The name doesn’t sound much more or less intimidating than a lot of the other CTM maps out there, trying to puff out their chest and sound all difficult. Super Hostile… Impossible Victory… Ragecraft.
But this map… this map is different. I’d like to say up front that this is one of, if not the, last reviews I’ll be doing. I might pick them up again at some point in the future, but quite frankly… I’ve finally found it. The worst map. The absolute bottom. The deeper I look, the more I analyze it, the more I wonder how in the seven hells anyone could have thought this map would be fun or enjoyable or anything but an impossible challenge for masochists.
…Which would make sense. It IS called Unconquerable. And it really means it, too. The central gimmick of the map is that it ascribes to ROMhack rules of difficulty in very specific ways. Of course, I use the term “ROMhack” loosely. Because even Kaizo Mario didn’t force you to reinstall the game and then start your save over from the beginning whenever you failed a level. This map blows up the wool boxes. It isn’t some smoke-and-mirrors empty threat. It really, really, REALLY, ABSOLUTELY, destroys the wool boxes. But it doesn’t destroy ALL the wool boxes. The first time a box is in danger isn’t until after the first intersection. Meaning, if you want to go for all the wool boxes, you’ll have to punch through the entire beginning portion of the map again and again. And that’s just ONE of the key problems with this map and its core concept.
This map makes it clear right from the start that you won’t get all the wools. And it’s right. You won’t. 50% is a good marker to shoot for, since about 40% of the map’s wools aren’t in danger. Honestly, if you can save even 1 or 2 of the wools the map puts in danger? You’re doing good! One of the possibilities presented by the mapmaker is to go about things in a “high score” fashion. Get as many as you can! The problem with that is that, well… the map isn’t fun. Whether you want to get all the wools or not, the map isn’t fun. There are only a few times where the wools the map puts in danger even CAN (reasonably) be saved, with or without foreknowledge of what’s going to happen (yes, there are a lot of BS traps).
But I think I’ve hyped the map up enough. Let’s calm down for a little bit and actually start combing through the game.
Spawn/Caves of Azarni:
We begin with a Vechs-like start, with a giant sandstone box as our spawn, with some signs telling us the rules. After that, we immediately enter the Caves of Azarni. I like these caves. They essentially act as an area to stock up on loot that would be useful to us, since we’re just starting the map. The more side-paths you explore, the more you find, and I appreciate that. However… there’s lots of lava around. Tons of it. It’s more the product of outdated CTM map design thinking than anything else (read: DYING IN LAVA AND LOSING ALL YOUR STARTING SUPPLIES AND NEEDING TO REINSTALL THE MAP IS HILARIOUS LOLOLOL), but it can still force a restart if you have any slip up one too many times. Furthermore, some of the “bonus loot” provided ranges from useless to amazing. In one side-cavern, you have a fishing rod and a cooked fish. Yay. In a cave hidden in the ceiling, you have a sharp II Unbreaking II iron sword. It isn’t just the best weapon in the first intersection, it’s one of the strongest weapons you’ll ever have in the entire map! …More on the gear progression later. Right from the start, the loot balance is already wonky. That said, this is a fairly good starting area… just so long as you can avoid the lava.
Rating – 7/10 (IT’S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE)
Intersection 1: Contains lava, wood, and coal. It isn’t bad but it’s not great either.
Rating – 7/10
Semi-Hard Wood(White wool):
Deaths: 2(1 TNT Trap, 1 Natural Mob swarm)
WOOL STATUS: SAFE
As you might be able to figure out from the picture, this area takes a little inspiration from “Western Commons” from a CTM map called Legendary. Okay, more than a little. In fact, it’s more like “straight up copied everything” – the aesthetic, the general feel of the area, even the little town that totally explodes on you! It’s okay to take inspiration or good ideas from areas, but you have to put your own original spin on it! There’s no original spin here! It’s just a copy! For that reason, I’m going to deduct a few points from this area’s score.
