact, I've been corrected on that before as said--but I'll look around again to be sure. EDIT: Okay, it is indeed 'briar.'

Thanks for the demos, as well. I should be able to look at them tonight and fix a thing or two.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

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[Last edited by Penwielder at 03-24-2011 11:07 PM]

Zorglub
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 74
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Comment removed.
Can't find a working angle at the uncharted island. I know what I need to reach, but can't yet find a way to do it.

Penwielder
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Wow, have I got work to do on this. After viewing demos from both of you (I've downloaded them all now), I have to fix unintended solutions to 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, and 18. I think I can see how to fix all of them, at least. In the case of 12, it will be as simple as putting the easternmost roach before the snake in the movement order. That one probably got messed up by an aesthetic modification at some point after I had forgotten that the order was important. 17 and 18 are the only ones that I might have some trouble correcting, but I'll see how it goes.

Only a few things I'll remark on now:
#6-Could I have a demo of using only two wubbas on this one? Or a description, if you think that could suffice? You didn't somehow manage to escape from the south tip without bringing the mimic to yourself, did you?
#11-Dischorran, your solution is really cool. You're intended to hit the northernmost plate yourself and let the fegundo carry the roach across to its plate, but I like what you did to the extent that I might leave it as a possibility. It won't be the high score anyhow.
#16-It felt really good, Zorglub, to watch your demo and see that you did everything as I intended in such a long mess. Did you eventually realize how hard you were on yourself with the eye?
#"19"-As the scroll says, this was made to be number three. I hope you can see that it wouldn't fit there. After dropping the idea and never looking at it again for half a year, it took me a long time to figure it out. I also see that you're right about briar.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

Penwielder
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That went much more quickly than I thought. Update attached to first post.

Unintended solutions have now been removed from 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, and 18. For the record, my own demos of 12, 17, and 18 are still intact. I also added the requested checkpoint to 16 and corrected my spelling on "19". I have not tried to work with 6 yet.

As a whole, with so many unintended solutions removed, the second half of the hold should be much harder now.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

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[Last edited by Penwielder at 03-24-2011 11:12 PM]

Zorglub
Level: Delver
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Here's the demo for 6.

Zorglub
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9 done, 10 unchanged, 11 done.
My demo for 12 still works.
I'm completely stuck on 13 now.

Penwielder
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Zorglub wrote:
My demo for 12 still works.

It doesn't for me. Since the pressure plate at (17, 10) isn't held down the whole time, the roach on the right side moves west and is stuck. If you look at the movement order, this is precisely what should happen (and does, on my system). Your demo then wanders around some (when it would have been moving the mimic in the old version) and then ends with the snake and isolated roach inevitably still alive. Does the isolated roach move before the snake on yours? Might be some kind of merge/import bug if not.

Regarding 6: Thanks for the demo. Heh, I see now that even my solution really only needs three wubbas. I'll take one out and fix a spot or two so that the third is necessary as I intended.

Edit: I just double-checked that 13 is possible. If you're at the point where you want a hint, I'm willing to give such; just ask. It doesn't get any easier from there on out, though, except that 14 won't be that bad because you already (accidentally, I suspect) stumbled into the intended concept. And just out of curiosity, how did you first approach 15, and what led you to the final solution? I'm impressed that you didn't seem to struggle with it.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

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[Last edited by Penwielder at 03-25-2011 09:31 PM]

Zorglub
Level: Delver
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12: Strange. Hold update kept this demo, so I thought it was still valid. You're right though, it's not working anymore.

15: I had one room once where Beethro had to be kept immobile to drive a fegundo. And Also there was another room where the aumtlich was circling a decoy. With all the decoys, I knew one of them would beam to the right spot.

13: Thanks. I think I have a working solution, I'll give it a try later on and let you know. EDIT: OK, 13 done.

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[Last edited by Zorglub at 03-26-2011 08:15 PM]

Penwielder
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Congratulations on #13, good luck on #12. And since nothing has come up in the last bit, here, I might as well toss you the new version of #6. See first post, as usual.

Another curiosity question: How big an optimizer are either of you? If you focus on that much, I would be particularly interested in advice from you regarding checkpoints. I can't really see it from your point of view on my own. I just know from my little experience that [having enough checkpoints] and [putting them where an optimizer would actually hit them]* are two very different things, so I think it's a matter worth concerning myself with.

*Gerund phrases bracketed for clarity.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

Zorglub
Level: Delver
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OK, 12 done. I struggled with the order in which to do thing.
Now on to 6, then 14 and greater.

Concerning the checkpoints, I'm trying to optimize as much as possible, though I'm not as good to it as mxvladi. For checkpoints, I appreciate when they are on the right path, although I kind of accept that being a safety net, it's OK if they are off the way. This is valid only for non optimized puzzles of course. Checkpoints are specially useful in the problem solving phase. Then comes the optimization phase.

EDIT: 14 done.
17 done. I fear another US: I killed the adder right away, used the fegundo to dispose the decoy, used the mimics to keep 11,9 pp open. Then one mimic to free the rattlesnake, the other one to kill it.

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[Last edited by Zorglub at 03-28-2011 03:23 PM]

Dischorran
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Update: I finally got 14, after trying multiple possible arrangements of mimic/wubba/giant/mirror for the various steps.

I generally like checkpoints near key parts of the room (e.g. pressure plates) and interspersed in areas in which I'm doing particularly tricky/lengthy manipulation. Exact placement isn't critical, but I'm not really an optimizer - all things being equal, I like to optimize my solution, but I don't get seriously hurt if I take slightly suboptimal paths or take a few extra steps now and then to hit a checkpoint. JtRH-style checkpoints way the heck away from any useful location annoy me, though.

Edit: For 15, are the disarm token and all but one decoy the the unnecessary components?

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[Last edited by Dischorran at 03-29-2011 06:41 AM]

Zorglub
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Dischorran wrote:
Edit: For 15, are the disarm token and all but one decoy the the unnecessary components?

I indeed did not use these in my solution.

Penwielder
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...and Zorglub's solution was indeed the intended one. There's a long, complex normal-seeming solution which just barely doesn't work, though. I don't know if either of you have explored it. Hopefully people with less experience with some of the game elements will wander off that way, trying to disarm the mimic and get it on the token... At the last minute, you just barely can't move the mimic around to it. That and you're stuck in the north compartment.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

Penwielder
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Two changes.

#14: I took the wubba out. With the added mirror, there was no reason for it to stay.
#17: The latest unintended solution is now prevented. The possibility of killing the decoy is still open, but it doesn't work out anymore.

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

Zorglub
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Penwielder wrote:
#14: I took the wubba out. With the added mirror, there was no reason for it to stay.

The wubba was the core of my protection against the goblins.
Back to finding a solution for those two, plus the sixth I can't get done.

Penwielder
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Now I'm really curious about what you did on #14. After all, I more or less told you what the intended solution was (since you had found the concept), and although I didn't specifically say so, it didn't involve the wubba (except to get the mimic out, which the mirror can now do equally well).

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Penwielder's Palace, Detention Complex, Archipelago, Cube of Memories

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[Last edited by Penwielder at 03-30-2011 09:59 PM]

Dischorran
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Argh, no more wubba? I really liked having it around to block the NW opening while the giant blocked the SW opening and the mirror held down a plate by the decoy, which was otherwise just an annoyance when I was trying to manipulate the rock giant. And then I had it come with me and the mimic when we went to get the rearm token to protect my flank.

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