12 replies to this topic

[HeroOfFire]

So that took a while, but I've finally added custom bosses to all the Shrines. That is the main feature of Beta 6.

Every Shrine ends one of many kinds of bosses. These are not your typical enemy editor bosses, I tried to make each boss script flexible with attack patterns and other options so even if the same boss type appears multiple times, it can feel very different each time.

This also replaces the Patras at the end of each Elder Shrine, and the Final Boss that comes afterwards is random each run. One of the few other changes this Beta brings is some Elder Shrines no longer have a Silver Arrow check before the boss, instead expecting some other later item. Of course, you have no idea what Elder Shrine you'll get or the Final Boss, so it is still a gamble to go in early without every key item.

Thanks to a post by Naru, I've been able to add some Zelda 2 enemies to the quest. There are a few other new enemies scattered here and there as well.

There are a few other changes here and there, a bunch of fixes, and a few small surprises. The one thing you won't be seeing in this beta are new Shrines. The 45 Shrines in the quest right now are good enough for a 1.0 release.

In fact, depending on any last minute changes or ideas, this could be the candidate for the 1.0 version.

Not that a 1.0 release means no more development, as Randomizer Returns showed with its updates. I doubt I'll reach the built in cap of 32 Shrines per Tier / 16 Elder Shrines, but you never know how long I'll keep adding to this.

[Ryunaker]

Gonna be running through it again, definitely, now.

[General_Milky]

Did a playthrough, and am now curious about some secrets.

Spoiler

Chiefly, what pressing the MAP button on the options screen does (seems to start a new game, but I don't feel like replaying it right now to pay close attention what it does exactly.) and what a clue in the Island Core means about defeating the Sorceress with the Ultimate Magic. I assume this means use the wand the Elder dropped to kill the Chaos Shrine boss, but she's long dead and I need to start over to test it. On a lesser note, the Core seems like it SHOULD have a second clue room like that one hidden in it, but I couldn't find it. Just a hidden room later on teasing Randomizer Omega, it seems.

[Moosh]

So how do I fight the elder? I have a full subscreen and 40 trophies (I think that's all of them, and I assume they have something to do with it) but I still get the bad ending when I reach the end of a final dungeon. Without a satisfying final boss doing all this just feels kinda hollow...

[HeroOfFire]

General_Milky

 

Pressing MAP on the Randomizer Options causes all the options except Elder Request, Shrine Length, and Use a Seed to be randomly picked, but not show you what it picks. Part of the fun is you have no idea what kind of rules it picked for you until you, say, find a random key or Tetrarch Fairy, or not see any Heart Pieces, etc. If you use a seed, the randomly picked options will also be based on the seed.

 

Perhaps if MAP works, other special buttons also do stuff for the Options?

Spoiler

There are 3 secrets in Island Core. 2 are found in the "maze" by going the wrong way. Going the wrong way will either take you right back to the start of the maze, or act as a random warp. The random wrong way warps in the "third" part have a 50% chance to take you to either secret room that has a clue about secret stuff.

 

Seems odd to have a well hidden hint room that only teases a quest that won't be done until 2032...

 

And yes, there is an easter egg if you fight the boss of Chaos Shrine when All Shrines are required. Fighting her with Infinite Magic is the normal requirement, but in Grand Tour mode, you also need the Elder's Cane, since the normal luck of encountering said boss has been removed.

 

 

Moosh

 

Spoiler

The secret rooms in the Shrines have small hints. The hint is different of each Tier of Shrine. The first 2 are pretty much flavor text, but the last 2 give clues for locations of interest. One clue not included in the quest, due to how fourth wall breaking it would be, is what would narrow down these locations. There are 240 cave layouts, but you don't see all of them each run as some caves lead to Shrines. However, 80 cave layouts appear every single seed. These usually contain items or are the warp caves. As these are the only constant locations in any seed, they are the only place I could hide anything.

