After playing it somewhat consistently since almost the very beginning of this year, I have finally gotten all the challenges and 2480/2480.
As a point of pride for myself, I managed to never, ever retreat from any currently-solvable puzzle room (or challenge) in this hold and beat the entire thing without any external puzzle hints. I wouldn't recommend playing it this way, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could beat a major DROD hold without hints after needing hints for the official campaigns when I played through them (I first started with KDD in 2016). So, props to the architects and organizers for not trying to make the hardest rooms they could. That being said, this hold still has rooms to challenge even the most hardened of veterans.
I liked the general organization of the hold, and I felt like the levels of the chapter hubs were overall very well paced, with only a few slow points. The larger levels later on could tend to drag on a bit because of how many mechanical interactions they had to show and the generally high difficulty, but it was also mostly necessary given the complexity of the elements, and so each level did a very thorough and good job of introducing and making puzzles out of mechanical interactions (though some of the finer points of manipulation, such as controlling aumtlichs or controlling your distance from rock giants might have warranted more focused introductions). I liked the advanced levels for previously introduced mechanics, even with their high difficulty, and felt they were all completely warranted.
Despite the gargantuan size of this hold, almost all of the solutions I found felt intended, with only a few potential misses here and there. I would like some kind of official demo file for the hold to know for sure. Almost every puzzle felt fair, although there were a few (very few) things that felt like unnecessary additional tricks or gotchas along the way. I personally did need a bit of trial-and-error for some of the harder trapdoor puzzles, but that might just be me being lazy about analyzing them. Each level felt like it was of a professional quality, through-and-through, and the aesthetics for the hold were spot-on.
This hold is a good entry point (roll credits kinda) for newcomers who aren't playing the official campaigns that want a high-quality introduction to each DROD element, with an extremely reasonable degree of challenge. It's good for that until, I feel, the end of Chapter 5, after which the difficulty escalates to a level that may intimidate most people away. So, this is also a good hold for newcomers to come back to and gradually work through in between other holds as their DROD skills slowly increase. This hold is a good exit point for veterans who might want one final capstone DROD challenge before they may move on to other games, which I think is pretty neat.
The following goes into more detail about my subjective experience with difficulty in this hold, and many secrets within it, so you've been warned.
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For me, chapters 0-5 were easy, with the occasional exception of a secret room or optional level. The chapter 3, 4, and 5 exams were much harder, so the indigo doors are definitely a good idea. After chapter 5 hub was when the base difficulty of required content started to really ramp up for me, with Lower Stoneworks being the first hard level. It had good puzzles, but the level of execution for some of the rooms made it a level worthy of an indigo door, since it also happened to be a roadblock.
Chapter 6 was mostly cruising for me, but with plenty of moderate-to-hard rooms interspersed with the easy ones, with the first really hard required room being BES: 5S1W (that one speed potion room with the spear and water skippers). Also, while I could marathon through the other chapters before, I found myself taking breaks much more frequently and typically having much shorter play sessions starting from here on out; I played the game differently from this point on. Chapter 6 exam was surprisingly easy, though its secret room at OS: 6N was particularly hard for me, since I didn't know the tricks for manipulating brained rock giants with my sword and had to figure it out on the spot. The optional levels for chapter 6 were the first really hard levels of the hold (AA & WY), and I thought they were pretty cool. Overall, it would probably have been good to have an exit point for the hold after chapter 5, but I do get why there wasn't an exit point there. The exit point after chapter 6 was also well-placed, as the interlude just after it was a little too hard for the rest of chapter 6 and would have been a bit of an anticlimax.
Chapter 7 was where I really struggled with the difficulty of the main content of the hold, starting on CA, but all of its levels were really cool (including my favorite floor of the hold, Temporal Regulator, which was surprising for me, considering the scariness of time clones). The puff, construct, and citizen levels were easy, (except for a room each near the end of the puff level and the construct level), and I appreciated those breather levels in between the other (very) hard ones. PCT1 was the longest floor of my playthrough, taking over twelve-and-a-half hours to get everything (this included my favorite puzzle in the hold, the second pass for the chapter 7 keycard in PCT1: 2N2W). Overall, some of the levels, including MM, CA, and TS felt like they dragged on a bit, but it was still my favorite chapter overall. PCT was a fitting climax to the hold and very, very challenging, with almost all of its rooms being fun for me, though also a bit of a slog (I didn't like the trapdoor puzzle components of PCT3: 2S4W & PCT3: 1S5W).
