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Dreamvale 2.0i

DREAMVALE - Download
Date: 2010
Genre(s): Tactics CRPG
Players: 1-4

Time passes for all, but for those who dream, time is eternal.
And so within the walls of an ancient city, the brave and the insane descend into a sea of dreams.
Where men never wake and time stands still.


Overview
Build a team of heroes and battle through 7 levels of arcade-y mayhem to escape the land of your nightmares.


Author's Notes
If you like tactical combat, but dislike everything else about RPG's, you may like this.
Just maybe.
It's not very good.


- As there will unlikely be anymore updates, Ive rolled-back the map to the last fully working version.




Keywords:
Dreamvale, Dream, Warchasers, Jungle, Green, Dungeon, Ruins, Dungeon Crawler
Contents

Dreamvale 2.0i (Map)

Level 23
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,783
Love to hear that, anyway Ill be honest and tell you that at the moment I have no strategy for beating Assaj right now.
At the same time he is extremely difficult for being the end boss of the whole game, so I dont really want to make him easier.
Im not saying he cant be beaten, just that I havent been able to beat him yet.

In essence Assaj is a combination of many of the earlier bosses. Requires you to dodge his spells as well being able to manage the sheer number of spawns he has. The only so called revolutionary mechanic he has are those vampiric circles which heal the boss and spawn more skeletons if the boss is standing in one.
 
Level 23
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,783
Well, the effect of the tree of life wears of, it doesn't heal.
But at some point there were like 15 trees just standing around in the area..
And the little clouds were lingering in the air. A fun sight, but it's a bug :p

Yah Ill get down to fixing it :p.

But did this happen all the time or only after a certain time?
 
Level 2
Joined
Jun 3, 2007
Messages
14
Excellent map! Thanks for providing many hours of fun gameplay. :)

One issue though:
I am/we are stuck at the last boss. We've read every tip and tried everything we could think off, but the boss just does his yellow-lightning-ultimate and kills us. I'm aware we're supposed to destroy the obelisks somehow, but either they're bugged (on the same note, the quest for level 5 was not marked as finished for us) or we just don't get how we can do that since they stay invulnerable all the time. A little hint please? :)


Feedback on the difficulty:
I've been playing it with three friends, all of them experienced in RPGs, stategic games and more reflex-based games (think Impossible Bosses) alike. We've started the game on easy and we did need about half a dozen attempts for the first level. Once we learned how to focus the nasty multi-target ones it became easier, but still. I liked it pretty much, better to need to try different strategies than to rush through the game at one try, but I didn't expect it to be that hard on "easy" mode with a (in my opinion) quite strong team of players.

Level two took us several more tries - good thing we saved. Imho the most intresting level of all.

Level three took us *another* several attempts. The final boss was a cake though.

Level four was no challenge overall. Neither the banshee-start nor the bossfight did really endager anyone. Beaten at first attempt.

Level five provided a better challenge, but it was still way easier than level 1-3, mostly because you have all the time you need to destroy the towers. It was pretty exhausting until we realized that we don't lose with the siege engine destroyed though. So it got destroyed, we took all the time we needed and beat it at first attempt.

Level six: See above. Some tries and still no clue. :)
 
Level 23
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,783
One issue though:
I am/we are stuck at the last boss. We've read every tip and tried everything we could think off, but the boss just does his yellow-lightning-ultimate and kills us. I'm aware we're supposed to destroy the obelisks somehow, but either they're bugged (on the same note, the quest for level 5 was not marked as finished for us) or we just don't get how we can do that since they stay invulnerable all the time. A little hint please? :)

Yah this is a known issue right, Ill be redoing most his abilities anyway next version, so fingers crossed. :X

Thanks for the feedback there. Ill up the difficulty of the 3rd and 4th levels.

The fifth level is more like a time trial, you have all the time in the world to finish it. Its up to you how fast you want to. I might increase the monster strength over time so that taking too long will result in death.
 
Level 1
Joined
Sep 26, 2010
Messages
8
Love the uniqnuess.

Every stage is something ive never seen before, and epiclly edited.

The description is good too. (too descri-haters :p)


Looking forward to seeing new levels (bonus? maybe) or new maps from you.

