"The Climber" [KS+][Challenge/Playground][Very Hard][Large] - TigerNDV

Hey everyone, I'm back! I decided to challenge myself to make a level that has NO new custom content (except sounds/music) but also uses EVERY tileset in the game! I hope you find this level fun and I'd love to see if anyone decided to take me up on the mapping challenge it brings! Special Thanks to Anton for helping me Beta test it!
https://knyttlevels.com/levels/TigerNDV%20-%20The%20Ultimate%20Climber%20%28V3%29.knytt.bin

This level is heavily replayable and contains tons of (hopefully) cool mysteries to explore and discover, please cheat with caution (this map is best played without any cheating since it's save system goes hand in hand with the gameplay of the level, but I understand the difficulty might not be for everyone)! I hope you have as much fun playing it as I had making it!

This level is so...pizdets...I mean very hard. I hope Don will make a speedrun.

This level is certainly a great candidate for that style of play! I don't believe there are any "luck" sections (or at least very minimal). I'd love to see someone do a speedrun of the level!

Have you managed to finish it yet?

Massive, that's all I have to say after 5h of left arm / hand destruction.

It's an interesting change of concept compared to previous level using this idea in an artistic way.
A lot of creativity for the platforming was also involved to make ti fun to pass through despite the very few difficulty spikes.
I had fun playing through it overall.

Played through without unlockables. Overall difficulty seems better handled than in OG "They Cry Out".
No extreme difficulty spikes for each save but definitely still a few worth mentioning.

One of them being very early on (that could be slightly nerfed) with a precise last frame jump + double jump and a similar case near the end.
Aside from those, there are technically simple ways to progress without tearing your hair off in the other 99.9% of cases.

There's a lot of details to take into account while proceeding through the level, as it is very difficult in general.
Zones add a gimmicky part to each of them, can be funny but also frustrating as a few of them ae instantaneous punishment that can avalanche down progress very quickly.
If one wants to do a speedrun of this, they will have to have a lot of patience as well as a fair amount of time to spend into this.

Thanks for playing, it was lovely to watch (what I could) of your stream! I agree a few of the jumps didn't need to be quite as tough, especially those before there is access to powerups.

Speedruns would be cool and I think doable. I'm excited to see if anyone attempts one, but it will take a lot of training to get a perfect run for sure. Curious to see who sets the best time! (please share your runs!)

I have updated this level is it's ultimate version, this includes many bug fixes, tweaks and polish points! I also added the floor numbers to each floor and some special bonus content for the most skilled climbers!

Thanks for playing, I hope you enjoy the final version!

Nice one! As you might expect, I did cheat-save to get through it. I played it before the update and here are the issues I've spotted back then:

Hey Gray! I didn't know music thing was possible with KS+. How do I set this?
All the things you mentioned sound like bugs and I have fixed them all for the final version, thanks!

One question though, I did not understand what you mean by this. "x999y835 - You can end up misaligned and get stuck in "Jump here" portal."

Sorry for the typo, and it's fixed now!

Speaking of version 3:

Awesome work! Really nails the "jump king" feeling of having mistakes punished by falling multiple screens.

I found the difficulty balancing to be really well done - each section ramping up gradually. There are a few jumps significantly harder than the surrounding jumps in that section but the player is warned by the NPC with flavor text. (Nice to know that these are intentional design choices).

I'm not sure if it's my PC or a general KS+ thing, but the level sometimes lags when transitioning between screens. This can be frustrating timing wise but manageable.


**SPOILERS BELOW*** (how do I spoiler tag?)

>! I finally managed to do the first tower the honest way. I personally grabbed the "eye" key first, then the "radar" key, then the "umbrella" key. 

Speaking of the screen transition lag - this was particularly frustrating near the top where screens "crumble" when you fall back down, but overall not a big deal. The lag only caused one screen to feel unplayable, the screen with the yellow and blue blocks that travel in a line. The screen lags every time that the blocks move to their next position and makes it way harder than intended. Since this mechanic is only used once, that's the only screen that I think could be reworked or removed in a future update.

MORE SPOILERS: My next challenge is to do the second tower the honest way. There are a few code sections that I'm not sure of the solution (other than one puzzle with the buttons labeled C,O,D and E) and had to skip, as well as a few jumps.

