[Challenge/Playground][Hard-Lunatic] [KS+] Gustav's Retribution

Is the lava supposed to only be transparent on the surface once you have the lava armor?

Edit: I think Pumpkin Dungeon and the underwater section near the end of Pumpkin Village could both benefit from having a save point near their final challenge. Both of those are by far the hardest parts of getting their items (the underwater one in particular is tough even with the flippers), but they require a fair bit of backtracking whenever you die.

Edit 2: The Lace Citadel fan got disabled again as well. Sure glad I don't need it anymore. Can you actually screw yourself over through this bug?

v3: https://knyttlevels.com/levels/Shreeps%20-%20Gustav%27s%20Retribution%20v3.knytt.bin

I don't think the fans reset can screw you over.  The candles you have to get from the fan repair are all on the 1st versions of the maps. (You have to get them before this Flag resets) I checked the wall GC30  and it doesnt have a flag check if you go to get it after Luminous turns into Crystalline Infection.   It should just always have its fan on in all versions after astral.

The lava blocks look strange.  I adjusted them slightly so they would match colors  in  Scorian but I cant figure out why they would vary so much from zone to zone.     Some  unique glow from the lava object maybe? 




v3 patch notes:

-Lit Knob fixed the roman siege tileset by anyndel.   

-Added Lit Knob to Torment credits, changed torment credits screen to siege.

-Fixed tippy top to catapults in Torment Village.

-Penitence spelling fixed across game from 'Penitance'

-Autosave when starting Penitence Village invasion

-Fixed floating plant insect thing in scarlet

-Save in Silverwood Cemetery (that reappears after consecrate)  should no longer disappear after getting sneak.   

-Save added save to Meditations/peach woods lake should no longer disappear

-Saves added to Pumpkin Dungeon and underwater section.

-For all you corner lovers out there got something special   Double corner fixed, added to redding tileset and used in Valley of Rust/Dust

-Fixed some corners in Pink Catcombs with double corners tiles, and 1 in the finale but not all of them.  There is not enough tiles to cover every variation. and I think they didnt stand out as much as the Valley of Rust corners.  Didnt feel like making a new tileset also Lol.

-Gustavs fan will say its turned off if you return to Gustav's farm after Astral Corruption without flag 3.  Lace Citadel fan should stay on after Astral Corruption.

Penitence Village's fan also got disabled. Still using V2, but I'll update my version now.

Edit: I think the path from Scorian Hollows to Rosecore is a bit disproportionately difficult with the current amount of save points, given that some of the challenges are rather unpredictable. I made it through there reasonably quickly, but only through a very close call at the end. I could easily have seen that part taking a lot longer. I think the parts of Rosecore leading to the cave where you get the feather are a bit low on save points as well. (At least coming from the left. Didn't try going there from the right.) Nothing there is particularly tough, but you have to get through a lot of ground to find the entrance. Other parts of Rosecore are easier to traverse. I'm not surprised I failed to realize the cave even existed on my first visit during my earlier playthrough. Though the cave itself has indeed gotten more manageable.

Edit 2: This guy can walk too far to the left.

Edit 3: Okay, turns out reaching the cave from the right is actually quite easy. It's just the part to the left of it that has an unusually long stretch of challenges without save points.

Edit 4: So what exactly is the point of this huge stack of sand blocks if you can just dive down to the left of it? Does it actually block anything? (Edit to the edit: I just realized the sand blocks still let the projectiles from the plant to the right pass, so perhaps that was your intention?)

Edit 5: There are a few screens where you seem to have placed more enemies of certain types than KS seems capable of handling, resulting in some of them hardly ever attacking. My screenshot shows one such screen, but I ran into a similar one on the path from Scorian Hollows to Rosecore.

I see the Alabaster Woods version of this screen from the Old Turt Pond still has the red (or should I say cyan) flower you replaced in the original. Not that it poses much of a threat here, seeing how there's no secret passage in this version. It's just inconsistent.

Edit: Okay, this right here was probably the hardest challenge I faced on this playthrough so far outside of perhaps the phase of the Nyx boss battle with five blocks. Perhaps some people can actually keep track of this many unpredictable projectiles at once, but I can only really brute-force my way through this screen, which works maybe 5% of the time. Wouldn't have been that bad if there wasn't another challenge right after it that was still hard enough to take at least a couple of attempts.

Edit 2: The underwater tiles in Eclipse Falls don't seem to kill you even without the radiation suit.

Edit 3: I guess the final phase of the Moon Lord's trial wasn't really one of the toughest challenges I faced, but I don't really get what I was supposed to do there. All I could do was open my umbrella, go wherever the fewest birds are and pray that none of their projectiles fly low enough to hit me. Is there an actual strategy one can pursue here?

Edit 4: Minor nitpick, but it feels a bit weird that going to the left here wraps you around to the right end of the screen. From Juni's perspective, she's below a building that suddenly disappears.

Edit 5: Okay, I'm pretty sure these tiles up there weren't the ones you meant to use, right?

Edit 6: Flying too far to the left in Rosecore sends you to a void screen.

