[hint request] Alice and the Wishing Tree

I’ve been trying pick a few XYZZY-eligible games to play, and this quest game caught my attention. I’m actually somewhat impresed with the implementation of the first room, but I can’t figure out what to do. I’ve read posts on the Quest site that seem to indicate that is not a one-room game.

I already found the farthing coin in the player character’s pocket.

Well, my guess is that

you have to throw the farthing into the fountain to make a wish

but after this

[spoiler]>throw farthing in water
I can’t see that. (farthing in water)

put farthing in water
Not in this game.

put farthing in fountain
Not in this game.

wish on farthing
I don’t understand your command.

wish
I don’t understand your command.

throw farthing in fountain
I can’t see that. (farthing in fountain)

throw farthing into fountain
I can’t see that. (farthing into fountain)

drop farthing
You drop it.[/spoiler]

either I’m wrong or there’s a syntax that needs guessing here. (I’ve never appreciated “I only understood you as far as…” so much!)

I’m starting to be able to say I’ve played a decent number of Quest games. A common mechanism people set up in the engine is plain ol’ ‘Use A on B’ with no specific commands as alternatives. This grammar makes more sense in a point’n’clickier context, but this particular game offers no point’n’clicking, not even for its inventory, which makes the solution just not intuitive. So the solution, as you might now have now guessed, is use farthing on fountain

  • Wade

It doesn’t work for me:

>use farthing on fountain
You can’t use it that way.

It actually appears to be

use farthing on water.

Yes.

And apparently that doesn’t work either until the water has been examined. That’s an interesting implementation; I wonder if it’s a peculiarity of Quest or if it was a concious puzzle design decision.

Thanks, guys.

Took me embarrassingly long to figure out the next action:

make wish

Darn it, I must have typed ‘water’ but then reported back ‘fountain’. And I must have already x’d the water, since it worked first time I did it.

Anyway, upshot is - don’t forget about Use A on B in general.

  • Wade