don't know what bigcalf is meaning either. But practicing and memorizing the pattern of the dodongos/gohmas will go far here. The pattern never changes and you can anticipate your next move prior to your arrow reaches its mark or bomb exploding.

I beat both the boomerang and arrow mini-games (although for whatever reason I kept running out of time even after hitting the last gohma, thankfully I finally got lucky and got the piece). I'm having an issue with the bomb game, even after blowing up the target I'll still run out of time due to the chime taking too long to play. I am using the correct build....

well, even after you bomb the right target, the game requires you to move to 'trigger' the transition to the next target screen. So keep moving around while bombing targets.

Gleeok brought to my attention your Origins 3 challenge quest, so I decided to give it a go and see what kind of difficulty there was. Just FYI, I am one of those "insanely gung-ho" players you are describing.

Played the first and second quests. Very nice graphics. Very good dungeon design and I gotta love the way you are able to make your game flow so nicely. You also seem to have a gift for decorating screens - I wish I could. There barely seems a dull moment despite the fact the monsters aren't difficult. Then there's the water rising and falling and the ghosts of level 6 - absolute winners! You are obviously a very skilled and gifted quest builder.

After I finished the 2nd quest, I was brought to the 3rd which I was able to zero-game with all my fancy equipment. Decided to restart the whole game starting with the 3rd quest with nothing more than 3 hearts. Here's my criticism from a strictly military perspective:

1) The beginning fight with the fire wizzrobes and darknut is not hard. Just dodge and throw your sword beam.

2) You need to explore the overworld to gather equipment in order to start fighting in the dungeons. These items cost money which means you need to kill lots of monsters to raise funds. Generally, not a very good way to start a challenge quest. Items should be got by hard fought battles - not by killing lots of easy enemies.

3) With those funds, you can buy the blue ring and hookshot (for stunning purposes) which gives a huge advantage. If you get the amulet, then you can kill some of the mini-bosses (like the 3 Manhandla2s with bombs) for more money.

4) Once you are loaded with your items and the hearts you can collect from them, you can tackle the dungeons. The poverty gods are cheap difficulty - almost forcing the player to give up a heart to progress.

5) Despite having to give up a heart now and then, the first dungeon is really easy with all the items and hearts. And once you have the big purse the hammer is within reach. And with the hammer its like having a master sword except it can pierce darknut shields making level 2 (on quest 2) really easy.

6) Upon beating level 2 (or was it level 3?) Link gets the gold arrow - and that's game, set, match for a militarily skilled player. There is also the red ring and plenty of hearts with the flippers from level 4. Combine that with medicine and Link is virtually invulnerable.

7) The extreme mode seems to only upgrade the enemy abilities. For instance, it upgrades red darknuts to blue, and blue to super. The rope2s are upgraded to bombchus and the goriya2s are upgraded to goriya3s. But, in my opinion, difficult quests are made by reducing Link's powers - but keeping the enemies the same. If you have too many powerful enemies and a powerful Link then it just becomes a slog of how fast a player can press their A button. But if Link is weak and the enemies are moderate then it makes for a fight where true playing skill is needed and that is what I believe "gung-ho" players like best.

You have many, many talents DFW and its a shame you're retired and gone. But I don't think designing quests for "insanely gung-ho" players is one of them. Its just not you and its not your taste and you shouldn't try. Leave designing quests for "insanely gung-ho" players to those players - coz they know whats best for themselves But I really do like your quest though. I thought I'd lose interest straight away but it held me despite being easy.

Have you tried Hidden Duality Xtreme? I've heard that is quite tough.
Also on topic of Origin, I knew that the first 8 levels might eventually turn to being easy. But I wanted either level 9 to be the field leveling factor. So no matter how strong you were going into level 9, there were death knights and mirror robes and many other STRONG enemies that can bring down even those with the gold mail. But kudos to you for finding it so easy.

Ahh...but there's a trick to beating them. See what you can do is door snipe a few easy enemies and then leave the room and return...and *sometimes* the difficult enemies get replaced with easier ones. For instance, try your Level 4 quest 2 on extreme mode. Kill a few blobs and exit and return and the bat wizzrobes will be replaced by blobs. Keep one blob alive and you will never have to deal with anything harder on that screen even if you leave the dungeon and reenter.

As for the death-knights, you can also use the superbomb against them to take them out in 2 strikes without ever putting Link in danger if there's a group of them. The mirror wizzrobes can be left alone and dealt with last because they don't home in on Link like the death knights. Can be beaten without working up too much of a sweat with the right strategy. Fire-rang can also stun the death knight up close.

I haven't tried the Hidden Duality Extreme, although I remember I played Hidden Duality a long time ago and I got stuck trying to figure out a way get to level 7 so I gave up. But I could give it another shot, right after I try Gleeok's quest.