Rep and 5/5!
 

sentrywiz

S

sentrywiz

I tried out the map. Its really fun to scour the dungeon like that. I am very pleased (like you care lol) of how dungeons start and how it returns you to an area and allows you spare time before you move into the next level.

Here is my personal experience from it:


Like[+]

-Its PvE (people versus enviroment) and its not only hack n slash. You need some running, especially since I was playing alone... hard enough to kill the 1st boss on your own with druid (Conservator?)
-Its minimalistic (items don't give +555 damage and 200% chance to crit the enemy for 45666 damage) part of which I very much like
-Its got fun spells (druid's overgrowth is terribly useful, because the creepies focus it instead of me) very very useful... would of died at boss 1 if it wasn't for that
-Terrain is great. Systems look great. The talents are awesome addon, I really like that
-many more small things that I like but dont remember right now



Dislike[-]

-Theres an acolyte left from Mirana at the beginning of the map... he revived like 5 times and I just gave up on killing him. Is that intentional?
-Theres no AI and I know it would be a great bother to make AI for this kind of map but still... playing alone is hard enough
-Theres no revive, if you die once your gone... I'd liked if you had atleast 1 life, because I died at 2nd stage, at the boss who creates illusions of itself (after killing everything else)
-At the start of the map, I didn't knew how to select a unit. A little game message at the start telling you how heroes are chosen would be useful



Overall, I give this 5/5 doesn't matter that I dislike things about it. Its a great map and once I find some wc3 company I'll try to beat the dungeons with friends. Awesome map mix. +rep


Druid Review[*]

I really don't remember the class name. Conservator keeps popping in my mind but its the healer if I messed up the name

1-Chain Lightning + Heal rules :)
2-Tree of Life is something I didn't use that much. Sure, when Boss would catch onto me, I would blow all cooldowns to stay alive, but I think the healing is great when playing with team. Alone though, the 1st spell healed me more
3-Passive rules! It saved me from using potions many times
4-The Summoning rules although it sucks that its healing isn't set on autocast. On few particular fights I could of died because I had to select it, Tab to find the skill and [Q] on the Druid so I would get heal
5-The Sleep spell was something I used like once barely. Its not really useful for me. Then again I only made it to level 2, maybe at greater levels its useful
6-Overgrowth was something I SPAMMED! To me it seemed like the monsties dislike roots, because everything was taunted to attack them. Extremely useful skill

 
Level 23
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,783
Theres an acolyte left from Mirana at the beginning of the map... he revived like 5 times and I just gave up on killing him. Is that intentional?

Hes sort of a test target dummy, most players never notice it so Ive never bothered to remove him.

-Theres no AI and I know it would be a great bother to make AI for this kind of map but still... playing alone is hard enough

Not really, I painstakingly balanced Dreamvale to be balanced at all player counts. Monsters do alot of AOE attacks which makes 4 players not always better than 1.

As for AI, its practically impossible. Lots of monster attacks like meteors and fireballs need human players in control to be avoided, its exceedingly difficult to make an AI smart enough to do that.

Theres no revive, if you die once your gone... I'd liked if you had atleast 1 life, because I died at 2nd stage, at the boss who creates illusions of itself (after killing everything else)

Revive does kick in Multiplayer, since you need the whole team to be dead in order to count as a lose. I have experimented with a solo life system but it seems to be fine right now.

-At the start of the map, I didn't knew how to select a unit. A little game message at the start telling you how heroes are chosen would be useful

Will Do.
 

sentrywiz

S

sentrywiz

Hes sort of a test target dummy, most players never notice it so Ive never bothered to remove him.



Not really, I painstakingly balanced Dreamvale to be balanced at all player counts. Monsters do alot of AOE attacks which makes 4 players not always better than 1.

As for AI, its practically impossible. Lots of monster attacks like meteors and fireballs need human players in control to be avoided, its exceedingly difficult to make an AI smart enough to do that.



Revive does kick in Multiplayer, since you need the whole team to be dead in order to count as a lose. I have experimented with a solo life system but it seems to be fine right now.



Will Do.

