The Golden

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Template:Infobox Level The Golden is a 2.1 Extreme Demon mega-collaboration level hosted by Bo and El3cTr0, published by Bo and verified by nSwish on 17 April 2020. It is a remake of the 2.0 Insane Demon El Dorado. Known for its extremely difficult wave sections, it has an intense atmosphere similar to that of VSC, a challenge also created by Bo. The Golden features a jungle theme, similar to that of El Dorado, and difficulty comes mostly from difficult timings and fast-paced wave gameplay. The level was previously set to surpass Tartarus in difficulty but was heavily nerfed by nSwish on Bo's request. Despite this, the level was placed at #1 on the Demonlist on 31 May 2020, surpassing Tartarus until 12 September 2020, when the two levels swapped placements.

An antagonist level, Avernus, was created by Bo and PockeWindfish and verified by Zoink on 22 March 2023.

History

Creation

The Golden started as a solo project made by Bo. Dissatisfied with an earlier remake of El Dorado known as 'El Dorado Rebirth', Bo decided to create an overall new remake of the level. On 21 April 2019, he uploaded a preview video of the first part of an upcoming Extreme Demon level, showing the first 37%. Afterwards, the full version of the layout was revealed on 2 May 2019. Despite the original plans of being a solo project, the level became a mega-collaboration with numerous creators including El3cTr0 involved in the project.

The creators involved would later upload a preview of their parts, including Woomy and Eridani.

Verification and placement

Bo initially tried verifying the level, making considerable progress, including 22-71%, 49-97% and 53% before passing the level to Sky Jax, then Dolphy, then finally nSwish, although Bo would try verifying it again in between those players. nSwish became the final official verifier of the level. He verified The Golden on 17 April 2020 after 52,870 attempts. The level was placed at #1 on the Demonlist, dethroning Tartarus and keeping the #1 spot for 105 days before it and Tartarus swapped positions as many skilled players stated that Tartarus was harder.

Gameplay

• 0-14% (El3cTr0 + Gooseam): The level starts with a UFO segment containing quite difficult timings, and the colour palette is mostly dark with a dose of green mixed in. After this, the player turns into a ball, and the timings continue, as the player must hit orbs precisely. Following this is a brief UFO section with more timings.
• 14-28% (Geemi + Woom): Next, the level gets a little greener, and the player turns into a ship. This ship has extremely tight spaces, and the gameplay has gravity changes scattered in some places. Following the ship is a brief cube section leading to the drop, where half of the player's vision is blocked by a big black glowing pillar. This part ends with a title screen of the level.
• 28-50% (El3cTr0): Then, the drop starts. This part consists of a very difficult triple speed wave section containing pillars with tight gaps, requiring near-impossible timings at high speeds. There are also heaps of gravity portals scattered throughout this section. On top of that, the size of the wave changes occasionally. After a while, the player slows down to double speed as they must spam through a brief but tight corridor, before getting thrown into a brief quadruple speed UFO section with precise timings. Then, the player turns back into a wave at triple speed with similar gameplay style as before.
• 50-72% (EyeOfTheStorm): After the player passes through the wave sections, they turn into a ship while remaining at triple speed. This ship section is tight and has many teleportation and gravity portals as well as difficult timings, making it difficult to traverse through. Next is a brief wave section followed by a brief but difficult cube section, during which the player must precisely hit three green orbs. Afterwards is a tight dual wave followed by a tight single wave before a ball section requiring precise timings to end the drop.
• 72-86% (Bo): After the drop ends, the player must pass a tricky half speed robot section where the player must spam in some parts and perform timings in the others. Next is a UFO segment that is also pretty spam-filled but mostly filled with timings. Following this is a short spider section with difficult timings.
• 86-100% (Eridani + BySelling, End-Screen): Following the spider section is a slow ship part with very tight spaces to fly through. This ship section has loads of gravity and size portals thrown at the player. After a bit, a very spam-filled ball appears with many timings. The same thing applies to the UFO section directly after. After the player passes the UFO section, the title of the level comes up, showing a golden city with the level's name in the center and the creators' names below, as the level ends.

