[5th Quest Entry] dcsyxx

I finished an entry for the fifth quest contest.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/c4...hxu5/5thdc.qst

Hopefully this has somewhat of a 1st/2nd quest feel to it. I added at least one type of new enemy to each dungeon. All dungeon locations are different from 1st/2nd/3rd/4th. It is also possible to do a swordless run if you're into that kind of thing (I think).

The levels are:

Level 1: Moon
Level 2: Fire
Level 3: Water
Level 4: Tree
Level 5: Gold
Level 6: Earth
Level 7: Day
Level 8: Life
Level 9: Death

It helps if you know Kanji, hehe.

Level 1 notes:

1. Entrance position has to be all the way on the bottom at the door, or else it looks terrible when you enter.
2. You MIGHT want to differentiate the color of the Lv. 1 and Lv. 2 Stalfos, being you have the enemy editor.

Now let's see if I can find myself a White Sword.

Edit:
Lv. 2 (start) notes:
Found the Triforce in like six rooms, just wasted your Like Like room and 3-headed Gleeok in no time. Got SO lucky.

Found:
2 Heart Containers
PLENTY of DRC's.
NO WHITE SWORD
NO BLUE RING SHOP

Power Bracelet was a joke to find.

Also, might want to watch your tiles. They only go dark when you're using C-Set 1.

-James

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

Level 1 notes:

1. Entrance position has to be all the way on the bottom at the door, or else it looks terrible when you enter.
2. You MIGHT want to differentiate the color of the Lv. 1 and Lv. 2 Stalfos, being you have the enemy editor.

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1. I never knew that. That's why I rarely ever used dungeon dmaps in my previous quests.
2. You're right. There were either Stalfos 1s or 2s. I'll change the color of one of them.

Quote:

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Now let's see if I can find myself a White Sword.

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The white sword is kind of difficult to find.

Quote:

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Edit:
Lv. 2 (start) notes:
Found the Triforce in like six rooms, just wasted your Like Like room and 3-headed Gleeok in no time. Got SO lucky.

Found:
2 Heart Containers
PLENTY of DRC's.
NO WHITE SWORD
NO BLUE RING SHOP

Power Bracelet was a joke to find.

Also, might want to watch your tiles. They only go dark when you're using C-Set 1.

-James

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Level 2 is much bigger than that.

I could swear I changed all the dark rooms to the proper CSet. I'll check.

Edit: I've updated the file, same link as above

Lv. 3: Easy
Lv. 4: Stuck. I found a "Grumble Grumble" room, and can't find the Blue Ring shop, and blown up nearly everywhere on the map. Where is that Blue Ring/cheap bait shop?

Also, stairs in the room before the west fairy, under the old Lv. 7 entrance, and the arrow are caves instead of stairs.

-James

There are plenty of Bait shops around.

The blue ring/bait shop is on an island.

I'll fix those entrances. Thanks again.

Level 3: Easy
Level 4: Easier than the 2nd Quest. :(

Onto 5. Looking for some bite. Only hard part so far was Lv. 1's boss.

-James

While "breaking into levels" has certainly been done in Zelda quests, I don't know how I feel about it being "mandatory", as you did with the Magicrobes of Level 5. This definitely needs to be discussed.

-James

What does it mean, "breaking into levels"?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Imzogelmo

What does it mean, "breaking into levels"?

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Going into a higher numbered level before beating the previous one, like getting the Ladder from Lv. 6 in the 2nd Quest early to get the HC on the sea.

-James

Level 5: Nice. I like this one.
Level 6: Easy. Shit easy. I have defeated levels like this, Gleeok aside, as LEVEL 1 (like BigJoe's original beta and Gleeok's unfinished quest). You're not talking n00bs playing this. I'd suggest toning this up slightly, maybe a bit. Lv. 4 of the Second Quest was harder.

Onto 7.

-James

OK, I'm done.

Check your statue flags all over. A lot of rooms, were they there just for decoration?

Didn't find the Red Ring or 1 Heart, but I didn't need it. This is not good.

