For the kiosks: you probably need to solve the eastern/right-side ones so you know the last bits of the language. For the last one there you need to notice that the direction words are slightly different than the ones on the previous kiosk and figure out where to split the sentence because some numbers are before the phrase they modify and some after. For the direction words, specifically the -n ending is east-of where the -k ending is east so they’re sort of opposite? (hopefully I haven’t got that backwards but you should be able to check).
For the mall bookstore, each book should click in when you place it, so if nothing has happened then one of them is in the wrong place. I think if you look at each colored shelf you can tell which ones? Or if you try to take the book back, maybe?
This one is a combination of all you’ve learned. I hope you kept notes on how the previous mall-area kiosks work and what the words mean.
You probably need to review what you learned earlier. Because you might have forgotten some words.
You’ll also want notes on how exactly the buttons are laid out from the previous kiosk because this one is the same layout (including which way is North)
Direct answer: The pattern is to push a specific button (e.g. green circle) then to push a relative button (e.g. the button 3 north of the red square). It took me a long time to notice the number part of this.
I’m feeling relatively confident that I’ve solved everything but the hotel; I can’t get above floor 3. Do I need anything from other areas (beyond what I’d need to get this far) or should I just be poking around the immediate area?
Don’t look at these if you don’t want 'em, but I wanted hints on the hotel several times, so…
Headers are questions (spoilery if you read too far ahead) followed by hint(s):
How do I get past the tree blocking the way to level 4?
Not directly by climbing or cutting, you have to find another way.
OK, what other way?
the elevator can be activated.
How do I get the elevator to work?
There’s a hint in the employee handbook, but you can’t go straight there, you have to solve all the other puzzles in this region first.
Another nudge?
Check out the front desk.
And the basement.
I got one locker open and there are partial clues to others but I can’t seem to deduce the full answer to any of them?
Yeah, you have to guess based on partial information: you mostly only get two pieces of information per employee and have to trial-and-error the third.
Range info: The earliest hiring year is 1989: the latest is 2000..
OK, but I still don’t know who the general manager is?
Although other employees are mentioned, only the ones on the printout matter AFAICT.
When you get down to about 6 unknown names remaining, you can pull a Sherlock Holmes on the rest.
Think about what you do know about the general manager.
Answer: Only one of the remaining employees is a woman.
Just to clarify, no guessing or trial and error is required in the hotel. The only lockers that are at all interesting have passcodes that can be deduced from the information available.
OK, can you give a concrete example of that? You keep making vague assertions that don’t match my experience at all so presumably I’m missing something (I’ve been doing that over and over with this game) but I have no idea what. I spent four or five hours combing through every noun and adjective I could find in the hotel and I didn’t find those clues for a SINGLE one of the puzzles except the tutorial one. I was consistently trying a number of years to find the right one, or all the departments.
For instance, you find the e-mail from Angela to Betty. It says “Monica is the right choice to lead the front desk, as long as Lori doesn’t mind having her for a supervisor. I know they’re good friends and we don’t want to cause any friction.” You look at the list on the printer and find that the only people with those first names are Monica French and Lori O’Neil. So you know the name and the department for their locker codes, and you know their department is the front desk. The e-mail is dated May 27, 1998, so you know they were working at the hotel in 1998.
But you don’t know when they were hired. From promotion to supervisor you’re going to guess that Monica has been working for a bit (though from my work experience, even family-run companies in the late 90s were leaning toward intentionally hiring outsiders for management). From “good friends” you might suspect that that’s supposed to be a clue that Lori has been working here for a while as well, but that’s quite a stretch: they could easily have been friends outside of work and Monica recommended Lori for the job. And I didn’t see any mentions elsewhere on the first three floors of nouns or adjectives that seemed like they could apply to either of these two, and I don’t think I ended up with any nouns or adjectives or names that were unaccounted for as being a clue for a particular person.
So I don’t see any alternative but to try the years starting at 1998 and working backwards to 1996 when they were both hired. What am I missing?
And even the ones that aren’t interesting… I don’t see any reference to “Donna” or “Greer” in any of my saved transcripts (though the game loses context if you play more than fairly briefly without saving a transcript, so I may have missed some stuff). But the single piece of information I found was that the general manager was a woman. No idea when she was hired. So AFAICS, to deduce who she is you have to rule out every single other woman on the list and then guess the years back from '98. PLUS you have to assume that only the employees on the 2000 list count (there are a couple other people who are mentioned as being employees). And you have to assume the person who was the general manager in 1998 is still working for them 2 years later. That’s very likely true, especially when she just got promoted, but I personally knew two or three people around that time who were promoted to upper management and then shortly used that as a springboard to a “better” job at another company. And your puzzles are usually pretty clear, so I wouldn’t expect you to claim that it wasn’t a guess, so presumably I’m missing something here too.
