Endymion commentary/hints thread

Competitions
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OK, I’m having a beast of a time with Endymion. I’m just not sure about many of my vocab words.

I have gotten to the debris field, but I feel like most of how I got places was by just trying things. Even now I think a lot of my vocab is wrong, and some I just have no clue about.

Question: If there is text on something, like the green door, does that mean that the text on the green door relates to the green door? Or could it possibly relate to the red door?

Words I have no idea about:

Rajarual, Ezheba, Azarogh (unless these are red green and blue-- I’ve gone back and forth with these), Baghe

Words I’m pretty sure I’m wrong about along with my probably wrong definition:

O-- in
Oqria- tile
groqo- touch/put on

I’ve had Al as handle, wheel, and pouch. None is correct although all of them work in one context.

Because my translations are so wonky, I really have no idea what to do next. The stuff I have now is clearly instructions for doing things (probably to get rid of the dark areas), but I need better translations before knowing exactly what.

Anybody else having luck with these?

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I’m also stuck at the debris field . But there are some other interesting things you can do there beside getting away again . Not sure what those mean though, it’s all greek to me.
I think Rajarual, Ezheba and Azarogh are just the names of the rooms.
You should be able to figure the colours from the description of doors and by looking at the floor in the room with lots of them.

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One medium-sized hint: If an inscription has the word al in it, that inscription definitely relates to the object it’s on.

Another medium-sized hint: One-word inscriptions always relate to the things they’re attached to (or, in one case, the object that used to be stored in it). The big ones are like navigation signs, the little ones are like inventory labels.

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So they don’t mean anything? Crap. I sure spent a lot of time trying to figure those out. Then I definitely have the colors right.

This is useful!

I need to throw away my notes and start them over. It gets to the point where there are so many things crossed out and arrows to other things that it gets to be a problem. I wish the list in the game worked for me but it doesn’t because I have to sort them by what I know, what I’m not sure about, and what I don’t know, and have a column with the entire sentences right next to that.

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After having spent some more time at this game, it becomes clear that some of those squares in the rooms are actually not just the name of the room, but rather more useful.

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Think about where you found the word.

What was inside it?

You’re only wrong about one of these.

Oqria, specifically. (Well, O isn’t exactly “in”, I think, but it’s close enough.)

Have you opened the pouch and seen what was in it? It should lead you in the right direction.

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The broken crate in the first room held the translation device. I am clearly extremely dense, because I have absolutely no clue how that tells me what the word means. Unless it’s just crate, and I don’t think so. It’s also on the metal sheets and the tile, but because I have so many problems with the rest of my translations, that doesn’t help either.

I think I might be at the point where I’m going down unproductive rabbit holes and getting cranky. I’m going to put it aside, play the other game, and return to it.

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Taking a break from the game seems like a good idea, but if you still need a hint when you return:

You have a case with something written on it. It’s one word, so according to Draconis’ hint above, it’s a label. If you see a label on a case, what could it possibly refer to?

It refers to the contents of the case.

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Various tips that I should have put in the hints:

If you’re having trouble with the structure of sentences:

  1. Words ending in -o are always verbs (and vice versa).

  2. Verbs come at the end of the sentence or clause. That is, the last word in an inscription, and the last word before a comma or en-dash, is always a verb.

  3. Adjectives come after nouns. “Apple red”, not “red apple”.

  4. Sentences with commas mean “if X, then Y”.

If you’re having trouble figuring out the names of things:

  1. One-word inscriptions (or rather, inscriptions that are supposed to be one word instead of being broken) are always nouns.

  2. They act like navigation signs or inventory labels, marking what things are. (In two cases, the label is on an object’s container instead of the object itself, because the object itself is too impractical to label.)

  3. Small labels refer to small things. Big signs refer to big things.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what things an inscription refers to:

  1. Inscriptions with the word al in them always refer to the thing they’re printed on.

  2. Al means “this”. Or rather, the thing with the inscription on it.

If you’re having trouble clearing away the darkness:

  1. The darkness in the Bridge can be cleared away. Examine the pedestal.

  2. The darkness in the Faceted Chamber and Cargo Hold can’t be cleared away within the game. Don’t worry about it.

If you’re having trouble finding things to examine:

  1. Take inventory. Examine any containers you’re carrying (like the pouch).

  2. A future version of the game will call out specifically what needs examining, and if it’s inside the pouch. Sorry about that!