First 10 victors

Victor #	Player	Date Completed	Total Attempts	Furthest Fail	Video
Verifier	nSwish	17 April 2020	?	?	YouTube
1	swiborg	28 May 2020	40,541	98%	YouTube
2	Sid125	23 June 2020	30,529	94%	YouTube
3	Kurumi	19 August 2020	42,576	96%	YouTube
4	Mycrafted	12 September 2020	?	94%	YouTube
5	DoSh7t	26 November 2020	49,109	92%	YouTube
6	Beastular	30 November 2020	~91,500	96%	YouTube
7	Wolvez	3 December 2020	20,122	?	YouTube
8	Combined	10 December 2020	~31,000	?	YouTube
9	dice88	28 December 2020	43,523	96%	YouTube
10	Seturan	4 January 2021	63,353	90%	YouTube

Trivia

• The level's password is 886988.
• The level contains 117,647 objects.
• The level is 1m 24s in length.
• The level was rated on 1 May 2020.
• The level was initially placed at #1 on the Demonlist on 31 May 2020, above Tartarus.
  • This addition pushed Crimson Planet out of the Top 5 for the first time, Belloq into the Extended List, and A2Marbl into the Legacy List.
  • On 12 September 2020, The Golden swapped with Tartarus, with Tartarus being at #1 and The Golden being at #2, as many victors around this time (i.e. Mycrafted) had stated that Tartarus was harder, this was mainly due to it having straight-fly segments with fixed hitboxes at 31% and 45%.
    • The Golden was #1 for 105 days.
• Since The Golden is a remake of El Dorado, the name comes from the English translation of El Dorado, 'The Golden'.
• The order of the verifiers for this level are: Bo, SkyJax, Bo again, Dolphy, Bo yet again, and then nSwish, who verified it.
  • Lolwut was chosen as a backup verifier if nSwish dropped the level.
• LmAnubis had a comment thread on the full layout showcase of the level, approving it as an official sequel.
• The Golden took nSwish 52,870 attempts to verify. It is the most attempts nSwish has taken to beat a level.
  • Many of these attempts came from grinding his super-buffed version and how unlucky he got following the nerf.
• A copy of the level, given to nSwish before he buffed it, was privately circulating with players for a while, with a 'no detail' copy appearing on the servers shortly after it started circulating. This copy infamously fell into the hands of Breeze, who used it for a joke 'verification' video of the level. ToshDeluxe also used it for his April Fools 2020 video.
• Lolwut created a fan-sequel layout named Athens.
• Difficulty opinions range from being easier than Zodiac (nSwish) to being harder than Tartarus (Technical).
• swiborg allegedly verified the unnerfed version on 19 December 2021, claiming that he forgot to record.
  • ItzDoVi beat an unnerfed version of The Golden on 16 June 2022.
• spaceuk supposedly beat The Golden as his fifth Demon, after DeCode, Windy Landscape, Leyak and Wasureta, until he got exposed as a hacker on 25 April 2023.
  • Despite this, he rebeat the level legitimately on 6 May 2023.
• stillsouless fluked the level from 40%, making it the biggest fluke on the level.
• swiborg once decided to rebeat the level and managed to do so in one attempt.
• Sid125 beat the level three times in a row in the GD World Tournament.
• Bo and PockeWindFish (originally Woomy, Kyhro and El3cTr0) officially hosted a level as the 'antagonist' to The Golden called Avernus. It was verified by Zoink on 22 March 2023.
• The Golden is part of the player-made 'New RGB trilogy', along with Tartarus and Sonic Wave Infinity.
• The level was temporarily updated to complain about a creator's release schedule in December 2023. [citation needed]
• The Golden is the 33rd former Top 1 in the game's history.
• Multiple levels since The Golden was created, was created as a remake, sequel or is inspired.
  • PockeWindfish created Avernus, which is an antagonist to The Golden. It is a former Top 1 since 16 October 2023 to 18 February 2024.
    • The third level of The Golden series was Tethys created by the same creator PockeWindfish.
  • Mist created Amethyst, which is inspired by The Golden and is themed around amethyst. It is the current hardest level.
• The movement of Coalescene from #57 to #49 on 25 December 2024 pushed The Golden out of the Top 50 on the Demonlist for the first time.
  • The Golden and Natural Disaster got swapped on 27 December 2024, returning The Golden to the Top 50 and knocking Natural Disaster out of the Top 50 on the Demonlist.
  • The placement of BEELINE on 5 January 2025 pushed The Golden out of the Top 50 of the Demonlist for the second time.

Gallery

File:TG Endscreen.jpg

The level's end-screen, created by Vale (previously known as BySelling).