(End(?) game spoilers ahead!)
I’m having trouble in the regions of the eternal night. Specifically, I can’t see my compass. I checked the hints, which say I need to put goo on the compass, but it’s been a few weeks since I last played and while the existence of some glowing goo sounds familiar, if I have come across this I can’t remember where it is… the word “goo” doesn’t appear in my transcripts anywhere, and “glow” doesn’t bring up anything relevant either. Where do I go to find this?
Hi! Thanks so much for for playing! As soon as you cross the troll bridge, there is a small pool ringed by phosphorescent slime. You should be able to put slime on needle and be good to go! Enjoy!
Thanks for bringing this to my attention @vegetablegarden … I’ve changed the wording in the hint file from “goo” to “slime” as that is the word used in the description, and added a parenthetical clause there reminding the player where the phosphorescent pool is found.
Also, kudos for reaching the endgame!!
Ah, so not an issue of it being somewhere I’ve forgotten, but rather my inability to read the description right in front of my face. I should know better than that at this point in the game… I also tried searching my transcripts for synonyms but somehow couldn’t think of either the words “slime” and “phosphorescent.” (Both were sitting somewhere just out of reach in my mind, probably because I was apparently staring directly at them!) Thanks for the help.
Part of the reason I was so confused is that my first thought when the game told me I couldn’t see the compass was to go back to the hall and get a candle. It took me several additional failed attempts to follow the directions and the game telling me “You don’t see any reason to leave the candle burning when there’s sufficient light to see, so you snuff it out to conserve it for future use” (while I was standing in the region of eternal darkness where I had just been informed that there was not, in fact, enough light to see) to realize that the candle was not a recognized solution to the light problem. May I suggest 1) either making the candle a solution or implementing some reason why a candle cannot be used in this region, and 2) telling you that it’s too dark to see the direction when you examine the compass (as after the initial message, there didn’t seem to be a way to check whether or not the darkness was still an issue)? (Edit: or just mentioning it every time you try to travel in a direction in that region while being unable to see the compass, to remind the player that their directions might not be working as intended.)
Hey! I appreciate the response. I’m writing this before going back to my code to check things out, so I’ll tell you how I “meant” for it to go.
Trying to use the candle to get past the troll’s house and onto the bridge fails because there is always misty wind there snuffing it out. Trying to use the candle to navigate the Regions fails because even a fresh candle would burn up completely before reaching the end (and, well, you can never take more than one away from Forthlong). Thus, you ought to be able to start traversing the Night with the candle, but you would always end up in the dark without being able to find your way to the destination when it burns out, and the phosphorescence is the only solution. I believe I coded a message/end-game scenario for trying to cross the Regions with the candle, and having it burn out.
However, if you are getting the automatic-snuff-the-candle-to-conserve message while in the Regions, then that is a bug or oversight on my part, and I appreciate the notice so that I can change the behavior.
Hope you enjoy the ending, cheers!
John
Reading back through my transcript I see that it does actually tell you when you cannot see your compass while travelling. I must have missed that when skimming through the room descriptions (I got a bit impatient after trying several times to make it through). Sorry for the redundant suggestion.
I indeed never got to the end-game scenario where the candle burns out. I got two other end-game scenarios while following the correct directions with the candle still lit every time I moved, however:
It was only a matter of time. Unless you had known yourself to be following
the one and only path that would lead to the Mystic Vale, you could not hope to
wander the Regions forever without a fatal encounter with the Creatures of the
Night. The foe that springs out upon you is like nothing you have ever heard
of or imagined before; its tortured form defies description. The terror of the
creature itself is as great as the horror of being destroyed by it.
*** You're not in Dwindeldorn any more ***
In spite of your cautions, the way is fraught with perils. Before you know what is happening, you have sunk into a pool of quicksand, surrounded by the overhanging limbs of evil-looking trees. But before your head goes under, your hand finds a root – or a vine... it doesn't matter – and you are able to save yourself from death. Not, however, before Quisborne sees you go down to your apparent doom.
Yelling "I'll save you, sir!!...", he casts himself madly after you, succeeding only in embroiling himself in an even worse predicament than you are in. You cannot possibly save him by letting go of the root – your only hope for him is to save yourself first. Pulling yourself out with infinite labor, you immediately turn back for the lad. But it is too late: the lad is gone.
*** Quisborne did not make it ***
The “Unless you had known yourself to be following the one and only path that would lead to the Mystic Vale" part of the first message is what originally led me to believe that the presence of a candle had not been accounted for as a potential solution.
Hopefully this is somewhat helpful in tracking down the bug… I can provide larger excerpts of my transcript if you need it.
I did enjoy the ending, by the way! Thank you very much for writing such a wonderful game overall.
