-
Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:
- The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
- Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration
Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.
This is not my beautiful house! - Talking about The Blue Prince
- Thread starter ShakeWell
- Start date
Oh man, the entire time I was reading your post I was like "did he just...not look?" But in your defense, the prompt is pretty small and easy to overlook!
Meanwhile, we had an enormous breakthrough today and wrapped up basically all of our major loose ends in one go (well, two runs).
We went back to A New Clue and in hindsight, the microchip clues were obvious enough that I felt dumb for missing them this whole time. Needless to say, we got the final Sanctum Key after that and were able to solve all the Realm Sigils too. There are still four puzzle boxes in the Sanctum we haven't done, mostly because I've been tired whenever we reached them. We were both a little surprised to discover some history after solving the map puzzle in Room 46. I think we were expecting to find another blueprint since there still seems to be (at least) one missing from our directory.
And, because this is Blue Prince, we now have some more things to pursue.
-We got our eigth (and ninth) trophies while playing tonight, but did not see the Gift Shop in our pool, so the Blue Tents remain out of reach for now.
-It feels like there should be something else to do in the Throne Room. Based on the text in its drafting tile, we brought the crown inside, but couldn't find anything we could open or interact with. I know it has the last Sanctum Key and another Antechamber lever in there, but it still feels suspiciously empty for future runs considering how much it costs. It's not like you can collect the Sanctum Key more than once, and it felt kind of anticlimactic after everything you have to go through to unlock it.
-From the microchip cutscene, "Castle court cloak" seems meaningful in light of the message behind the wall in the chessboard room, but that message seemed to imply three six-letter words, and "court" and "cloak" obviously have five. Still, there's got to be something here.
-We've got a lot of crates to remove!
-Sinclair's will mentioned leaving us the original drafts of The Red Prince and A New Clue "regardless of whether [we] discover room 46", which implies you don't have to roll the credits to get this. I feel like we've been just about everywhere and have no clue where this could be.
-We still only have six letters and haven't seen another safe or gate.
Lacking any other toeholds, we're gonna work on the crates next.
-It feels like there should be something else to do in the Throne Room. Based on the text in its drafting tile, we brought the crown inside, but couldn't find anything we could open or interact with. I know it has the last Sanctum Key and another Antechamber lever in there, but it still feels suspiciously empty for future runs considering how much it costs. It's not like you can collect the Sanctum Key more than once, and it felt kind of anticlimactic after everything you have to go through to unlock it.
-From the microchip cutscene, "Castle court cloak" seems meaningful in light of the message behind the wall in the chessboard room, but that message seemed to imply three six-letter words, and "court" and "cloak" obviously have five. Still, there's got to be something here.
-We've got a lot of crates to remove!
-Sinclair's will mentioned leaving us the original drafts of The Red Prince and A New Clue "regardless of whether [we] discover room 46", which implies you don't have to roll the credits to get this. I feel like we've been just about everywhere and have no clue where this could be.
-We still only have six letters and haven't seen another safe or gate.
Lacking any other toeholds, we're gonna work on the crates next.
I sure hope our save file doesn't get corrupted before we get to finish the game!
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
We could not figure out how to get down there, it seemed like we were halfway down but there was just nowhere to go? We were coming from the Catacombs/Tomb if that helps. Feel free to spoil away, our Gamepass ran out so we won't come back to this but I'm enjoying reading what other people are finding.
Seeing posts like this is what blows my mind. Lumber and I are either incredibly unlucky or our brains are just not wired for this game I guess.
We definitely argued with that interface for a while.
Ah, yeah, you can't get to the bottom from the Catacombs. If you come from the elevator in the Foundation (which I don't know if you found in your game), there are steps leading down on that side.
Further exploration spoilers: you can eventually unlock paths from the external house grounds to each side of the Reservoir, which takes a couple of runs (they each need separate contraptions to open and you have to do at least one of them from the inside out, plus you need to have lit all four gas burners). We'd already finished the Reservoir stuff before fully connecting the Underground areas in our game, but it's been useful to have those paths open regardless.
My friends and I are the kind of sickos that this game is explicitly aimed at, I think. "People who unironically enjoy RHEM games and Hadean Lands" is a pretty small group, but we're eating this shit up. Someone said above that their runs routinely end at rank 2 or 3 and the mind absolutely boggles, because our worst day ever ended at rank 7, and we were phoning that one in hard because we were rushing to try to get to bed (we didn't realize at the time that you couldn't stop mid-run; sure would be cool if this game had a suspend feature).
That said, some important context: a single day/run typically takes us 3-5 hours. I suspect that many of you are playing this somewhat more quickly.
It's an absolute crime that they dropped the game they were gonna make after Hadean Lands.
jpfriction
(He, Him)
I always get a kick out of hearing how you play these type of games that allow one to sit and puzzle out the perfect move. Exact opposite of my impatient ass.
Yeah, if a run of this game takes me more than an hour you know something monumental has happened.
