March Archipelago 2025 (Complete)

Alex_Among_Foxes said:
I full cleared Turtle Rock and there was no compass chest check. Are you sure that's the right dungeon? Cause my tracker says 14/14.
Click to expand...
Checked out the server log.
Alex LtP sent World Card Twilight Town to CherrimKHCOM (Turtle Rock - Compass Chest)
Click to expand...

Sent correctly. Would have been the first chest you opened. Looked at a probably outdated Archipelago tracker. (Ignore the red squares. Did not connect to this Archipelago. Held a previous playthrough in memory.)
[PokeCommunity.com] March Archipelago 2025 (Complete)
 
@Alex_Among_Foxes I have your Iron Boots, and I've also made more hints for your Zelda games. I've updated my status update to reflect them as well as Setsuna's recent release of FF5.
 
[PokeCommunity.com] March Archipelago 2025 (Complete)

As of now, I've finished every game in my care, so I'm done with the Archipelago! Thanks so much for hosting and to everyone who joined, it was so nice to do one of these again and I remembered how excited I get when these happen, they get my full attention cause they're just a total bunch of fun. Thanks especially to Devalue for helping people get set up, and for being willing to accept my YAML for FFV, because that was a lot of fun. I'm gonna yap about my thoughts on both games I cleared tonight (since I already did for Cave Story), but all you need to know is I'm done and had a wonderful time! Let me know the next time one of these happens, because I'll definitely be there. I'd love to play FFV again if possible.

Spoiler: Thoughts on my games
 
Update 5

Got the Zephyr Badge. Means not needing to roam around Silver Cave in the dark.

Dumped the 5 Rare Candies into Entei. Reached level 66. Good enough.

Led with a level 81 Hypno. Hit for a measly 30 damage with Karate Chop. Set up X Specials all the way to +6. Still failed to one-shot two of Red's Pokemon (Lapras and Umbreon). Had a far better team than anyone on the Elite Four did.

Entei's final stats:
Level: 68
Attack: 145
Defense: 162
Special Attack: 185
Special Defense: 143
Speed: 195
Moves: Ice Punch, Bite, Rock Slide, and Amnesia

Not very strong, relative to some experiences in Red, but good enough. Really needs level scaling in Crystal to avoid Sphere 2 fights with Bugsy and Sabrina.

@Explorer of Time : Got everything from Crystal.

Locked a boatload of stuff behind Surf. The full list of just "progression" items:
  • Ocarina of Time's Minuet of Forest
  • Zelda 1's Silver Arrow
  • Link to the Past's Big Key to Thieves' Town and Small Key to Ice Palace
  • Super Metroid's Energy Tank
  • Mario & Luigi's Winkle Card
  • Sonic Adventure 2: Battle's Emblem x2 (Arcaneum's)
  • Sonic 1's Shiny Ring x2
  • OpenRCT2's River Rapids, Wooden Roller Coast, and Drink Stall
  • Risk of Rain's Teleporter Fragment
  • Crystal's Rock Smash TM
  • Stardew Valley's Farming Level
  • Sonic Adventure 2: Battle's Emblem, Tails's Mystic Melody, and Eggman's Mystic Melody (Explorer of Time's)
  • Starcraft 2's ATX Laser Battery (Battlecruiser)
  • Doom's Shotgun
  • Bomb Rush Cyberfunk's 8 REP, 16 REP, and Skateboard (Sylk)
  • Pokemon Blue's Fly HM and Moon Stone. (Note: Fly in Silver Cave. Gross.)

_____________________

Finished all three games. Went a lot faster than expected. Played waaaay too much these past few days. Blames Stardew Valley for that (well, and a desire to keep things moving). Always had something to do, in an "early" part of the game. Felt pressed to do that, but also keep up with the other two games. Also took ages to do those checks.

Learned to not do Stardew Valley with other games. Enjoyed it, to be clear. Ate up too much time. Needs to treat it like 3 games, in terms of time, at least under these settings. Would probably do it by itself sometime, but maybe with more settings on. (May not happen very often, though. Means not playing some other games.)

