Which is why I think it was shitty to put it into a marathon.
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This is not my beautiful house! - Talking about The Blue Prince
- Thread starter ShakeWell
- Start date
Respectfully, nobody's being forced to watch anything and all potential spoiler categories are explicitly called out before the run starts. From GDQ's side, I don't think there's anything wrong with them putting a new and popular game into their marathon to raise money for a great cause. They even invented this race format specifically for the event!
Personally, I'd love to see more of these races while the game is fairly fresh in my mind.
Small status update because I haven't been able to play for a while and I've got Blue Prince on the brain:
Placing the Foundation as our outer room was a hilarious fuck you and I am absolutely here for it. I literally had the thought just before I placed it that it might fuck us, given the room description, but we had to try. Anyway, not only did it not work, but it fucked our outer room, and we had a foundation stuck there. We were briefly worried that we might have bricked our save file, but we trusted that Tonda Ros wouldn't allow that and kept playing, and sure enough, a thing happened that was both very funny and allowed us to unfuck ourselves. That said, losing the Foundation in the house has been a real setback, so we're eagerly looking forward to being able to place it again (probably in rank 8, just to find a blue memo, even though that means fewer rank 8 blue memo slots going forward).
Speaking of blue tent memos, thus far basically not a single one has been helpful. The only one that told us anything even remotely helpful was the note that the red box in the boiler room powers not one, but two doors, but then later that same day...
We got through the crate tunnel and just so happened to have a day that allowed us to completely get through the door gauntlet that same day that we opened it (had the boiler room, had an Armoury torch, were able to make a power hammer, etc)... until we hit an entirely new door. We haven't the slightest idea how to open this stupid thing, lol. Maybe something to do with the Throne Room, or the letter puzzle in the wall of the chess room that we haven't figured out yet, but that's not much to go on.
So we don't really know what to do now! The Treasure Trove is going to be our outer room tomorrow, so hopefully that's something, and we have one or two other small action items on our list, but nothing that I expect to pay huge dividends, so I think we're just going to be hoovering up blue memos in hopes that a way forward falls out. Fingers crossed, I guess, but for now, this is least promising a strings of days has felt since we began, I think. We're definitely not giving up, though!
Speaking of blue tent memos, thus far basically not a single one has been helpful. The only one that told us anything even remotely helpful was the note that the red box in the boiler room powers not one, but two doors, but then later that same day...
We got through the crate tunnel and just so happened to have a day that allowed us to completely get through the door gauntlet that same day that we opened it (had the boiler room, had an Armoury torch, were able to make a power hammer, etc)... until we hit an entirely new door. We haven't the slightest idea how to open this stupid thing, lol. Maybe something to do with the Throne Room, or the letter puzzle in the wall of the chess room that we haven't figured out yet, but that's not much to go on.
So we don't really know what to do now! The Treasure Trove is going to be our outer room tomorrow, so hopefully that's something, and we have one or two other small action items on our list, but nothing that I expect to pay huge dividends, so I think we're just going to be hoovering up blue memos in hopes that a way forward falls out. Fingers crossed, I guess, but for now, this is least promising a strings of days has felt since we began, I think. We're definitely not giving up, though!
This was exactly the same way that happened in my game, which is extra hilarious. After the regular locked door and keycard door, I said "we're going to have to use every single method of opening doors, aren't we". And then of course we did.
You're reaching the point where I started to feel that the late-game puzzles were just a bit overtuned compared to everything that came before them, but if you've made it this far you'll be able to make it all the way through.
There's one thing I found useful for blue memo hunting, which you're probably already doing: as the pool of memos you need to find gets smaller, try and save up your rerolls for rank 8, especially if you're trying to find more of the rare rooms. There were some rooms we had to reroll 8-10 times in a row to get to show up there. Depending on what you've done in the Conservatory, you might want to draft a Solarium before you get there to help with those as well.
Another update:
I was supposed to end this post with a brag screenshot, but I think one of the cats closed Paint. :-/
Pretend you're looking at a screenshot of the top-right bar here with, to the best of our memory, a truly ridiculous 14 reroll dice, ~30 gems, ~30 keys, and ~400 gold thanks primarily to winning big on the 100-gold stake Casino wheel (first we won two bonus spins, and then our two bonus spins landed on 300 gold and then +10 everything, where everything is steps, gems, keys, and *dice*). Shame that most of those resources don't really matter anymore.