I think our shortest run was still over 3 hours, but I guess I would counter by saying that I feel like something monumental has happened every single day so far (I think we're about to start day 8?), and sometimes several somethings. We're always like "let's just try this one more thing and then end the day" and then like 4 more things that we're not expecting will happen.
ETA: On our most recent session (spoilers for a Workshop tool and something non-obvious in the Drawing Room) we made the burning lens and started looking around for things to use it on (we found a couple of really interesting ones), and we were trying to light a candelabra on the mantle in the drawing room and instead found that we could pull a lever on one of those same candelabras to reveal a hidden safe and we all laughed for like a minute straight.
ETA: On our most recent session (spoilers for a Workshop tool and something non-obvious in the Drawing Room) we made the burning lens and started looking around for things to use it on (we found a couple of really interesting ones), and we were trying to light a candelabra on the mantle in the drawing room and instead found that we could pull a lever on one of those same candelabras to reveal a hidden safe and we all laughed for like a minute straight.
Last edited:
What. I am genuinely asking this: how? What are you doing to make it take so long? Because we're regularly filling the entire house and runs typically take about an hour. And we're pretty far advanced in the meta-progression by now!
If anyone besides me is playing on PS5, there's been a positive update on the save bug situation - they've figured out what causes it, and have moved into testing for the fix. No timeline on when they'll deploy it yet because they want to be sure they've got it right before making that kind of announcement, but it's great to know things are coming along.
Well, I mean, first off, for context, you should know that I'm pretty notorious here and elsewhere for how slowly I play games (and do basically anything, if you were to ask my fiance...*). Typically if I want to estimate how long I will take to finish a game, I go to HowLongToBeat, look at the average Completionist time, and then double it.
In this specific case, though, it's just a lot of talking, whether that be discussing options (like, for example, weighing the pros and cons of each possible room presented when drafting or what order to draft open edges in), floating theories, planning next steps, or what have you, along with taking the time to carefully take screenshots and notes and properly organize (and reorganize) them in the spreadsheets, and pour back over those shots and notes to look for relevant information or connections as we explore the house.
I frankly have no idea how I'd manage to get a run under two hours without just feeling like I was playing frivolously or rushing/stressing, and I'd dearly love to, because it's really hard to find time to squeeze in more than one run an evening as things stand.
Also, on the note of filling the entire house, we did actually just get our first trophy for doing just that recently (I want to say on Day 6? It may have been 7).
*-Her on watching us play this recently: "TikTok makes this game look so fun, but you guys make it look so boring. How do you make everything so boring?"
Do you not feel like you're gaining enough familiarity with the rooms and layouts that your play will speed up? (Again, genuinely asking out of interest, not trying to pick on you. I support you playing how you like to play!)
I mean, if anything, that slows play down, I'd say. Having more familiarity with rooms and layouts gives us more information to chew on and considerations to weigh! "We want to go this way first because we have more left elbows in the draw pool", "We want to loop around to there to have a south-facing door on the west wing", etc, etc. And yes, revisiting a room typically means less time spent taking pictures and transcribing, but we're still getting a steady 3-6 new rooms per day ATM, and even in old rooms, we still take time to look around for details we might have missed previously (or look over previous documents with a magnifying glass where relevant), along with any errant dirt piles, coins, keys, gems, etc.
We also discovered this by accident today, after 30+ hours of play. The really funny thing about it is that if you look at the portrait of Sinclair that's sitting in the middle of the room, the candelabra is shown there with the arm down. This has literally been in plain sight since the first time you walk into the room.
Otherwise, we had a nice bit of progress today.
Having gotten the Gift Shop again, we've been trying to get enough money to buy the Tents, but even with our current starting allowance of 52 coins (all the Mora Jai boxes in the Sanctum rooms have been solved now), we've been having really bad luck not hitting Freezers on consecutive runs. Seems like we'll find one and then not see it again for another two or three runs. The worst part is that in between getting the trophy and finding the Gift Shop again, we actually had a run with over 400 gold (I think from hitting a Freezer in the run before and opening the final safe deposit box, maybe?) but didn't see the Gift Shop (or another Freezer), so it was just wasted. This feels like it might take a while, depending on the whims of RNG.
We had some really good luck doing this today. After designing a relatively narrow experiment packet, we managed to start with a Shelter, immediately use that terminal to remote into the Lab, and get "whenever you draft an upgraded floor plan, remove a crate" in two separate runs today. We currently have 12 upgraded rooms and were able to get all of them in the same run, both times. Combined with the few crates we removed before today, this was enough to get us through the tunnel and into the doors beyond. We had to stop at the Power Hammer point, but we're both excited to have an excuse to craft one of those again. As for the key you find halfway through the tunnel, my girlfriend had an amazing guess out of nowhere about where to use it, and she was right. We once again have no idea what to do with the info that gained us!
