Am I missing something? (Midgame?? spoilers)

[Fiona Kaenbyou]

So I finished my first loop while voided, and spent several hours travelling down to the bottom again using the Infinity brand. I've been trying to collect the crystals on the way down but there was one floor in particular (b138) that I simply could not figure out. Other than that, it was fairly smooth sailing.

Then I got to the giant head room and realised I was screwed. Since there's no way out of the room other than to take the grinning statue shortcut, I lost all my locusts only for the warp to drop me in the 190s. I promptly died and now I have to start the entire run all over again.

Am I missing something? Am I just expected to memorise 224 floors and beat the whole thing on strictly limited lives, or pray on the warp until it takes me past everything? I thought Infinity was an option because expecting someone to play the whole game flawlessly was unreasonable, so having it screw me over several hours into the run was extremely annoying.

(It didn't help that the last time I tried it non-infinite my locust supply started dwindling out of nowhere around b50f and that made my mistakes even more costly. I got called out by ZERO COURT for trying to circumvent this via quit/reload so I don't know if that was a punishment for that?)

I'm having mixed feelings about this game rn. I loved Zeroranger and there's a lot to love here as well, but constantly having to solve the same puzzles over and over is not fun for me. Especially when the punishment for not remembering all the answers is getting booted back to the start.

If there is a more sane way to advance please let me know. If this is what the game is going to ask of me I don't know if I have it in me.

[saltbread]

Tip: There's something you could be doing to make the entire game WAY easier to run through! The clues are written on the walls... literally
Slightly more spoilery tip:Those brands you find on the signs on the walls are more useful than they seem...
Answer:When you find a 6x6 room, try inputing the wall brands into the room by rearranging floor tiles, removing the exit stairs tile and jumping down when the holes light up. One room early on will already be in the shape of one of the brands, so just remove the stairs and jump down[/spoilers]

[Emma: Louised]

Here's some tips/answers for your questions, from least to most spoilery:

1. You don't have to memorize anything before warp where you loose or your locusts, just the stages that come after
2. From what I've read zero court punishment for save-scumming is losing locusts each stage, but if you have 0 this doesn't matter. So you could just save-scum from then on. Timing is a little lenient for exiting while dying( I think ), so just f4 if something sudden happens.
3. Getting a locust from a chest then exiting the game doesn't erase the locust I think, so you could just loop the same stage over and over, but I haven't tested that.

more spoilery solutions:
4. There's some strange ways to amass a lot locusts, you can use this to fall really far, even to the final puzzle.

5. You can kill the head, or so I've seen people say.

extra:
But also yes this game really likes throwing away your runs for really weird reasons, it expects you to use a looong time doing the same puzzles over and over. If you value your time a lot this game is a hard sell.

Hope this helps.

[Fiona Kaenbyou]

Originally posted by saltbread:

Tip: There's something you could be doing to make the entire game WAY easier to run through! The clues are written on the walls... literally
Slightly more spoilery tip:Those brands you find on the signs on the walls are more useful than they seem...
Answer:When you find a 6x6 room, try inputing the wall brands into the room by rearranging floor tiles, removing the exit stairs tile and jumping down when the holes light up. One room early on will already be in the shape of one of the brands, so just remove the stairs and jump down

Oh my god I knew they had to do something.

I assumed the wall brands were level warp codes, but when I tried to enter them at the start I got booted out. I assumed I just hadn't unlocked the ability to use them and I was meant to finish the run 'legitimately' before I was allowed to warp anywhere. I'd been recording all the room-floors as well and assuming they'd be passwords as well, but it never occurred to me to use the former on the latter.

Thank you for this! I've stepped away briefly to clear my head but I'll get back to it soon.