The actual dungeon part of the area is a fortress located at the end, and it’s the only thing that isn’t copied. It’s also the worst part. This map has no honeyboxes to speak of, even if it is fairly big. If you attack this area at daytime, the fortress will have TONS of natural mobs and be WAY harder than the number of spawners would suggest! Once you actually kill the inevitable swarm inside and light it up, it isn’t actually that terrible of a place to be. The fortess has an incredibly simple design, just some floors with stairs and spawners embedded in the floor. Eventually, you’ll find the wool in a nice cute little safe space underground, in a bedrock box, with absolutely nothing that could threaten it. We’re not at that point yet. Expect to be going through this place a lot if you want to try for all the wool.
The wool wasn’t at threat in this area, either, but you certainly are! You’ve probably noticed from the intersection, first area, and now this place, that inventory-wiping threats are a constant thing in this map. It very much subscribes to the idea that having your inventory wiped is fun, when you have limited supplies to work off of and enough deaths could force you to do a map restart. At least we got better access to cobblestone and coal here. The area’s design is very simple; giant stone pillars, each with some loot and enemies inside, and one of them contains the wool. The main threat in this place is natural spawns, again. Once you make it to the wool, that changes. It’s a classic example of the mapmaker making a challenging problem, but not a solution to it. Let me explain. The entrance to the room with the wool in it is a 2x2 hole in the ground, which leads to a long drop into a 2x2 lava hole. Water buckets aren’t available. You could dig through the walls… if they weren’t all silverfish blocks. This leaves you with only one choice: Drop down, angling yourself so as to hit blocks next to the lava, then trying to survive the hordes of zombies without getting knocked down into the lava, while praying that there aren’t too many naturally spawned skeletons and creepers down there. It’s pretty dumb. This whole area is just far too intense for a starting area, and being in a map called “Unconquerable” isn’t a good enough excuse!
Rating – 4/10
Caverns of Darkness(Magenta Wool)
Deaths: 6(2 from mob swarms, 4 trying to reclaim items)
WOOL STATUS: SAFE
The map tells you at the beginning that “this is where the real hard map starts”. It isn’t kidding. But it’s ALSO where we begin to see just how bad this map really is. This map is insanely difficult – but it’s not from having any sort of balanced challenge. It’s from a complete lack of effort on the mapmaker’s part. The setting is generic stone cubes, made to look like “caves” by using MCedit erosion on the walls. You have to go down them through holes in the floor, and when you reach the bottom, there’s a slightly bigger cave with the wool. With no honeyboxes to speak of, the caves are FILLED with natural spawns. This entire area is a MASTER COURSE in why natural mobs shouldn’t be used as your main enemies! It’s completely luck based whether you’ll fight 20 skeletons in any one room or 20 zombies, but you’re definitely fighting at least 20 enemies! Good luck with your leather armor and stone tools! Yeah, the loot level in the map is just too weak to fight these unbeatable hordes. Even as you kill them, more will just spawn. There’s a few spider spawners hidden behind blocks, but compared to the natural spawns, they’re hardly even a threat. Eventually, you’ll reach the wool – totally safe unless 80 creepers decide to spawn outside the fleecy box – and then find the connections to the fourth area and second intersection. But this area is complete garbage. Totally uninspired, totally unbalanced, just remove it! If you wanted to rebalance this map, you’d have to rebuild the area from the ground up! IT CAN’T BE SAVED! IT’S AWFUL!
Rating – 2/10 – At least it’s short
Psychological games(Light blue wool):
Deaths: 1(TNT)
WOOL STATUS: DESTROYED
Alright. Let’s get started. I hope you didn’t skim over those 2 screenshots. Go back. Look over them REAL carefully. I’ll give you a minute to think about the question: What do you think the solution is?
…
You don’t know? Well guess what; I don’t think anybody ELSE knows either!!
Okay. Okay. So, I will say one good thing: I like this area’s CONCEPT. Considering that every sign we’ve seen so far has been the mapmaker taunting us as best he can, this psychological warfare thing fits with the theme of the map perfectly. These are the types of areas we should have… is what I WOULD say, if not for the fact that the execution is terrible.
The problem posed is that if we run forward, a proximity sensor could trigger before we had a chance to get the wool out. But if we push the button, it could disable the proximity sensor! Or maybe, there isn’t a proximity sensor, and the button will destroy the wool! There’s no way to know! How is anyone supposed to figure it out with the information given? The problem, as it is posed, is a bunch of crap!