Barely noticed EnergyLink on. Favored sending from Stardew Valley to Earthbound because of the conversion rates. (10 gold in Stardew Valley = $1 in Earthbound, plus a withdrawal tax on maybe just Stardew Valley's side.) Never needed money in Earthbound, though, even with Shopsanity on. Also tried gifting. Kind of got lost in the usual 60+ letters waiting in the mailbox. Believes a Peanut Cheese Bar turned into a Garden Pot. Probably.
 
Great to hear it all turned out for you!

I've completed OoT and released all the stuff there. I'll try to get as much done tonight on the rest as possible.
 
Alex_Among_Foxes said:
I've completed OoT and released all the stuff there. I'll try to get as much done tonight on the rest as possible.
Click to expand...
Poor Link. Probably froze for a minute straight after defeating Ganon from all the remaining Ice Traps just in your world. (Up to 560 Ice Traps received out of 981 total items, so over 50% Ice Traps.) May not be a coincidence that the games show people stuck in crystals.
 
Alex_Among_Foxes said:
I've completed OoT and released all the stuff there. I'll try to get as much done tonight on the rest as possible.
Click to expand...
If I may ask, I'm the only other player left and the only thing I need from you is the Level 7 Key Drop (Moldorms) from your Zelda 1, which would put me in Go Mode for my final game.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and A Hat in Time are both already in Go Mode. The former will be finished tomorrow, and hopefully the latter will as well, but it might take another day if I can't get enough time to play it.

Sonic Adventure 2 was goaled and released recently as well.
 
Explorer of Time said:
If I may ask, I'm the only other player left and the only thing I need from you is the Level 7 Key Drop (Moldorms) from your Zelda 1, which would put me in Go Mode for my final game.
Click to expand...

I just finished and released it, so you're good to go.
 
I have finished my last game and am finally done! I had a great time doing this run with all of you, and I hope we can do another at some point! ^^

Some brief final thoughts on each game of mine:

Zelda 1: With exception to where the randomizer stuck my Flute, I had a really nice time with it this session. Nothing about any of the settings made me want to change anything, and I got the rest of my items at a pretty good pace. I'll happily run it again next time too. It doesn't really get old for me.

Super Metroid: I'm not the biggest SM fan already, and the randomizer didn't really help that either, sadly. There wasn't anything wrong with the setting, I'm just not that fond of the game in general... I do think having it along with a bunch of other really hefty games made it harder to focus on playing it well, though, because I kept telling myslf that a game with only 100 really spread out checks isn't worth the extra effort to run at the moment when only a tiny amount of work could net me like 30 in OoT or M&L. I'll likely run it again, but only every once in a while, or when I only want to do one big game and a couple shorter ones.

A Link to the Past: I've decided after this run that I won't be keeping keys to set dungeons any longer. It makes me have to backtrack far too much for a playthrough like this. Other than that, I had a good time with it over-all. Though I won't be running it and OoT in the same session again. That was far too much Zelda at once for my liking.

Ocarina of Time: I actually found myself enjoying it less than I thought I would. Though not because of the game itself or any of the settings I'd picked, (though I do wish I'd have gone with the maximum amount of ice traps which is something I'll b fixing next time) but rather the way the emulator handled movement and especially aiming, which got rather infuriating at points. I'll actually have to turn off some checks to prevent that sam issue next time, and I really don't like having to do that just because of tech issues... >.>
Otherwise I had a wonderful time with it! I loved shuffling all the pots and crates and such for even more chaos lol.

Mario & Luigi: This one was a standout for me. I didn't expect I'd have as much fun with it as I did, and that was awesome! Though I do think I hit GO mode for it much too quickly, and that made me end up having to rush my way through it way too fast to be properly enjoyed imo. None of the bosses were particularly hard either, though I did find the first boss in the game showing up in Bowser's Castle to be absolutely hilarious thanks to the shuffle. XD I do wish it didn't recycle some of them, though. That was a bit disappointing.

Thanks for hosting the great time Deva!
 
Doom and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk are now completed as well. All that remains is to clear Hat in Time, which I hope to do sometime tomorrow. (Next time, I will set my goal for Time's End rather than Seal the Deal.)
 
And Hat in Time is cleared and released, formally ending this Archipelago.

