And, Bonus 33 solved! Took me a lot longer than I thought it would, but I finally did it. Thus, the Bonus rank is finally all solved and therefore I finally have completed all of United!
My thoughts on the Bonus rank:
Overall, for the most part I really loved many of these levels. The levels were quite impressive and a huge relief from all the mind-blowing difficult levels from the earlier ranks and not as stressful. At least for the first third they were like that, as I breezed through the first 11 levels with little to no problems. In that batch,
Overarmed and Underarmed was probably my most favorite in terms of what's required in the solution. In particular,
Using a fencer to release a blocker, along with using a builder staircase for a fencer to continue, was pretty clever. Also, using a glider to bomb into the wall, another to get into the hole and bash, and finally a third one to get in the hole and turn around to mine to get to the bottom half to set up the fencer tricks.
Bonus 3 -
Burning Ships looks quite decent, but it is agonizingly slow, to the point that fast forward isn't that much faster at all. However, thanks for making the level really easy and quite open-ended due to the large skillset. Also,
One can easily think that the black areas are empty but turns out to be solid. I had to turn on CPM to make sure of this
Starting with Bonus 12, the difficulty started picking up considerably and stayed quite difficult for the rest of the rank. Bonus 12 -
2 Minutes Before the Mall Opens was the first level to give me problems. In the end, after I solved the level, I viewed your replay on Youtube, and it turns out that my solution is considerably more difficult to execute, as there's a lot of pixel precision in my solution AND I don't even go through the bottom left to disarm the traps. You'll see what I mean when I send my entire United replay collection after I go back and resolve the new versions of the 4 Genocide levels first.
The rest of the rank from Bonus 12 onwards managed to give me problems in some way. In the remaining batch, Bonus 13 -
The Drunken Knights of Clausthal and Bonus 19 -
Not a Bitter Timing Effort were the easiest ones for me. Also in the batch, Bonus 17 -
Xeno Menace was probably my most favorite level. I thought the entire solution is quite clever. In particular,
Using a shimmier to get past a stack was quite ingenious. The time limit is also very tight, but as you know I personally don't mind time limits in the game. The most difficult part for me was the starting area, in particular how to contain the crowd temporarily. In my first several attempts, for a long time I thought I needed to use a blocker along with a stacker or even just a blocker. I honestly felt extremely satisfied beating the tight clock on this level, especially with the awesome tricks needed in the solution.
I remember Bonus 24 -
T=0K from Wafflem's pack, and I was considering to use my replay for it rather than play through it again, but I decided to rise to the challenge and find an alternative solution. So, I now have two different replays for the level, one for Old Formats NL and one for the most current New Formats NL.
Surprisingly, Bonus 14 -
Welcome to the Spider Dance gave me problems, but that's because
I failed to spot the one place to put a blocker that can direct the crowd to the right side of the bottom half for a really long time
While Bonus 20 -
Lemmings in Unison looks very daunting and turns out to not be really difficult, I couldn't formulate the solution correctly in my thought process. Hence I resorted to
The trick of bashing and then making a lemming that gets hoisted in midair become a blocker so that it gets released AND turns the basher around at the same time. As a result, this made the level that much harder for me in that I needed to make sure to release the glider and floater at the right times. Yet another challenge solution from me, you might say, and that I made things more complicated than they needed to be. When I viewed your solution to the level, it turns out I did think about using the huge water pond but it never occurred to me to bash from the right instead of the left with the correct lemming.
Bonus 25 -
Spires of Mire and all the levels after were all hard in their own way. Bonus 25 is visually quite appealing. However, this level also surprisingly gave me a lot of problems. For a long time, I kept thinking
I needed to have a basher for the end part to release a blocker after mining down to the right so the crowd can exit.
Sorry to say it, but I wasn't too much of a fan of Bonus 26 -
Soilworker's Song of the Damned. It was just too fiddly for my taste and all the nuances of the many gaps present in the level. Still, I thought it was pretty cool you made a level out of your forum avatar. At the same time, I was quite amazed at how many different solutions there are for this level. Mine turns out to be very different from all the other solutions you showcased on Youtube, so I guess consider my solution a 5th one.