Chapter 8 felt about the same as chapter 7, difficulty-wise, except I got stuck on puzzles more often and some rooms looked more intimidating. Due to my very specific playstyle I mentioned for this hold, I didn't retreat from TS: The Entrance and so initially had a very intimidating impression of chapter 8 (whoops! Also, this created a minor backtracking issue in TS: 1S). It included my second-favorite level in the hold, Vacant Bastion, which also happened to be the first level I played in chapter 8 hub. ES was the second-longest floor of the hold for me, taking nearly ten-and-a-half hours (real-world time, it was more like 2-3 weeks for me, as this had the most rooms I got stuck on). Chapter 8 wound being a mix of very hard and breather levels for me, with MB, TL, and ROTW being the easiest, most notably with ROTW taking less than 2 hours; I'm fine with the uneven difficulty of chapter 8, as the breather levels helped motivate me to keep going, so I think it was good not to make everything so hard. Also, SM: 5E was my hardest room of the hold; I
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×manipulated the snake from the NW corner of the grass field
. Post-chapter-8-hub felt less climactic gameplay-wise to me than PCT, but more climactic plot-wise. I liked that its levels after the hub started out a little easier and then gradually got more difficult again, making it feel more like a final push for the player. Slight puzzle spoilers for CC,
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×I thought a few too many of the puzzles in CC relied on tricks or misleading the player about what needed to be done, but still liked how it made good use of every element
. Chapter 8 would be my second-favorite chapter.
The many secrets of this hold were fun to find, and almost always fun to solve. I liked how their areas often led to different mechanics from standard gameplay, and Rin's hints really helped for when I missed a certain collectable. The red tristone felt like a nice, mysterious award to find after completing PP, and neatly tied together the easiest sequence of secrets without being extremely challenging. Then I got the epilogue, with its very high difficulty being fitting for post-chapter-8 and I enjoyed it. The blue tristone was similar to the red tristone, except more difficult, of course, since it can only be acquired after getting through most of chapter 8 first, and UC felt like a fitting finale for its sequence, though due to the level's sheer size, it did drag on a bit, but it was still really cool to see all of the chocolate elements getting combined in different ways (a particularly hard room was UC: 3E, since the multi-push required for it was so precise to find, which I felt took away from the focus on the chocolate elements). The way it unlocked the blue tristone piece was pretty cool, too. The green tristone I needed a bit of help to find because I missed the blue door in the Oystian Archives; if a future version of this hold could have Rin hint at it somehow, that'd be a pretty fitting way to help players who missed it. Thanks to Nuntar for helping me! Once I got to the scavenger hunt, I found most of the rooms in a reasonable amount of time, though for 10 and 11 I felt like their hints directed me slightly away from the real spots and Halph's hints didn't help me at all for them; I think 11's text should at least have "
stone"
changed to "
wooden"
given the tile set of a certain place. Also, there were only 12 spots to find, not 13, FYI. I enjoyed the scavenger hunt overall, though, and it was a neat way to reflect on my progress so far in the hold. The rooms in ESA felt just right in terms of difficulty, though the final room was a little difficult for me and I think I might have cheesed it
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×(I used the guard to remotely break the mirror)
. Finally, the floors after the Tristone Chamber were a nice medium difficulty, which was a nice way to cool off from everything else, and their gimmicks felt surprisingly fresh and fun (I got the reference, by the way). I liked the final reveal at the very end, and that was true 100% for me.
a time of 309:44:38 (I'm a slowpoke, also maybe add like 10-20 hours for level editor and restoring)
Edits to fix grammar/typos, clarify a sentence and hide a potential puzzle hint.
You might be only the second person to 100% the hold without early access, though there may be more who have done so without CNet.
