admin
Level: Legendary Smitemaster
Rank Points: 8
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File: fetchpie_jul10_1.drh (360.5 KB)
Downloaded 460 times.
License: Other
From: Unspecified

After a very long development process, full of hiatuses, here it is: Fetch the Pie, one of the most anticipated DROD RPG holds from the RPG Architecture forum.

Join smitemaster Vincent Trisman as he valiantly sets forth to retrieve a pie from the bottom of an infested dungeon, and in the meanwhile, upgrades his statistics and equipment so as to fight ever-tougher foes. Order your operations to save health and keys! Solve DROD-like puzzles to unlock secret areas! Mess around with scripted monsters that move around and create new problems! And uncover the mysteries of the Pie.

Thanks to the following people:

- Everyone who ever played the hold on RPG Architecture, especially those who commented
- Caravel Games, for some character tiles and portraits
- Penwielder, for an equipment sprite
- Dischorran, for a custom monster from another hold

One more word of warning: This hold is huge, with 10 main sequence levels and 2 interlude levels, several of which are larger than in Tendry's Tale. There are shortcuts all over the place, but be warned that this hold will probably take a while to complete.

superluminal
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 75
Registered: 05-26-2016
IP: Logged

File: nocheckpoint.PNG (1.1 MB)
Downloaded 1218 times.
License: Public Domain

You might have forgotten a checkpoint graphic:



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spacelike

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[Last edited by superluminal at 07-10-2016 08:44 PM]

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3648
Registered: 10-06-2005
IP: Logged

Hmm, so I did. Fortunately that was a quick fix in my local version (the character was just of the wrong type).

I'm not sure how soon we can update the hold now that it's published, but hopefully since this is just a minor aesthetic problem it shouldn't be too hard to do.

EDIT: I made a quick update and Schik posted it. That checkpoint should now look like an actual checkpoint (and a minor music scripting bug in level 9 should be fixed too). Nothing else has changed.

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[Last edited by Chaco at 07-10-2016 11:17 PM]

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1486
Registered: 03-31-2005
IP: Logged

This is a fantastic hold, polished, innovative. And yet it crumbles a bit under it's own weight. Even with all the fantastic convenient shortcuts there are a lot of rooms to keep track of. I very much enjoyed the hold halfway through, and then it started to get a bit overwhelming.

Don't get me wrong: It's hughely impressive to keep the suspense up for such a massive hold. Really a lot of fine tuning balanceing have gone into this. But it just wasn't as fun to try to keep track of all those rooms as it is to keep track of a smaller number of rooms. It still was fun, just not AS fun. I would guess that Tendry's Tale is close to optimal when it comes to size.

I will try to add some more specific feedback later, but right now I'm a bit in a rush Huge thank you to Chaco for producing this wonderful hold!

Rheb
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1211
Registered: 08-04-2006
IP: Logged

Very nice hold.

The levels are massive, but you get a good overview and a good feel for which choices are beneficial.

At the instances where I made unfavorable trades (because of mismanagement of one type of resource) the hold made sure I was aware, and also made me feel like I could probably have done things better. Witch is a good thing!

The story got messy pretty quickly and I followed it only loosely, it could maybe have been a bit more concise, but I like the overall fell of the hold.

It's really cool to have a massive hold expanding the DROD RPG world. Great job Chaco!



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Voligner is my very own DROD-like game. Please check it out!

Lhexa
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 12
Registered: 11-05-2008
IP: Logged

This was a fantastic hold. I am amazed by how tightly balanced it was. I never reached a point where I felt overpowered, but neither did I ever fall so behind that my choices dwindled. The game rarely punished me for using resources to explore further ahead, thus avoiding the problem that frustrates me the most about RPG holds. I made a single poor (and important) decision near the end, and that was enough to bring the final battle down to a thrillingly thin margin: after cashing in all my keys, I only had about 8% more health than I needed to defeat the hold. As of now, this is my very favorite.

The story was interesting, subverting its own lighthearted premise. I'm a bit sad that the woman character didn't turn out to be nicknamed "Pie," though.

greenscience
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 146
Registered: 02-27-2015
IP: Logged

Fetch the Pie is a good hold to optimize for compared to holds of similar size since there are only ATK gems and one major accessory to plan around. Holds of a similar structure are the first halves of Tendry's Tale and Great Place. Tendry's Tale has more pervasive use of hot tiles and Aumtlich beams that make optimizing for later score points tedious. In addition the optimal route has surprising uses for some accessories. Great Place and Fetch the Pie are similar in that the main decision between score points is whether key for gem trades would pay off in terms of health saved, which tends to occur for later score points. The major difference of Great Place is that it is not backtrack-able and has a puzzle about balancing the amount of health and GR taken into the final level of the first half.

