Emerald Bathhouse

Good map

Fun, short, and easy map to romp through centered around the lower-tiered weapons and mobs, with a decent few books thrown in.

The encounters were pretty fun when tackled head-on, but on the flip side the map suffers from some drawbacks in its encounter setup in that most of the encounters can be cheesed fairly easily if you wanted to.

With that down side out of the way, a lot of what was here in this short map was good stuff, from the starting encounter to the final one, with some good incidental combat and a set-piece-or-two in-between; some clever and fun low-tier monster placement. I liked the use of the UWs at the start, as well as a few other placements that managed to apply some good pressure throughout the map, as well as the pacing of the encounters and items/weapons available. Just a few small changes to the existing encounter setups and areas could go a long way to bring out the good this map did, but as it is it was still fun times. While the map does focus mostly on the wand and the gauntlets, the book use (and situationally great time bombs) really makes the map fly by and pushes you onward. The powered up gauntlets act as a life-leech, so like a can of pringles once you pop the fun don't stop and you can easily push your way through a set-piece and the section after it with nigh-invulnerability, interspersed with bwasting from a powered up wand/etc, while the unpowered wand can be used to take down the stragglers, or to snipe if that's your fancy given the low-tiered mobs present and risk of taking damage while using the gauntlets. Or you can just hold backward and use the gauntlets anyway to speed up the clean up. You can find a secret crossbow as well which is nice.

 - I liked the use of the gap: how it made the overall map flow and added a small bit of interconnectivity to an otherwise linear map. It added interest to that area of the map.

 - One unmarked secret?

 - Speaking of secrets, some variety between them could have also been a nice thing.

 - The map's aesthetics were safe and serviceable, but I get the feeling this was more function over form, which to be fair isn't necessarily a bad thing on its own.

All-in-all a fun, quick map to barrel through. Like a great c-list movie, this wad may not have all the special effects or fancy design, but its labor of love will win you over on its heart and fun design ideas. Give it a go if you got 5-10 minutes to spare :)

A uniquely-balanced level. You don't get any weapons besides the starting Wand, but you're continually fed Tomes Of Power for it (as well as Morph Ovums and Time Bombs). This at least prevents the level from being total tedium, but it's an odd choice not to just include more weapons. You will spend most of the level rushing to avoid the Tome running out before finding the next one, so it goes by fairly fast. Not that it's a particularly large or complex map to begin with.