Edit 7: I only just noticed it, but the main gradient of Rosecore looks pretty weird upon closer inspection. Like it was aggressively compressed.

What exactly is the purpose of that screen at the left end of the Celestial Oasis? You have to go through some challenges to get there if you don't have the Angel Cape, yet there doesn't seem to be anything there.

Edit: Are there supposed to be lasers on that screen at this stage? I thought the hobbit engineering disabled all of the non-timed ones.

Edit 2: Most of the phases of the Sky Kingdom defense mission had an unusually low level of difficulty, with some even featuring blind spots that offered reliable protection against all attacks.

Edit 3: Is that angel supposed to keep saying this even after the attack on the Sky Kingdom happened?

I noticed there's camel walking on air in one of behind the lava areas. I still have the first released version of level and I found out it's possible to get into that area with lava suit and the lava acts like you already had flippers but maybe you fixed that already.

I noticed there's camel walking on air in one of behind the lava areas. I still have the first released version of level and I found out it's possible to get into that area with lava suit and the lava acts like you already had flippers but maybe you fixed that already.

Beat you to the punch by a few hours with reporting the camel rider.

V2 moved back the point where the lava suit can be unlocked. One of the iron ingots now requires the flippers.

The Penitence Village fan gets submerged in the weird crystal water and stops working.

The sand blocks make you need shovel to get that coin in the early game.   After astral corruption I added a screen below but you cant get back out so I just removed that column of sand.  I changed one of the enemies on the feather screen to the faster shooter. 

The stuff on the left of oasis is just for scenery.  I thought about putting an item there but it would be too easy to get with cape.

the laser on oasis i think could be bad and screw you over.  I made a cape and non cape version of that one when i still wasnt sure if engineering would be required to get cape.  that flag4 gets turned off when buying visor barrier on the moon.  but it looks like i came back and removed the wrong version because I had the 7th layer turned off often on the editor.

I didnt want to make another pointless screen on sky kingdom Lol.  it does feel funny though.

The steppes weird tiles showed up that way cause i wrote over the moon that was there on the copied screen with blank ones on the siege set lol.   removed them from all 3 versions of that map

The properties of the spring water block the  radiation   hehe

I have done that screen with the moonlord final screen by staying on the ground and just reaction speed basically.  I moved them so they start closer together though.

that dialogue still kind of applies cause they havent fought xethiz himself yet. 

It should take flippers to get ingot 4 in swamp then consecrate to get ingot 7 in cemetery now to get lava armor.  Are you able to get 4 without flippers??  I cant do that jump with only water breathing. 

v4

https://knyttlevels.com/levels/Shreeps%20-%20Gustav%27s%20Retribution%20v4.knytt.bin

-Lit Knob fixed Gradient 7 in Rosecore
-fixed Floating camel by Rosecore tunnel
-fixed gc34 in eventide (important)
-Added a save to underlava tunnel in scorian. and a couple on surface rosecore
-added warp object to top left screen of rosecore
-swapped disc that shoots gravity projectiles in spire to the one that only shoots up, short range.
-added  enemies to a couple screens on sky kingdom invasion

gonna chill on updates for a bit, unless there is something really bad comes up like GC34

SPOILERS BELOW. Played the first version, or whatever's on knyttlevels:

Wow! I was not expecting that storyline and such a massive level. Each location is unique and replayable on their own, and seeing the entire world change (with new location names too) was shockingly cool. The quest guide was a fantastic QoL addition and made the experience 1000% more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise. I also enjoyed the city hub which made connecting to the different branches easier. The dream world was *chefs kiss*.

Small nitpicks:

The Quest Guide is great for coins and golden creatures, but would have benefited from a key for the other things, especially the top row (power-ups I've bought / events). AFAIK, there's no indication which powerups have been bought on this screen, or what they do if one forgets after buying them (which helps knowing where to explore in the levels). The build/defend icons don't seem to disappear after completing them, among other things. There's also multiple watch/golden scissors/etc. icons on the guide which I still don't fully understand.

I think you mentioned some collectables needing multiple powerups (hence the NEED descriptions). These should just go in the column of the latter powerup, assuming powerups can only be unlocked linearly.

Without a world-map info screen, it can be easy to forget where various sub-levels are (Hobbit, Spire, Roseholm, Archives, etc.)

Playing the game over multiple days, I would sometimes forget where to visit next to advance the story. It sort of works itself out by being tied to buying things in the shop, but not always.

Basically, I'm envisioning a more comprehensive info center in the city. "Here's a screen with all of the powerup names/descriptions/lore that you've unlocked." "Here's a world map with the names of every place visible on one screen w/ shop locations" "Here's a hint of where to visit next story-wise e.g. mechanic similar to the old lady in A Knytt in Time(?)".

IIRC, the golden creature gates (XL, L, etc.) gave no wiggle room if there was one or two creatures you couldn't find even knowing where they were. Some lee-way would have been nice.

There were too many (long) boss fights for my taste. From memory, there's 20+ fights with 8+ phases each that border on very-hard / lunatic projectile spam at times. I found myself using invuln. at times from sheer difficulty or repetitiveness. The finale portals especially suffered from this.