So we started hoovering up blue memos, making for, I think, the biggest feeling of a lull since we began. Just a few days where the only real progress was finding blue memos (our outdoor Trove proved to be a bust, just presenting us with a cool locked box that we haven't the slightest idea how to open), of which we're found 21 thus far (of the 57 we have on our list). I love how some of the blue memos are trivial to find while others are absolutely fiendish (love to re-solve the Utility Closet puzzle literal months later with little memory of how it worked) and there is absolutely no correlation between difficulty and clue value. Over half of these blue memos seem to just be useless trivia or redundant clues, while another third are jokes (my favourite thus far is the Kennel note, which I am not yet convinced isn't *also* a clue of some sort) and the remaining small portion are game-changing hints/directions forward. The big recent find for us was the Office, which pointed us towards some shenanigans in the chess room. We were split on how to interpret the hint (I was convinced it had something to do with moving the pieces around on the board itself, or arranging them with a specific house layout), but we got there eventually, and now we have... a bunch more clues to yet another new puzzle!
This one actually seems pretty clear, so we're going to take our first stab it on our next day. There's a few aspects we can't quite agree on (which room we're supposed to be in, whether or not it's okay to have tools in our inventory, whether or not we need to first confirm that it's a Cross constellation day by visiting the Observatory or if it's sufficient to know in advance, etc), so it might take us a few tries, but I'm sure we'll get there shortly. My hope is that the reward will be the key we need to open up the outdoor Trove chest, but given how the game has gone so far, it's just as likely to be another note that tells us the computer password again.
We also managed to do another final exam run on our successful chess puzzle day, so we have the results of that waiting for us tomorrow too. I'm not optimistic that we got the history question about the final battle of the war correct, but here's hoping! I'm pretty confident that we aced the rest of it, at least. And we got classrooms 8 & Final in rank 8, so we have a blue memo suggesting that our answer to the final question is correct, as well as some more Erajan language clues.
Speaking of Erajan, that bit is still frustrating me. I've never been good at learning fake languages (it's where I tapped out on Tunic, a game that I otherwise 100%-ed completely unaided and adored every moment), and right now I still feel very far from being able to translate the Erajan letter despite having quite a lot of translation notes at this point. I'm not convinced that letter will be important, however we *think* we've made enough progress on the CASTLE drawing on the wall of the chess room (it's also possible we're completely barking up the wrong tree, since solving puzzles based on erased tic-tac-toe chalkboard games feel pretty tenuous) that we think it might also be in Erajan, and I'm sure that it's important. Hopefully we'll find more language clues somewhere else, but right now we think we think we're only missing a few letters on that wall.
This one actually seems pretty clear, so we're going to take our first stab it on our next day. There's a few aspects we can't quite agree on (which room we're supposed to be in, whether or not it's okay to have tools in our inventory, whether or not we need to first confirm that it's a Cross constellation day by visiting the Observatory or if it's sufficient to know in advance, etc), so it might take us a few tries, but I'm sure we'll get there shortly. My hope is that the reward will be the key we need to open up the outdoor Trove chest, but given how the game has gone so far, it's just as likely to be another note that tells us the computer password again.
We also managed to do another final exam run on our successful chess puzzle day, so we have the results of that waiting for us tomorrow too. I'm not optimistic that we got the history question about the final battle of the war correct, but here's hoping! I'm pretty confident that we aced the rest of it, at least. And we got classrooms 8 & Final in rank 8, so we have a blue memo suggesting that our answer to the final question is correct, as well as some more Erajan language clues.
Speaking of Erajan, that bit is still frustrating me. I've never been good at learning fake languages (it's where I tapped out on Tunic, a game that I otherwise 100%-ed completely unaided and adored every moment), and right now I still feel very far from being able to translate the Erajan letter despite having quite a lot of translation notes at this point. I'm not convinced that letter will be important, however we *think* we've made enough progress on the CASTLE drawing on the wall of the chess room (it's also possible we're completely barking up the wrong tree, since solving puzzles based on erased tic-tac-toe chalkboard games feel pretty tenuous) that we think it might also be in Erajan, and I'm sure that it's important. Hopefully we'll find more language clues somewhere else, but right now we think we think we're only missing a few letters on that wall.