The thing that totally caught me by surprise is how the fencer I cancelled at the very top works, but since I was super annoyed already with how I thought I had a working solution from so many close attempts, at that point I was like "I finally solved it, and it works, so whatever." Mine is probably the most difficult solution to come up with. The others I have seen are so much easier. In particular, I can't believe it never ever occurred to me to mine so that a builder can continue instead of hitting his head. No wonder I had so many problems on this level
Bonus 27 -
Button Mashing for Experts was a pretty good level that managed to cause me problems. In particular,
The biggest problem I kept running into was bashing both of the OWWs before getting to all the buttons. In the end, mine is a variant of your solution in that I used a cloner after the worker lemming goes over the top of the other side (in this case, after hitting the top right button, as we both used a worker lemming from the left side) and as a result I have a blocker left. In other words, after interrupting a basher midstroke at the bottom with a walker, I used another walker skill to have the worker lemming circle back the left side. Also, I cloned the worker after he passed the exit, therefore making it unnecessary to block in front of the locked exit and hence I was able to have a blocker leftover.
In the batch of the final 9 levels of the rank, I say the hardest for me were Bonus 28 and Bonus 29,
Laboratory D-E-S-C-E-N-T and
Laboratory A-S-C-E-N-T, respectively. In particular, the latter was way more difficult. In the end, my solutions to both levels is way different from yours in that I managed to make them way more complicated than they needed to be. Regarding my solutions,
For Bonus 28, I never thought about cloning a glider on the starting platform and so my entire solution was a mess but still uses all the skills. Also, great use of the decoy pickups to fool someone into thinking they all needed to be collected.
For Bonus 29, although I still ended up using all skills, I don't use the trick of interrupting a platformer with a stacker AND I never ever thought about building much farther to the right below the high platform. As a result, my entire solution is completely timing heavy and a huge mess in that the timing just had to be right to manage the crowd to make sure none were nearby and they don't fall off and splat while I was platforming to the exit. Also, I got to say it surprises me how climbers don't hit their heads and are still able to get past a platform bridge that's low enough on a stack.
Bonus 30 -
Apocalypse Maintenant was an oopsie on my part in that while searching the forums with the level title in the search box, there was one post you made in that you revealed that
The nuke is required in the solution without putting it in a spoiler tag. If there was a spoiler tag, then I would not had peeked at all without solving the level first. At the same time, before I accidentally stumbled upon your post, I pretty much had all of the level figured out. I was just missing the nuke part. In any case, the thought of nuking might had eventually came to me even if I didn't accidentally stumble upon your post, but that's not certain. I had a similar experience in a Lemmicks level I played in that the nuke never occurred to me and I had made the connection only after I had read Nepster's NL manual in that the nuke applies to the non-fatal bombers gimmick as well. Besides, there were some hints of it being required that kind of went over my head: The fact that you can lose up to 22 lemmings AND the level title itself. Interestingly enough, after I solved the level last night, today a video of the level showed up on the home page of my Youtube tab. My solution is exactly the same, except that I was only a slightly bit more efficient in my platformer use and thus I have a platformer leftover.
Regarding Bonus 31 -
Catacomb of Sorrow and Bonus 32 -
Shadows of Ourselves, your two levels in the LDC #17, I thought the latter was the way more difficult one. Sure, the former also gave me problems, but I managed to solve that one much quicker. Solving time for 31 was about 20 minutes, while for Bonus 32 I think it was close to an hour or even an hour and a half. 32 is the very first level I have ever played with this tileset, but I got to say i'm not much of a fan of this tileset at all. However, I got to say that I love the solution to 32 way more. In particular,
The cloning a fencer was quite ingenious. The reason this level took me much longer is because initially I kept thinking after bashing across I fenced up through the second to last column from the left, stacked, use a walker to cancel, then try to get up by bashing and cancelling midstroke with a walker and continuing from there. Turns out it would be impossible to mine out the contained crowd later. At some point, before doing what I just described, I did try bashing all the way through and building and cloning it, but I dismissed this as a possible route too quickly. I think the problem was that I incorrectly kept thinking a builder needs to be used to get to the exit area from the right side.
So, after maybe fiddling around with the incorrect route in the early parts of the previous paragraph for probably a good 20-25 minutes or so, I came back to bashing all the way through and then cloning a builder. At one point, I had all of the solution except for destroying the terrain so that the crowd doesn't walk into the spinning fire trap. So back to refining my almost all correct solution for a few more minutes.
Then it dawned on me to clone a fencer to achieve that. However, this is the part that caused me to rage so much. The fencer kept destroying the terrain above when I didn't want it to so that the crowd would end up falling into the water instead of the builder bridge. It turns out that I needed to fence the wall in the platform above with the diamond hole in the correct position in order to get the fencer to stop and not destroy more of the terrain while fencing along the builder bridge.
