{"id":4834,"date":"2016-12-14T03:29:49","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T11:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/?p=4834"},"modified":"2016-12-14T03:29:49","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T11:29:49","slug":"drod-repeat-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/4834","title":{"rendered":"DROD: Repeat Play"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Getting back into <em>DROD<\/em> after all this time has proved fairly easy. All the little tactical swordfighting tricks that I picked up in my first play-through are still with me: how to efficiently cut down a horde of attackers, how to manipulate a goblin or wraithwing into going where I want. A great many individual rooms are still familiar to me, too &#8212; not so much so that I&#8217;d be able to recall them from memory alone, but enough for me to recognize them when I see them, and remember the main secret to solving them.<\/p>\n<p>This seems to be less the case as I go deeper, though. Floor 18 is almost entirely unfamiliar to me. I suppose this makes sense &#8212; this isn&#8217;t my first attempt at a replay. I recall playing through at least the beginning in preparation for at least one of the sequels. At one point I even started playing through the game to make notes for a Hold <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_4834_1('footnote_plugin_reference_4834_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_4834_1('footnote_plugin_reference_4834_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_4834_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">1<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_4834_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">&#8220;Hold&#8221; is <em>DROD<\/em>&#8216;s term for a set of player-made levels.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_4834_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_4834_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script> I was contemplating making, a &#8220;King Dugan&#8217;s Dungeon Condensed&#8221; that would attempt to distill the essential features of each floor of the original dungeon into a single room. I never finished that; I think I gave up when I found some floors that were too heterogeneous to easily summarize. The point is, I have played the beginning of this game several more times than the ending.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, I&#8217;m managing to clear rooms at a pretty good clip, and never really get stuck &#8212; except on one thing. The one new, unfamiliar thing. The Challenges. I&#8217;ve gotten fairly severely stuck on those several times. Floor 16 had no less than three Challenge rooms that took me multiple sessions to solve.<\/p>\n<p>The thing about the Challenges is that they&#8217;re fiddly. They involve precise positioning and optimization, often even to the point where you have to already be in the correct orientation when you enter the room, just so you don&#8217;t have to waste a turn or two turning about. Without Challenges, most of the rooms in <em>King Dugan&#8217;s Dungeon<\/em> ask no more of you than competent footwork and the ability to spot the &#8220;lynchpin&#8221;, the non-obvious idea that makes it all easy. A lot of the Challenges are specifically based on ignoring a room&#8217;s lynchpin. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drod-challenge.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drod-challenge-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"drod-challenge\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-4835\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drod-challenge-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drod-challenge-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drod-challenge-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/drod-challenge.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>For example, one of the rooms in floor 16 is based on using tar growth, normally an inconvenience, to your advantage. There&#8217;s a serpent in a completely inaccessible area, together with a small bit of tar. Serpents die when they get caught in dead ends, but there&#8217;s no dead end in that area. The lynchpin: You can create a dead end just by letting the tar spread all the way to the wall. To do this, you have to ignore the temptation to kill the &#8220;tar mother&#8221; (the thing that makes the tar grow) for three complete growth cycles. The Challenge for that room: Kill the tar mother before the third growth cycle. I had to learn more than I had ever before needed to know about Serpent behavior to solve that one.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been spending so much more time on Challenges than on anything else that they&#8217;re basically the dominant part of my experience by now. Now, bear in mind that Challenges are optional. I could just skip them, solve the rooms the easy way and move on. But why would I do that? I&#8217;m in no rush to reach an ending I&#8217;ve already seen, or solve more puzzles I&#8217;ve already solved. No, for a return visitor like myself, having the Challenges dominate the experience is probably a good thing.<\/p>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><p><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_4834_1();\">&#x202F;<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_4834_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_4834_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_4834_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">References<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_4834_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_4834_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_4834_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">&#8220;Hold&#8221; is <em>DROD<\/em>&#8216;s term for a set of player-made levels.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_4834_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_4834_1').show(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_4834_1').text('\u2212'); } function footnote_collapse_reference_container_4834_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_4834_1').hide(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_4834_1').text('+'); } function footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_4834_1() { if (jQuery('#footnote_references_container_4834_1').is(':hidden')) { footnote_expand_reference_container_4834_1(); } else { footnote_collapse_reference_container_4834_1(); } } function footnote_moveToReference_4834_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_4834_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } } function footnote_moveToAnchor_4834_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_4834_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Getting back into DROD after all this time has proved fairly easy. All the little tactical swordfighting tricks that I picked up in my first play-through are still with me: how to efficiently cut down a horde of attackers, how to manipulate a goblin or wraithwing into going where I want. A great many individual [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[92,119],"class_list":["post-4834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-drod","tag-drod-king-dugans-dungeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4836,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834\/revisions\/4836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}