What's with Mojang being so secretive this time around?

You've done it again, Sethbling. You've done it again.

Love the villager vehicles Sweet animation!
Also, are those the villager rigs from Bite-sized Minecraft 2?

What it sounds like to me is a massive server, hosted by Mojang or some other big organization, where you start a game on the server, then other people you choose can connect to the server.

Not to mention the fact that leopard mac support was unintentionally dropped (if you want, call me a whiny, ungrateful douchebag for repeatedly stating that - even making a new topic for it). I'm still fuming about that. Granted, like many people said, Macs aren't built for gaming, but besides having to turn my quality settings down, I've never had problems with Minecraft on my Leopard Mac. It runs at a fairly smooth 20-30 fps excluding new world/chunk generation (which is horrible to some of you - and I thought I was spoiled), glitches are minimal, slowdown is only apparent in multiplayer (which I can blame on my marginal internet connection anyway), and modding isn't difficult compared to Windows (stupid "aux.class" getting in my way). Combined with the technical problems many people have faced with this update, I'm not sure if updating is even necessary or beneficial. The lack of announcement either shows ignorance or cruelty, and I find it hard to believe it being the latter. At least they announced their future lack of Java 5 and PowerPC support, for comparison.

Quote from Many people

Removed Herobrine

It's a running gag at this point, but I agree. Kind of lame.
Tried updating LWJGL (Using Mac 10.5.8 and Java 6), didn't do anything. I'll try updating Java, but until then, blah.

I can't run any of the 1.5 snapshots on my laptop. It's a Macbook with OS 10.5.8, Java 6 SE, with J2SE 5 in 32 and 64 bit if needed. 2 GB RAM, latest LWJGL, and 250 GB hard drive.
It's a shame too. If I can't run 1.5, I will never update again out of both inability and frustration.

Trying to make a Santa suit from leather armor is tricky enough. You've outdone yourself again, diSCo!

Quote from KooalaBear123

Wow...Nice! Anyone else think the Thorns enchantment is a bit useless?

Not really. It's nice for dealing extra damage when hordes of zombies are after you. It's more of a luxury than anything else, but I wouldn't call it useless.

YES! YES! YES! THANK YOU HYPIXEL! This is what I was looking for in an adventure map! We actually have decent equipment at the start, we aren't beating up diamond-clad zombies with clubs, and I only saw one elite the whole time! Finally a non-frustrating challenge! Thank you. There's also more to do, and the boss fights, while still a pain (I had to cheat for the last few because I swear to god that one jump in the villager rescue is impossible, and the final boss just took too many hits to keep going legitimately), are definitely more fleshed out. I liked the blind maze run, as tedious as it was. It made it interesting. Same with the ender crystal challenges. The story was much more intriguing this time around too, so huzzah for that. I LOVE the prologue.
Once again, thank you for this map. It was a much more pleasant and rewarding experience than Herobrine's Mansion, and you did what every good map/game maker does: solidify the formula, fix the problems, and add new content. My respect has returned to you, fine sir.

Quote from Hypixel

I had comments about the map being too easy, so it's very hard to balance for me as a game designer when you have people complaining it's way too easy and other saying it's impossible. I think some people have to learn Minecraft PVE mechanics to be fair, use crits jump,avoid being hit by cornering and find a good partner that will not knockback hit the enemies towards you. I can't tune it down just for a % of players, that's why death don't have much consequences and you can bring more friends. I decided to make the map hard by nature so people could bring friends.

I don't want people to 1 shot zombies, that's boring. I want every fight encounter to be entertaining and challenging - it's new.

You were talking about using the bow spam technique... which is not very good DPS output as the bow has a very low min damage and you need to deal some good DPS to eventually get out there alive. (Pigs are actually very easy encounter with 2 players)
Gather regen potions before bosses is a most-have for some fights, get them in hidden chests and at the shop.
I suggest NOT buying berserking potions until you have completed your Demonic set.

Of course you are going to die if you are not careful, it's meant to be so that people doing non-dead challenges are actually being challenged. I've seen a few do it all on hard without doing once, including me. I had to use a lot of potions and tries.

