This hold seems to have been overlooked by a lot of folks last year and it's a real shame. It has the feel of an official hold circa TCB and I suspect it would appeal to a lot of DROD players.
The hold was in architecture for ages and as a result most of the rooms focus on pre-TSS elements. There's some variety, with a heavy theme of rock giants on trap doors and making stepping stones in shallow water. Towards the end these elements start to feel a bit overused and I feel like there was maybe one too many rooms requiring me to kill another rock giant in just the right spot in a large patch of trapdoors, but on the whole this is a minor complaint. The only other minor complaint I had about this hold was the difficulty in navigating the second level's maze-like layout, but that's mostly a matter of personal preference.
"
Trek"
is very approachable and the first level is definitely below the current difficulty rating. The hold starts out fairly straightforward, but has a good difficulty curve for the most part with no levels feeling disproportionately difficult. Most of the difficulty lies in execution, but not in a tedious hack-and-slash or magic-move-sequence sort of way. Rather, there is a focus on strategically approaching monsters and sequencing what tasks to approach in what order. It's a type of difficulty that I think a lot of people here enjoy. It also makes for a very satisfying pace of progress and it's easy to get absorbed.
The biggest reasons you should go play this hold right now though are the story and the custom artwork. The story starts off in a typical way, but soon turns into a crazy romp that was utterly hilarious and a pleasure to follow. It's also no exaggeration to say that this is easily some of the best, if not the best custom artwork I've ever seen in a user made hold. The graphics and animations (yes!) really floored me the first time I saw them. You owe it to yourself to get past the third level just to see some of the amazing art in this hold.
____________________________
Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:
Click here to view the secret text
