This is not my beautiful house! - Talking about The Blue Prince

[lincolnic]

Spoiler: Not sure if this is actually a spoiler or if we're just dumb, but post-credits talk within

So on a whim tonight we decided to go back into Room 46. I had assumed it would just roll the credits again, but no, there's hints to the post-game puzzle in there. picardfacepalm.jpg

And also a new item! Which we did not get to try, because we'd already explored the rest of the house before we went back in case it was going to end the run.

We did this on one of our last play days. Was a bit frustrated because it didn't seem to do anything, we couldn't get anywhere new. Looked it up later and it seems like you don't want to fully drain it the first time but have to do it in bits and access different areas at different drainage levels?

Genuine question: did you not want to investigate the trunks at the bottom?

In any case, you can definitely do all the reservoir water level stuff in one run (we did), but it definitely helps if you start the run already intending to do it so you can manage your steps and whatnot. (There was another thing we did that helped specifically in that regard, but it's a spoiler for something I don't think you've done, so I won't go farther into details unless you want to know!)

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I am done with this game. I enjoy solving the puzzles and seeing how different rooms interact. The severe RNG is just too much. I wish there was an Easy Mode that gave you more control over the rooms you draft, but this game oddly has no difficulty modifiers that I could find. I hate giving up on a game I mostly like.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Wait, how did you roll the credits without doing this? You can't access the lever that opens Room 46 without it.

Not so! To date I have found two separate ways to access the underground:

-Using the aforementioned POWER HAMMER to smash down a wall outside the manor
-Through the Tomb

To do that thing you mentioned, first I went down through the Tomb and moved the mine cart. Then, by going in through the POWER HAMMER hole, I was able to access the mechanism to spin the gear platform, as well as the side passage that the mine cart normally blocks. Doing that, I was able to open the north door of the Antechamber, which is something I did before ever making it inside the actual chamber itself (that happened on my next run).

Speaking of the fabled POWER HAMMER, I'm starting to realize how lucky I got on the run where I was able to put it together. It seems like it's hard to even draft the workshop in the first place, and the fact that I just happened to have all the ingredients on me to build it was pure luck, since I had no idea what I was trying to make or what the recipe was. That I did this with almost no steps left and yet still managed to find the wall that needed breaking before running out was honestly almost TOO lucky.

 

[Nodal]

Not so! To date I have found two separate ways to access the underground:

-Using the aforementioned POWER HAMMER to smash down a wall outside the manor
-Through the Tomb

To do that thing you mentioned, first I went down through the Tomb and moved the mine cart. Then, by going in through the POWER HAMMER hole, I was able to access the mechanism to spin the gear platform, as well as the side passage that the mine cart normally blocks. Doing that, I was able to open the north door of the Antechamber, which is something I did before ever making it inside the actual chamber itself (that happened on my next run).

Speaking of the fabled POWER HAMMER, I'm starting to realize how lucky I got on the run where I was able to put it together. It seems like it's hard to even draft the workshop in the first place, and the fact that I just happened to have all the ingredients on me to build it was pure luck, since I had no idea what I was trying to make or what the recipe was. That I did this with almost no steps left and yet still managed to find the wall that needed breaking before running out was honestly almost TOO lucky.

I have spent a lot of time with it

Spoiler

in the coat check.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

That's definitely a good idea, but not one that I could achieve on the run where I actually had it in my possession.

 

[Mogri]

Re: RNG complaints

For any RNG-reliant task on the critical path to beating the game (and for several that aren't), there are several ways to accomplish that task. There are certainly plenty of inessential tasks that require a lot of luck, and that means you'll have extreme difficulty reaching 100% completion. On the other hand, there's so much to do in this game that you can reach for several of the long-odds objectives in any given run.

The thing it took me longest to do, from knowing what to do to pulling it off, was the Laboratory lever puzzle. I'm annoyed by how few power sources are in the pool. It's a problem that can be mitigated by upgrade disks, but you have to get lucky twice: once to get an upgrade disk, and again to get the opportunity for the right upgrade. In general, though, I find that the game has ways to mitigate just about every problem you run into.