…and that ALSO is what I would say… if I didn’t KNOW. This isn’t my first playthrough of the map. It’s my fourth. None of the playthroughs save this one finished the map (“finished” being… debatable), but all of them made it to this area. So I KNOW what’s going to happen. There’s a proximity sensor that will trigger TNT to destroy the wool as you approach it, if you ignore the button. But if you press the button… it will just trigger the TNT right away, destroying the wool sooner!.
Both options will destroy the wool. I knew this, because I had tried both. However… I don’t give up easy. I had a third plan in my mind! You see, earlier on in the map (though I forget where), the map had seen fit to provide us with enderpearls! I had them squirreled away, all ready to unleash my master plan: Teleport in, then get out!
But alas, things were more serious than I ever expected. My first pearl took me right to the wool box… but when I broke in, I quickly realized: The wool box you see in the picture is solid glass! You’ll have to punch through 10 glass blocks just to make it to the chest! So I did. As I heard the TNT begin to go off behind me, I reached the chest, only to realize… there was a brick block above the chest. In order to get the wool, you’d need to break that, too. I tried to break the chest, but… well, let’s just say I never had time to use my second enderpearl.
So any chance of getting all the wool in the map is gone. The task this map sets before you is intentionally impossible. This map truly is Unconquerable.
But you know what? This area might actually be a mercy. Because this is only the first intersection. And things never go any direction but downhill in this map. If you’re intending to play the map, or are playing the map, this is where it tells you: It never even intended to let you think you had a chance. So get off! Stop playing the map! Now’s your chance! Run! Go far away! Your hopes have been crushed!! You can leave! RUN!
Rating – 1/10
Intersection 2: A simple, boring intersection, with no way home. I say “way home” because this was before teleporters were a thing… but even Vechs had the good courtesy to put minecart tracks back home in his maps.
Rating – 5/10
The Deepest Mines(Lime wool):
WOOL STATUS: SAFE
The aesthetic for this place is “stone cave with bedrock as the floor”. Not that it matters, because this is all you see throughout the whole thing. This map was made back when void fog was a thing, and making an area based around void fog is a neat idea, but it isn’t used in any particular way here other than causing you to spend a lot of time stumbling around and running into walls. The area’s main threat is natural spawns and the occasional ceiling-embedded creeper spawner (that you can’t see). Eventually, you’ll end up running into the wool if you keep moving forward. This area could definitely be improved by throwing in some actually interesting things about it, other than void fog. There’s just… nothing here as it is now! It’s definitely a pretty bad area. At least it isn’t a maze…
Rating – 3/10
You might be able to detect a bit of a theme by now. The areas where the wool can’t be destroyed (or, the map isn’t actively trying to take it out) are generally bad, but in a mostly unremarkable way. Meanwhile, the areas where the wool CAN be destroyed make it completely impossible. As the map goes on, the number of the latter will increase and the number of the former will shrink.
Maze of Creepers(Yellow wool):
Deaths: 2(Lava)
WOOL STATUS: UNOBTAINABLE
Alright. This area is one of the few to use the gimmick of making wool unobtainable in a semi-constructive/challenging way. It’s a stone maze where the walls are surrounded on all sides by lava, and filled with creepers. Any creeper explosions will result in the corridor they were in being flooded with lava. Sure, in theory you could just rebuild the walls… but have you ever tried that? It’s almost impossible without fire resistance! Essentially, as creepers explode, parts of the maze will slowly be cut off, and things will get harder. Let too many explode, and you’ll no longer have a way to the wool. It’s not a bad concept! But again, the execution is miserably botched. To begin, at many parts of the area, the floor is lined with TNT. If a creeper sets off the TNT, then it will just destroy half the maze instantly, eliminating any route to the wool – this is how my run of this area ended, if you’re wondering. So much for the wool slowly being sealed off. To make sure it was impossible after the TNT exploded, I gave the area a look-over in Creative – the way to the wool is just one, singular winding hallway that branches off from the rest of the maze, and its absolutely FILLED with creepers. Good luck making it through that and out with none of the creepers exploding!
It’s an interesting challenge, but not a well-executed one. The creepers and lava were enough. In order to make it better, the TNT should have been removed entirely, and there should have been many paths to the wool rather than just one. Then, we maybe could have gotten one tense area out of the map. Out of all the areas, this is one of the few I saw with actual potential in concept, which made me all the sadder that it was botched.
