Hunting for Bolds [4]

[Ihavenoname248]

Even more bolds!

I Slide: Fairly simple-there's more than enough time on the long ice slides to remember/reference a set of notes, resulting in a fairly easy bold.

Traffic Cop: Another very easy bold to obtain, a nice breather level among breather levels. As a kid I never though to bridge across water with a block...

Grail: Another really fun level to play, despite the heavy randomness of the start. Didn't take too long to pull off.

Potpourri: The wiki hyped up the ice section to be really difficult, but I got the boosting down instantly and took only 3 attempts to that point-one failed boost, and one where I derped and moved UL into a ball.

Deepfreeze: Aside from one attempt where the I forgot the double ice slide en route to the skates, the bold came smoothly.

Strange Maze: Another first try bold. I was beginning to wonder when the next challenging level would come up, but I had forgotten about...

Loop Around: ...which proved to be nowhere near as hard as I expected. The 50s are definitely on the easy side for bolds. Took a couple tries to pull off, but it was definitely on the easy side again.

Hidden Danger: 2 tries, the first boosted past the teleport.

Slo Mo: Having already done level 60 and 61 being untimed, Slo Mo ramped up the difficulty again...with luck. I blew one attempt literally 2 spaces from the exit, though 3/4 of the time it would have worked, luck was not on my side, as nearly every time I was next to a blob, the blob would move onto Chip at 1/4 odds...until the winning run, where Chip ran past no less than 3 blobs. I did not expect that.

Block Factory: The boosting at the start took a couple tries to get down, as usual, but oddly I never stopped messing up the chip grabs off the force floors. Humorously, one attempt failed by going on the long ice slide below the last chip. The wiki says that waiting [1/2] before pushing the final button is easier, but I could never get that timing (scoring 476.8) whereas every time I tried the [1/2] wait before the button, I got it. After throwing 3 attempts to the "easier" method, I scored 477 first try using the "harder" method.

Spooks: The first of the non-public bold routes...well, I scored the old bold of 547, and then started looking for potential improvements to see if I could find the 548 route...unfortunately, every different start I tried was unable to pick up a chip, and Luc's route is incredibly tight-whatever pieguy found, I'd sure love to see it...

Amsterdam: Another pair of false difficulties-this one is ranked at 3 stars, while the 547 route for Spooks is ranked 4 stars. This is a hard one. Like, a really really hard one. I scored 395 easily enough (using the 397 route), scored it again, and then scored 396 (-2 moves) on what I thought was perfect. Re-watching my 396 and the 397 in the public TWS revealed to me that I lost 1 move (maybe both?) in the section with the single tile ice slide. Further attempts and studying were able to save the first move and pinpoint where the second was, but actually scoring the bold was no easy task-including one try where I ran into a wall with 16 chips to go. *sigh*. Then I scored a -.1, failing only the single ice tile (accidentally boosting past it until of turning south), chaining together each half of the level on a separate run. It was only a matter of time...but I couldn't get it. So I stepped back for a couple days, and then scored the 397 literally first try when I went back. That always seems to be how these things work...

It was at this point that I went through the existing bold difficulties and adjusted them to be for respective of their actual difficulty to obtain-I'll mention any further old rankings I seriously disagree with.

Chipmine: Made a map similar to Mishmesh, played the level a few times to work out the best path to take to reveal pathways based on other opened pathways, scored 518 fairly easily. I personally wouldn't rank it 4 stars, but I can definitely see why it was ranked that high-the fact that I could reference back and forth between an edited map and the game itself definitely helped, and the maze...it's a hard feeling to describe, I want to say I already knew the maze, but I didn't. This was one of my favorite levels as a kid, so maybe I subconsciously remembered a few of the pathways? Either that or the spacefilling nature (2 dead ends, each only 2 tiles long) made the required turns simpler to 'guess'. Regardless of why, I coasted through a level I expected to be difficult, despite running into a wall once.

Eeny Miny Moe: Pretty simple bold to score, took a couple tries to remember the bridge section route, but from there it was just 2 and a half minutes of movement. No big deal.

Bounce City: The wiki overcomplicated the key grabbing section-I just ran through, and due to the ball towers I could even forget where I was going for a second and still easily score the bold.

Nightmare: Literally first try. The force floor right before the red key I deliberately dropped the boost, noting that there was a wait up ahead and that failing the boost would result in a swift plunge into the water.



With that, I was "halfway" through the game, only down 3 bolds (4, if you count untimed levels) and a score of 1,666,230. The real question of if I can keep up this pace of scoring when the levels get harder will be answered...eventually. I have a CCLP1 race in an hour! and you can watch on my stream too! twitch.tv/ihavenonamesda