You do have to learn to live with some days just ending abruptly on rank 2 or 3, but it's not as though you're on a timer.

 

[Adam]

Yeah, last night I had a pretty small house that was mostly classrooms and then followed that up with a hail Mary day (wasn't trying for anything specific, just more informed drafting) that solved at least 2 lingering threads and scored me a puzzle and solution I wasn't even aware of. I'm well past a lot of what I've seen in spoilers here and I still have 5-6 threads I'm following.

 

[lincolnic]

Not so!

Yeah, you're totally right - I've done both of the things in your spoiler text, but in our credits run we got to the Antechamber and got the Basement Key before we even knew that the POWER HAMMER existed, so my brain said "obviously you can't get to the north lever without the Basement Key". We didn't open up the POWER HAMMER shortcut until much later! But it's been unbelievably useful for traversing the grounds to solve other puzzles; I'd consider it essential at this point. Apologies if I inadvertently spoiled Basement Key stuff for you.

I'm annoyed by how few power sources are in the pool. It's a problem that can be mitigated by upgrade disks, but you have to get lucky twice: once to get an upgrade disk, and again to get the opportunity for the right upgrade. In general, though, I find that the game has ways to mitigate just about every problem you run into.

There's an easier way to mitigate this as well, but the game only tells you about it in one of the Drafting Strategies books: if you open a door that's coming from a powered source (e.g. if the boiler is directing steam at that door), you're more likely to draw rooms that also have ducts to carry power. There aren't too many rooms with ducts, so with some careful drafting you can tilt the odds a bit more in your favor. Having said that, it also took us a little while to line this up.

We're running out of loose ends in our playthrough! Which is exciting on one hand, but also makes it tougher to make more progress as hints and clues start to dry up. What we have left (not asking for hints, and I will be extra careful to use spoiler text within this):

Spoiler: Very late post-game spoilers within, including some particular room talk; most of this just is to help myself keep track

-The Chamber of Mirrors. We know what we need to do in here, just haven't been in a position to actually do it.
-Eight Classrooms. We haven't been able to get more than three in a run so far.
-The note in Clara's tomb written in another language. Absolutely no idea how to translate this or what it relates to.
-The drawing you find in the Safehouse of a cracked wall between two pillars. This one is extra frustrating because I'm positive in an earlier run we actually saw wherever this is, and I thought "huh, that's interesting", but for whatever reason didn't make any note of it or say anything out loud to my girlfriend. So of course we haven't been able to find it again.
-The Gallery. We've read the Puzzle description in the glossary of terms from the network terminals, so we know it has something to do with the Parlor, Billiard Room, and whatever Room 8 is, but I still feel like we're missing some key information. Speaking of which...
-Where/what the hell is Room 8? It's the only room missing from our Directory and at this point it's pretty clear that there's some special condition to find it.
-We've opened safes in the Office, Boudoir, Drafting Room, Study, and Shelter, and found a sixth letter in the hidden room right by the Inner Sanctum. Absolutely no idea where the other two letters are, but going by the "eight dates crack eight safes" message in the room art puzzle, there's still one more thing we need to unlock with a date. (The Orchard and the thing I mentioned in the previous spoiler are "small gates", so we've unlocked seven total.) Not sure if it's another safe or another small gate either. The fortune teller in the Rumpus Room said that there's one letter we wouldn't be able to find, but Sinclair's letter frozen in the cooler specifically says he left eight of them.
-Regarding what opens up with after getting the fourth permanent upgrade: we've accessed the Blackbridge Terminal, but it seems like we still need to figure out Sinclair's login, or at least another way to gain archive access. Still no idea what the sticky note on the opposite side of the room is about either.
-Talking about that same room: the friggin' microchips. Earlier tonight we successfully (spoiler warning: talking about a specific book) decoded the message in A New Clue, which led us to another microchip pedestal?? My gut feeling is that there are two more sundials hiding somewhere that might have the other microchips in them, possibly in Green Rooms, but the only ones didn't get to check yet are the Secret Garden and Veranda, possibly the Terrace. I don't think there's anything in the Veranda or Terrace though.
-Sanctum Keys: we've found five and I'm pretty sure another is in a safe deposit box we have yet to open, which is actually a little frustrating RNG-wise. I'm not sure if there's a consistent way to find that item. I do know that we could theoretically trade for it in the Trading Post, or possibly dig it up, but those are both heavily dependent on RNG. No ideas yet about the rest.
-Continuing on to what those keys unlocked: we've solved two Realm Sigils and found partial information for a third, but so far it's seemed very hard to find hints/info for them in general. I know The History of Orindia will have some useful information within, but we need to go back over the text (we took pictures, at least!).