This area is completely thoughtless. Our setting is, for the umpteenth time: Boring stone cave. This boring stone cave, however, has spawners EVERYWHERE. In the floors, in the walls, even in the ceiling! And these spawners aren’t exposed to the air, they’re hidden behind generic stone blocks! Making it nigh-impossible to find them and make the area safe, especially since enemies spawn far faster than you can hope to slay them!
Alright, for this area, I want to talk about two things. Two things critically wrong with this map. First: The resource distribution. To its credit, Unconquerable gives you good access to plenty of your most absolute basic materials… but to its detriment, it expects you to farm ALL of them – almost nothing is provided in chests. There’s wood, but in the form of forests you need to cut down. There’s coal and cobblestone… in the walls, for you to mine with your slow stone picks. There’s bread… in the form of wheat seeds, which you need bonemeal to grow. If I wanted to play survival where I needed to farm to get anywhere, I’d play normal survival mode. Again, this is a product of old design thinking, but it’s more than that: You never get anything better. Throughout almost the entire map, you’re going to be using leather armor and stone tools. Sometimes, you’ll get an iron sword, or even some leather armor with protection I(gasp!). However, you won’t be able to keep those things, since Unconquerable LOVES its TNT and lava and void traps. It LOVES them. Almost all of the (very rare) “good” gear in the map (mid-tier loot in any other CTM) has some sort of unavoidable trap guarding it. And it just isn’t enough! In this and caves of darkness, you have to fight unending swarms of mobs, but even with the ability to spam click, you can’t kill anything quickly or take very many hits! You’ll die, and you’ll die a LOT! This sort of difficulty would be much more acceptable if we had any gear to counter it with, at all!
The second thing: The traps. This map appears to be, at many points, attempting to channel the ROMhack hard spirit of I Wanna Be the Guy and other copies. But there’s a key difference between those games and this map. You could rightfully call those games a bunch of fake difficulty nonsense, with their insane unpredictable traps. But at least their traps managed to surprise you! Here, that isn’t the case. All the traps are the exact same: Lava, or TNT. The mapmaker’s idea of making new, more exciting traps is best summed up as: Add more TNT. For example, I wanted to open up a chest. As soon as I opened it, a crater this size was blasted:
Most of the traps aren’t interesting, nor are they really avoidable. After the first few times, each lava and TNT trap does nothing but elicit a sigh. And that’s just one of the reasons why this map doesn’t work.
Back to the area: For some reason, the later part of the area contained a ton of lag. Now, I have NEVER had any lag problems with any of the maps I’ve reviewed – none of them. Until now. It seriously messed with me, although I DID manage to identify the cause – which we’ll talk about later. Suffice to say, while it isn’t IN this area, it certainly affects you in this area. Keep your render distance down.
Also, there’s no threats to the wool itself in the area.
Rating – 2/10
Intersection 3: Another boring, ugly intersection, with lava for a floor. They’re all the same at this point. Rating – 4/10
Unconquerable Monument:
Finally… a nice place to rest. Even if the monument itself is nigh-impossible to complete, this place provides you with infinite amounts of materials you had plenty of already – stone picks, coal, and leather. It DOES provide you with an upgrade in the form of double chests full of iron swords. Not sure how much it will help, but it is very much appreciated. It even has rail lines back, albeit very long ones.
Rating – 7/10
Numbers(Grey wool):
WOOL STATUS: DESTROYED
Another area where you have to make a choice. This one, however, appears to have a semblance of logic. Essentially, you have 4 numbers: 859. 631. 699. 499. The map tells you to pick the “odd one out”. Pick right, and you get the wool! Pick wrong, and the wool is dead. This puzzle suffers from a lot of problems, namely, the main thing that makes a puzzle design hard: How do you communicate your logical line of thinking to the people trying to solve the puzzle? Of course it’s obvious to you, since you’re making the puzzle. But to people who aren’t you, it’s really hard. For this puzzle, I of course chose 631, since it’s the only number that doesn’t end in “9”. This evidently was not the solution the mapmaker had intended, as the wool was promptly destroyed.