Woah. I was still editing my color flashy things and you replied. :D

Hm, I would urge you to add an Ankh of Reincarnation for single player mode. Or atleast, the bag of acorns that I received early on? Add the effect to it, so when I die (and I will eventually) I will have a second shot at getting further into the dungeons.

Oh yeah and bag of acorns cant be sold. How come? If it was ankh I get it, but it only gives +2 Int.


About the AI, nothing is impossible. With the right idea it would be outright silly. A few if/elses to check where the boss is and where the ability target is would do the trick. I think implementing the AI to follow the player and not lure monsters is harder.
 
Level 23
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Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,783
About the AI, nothing is impossible. With the right idea it would be outright silly. A few if/elses to check where the boss is and where the ability target is would do the trick. I think implementing the AI to follow the player and not lure monsters is harder.

Well alot of the Boss abilties for example to fireball barrage on the first boss is random, you cannot predict when and where the fireballs will explode. Most of such abilties really needs player awareness to be countered

Oh yeah and bag of acorns cant be sold. How come? If it was ankh I get it, but it only gives +2 Int.

Bag of Acorns is a hero specific relic, in future versions you will be able to upgrade it in some way. In the mean time just drop it when its useless.
 

sentrywiz

S

sentrywiz



I've played the map for an hour now. I'm still amazed at the complex simplicity at it. I love the spells, they aren't getting leveled which is great in my view and talents are amazing. For singleplayer here is my second review:



I will disregard the hero names or class names hence I didn't remember them all. So I will just name them how I remember



Stone Sentinel - Powerful, and possibly the only tank in the game. I think. I died at level 2 from over-damage at Steamroller difficulty. Am I that bad of a player or just inexperienced at it. Or the demon hunter's copies he leaves behind deal too fast of a damage to be healed...

Naga Caster - Complex to play, yet most versatile so far. She is the only one I managed to kill the level 2 boss, but again... I died from the clones that shoot with too much speed to be healed at. Plus her healing ability is self-target cast and at that time, panic ensured that I die before I get healed... Even though I killed the boss because of her poison and dot spells. Treants also didn't heal me not even once, cuz they are often killed before they make their 5 attacks

Ranger - High damage, no doubt. Squishy? I died at first boss. He two shot me with his spells, even though I had a potion. Maybe this class isn't for me :D

Mage - Very high damage, but has more complexity in delivery. Once again Sikhar showed me his club and "Your flesh ignites... that the best you got?" you know what that means :(

Demon Hunter - Didn't try him. If I can't beat the first boss with two high dps-ers, how would I do it with a melee one? Maybe I should of checked, does he have the ability to stun > stun > stun until you die and once you die, stun again? If so, then I'm gonna go back and play him :D

Shaman - Complex self healer. I liked him. However I didn't play him that well. I noticed a bug though... Swipe? None of his spells are named Swipe? The last spell that doubles the next spell's effects said "Swipe - stuns double" or something. Check it out... Anyway I made it to level 2 with him and received a meteor on my head and died...

Druid - the best so far. Too much healing... but still I died at level 2 because of them clones the demon hunter boss leaves behind, they shoot too fast.



With enough practice one can beat level 2. But I just hate to restart all the time, especially since I have to start all over again... with a chance of dying at level 1 Sikhar. The bastard has fire even though it rains xD

If you can modify singleplayer revival, that would be the ultimate fix for singleplayer. Because I can only handle 4-5 restarts, then rage pummels and I stop being polite and duress your map with very colorful language. It sucks to die all the time, even when I know its practice so I get good at it.

Fix singleplayer revival. Please... for the sake of Sikhar's unborn revenant bastard children from the grave I urinated on.... o_O

 
Level 23
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Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,783
Stone Sentinel - Powerful, and possibly the only tank in the game. I think. I died at level 2 from over-damage at Steamroller difficulty. Am I that bad of a player or just inexperienced at it. Or the demon hunter's copies he leaves behind deal too fast of a damage to be healed...

Anzo appears to be the only tank hero ingame since he has the highest health, this is not true and so far all the strength heroes seem to be viable tank classes.