I was supposed to end this post with a brag screenshot, but I think one of the cats closed Paint. :-/
Pretend you're looking at a screenshot of the top-right bar here with, to the best of our memory, a truly ridiculous 14 reroll dice, ~30 gems, ~30 keys, and ~400 gold thanks primarily to winning big on the 100-gold stake Casino wheel (first we won two bonus spins, and then our two bonus spins landed on 300 gold and then +10 everything, where everything is steps, gems, keys, and *dice*). Shame that most of those resources don't really matter anymore.
We also thought this solution involved what you thought it did, and boy did that take a lot of time to prove wrong.
Keep it up!
I'm officially in the post-post-game! Or at least, I think I am. Which is to say that I have now solved all the realm sigils and the 8-realms-in-8-months puzzle. I also just purchased the blue tents, but so far they don't seem to be doing anything for me? More investigation required. But I hope I stumble across a new clue (ha ha) soon, because I've solved almost every puzzle that I am aware of in the house. From reading some spoiler text in this thread, it sounds like I should have been destroying the crates in the tunnel using (presumably) the POWER HAMMER this whole time? I'll have to try that out next time I play.
It's taken me a long time to get this far, but it's kind of difficult to say HOW long exactly. I have 100 hours on my game clock and am at day 187 or something, but a whole lot of that was my son playing on the same save file. It's not always convenient to have a somewhat chaotic person sharing your save in this game! Thought I couldn't help but laugh after I spawned the cursed chest in the shrine and gave him the ability to curse me on subsequent days.
lincolnic can correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume it's pretty safe for me to watch that GDQ run now?
It's taken me a long time to get this far, but it's kind of difficult to say HOW long exactly. I have 100 hours on my game clock and am at day 187 or something, but a whole lot of that was my son playing on the same save file. It's not always convenient to have a somewhat chaotic person sharing your save in this game! Thought I couldn't help but laugh after I spawned the cursed chest in the shrine and gave him the ability to curse me on subsequent days.
lincolnic can correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume it's pretty safe for me to watch that GDQ run now?
As in, you're not aware what they've changed? I'm pretty sure that the game states their function on purchase, but either way, you should be able to click on them on the status screen to get an explanation. You are definitely supposed to be aware of their function.
Based on what else you've said in that post, I think there's still one thing that the GDQ run could spoil for you, which is the location of the microchips.
You might want to double-check the item description again (you can do that from your map/inventory page). Assuming you've done this, keep in mind the new memos might be tucked away into odd corners of their respective rooms.
I think I've already found all (both) of those? I needed them to get the last sanctum key in the throne room.
OK, that makes me feel a lot better about looking up what they do, which is a thing I just did.
Oh that's right, I forgot that's where the last Sanctum Key was. I think you should be good to watch, then!
So, a big, significant thing happened tonight.
ETA: Oh, and now that our day count is into the 60s, we've finally stopped being so precious about optimizing every day and have finally started calling days early with incomplete houses, so we're finally having days that last less than two hours. Honestly, I find it less satisfying/fun that way, though. The core mechanics of this game's house-building have never stopped scratching the feel-good bits of my brain.
Our progress has been pretty slow for a while (we're down to about a dozen remaining blue tent memos), but we actually solved the infinity clock puzzle pretty shortly after my previous update above. We were stumped at first, but then we saw the grid on the side and realized that it must be associated with the CASTLE grid in the chess room. We were actually still missing two letters, but we were able to infer enough from what we had to properly suss out the solution (although we solved it almost by accident, not expecting it to actually work).