You’re most welcome 
Just to follow up: having looked at the code, I see that when you first travel into the Regions away from the Rift (sans slime), it posts a message saying that your candle will not last the whole way, and halts the travel. If you try again, however (still sans slime), you will be allowed to proceed but will inevitably die even with the candle; the problem is that I failed to post a message before the death scene saying “your candle has burned up and that’s why you are now lost”, so that a player having missed or forgotten about the earlier candle warning, may think they are on the correct path with adequate light and wonder why they are repeatedly killed for following the directions.
One final thanks for bringing this to light, and apologies if the omission occasioned you some annoyance; I will certainly preamble the death scenes in that context with a notice that your candle has expired and that’s why you’re forced to lose your way; also I’ve already added the bit that will prevent the auto-candle-snuff mechanism from happening when you’re in the Regions of Eternal Night.
Good luck Peter!
Hm, I’m double-checking my transcript again and I don’t see the initial warning that the candle won’t last. The first time I started into the regions, I did not have any light at all, so the warning was related to that, and I immediately gave up to get the candle. Could receiving that warning message have prevented the subsequent updated warning message from appearing?
No need for apologies by the way. I only continue to press the issue in hopes of being helpful to you in squashing the bug. Speaking of which, there were a few other minor issues I ran into as I played:
The command rub knife on needle (my first thought when I learned I needed a compass, hoping the knife might be magnetized) produced no output at all. (This was when holding the sharpened butter knife.)
In Behind the ship-tavern, the command cut ferns produced an error message and file.
pqerror1.txt (4.4 KB)
This is extremely minor, but the command search flagstones in the temple resulted in the flagstones is too far away, instead of the flagstones are too far away.
In the troll’s room, the command take candles from stand produced an error message and file.
pqerror1_takecandle.txt (5.1 KB)
Again, these are all quite minor, and unlikely to affect anybody’s enjoyment of the game very much (if at all), but I noted them down when I saw them in case reporting them would be helpful in any way.
Aha, yes, thank you! I realize now that it only mentions the candle as being insufficient if you have a candle with you, so in your case, getting the warning, then going to get a candle and returning, results in inevitably dying without an explanation of what’s going wrong. Rats, very sorry! It shall be appropriately addressed.
Have not gone back to the code again, but thank you very much for including the other bug reports. I love trying to fix every slightest foible, including “the stones is not important”.
I appreciate all the follow-up!
Well, it took awhile, since I was finishing up some other things, but a new version (2.14) of Prince Quisborne has been pushed to GitHub (and thus IFDB). @vegetablegarden, tweaks based on your reports include the following:
-Flagstones as seen from top of pillar corrected use of is/are in messages
-Fixed empty response for RUB KNIFE ON [anything not a sharpening source]
-Added specific response for RUB KNIFE ON NEEDLE, hinting that it isn’t sufficient for magnetizing.
-Fixed the odd error caused by CUT FERNS (seems to have been due to the fact that a MultiLoc/Distant was present in the Room and tripped up the parser when the parser was cycling through objects to find what was meant for the cutting tool)
-Fixed the odd error caused by TAKE CANDLES FROM STAND in troll room. (Bizarre sequence: you must have tied the vines to the shore trees, then chopped the trees down, which erroneously made the vines disappear with the trees. Then when you cut new vines, the code object is the same as the “old” vines and was (erroneously) still marked as being tied to the trees. Because “take candles from stand” wasn’t handled by the vocabulary, the parser cycled through objects again trying to find out what was meant and when it evaluated the vines an error happened because they were located in something that had been annihilated.)
-Added a response for TAKE CANDLES FROM STAND to the effect that the troll’s body language discourages you from trying to make off with the candles
-Vines also are now automatically untied from the shore trees if the trees are getting chopped
-The candle will not auto-snuff when you are in the Regions of Eternal Night
-If you try to venture into the Regions without a phosphorescent needle, the warning message will appear regardless of whether you have a candle or not, saying that a candle would be futile because it would burn out long before the journey ended, and the wind is too forceful to keep it alight.
-If you do enter the Regions with a lit candle, you can proceed on the correct path without getting lost for awhile, but the candle will inevitably burn out after three journey legs. A message prints stating that the candle is gone, and that you will be hopelessly lost without being able to see the needle. A death scene is guaranteed to happen within a couple turns of losing your way.
-If the player has been to the Regions, but goes back to Forthlong Hall to try to knock down multiple candles, they will be discouraged with the reminder that it is too windy there to keep a candle alight, but hints that there is another means of illumination available near to the place of need.
Plus a small list of minor changes I found on my own. Thanks again @vegetablegarden for pointing out the quirks you found!