Quest From Kieran [Difficulty: Medium - Very Hard]

[Swerdis]

Having completed QFK today, here is my final assessment. I can make it short: I love this pack. It's a puzzle-centered pack right from the beginning, no fillers, everything is very well-thought. Moreover, this pack proves that great levels still can be made with the original skills only, the potential is not exhausted at all. It's hard to name favourite levels as there are so many. "Rescue Rodents", "Boxed in", "How's It Hanging?" are some to name a few. What I also like about it is the progression of difficulty which feels about right. The levels are well-placed, the final rank is really the hardest one, no doubt about it - which can't be said about every pack. The custom music is also nice, but that's just my personal taste. One of my favourite packs I played so far, along with Lemmings Destination, Insane Steve's World and Lemmings Reunion. Thank you for providing this!

[kaywhyn]

Having completed QFK today, here is my final assessment. I can make it short: I love this pack. It's a puzzle-centered pack right from the beginning, no fillers, everything is very well-thought. Moreover, this pack proves that great levels still can be made with the original skills only, the potential is not exhausted at all. It's hard to name favourite levels as there are so many. "Rescue Rodents", "Boxed in", "How's It Hanging?" are some to name a few. What I also like about it is the progression of difficulty which feels about right. The levels are well-placed, the final rank is really the hardest one, no doubt about it - which can't be said about every pack. The custom music is also nice, but that's just my personal taste. One of my favourite packs I played so far, along with Lemmings Destination, Insane Steve's World and Lemmings Reunion. Thank you for providing this!

Excellent review and congratulations once again on completing QFK! I'll make sure to pass this review of yours on to kieran millar. I'm sure he'll appreciate the kind words you had for him and his pack!

You'll be happy to know that Fiat Lem!, the pack you're playing next, is all classic 8 skills, except for one level in the second rank which has the walker skill available. That same level also has a pre-assigned swimmer hatch. So, other than the pack pretty much being a classic 8 skills one, the pack does use NL features. In particular, I remember one level using teleporters, and a few that uses a locked RR, to name a few examples.

You'll also be happy to know that my upcoming level pack Lemmings Memories will be classic 8 skills only Furthermore, I don't think I'll be using any NL features for the most part, it'll just be a pure "classic" pack for NL. Maybe when it comes to backroute fixing I'll use pickups, but that will be as a last resort    

[Guigui]

I'm currently, slowly, grinding up this level pack. Now at Hard But Still Fun 10.

Some levels I can figure by myself, and am quite happy. Others I just cant.
For instance Star Trek was a real road block and I had to watch 56 minutes of kaywhyn trying to get them Lemmings up there to get burned at the correct timing ; this kind of relieved to me to think that if kaywhyn struggles, then I am allowed to get stuck.

All in all I'm having a great time with the pack, good job for the custom musics, clever level design with 8 skills only. I must say I have to relax on some easier packs from time to time though, Quest From Kieran is devil 

[Guigui]

Sorry double post, but this one is definitely a feat to me !

Quest From Kieran, Hard But Still Fun rank 12 : Boxed In.

More than 5 hours of searching solution here, making bombers everywhere, reading the clues given by kaywhyn and Swerdis who cleared the level too, not looking at videos, and dreaming about it at night.

My attached solution works too, but requires so many precise bomber placement that I think this was not the intended one either. I also end with an extra lemming, and just let one of them die in the middle of the process because he has nothing else to do...

Hardest bomber placement was actually the first bomber, who needs to climb precisely 2 steps from the builder before him then fall, or else his explosion is either too high or too low for the bridge to the exit on the right. 95 RR did the trick here.

I then used a basher under the trap at the bottom left. Also cleared the barrels obstacles with 2 bombers, the first one of which falls from the upper bridge, which definitely looks intended.

Curious to know what you people think was intended and what was not here ?