Shortly after (or maybe before? It's been a couple of weeks) that, we found the manuscripts in the Tomb. I hadn't initially clocked that the order of the angels in the will was different than the order in the chapel, but fortunately I'm not playing alone. I think that may have been the only useful reward hiding behind the pinboard puzzle in room 46? That, coupled with finding the scepter in the outer trove (we weren't sure if we had to pick blue or not, and would have preferred not to, but we were too scared that it had to be blue to try anything else, and the mechanics of resetting it were unclear enough that we didn't want to risk it), suggested our next course of action, and it actually didn't take us very long at all to line everything up, nor did it take us long to draft the needed succession of blue rooms after (honestly, it was so trivial that I'm not sure why it was in there at all).
So yeah, we made it to the fancy blue parlour, and I immediately felt vindicated, as someone who took as almost his very first note for this game something along the lines of "try fucking around with the wind-ups keys, because there must be some reason that it's a discrete item that you can coat check, etc". Unfortunately, we had already solved a parlour in the house on the day we found it, so we were only able to bring one spare wind-up key outside (from a second hall of mirrors parlour). First we opened the "this game never ends" box, and were disappointed to find it empty, but then we opened the "you're at the end box", and *I* was disappointed to find an ending in there.
However, we also found a magnifying glass, which allowed us to read the note that suggests that we're not actually done after all. It seems pretty clear that this is yet another ending point for the game, if we want to take the provided off-ramp and let it end here, and that whatever remains is for true doom murderheads only, but I didn't get this far to not sign up for puzzle sickos mode, so let's go.
There's certainly enough loose ends that there *must* be more still to find, but it feels like the critical path has died up a bit. The list of loose ends for us to chase down next, copied from our action items list, at least some of which are probably nothing, but most of which must be something:
-The description of the Blue Prince Throne suggest the existence of at least one more big beautiful blue door, and we have no idea where it could be.
-Try bringing 3 wind-up keys to the outer parlour, through some combination of coat check, monk blessing, and mirror room shenanigans.
-Try the same in a vanilla parlour.
-The Cabinet rocker switch in the Utility room
-The machine in the boiler room clearly displays a succession of 4x5 grids that must be a solution to something.
-Similarly, the votive candle sets in the tomb must be *something*.
-We haven't tried sleeping in the bunk room and then visiting the tomb the next day to see what has changed.
-Figure out the clock tower riddle (not the sanctum key puzzle, but rather the little poem). Also, there's a pattern of darkened stairs in there that may be a clue or may be nothing.
-We have a documented set of arrows throughout the house that may just be there for style or may be something else.
-There's at least one more riddle hiding unsolved in A New Clue. Something to do with doing laps, maybe, as a homonym of lapse, possibly of a blueprint?
-We have yet to do anything with the "court", "cloak", "castle" clue, or the sequence of 4 binary numbers that comes with it, which may or may not be a numerical core.
-SWANSONG, or maybe SWNSNG, is apparently an acronym, but we have yet to figure it out.
-The New Clue manuscript suggests that we want to dig under a bed somewhere, but we have yet to figure out where.
-There's also a blue butterfly in those manuscripts that may suggest looking for something outside? It's trail is suggestive of the treasure map trail, and we've never figured out the significance of the origin point of those trails, if any exists.
-Figure out significance of "Denoted in verse" / "Does it never end?" treble clef/spiral star
-Something to do with seeing constellation reflected in the floor of the ballroom at a certain time of day, as suggested by the song lyrics?
-Figure out what's up with cuckcoo two/too in Room 46 (counter-clockwise, per the New Clue manuscript)
-Figure out significance of moon symbol casting vase shadow in a New Clue draft?
-Figure out what to do with the roman numerals on the family crest in the wine cellar, which may or may not be related to...
-Figure out the clues that refer to a "family core" in the vault.
-Figure out the significance of the bird baths all over the estate
-Can we rotate the floor of the grotto?
-Several new items suggested by Alzara's final predictions.
So it sure doesn't seem like we're done yet!
(Oh, also, we finally fucked up a parlour puzzle solution at around our 60th parlour, breaking our perfect streak, to my eternal shame. And the dart boards have recently started introducing fractions, which is fun-- I thought we'd seen all the math.)
