Minecraft Forums

This map is fun for the most part, but has some flaws, most of which are related to some serious balancing issues. Throughout almost the entire map, I had little or no food which made the map much more frustrating and difficult than it really needed to be. In general, there wasn't much loot given out either. I only had one set of chain armor and wooden tools by the time I had "completed" the map, but I didn't have any back up gear or torches so if I had died to lava, I would have no way of completing the map. The skeletons were also a bit overkill due to their insane amounts of punch and I wish there was a better way of distinguishing if they were a natural spawned skeleton or a hellish punch/flame skeleton. Regardless, the skeletons were nearly impossible to deal with in the first area because one shot made me fly across the room and into a pit of lava.

The first dungeon was pretty simplistic, though a bit spammy, especially around the few floors above the white glass box. I like the aesthetics of the whole area, although I wish the floor had a slightly different variation of blocks than the walls and ceiling. It looked a bit strange with all the surfaces of the cave looking the same way.

The second area started off with a mini cave that I just ran though, ignoring all the blazes because I couldn't be bothered trying to find all the hidden blaze spawners. I took what I assumed was the fun path up to the top of the tower and realized that I couldn't go down from the middle to where the glass was. I ended backtracking to the base of the tower and digging down along the side of the tower. I wish there was a clear fun path, starting from the top of the tower, that went down to the fleecy box. It just felt wrong, having to make my own fun path to get to the glass. On top of that, the ghasts didn't even spawn and the lack of food made this area really painful.

I only got 8 emeralds because I missed the one in the first dungeon that I had found only after I went into spectator mode to hunt for it. I got two deaths, two of which were caused by lava, two of which were suicides to regain my hunger.

Victory pic, had I found the last emerald by the white crystal, I would have made the block :/

First off, I want to say that I know Chip has updated the map and everything, but this is my experience with the first version of the map, which is pretty unbalanced.

The first forest area looked nice, and the only problem I had were the natural spawns that nearly killed me multiple times.

Yellow wool was more frustrating than fun and suffered from a 1 step forward, 10 step back deal. Once again the natural spawns terrorized the entire place and made it awful to transverse, however the potion spawners are what really caused the most pain. They spawned in clusters of four which just made them really obnoxious to try and deal with without hiding behind one of the pillars and knocking them into lava when they came around. I ended up struggling so badly in this area that I got 6 deaths, fell into lava once, and ended up pulling a full reset. After replaying the first intro area again, I just ran and ignored everything in the area, and managed to get out safely with 0 deaths and the wool. I'm just very glad Chip's updated the map to be more balanced because otherwise, I think most people would have ragequit right then and there.

Blue wool was definitely my favorite in the map. I thought it looked really nice, although I wish more detail was added to the ice river. The loot was balanced quite nicely with the difficulty of the mobs, although the mobs are absolutely spammed to a rediculous extent at some spots. Also, the loot in the upper portion of the area is not worth getting, the sword was the only good thing there, but even then, I could have easily lived without it.

The boss fight was a complete derp in the first version, so I hope Chip gets that fixed too.

Victory Pic:

I really enjoyed this map, and I just wish it were longer. I think the biome boxes are a really neat idea and I wished there were more of them to explore. It was a bit of an inconvenience having to bridge or tunnel to get to each one, but it wasn't that bad at all. I'd just prefer if the boxes were all connected somehow. Overall, I think the first area might be a bit too easy, but it was still fun anyways.

The second area may have also been a bit too easy, but it was still really fun to play through. The interiors are really nice looking thoughout the entire map as well. Brown, you managed to redeem yourself

Victory pic:

I found the light gray wool in Brown Co. Testing Facility, but I don't know where to find the dark gray.

at the top of the giant room with trees and the glass boxes

This map was quite short, with the main challenge being a lack of food - only a meger amount is provided, and there is no real way to farm for more.

Similar to Omega's map (which I won't bother reviewing as it was broken when I played it), the map suffers from "built in a void world for no reason" syndrome. Basically, unless you are making a sky island's map that requires a void world, please use a superflat world that has blocks and hollow out caves, rather then trying to create caves in midair - it looks nasty from outside, means you can break the map by tunneling though a thin wall, and I bet it's harder to create caves in a void world.

The map itself doesn't do anything new or employ any new mechanics, but I feel as though it may be a decent map for speedrunning. A lack of food and any replacement resources encourages a speedrunning playstyle, and on this occasion, I feel as though the map may have benfited from being in hardcore mode.

On my first run, I burnt out too may resources taking out the first area, leaving me with too little to take on the second - so I started from the top and (now knowing where things were) speedrun the map in about 5 minutes.

Victory:

A longer map that also contains areas that look really nice considering the timeframe allowed. Chipmunk is an experienced map creator, and all the basic things - good aesthetics, good items, good custom mobs, some nice command block mechanics - are covered well. Unfortunately, some balancing issues are present, despite the map receiving an update.