There is also a puzzle in the first tower top crumble section where you are asked to press the middle button 3 times to pass. However, pushing the buttons to get (circle, push middle 3 times, circle) - does not remove the force field gate-thing. Either I'm misunderstanding the instructions here or they could be worded more clearly.

I noticed that when you earn your final reward (climb) and choose to destroy it, you are not refunded the 20 coins and the power up is no longer available. Therefore it seems like you can never get the power up again if you save after this. Is this intended?

Edit: Replayed on another save file. I made it to the top, collected the red key, fell down to the base yet the draw bridge is still not open for me. Is this a bug? I've used the key to return to the throne room multiple times yet the draw bridge stays closed.

Thanks for playing, hope you had fun!

-Not sure what I can do about lag, it's unfortunate it affected your experience like that
-All the codes in the second tower should have hints about how to solve them nearby, which one(s) in paticular did you have trouble with? Can you post a screenshot or screen coords so I can give hints?
-On the screen where you need to press the middle button 3 times, you also have to press the first and last button once because there is no other way to press the one in the middle without pressing the first and last as well
-The coin refund thing is a good idea, but not possible afaik in KS+. Coins cannot be flagged on, especially not in bulk so it's just poor design on my part there. This should have worked differently.
-Once you reach the top you will lower the drawbridge, if you climbed the tower naturally it should work, if you cheated it might break since it has some checks along the way. Red Key itself does not lower the bridge, I believe it's a different set flag you have to actually climb the tower to set.

Hope this helps!

On the screen where you need to press the middle button 3 times, you also have to press the first and last button once because there is no other way to press the one in the middle without pressing the first and last as well

The way I did it was run to the middle button, strafe back and forth to activate it 3 times, float down to the left, and then straddle the cliff edge by the first button (which I activated once on the initial run) until it was back to the circle symbol.

So it went like
0 0 0
1 1 0
1 2 0
1 3 0
and kept activating the first until
0 3 0

A player wouldn't need to carefully straddle the cliff to keep activating the first button either if that is too difficult, as one could activate the first button once, fall down to the left, and repeat until the first button is back to the circle symbol.

I don't think it's intuitive enough that the solution is 1 3 1, since the player could also run back to the start to make it 2 3 0. It's such a minor thing though and I could have figured it out with more trial an error so it doesn't matter

---

As for the drawbridge thing, I did that run 99.9% without cheats (only teleported on one screen with the puzzle described above ^). It didn't happen on 2 of my other save files, fwiw (including the first with gratuitous cheats) so who knows.

No big deal since I can go to a different save file.

The coin refund thing is a good idea, but not possible afaik in KS+.

I don't know about level creation, is there a way to have the powerup itself freely respawn once "destroyed"? Alternatively could have one of those roman numeral gates, but I'm assuming they're tied to the golden creatures.

I'll give the code sections another go and look out for hints in the surrounding areas! Thanks for such a great level.

I think you found a valid bug, when you reach the top of the tower there are invisible shifts that trigger a flag which marks you as having "finished" the tower, however these are type "spot" meaning it's possible to squeeze between them and miss your flag. Good catch, to fix this just use your red key to travel back to the top of the tower then jump downward towards floor 255 and make sure you hit the invisible shifts there. Moving left to right in the screen transition from floor 255 to the top should ensure you get it.

Having a powerup respawn would normally be easy but I already used all the flags possible to use in the level so I'd need a different solution, I don't think I'll change anything there since it would require a hefty amount of work that I don't want to take on haha

And yes, those gates are tied to golden creatures!

The level has disappeared from KnyttLevels!

That's because the link in the OP is still pointing to V2.
The latest version is V3.
Also, it's called The Ultimate Climber now.

God that was hard! I had a ton of fun with it, though, and going back down and up again with a new power every 50 floors was a great way to become intimately familiar with the tower's layout while still finding new ways to get through some screens. I still think the first 50 were my greatest hurdle, since I hadn't played anything but the official Nifflas levels.....

Small negatives: I did play the V3 and did not find the hologram where it was supposed to be according to a couple of videos I watched. Which meant I couldn't get to the left part of the top of the tower. The drawbridge didn't lower itself either, which was a bit of a disappointment since both seemed to lead to fun stuff