Coming out of the spoiler pop to ask a specific question that I actually do want to know the answer to, if anyone knows. It's something we solved accidentally and aren't sure how. This is about a specific room involved in the post-game search for Sanctum Keys: how do you actually unlock the room with the puzzle in the Clock Tower? We were messing around at the top of the Tower, I paused the game briefly to look at something, and when I unpaused it suddenly showed the cutscene of the secret door opening up. I've tried pausing and unpausing in there again, but that hasn't reopened the room. Luckily we solved the puzzle in there the first time, it's just bugging me that I don't know how we accessed it in the first place.

 

[Nodal]

Coming out of the spoiler pop to ask a specific question that I actually do want to know the answer to, if anyone knows. It's something we solved accidentally and aren't sure how. This is about a specific room involved in the post-game search for Sanctum Keys: how do you actually unlock the room with the puzzle in the Clock Tower? We were messing around at the top of the Tower, I paused the game briefly to look at something, and when I unpaused it suddenly showed the cutscene of the secret door opening up. I've tried pausing and unpausing in there again, but that hasn't reopened the room. Luckily we solved the puzzle in there the first time, it's just bugging me that I don't know how we accessed it in the first place.

Spoiler: Room Title

Spoiler: Clock Tower

It's the time of day. Notice one of the clocks is stopped at a specific time.

 

[Mogri]

The Gallery is a standalone puzzle; you don't need anything from anywhere else. Solving it
unlocks room 8; solving room 8 just awards extra allowance IIRC.

 

[lincolnic]

Spoiler: Room Title

Spoiler: Clock Tower

It's the time of day. Notice one of the clocks is stopped at a specific time.

I figured it was something like this, but I'm positive that when we were in there it was already at least a couple of hours after the time on the stopped clock. And further visits have also been after said time. I guess it's possible that we just got lucky without realizing it.

The Gallery is a standalone puzzle; you don't need anything from anywhere else.

Thanks, but I did say I wasn't asking for hints.

 

[Mogri]

Ah, sorry

If it's any consolation, the puzzle is kind of awful, and knowing this doesn't actually help you much.

 

[Nodal]

I figured it was something like this, but I'm positive that when we were in there it was already at least a couple of hours after the time on the stopped clock. And further visits have also been after said time. I guess it's possible that we just got lucky without realizing it.


Thanks, but I did say I wasn't asking for hints.

Ah, sorry

If it's any consolation, the puzzle is kind of awful, and knowing this doesn't actually help you much.

It's truly bad.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I did not give up. Good thing, because I made some major progress.

Spoiler: Important Question

I opened up the Moon Door in the Antechamber, despite my having not been able to enter said room so far. Does this door stay open, or do I have to do whole Underground rotating room thing every time I want to get to the Antechamber?

 

[lincolnic]

I did not give up. Good thing, because I made some major progress.

Spoiler: Important Question

I opened up the Moon Door in the Antechamber, despite my having not been able to enter said room so far. Does this door stay open, or do I have to do whole Underground rotating room thing every time I want to get to the Antechamber?

The door will close between runs, but the rotating gears will stay in the position where you leave them.

I'm glad you've stuck with the game, though, and I hope you're having more fun!

Ah, sorry

If it's any consolation, the puzzle is kind of awful, and knowing this doesn't actually help you much.