As mentioned above, we found what I believe to be our final safe in the Drawing Room today. We have seven letters and we've opened two small gates and six safes, so according to the letter puzzle we're all out of things that can be opened with dates. If the Fortune Teller is right, we won't have any more letters to collect, but Sinclair did specifically say he left us eight, so it remains to be seen if we'll find another.
Going back to something I talked about on the previous page, relating to an item you find in the Catacombs: we made a lot of good progress translating the note in Clara's tomb, but there are still a few words we don't know how to translate yet. I'd say we're probably about 85% of the way there?
Yeah, we actually just noticed this ourselves earlier tonight. It's a pretty fun detail! We also just opened that same safe earlier this evening (which is when we were pouring over the room and noticed the detail), making for 3 or 4 opened of 8 total, depending upon how you count.
Also, we specifically set out to try and hurry tonight, and we still took 3.5 hours. There's just too much to do!
jpfriction
(He, Him)
Regarding cash flow: I can think of at least two other less RNG dependent ways to do what you are trying to do, but they’ll take a bit.
I'm assuming you mean the Vault and the Treasure Trove, and/or possibly getting lucky from Treasure Map hits, but even with all of those it doesn't seem possible to get that much cash in a single run. We haven't spent too much time in the Casino either, so I don't know if it's possible to do something like rig a payout there. We're also aware that we can break the piggy bank in the Chapel, but I suspect you can only do that once so I'm hesitant.
In theory the Treasure Trove will eventually pay out enough to buy the thing outright, but we'd need to draft it ~50 more times first. That seems like it would take a lot longer than getting two or three Freezers in a row!
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Damn, yeah, we took a minute or two to discuss draws together and look at the map and have a few pages of notes but that's it. I definitely do get in that mindset and enjoy it for a lot of games but this one feels too random for me. I'd be frustrated that all the planning fell apart due to a bad draw.
Ah, this was actually the final straw for Lumber. We were already kinda frustrated with the game and knew we weren't going to be exploring that much so I looked up how to work that because we were really curious. Determining that we needed to set it up to have a door at that exact orientation was too much for him and he literally got off the couch and marched out of the room once I said the answer.
jpfriction
(He, Him)
This was the main one I was thinking of.
I could never do that and live with myself afterward.
I kinda feel the same way, honestly.
However, I took another look at (specific book) Drafting Strategies and I'd completely forgotten that once you draft a Freezer, you can't draft it again the following day. Sooo...we may have to sacrifice a pig at some point.
I'm not sure what you mean by that? You don't need to have a door in any specific spot to use the Foundation elevator. Also, I forgot to mention it when I responded to you the first time, but there's a second way to get to the other side of the reservoir: if you don't have the Foundation, you can use the Power Hammer to open a shortcut from the lower level of the grounds outside the house directly into the Basement, which also brings you to the opposite side of the reservoir. I always forget about this because we had already done the first thing by the time we'd discovered the second.
jpfriction
(He, Him)
My other thought was that a guy could also drop a coin in the fountain every day and collect them all at once. But that’d definitely a playing the long game.
At that point, I think we're better off with the Treasure Trove. But we have been trying to convert excess steps into more coins for the Chapel at the ends of runs lately, so it may come down to that + Treasure Trove + Vault + Freezer. Maybe if we get lucky we can throw a Treasure Map in there too.
R.R. Bigman
Coolest Guy
I attempted to do a bit more before I quit. Namely, open the Basement Doors under the Foundation and Fountain. What exactly is the purpose of opening the door under the Fountain?? The Basement Door under the Foundation is (apparently) the intended path to the Room 46 lever, only the Fountain door seems to just be a way to reach the other side of the reservoir sans Tomb.
This is one of the most interesting games I’ve played in a long, long time. I feel that I have plateaued regarding how much I can do without looking up guides, sadly.
This is one of the most interesting games I’ve played in a long, long time. I feel that I have plateaued regarding how much I can do without looking up guides, sadly.
You answered this at the end of your next sentence. It's another way to reach the other side of the reservoir.
this is not...precisely true.
maybe check the drafting strategy series again
I mean...it says the Freezer can't be drafted again for the next 24 hours, so I think I see what you're getting at, but I'm not sure either of us is super interested in just letting the clock run while we wait for a particular time of day to occur.
Although speaking of that exact action in my last spoiler (and a specific room), we happened to draft a Sauna yesterday (which we've rarely done) and I noticed that the clock in there seemed to indicate one of two potential times. It was close enough to the first that we hung around for a minute to get there, and nothing happened so we went on with our run. We made sure to come back for the other time, and...nothing happened? The clock also seemed to indicate maybe being there for a particular amount of time, which I thought we had done, but that didn't change anything. Clearly I'm not interpreting the clue correctly, but I'm not sure what else to make of it. Unless they want you to wait in there for the entire span from the first time to the second, which seems like kind of a big ask. (NB not asking for a hint, just musing out loud.)
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
We couldn't access it and when we looked it up and found this guide for that room (under the Where is the Foundation elevator control? section, and I don't know if anything else on that page is a spoiler) noted that's how it works.