Despite a tip from a commenter telling me that it was already possible to break the seal affecting all of the hub rooms, and also possible to productively interact with Belboz, I could not figure out how, nor how to progress in any meaningful way. I turned to the walkthrough, and saw that its next instructions showed how to deal with the octagonal room.
What you do is put the compass rose in a compass-shaped inlet, as I had, to open the passageway into the octagonal room. But I was wrong in my belief that the compass controls it from here! Before entering, you remove the compass rose. The passage stays open. Then you go in, and you touch the runes on the octagonal room's walls with the compass to open a passage there.
Seriously - did anyone figure that out on their own? Placing the compass in the initial inset was pretty obvious, and removing it not quite as obvious, and I knew the compass was somehow used to manipulate the room, but why would you think that touching the walls with it would do anything?
This area is actually a maze of octagonal rooms, and each of the compass's eight directions is good for one use before turning into brass and deactivating, and north is already used up to get inside. In effect, you get seven moves to navigate the maze, and can't move in any direction twice. The rooms themselves have eight walls each, and each wall has a rune whose color dictates whether the compass will react and open a hole there or not.
The maze is not large or complicated, and one room's west wall is uniquely marked with a gold rune and alabaster inset. I couldn't find any way to reach this room without using up my west move, and I don't think it's possible, but it doesn't matter - all you have to to is Rezrov the inset and the wall opens up revealing... another cube.
The ninth cube goes to "No Place." Eastward from this hub is the Inner Vault from Zork III, still full of treasure, and the door from the Outer Vault locked and Rezrov-proof. Southward from No Place is a nondescript "plain," which is in fact a frictionless plane like something out of Mathmagic Land. Colorful rocks glide around the landscape, and another cube sits on one, but walking around is impossible, and the rocks protest if you try to climb on them.
I offered the lava fragment to the green rock in the immediate vicinity, and it gratefully allowed me to climb aboard and carry me where I wished. I moved toward the brown rock in the east, and it moved away, but I could eventually trap it in the corner of this plane and get its cube.
The tenth cube goes to a "Dark Room." And this dark room is situated over a dark, dark cave. So dark that your own light sources don't work very well.
You know what this means - grue city! And if you're in deep enough that you can see their outlines, you're already dead.
To survive, you've got to memorize a Snavig spell and then abandon any light-emitting items before going on. And then you must cast Snavig to become a grue.
Past the grues is a pool of faint light, with a climbable pillar in the middle. And on top of it, a cube.
The eleventh cube goes to a "Fire Room." South goes to back to the clifftop connected to the very first cube. North goes to a volcano - we'd been to its base before, but this part is higher up.
On the volcano, a heat-resistant outcropping can be seen to the west, but there's no obvious way to reach it.
Now I'm 415 points in, out 600, and I've seen 80 rooms, but a lot of them are part of the octagonal room maze and plains area. That's already more than the median 48KB Infocom game; only Zork I and Planetfall are appreciably bigger. I've got to be nearly done.
I have four unsolved problems:
- How do I enter the sealed rooms in the hubs?
- What do I do with Belboz?
- How do I open the door in the inner vault?
- How do I reach the volcano outcropping?
The first two should be solvable already, but I still can't figure out how.
Tips would be appreciated - if possible, I'd prefer gentle tips that prod me in the right direction to find the bit of information I'm missing to solve the puzzle over outright spoilers. I'll have updates in the comments regarding my progress over the weekend.
You can't solve the two new problems before solving the two old ones.
ReplyDeleteThe first old problem involves something you have certainly seen by now, but apparently didn't think was important.
Have you tried talking to Belboz?
Thanks - I have now solved three of the four outstanding problems.
DeleteOk... what the hell is going on in the Outer Vault? I know what I'm supposed to do here, but it isn't working.
DeleteFirst attempt (that should have worked):
https://pastebin.com/uTqtLw3M
Jindak 1 narrows it down to x1, x2, x7, or x8.
Jindak 2 eliminates x1 and x2.
Jindak 3 shows it's x8.
Blorple x8 -> Nothing!
Second attempt:
https://pastebin.com/kzXAHRhS
Jindak 1, once again, narrows it down to x1, x2, x7, or x8.
Jindak 2 is lucky and shows that it is x2.
Blorple x2->Nothing!
Third attempt:
https://pastebin.com/s2FXf6TP
Jindak 1 yet again narrows it down to x1, x2, x7, or x8.
Jindak 2 shows it must be x1.
Blorple x1->Nothing!
Fourth attempt:
https://pastebin.com/tQyLaC5g
Slightly different strategy now.
Jindak 1 shows it is x3, x4, x5, or x6.
Jindak 2 shows it x4, x3, x11, or x12.
Jindak 3 shows it is x3, x9, x5, or x6.
Blorple x3->Nothing!
I feel like there must be some invisible trigger that marks the puzzle as "solved" that I'm not hitting correctly. Because I can't see why any of these attempts didn't work.
The point here is that the cube you want is different (either brighter or dimmer) so the strategies you tried only work half of the time.
DeleteAh - silly me for assuming that the true cube would more powerful than the fake ones. Weird that I was wrong four times in a row! I've solved it now, and funnily enough, the true cube was underweight yet again.
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