Shortly after (or maybe before? It's been a couple of weeks) that, we found the manuscripts in the Tomb. I hadn't initially clocked that the order of the angels in the will was different than the order in the chapel, but fortunately I'm not playing alone. I think that may have been the only useful reward hiding behind the pinboard puzzle in room 46? That, coupled with finding the scepter in the outer trove (we weren't sure if we had to pick blue or not, and would have preferred not to, but we were too scared that it had to be blue to try anything else, and the mechanics of resetting it were unclear enough that we didn't want to risk it), suggested our next course of action, and it actually didn't take us very long at all to line everything up, nor did it take us long to draft the needed succession of blue rooms after (honestly, it was so trivial that I'm not sure why it was in there at all).
So yeah, we made it to the fancy blue parlour, and I immediately felt vindicated, as someone who took as almost his very first note for this game something along the lines of "try fucking around with the wind-ups keys, because there must be some reason that it's a discrete item that you can coat check, etc". Unfortunately, we had already solved a parlour in the house on the day we found it, so we were only able to bring one spare wind-up key outside (from a second hall of mirrors parlour). First we opened the "this game never ends" box, and were disappointed to find it empty, but then we opened the "you're at the end box", and *I* was disappointed to find an ending in there.
However, we also found a magnifying glass, which allowed us to read the note that suggests that we're not actually done after all. It seems pretty clear that this is yet another ending point for the game, if we want to take the provided off-ramp and let it end here, and that whatever remains is for true doom murderheads only, but I didn't get this far to not sign up for puzzle sickos mode, so let's go.
There's certainly enough loose ends that there *must* be more still to find, but it feels like the critical path has died up a bit. The list of loose ends for us to chase down next, copied from our action items list, at least some of which are probably nothing, but most of which must be something:
-The description of the Blue Prince Throne suggest the existence of at least one more big beautiful blue door, and we have no idea where it could be.
-Try bringing 3 wind-up keys to the outer parlour, through some combination of coat check, monk blessing, and mirror room shenanigans.
-Try the same in a vanilla parlour.
-The Cabinet rocker switch in the Utility room
-The machine in the boiler room clearly displays a succession of 4x5 grids that must be a solution to something.
-Similarly, the votive candle sets in the tomb must be *something*.
-We haven't tried sleeping in the bunk room and then visiting the tomb the next day to see what has changed.
-Figure out the clock tower riddle (not the sanctum key puzzle, but rather the little poem). Also, there's a pattern of darkened stairs in there that may be a clue or may be nothing.
-We have a documented set of arrows throughout the house that may just be there for style or may be something else.
-There's at least one more riddle hiding unsolved in A New Clue. Something to do with doing laps, maybe, as a homonym of lapse, possibly of a blueprint?
-We have yet to do anything with the "court", "cloak", "castle" clue, or the sequence of 4 binary numbers that comes with it, which may or may not be a numerical core.
-SWANSONG, or maybe SWNSNG, is apparently an acronym, but we have yet to figure it out.
-The New Clue manuscript suggests that we want to dig under a bed somewhere, but we have yet to figure out where.
-There's also a blue butterfly in those manuscripts that may suggest looking for something outside? It's trail is suggestive of the treasure map trail, and we've never figured out the significance of the origin point of those trails, if any exists.
-Figure out significance of "Denoted in verse" / "Does it never end?" treble clef/spiral star
-Something to do with seeing constellation reflected in the floor of the ballroom at a certain time of day, as suggested by the song lyrics?
-Figure out what's up with cuckcoo two/too in Room 46 (counter-clockwise, per the New Clue manuscript)
-Figure out significance of moon symbol casting vase shadow in a New Clue draft?
-Figure out what to do with the roman numerals on the family crest in the wine cellar, which may or may not be related to...
-Figure out the clues that refer to a "family core" in the vault.
-Figure out the significance of the bird baths all over the estate
-Can we rotate the floor of the grotto?
-Several new items suggested by Alzara's final predictions.
So it sure doesn't seem like we're done yet!
(Oh, also, we finally fucked up a parlour puzzle solution at around our 60th parlour, breaking our perfect streak, to my eternal shame. And the dart boards have recently started introducing fractions, which is fun-- I thought we'd seen all the math.)