I found myself wanting to explore the map after beating the game (autosave prevents this), but it makes sense thematically that the ending is a point of no return.


TL;DR: Loved it. My nitpicks can be summarized as "git gud, you don't need your hand held".

I'm not too fond of the boss fights myself for the most part, but you did remember that you have the hologram in the end game, right? That makes the last ones notably easier.

I think some of your complaints regarding the quest guide might be worth looking into but others probably aren't really possible to rectify. The images behind the collectables that show additional prerequisites are part of the background, so they don't automatically disappear. If they're the only thing that's left in a cell, that means you already got its collectable and can ignore it.

In the middle a lot of the powerups/events are non-linear.   Its theoretically possible to have the icons for the coins and story items disappear but it would take so many screens to account for all the combinations it would probably be more complicated than the entire level .    Not possible for the GC's though as they don't have flags.

In the next version I will come up with something to give you more info for the items that dont show up in your regular inventory.  Hints where to get it and where to use it depending on how what it is or how far you are.  It will have to be a different screen for each item though.   

The boss fights in this are a lot easier than the last ones I did lol, and you can hologram through the finale.  (The Salty Seas the original insane difficult versions are in this video https://youtu.be/sSXORE9ubqg?si=CJlBcLey4uoWIPlJ  )   Knytt isn't that great for boss fights and I think moving forward theyre better as some kind of 'event' or kept shorter other than finales

Reached XL so far. What a level this is...
Love how the story progresses through increments of powerups. Love how KS+ features are put on their best behavior : lots of titles/subtitles, lots of cool OCOs, and the most extreme case of flag/coinflag utilization.

After opening the guide for the first time, I could not stop going back to it a million more times and then having enough back and forths... took screenshots, it was the only way for me to advance swiftly (but then again ...) Crossed the turtle bridge too many times to keep a proper count. 

Took some time to figure out the layout of the city, some indicators could have greatly helped to know which of the 6 exits it is... something like 1 colored bloc, or a 6 dots face of a D6 in which one dot is colored to indicate the exit position, that was more or less the mental image I built up.

My most enjoyable parts is the suitable amount of difficulty there is during the conflicts and the 1 screen secrets as long as the save is not too far away.
What I disliked was the moments when the next powerup required a lot of unclaimed collectibles, it's either back to every single zone visited, or one more peek to the guide.
Overall it's really hard to keep a proper flow compared to a more linear level. And at some point you know you'll be coming back to that place where something was just out of reach, but forgetting about it because there's so much to keep track of.

After opening the guide for the first time, I could not stop going back to it a million more times and then having enough back and forths... took screenshots, it was the only way for me to advance swiftly (but then again ...) Crossed the turtle bridge too many times to keep a proper count. 

In case you didn't know, there is an external version of the guide available in the level data as a single image. Of course, that one doesn't remove the things you already got.

I watched a bit of footage of the last boss in that Salty Seas video. That does indeed look scary. Especially when the boss seems to flood the screen with projectiles at seemingly random intervals. Is there even a reliable way to deal with that? Do you plan to tone down the difficulty of such bosses in the future? I was looking forward to your Azure Serenity remake if it ever gets finished, but if it has such brutal challenges on a regular basis, I may have to give it a pass.

Also, regarding the cosmetic screen at the Celestial Oasis, I wouldn't normally take issue with it were it not for the fact that you have to go through a non-trivial challenge to get there unless you have the angel cape. It's still not exactly hard, but a walking palm tree strikes me as a bit too strong of an enemy to use on a route that's just a red herring.

I'll try to wrap up my second playthrough now. Is there anything that could go wrong if you end up releasing V5 before I'm done and I switch to it?

Edit: The second bus trip has some screen transitions that frequently result in brief wallswims. Also, minor nitpick again, but this NPC still says this line after you successfully fended off the attack through the second bus trip.

Edit 2: The end of the Paladin Temple has a screen that's supposed to visually connect the area with the Lunar Steppes. That's a nice touch, but it doesn't get updated when that area becomes Mount StarFlame.

Edit 3: So I seem to have gotten stuck. I'm in the last phase of the Mount StarFlame defense mission, and it doesn't end even when the time runs out. I reached that point twice. Also, I was going to save this until I'm done with all of the near-end game's defense missions, but I think they could use a second pass. Some of them have an appropriate level of difficulty, but others have either total blind spots where nothing can hurt you or at least spots where you can reduce the amount of attacks that can hit you to a point where dodging them no longer poses much of a challenge. The Gulf of Jasper mission in particular has plenty of screens where only the evil wizards can hit you in the air, so you can just fly to the invisible ceiling and cross the edge of the screen every time they shoot at you.

Those bosses are a lot easier now and I probably won't do them that hard again in the future unless there is an alternative way to deal with them. 

I don't know if anything could go wrong badly, you can restart the quintet fight over and over if you go back after the climax begins Lol.  I dont think it breaks anything though just a loop. 

I want the sunset village to have the sun background.  I don't think there is any way to fix the bus wallswims but I made those screens loop so I think worse case you just fall from the sky?  Lol.

I'll do another pass over the invasions though and try to make them all absolute target shifts instead of relative