Of the 8 deaths I received - technically 9 since the first occured before I set up the death counter - the vast, vast majority (all but one) happened in the first area. A lack of suffient honeypots led to a number of natural spawns right at the spawnpoint , including two witches. The first few spawners are also particually brutal with no armor, reduced health and spawners that spawn well geared mobs at a faster rate then normal. As soon as I had some decent armor, things got much easier.

The first wool area is by far the most well balanced in my opinion, providing a decent challenge while providing approprate gear. The strategy I employed was to hug the left wall all the way down, pillaring to reach the elevated creeper spawners and finding a safe place to run across to the other side to deal with any spawners on the right hand side. This strategy itself is not without risk due to the silverfish - though they provide ample XP to be used at the enchanting table.

The second wool is much easier then the first - the mobs remain around the same level but the gear is better. The spawners in this map have a weakness in that they take some time to first spawn. An agilty potion combined with a gold Eff IV pick gained from enchanting made short work of the entire lower area. In all, I think I cleared this area in about a third of the time as the previous, despite it being longer.

The final area is a boss fight. Personally, I think that this isn't the king of thing that should have been attempted in such a short time frame. Compared to the rest of the map, the bosses room looks both small and drab. The spawners can be taken out extremely quickly using the same method as the previous area, and the boss on his own his no measures to stop you just going to town on him. Despite the book impling that both buttons would need to be pressed, only one was required to weaken the boss - and you even get teleported to the middle of the arena, allowing you to potentually avoid attacks. The boss (or rather bosses - a second spawned when I left and re-entered the room briefly) is itself feeble, falling in just two itterations of going to press the button and then attacking.

All in all, this is a very good map - only bought down by balancing issues in the second and third areas and too many natural spawns right at the start. Personally, I think that taking out the boss fight and adding a emerald objective to encourage exploration (like my map or Xenocorpse's) would not have detracted from the map and would have opened up a little extra time that could have been used to playtest the map.

This was a very short and nice looking map, with impressive aesthetics in the first area, but had two rather bland, less exciting areas after it. The first area had really good interiors in the main building and impressive exteriors on all the buildings. In general, the first area was really balanced and I had a blast playing through it. The two areas that followed weren't as great in my opinion. The two other areas were really small and took very little time to complete. I like the statues holding up the roof in the third area, but that seemed to be the only real difference between the two areas. The block variation stayed the same and the gameplay was very similar. In addition, the last two areas combined took about 2/3 the time it took me to complete the first area. Besides the large similarities between the last two areas, I thought the map was very fun and easy to play through.

Victory Pic: (Just ignore the arrows that are stuck in my side)

This map for the most part suffers from extremely similar area design, with each area containing suspended platforms over lava, void or a large drop. It felt a little repetitive as progressed through areas, only to realize that it had similar layout to the area before it. I thought the balancing was decent up until the second area, where a single charged creeper could kill the player with one blast. That's how I got my first death, and due to the suspended platform styled area, I couldn't retrieve my stuff. This was a major setback, since I had to complete the rest of the map without food or decent equipment. The third area's first half was visually simplistic, which I suppose is fine considering it's a jam map, however the second half was horrid. The second half was rather atrocious, considering how little equipment the player would have to combat the mobs. Due to the serious lack of supplies, I got killed twice and couldn't gather the loot I had died with. Overall, the aesthetics looked fine considering the time limit and how the areas were structured, and my only real problem with the map was how one death would make progression significantly more difficult.

Victory Pic:

This map for the most part didn't look too great, the balancing was a bit off, and the dungeon layout and disc placements were questionable. The first area had an interesting arangements of rather bland looking buildings and I wish the upper portions were filled with spawners or loot chests. There was this void that wasn't filled due to the lack of details inside each building. The disc placement for this area was so weird that I had to go into spectator mode to even find it. I'm assuming the book in the obvious fleecy box was meant to be a hint, but I didn't understand it. The second area had much better aesthetics and balance than the first area, but still suffered from an extremely obscured disc placement. Having some sort of marker that screams, "Go here!" would be great. I didn't find this until going into spectators mode after I "gave up", but I'll get to that later. The jukebox area needed ladders or some better way of getting down besides just taking loads of fall damage. That was the major setback for me, being unable to safely travel down or up. Anyways, I died in this box and having respawned at the start, decided to give up. Having some sort of checkpoint system or beds would be great, as well as balancing this map in general.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll adjust a few things, then probably post
another link tonight, i didn't have much time to balance test the map,
and i thought the charged creepers were fair considering how open the
area was, especially with the knockback 5 item. The only part where i
thought they posed a real threat was the last little area after the
bridge, where the design on the ground made it more difficult to run
away. The water bucket and the flame bow were key in the last area, by
using the bucket to harm the blazes, and as a safety net on the last
part, as well as using the bow to set off the tnt, i thought the area
was a piece of cake.