Minimum skills with maximum % Challenge

[LemSteven]

Apparently I didn't push my own method far enough.  Mayhem 25 is now down to 12 skills.

Solution

1: The first lemming builds a short ways back from the edge.
2: The second lemming builds a short distance behind him, just a couple of steps after he lands.
3: The third lemming digs in a pixel-precise location on the first builder's bridge, such that he will continue through the edge of the steel. (The first builder will hit the wall and turn around just as the second builder is patching up the hole.)
4: The fourth lemming blocks on the second lemming's first brick.
5: Increase the release rate to 19.
6: The digger/leader uses six builders to blaze a path to the exit.
7: Mine through the bridge restraining the crowd, about halfway up.
8: Make a lemming coming out of the entrance bash to free the blocker.

This solution will also work for Tricky 13.

[ccexplore]

Mayhem 5 improved to 13 skills on DOS.  Actually not sure where that previously reported 18 came from.  I had a Lemmix replay on my computer that was marked as "4 blockers, 5 builders, no bashers" that is also a lose 4 solution and takes 14 skills.  Yet I can't quite place which challenge that was ever posted to, or if it was ever actually posted at all.  At the same time I don't think I actually see any replays attached for the level that takes 18 skills?

Anyway, attached the 13-skill max % solution here.  It doesn't work on SNES because of difference in digger mechanics, 14 likely remains the record for that version.

[Proxima]

18 comes from Minim's post here. Interest in the Challenges board had died out at the time, so Minim filled in all the gaps to the best of his ability, but all these results are suspect and would benefit from looking over by an expert.

[ccexplore]

Mayhem 30 now has a "real" result to replace the 38:  25 skills.  It's just the 23-skill solution for the min-skill (without 100%) challenge, tweaked slightly (though not trivial) to efficiently handle crowd holding and release.

Note that this is a little bit different from MASTER-88's 25-skill SNES solution, which doesn't work as-is on DOS for two key reasons:

1) DOS level is actually different from SNES.  On the left side, there is a part that on SNES only requires 5 builders to get across, on DOS it takes 7 builders, because the length across is longer (the island in between at the bottom, with the bear trap, is longer as well).

2) On SNES it is possible on the right side, to build into the right boundary of the level, and the boundary will turn around lemmings.  That doesn't work on DOS.

The overall route though is basically the same, so there is a chance the SNES solution could adopt some methods used in this DOS solution to reduce its skill count by either 1 or 2, depending on whether those methods can be made workable with the somewhat different miner on SNES.

[edit: re-upload replay with simplified handling of right side compared to what was done with the original 23-skill non-100% solution, so that much less precision is required, for same total skill count.  This also makes it all but certain that SNES can reduce skill count by at least 1.]

[ccexplore]

Confirmed Mayhem 7 13 skills and Mayhem 14 17 skills.  Not particularly challenging once you start looking for it knowing it may be possible (in this case from MASTER-88's SNES results).

[ccexplore]

Reduced Tricky 11 to 9 skills.  Thanks to MASTER-88 for alerting that it is possible.  I didn't look at his video before trying it out so it's slightly different than how he did it on SNES, but still basically same trick and overall solution.

I don't have Pooty's replay of the 10-skill solution, but I believe the 9-skill solution is basically a variant of his 10-skill solution, using a new-ish trick to set up the climber using less skills.  I think people have some awareness of the trick before, but I don't remember whether any previous challenge solutions had ever made use of it like here.

[ccexplore]

Improved Taxing 4 to 13 skills.  I finally found a way to efficiently trigger sliding glitch for profit here, as well as found a better way to do the mining at the top so that less builders are needed to complete the path to exit.

Thanks to MASTER-88 for indirectly inspiring this.  The failure to adapt the former 14-skill DOS record solution (by Clam) to SNES spurred me to take another look at trying to use sliding glitch again, which I had always been aware was a possibility, but until now could never find a way to do it efficiently enough skill-wise here to beat Clam's record.  Also thanks to LemSteven, whose handling of Tricky 28 for this challenge thread directly inspired me the idea to try something vaguely similar here, for the builder that would trigger the glitch.

I'll discuss adapting this solution to SNES on MASTER-88's thread, but it looks possible even if some details might have to change slightly.

[ccexplore]

Improved Mayhem 10 to 29 skills.  This may be the first time we've looked at this level specifically for this challenge, as opposed to just taking an existing solution from one of the other challenges.