Naga Caster - Complex to play, yet most versatile so far. She is the only one I managed to kill the level 2 boss, but again... I died from the clones that shoot with too much speed to be healed at. Plus her healing ability is self-target cast and at that time, panic ensured that I die before I get healed... Even though I killed the boss because of her poison and dot spells. Treants also didn't heal me not even once, cuz they are often killed before they make their 5 attacks

I admit Dalia is alittle flawed in her design at the moment, she is very strong on level events but is rather weak in boss battles. However she is the easiest hero the solo the game with IMO.

Ranger - High damage, no doubt. Squishy? I died at first boss. He two shot me with his spells, even though I had a potion. Maybe this class isn't for me :D

Windwalker is THE kiting hero, Samara is the only hero that can attack and run almost simultaneously. She is really squishy if you let them get into melee range, the trick however is the stay moving and out of range all the time.

Mage - Very high damage, but has more complexity in delivery. Once again Sikhar showed me his club and "Your flesh ignites... that the best you got?" you know what that means :(

Keryl is the hardest hero the play right now and I intend to leave him so, every one of his spells is manual aim and can miss if you dont aim well. As to what Sikhar says...
Your Flesh Ignites! - When he hits you with Conflagrate.
Is that your best? - When he kill someone.

Demon Hunter - Didn't try him. If I can't beat the first boss with two high dps-ers, how would I do it with a melee one? Maybe I should of checked, does he have the ability to stun > stun > stun until you die and once you die, stun again? If so, then I'm gonna go back and play him :D

Blindscythe is a hit and run hero and currently hes probabbly not very good at soloing, he has the highest burst damage ingame and is very good in teamplay for chain nuking monsters to death.

Shaman - Complex self healer. I liked him. However I didn't play him that well. I noticed a bug though... Swipe? None of his spells are named Swipe? The last spell that doubles the next spell's effects said "Swipe - stuns double" or something. Check it out... Anyway I made it to level 2 with him and received a meteor on my head and died...

Swipe actually refers to Maul his first ability, anyway typo noted and Ill fix that.


Anyway, THE one thing I noticed you are doing wrong is you are ignoring Rhayme's Dancing Shadows. In the boss intro it is explicitly stated Dancing Shadows will become stronger if you do not kill them quickly.

When dancing shadows spawn the start at half health and slowly regenerate to full. Once at full they cast metamorphosis and become alot stronger. as long as they stay below full health the shadows will not transform and thus not dangerous in any way.

This battle is where Dalia is very usefull as her AOE dot kills off the shadows very easil.y
 

sentrywiz

S

sentrywiz

Not a problem, I'm sure I am missing something as always, I only played each single time, druid multiple.. Fail is expected, in order to win.

If you fix revival, it might be possible to solo the game... might be. I read comments about 3rd level being impossible, but I cannot confirm cuz I didn't made it so far.
 

sentrywiz

S

sentrywiz

I made it to level 3 and died :D
Now I have to do it all over again...

But srly, good map makes me wanna flipper it until the end. How many levels does it have?
 
Level 1
Joined
Feb 25, 2011
Messages
1
excuse me ......

I play this map , so happy , it's a good map , but .... in chapter 3 ,

"Poison Control" , I killed the big scorpion , and take the "Venom Gland" ,

throw into Karoma's cauldron , then the big scorpion attack me again , I

kill him , but nothing happen ........ where is the gate way to chapter 4 ??
 
Level 1
Joined
Oct 3, 2010
Messages
2
hi Kino,

My friends and i love your map and i want to say good job! all of the heroes are fun to use. most of the items are extremely meh though, although I think the hero abilities and talents more than compensate. Also, your terrains are really nicely done.

We're stuck though, after we kill the Scorpion queen and drink the elixir, buy our stuff and go to the next stage, we end up in a creepy looking hall with the gravekeeper and he does not say anything. The door on the other side has sparkling purple lights near it, but it won't take us anywhere. Did we break the game and if so, how can we avoid doing so later?

Also, are you planning on re-using these heroes in another project? They are really fun.

