Felt quite weak initially in this map until part a ways through the mine when you actually start to get geared up by finding secret gears.
Ran into a perfect storm of fail, got to the entrance to the mine coming out of the desert in a sandstorm going the wrong way, this sand storm wouldn't let me jump the gap to the house.
Meanwhile being chased by antlion chargers and tumble weeds and those crimson flying dudes, and one flying ant lying in for me down the chain.
No time to grab the chain and dive down as already suffered enough attrition that another few hits were going to be fatal.
Take a guess on which death I chose ;p
There were a few similar fail return trips until I finally got across that gap saved at the bed and was able to start the journey down the mine.
Think my main hate was dealing with sand enemies more than the crimson dudes early on as the knockback on weapons doesn't quite account for their move speed and I couldn't be arsed dodging properly.
Anyway tough with silver gear early on until you get geared up imo when playing solo. But after mine more than enough gear to get through with melee class, similar to I guess other peoples comments regarding being strong.
Avoided ranged cross class as I'm always hesitant about running out of ammo (especially when there's a LOT of exploring)
Magic/summoner class I haven't looked at the gears in the map but there's quite a range available now to tailor balance these days.
Mine was all good, personally I would've wanted more light since in the vanilla game I am quite torch happy but was able to play around this. (part way through I did cheat but ill get to that.)
Took awhile for me to find all the switches to hit to open up the first boss, this is fine.
The save bed closest to the boss is a trap I swear, much easier to save at the water pump bed and run back then the far east of that room down there.
+1 for giving a copper watch early on so I could check the time and fight the boss at the right hour. A usually unavoidable annoyance when playing against bosses that nighttime required, especially with a boss part way through a map you can't really time when an average player will get there usually.
-1 to me for not loading up in my own server so I could change the time of day at will.
After killing the first boss and making a bridge with crimtane blocks, to the west in sector 1, I got super lost. Super freaking lost.
Got to a part where there were dribbler statues to the south east which as far as I could tell was just loot and a trap. To the west a looped minecart track that fell onto itself taking you in a circle.
At the top of the track appeared to be a switch that would trigger when a mine cart would cross it causing blue torches to lights up.
But I couldn't really see or find what effect this had, lights on or lights off. I couldn't find anything else that did anything apart from traveling back to the meat grinder dribbler trap.
There appeared to be a upward track to the west that approached a wooden/stone walled off section to another part but I couldn't discern whether this would be trigger by something and open up or if there was another way.
I spent about 20mins and kinda gave up going around in circles and decided to just cheat. Plowed through the wood and stone that went to another cave, which again couldn't find a trigger to open another door after going around in circles for ages. So did it again winding me up at the second village with quests.
Not my proudest map playing moment =(
Anyway after reaching the second village there were no navigational issues and it was smooth sailing to the end of the map.
Slime king can be mostly cheesed by hanging off the green roof vine in the middle of the first section and crapping hell on it until it dies.
The platform underneath the heart at the brain of Cthulu boss that spanned the whole horizontal distance of the arena was generous and honestly a lifesaver vs the triple brains being able to just run horizontally then change direction as needed to minimize taking damage. Bit awkward trying to use cloud in a bottle as the movement down there so staying on that one platform worked for me.
Played on a lower resolution on purpose so the end credits were cut off for me. Not sure if this effected anything else in the map except where random enemy spawns were placed. (meat grinder dribbler trap had a constant spawn of antlion chargers flooding in making it hard to get out when the dribblers were active haha)
Not sure how I got here at the end but was fun making the heart jump all over those switches eheh.