Final Thoughts:

Starcraft 2: I got an overpowered game-winning army comp for each race very early, plus the two strongest Spear of Adun ultimates early on. This paradoxically made the game less fun, as part of the reason I like playing it in Archipelago is to try and win with out-of-the-ordinary unit selections, and only Terran really had even the slightest bit of that this time because I had a very weak infantry selection. Since I had already finished a full-campaign SC2 in an offsite async earlier this month, I was also somewhat burned out by this game and decided to finish it early.

Doom: The speed at which we played this Archipelago made this game a perfect fit; Doom is a very short game if you know what you're doing, and spends lots and lots of time BKed in slow-paced Archipelagos. Starting with Shotguns made it much more enjoyable as well, though I still had trouble with Barons of Hell, bosses, and occasionally Cacodemons up until the point where I got the BFG.

A Hat in Time: This game was a blast to play in Archipelago... at first. Adding in Death Wish made it drag on longer than it should have and didn't noticeably get impacted by randomization, since I already had all my upgrades by the time it was even unlocked. Ultra Snatcher was also a huge pain in the neck to fight as my Goal mission, even with Assist Mode and Peace and Tranquility on. The next time I play this, and make no mistake, I will play this game again next Archipelago, I'm turning Death Wish completely off.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: This was somewhat of a disappointment in Archipelago; very linear, and randomization didn't have much impact on the overall experience except for aesthetics and the points where I got BKed. The next time, I don't intend to play this except as a last resort. Still, I figured out how to install a custom music mod, which worked fine and drastically improved my experience with this game. The original soundtrack is quite annoying and Sonic soundtracks are a great fit for the gameplay here.

Sonic Adventure 2 Battle: Not too much different from last time, but Omosanity and Beetlesanity added some more checks to get here. Still very annoyed about the technical issues at first, though. Next time, we should run a test server with every game before starting instead of adding untested games in at literally the last minute.
 
Last edited:
Congrats on the clears everyone!

One thing I did want to add once we were all finished was that while I had a good time during this Archipelago, I thought the Word Puzzle unfortunately didn't add a lot to the entire thing. I was excited hearing about it and wanted to give it a shot, but I think the words were guessed way too early for me to be able to make a solid guess given there were almost no letters in them at the time. I'm unsure exactly what kind of solution or ideas I could offer, but I did want to throw my opinion in and ask if anyone else had any thoughts on its inclusion.
 
Setsuna said:
I did want to throw my opinion in and ask if anyone else had any thoughts on its inclusion.
Click to expand...
The fact that they were all Pokemon-related made them much easier to guess, especially when combined with permission to use outside sources like Bulbapedia. Once I figured out that the second words in each puzzle were "Geyser", "Trap", or "Canyon", there were really not many options left to guess when limiting myself to Pokemon guesses. Next time, if we implement another word puzzle, I would recommend giving each puzzle a different theme, e.g. related to three different games from within the same Archipelago.
 
Officially concludes this game of Archipelago. Thanks everyone for playing. Really blazed through this one. Completed it in about 6 days.

Plans to run another one in...maybe a month? Gives people time to recover from this one, as well as try out other games on their own. May be longer if someone else hosts an Archipelago before then (competitive or otherwise). Welcomes anyone to do so.

Explorer of Time said:
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle: Not too much different from last time, but Omosanity and Beetlesanity added some more checks to get here. Still very annoyed about the technical issues at first, though. Next time, we should run a test server with every game before starting instead of adding untested games in at literally the last minute.
Click to expand...
Apologies about that. Was tested on Arcaneum's end (offline). Runs the test servers to test individual set-ups, not conflicts with other games. Forgot about the APWorld difference because of it being a supported game (despite downloading the new APWorld minutes prior to generation). Expected the generation to fail if there was a problem. Usually happens with YAMLs generated from different APWorlds, like with Cherrim's Fire Red.

Would rather not toss up a test server every time. Already feels like a long sign-up time. Adds a day to that for testing, plus maybe another day in the event of more changes. Becomes more uncertain when the game actually starts. Commits to a 2-ish week long event on top of that. Weighs the cost of checking everything versus, as Age of Empires 2 would put it, "Start the game already".