Hopefully this helps a bit! Unfortunately I guessed somewhat wrong about what things people would get stuck on most.

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I would not infer “people” from my experience! My problem is that I make everything very complicated and chase shadows, along with not tweaking to that one crucial event at the very very beginning. It’s a curse.

But I definitely think chefs should be allowed one tester, maybe not from this forum or determined beforehand and the tester isn’t allowed to participate? Or the Fukui-san? Not allowing ANY outside feedback is blargh.

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Oh no, my sister has also gotten stuck, and I’ve been reviewing posts elsewhere on the forum—you’re not the only one! This was a risk with building the whole game around a single huge puzzle; now, all I can do is try to provide some hints so people don’t get entirely stuck.

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Just finished the game and I think I have a complete dictionary of good-enough translations. Funnily I think I had an advantage because not only do I speak Japanese, but I’ve been thinking about it (in it?) a lot due to it coming up in proximity to Iron ChIF, so I twigged to the verb-final syntax immediately. Happy to help anyone who’s stuck.

Fun fact, the place I actually got stuck the longest was trying to get into the bridge, and skimming this thread I wondered why people who seemed to be having a harder time getting to grips with the language stuff had gotten farther than I could. It was because I thought I had to put the coil on or stick it into the door and then turn it, not just turn it in the vicinity of the door, and I thought I was failing to figure out the correct command or sequence of commands to make that happen. Eventually I was like “well I guess I could just try ‘turn coil’ and see what happens” and then I felt really stupid. I mean, it only literally tells you to do that in so many words…

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The coil was like that for me as well but because I had the wrong word for turn I stumbled across >PUSH COIL instead.

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I have played for two hours without hints (to major question 7 in the invisiclues) but my problem is when I turned to the invisiclues, I was still unable to finish the game. I opened every clue so I could search the text, and remained stuck. I’ll quote step 7’s prerequisite then elaborate

  1. By this point, you should have visited all six areas, come up with a tentative translation for every word you’ve seen (at least 20 of them), and opened both the pouch and the device. If you haven’t done one of those things, come back once you have.

It says ‘opened… the device’. What device is this? I searched all references to ‘device’. The only mention is the translator itself. In turn, what’s this green orb? I never saw it and there’s no indication where to find it in the invisiclues, except that it’s nested under the pouch. Actually it strongly implies it is indeed in the translator. Maybe I’m too close to see any more.

-Wade

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You are indeed very close! Very slight nudges:

  1. What’s the word for the device itself?

  2. If you don’t know the word for it, do you have a noun with no meaning attached?

  3. Look at the things in the airlock again.

Explicit guidance: The word for the device is baghe, as printed inside its case in the airlock.

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Honestly, that just gave me the impression it was the word for closet…

Even more explicit hint:

The device is the translator which you can open with the hoop.

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I’ve also found it a good challenge (spent some time stuck on that red door!) but I also feel motivated to try and figure them out because the puzzles are novel.

I’m also on the debris field, like AmandaB. She seemed to have figured out there were instructions there (I didn’t really think about what those were), but I did manage to figure out what one was telling me which was a neat breakthrough.

Yeah, debris field seems to be when your translation skills really start coming into play!

Just for prosperity’s sake since I think this might be a sticking point for other players too so it’ll be interesting to compare looking back:

Here's the list of (probably wrong) translation guesses I have at the Debris field, having already solved a few things out there including the aforementioned breakthrough although I haven't figured out how the modifications help yet

So far, you’ve assigned translations to 20 words:
•Ledozhe (found on the shiny tile and the floor grid) means “west”

•Eviozha (found on the shiny tile, the thin metal sheets, the large wheel, and the floor grid) means “south”

•Zedre (found on the shiny tile, the red door, and the floor grid) means “north”

•Aq-duo (found on the broken lever, the shiny tile, and the left disk) means “teleport-return”

•Ev-duo (found on the broken lever, the shiny tile, and the right disk) means “teleport-leave”

•Al (found on the broken lever, the right disk, the left disk, the narrow console, the squashy pouch, the carrying handle, and the large wheel) means “me/itself”

•Baghe (found on the shiny tile, the thin metal sheets, and the broken case) means “translator”

•Davazo (found on the thin metal sheets, the carrying handle, the large wheel, and the red door) means “turn”

•Groqo (found on the thin metal sheets, the narrow console, and the squashy pouch) means “insert?”