 

Of course, you can always stumble across these secrets with the Lens, aka the ruiner of otherwise hidden stuff. Also, don't overlook the Old Woman hints, an Old Man mentions they have a lot to say and give one of many random clues each time you pay.

 

If that was too vague and want the direct answer...

 

Spoiler

Hint #3 is about a brown rock and a waterfall. One of the two-screen caves has a rock with a different color next to a waterfall. Check that out first.

 

Hint #4 tells you that Flippers are needed for some other big secret. The Old Woman that charges 40 rupees for info will randomly mention something about a dock. Once again, look for an out of place dock in a two-screen cave.

[Moosh]

Spoiler

Oh you clever ruseman!

 

I checked most of the transition caves while looking for what I assumed was the flippers, but I somehow must've missed the one with the waterfall. Also I guess I should get it through my thick skull by now that in HeroOfFire quests I should always be attempting some act of dock related terrorism at every possible opportunity.

 

Anyways, a few things that stumped me or otherwise rustled my jimmies on my playthrough:

• At some point I stopped reading the secret room hints because they kept repeating themselves, so I missed the last one. It might make it more clear that they're sorted by tier if the hints themselves had the tier number at the beginning or something.
• I got stuck for a good while finding my last item (Ice Rod) because it was in the chest game. Tricked by years of tradition where money making games are largely useless in ZC...
• I went like 70% of the game without finding a tunic because both ended up in the same dungeon. I'm sure you've gotten this kind of complaint from plenty of other randomizers now and if there was an easy way to fix you would have, but...oof!
• Many of my compasses got eaten by dungeons that I'd already cleared that I entered by accident. I didn't start using the map marking feature until around half way through, so there were a lot of dungeons I wasn't sure if I'd cleared. Would it be possible to add in an extra check to prevent this?

[HeroOfFire]

I've changed the text for the item chest games to try to make it a little more clear items are involved.

 

The Tunic "bug" is kinda hard to fix. It is not uncommon to have multiple levels of an item in the same location. There is a little logic where one of the tunics will not be randomly placed in a Tier IV if you select Easy or Normal Difficulty, but besides that, they can appear anywhere. Based on what you've said above, I'll assume it was a Grand Tour run. No idea where said Tunics appeared, and if maybe I should adjust the logic so one Tunic appears BEFORE Tier IIIs (except in Very Hard).

 

Then again, one of the few things I may add before a 1.0 release are a few item upgrades exclusive to Grand Tour, to balance out the sheer number of item locations. I guess I could add "Tunic 1.5" to the list.

 

Spoiler

Maybe I could make the notes in the secret rooms different colors based on Tier. Since outside of Grand Tour you have no idea what Shrines you'll get, I had to make the hints consistent across all Shrines of the same Tier.

 

The Compasses are an interesting feature. Story wise, you are taking a "blank" compass to a Shrine, where it becomes the Compass of that Shrine. When you say cleared, I assume that means you found the secret room without it. Finding the Trophies does set the bit to stop the compass mark from flashing. However, I'm not too sure on the whole "don't use a compass when you enter a Shrine you got the Trophy from". If I simply make it you don't "activate" the compass, then questions will raise why it seems to randomly not work. If I make it activate for free... again, it might raise questions how you bought 10 compasses and used 40.

 

Also, I've been working on the last few little additions missing for 1.0. Boomerang 3 and Hookshot 3 variations took a lot less time than I expected. Then I went to add a new "chain of deals" key item logic, and discovered the logic for placing key items has been flawed this whole time.

 

Basically, several early key items were placed in the same order each time when I assumed the order was random, which explains why Whistle seemed to show up late so often... it was placed after a bunch of other key items every time, opening up most of the early locations for it to be placed. Also, first Boomerang, Whisp Ring, and Fire Rod were being placed late, and Mirror Shield early (by early and late, I mean these items were grouped with a Tier of key items they did not belong with in relation to what Tier of Shrines they were expected for). I've since fixed this, which should make item chains in Very Hard and the upcoming mode more interesting, but this also means a Beta 6.1 will be inevitable, to make sure this late change doesn't break anything.