Rating – 2/10
Happy Fluffy Bunnies(Light Gray Wool):
Deaths: 3(Mob hordes)
WOOL STATUS: SAFE
This area began with your usual stuff. Tons and tons of insane, insane naturally spawned hordes, too strong to beat with mere leather armor. So, I turned off the natural spawns. I was done with them. From here on out, just assume every area’s score would be 2 points lower if natural spawns were still on. They were just making the map nearly unplayable in their numbers. Even without natural spawns, all the areas still put up a fight – it’s just that now, they were possible!
(Please forgive me for cheating on a map I’m reviewing. I’m sorry, but assume it was so that I could reduce my rage enough to present this review to you in a mental state even slightly resembling coherent)
Most of the spawners in the area are skeleton spawners, but they contain an extra layer of crap, one that speaks to this map’s apparent lack of playtesting – this cave is made of redstone ore, in a map where iron is not thus far a thing. Good luck getting to the spawners in the ceiling with your stone picks! At least the cave segment is short. It branches off in 2 ways at the start; one leads to I4 and the other leads to… this room:
Alright. Compared to the other traps so far? This one isn’t that bad. See if you can guess what it is. Here’s a hint: The redstone ore triggers TNT which destroys everything. But this time, this trap is actually done in a way that someone knowledgeable can guess what will happen before it happens! It isn’t bad! Thank you! It’s still an entirely TNT-based trap, but at least its execution isn’t terrible this time.
But aside from that, this area has a lot of problems, so it still gets a low, low rating.
Rating – 4/10
Intersection 4: Well, if nothing else, this intersection was something different. The outside is entirely a dark room with swarms upon swarms of cave spiders and their spawners. But, at least, you had glass walls protecting you! It was meant to be used as an EXP/drops farm, I believe. So it’s… sort of nice? …Ish? …?????
Rating – 7/10
Silvervenom(some wool):
I can’t rate this area. I can’t. Upon entering, I was struck by such lag, I could hardly move. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Out of all the maps I’ve reviewed, this is the first one I’ve ever had problems with it. I have a fine computer and 2GB dedicated to Minecraft. And was playing on a really old version. Not to mention, this map is many years old. If I have problems, I doubt that anyone who played this area before me would do much better. However – I was actually able to find the cause, or so I believe. Beneath the city pictured, there’s a big, bedrock tunnel, where all the walls are more-or-less nothing but spawners. Row after row, wall after wall. If you could use spectator mode, you’d realize that the spawners are actually several blocks thick, which honestly isn’t even necessary. I’m pretty sure that one layer would have been more than enough. Well, we’ve identified the cause of the lag, but what is the purpose of this tunnel? It isn’t designed to be balanced, the signs even tell you to give up. This tunnel, which renders the entire area unplayable, leads to… LEADS TO…
A small, lit up room tucked in the corner, a light at the end of the tunnel… And inside lies…
A sign that calls you out for cheating. That’s its purpose. That’s the only reason its there.
That’s all there is.
That’s what this area was sacrificed, made unplayable, for. A pointless side tunnel, with nothing in it but a “clever” call-out to cheaters for getting past the tunnel. The tunnel that wouldn’t have needed to exist if not for the specific purpose of having cheaters get past it. If I hadn’t decided not to give the area a rating, I’d give the tunnel a 0. The rest of the area doesn’t even matter. That’s how stupid this tunnel is. Why. Why. Why.
Rating --/10
Forest of the Dead(Cyan wool):
Deaths: 3(Cave spider swarms)
WOOL STATUS: SAFE
The top part of this place isn’t that bad. It’s a forest in a sandstone cave, with spider and cave spider spawners hidden underneath the trees. It’s not original, or unique, or particularly fun, but it isn’t that terrible. However, in the ponds in the forest, you have the entrance to the wool room underwater. It’s just a giant, dark, bedrock room, with the spawners hidden inside the bedrock where you can’t get to them. And there are a LOT of spawners. The intended way to do it seems to be to find time to break the glass blocks and make it inside the wool box with this horde following you:
It isn’t a very fair challenge. If we had armor that wasn’t leather, and could actually expect to take a few hits before dying, then maybe. But it isn’t particularly fun as it is. There is nothing in particular threatening the wool itself in this area.