ETA: Oh, and now that our day count is into the 60s, we've finally stopped being so precious about optimizing every day and have finally started calling days early with incomplete houses, so we're finally having days that last less than two hours. Honestly, I find it less satisfying/fun that way, though. The core mechanics of this game's house-building have never stopped scratching the feel-good bits of my brain.
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lol:
We figured out the family core, and we stared at that fucking cipher grid for 20 minutes before calling it a night. We have some ideas, some of them very disparate, so hopefully we'll be able to figure something in the downtime before our next session.
So we did the thing! We sat on the that word grid for a week, and tried a few different angles of attack, but once we started solving cores and got whole numbers to fall out of each word and then saw that the first 5 spelled a real word we were pretty confident we were on the right track. It helped that I just happened to have screenshots of the alphabet and the number system sitting adjacent to each other in the schoolwork tab of my spreadsheet, although I have to admit that I didn't find the first leap to be at all intuitive. I wish that Herbert's letter had said that his mother had more specifically asked a mathematician for help or some such, just to gesture at it a bit more.
I'm delighted to report that I immediately slam-dunked the meaning of still water, though, as I've been hypervigilant on clocking homonyms, and we pretty quickly arrived at the rest of the solution as well. It took us a day or two get our greenhouse, and the last light bulb was when we were walking through the library and took note of the blank books on the lecterns that we'd been ignoring since literally day one.
We now have what I would describe as an aggravating number of representations of that spiral and anagrams of that phrase, but to what end, I still don't know. We're trying to juice our star count while we do everything else, but we're certainly nowhere near 1000, if Alzara spoke true (he probably didn't).
After a few false starts of trying to draw water from the stream and the like, we correctly parsed the ever-so-slightly bolded hint out of the letter, and hilariously realized that it was pointing us to something that we already kind of knew-- we'd clocked that blank book spine ages ago in our early monk blessing experiments, and revisiting it was already on our very lengthy to-do list as a low-priority item.
So now we're in the Atelier! That... sure is a thing. It was so exciting to first walk inside-- I got goosebumps. I wonder how much this resembles Tonda Ross' early asset-light version of the game that he's spoke about? I think that's certainly what it's trying to evoke, if nothing else.
We poked around long enough to get a general idea of the shape of the thing, but we're going to leave cracking it for another night. It seems like it's going to spit out two different messages once we completely solve it, but it felt like this was the final puzzle, so I have no idea what those presumed two further hints are going to feed into next.
And we still have a bunch of unanswered questions about how it works (first and foremost being if it changes every day), and how it relates to the other big unanswered question of what to do with the prism colour riddle (we have some ideas there, and think we know what 3 colours it's referring to, but nothing firm yet). If nothing else, boy I hope that the boxes stay open.
I think we're in the home stretch now? Again? Maybe?
Man I love this game.
I'm delighted to report that I immediately slam-dunked the meaning of still water, though, as I've been hypervigilant on clocking homonyms, and we pretty quickly arrived at the rest of the solution as well. It took us a day or two get our greenhouse, and the last light bulb was when we were walking through the library and took note of the blank books on the lecterns that we'd been ignoring since literally day one.
We now have what I would describe as an aggravating number of representations of that spiral and anagrams of that phrase, but to what end, I still don't know. We're trying to juice our star count while we do everything else, but we're certainly nowhere near 1000, if Alzara spoke true (he probably didn't).
After a few false starts of trying to draw water from the stream and the like, we correctly parsed the ever-so-slightly bolded hint out of the letter, and hilariously realized that it was pointing us to something that we already kind of knew-- we'd clocked that blank book spine ages ago in our early monk blessing experiments, and revisiting it was already on our very lengthy to-do list as a low-priority item.
So now we're in the Atelier! That... sure is a thing. It was so exciting to first walk inside-- I got goosebumps. I wonder how much this resembles Tonda Ross' early asset-light version of the game that he's spoke about? I think that's certainly what it's trying to evoke, if nothing else.
We poked around long enough to get a general idea of the shape of the thing, but we're going to leave cracking it for another night. It seems like it's going to spit out two different messages once we completely solve it, but it felt like this was the final puzzle, so I have no idea what those presumed two further hints are going to feed into next.
