[5th quest entry] Travster

[justin1]

i think the quest has a lot of promise. it just needs some tweaking. as nightmare said, playtesting the quest would go a long way to smoothing things out. early game is just brutal, but by level 4 the difficulty levels out and seems about right for the contest. actually other than level 1 and the overworld the difficulty is probably good. my recommendation for the overworld is to guide the player to where you want them to go at the start of the quest, so have easier or less enemies on those screens you want them to visit, and harder enemies everywhere else - and the "easier" screens don't need to be 1st or 2nd quest easy you can still have your poweredup enemies just find the balance. i'd keep the overworld boomerang where you have it, make it the wooden one, and ditch the boomerang in L1, maybe move the clue for it to somewhere on the "easy path".

i just beat level 7 and i gotta say that the level design is among the best of the contest quests i've played - your dungeons are interesting, not too linear and they have good flow. too many of the other contest quest dungeons are just linear gauntlets or mazes of confusing passageways. only criticisms with the dungeons themselves is that a couple might be a little small, the one is a really unusual shape, and i have yet to see an off map screen.

a couple other criticisms
. make your push blocks consistent within the quest - its fine that they are different than 1st or 2nd quest just make them consistent throughout your quest - its one of those factors that adds to the tediousness
. almost every dungeon room is just filled with one type of enemy, mix it up a bit. you could use more bubbles as well.
. less kill all enemies for shutter or block rooms when the enemies are splitting type and when its a room that needs to be travelled numerous times
. play some of the other quests in the contest to see what types of custom enemies they've created. diagonal sword throwing darknuts, charging darknuts, zols that tribble on boomerang hit but die to sword, pols voice that one hit kill with wand instead of arrows, etc. not to say you have bad enemies - i like the fast shooting moblins, and the tribbling goriyas and 4-way sword stalfos are just evil (good evil).
. was your intent for the red zol to be a heart/rupee mining enemy? if you want them to harder than create a custom dropset without the clock. as they are right now its too easy to use them to get back to full health and 200 rupees in less than 30 seconds.

more later. but don't let any of this discourage you. your quest has promise.

[justin1]

just beat this one. level 9 had a good design and gimmick, but the enemy choices made the gimmick tedious. too many red zol rooms, and the blue like likes aren't a threat at all. the patras were challenging, but they are a one time thing - clear the room and it stays cleared - they would have been better served guarding something and not just in a room that will be visiting several times (same goes for all the mini-bosses in the dungeon). the player can get stuck in the room before ganon without the boss key as the shutter closes behind you. which also made the ganon gauntlet easy with all the patras gone. the money (210!!!! rupees) or life room traps the player, which i didn't like, nor did i like the -100 door repair room in lvl8. as someone mentioned already there is no map in lvl8.

the difficulty of the later levels was good - its just unbalanced early game. however, i did start a new game and race through the first few levels with minimal deaths (5 deaths through to lvl3 where i had dozens more deaths on my first playthru, knowing what to do made a whole lot of difference). it is possible to get a magic shield, the blue ring, magic boomerang and white sword all before level 1 if you know what to do (breaking into 4 to grab blue candle specifically). even without the candle getting the white sword before 1 is possible though difficult, and getting it before 2 is more possible and less difficult. there are magic shields to be had without the candle too, but hard to get.

this quest did grow on me though. as stated the level design is good, they flow well. a few tweaks could make this a contender.

[Zweldron]

I just finished my playthrough of this one- I found a copy of the map elsewhere, and it was the "hard" version. My general comments, followed by per-category comments:

I found the overword to be challenging, but the only real problem was a few overly dangerous rooms right by the start. I normally search the whole overworld before going for dungeon 1, and found I had to use the "leave 1 creature alive" trick, always leaving a path to a fairy fountain so I could recover. As a side effect, I found many of the locations before entering any dungeons- though the NW section I had to pass on, as one hit from a lionel causes 4 hearts damage, and with only 3 hearts, it wasn't worth it. After finishing dungeon 2, I had 5 hearts, and since dungeon 3 was too tough I explored that area, and found all 5 heart containers before I got the white sword! finishing dungeon 3, and then quickly 4, I had the white sword for about 1.5 dungeons before getting the magic one.

The biggest problem I had with this was the "ramping" of the map. By this I mean the rate at which things got harder. Dungeons 4 and 5, and to a good extent 6 were trivial compared to the first 3. I disagree with others about the fire boomerang and Red Zol rooms. I think that you could safely remove one, but not both.

on to the categories:
Riddler: Although I found the locations that several of the clues went to before getting the clues, thanks to my methodical searches, they were done well. It would have been better if many of these weren't the same locations as in earlier quests, but there aren't many named locations (like Spectacle Rock) 4/5 here

Hardest: I take some liberties with this rating, because it was quite hard to start, but the reverse ramping detracted a bit. I think that if dungeons 4 and 5 came before 1 through 3 (with appropriate changes in items so they COULD be done in that order), it would have been much better. 3.5/5

Bosses: most of the bosses were just stronger versions of the originals- although the double-Ghoma boss was quite tough to beat, the other multi-bosses weren't so tough. If you include the mini-bosses, I think Travster went Patra-Crazy near the end. Several timesI entered a room, only to have multiple patra appear on top of me! fortunately the red ring comes before dungeon 9, so this was more annoying than tough, but still, after the third multi-patra room, the novelty is gone. Basically, ideas were overused. Maybe save the quad-patras for the gauntlet only, but leave a few doubles in the dungeon. Also, After all that work, Ganon was a let-down. Maybe double his health so 4 hits don't kill him. Gannon was one of the easiest enemies in the game! 3/5

enemies: similar to the bosses, the variants of most of the enemies was nice - at first- but they were over-used. For example, having more than one room with 11 green goriyas was overkill. A graveyard with 8 killable ghosts was also a bit much. On the subject of ghosts, a note: ghosts appearing in a dungeon room is cute, but they prevent shutter doors from activating, since they can't be killed, and aren't bubbles. 3.5/5

dungeons: the dungeons as a whole were pretty good in design (albeit with the ramping caveat), but there are 3 main problems I had: (1) there is no indication of obtaining the boss keys. In at least one dungeon, I happened to be standing right where it appeared, so I didn't know I had it! Please make a space on the subscreen for this. (2) there is no map in dungeon 8. Although I didn't need it, it does make it easier to know where to look for hidden paths, and to know that I didn't miss anything. (3) dungeon 9 overused the 1-way-passage-back-to-the-start gimmick. Unless I missed one, there were NINE (9!) such paths. This made exploring the dungeon very tedious, but even so that isn't the main problem. That honor goes to the gauntlet-trap. I got to the room before Ganon fairly early, and had to quit/continue because there was no way back. That last room before Gannon SHOULD have had a 1-way-passage-back-to-the-start.Unfortunately, I have to give a below-average mark in this category. 2/5

appearance: nothing special, nothing bad, just ordinary. A few of the dungeon layouts didn't have any apparent shape to them. 3/5

NES feel: This did pretty well with the feel, Most of the upgraded creatures in the dungeons were a natural progression up from the originals (although bomb-throwing wizrobes were a bit jarring). Still, I think the map did a good job with that. 4/5

overall: There were plenty of plusses and minuses to this, as I've pointed out, but I think the plusses do come out ahead here, so I give an overall 3.22 / 5 for this quest.