About the part getting lost in the mansion I think you are exaggerating a bit because all the mobs I've put on the map are for the most part persistent, so that means if there's no mobs in here, it means you been there. So now it's just a matter of looking at odd things such as doors with lights or giant signs "SPIDERS AHEAD".
I think herobrine's mansion is one of the most Linear adventure out there, getting lost for 10 minutes is actually something I've never heard of. I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos and the one thing I notice is how easy they can find the bosses.

If you went creative for the Wither, you clearly did not understand the fight. You have to do "packs" with mobs and use the Holy Water on them, it will 1 shot them all. Then gather enough Crystals for 2 Heaven's Grace to bring him down to 50% and use Holy Water on him. All that done without dying once is VERY VERY VERY easy.

I have no plans to make my future maps easy, however I will not make them frustrating and allow people to bring friends so they can pummel through.

I've done an update on my website: http://hypixel.net/t...ge-17#post-1882

Dropped Zathos the Mage hp by about 15%.
Dropped Zathos the Mage on Herobrine fight by about 25%
Dropped Zathos the Mage damage by about 25% on both encounters.
Dropped Herobrine hp by about 20%.
Added ender chest at the end.
Added a chest with a book for the Wither boss strategy next to the ender chest.




I'm taking in account all feedback for my next adv map, but difficulty is a very touchy subject... I get people saying there was no challenge at all and people saying it was impossible. I think it ends up being balanced

I can see what you're getting at, and I played the map again with my cousins, but the Wither boss was still too challenging. I realized where the holy water was, but even then I still had to build it up and fill my hotbar. By the end I still had to cheat because the Heaven's Grace didn't have enough uses (even after buying 8 of them and using them all at once) to make up for the Wither's regen and pinch mode projectile immunity. Plus, he was a wimp and never charged me except when I was on the brink of dying. Stupid coward he was.

Thankfully, I still didn't ragequit at Zatho, and I was exaggerating a bit on how long it took to find Benetha, but not by that much. It took maybe 3-5 minutes, but that's still a lot. It's really just how big the mansion is.

Maybe it's just me, but if in any game (this included) I'm not a raging kleptomaniac, I get a smackdown to the face. I'm just not lucky when I don't have everything.

When I watched the Yogscast play, I was utterly and completely BAFFLED that they could do it first try, considering how much they suck at PvE.

I find that when a new feature (like command blocks, pistons, or armored zombies) enters the game, adventure map developers (like yourself) will find every excuse they can to put it in and integrate it somehow. In the few maps I made, I did it too. Sometimes it works nicely (like the shop or dialogue), but other times it doesn't find good use (like diamond armor wearing zombie pigmen).

Like you said, bows don't have much of a damage ratio this time around when spammed, but sometimes it's better than the sword. When i find myself using the sword, I ALWAYS use critical hits, but due to the sheer HP of some of these creatures, it's very difficult to wear down their health. I found myself cornered by 2 elites and and some weaker mooks at the same time at one point, which sent me to my death numerous times. I happened to have a demonic bow on me, but even when I sniped them from afar with fully charged shots, it took about 10 hits, more than the 3 or 4 of an unarmored mob. Stuff like that is monotonous and boring.

At least you turned on keepInventory. That is a godsend. If it weren't for that, this map would be unplayable. Thank you for that.

I think for your next adventure map, make it so both you and the enemies get better equipment as time goes along rather than having the big stuff all at once, with the enemies getting a slightly sharper difficulty curve to keep things interesting. PvE-based boss fights are interesting, but since the strategy for beating them all is the same (except the Wither, which is partly luck based), some redstone-based boss fights may be interesting to throw in too, like a jumping puzzle to drop some TNT down a chute to damage a mob or having to snipe 5 or so targets to disable sentry turrets so you can get close to a mob.

On the topic of variety, while I find combat interesting, that shouldn't be just what an adventure map is, unless it's designed that way for, say, an arena-style map. I know this is an early attempt, but where's the jumping puzzles? Where's the traps? Where's the shooting of paintings to gain secrets? Where's using the block mechanics to your advantage? I like combat and all, but here, despite all the variety of equipment and mobs, it's still incredibly dull. I'd like for you to think about this for your next map, too.

This is a fine first attempt, but overall, it feels like Mario 2: Lost Levels to me. It's way too hard, due to your lack of healing ability and the experience in general, while occasionally enjoyable, is just dull and boring as a whole. If you make the next map easier at the start, increasingly harder as you go, and make the boss encounters more interesting (locking a mob in a corner isn't always fun), I'll like it much more. A good start, but not absolutely stellar.