And we still have a bunch of unanswered questions about how it works (first and foremost being if it changes every day), and how it relates to the other big unanswered question of what to do with the prism colour riddle (we have some ideas there, and think we know what 3 colours it's referring to, but nothing firm yet). If nothing else, boy I hope that the boxes stay open.
I think we're in the home stretch now? Again? Maybe?
Man I love this game.
Oh man. You're finally there! I'm so excited! I really thought the Atelier was a jaw-dropping set piece when we got there in our playthrough. While I didn't love having to open so many damn Mora Jai boxes, we ended up mapping out the entire area before solving the puzzle, which was pretty fun.
As for the core cipher puzzle: I understood what to do with it right away, because the game tells you that Aurevei had spent a long time searching for the method to make numeric cores (and also you have to solve one to find it in the first place), but my big issue is that one of the words requires you to end up with a fraction partway through the calculation and the vague instructions on how to solve a core in the first place make it seem like you're only allowed to have whole numbers. It felt unexpectedly sloppy in an otherwise precisely crafted game.
Anyway, you're so close now. What a journey!
As for the core cipher puzzle: I understood what to do with it right away, because the game tells you that Aurevei had spent a long time searching for the method to make numeric cores (and also you have to solve one to find it in the first place), but my big issue is that one of the words requires you to end up with a fraction partway through the calculation and the vague instructions on how to solve a core in the first place make it seem like you're only allowed to have whole numbers. It felt unexpectedly sloppy in an otherwise precisely crafted game.
Anyway, you're so close now. What a journey!
jpfriction
(He, Him)
I’m glad you guys are still having fun but every one of these updates make me happier I got distracted by a different shiny game shortly after the first credits scene…
Maybe I’ll unlock a few more sanctum doors
Maybe I’ll unlock a few more sanctum doors
We split up solving duties, and I don't think I ended up with that one, since I don't recall seeing that, but FWIW, I do feel like there's some precedent for that given that the dartboard math puzzles have started having intermediate fractional numbers on the way to a whole number solution.
Eh, I dunno if I agree with that, especially when it's literally just one word out of the whole bunch, and the instructions for solving a core specifically talk about whole numbers (I think, it's been a while). It felt like an extremely arbitrary and almost thoughtless choice to me. Then again, this game also doesn't know what an acronym is, so, shrug.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Same, this is intense. But it's really cool that the game has this much depth underneath.
I've said this elsewhere in the thread but it's worth repeating here: I really and truly appreciate how the game gives you multiple off-ramp points where you could feasibly say "this is a good place to stop, for me". And some of them are pretty far deep in the rabbit hole already! But I also appreciate how they didn't spare any effort for the blue doom murderheads like me and JBear who wanted to see as much as the game would give us.
Probably my 2nd-to-last update:
So we mapped the Atelier. It was a super long, super exhausting, single session, with entirely too many Mora Jai boxes, and if we were smart, we probably would have split it over several sessions. We didn't do that.
We were worried about our step count, so before entering the Atelier we did a normal day in the main house with the goal of juicing our step count, and we pretty easily got up to about 350 steps before heading back to the Atelier, where it turned out we only needed < 50 of them, because the Atelier seems to count as outside the house, which means the Running Shoes trigger constantly. Highly recommended footwear for all your post-post-post-game needs.
So anyway, we now have a hand-drawn map, and a grid of lights, and a locked door, and two different secret messages (to add to our existing riddle from the still water), and no real idea what to do with any of it. Hopefully something will come to us by the next time we play!
ETA: Oh, we also used a powered laundry room to swap our stars and allowance, which were formerly at ~70 and ~90 respectively, so that should be a good bump towards our goal of seeing if anything special happens at 100 stars. This is kind of a fun book-end with us using a powered laundry room very early on to do a similar swap in reverse, swapping our pretty healthy star count of maybe a dozen for an anemic allowance of like 2-4, IIRC. A double-digit allowance seemed like such a big deal back then, lol.
We were worried about our step count, so before entering the Atelier we did a normal day in the main house with the goal of juicing our step count, and we pretty easily got up to about 350 steps before heading back to the Atelier, where it turned out we only needed < 50 of them, because the Atelier seems to count as outside the house, which means the Running Shoes trigger constantly. Highly recommended footwear for all your post-post-post-game needs.