•Dajogov (found on the large metal hoop, the thin metal sheets, and the squashy pouch) means “hoop”

•Gie-zhag-leq-zhio-leq-rez-gho (found on the large circle) means “planet”

•Zria-rez-ruag-gho-leq-rez-gho (found on the many-pointed star) means “sun”

•Rajarual (found on the broken lever, the narrow console, the shiny red square, and the floor grid) means “command-bridge”

•Lazha (found on the narrow console, the wire coil, and the red door) means “coil”

•Ezheba (found on the carrying handle, the shiny green square, and the floor grid) means “cargo”

•Azarogh (found on the thin metal sheets, the floor grid, and the shiny blue square) means “airlock”

•Zoqradozhe (found on the shiny white square) means “chamber”

•Jedo (found on the thin metal sheets, the narrow console, the squashy pouch, the carrying handle, the large wheel, the red door, the black lever, and the blue lever) means “open”

•Grazad (found on the large wheel, the red door, the floor grid, the black lever, and the blue lever) means “door”

•Bralo (found on the black lever and the blue lever) means “closed”

You’ve also found two other words:

•Oqria (found on the shiny tile, the thin metal sheets, and the squashy pouch)

•O (found on the shiny tile, the ruined shiny square, the thin metal sheets, the squashy pouch, and the floor grid)

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I have similar translations as yours! second guessing myself now though. I’m also at the debris field, having figured out the hoop things, and experiementing with the pouch objects.

I’m now looking at the hints, which says the message “Zoqradozhe qia o? Ev-duo!” means “The artifact [unknown] is located? Transmit!”; puzzling because by my (probably inaccurate) translations that reads “faceted chamber qia location? Portal out!”, which I interpreted as “are you in the faceted chamber? leave now (and go there?)”. Now I can see how ev-duo is transmit, esp after messing with the red sphere, but the logic that gets from Zoqradozhe to artifact is somewhat escaping me

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I’ve just finished, after having made it most of the way through using only the THINK command and then turned to this thread and the explicit hints for the final few steps.

There were two points where my translation was flaky which sent me astray:

Spoilers

I never figured out the meaning of ev-duo and aq-duo, so I was working with my initial, very literal translations of “left disk” and “right disk”. But this makes oqria zedre ev-duo – oqria ledozhe aq-duo – oqria eviozha baghe o sound like instructions to put the red sphere on the left disk, the blue sphere on the right disk and the green sphere in the device. Since I didn’t have the green sphere at that point, I decided to ignore these instructions until I found it.

I couldn’t find the green sphere without help because I hadn’t worked out how the alien grammar expressed conditionals. So I thought that baghe azarogh o – oqria eviozha baghe o – baghe davazo, baghe dajogov groqo, baghe jedo was telling me that I needed to bring the device to the airlock and put the green sphere inside it before I could open it using the hoop. (In retrospect, possibly I should have guessed that opening it should come before putting things inside, but I was building off a significant amount of guesswork already and it didn’t seem totally implausible that there might be a little niche on the device which a sphere could be popped into.)

So I think this was probably too difficult for me to have hoped to finish it without some level of help, but I really enjoyed gradually refining my translations as I progressed through the game and I’d love to play a larger game with the same premise that had the benefit of some external testing to smooth out some of the sticking points!

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OK, I’m close. But I can’t figure out what to transmit. In desperation I went to the hints, which said, scan the shiny white square in the faceted chamber, the star in the command bridge, and the broken square in the debris field, in that order.

But this didn’t work, because what broken square in the debris field? There is ice. There is the chunk of ceiling. There is the hoop. There is the disk/lever.

It’s always a bad idea to take a break from a game this complex, because I got fuzzy about what I did know.

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