Basically, I have no official say of what gets accepted or rejected, but quite frankly, this quest is easier than the 2nd Quest, and I whole-heartedly believe it should be rejected on those grounds. You really need to tone up this quest to make it more challenging before the deadline. And to be fair, most people hare have beaten New Quest, James Quest, the 3rd, or the 4th, some 0-gaming them. This won't impress them. Your only chance of winning with the current build honestly if people can't finish the more difficult ones.

But until Gleeok or SUCCESSOR gives the final word, here's the score I'd give you and I'll put you in on the ratings:

Difficulty: 0/100
Easier than the 2nd Quest.

NES authenticity: 99/100
VERY accurate, better than Miller's

Fun Factor: 50/100
Boring, no new secret finding techniques, easy.

Overall score: 49.67/100
Needs work.

Good luck, and maybe you can improve it with the time remaining.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nightmare

OK, I'm done.

Check your statue flags all over. A lot of rooms, were they there just for decoration?

Didn't find the Red Ring or 1 Heart, but I didn't need it. This is not good.

Basically, I have no official say of what gets accepted or rejected, but quite frankly, this quest is easier than the 2nd Quest, and I whole-heartedly believe it should be rejected on those grounds. You really need to tone up this quest to make it more challenging before the deadline. And to be fair, most people hare have beaten New Quest, James Quest, the 3rd, or the 4th, some 0-gaming them. This won't impress them. Your only chance of winning with the current build honestly if people can't finish the more difficult ones.

But until Gleeok or SUCCESSOR gives the final word, here's the score I'd give you and I'll put you in on the ratings:

Difficulty: 0/100
Easier than the 2nd Quest.

NES authenticity: 99/100
VERY accurate, better than Miller's

Fun Factor: 50/100
Boring, no new secret finding techniques, easy.

Overall score: 49.67/100
Needs work.

Good luck, and maybe you can improve it with the time remaining.

---

Thanks for the feedback. I went ahead and made a few tweaks to the difficulty and made a little tweak to level 5.

Voting is now open for this quest. Vote for as many categories as you please, but be sure to vote before tax day!

Also, please post in this thread stating which categories you selected and explaining why you picked those categories.

A null vote besides Played on this one too.

As a fan of 'new-original' quests, I hope to finish all these 'Quest 5' hopefuls before all is said and done. As chance would have it, this is the first one I'm working on.

Having now completed the quest, I can offer my two cents:


The game certainly had the feel of an NES quest, a worthy successor to the line. I particularly liked the location of Dungeons 3 and 8.

I looked up a list of Kanji symbols after playing. Sure enough, I saw the patterns. Nice touch. (I don't know if the 'days of the week' reference was necesary, but I see where it came from.)


Not sure if this was a bug or not, but there is one cave with nothing in it. It might be where the 5th Heart Container was supposed to be, but the screen was close to another screen that did have one, so I'm not really sure.

Another minor 'typo': a room that was 'off the map' in Dungeon 1 appeared on the Subscreen Map.

I thought the early dungeons (particularly Dungeon 1) were too large compared to the later dungeons.

Dungeons 7 and 8 allow you to traverse the entire bottom row of rooms. I'm not sure it was supposed to be this way, but it made traveling around those dungeons too easy.

I never found the Red Ring, either. I suspect there was a room with blue Wizzrobes in the Southeastern part of Dungeon 9 that was 'supposed' to contain it, as it was otherwise a 'dead-end' route with no purpose. That made defeating a twice-as-strong Ganon that much harder.


Overall, I enjoyed playing through this quest. I don't have any comparisons to make, as this was the first one I did, but I do like what was done.

I played about halfway through this one, and then got distracted with other things, so it may not be totally fair to say this....

But this quest is very easy. I'm not even that great a player, certainly not hardcore like many folks around here, but I had no trouble at all with it. I can only equate it to playing the first quest in the way that I do now, which is to get 2 heart containers and the white sword before I even go to level 1. I mow right through everything.