Thanks,
saviour
 
Level 23
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,783
We're stuck though, after we kill the Scorpion queen and drink the elixir, buy our stuff and go to the next stage, we end up in a creepy looking hall with the gravekeeper and he does not say anything. The door on the other side has sparkling purple lights near it, but it won't take us anywhere. Did we break the game and if so, how can we avoid doing so later?

Check around the Gravekeeper, one of the flowers on the floor is interactive.
Picking it up will start the fourth level.

Also, are you planning on re-using these heroes in another project? They are really fun.

Nope :p
 
Level 2
Joined
Aug 12, 2011
Messages
14
A really nice map you have here.Nice terrain and the Heroes abilities are very good.The only thing is the creeps is a little too strong(for me i guess) and the models you used are a bit weird.....Also,better check your spellings in the game.(In the Hero description)Other than that nice map.Reps for u.++++++
 
Level 5
Joined
Dec 20, 2007
Messages
211
I think it not weird , it look like fantasy - warcraft 3 model. For creep, you can change your difficulty before starting the game.

but for me , creep in Act 3 [multi-poison colors] it really tough because we died in every times when we play this act and we don't know how to

conquest this act although read the description many times.
 
Level 23
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Oct 12, 2008
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1,783
but for me , creep in Act 3 [multi-poison colors] it really tough because we died in every times when we play this act and we don't know how to

conquest this act although read the description many times.

Dude, the poison level is gone entirely....

Sorry, read your post wrongly.

You need to find Almyst, he leaves a huge trail of dust where ever he goes.
You then need to splat the others monsters above the dust trail for him to unburrow.
 
Level 5
Joined
Dec 20, 2007
Messages
211
He said he want you to improve map description such as screenshot, map description, storyline in game because two lines of story , it look poor. Tell more story about what the story look like, what is inside the ancient city that you told them in the story. He want storyteller.


Note = i didn't get any game crash from this maps so i think it's your problems.
 
Level 23
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Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,783
He said he want you to improve map description such as screenshot, map description, storyline in game because two lines of story , it look poor. Tell more story about what the story look like, what is inside the ancient city that you told them in the story. He want storyteller.

Well Ive never had the game crash for anyone so its not a problem with the map I think.
As for the story, its ingame. The whole Dreamvale storyline would probably be over a page long summarised.
Il update the screens soon.
 
Last edited:
Level 21
Joined
Dec 4, 2007
Messages
1,478
Hey Kino,
we tried it once again, since you've patched 1.5... But honestly some bosses are behaving odd like hell. The first boss (and we played on test and easy mode, which only affects health points i guess?!) just killed my windarcher, i even stayed far behind and ran instantly away with this particular speedboosting skill of her, all for nothing, the boss still hit me with his snake ward attacks, bouncing from teammate to teammate dealing indredible damage 0o...

Well with the second try we barely finished him...
Then we approached the demonhunter boss, which is spawning meteors on the ground and let me tell you they surely fall like instantly xD and what's really funny is, that i used my speedboost once again without effect. Well maybe i was just unlucky, but all together it doesn't meet up with the maps quality:

Great terrain, hero concepts and overall atmosphere.

I guess that's it for now, with tryharding it all could be solved, maybe? But is that what you intended with this project?...
 
Last edited:
Level 23
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,783
we tried it once again, since you've patched 1.5... But honestly some bosses are behaving odd like hell. The first boss (and we played on test and easy mode, which only affects health points i guess?!) just killed my windarcher, i even stayed far behind and ran instantly away with this particular speedboosting skill of her, all for nothing, the boss still hit me with his snake ward attacks, bouncing from teammate to teammate dealing indredible damage 0o...

Ive redone alot this version gameplay wise. The bonus sparks are just an extra threat to balance out ranged heroes since otherwise they deal with him way too easily.

The key thing to watch for the redone bosses is that they all now feature an energy bar.
And quite obviously, bad stuff happens when it hits 100.
Sikhar blasts every hero regardless of range for 150ish damage that increases with difficulty when he hits 100.
You just need to make sure you have enough energy to survive that blast.