No harm done, it's cool. We spent a bit more time banging our heads against this one tonight and I think we're on the road to solving it, but we're still stumped. It's good to know that other folks think this puzzle is rough too -- it really feels like it's completely different from every other style of puzzle in the game and it doesn't give you any feedback if you're doing things correctly or not. I'm at the point where I personally would like a gentle hint, but my girlfriend isn't ready for one yet, so I've got to defer to her for now.

Spoiler: Our thoughts/progress in this room so far

-Five letter painting: it's either showing us pairs or opposites - thick and thin, dark and light, lock and key, etc. We put in PAIRS for now.
-Six letter painting: all of the things it's showing -- apples, roses, wagons, fire hydrants, stop signs -- are red, and the image is also mirrored. No idea what the singular P is supposed to mean. I looked up shades of red and found CERISE and CUNARD, both of which are possible to input, but seem pretty esoteric.
-Seven letter painting: this one seems clearest of all of them. Genuine, veritable, eyes on the ground, actual, objective, light -- all things pointing towards truth or something being real. We put in REALITY, mostly because we couldn't come up with anything else that worked.
-Eight letter painting: we're pretty lost with this one. I noticed that there are a lot of words depicted that contain "in" -- sins, bins, pins, fin, infinity -- but we can't come up with a potential title based on that information. As a placeholder, we put in NUMERALS. No idea if the fact that it says "hubris" and "avarice" instead of "pride" and "greed" is meaningful.

Tonight we also ran into the first thing in the game that made me go "that's bullshit" (related to a specific trophy): if you manage to buy out everything in the Showroom, the game doesn't just give you the trophy. You have to buy the fucking thing and it costs another 100 gold! That was an annoying discovery, especially because we spent all our gold with the expectation that it would get us the trophy.

 

[lincolnic]

Just solved another loose end that I'd forgotten to put on my list, relating to a specific item (the Treasure Map): we were stumped on most of the Baron Bafflers for a while, but over breakfast quickly figured the rest out. Seems like this is maybe a red herring though? I can't see how it relates to anything else we've seen.

 

[JBear]

We just finally got around to this recently and we're absolutely loving it. Like, I am super jazzed about this game. I have a Google spreadsheet with two dozen tabs, it's the last thing I think about when I go to bed, and I've had a dream about it. Also, I think we're kind of kicking its ass? It just feels like we solve a bunch of new puzzles every day. After 5 days, we've unlocked (all?) 4 permanent exterior upgrades, and we just managed to get into the antechamber and then the basement at the end of the day. I don't know if we've just been lucky or what.

 

[jpfriction]

When I first started playing I thought to myself “Jbear is going to beat this in 6 game days”. Don’t disappoint me!

 

[R.R. Bigman]

Spoiler: Deep Puzzle Times

I was poking around the Underground after painting myself into yet another architectural corner, when I found a padlock that had letters and a single number. I looked through all my notes to no avail and decided to leave. On the way out I had a genuine Jimmy Neutron Brain Blast moment and deduced the combination must be a calendar date based on the lone number. It worked, which netted me a Blackprint(?), and the realization that every lock I’ve opened so far has been a date. Even the time lock safe that I had spoiled for me has a date and time as the answer, just one you set yourself. Am I on to something here? Big if true.

 

[lincolnic]

Am I on to something here?

Do you want an answer, or was that rhetorical?

In my game, we solved the Gallery tonight! Mogri and Nodal were right, this puzzle felt bad and dumb, but we're glad (relieved?) to be done with it. Though the thing that led to us breaking through was actually kind of funny:

Spoiler: This story involves other post-game spoilers

We were actually trying to take the final exam after drafting all the necessary Classrooms, and I noticed a question along the lines of "Which piece of art isn't represented in the Entrance Hall?" One of the options was "Realize", and seeing that made me go "Oh shit, that's the answer to the painting we thought was "Reality". We didn't manage to finish the exam in time, but in our next run we got a Gallery very early, and saw that my realization was correct. From there we went back to the six letter word and pretty quickly figured out we had to mirror red for its ending, which made the beginning fell into place pretty easily. At that point we knew what the theme was and got the five letter painting more or less immediately (and both felt pretty dumb at how obvious it was in hindsight), and then the last one only had one logical answer. I'm not sure how you're supposed to get RUMINATE just from looking at the painting, though.