Rating – 2/10
Spider Lattice:
Deaths: 2(1 Spider swarm, 1 TNT)
WOOL STATUS: DESTROYED
Alright. This area was short. Short but terrible. The image you see above is the entrance to the area. Let’s talk about the number of reasons why it is bad. First off, you’ll probably notice that the area seems to consist of a checkerboard pattern of half-slabs and nothing, above redstone ore. If you were to guess that the redstone ore triggers many, many, many blocks of TNT, you’d be right! You get a prize. The prize is that you don’t have to play the map, since you already know its tricks. As you can see, this area is SWARMING with spider spawners… which, as you can probably guess, are again hidden in bedrock. The spiders build up fairly quickly, and as you can see, there’s really no way to get into the area except by dropping into the spiders, getting slapped around, and HOPING you don’t end up on the redstone ore. What I’m saying is, this challenge is almost completely impossible and you’re going to die.
Let’s talk about the map’s difficulty curve for a little while. Okay so, imagine not a difficulty curve, or a difficulty cliff, but a difficulty mountain. You start your climb a ways up, because if you’ve found this old map it’s safe to say you have at least some minecraft experience. But the climb quickly gets intense. Blizzards of lava. Avalanches of TNT. And as you climb higher, and higher, and higher, you’ll realize the top isn’t getting any closer. You can turn back there, or choose to keep going. But if you keep going, it still doesn’t closer. Finally, miles above the ground, your breaths get harder to take. The air is thinning, and it will only continue to do so. You can keep going, but at some point, you’ll have to accept that to go any higher would require you to die due to lack of oxygen. And the point you need to cross still hasn’t gotten any closer.
What I’m trying to say is that this map is too difficult for human beings to beat.
Here’s the thing. If you want me to care about a challenge… if you want me to get invested in something, if you want me to be engaged in whether or not I can succeed… not just “I”, but “anyone”… you have to give out a chance to succeed in the first place. This area doesn’t give out a chance for success. It throws something completely insurmountable at you, right from the beginning. Could any normal human fall into a group of spiders, then fight their way out, and make it through an area without ever touching the redstone ore and activating the TNT, with only leather armor, and iron swords, when they can’t even break the bedrock spawners? I think not. For that reason, this area is where I totally stopped caring about the map. This was clear as early as Psychological Games, but with every area we play, it’s becoming more clear. Now I can’t even see. It’s isn’t just see-through, it’s become so clear it’s invisible again. It’s the reason why the map’s core concept fails. We. Will. Not. EVER. Succeed.
It’s all already been decided. Whether or not you will get the wool was already decided. You’re either set up for failure with nigh-impossible tasks, or nothing threatens the wool at all. You can’t play the map like a “High score map”, because you’re guaranteed to get half the wools – with persistence -, and CAN’T get the other half! What would the point of trying to get as many as possible even be?? There isn’t much point to really try, or get invested any more. From now on, this is about seeing how badly the map can make things go before it destroys the last few wool.
Rating – 3/10
Intersection 5: A lava-filled place with no way home.
Rating – 4/10
The Box:
WOOL STATUS: NOT GETTING IT
Again… it’s a bedrock box, full of cave spiders and silverfish and creepers, and massive lines of TNT that will kill you. It’s all primed, so the goal is to beat the area without touching it. Now… this area MIGHT have worked as a slow, careful area, where you have to fight a handful of stronger enemies, while carefully avoiding TNT and moving forward as fast as you can. It does NOT work as a horde area with creepers where one mistake absolutely guarantees destruction. Again, the map has provided you with a challenge, but not a way to solve it. There is no point.
Rating – 3/10
The Evil Comets(Brown wool):
Deaths: 3(Lava)
WOOL STATUS: SAFE
The area is as you see. Now, considering that the main challenge here is “desperately build a bridge in spite of ghasts”, you’d think the area would provide us with blocks, or bows/arrows, or enderpearls, or any of the other materials needed to actually take on this challenge! But no. Come to think of it, in all these areas, we haven’t had any loot at all since the monument’s chests! I guess the map expected us to rely entirely on them? But, those chests only gave us picks, swords, coal, leather armor, and a place to farm food. If you want bows/arrows, blocks, tools, or anything else, you’re out of luck. Considering the incredible taxation the map has put so far on inventories with all the TNT and lava, it’s not a stretch to say you’d be forced to mine blocks, just to have some bridge-building supplies, in order to beat this area. There’s a big difference, and a fine line, between a survival-based map and a map that requires grinding. This is the latter, and it’s way over the line.