Then we approached the demonhunter boss, which is spawning meteors on the ground and let me tell you they surely fall like instantly xD and what's really funny is, that i used my speedboost once again without effect. Well maybe i was just unlucky, but all together it doesn't meet up with the maps quality:

Well, Rhayme is the only boss that remains untouched. Everything he does now is no different than before. So I cant say anything here.

Im not sure what you mean by it doesnt meet up with the map's quality

I guess that's it for now, with tryharding it all could be solved, maybe? But is that what you intended with this project?...

If youre asking, the end goal for Dreamvale is to...
a) Finish the storyline
b) Make it really challenging tactically
c) Make it more Intuitive, more player intuition and less being told what needs to be done.

Now on the topic of tryharding, Im not too sure what exactly youre getting at.
If your attmepting every strategy possible and failing then perhaps the game is too hard.
If you mean that victory can be obtained by just randomly steamrolling and hoping for the best then its too easy IMO.

Im not sure if thats what you meant, care to clarify?
 
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sentrywiz

S

sentrywiz

Okay, I see I've wrote stuff about this map before. But this is a new version so I'll just ask and say what I have to say again.

Rocks!
Like people in earlier posts said, you worked your ass off for the map. Strangely, I read the entire comment section and I saw not one person bit intrigued about the secrets.

I killed them all!
With cheats of course. Let's be honest, I barely kill Rhayne or whatever his name is. But I did it to scour secrets. Let's see how much I found, and I'd love if you could spoil me fun and tell me about the stuff I didn't found or didn't understood.

Level 1
-Found the Red Tree, got the item, killed Sikhar and challenged the what's his name... got some Sigil +3 Agility +2 Damage I think
-Found Timolo or whatever the name was... he gave me a scroll for +2 armor (btw you misspell armor for armour. Its Armor :p)

Level 2
-Didn't find crap. Looked in the corners, the pond with the boat, behind trees and stuff... Nothing

Level 3
-Didn't find crap. Looked at the spider eggs, behind trees, in the cauldron o_O ... Nothing

Level 4
-Found Pipe, the ghostly troll. He was smoking the hella-hella and ignored the crap out of me.
-Besides that, found nothing

Level 5
-Gravekeeper is stingy ass mfker! I beat the boss in 1 hit and he gives me nothing, just tells me to get lost. The Prick!

-Found 2 NPC's that wouldn't tell me crap. One was Miro and the other was a ghost that I barely recognized I guess you really really worked to blend her to be undetectable. Pretty please why they no talk to me?

Level 6
-Found Timolo and Mirana (they cannot be missed I know) and tried to give Timolo the item he gave me at Level 1. Bastard pretended I didn't exist...
-Found Ja... something... the girl with the Jaina model. She also saw through me like thin air. Why they no talk to me??? :p

Level 7
- I killed the Moab in 2 hits (imagine that, whosyourdaddy FAIL!!!)
-Found another Red Tree. It dropped no item. Awwww wanted another challenge...

GAME OVER!
I win! Found all the 5/100 secrets... fail...
 
Level 23
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
1,783
Level 2
-Didn't find crap. Looked in the corners, the pond with the boat, behind trees and stuff... Nothing

There is a red tree somewhere on the southern shore of the map.
fyi. There is a red tree on every level.

Level 3
-Didn't find crap. Looked at the spider eggs, behind trees, in the cauldron o_O ... Nothing

Theres is a secret npc somewhere in the north.

Level 5
-Gravekeeper is stingy ass mfker! I beat the boss in 1 hit and he gives me nothing, just tells me to get lost. The Prick!

-Found 2 NPC's that wouldn't tell me crap. One was Miro and the other was a ghost that I barely recognized I guess you really really worked to blend her to be undetectable. Pretty please why they no talk to me?

Some NPC's are character specific, they will only whisper to you if you are playing a certain character.
 

sentrywiz

S

sentrywiz

There is a red tree somewhere on the southern shore of the map.
fyi. There is a red tree on every level.



Theres is a secret npc somewhere in the north.



Some NPC's are character specific, they will only whisper to you if you are playing a certain character.

Hm, I see. Well I didn't seem to locate that red tree on every level. But now that I know I'll try and find them.

Btw, any other spoilers for the secrets? I expected more response, but you only told me for 3 levels?
 
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