After that, the Room 8 puzzle was a breeze, and we even had the foresight to not use the key until rank 8 to get the associated trophy! Is there any reason to do this puzzle more than once? Does anything replace the allowance tokens after the first time?

Spoiler: More house directory musings

That was the final room missing from our directory, so I thought it would give us that trophy as well, but it didn't. We noticed our Found Floorplans section only has six rooms though, and the other non-numbered rooms all have eight, so I guess there are somehow still two rooms we have yet to add to the pool.

Also, yesterday we discovered one delightful thing: if you draft the Boudoir on Day 49, it turns out that's Christmas. The room is decorated with a tree and presents like in the photograph, and you get a bunch of keys, gems, and ivory dice. I wonder if you get anything somewhere for New Year's Eve/Day, but I guess we'll find that out soon enough.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

Do you want an answer, or was that rhetorical? to

I wouldn’t hate an answer.

Spoiler: Troubles

I know now how to open three of the Antechamber doors, including the one to Room 46. I am still having immense trouble getting the Secret Garden Key to spawn, which I need for one of the levers. The Grand Hall is a bit more reliable, but I don’t always have enough keys to find the lever, or a Metal Detector for when it’s next to coins or a key. It’s very frustrating now that I know more or less exactly what I need to do, but the RNG is still giving me baskets full of lemons and not a pinch of sugar.

It would be cool as heck if I could find the key to the Foundation sub-floor so I could use the shortcut to the Underground Warehouse. I assume that would work, anyway.

 

[lincolnic]

I wouldn’t hate an answer.

You are onto something there.

Troubles

Couple of things that may help you, if you want them: for the Great Hall, try and draft a Foyer first if you're low on keys. As far as the Secret Garden Key, there are a few places you're more likely to find it - the Billiard Room, the Locksmith, the Music Room, dig spots (pretty likely to be in Green Rooms), I've also seen it in the Patio (though this may have been after drafting the Veranda first).

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I got to Room 46, found the red key I’ve been been looking for, then had it taken away after the credits. Mental, as the British say.

I got credits, in addition to solving a lot of puzzles that are probably for hardcore post-game stuff, so I got my money’s worth.

I assume I have to get to Room 46 every time I want the Basement Key, eh?? That’s a bit much for me. I have yet to find a logical reason for why you can’t retain items you pick up each day. Does someone take them from you while you sleep, or do you simply obey the rules, as you are an upstanding English lad?

 

[lincolnic]

I assume I have to get to Room 46 every time I want the Basement Key, eh??

Assuming this was not a rhetorical question: yes, but no one said you'll need to use the Basement Key more than once. I think you did a sequence break to get to the north lever the first time - the note alongside the Basement Key effectively tells you the intended order.

We've knocked off quite a few things from the long list of loose ends I posted about the other day, but unfortunately we're still stuck on some of the bigger puzzles we have left. Again, I'm not asking for hints, but here's the updated version to help myself keep track:

Spoiler: Big post-game spoilers within, while also being very conservative with inline spoilers

-The Chamber of Mirrors. We know what we need to do in here, just haven't been in a position to actually do it.

Did this, didn't give us any meaningful progress.

-Eight Classrooms. We haven't been able to get more than three in a run so far.

Done, and we aced the Final Exam.

-The note in Clara's tomb written in another language. Absolutely no idea how to translate this or what it relates to.

Figured out how to translate this thanks to one of the Classrooms, haven't actually sat down to do it yet.

-The drawing you find in the Safehouse of a cracked wall between two pillars. This one is extra frustrating because I'm positive in an earlier run we actually saw wherever this is, and I thought "huh, that's interesting", but for whatever reason didn't make any note of it or say anything out loud to my girlfriend. So of course we haven't been able to find it again.