Since you can’t really go on the offense against the spawners, the “solution” seems to be to VERY CAREFULLY weave through them – or at least, that’s what I did. It isn’t easy. Once you actually reach the bedrock platform, you have a few more bedrock surrounded spawners, but the map is merciful – nothing will touch the wool. The area is still crap, but you can at least take the wool home.
Rating – 3/10
Demon Run(Red wool):
For the second-to-last area, lag begins. Again. This time, there isn’t a specific part of this place that’s causing it… it’s more of… this area as a whole is just row upon row of spawners.
Okay, so. This castle. To start with, the entrance you see in front of you is actually to BLACK wool. The red wool can be found by entering the glass encasement at the top. Once you make it up there, you can descend into the “final room”, even though its really the first part of the way to red wool. It’s well…
…yeah, that’s where the lag is coming from. This goes on for a WHILE. Remember – the only gear is unenchanted leather, iron swords, stone picks, and hopefully a whole lot of torches! Have fun!
…Okay, that’s not completely fair. There IS a chest full of enderpearls at the start, so you can warp through that area. That said… would it even help? The mobs are still insane, and you can’t mitigate the damage the enderpearls do to you since you don’t have feather falling. Teleport spam isn’t an option.
Basically, this area is full of all the problems with the rest of the map, in one convenient package. A massive area, full of thoughtless mob spam, with no good way to approach it, while you’re undergeared, in a way that causes lag, and most of all, isn’t fun. This is it. The pinnacle of the difficulty mountain. More-or-less a copy of the intentionally-designed-to-be-impossible tunnel from earlier, except this time you’re actually expected to go and beat it. Honestly, if you compare the two, the similarities are so striking it’s ridiculous. The mapmaker placed some signs taunting us, and said that there are 400 spawners crammed into this itty bitty space. 400.
If it wasn’t clear. I didn’t actually play this area. From here on out, I’ve just switched into creative and begun flying through. That’s how badly this map has frustrated and broken me! I’ve stopped actually playing it, and now I’m just a passive observer! But let me defend myself here. If I actually DID try to play this area, imagine the position I’d be in. With nothing but leather armor, iron swords, stone pickaxes, and ender pearls, I would have to slowly begin chipping away at this monstrosity – spawner by spawner. For the first few hours, I’d be dealing with lag, but if I could break some of the spawners, then MAYBE the lag could be alleviated. Slightly. It would be hours upon hours of just trying to eke out bit by bit of progress. And, well… I have a life. I have limited free time. I can’t spend it all trying to clear this impossible map, just to make my review a little more authentic.
I’m sorry. This map has taken all I have from me. I have nothing left to give. This area receives the most dreaded score…
Rating – 1/10
Black Wool:
(Area had no formal name).
And it goes out with a whimper. This is IT. After the insanity of red wool… I honestly expected something more. But this is what we get. It’s a bedrock platform, with skeletons, blazes, and ghasts above void. The wool is in a chest in the middle, which is surrounded by TNT. And that’s all there is. I’ve said all I can say about these areas. Anything more I said here would simply retread old territory. We’re done here. Let’s skip right to the finish.
Rating – 2/10
CONCLUSION:
Well, this picture shows what I DID manage to complete of the monument. Which isn’t much. As I said before, 50% would be a “good” score for this ridiculous map. This utterly, utterly ridiculous map.
I hope that the review up to this point has managed to convey to you at least .01% of the map’s absolute awfulness. Everything about the map is wrong. The core concept is flawed, the execution of the map isn’t flawed so much as a trainwreck. A trainwreck lying in a heap at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. On a train that was trying to get from New York to Detroit. Millions are dead.
The map has two main forms of challenge: Ludicrous numbers of spawners. Traps that can’t really be predicted, avoided, or circumvented. I’ve spoken of these problems many times before in other maps. But this map provides all those problems in much worse, unrefined, pure, raw forms. It’s almost awe-inspiring in how little it tries to hide what it is. And what it is is garbage.