[Ryunaker]

Trying to use the map in-game sometimes seems to glitch, now...it's not often, and I'm not sure what triggers it, but it suddenly stops taking input.  Last time it happened, it was just after I changed the color on a location.  (Was in the middle of a dungeon, do not know if that makes a difference, and have had that work fine while I was in a dungeon.)  I am not sure what the trigger is.

[Orithan]

Related to the map; I discovered a bug with it.
If you press the map button on the frame you make a screen transition, the map stays up and the screen is no longer frozen. This persists until you press the map button again or until you are hit by an attack.

[Dockside2012]

For the "Items in Shrines" option, i think you should add a "Very Easy" option that has ALL key Items to only be located in the overworld. Me personally, I like to get the important items early without going through so many dungeons.

[Deedee]

Spoiler

Is there a true final boss or something? I got 213 items, 45 shrines cleared, all artifact shop items, and I defeated the elder and got his cane. Yet I still just get the "treasure" upon reaching the end of an elder shrine.

[Moosh]

The Tunic "bug" is kinda hard to fix. It is not uncommon to have multiple levels of an item in the same location. There is a little logic where one of the tunics will not be randomly placed in a Tier IV if you select Easy or Normal Difficulty, but besides that, they can appear anywhere. Based on what you've said above, I'll assume it was a Grand Tour run. No idea where said Tunics appeared, and if maybe I should adjust the logic so one Tunic appears BEFORE Tier IIIs (except in Very Hard).

It was a Grand Tour run. Both tunics appeared in the Wand Shrine, a tier three. It wasn't an especially hard dungeon, but I can imagine some other tier three dungeons that it wouldn't be so great to have it happen in. Lost Ways and Lavender come to mind. I think having one tunic appear before tier three sounds reasonable.

 

Spoiler

On the matter of the compasses, it seems to me like the best way to balance the lore and gameplay would be to make it an active item and let players decide which dungeons to use them on. I played with curse of the red rupee, so paying for all those compasses was no problem. I imagine with less money in the pool, wasting compasses you didn't want to use would be much more frustrating.

[HeroOfFire]

Alright, I've been testing two new mode options as well as the fixed item logic in general. Beta 6.1 should come after a few more test runs (including a Grand Tour run). A few things to come:

 

In Easy, Normal, and "None" modes, a Tunic will appear no later than a Tier II

In Hard and "Chained" modes, a Tunic will appear no later than a Tier III

Only Very Hard doesn't force an early Tunic

 

One of the things I'm testing right now is a 1.5 Tunic that appears only in Grand Tour. This should help with the "go too long without a Tunic with 40+ Shrines" problem.

 

A few late Shrines have had the required items change a little, to work better with Chain of Deals mode. Nothing major, but you might notice a new Arrow requirement or Blue/Red Bubbles added in a few places.

 

I've addressed most of the concerns above, although...

 

Spoiler

I've decided to keep Compasses the way they are. The main reason is that even if you've gotten the Artifact from the Shrine, the Compass is still useful as it will show a not blinking marker, which can be used to confirm you've gotten the Artifact there.

 

Beta 6.1 should be the last Beta before a 1.0 release, but I have one final feature planned exclusively for 1.0

 

I plan to add an option to the custom weapons called "Top Picks". The top five most popular random items will always appear when this option is selected. There are 30 different weapons to choose from. After Beta 6.1 is out I'll make the thread for more details on this, but I realize some of you have only seen 5 of these weapons from a single run. If you want to play a short run to see more of these items, you can press Ex4 on the Randomizer Options, which presets most of the options in such a way that every item location in the seed will have an item of some sort, while only containing 8 main Shrines. Not every run needs to be 8 hours long after all.