I read most of it. I find it surprising no one had trouble with obtaining two platinum rods, or two zafranum threads, or orichalcum. That’s what I’m trying to work on but not having much luck.
Well, you can’t. You need to look for other ways of accomplishing stuff.
Have I screwed things up by waking Aistheta first? It seems as if I’d done that with another one I would have been able to do much more.
Also what does the fulcrum do? All I’ve noticed is that it glows near a dragon but that isn’t much help.
Nah, there’s a win path from each of those four starting points.
That’s an essential part of waking more dragons. It sounds like you’ve not found the details of the ritual that uses it, so keep exploring. A tip is that the “Doors” command will remind you of unreached places.
Oh wait, are you talking about dragon subsumption? Apparently it’s not a ritual, which is why I missed it. It was in “facts”
Yup, that’s the procedure you need to do (several times).
I also went past it for a while - I didn’t think it was something I could do, because I didn’t seem to have everything required.
Then the game started hinting that I try it anyway. So I did. The game’s really good at nudging - the only two points I was ever really stuck in (and I mean utterly, game-stoppingly and unpleasantly stuck) were not figuring out the sparks (my stupidity and incorrect assumptions) and the Gaia thing (because of a lack of vocabulary).
This is a game that rewards experimentation, so go wild. Even if you don’t think it’ll work. Heck, especially if you don’t think it’ll work. That’s a good rule of thumb for whenever you get stuck.
So I’ve finally got around to this and I’m absolutely stuck toward the beginning. Current rituals under the spoiler:
resonant oculus creation (*)
fungicide synthesis
universal tarnish cleansing inscription (with the brass pin)
doubled rust cleansing inscription (with the steel bolt)
doubled tarnish cleansing inscription (with the brass pin)
basic rust cleansing inscription (with the steel bolt)
basic tarnish cleansing inscription (with the brass pin)
I’m not going to completely spoiler the things I think I’m stuck on, because when a post doesn’t have anything outside the spoiler tags, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s applicable to anyone’s situation without blindly opening the spoiler tags, which rather defeats their purpose. If you’re worried about seeing any sort of spoiler at all, keep your eyes tightly shut as you read this.
So: I think I need to find a gestalt shelf to do the ritual I know but haven’t done yet. And I thought I saw one somewhere, but I can’t find it for the life of me–is it just in my memories? Do I need to make one?
Another possibility would be an
Alchemy File Lock
but I gather from a couple posts I’ve opened that I can’t get that yet.
No, you’ll find them attached to some of the ritual bounds. I’d suggest revisiting the rooms that are accessible to you, noting which have bounds, and examining them carefully. The bounds can differ from one another in interesting ways.
Oh good heavens, I think I managed never to go north from the Lab Hall Southwest. I may not be cut out for this.
Worry not. This game has lots of features that aren’t usual for IF games, like DOORS and stuff. Get used to making full use of them, and you’ll have a much smoother playing experience.
In this case my problem was that I was abusing DOORS–I was looking at the locked doors and thinking “Well, I don’t know how to deal with any of these,” when it seems as though what I needed was a PERFECTLY OBVIOUS EXITS YOU HAVEN’T USED YET command.
starts implementing a PERFECTLY OBVIOUS EXITS YOU HAVEN’T USED YET command
Truth be told, a status-line exit lister with three colors–directions you’ve been, directions you can’t go right now, directions you could go but haven’t–would be a great help to me in a game like this. Though I’m pretty sure that someone is about to tell me that there is one, and I just don’t look at the status line.
Also, there’s a reason I stuck the map on the front page of hadeanlands.com/ . It’s somewhat spoilery for overall extent, and room names if you look at the version with room names, but it solves the “what there’s a north there?” problem.
I looked at the map, looked at the room description, said “oh well I can’t go northeast from there because of the fracture,” and somehow my brain turned that into “You can’t go north or east from there because of the fracture, either.”
I am not denying that this is entirely my fault.
So, I really-really-really hate asking for hints but it’s starting to seem like I have no choice.
I am hoping someone might be kind enough to reply with one of those graduated hints posts –
where there are 4 or 5 hints that one can open that get increasingly explicit. If not , no worries;
I’ll take what I can get!
So, I['m stuck in in what I think is early mid-game. As a way of calibrating whether you’re
past this point or not I’ve just recently had my “reset location” change.
Here’s where I am exactly:
I’ve got Pneuma working. I’ve been to the wreck and gotten inside and to a plate glass window.
I know three of the alien glyphs. And I know I’ll use these as dragon names when I
perform the Fulcrum Inscription (but I need a bound of mercury or amalgam). I’ve noticed the weird way
you can toggle your attitude towards crew members and I’ve seen the stories associated with their
shadows (seen through the loop).
I’ve been spinning my wheels unable to get any forward momentum going. Here’s my best guess
as to the things that are ready to crack open:
I bet I should be focusing on:
I need a “bound of quciksilver or amalgam” in order to perform the fulcrum inscription. I have mercury
but have been unable to leverage it for this – my assumption is that I need to bind with one of the rods
and make wire and use it as a catalyst. But I’ve tweaked all the rituals every way I can think of and gotten
nowhere.
But maybe it’s this:
I strongly suspect that I need to get Baros working to get over the bridge and that once I am over the bridge
I will find a ritual bound that is made of “deep stone” where I can make a flawless diamond. So I think that
this will follow the fulcrum inscription but it’s possible I am wrong and I should be focusing on how to get
past the bridge.
Or maybe I’m off base and it’s one of these:
[spoiler]I didn’t get very far playing around with my attitude toward other crewmembers but maybe I should focus on
that.
i tried everything I could think of to get past the plate glass. I don’t have enough zafranum to both make
aither-resistance potion and the glass permeability chime. Maybe I need to look harder at this problem.
But it’s probably, something that hasn’t even begun to occur to me yet.[/spoiler]
If anyone could nudge me toward which of these puzzles (if any) I should be focusing on and maybe a hint
that might help get the ball rolling again, I would appreciate it!
What have you tried in order to make the quicksilver amalgam? It might be easier than you think.
Huh. I tried so much but based on that I suspect that I started out too complicated.
But I’ve tried to pair it with pretty much every metal object in the game by tweaking any of the rituals
that seemed relevant. When basing it off perfect mud, etc didn’t work then i tried to mimic
the percalcinate stuff even though that didn’t make always make sense. I am suddenly realizing
that I don’t think i ever tried just melting it with lead or nickel. Seems crazy I never tried that.
I’ll go do that now and see what happens.
But this is perfect even if that doesn’t work, I at least know which direction I want to be heading in;
thanks!
Admittedly this might require extra out-of-game knowledge. (Spoiler-tagged due to context, but the following is out-of-game information.)
Quicksilver/mercury really likes to react with other metals. When it comes in contact with most metals, even at room temperature, it’s absorbed to form dense solids called amalgams. (Which looks really cool.) So aside from how toxic everything is, there’s no difficulty in creating an amalgam: just put quicksilver on something made of metal.