[Swerdis]

Hi Guigui,

your solution actually looks pretty clean to me. Well done! I think this one is quite an open-ended level. There is not the only one solution here and no real backroute as well. We both saved one over the requirement, but our solutions still differ a bit. I avoided the trap by bombing away the trigger while you bashed underneath it. This spared me one basher which I used for the barrels where you bombed your way through. I closed the gap while building simultaneously from both sides while you built from the right side only, starting a little bit deeper. And you built to the exit way earlier than I did. But I think our solutions stand equally side by side except this level was a relative quick solve for me. I found it much easier than "Star Trek" for example.

[Guigui]

Thanks for your answer Swerdis,

Now that I looked at your solution too, I find it way more natural than mine. No pixel-precise bomber here, all goes smoothly for you.
The part you do have and that I've missed, is the lemming landing safely on the grey crate at the top of the barrels. He is the one to save the bottom batch, and to join the bridges like you did, great job.
Saving the bottom batch was the big road block to me, and using 2 bombers to get through the barrels is the only way I found.

[kaywhyn]

For instance Star Trek was a real road block and I had to watch 56 minutes of kaywhyn trying to get them Lemmings up there to get burned at the correct timing ; this kind of relieved to me to think that if kaywhyn struggles, then I am allowed to get stuck.

Of course you're allowed to get stuck! It will happen, especially with hard level packs, and it happens to everyone at some point or another! Honestly, it amuses me that people are surprised whenever I get stumped on a Lemmings level. I get stumped all the time! Really, me getting stumped on a level is no different anytime someone gets stuck on a level. At least it shows that I'm human and not just someone who possibly (I don't, by the way ) has all the answers/solutions to every Lemmings level.

While people have noted that I have the uncanny ability to solve level packs much faster than the amount of time it takes the author to create the pack, there's still the rare odd Lemmings level here and there that I get stuck on for a really long time. This of course is very rare for me, but there are those levels out there that I found difficult but some others didn't and are able to figure out faster than me. For example, NepsterLems, one of the hardest level packs available that sticks to just the classic 8 skills, still took me 3 years before I finally beat all of it, all courtesy of Black Hole 1. Yet, there are packs far harder than it which didn't take me anywhere near that long (Lemmings United, Lemmings Uncharted, DavidLems, etc.) to solve. Back then, when I was pretty new to NL, I generally switched between packs, but I always eventually kept coming back to the levels that stopped me dead in my tracks and kept trying until I finally succeeded in solving them. Sometimes it still takes me a while, yet other times sometimes a brilliant idea comes to my mind while I've been away which I hadn't tried before that might help. Sometimes getting away and putting a level aside can help spark that aha moment! At least for me a lot of the time that has been true.

Another thing I sometimes do is save an image of the level to my phone and then sometimes staring at the level that way helps me figure out the level. 

I just happen to be one of those people who's possibly way more enthusiastic about the game of Lemmings than most here. As Icho mentioned in the NL Intro Pack topic, the best way to get better with solving levels is to just play a lot of packs. For example, back when I was a high schooler, I played a lot of Dos 10-level Lemming packs in order to gain some experience so that eventually I could make my way up to later playing custom level packs on other engines (Lemmini, SuperLemmini, NL, etc.). Solving all of those Dos packs definitely helped me a lot here IMO! Especially as I saw and learned a lot of tricks that I had never seen before and would be able to apply when solving bigger custom level packs.

Does learning these tricks make them automatic? Not necessarily! Knowing them is often just half the battle. One still needs to be able to spot their potential usage when solving, and that's not always easy to see depending on the level. The hardest custom levels generally hide the solutions really well.

In the time you've been here, you might have noticed that custom level packs generally tend to be far harder than the official Lemmings games. Not all of them, of course. There's still some easy packs available that stay close to the difficulty of L1/ONML, but there currently aren't many that do. I'll post a list that a user was generous enough to send me separated into the 3 categories you listed in the HL2024 topic    

[kieranmillar]

Glad people are enjoying the pack.

If you're ever curious as to what is intended, the official solutions can be found here: https://www.lemmingsforums.net/index.php?topic=6184.msg98640#msg98640