Remembered where this was and did the obvious thing of breaking it open with the Power Hammer, only to once again be completely baffled about what we found.

-The Gallery. We've read the Puzzle description in the glossary of terms from the network terminals, so we know it has something to do with the Parlor, Billiard Room, and whatever Room 8 is, but I still feel like we're missing some key information. Speaking of which...
-Where/what the hell is Room 8? It's the only room missing from our Directory and at this point it's pretty clear that there's some special condition to find it.

Done and done.

-We've opened safes in the Office, Boudoir, Drafting Room, Study, and Shelter, and found a sixth letter in the hidden room right by the Inner Sanctum. Absolutely no idea where the other two letters are, but going by the "eight dates crack eight safes" message in the room art puzzle, there's still one more thing we need to unlock with a date. (The Orchard and the thing I mentioned in the previous spoiler are "small gates", so we've unlocked seven total.) Not sure if it's another safe or another small gate either. The fortune teller in the Rumpus Room said that there's one letter we wouldn't be able to find, but Sinclair's letter frozen in the cooler specifically says he left eight of them.

No progress on this front.

-Regarding what opens up with after getting the fourth permanent upgrade: we've accessed the Blackbridge Terminal, but it seems like we still need to figure out Sinclair's login, or at least another way to gain archive access. Still no idea what the sticky note on the opposite side of the room is about either.
-Talking about that same room: the friggin' microchips. Earlier tonight we successfully (spoiler warning: talking about a specific book) decoded the message in A New Clue, which led us to another microchip pedestal?? My gut feeling is that there are two more sundials hiding somewhere that might have the other microchips in them, possibly in Green Rooms, but the only ones didn't get to check yet are the Secret Garden and Veranda, possibly the Terrace. I don't think there's anything in the Veranda or Terrace though.

No progress for either of these. The microchips are especially frustrating to us, since we haven't seen any kind of clue to point us in the right direction.

-Sanctum Keys: we've found five and I'm pretty sure another is in a safe deposit box we have yet to open, which is actually a little frustrating RNG-wise. I'm not sure if there's a consistent way to find that item. I do know that we could theoretically trade for it in the Trading Post, or possibly dig it up, but those are both heavily dependent on RNG. No ideas yet about the rest.

Still haven't seen the safe deposit key again, but we picked the Trading Post to start our next run, so I'm hoping it'll line up this time. No ideas about "a king on his throne", just had an inkling that "the last door of eight" might refer to the Mechanarium. Seems like it'll be very hard to draft eight mechanical rooms, though. Might have to get lucky and start with a Gear Wrench from the Toolshed.

-Continuing on to what those keys unlocked: we've solved two Realm Sigils and found partial information for a third, but so far it's seemed very hard to find hints/info for them in general. I know The History of Orindia will have some useful information within, but we need to go back over the text (we took pictures, at least!).

We've now solved four of the five Realm Sigils available to us, and don't think we have enough info for the fifth yet. The Geography Classroom and some of the plate fragments and stamps we've seen along the way were invaluable for this.

Spoiler: And a couple of new baffling things we've found, for good measure

-The aforementioned word puzzle (?) behind the cracked wall in the chess puzzle room.
-A note in the Lost and Found that says investors needed underneath a diagram that looks like a cross between a circuit schematic and an aerial view of the driveway/fountain/front of the house.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Folks, I have no idea how you're supposed to talk about a game that's this big, non-linear and spoilery. But if anyone wants to know how I'm doing, I'm gonna put it down here, if only to help me organize my thoughts. Right now I'm at day 25 or so, although 4-5 of those days were played by my son, who isn't much for solving the bigger puzzles in the game. Still, he accrues resources and upgrades, so he's contributing in his own way.