Don't get me wrong, it's fun, and I like to mow through things when I am going for speed, it's just not what I would expect from a quest that is to follow 2nd, 3rd, and/or 4th.

through lvl2. as with Nightmare, I found the boss room and triforce within seconds of entering the level, the rest of the level is WAY more obscure than the path to the boss.

i thought the difficulty of lvl2 was good, i died a couple times, but i hated the level design. too many random bomb walls. the map was buried too deep for all the bomb walls, and even with the map i was still wasting bombs trying to figure out where to go. make some of the bomb walls walkthru or just doors. and what was with the extra 2 keys in the level? maybe put some lock doors in to correspond to the keys. i have 3 keys leftover now from lvls1&2. not sure what the purpose of the top 5 rooms on the map was, all that was over there was a key? would probably make the most sense to put the boss up there.

play more later

your L2 patra's have the wrong tile selected for their flame trail, its just pasting garbage on the screen.

up thread someone mentioned not being able to find all 5 heart containers, they do all exist. although there is one overworld cave with nothing in it - death mountain screen with red lynels and armos.

as many have said, the earlier levels are harder than the later levels. 5 being the hardest. 7 and 8 were really really easy.

going onto 9 tomorrow.

done.

lvl9 was good. i liked the mazeyness of it, although the shape was awkward.

wasn't sold on the whole kanji shapes thing, i never bothered to look them up, some look good others not, the non-symmetry combined with the seemingly endless random bomb walls made dungeon exploration a chore. on the plus side, your dungeons were fairly non-linear.

difficulty was alright, a bit harder than 2nd quest i'd say, but not by much. certainly not the easiest of the contest.

i had WAY too many keys for the whole quest, some points i'd have 5 or 6 between levels. made the level exploration a little less tedious because i was never looking for a key for that door. i didn't bother grabbing the magic key, got sick of the money or life rooms, and i still had like 5 keys at that point so i figured i was good without it. i looked in the quest file after and looks like all the extra keys are there to get the magic key, but what's the point since level9 has so few lock doors? i'd take out some of the more crucial bomb walls and replace them with key doors, that way the keys get used in their dungeons. you can still have a key guantlet for the magic key, maybe have some hard battles in that dungeon to get the extra keys, or make the player buy one or two instead of money or life. at least make it worth it to get the magic key - more lock doors in lvl9.

there was another level after 2 that was basically a straight path to the boss, found and beat it in like 10 screens, without finding any of the other dungeon treasures first. in that same dungeon (i should really look, it was probably 3 or 4), the map was buried in the center 4 squares of the dungeon. you have to push a random block (different than 1st and 2nd quests) in a random room to open the passageway to those rooms, but without the map it looks like those 4 rooms are intentionally blank. maybe have a bomb wall into those rooms so you can see the map or doors, but can't actually access it. i didn't figure that out until looking in the quest file.

First contest map I finished, but my thoughts, by category:
Riddler: The clues dungeon-to-dungeon were nice, but by my play style only in retrospect (I generally search all "usual" locations before entering dungeon 1, but no exhaustive searches; once I get the whistle or red candle I check all overworld areas in which I didn't previously find anything. This means I find many dungeons "accidentally")

Difficulty: fairly easy. A few new creatures took a moment to strategize on, but nothing too hard.

creatures: a lot of fun with new things- though the fire-spewing patra had was too many mini-patra circling it (2 rings of 16/32? )

dungeons: I know a little kanji, which helped in exploration. As others mentioned, an a couple dungeons I found the triforce piece before exploring more than a small fraction of the dungeon. Extra key-doors before the bosses would fix that problem, as well as the "too many keys" problem. I didn't care for the level-jump to 6 so I could get the wand for a reasonable chance at finishing 5.

NES feel: Very good. definitely had the right feel to it.

Overall: A very solid, well-made map. I didn't give individual ratings above for each category, but overall I give it a 3.3/5. As note, my rating system makes it fairly easy to get a 3, but very hard to get a 4, and almost impossible to get a 5, so 3.3 is is significantly better than a 3.