Teratophobia
Teratophobia, in both the world of Chip's Challenge and in the physical world, is a fear of monsters. Almost all beginning Chipsters have teratophobia in their early years of play and slowly become more experienced at breaking it; most bold time routes that involve monsters require a player to mingle with many monsters. The biggest step to becoming an expert at CC is to beat this phobia.
Causes and roots
In the real world, it is difficult to predict the exact movement of any danger to oneself: people driving on roadways tend to err on the side of caution for sake of life and limb, and for obvious reasons. When performing any activity for the first time, one also tends to take things slowly - and in the case of Chip's Challenge, it becomes difficult to learn exactly when a move is safe and when it is not. Even in cases where a Chipster knows the right move, they will be instinctively trained to rather be safe than sorry.
Overcoming the problem
There are two keys to overcoming teratophobia: the first is that death is largely illusory - the only injury suffered is that of having to restart the level. Oftentimes it will be worth taking caution for most grades of Chipster when an attempt has gone on for a long period of time; this is common even at the highest level in random-element levels. Even from the worst, most painful deaths, however, valuable lessons can be learned. It is true of all things that one does not learn much without making mistakes.
Second is that monsters always have a fixed speed in specific mediums - floor or sliding tiles, MS or Lynx. Learning the m/s chart, as well as the monster order and monster list, is important to understanding the physics of Chip's Challenge.
A valuable tool for reducing specifically pyrophobia - a sector limited to fireballs - is to play in Tile World where there are a lot of fireballs. The difference is that each of the four fireball tiles can be distinguished from each other, whereas in MS CC they all look the same. In addition to making the player more comfortable with the presence of monsters, the workings of the monster order will become easier to learn this way.
Typically, the last barrier teratophobia sets up - although typical of all deaths - is that Chip's level bonus will be reduced. At this stage of experience, however, the player should be able to learn clock setting and to consider Fullsec. In particular, Fullsec (or playing in Tile World) will reduce the time lost by a death, which allows the player to adapt to a bold but wise life as Chip.
Practice levels
Many levels allow for easy exercises to become more comfortable with working with monsters; this list organizes them into different grades.
Beginner
Intermediate
- Digger
- Tossed Salad
- Chchchips
- Lemmings
- Spooks
- Underground
- Yorkhouse
- Fireflies
- Ladder Needs a Wash
- Monster Factory
- Gauntlet