One obvious thing to explore is ceiling route, but that turns out actually not great, the shape of the ceiling really works against you forcing you to use more builders than you'd like, plus it also costs a lot of builders to set up, at the upper area only, a holding system for the crowd--especially since the ceiling route takes up a basher, so you don't even have enough leftover skills to use 2 blockers (and still be able to free them both), you can only use 1 blocker.  My testing seems to show that any ceiling route solution would end up using either all builders or at best maybe 1 less than all.

So instead, the improved solution here is yet another floor route building to the right exit, like the other two lose-2 solutions previously presented.

I'm still wondering whether maybe it's worth trying to use sliding glitch twice, the second time to slide the crowd up from bottom of the exit-holding pillar.  From the one-blocker solution, we know there's one natural place that can be easily used to compress the crowd without using a second blocker (that you won't have enough skills left to free).  But it takes multiple builders to later release the crowd from that location, which may well cancel out trying to use less builders by using sliding glitch.

[ccexplore]

We finally discovered that Mayhem 19 can actually lose only 2 rather than 3.  This invalidates the previous results here for lose-3.  For now I've put in the result of 21 from the replay I've made so far for the lose-2 solution.  Though I suspect it might be possible to use 1 or maybe even 2 less builders, will try later and see.

[MASTER-88]

I finally confirmed Mayhem 23 with 16 skills in DOS.  It was nothing intuitive or obvious, and I'm wondering if I'm missing something substantially easier.  Anyway, here's the solution.

I finally read this post when i read posts in this topic. I personally never figured out you can use slide glitch in this level max-% points min skills challenges.

My SNES solution which also was done 16 skills is done totally glitch free. Its use one little trick which could be pretty hard figured out, but im not called that real glitch. It just thing how i can continue building without web stopping it, but still break way pass lemming groups. My solution was also totally blocker free.

However this level could be different on DOS version. This sounds you did starting this level very different way than i did it my SNES. End part sound just like same way what i did.

EDIT:
About DOS version there is two levels which might be worth watching better. Taxing 2 & Mayhem 1: Spoiler alert:

Spoiler

Taxing 2. Snes version probably can done with 6 skills otherwise but 100 lemmings is too much with this. But 80 lemmings seems good enought make 7 skills solution on DOS. Yeah i know there is two entrance and 6 skills is definitely impossible on DOS version and SNES version strategy doensn´t work on DOS. Also DOS strategy doens´t work on SNES because there is 100 lemmings. I actually test out this. But 7 skills could be done. Im pretty sure about this. At least im confirmed it on SNES.

Mayhem 1: I am pretty sure 27 skills 100% working on DOS. I test some things and im not see troubles. Its just lock and release

[LemSteven]

Improvements for both Taxing 2 and Mayhem 1 are confirmed in DOS.  Taxing 2 with 7 skills is actually pretty straightforward - first 3 lemmings dig, RR 99, then bash twice and build twice to the exit.  The crowd has enough walking space to render any sort of crowd control unnecessary.

Mayhem 1 with 27 skills just barely works, using 2 floaters, 24 builders, and 1 digger.  A screenshot of the left side of the level is attached.

[LemSteven]

This is not an improvement per se, but I finally confirmed 12 skills for Wicked 6.

Previously this result was unconfirmed, but assumed based on a combination of ccexplore doing the left side of the level with 5 skills and me doing the right side of the level with 7 skills.  After a long look at the level this afternoon, I have finally figured out the 5-skill solution for the left side, and put the two sides together to confirm the long-suspected 12-skill 100% solution.

[EricLang]

I was wondering if this solution was known.

[Proxima]

I had another look at Minim's post (and the three posts following it) listing levels that had not been looked at at the time. It seems that nearly all the Original levels from that post have since been looked at, the only exceptions being Mayhem 8 and 15. So it would be good to get a confirmed result for those two.

There hasn't been any more progress on the ONML levels, other than the Wicked 6 result, which is really nice to have confirmed at last.

[namida]

Mayhem 8, I can't even reproduce Minim's result, let alone beat it. The best I can manage is 10 skills - three to contain + release the crowd, three builders to cross the gap. It seems you then need at least four to get past the wall without losing any lemmings (the easiest way being 2 climbers + 2 diggers). You can't cross the gap in such a way that you can do a builder-miner combo to both get partway through the block and release the crowd.

Mayhem 15 on the other hand, I can confirm (but not beat) 14 skills. This is not at all difficult to do.