Quote from Hypixel

Did you play ?

Because there's about 5.5k meters of redstone, strategies and fully customized items.

Yes, I played the entire map beginning to end, and I died about 1,000 times. Maybe it's just me and that I suck at PvE, but the enemies are a: more powerful than you and b: more plentiful than you. That's a bit harsh, IMO.
As for the bosses, I like the concepts, but they just throw way too much at you.

• The Skeleton King is probably the second easiest boss fight, next to Herobrine (which is kind of ironic, actually). However, his knockback bow sends you skyrocketing across the stage. Like the other bosses I had to back him into a corner and wail on him.
• Benetha's fight is bad enough without potion rain and baby zombies who will beat you to death 20 times over if you don't notice them. The 50x zoom potions are a bit over the top too.
• Arita the spider (or whatever her name was, I can't remember) had god-awful collision detection, when I was clearly hitting her and the hits didn't count. I ended up using the bow throughout most of the fight, which makes no sense.
• ZATHO IS BRUTAL! Not only does he have 3 pumpkin mages to constantly wail on you, but his choking attack (he squeezes you so hard it makes you blind) is outright overpowered. It's completely random, so just when I have him backed in a corner, BAM! He picks me up and throws me again! Beyond that, he deals so much damage by himself that it feels like I respawn with 0 health. Really man?
• At least Herobrine wasn't so bad. As soon as I had him locked in a corner, I could just wail on him as much as I wanted while taking little damage myself. Kind of disappointing considering the difficulty of the other bosses.
• And like many others have stated, in the Wither fight, there are too many obsidian skeletons. I had to go into Creative mode just to get a good hold of him. If I didn't, I wouldn't be able to see where I was.

So, to summarize, my main problems with this map are:

• Elites are a pain to kill, so fighting an elite with other enemies or multiple elites at once is downright impossible.
• While the construction is certainly impressive, it's very easy to get lost in the mansion. I tried to find Benetha from Arita's chambers and only found Herobrine. Took me about 10 minutes to find her and come back.
• Sometimes there's so much lag that the game crashes, at least for my 6-year-old Macbook. That's too much for a map like this, considering how localized the setting is. Must be too many enemies or potions flying around. Used Optifine, didn't mean a thing.
• Regular mobs are too powerful for how weak your weapons are. Sure the enchantments are certainly nice, but they aren't enough to beat these guys, especially with the swords. Just like in the demo video, I ended up using the bow at close range, which would work just fine if the bow mechanics didn't change back in Beta 1.8.
• All I ended up buying at the shop was Steak, Healing Potions, Regen Potions, and the occasional Bezerking potion. Considering how much grinding you have to do to get enough flesh and bones to buy these items, it's not worth what they cost.
• Because of the sheer damage output from the enemies, I had to spawn in golden nuggets to buy the demonic set of armor. It was just too expensive for me to find them normally without dying another 500 times or so.
• The bosses may be a nice touch, but the best way to defeat them is the same: lock them in a corner and pump them full of arrows. I already talked about the Wither up above.

I love the immense detail and intricacy in the design of your map, but it's just WAY too hard, even on easy mode. The map may be one of the most well-developed and designed maps out there, but I would be lying if I said it wasn't painful. That's my opinion.

Intense adventure map? Really? You call skeletons with protection 10 diamond armor and Punch 6 Power 50 bows intense? You call witches with potion rain and mages with 1-hit kills intense? That's just frustrating. Great concept, just too hard to enjoy,

Windows isn't safe, (GNU/)Linux isn't safe, what else? I'm on Mac and I didn't get any viruses, so wth? I guess that's a good reason to switch from windows: Lots of good programs are made for it, but you have to be super careful to not get viruses. Hell, even "anti-virus" software can sometimes be a virus in itself. What gives?

I like the anvil fixes. At least it's not so expensive to make now (still a pain -.- but whatever). As for the repeater lock, I like this addition. It'll sure make D-flip-flops easier (that's basically what it is - a D-flip-flop). It may seem annoying, but at the same time, what was the advantage of pointing a repeater into the side of another beforehand? Nothing!