The loot distribution? What loot distribution? I’ve already told you before: You spend the first half of the map with leather armor and stone tools. You spend the second half of the map with leather armor, stone tools, and an iron sword. And that’s all. It isn’t anywhere near enough to face what the map throws at you in heaps.
If the wool being destroyed was used to make action-filled, high intensity areas, then maybe I could have at least gotten some adrenaline rushes or something out of this map. But no. Almost every time the wool was in danger, it was in danger in a way that you were doomed from the start. Providing any chance at all to reach the wool came off as more of a cruel joke than an actual challenge to be solved. Maybe that’s all this map was. Just a cruel, cruel joke. So please.
Please don’t play Unconquerable.
The entire reason I made this review was so that nobody who stumbled upon it would have to traverse this Nightmare Realm. To go right ahead and play it anyways would ruin everything I’ve worked for; like stabbing a knife through my heart! Please! Please! Run as far away from Unconquerable! DON’T PLAY IT!
OVERALL RATINGS:
Gameplay: ++-------- 2/10
Aesthetics: ++--------- 2/10
Functionality: ++++----- 4/10
VERDICT: ++-------- 2/10
Die in a fire, Unconquerable.
Still waiting for someone to actually complete the map.
It's been a while since I posted there like one year and a half and probably most of you don't even know me xD
But I'm still working hard on my map since more than two years now so I wanted to drop by to share a few pics and talk a bit about the progress. Damn that sentence seems awefully wrong but anyway xD
It will be next to impossible to give an estimation of the work left since lots of areas are still more or less WIP.
Basically,
The "ancient times" tier (intersection 1) has been completed.
The "great empires" tier (IT2 )is close to completion.
The modern one (IT3) is roughly half done.
The futuristic has just begun so nothing is done except the concepts\ideas to use.
And of course the map was designed for 1.8 so all the decoration/loot/spawners/CMD block systems already done will have to be updated or changed so with huge areas like that it represents an obscene amount of hours.
So please don't ask for ETA, I have really no idea but I could really use some snow bears
I'm don't have much time to make screens for all the areas right now so I will simply use what I have in my folder lol
Anyway enough talk
IT1
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IT2
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This zone features a huge castle which is the dungeon, sadly not finished/terraformed blabla yet so no pics
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A screenshot of the loot (armor) specific to this area and a hint on the mechanic used here
IT3
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Most of the infrasructures are underground
For the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.S. fans (dat game <3), this area will features "anomalies", and a "radiation memory" (where basically more time you've spent in a specific anomaly, more damage you will take every time you enter it, checkable by scoreboard and MP friendly ) and multiples sets of protective gear necessary to survive and even better The legendary "Vintar BC" !!! Plus some drugs to help you decrease specific contamination.
This sounds a bit fancy but it's kinda simple ingame
The system will surely be tweaked heavily since it was designed in 1.8.
A few military models for the futuristic tier
The laser tower is of course fonctionnal and futhermore retractable, the tanks and chopers not so much xD
Home/ Nexus
The asteroid exterior is not done yet, same for multiples rooms inside so that will be more of a teaser.
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Hope you like it !
Btw any kind of feedback is welcome and appreciated.. I come once a year so please don't hesitate
This feedback is not very good. Good feedback is kind specific and helpful. Saying it looks bland is kind of blatant, and could be interpreted in a host of different ways. So it isn't very specific. Asking someone to add more details is also very open ended. What kind of details should he be adding? Seriously, it's just not specific enough to be helpful imo, and comes off as lazy, and a little rude.
If I were to critique Blam's work I would start by listing a few things I liked about the area. Then I would move onto a few of the problems I saw and how I would go about fixing them.
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For 1.12.2
Theme: Escape
Screenshots:
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Still waiting for someone to actually complete the map.
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Sad.
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Sometimes...
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Fang,you should update thread again.
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R.I.P maps.
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I love this new magma blocks so much. :0
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Fang,you should update this thread.
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This looks OUTSTANDING!
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but I actually like this style lol.
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after extremly colorful Savage Realm areas this looks kinda bland... :\
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Walls are too plain,they need more details.
And I don't like this wool blocks.They looks out of place.
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Simple and beautiful.
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Okay.Edited my comment.
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Working on something...