So anyway, we now have a hand-drawn map, and a grid of lights, and a locked door, and two different secret messages (to add to our existing riddle from the still water), and no real idea what to do with any of it. Hopefully something will come to us by the next time we play!
ETA: Oh, we also used a powered laundry room to swap our stars and allowance, which were formerly at ~70 and ~90 respectively, so that should be a good bump towards our goal of seeing if anything special happens at 100 stars. This is kind of a fun book-end with us using a powered laundry room very early on to do a similar swap in reverse, swapping our pretty healthy star count of maybe a dozen for an anemic allowance of like 2-4, IIRC. A double-digit allowance seemed like such a big deal back then, lol.
From what I remember, the Atelier doesn't take away your steps if you're in the hallways. Pretty sure only going in/out of the rooms costs you steps.
It was! This is the last one. We're done! We had to take a month off due to scheduling conflicts, but now, at 122 hours, on day 69 (nice), we have completely finished Blue Prince, and thoroughly mined it for content. There may be one or two incidental loose ends, and a whole lot of red herrings (including some hilarious ones at the very end), but we're comfortable calling it done now.
What a fucking video game. Just an absolute masterpiece. Bravo.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
For more than one reason -- that's very impressive!
Congrats! I was wondering if you'd made it through yet.
The more I've thought about it, the more I'm pretty sure this might be my game of the year. Obviously puzzle games have existed for decades, but this really felt like such a fresh and unique experience from start to finish.
Lol my save is currently sitting at 247 days, but that's largely because I share it with my son, who enjoys the placing-the-rooms aspect of the game but who doesn't really contribute to solving the broader puzzles. Even so, a good 120 of those days must be from me, as well as (probably?) around 100 hours of play time.
It's super hard to nail down exactly where I am, due to the non-linear nature of Blue Prince, but for those of you who have already finished the game (or who don't mind spoilers):
One really nice thing is that I convinced my coworker to pick this game up, and he caught up with me fairly quickly (the guy definitely likes his puzzles!). It's really fun to have someone to work on stuff with, as opposed to asking for hints from my friends, who are all farther along than I am.
It's super hard to nail down exactly where I am, due to the non-linear nature of Blue Prince, but for those of you who have already finished the game (or who don't mind spoilers):
I'm well into the post-post game now, having collected most of the blue notes on rank 8. I recently "solved" the castling puzzle, by which I mean I tried a bunch of incorrect things before being nudged toward the (much simpler) actual solution. It was infuriating! I solved the mora jai boxes in the room that opened up and put together the rhyme, which I MOSTLY understand but haven't quite managed to solve. I've removed most of the crates from the tunnel - one more lucky run should be enough for me to break through that last wall of them at the back. I've started filling in the 3x6 letter grid that you find by smashing the wall in the chess puzzle room and am only missing 2 letters to complete it.
Hopefully, some combination of these puzzles will eventually lead me to the sceptre, at which point I will attempt to bring it - along with the crown and the stone - to the throne room. From what I've heard, that will not be the end of things!
Hopefully, some combination of these puzzles will eventually lead me to the sceptre, at which point I will attempt to bring it - along with the crown and the stone - to the throne room. From what I've heard, that will not be the end of things!
One really nice thing is that I convinced my coworker to pick this game up, and he caught up with me fairly quickly (the guy definitely likes his puzzles!). It's really fun to have someone to work on stuff with, as opposed to asking for hints from my friends, who are all farther along than I am.
I set this down after reaching the room beyond the antechamber. I have opened the outdoor areas and found (I think) two microchips, and I did some underground exploration but never figured out the appropriate water level to be able to explore the underground lake. I haven't opened all the safes (I can't imagine what other dates I could be missing), and I don't know if I can find my old notes. If I want to pick it back up, what would you recommend? I am not averse to minor spoilers if it makes answering easier.
If you're trying to get back to the game after reaching room 46, my first recommendation would be to return to room 46. This will give you a good sense of direction for what you should be trying to accomplish next.