Spoiler: Progress to date

- Opened the west gate and got access to the outside room
- Opened up the orchard/gem mine/server room/outside room
- Added about 5 new rooms to my drafting pool/upgraded something like 10 rooms
- Upped my allowance to around 50 (!)
- Built the POWER HAMMER and used it in four places (the hidden basement entrance, secret garden, greenhouse, weight room)
- Found the secret basement entrance in the Tomb and by draining the fountain
- Opened up room 46 and saw the credits
- Went back to room 46 and got a major hint about finding the sanctum keys
- Opened up two safes (boudoir and shelter) and one gate (gear room)
- Opened five sanctum doors, solved two sigil puzzles
- Shut off four gas lines and activated the elevator
- Built the lighter, lit the torches in the tunnel and got the Tunnel (capital T) blueprint
- Used the lighter to open the torch room stairway
- Completed a run with a full map (45 rooms)
- Placed the foundation (at rank 8)
- Finally logged into the goddamn network (stupid UI)
- Found the sanctum keys in the clock tower, reservoir chests, music room and safe room
- Powered up the laboratory and opened the server room (plus guessed a few of the access keys)
- Lit the dynamite in the trading post, got a bunch of money
- Opened 3 safe deposit boxes in the vault
- Bought a number of new books/the lunch pail/the swim trunks (har dee har)
- Solved the chess puzzle, chose the pawn as my reward

Spoiler: Mysteries to pursue

- Find the remaining 4 red letters (office safe, drafting room safe, ???)
- Find the remaining 3 sanctum keys (two of which are presumably in the vault and mechanarium)
- This means collecting vault keys and mechanical rooms
- Solve the three rune puzzles that I currently have available
- Place 8 classrooms on the map at once
- Buy and read the remaining books in the bookshop
- Access the deleted logs in the server room
- Find another microchip to unlock the server room door
- Power the garage (there seems to be a power conduit leading outside?)
- Try to light every candle I can find (burning glass currently in the coat check)
- Check out the closed exhibit room that I recently added to my drafting pool
- Try to place 20 dead-ends in a single map
- Find a way to unlock the other two gates on the grounds
- Solve the gallery puzzle
- Solve the 8 realms map in room 46
- Find the rest of the sheet music and decode the phrase
- Rebuild the POWER HAMMER and smash down the wall in the greenhouse/weight room
- Figure out how to get the basement elevator to work
- Build a lab next to the power generator and run the lever experiment
- Read the book on runes
- Figure out some way to access the rowboat (just need to adjust the reservoir water level now!)
- Find a way to open the sealed doors to the east on the grounds
- Find the last gas shutoff to light the fourth lamp
- Get access to the network (I have the password but it doesn't seem to work?)
- Light the dynamite in the trading post
- Adjust the reservoir water level and explore the side tunnel
- Solve the chess board puzzle
- Decode the phrase made with the double illustrations in each room

 

[lincolnic]

Spoiler: Talking about stuff unlocked after the fourth permanent upgrade

We had a bit of a breakthrough with the terminal in Blackbridge Grotto. My girlfriend had the very smart idea of trying the name on the still-valid fake passport we found in the third safe deposit box, which gave us access to the uncensored data logs and a cryptic hint about the third delisted admin key, but we're still no closer to figuring out what that is. Until now I was expecting that to give us full archive access and the ability to reconnect to external networks, but judging by what the message from your mom (lol) said it may just be hints to another puzzle? I feel like we're close to cracking this one, but either we don't know what we're looking for yet or we've been overlooking it.

 

[lincolnic]

Made some nice progress tonight.

Spoiler: Same spoiler warnings as my previous posts

Found two of the Sanctum Keys we've spent the past few days hunting for. I was right about the Mechanarium, which made me feel very smart, and we made it happen in an extremely absurd way. After multiple runs where we were checking the Gear Wrench in and out of the Coat Check, and either ending up with all seven mechanical rooms and no Mechanarium or seeing the Mechanarium too early, we took a Shrine as our Outer Room for fun and ended up with Blessing of the Gardener (puts eight Courtyards into your pool). We said "Okay, this probably isn't the Mechanarium run then," but after a few Courtyards the Coat Check popped up. "Well, why not," we said, and took the Wrench again. We found a Utility Closet and then a Laboratory, and the Lab gave us the experiment option of adding three Aquariums to our draft pool every time we dug up trash. Now, we'd previously upgraded our Courtyards to have five digging spots, and upgraded our Aquariums to be power sources (and therefore mechanical rooms). So with a billion places to dig thanks to all the Courtyards, I said "let's dig up two pieces of trash, add six Aquariums to our pool, and then stop digging". Naturally, we ended up doing exactly that within the next two rooms. The Aquariums fell into place, we found a Silver Key, and with a couple of well-timed rerolls we managed to spawn a Mechanarium.