The more I read these two critiques, the more I feel they are unfounded, and that's only because I know the developer insight as to why I made those design decisions. And now I'll reveal them to you so you'll better understand why I did those things. It was basically ZC engine limitations honestly.
Unless things changed in the latest versions and we can have multiple whistle warps per Triforce Piece created, I was limited to 8 triforce pieces and thus 8 whistle warps. So that is why I disabled the warps with the whistle since you could claim the triforce in two separate quests IN the same quest file! Don't want to beat level 1 in 2nd quest and whistle warp to 1st quest! O_o
Also, since you could get to 3rd from the end of the 2nd, that drove my decision NOT to have the Triforce be in 3rd quest and just utilize bosses as triggers to entering level 9. Since you had the ability to choose between dungeons from 1st or 2nd quest in 3rd. You could choose them in such an order, that if items could only be found in dungeons, you could permenantly get stuck and be unable to complete the quest because you completed two dungeons that gave you the hookshot twice but neglected the dungeon that gave you the critical step ladder. So the only way I could figure to give you items without just...GIVING them to you, was to buy them. Thus all the new shops. So unless you know of a better way I could have handled that with the engine limitations, I was stuck with what I did.

Oh I see how your quest works now. The 3rd quest is simply a continuation of the 2nd where the player warps from the 2nd to the 3rd. Its not a like a restart from the 1st quest to the 2nd. I see.

I don't know what's in your Lost Isle build, but if it had scripting it would be VERY easy to write a script to take away Link's items and HCs. Even if you couldn't script it yourself, I'm sure one of your loyal fans could write you a script. But without scripting...hmm...best way I could think of is to make a new quest file. Like the way you separated Hidden Duality and Hidden Duality Extreme. Or you make a "dummy" triforce piece and then write and attach a script to teleport Link to wherever you wanted upon pickup.

If I didn't have the ability to script - I think what I would've done is to create a whole "chain" of mini-bosses scattered throughout the overworld. The first miniboss would be visible - the prize being the amulet. This amulet would allow you to battle the second miniboss - prize being, say, the bow 'n' arrow. This would allow me to battle the 3rd mini-boss which was a gohma etc... That way, the items wouldn't be in dungeons and I wouldn't need to "scrounge" for funds.

I'm liking your Hidden Duality Extreme. Certainly worthy of challenge, but I wouldn't say it was one of the more extreme quests - like mine I'm up to the 4th level with 26 deaths. Most deaths were because I kept trying to beat those 6 super darknuts but I couldn't. Also tried beating the level 3 gohmas but couldn't. But I'll be back...

yeah, I feel I did a better job at challenge with Hidden Duality Xtreme than my 3rd quest.

I think you did too good at that <_<

Also my as well bump this in noting that Origin was re-released as a 2.50 Quest and that I've been testing to make sure it was a flawless transition and it seems that way so far, though I've found a couple of things that may or may not have been a bug in the original as well.



You can walk past those statues without setting them off if you are as close to the statue as you can(standing partway on the tile the statue takes up). This is confirmed to work in Level 1 as well.



You can't go up if you are standing on that tile, but if you stand on the right tile or in-between the two you can go up. You can go down from the left tile though...

And of course now statues shoot you even if you're standing next to the shooter which makes getting a level 3 key a little annoying, but all the more reason to buy a shield, I guess...

Edited by Eppy, 22 May 2012 - 07:30 PM.

Both of those are bugs inherent to the engine and something I can't do anything about. Yet they were there in the original version.

Wait, the statues activate by triggers placed on the floor, right? If that's the case, Link can circumvent them by walking along the statue, so he doesn't step on the floor triggers. So, couldn't you make the statue tiles themselves triggers, so Link would activate them anyways if he tried doing that?

That wouldn't work either since how ZC handles movement, he needs to be at least on the 'lower' half of the tile (or the base of the statue) for it to even trigger. Walking along the base of the statue will still circumvent the trigger, unless I make the lower half of the statues walkable and that would be just silly. Besides, if you think about it logically, it makes sense why doing that doesn't trigger. Because the statue has to 'SEE' you before he triggers the blocks. So if you were to honestly sidle up next to the statue, down beneath his sight, it stands to reason it wouldn't see you and thus not trigger the trap. Just spouting stuff...

Edited by DarkFlameWolf, 23 May 2012 - 09:50 AM.

Hello, I am playing this quest. I believe I am in the first quest level 2. I got a key and used it. I got the amulet. I am alittle stuck now. I can't figure out where the 2nd key is and there are areas that are blocked by water. How do I get by them and where is the 2nd key?

In the room where you got the Amulet, did you try bombing the east wall?