Dunno. EIther we’re using very different definitions of “guess” and “trial and error” (which seems somewhat unlikely) or I missed the final clue on 14 different puzzles even after scouring the place for clues for several hours which… maaaybe?
I deduced the exact answer for the General Manager’s locker; I can see my notes and what I had crossed off. The year was given by a note that mentioned something like ”since we expanded the executive team last year…” which was when the hiring happened. I can see you already know how to get the name from your earlier comments.
That said, I can’t subtract one correctly, so I had to bother Sarah for a hint, and she pointed out I had all the info correct, but needed remedial maths training.
Ah, nice. I hadn’t read that as necessarily hiring rather than promoting, but that’s a fair clue. And I guess you don’t have to actually solve the full locker codes for all the other women, you just have to find their departments to rule them out from being the general manager. Got it. Thanks!
Edit: aha, I see why I thought that: it comes right after the paragraph where it says they promoted one person to department manager so I assumed last year’s new general manager was also a promotion. Cleverly misleading. Nice.
So much fun in the hotel-- thanks, Sarah! I’ve unlocked the elevator, and I’ve found the evidence box, the shadow box, and Melody’s journal. Stuck on the passcode to the Observatory. I’m sure it’s somewhere in these notes and correspondence, but it continues to elude me.
A whole bunch of locations, turns out! Many thanks, I’m in now-- and now apparently I need to go visit the mosaics around the waterpark. (Or brute force it, like Fiona? Hm.)
I never figured out how to turn the water on enough to do anything with the mosaics (I think that’s how it works?) so I got it the way that just gives you the solution… I’d be curious to know how the water puzzle works: I’m sure I overlooked something I should have seen there too, but it felt like I was supposed to patch the water tower somehow? Or the pipe partway up the water slide? But I didn’t figure out how to get at either of those things.
I ended up doing it the direct solution way as well, but for the mosaics I think you can play around a bit with the levers by each of the four gates and the numbers on the outflow valve?
I still haven’t been able to get enough water for the water slide to work properly, though, so I’m with you on wondering about that.
You need to turn the input valve on and turn on the output valve a bit, then look at the pipes running around the park and fiddle with the valves to effectively run only one part of the park at a time.
That said, I never worked out the mosaics from that, I used the shortcut
OK, after staring at all the pieces for a while, including the hints and the outright solution that you get given in-character in-game, here’s my wild guess about the mosaic puzzle. This feels like a stretch and I’m not sure it all makes sense, but…
mosaic puzzle solution? probably not
The quartet of crustaceans tell you:
You may rely upon your friends to recognize that something is wrong.
You may rely upon strangers to recognize your triumphs.
You may rely upon a deceiver to offer a lie.
The path to initiation is opened by the reliable.
So maybe we categorize the animals into friends, strangers, and deceivers, and see which ones are saying that something is wrong, saying that you’re doing great, and telling a lie?
3 of the buttons are pairs of animals (sea otters, beakfish, manta rays): could those be the friends? Only one of them is saying that something is wrong.
5 of the buttons are semi-hidden animals, and have object names to match (stealthy moray eel, wily stingray, concealed perch, obscured octopus, sneaky snail): deceivers? This is where it kinda falls apart, because I feel like the perch and the octopus could both be lies?
That would leave the other 4 (dolphin sea turtle, sea star, sea urchin) to be strangers, off doing their own thing: only one of them is “recognizing your triumphs.”
Okay, I have played further. I am still stuck at a few places:
Shore: The final kiosk on the left has still stumped me. I worked out the right one with the nudge, thank you! I’ve hit the point where I would really like an explicit answer.
Waterpark: The barrier wall puzzle with the sea creatures. I have tried puzzling it out, but, as I think everyone has said, there’s not a ton of logic to it. (Also, brute force is wildly annoying because the description of the buttons doesn’t include whether or not they are depressed. AFAICT, the only way to know if a button has snapped back out is to press it again.) I’ve gone through and tried to flag creatures that are friends, etc., but I’m clearly wrong on at least one of them if not several. Apparently there’s a solution in-game? Would someone be able to give me a nudge to find that?
Mall: What is the reward for the bookshelf puzzle? I seem to have solved it (none of the books are takable), but if it triggered something, I missed it.
Nudging along the left (final) kiosk, here’s what the buttons do:
1 reverse (can be used twice)
2 i soti ra_lba ya t
3 y → l
4 an_ayarg fir pihG
5 if ya_gro
6 ya → li
7 gh_un tef dip
8 ef ayeb fe_y kehs
The language is the same language you used to solve the right-side kiosks; there are no new words. If a word or phrase looks sus, you either need to reverse it, replace the ya or y, or add more language. The trick is to figure out how to build the sentence from the inside out, replacing and reversing (and re-reversing) as you go.
When you get done, the result will be (BIG SPOILER): Ghip rif gralashek li soti rif lighak li dun tef dipa grolba li tef bela fena.