Then, in our very next run, after failing to find the last Safe Deposit Box Key for days, a Music Room popped up and I said "I want to see if it can spawn in there." And, of course, it did. I knew the Vault was already in the pool because we'd already seen (but didn't take) it, so we just had to get a little lucky farther in the house. I'm relieved to have that one done, it really just felt like we were at the mercy of RNG.

We've solved five Realm Sigils (of the seven currently available) and still have one Sanctum Key to find -- I'm positive it's "held by a king on his throne", but we really have no idea what this could mean. Haven't really seen anything that seems like it fits the description.

Unfortunately, we're a little stuck now. All the things we have left are things that we have absolutely no leads on. I'm at the point where I want to ask for a gentle hint or two, but my girlfriend isn't quite ready, so we're going to switch gears for a minute. We've got seven trophies at the moment, and we feel like we can accomplish the "reach Room 46 in under an hour" one without too much effort, so we're going to shoot for that and then buy the Blue Tents. We don't know what that'll do, but it's another goal to shoot for, so unless we have any brilliant flashes of insight about the other puzzles that's our next move.

 

[lincolnic]

we're going to switch gears for a minute

Nevermind, turns out you have to do this from a fresh save file, which we're less keen on. But we're also close to solving 40 Billiard Room puzzles, so that should still get us what we're after.

Speaking of save files, I learned last night that the PS5 version of the game (which we're playing) has had a bug since launch where your save file might just...stop saving. And the only way to tell is if you save and quit, and reboot the game from scratch. We've been choosing "Save and Continue" at the end of every run and putting the PS5 to sleep, so I'm gonna have to find out later today if our save is still okay. The devs have acknowledged that it's a priority fix for them, but their last update was a bit over a week ago and it was just "we're still working on it". So that's a fun thing to have to watch out for now!

If anyone else is also playing on PS5, apparently the way to minimize lost progress is to Save and Quit at the end of a run, then manually close the game (from the PS5 home screen or launcher) and relaunch before your next run. I really hope this gets resolved soon, especially because we've accomplished some annoying tasks in the game lately!

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Guys I am SO MAD. I've been trying to log into the network since my very first run, and for about the last 15 hours I've known what the password was. But for some reason, it never seemed to work! I'd enter the password, press A on my controller a bunch until I got to the end of the character field and...nothing would happen. Until last night, when I accidentally pushed the right trigger on my controller - and suddenly I was in. What the actual fuck? Since when do you use RT to do anything other than open the map? Every other time you need to push a different button (for example, if you have an upgrade disk and you want to insert it into a computer) a button prompt pops up. But not this time, no sir! Just gotta button mash until you find it! That's a cardinal sin in a puzzle game, as far as I'm concerned - obfuscating the way to complete a puzzle even after you've found the solution.

Of course, having finally figured it out, I was then able to immediately solve the breaker panel puzzle, open up the gem mine and light the final gas torch, granting me access to the exterior elevator. I'm almost too happy to be mad about it, but I'm trying to hold on to that righteous indignation a little longer.

ETA: I just looked up a video and apparently the button to push is indicated in the bottom corner of the screen! I'm still mad, but now I'm mad at meeeeeeeeeeee

 

[Mogri]

We've solved five Realm Sigils (of the seven currently available) and still have one Sanctum Key to find -- I'm positive it's "held by a king on his throne", but we really have no idea what this could mean. Haven't really seen anything that seems like it fits the description.[/SPOILER]

My probably-wrong guess is something to do with chess pieces.