Outside of the NL Tutorial Pack, Bonus 15 -
Switcheroo is the very first level I have played in any pack that has shimmiers. However, I got to say that I learned some pretty good shimmier tricks while playing the levels that have them. While I do use the shimmiers in the solution for Bonus 15 (I can't imagine any solution that doesn't), I use them very differently from your replay. You'll see what I mean when I send the replay after I go back and resolve the new versions of the 4 Genocide levels first. Also, Bonus 18 -
Stackenblochen did give me some problems, but I got to say I felt quite proud for
Discovering the tricks of bombing a shimmier moving away from the wall, as well as using them as a temporary jumper that only jumps straight up vertically to bomb a bit higher on a nearby lemming, on my own for this level. Once these were found, it was a near solve.
For Bonus 22 -
Time for Strongarm Tactics!, this was a really good level, but my solution is also completely different from yours.
I initially thought about getting a non-climber up there as well, but my solution still gets a climber up there to mine down to the crowd below. In particular, it almost fails, but the wall and exit are positioned just right so that it's possible to just platform across and then immediately dig down after it turns around so that it doesn't exit or hit the wall after gliding a bit. Once all was said and done, the only problem I had left was that the climbers (due to cloning a climber while it's mining) would die because they would get over the stack. Since I did have a couple of shimmiers at that point, I tried assigning one close to the stack, and, to my surprise, the glider will hit the stack and turn around. I thought this trick doesn't work anymore? Or am I confusing this with how before it was possible for a glider to land on top of a stack with a jumper instead before the 12.9 NL version? If so, this couldn't had been accounted for.
In any case, I do use all the skills, and I guess once again mine is a challenge solution.
Finally, while Bonus 33 -
Renaissance of Ideas isn't the hardest of the levels in the rank, I guess it's a fine level to close out the rank AND the United pack. In any case, as I said before the hardest part is the very start. Before I finally figured out the trick needed, I had the rest of the level figured out very easily, so I was simply missing the part on the left side.
The main challenge was figuring out how to get up with only 1 basher. For a long time, I kept thinking I needed to use a basher in combination with two stackers to get up. I have a failing replay saved where I had the stack in the right position (against the wall on the left with no gap) so that I'm able to get all lemmings coming from the right to get up in between the stacks and get stuck. That was the closest I got to a solution.
Then I tried tinkering some more with the positioning of the two stacks for quite a while. I did this for probably about 15 minutes before I decided to give up for the night and that I'll come back to it later on today.
Couple of hours ago, I played around with the positioning of the stacks even more. After about 5-10 minutes, I came to the conclusion that it's not going to work at all, because either lemmings from one side will be blocked, or there's too much ceiling that a lemming won't be able to get on top of it. I think that was then and there that I figured out that it must be the case that one should use only 1 stacker and 1 basher to get up. With that conclusion, the only challenge then was to figure out how to achieve that. This was when I came back to stacking against the left wall with no gap. For a few minutes, I kept incorrectly thinking I needed to bash to the left. After, I tried bashing to the right and I saw that if done and timed correctly, a small hole will be left in the stack that will allow lemmings to step up it coming from the right while leaving the terrain intact so that the pickup can be collected and the crowd can get up there and be stuck in a circle while the two swimmers forge the path together. That's when the light bulb came on and it was very easy from there. Then, solved!
Also, the stoner trick of getting into the exit from Genocide 15 returns.
I have mentioned in an earlier post that so many of the levels in this rank are really inspiring and motivating me to give level creation a try, something I have said over and over that I wouldn't ever do because I'm quite certain I'm no good at it. However, the thing is I won't know if I truly am not good at it unless I try. So, I guess I have Icho's Bonus rank to thank for this
I haven't done anything yet, but for sure I will soon.
All 238 levels solved and hence concludes a really wonderful pack! Fun fact for the others:
I started solving this pack on this very day last year. Today, I managed to finally finish solving all of United on the 1 year mark exactly. Seriously, how did this happen? I wasn't even planning for this to happen. I guess it makes this all the more significant in that it shall be remembered by me that it took me exactly a year to solve all of United and that I started and finished the pack on
September 7, 2019 and
September 7, 2020, respectively. And on Labor Day here in the USA!
However, my task is nearly complete. All that's left for me to do is to go back and resolve the new versions of 4 Genocide levels. However, as I'm completely burnt out by the pack, I'm going to take a couple of days break before coming back to resolve them. Since it's only 4 levels, it probably won't take too long, but that remains to be seen. Probably will only take about a week or two, but so far I think Genocide 21 and 28 will take me the longest, as they both seem to be too hard for me. Speaking of which, now that I know the trick required as well as the solution for Bonus 33 and did something a bit similar on Genocide 21 at various points in the old version, I wonder if I can use this to my advantage to resolve the new version. Then again, I think Icho might had already blocked that trick on the level since he did say that "josh used the trick to backroute the level," so maybe not.
Once that's done and if I'm successful, then I will send my entire United replay collection to Icho. Then I can claim his prize.