The unique point of Fetch the Pie is that it adds a large variety of puzzle elements to combat. There are many points where it is worth using keys to skip fights, using Grappling Hook for the same at the cost of extra damage from mandatory fights, using Mimic to fight certain enemies for less damage than direct combat, and bump killing Seep-like enemies on broken walls. Then there are rooms dedicated to dancing around mobile enemies, minimizing or maximizing enemies killed to control briar growth or roach eggs laid, and minimizing Tar Babies killed while clearing tar. One variation I did not see was encouraging bump killing Tar Mothers to avoid killing extra Tar Babies while opening tar gates. This could work well with Mud and Tar, but not Gel unless using a briar or egg mechanism. The puzzle with the most variability in outcome was the eyeball arena. I found a good strategy that only requires 2 hits (50 dmg); not sure it is possible to shave off another.

There are issues I found with the Ninth Level boss scripting (tested on Linux v1.2.7.319) that may warrant an update.

A less important point is that the 1st Interlude is closed off by crossing over to the right side of Third Level instead of being required before going into the next level like with 2nd Interlude. This means it is theoretically possible to return to 1st Interlude with much higher stats later on by skipping the right side of Third Level although I'm not sure how far it is possible to reach without the resources from the right side plus Interlude. Finishing Third Level is definitely possible while Seventh Level is the most likely roadblock if there is one. It would be good to know whether this route would be left as a challenge option or patched out by perhaps using scripting to prevent 1st Interlude score point from activating after entering Fourth Level or by making it so entering the boss room would also trigger the cutscene closing off 1st Interlude since there is already a cutscene in that room.

mauvebutterfly
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 771
Registered: 05-03-2015
IP: Logged

I've been working on this throughout the week and finally finished it today. Wow, what a journey.

This hold is really big. Normally with big holds I find that balance kind of gets thrown out towards the end, but that wasn't the case here. Despite optimising fairly well throughout the hold (or at least I like to think so) I still felt pressured all the way to the final level. This is not an easy hold.

I also really enjoyed the clever way many of the DROD RPG mechanics were being used throughout the hold. The use of mimics was particularly interesting.

There are a couple of criticisms that I have, however. First is that the puzzles, while fun, disrupted the flow of gameplay. This didn't happen too often, since most of the puzzles were reasonable, but there were a few moments when I knew that it was optimal to do a puzzle right then and I really didn't feel like doing it.
The other issue I had was probably unavoidable given the scale of the hold: there were too much stuff available at any given time. It can get exhausting having to check 4 or more levels for potions/keys/gems before being able to make progress, with all of the walk time required even with the rapid travel system in this hold. I think this is the main reason why I enjoyed the hold more up until the start of level 7.

This hold does feel more like an RPG than a lot of other RPG holds that I've played. There is enough of a story to keep the game moving, the world is alive with other people doing things in the background, and each new level has some thematic threads running through it making different zones actually feel different from each other. Overall it's a very fun hold and I'm glad I played it.

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106th Skywatcher

navithmastero
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 621
Registered: 01-03-2012
IP: Logged

Finally got round to playing this again thanks to mauve's above post prompting me to do so!

This is a very large hold. Most of the levels are very substantial and there sure is a lot going on here. Thankfully though, there are warps throughout the hold which makes navigation somewhat easier than it otherwise would be.

Despite being a very big hold, trades are mostly thoughtful and levels are built well around achieving attack thresholds so that the goal for the player is very clear and because of that, blind optimisation isn't as difficult as it could have been. There is, however, a big step-up in difficulty from level 6 to level 7 if you haven't optimised very well so this hold can lull you in to a false sense of security. This clearly happened with a number of players as the scorepoint at the end of level 6 has 15 players achieving it on Cnet, while the next scorepoint has just 5 players achieving it.

That being said, this hold isn't particularly difficult if you utilise regular optimisation tricks. Since you don't need to worry about collecting defense or greckles (with one exception early-on), I didn't find myself replaying many sections multiple times like I might otherwise and in a single playthrough I managed to finish the hold with 10000 HP and 25 keys to spare.

One thing that is important to point out is that your regular DROD skills will be tested here as well as your RPG optimisation due to custom monsters who are capable of moving. While this does lead to some very interesting rooms, it can make optimisation a little tricky at times as it is unclear what the optimal solution is to some of these puzzle rooms. That being said, it doesn't make a huge amount of difference as these puzzle rooms aren't super frequent and aren't too tricky for the most part (though there are some notable exceptions to this rule, as pointed out above).

Overall then, this was a really fun hold which I enjoyed playing. While I'd probably avoid it if you're relatively new to RPG, I'd thouroughly recommend it to more seasoned players. Don't be daunted by its size or difficulty rating, this hold is well worth playing and IMO is lenient enough with keys and potions that there aren't too many roadblocks en route to finishing this one.

Difficulty: 6
Fun: 9

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[Last edited by navithmastero at 07-07-2020 02:38 PM]