Been trying to get the top score on the scorepoint in this room, the second one in this hold, and I feel like I have exhausted every avenue so it's time to ask for a hint.
https://forum.caravelgames.com/rpgscores.php?action=pointscores&id=14498
The hold isn't very complicated up to this point. I have the top score for the first score point on floor 5
https://forum.caravelgames.com/rpgscores.php?action=pointscores&id=14496 and it's shared exactly with 3 other people, so I'm confident about this. Due to no backtracking in this hold, I think I don't need to look earlier than this.
I believe have level 6 fully optimised, I leave with 899 HP. I am 2 HP off of saving 170 HP on one of the soulless near the end, but couldn't figure out any improvements. If this is actually where my savings lie, then I will shoot past the current highscore for the second scorepoint, so I feel reasonably confident level 6 is fully optimised.
So level 7 is where it's at. I can end with identical keys, gr and rep to Meta and greenscience, so I'm sure I'm opening all the correct doors. And yes, I know about the doorwalking trick to not get hit by the evil eye in 2E
A big part of the strategy here seems to be when to go for the shield. The boss has 2 checkpoints that are relevant. 114 ATK and 124 ATK. There are more before and after this but the earlier ones are trivially bad to go for and the last one is very obviously bad as it requires most of the attack. I tried both anyway and confirmed these.
The final attack gems to collect seem fairly set in stone. The last one is behind the yellow baby in 2E, and the two before that are locked behind Soulless in the West. These two enemy types hit for 140 which is the largest single hit damage in the level outside of the boss, so it's very hard to justify taking these earlier, you can't save that much. There is another yellow baby guarding two attack gems which is effectively locked behind the boss, so it's optimal killed at 133 attack. This then takes you over the gray man attack checkpoint for two gems behind gray men and then you're in soulless range. And the freeze eye, for 130 attack, has an attack checkpoint just before that.
So it seems the last 8 attack gems are:
Freeze eye in 1S1E
Yellow baby in 1N2E
2 gray men (one is locked "
behind"
the freeze eye)
2 soulless
Yellow baby in 2E
All these constraints leave very few options. There's a big winding path in the middle of the level with Icewings that leads to 3 attack gems. The icewings have no enemy defense so having the shield is vastly reduced value for this path. Also once you reach the only relevant attack checkpoint for these at 119 ATK, those three attack gems take you straight into the boss's later checkpoint.
And indeed this works out to the best result I can figure out. Leaving the shield until the later boss checkpoint after the Icewing path, leaves me 50 HP off of the top score. Worth noting that if you're leaving behind the shield, then the Entrance room is best ignored until the very end, you only want to kill the brain before doing the icewing path if you already have the shield.
There is one glaring flaw with this path. Leaving the shield until later requires more HP, and it's impossible to do the icewing path and then the boss without taking multiple of the 400 HP for a yellow key trades. Which is fine for score, but Meta didn't take these trades, which is very suspicious.
If I go for the earlier boss attack checkpoint and clear out Entrance early, then I'm 100 HP off of the top score, but don't have to make any of the key trades.
Any ideas what I'm missing?
[Last edited by kieranmillar at 08-25-2025 05:53 PM]