(Also finished the entire Archipelago in less time than the sign-up period (this time).)

Considers something like a 6 day sign-up, 1 day test server after sign-ups, then the actual thing, however. (Runs some test servers during the sign-up period still, of course.) Ideally schedules a full weekend in that sign-up period. Provides a good time to figure stuff out.

Setsuna said:
Congrats on the clears everyone!

One thing I did want to add once we were all finished was that while I had a good time during this Archipelago, I thought the Word Puzzle unfortunately didn't add a lot to the entire thing. I was excited hearing about it and wanted to give it a shot, but I think the words were guessed way too early for me to be able to make a solid guess given there were almost no letters in them at the time. I'm unsure exactly what kind of solution or ideas I could offer, but I did want to throw my opinion in and ask if anyone else had any thoughts on its inclusion.
Click to expand...
Agrees. Expected them to get solved early, but not that early. Did not quite hit the level of 120 free starting items for the seed, but not that far off, either. Was not that interesting.

Thought about another implementation. Basically, Who's That Pokemon. Begins with a blank 4x4 grid. Finds panels to fill in the image. Probably needs to be a zoomed-in image, similar to the ones from the Get-Together (a 20x20 pixel square from the Dream World art). Guesses something like Pikachu with a single panel otherwise. Hm. Or perhaps an image with [X] effects done to it? Only works if you can confine the effects to layers, which is probably not possible.

One problem with a Who's That Pokemon: Updating. Hates to update for every single found panel. Liked the word puzzle because of people being able to fill in the blanks on their own by looking at the tracker in the room, if necessary.

Invites anyone else to toss out ideas as well.

Explorer of Time said:
The fact that they were all Pokemon-related made them much easier to guess, especially when combined with permission to use outside sources like Bulbapedia. Once I figured out that the second words in each puzzle were "Geyser", "Trap", or "Canyon", there were really not many options left to guess when limiting myself to Pokemon guesses. Next time, if we implement another word puzzle, I would recommend giving each puzzle a different theme, e.g. related to three different games from within the same Archipelago.
Click to expand...
Some problems with choosing games in the Archipelago as a theme:
  • Requires everyone to know something about the games. Likely picks something pretty well known (like Mystic Melody) or something only the player would have ever heard of. Feels like a worse interaction. Chose Pokemon for being shared knowledge, a large volume of possible words, and being able to pick words that are minor. (Pre-post edit: Perhaps random items from the spoiler log of a test server? The problem with that, besides the inevitable "Ice Trap"...)
  • Is kind of a pain to adjust on the fly. Creates all the items manually. Looks like this for each one, minus the colored Unowns:
    Code: 
    	{
	    "name": "Word Game P1W1L1: P",
            "category": [
                "Puz1"
            ],
            "progression": true
	},
    Copy/pastes a lot of that, to be fair. Double-checks to make sure all the numbering and commas are right. Figures out hints from there. Cannot forget to change regions.json to the puzzle length either. (Determines what is logically required. Only changes one number per puzzle here, at least.)

    Passes on dealing with that after sign-ups. Means more testing on a short deadline. Wants to handle this before even posting sign-ups.

Remains open to other themes that would be common knowledge, though.
 
Last edited:
I'm glad they were solved early, it would've been pretty annoying if one of my most important QoL ALttP items was locked to late game just because the answer to a random word puzzle was too obscure for anyone to guess.

It (having the extra minigame) didn't really do anything for me personally, but if everyone else wants them, then I'm fine with it. *Shrug*
 
I wasn't sure if it was a matter of the hinted letters giving enough that someone could simply brute-force look at a bunch of Pokemon-related word lists to figure out what it was right out the gate or if maybe there were just too many hints in earlier spheres or something. In theory I love the idea of collaborative puzzles to figure out together and I agree that making them Pokemon-related is definitely best given we are a Pokemon-related community and it's the simplest common ground, but they were just solved way too early for me to really think about them at all. :'( I don't even mind having stuff locked behind them because that should give incentive to solve them but I do feel in the current iteration it moreso rewards just brute forcing it rather than finding more letters. I'd be open to experimenting with different puzzles on the side with future Archipelagos.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top