(This directly continues my prior posts, especially my last two.)
I was hoping for the Cathedral to have fallen, but alas. We do have some interesting codes for the lock from last time as well as some good stabs at riddle-unraveling by Ilmari Jauhiainen and Voltgloss, but actually breaking out is still a problem.
Ad from New Scientist, 16 June 1977.
To be totally clear on the layout (and to recap a little from two posts ago):
The electric vehicle (from two posts ago) busts in the “cathedral” area where you can climb up a pipe, but the only thing you can be holding is a wire. You can also use the wire to get into the eastern “monstery” area.
In this second area four of the rooms have a “ravine” shearing off part.
You are in, what apparently was once, a lounge. However, the west side of the room has subsided into a deep ravine, leaving only a small ledge for you to stand on. Beyond the ravine you can see the remains of the west side of the lounge, also with a small ledge.
In the lounge above you can drop a mattress into the ravine and fall onto it safely, eventually reaching a dark cave which I have yet to tackle (it’s a “trick” maze, I’m not just in the mood for another maze yet even when it doesn’t need mapping).
Geronimo!
As you plummet headlong toward the rocky floor of the ravine you silently congratulate yourself for having the foresight to provide yourself with a soft landing. An expertly executed arm roll leaves you standing in the ravine.
Ravine
You are standing in a ravine between two sheer rockfaces. The ravine narrows to the north and widens to the south.
Exits: NS– ——– —
There is a shabby mattress here
By all appearances (from the wire being the only thing that can be brought in) the cathedral to the west needs to be finished first.
The inside starts you off in a 4 by 4 grid (the unshaded portion above) where to travel anywhere you need to push on walls that revolve.
Waaaaaaaaghhh!
You most unceremoniously hurl yourself down the shaft, and after much bumping
and boring, are deposited on a hard floor with a sickening thump.
Room of Abstenance
You are in a room lit by a suffuse glow.
-> push east
As you lean your weight against the wall it revolves on a central axis, taking
you with it.
Room of Passion
You are in a room lit by a suffuse glow.
This has notable implications in at least two places. In the southwest corner of the map there’s a video touchscreen on one wall (it starts blank, but it does show something later) and if you “spin through” the wall the touchscreen will also travel and so technically gets moved to a new room.
Additionally, there’s a spot where a monk is sleeping by a north wall. You can ignore the monk to start, but to go by the monk you need to wake him up.
Room of Apocalypse
You are in a room lit by a suffuse glow.
There is a fat monk lying asleep against the north wall.
-> wake monk
A gentle tap on the shoulder wakes the monk who stirs and slowly opens his eyes. After a good stretch he appears to be fully awake.
He will then start causing some mischief and most notably will thwack you:
The monk whacks you around the head, pushes a wall, and runs laughing from the room.
This hurts you, according to the DIAGNOSE command. (You start to go from feeling “fine” to “ok”.) Based on earlier solving, this means your inventory capacity starts to drop, and I suspect it might be not possible to win if you get injured enough times (at random).
Laying out “in the open” (as far as things lay out in the open with the odd “pushing” structure are a wooden splint and a metal bolt. You can tie the wire to the wooden splint (which I first tried to make into a flail of some sort) but the game specifically says you can tie it to “one end”. This means you can tie the wire to the splint again and have it tied on both ends, then use the bolt, which is described just as ASCII art…
…as a weapon. This is a bow and arrow, and you can FIRE BOLT AT stuff. The most obvious piece of stuff is a mirror in the lower right corner of the map.
-> fire bolt at east wall
Twang!
The mirror breaks into a number of pieces.
-> e
Room of War
You are in a room lit by a suffuse glow.
Exits: N–W ——– —
This opens the blue-shaded portion of the map I put earlier, leading to either to a pipe with a wheel (the wheel doesn’t want to turn or react in any way) or a swimming pool.
Swimming Pool
You are in a room lit by a suffuse glow. The room contains a swimming pool, with a small ledge along the eastern edge.
You are standing on the ledge. The pool is empty.
The choice of which one is dependent on the lock I mentioned last time. One code makes the pool appear, sans water. There might be some complicated way to get the water from the roof into the empty pool, but I don’t know how.
Another code makes that video screen from the lower left of the map (the one that spins around with a wall) show something that nobody has been able to get to yet:
-> examine screen
The video screen is displaying a picture of an empty room hewn from solid rock. The room is lit by a suffuse light. There is a dark passage leading from the room.
I’m sorry, there’s so much going on it is hard to organize sensibly! I was hoping to wait until the cathedral was solved and I could trace together a coherent narrative, but I don’t even know what to focus on. Some bits may be red herrings for atmosphere. One last area, though, in the upper right of the four by four portion:
Room of Hell
You are in a room lit by a suffuse glow.
-> push east
As you lean your weight against the wall it revolves on a central axis, taking you with it.
Room of Descent
You are in a room lit by a suffuse glow. You are standing on a horizontal section of floor that stretches into the room for about a third of the room’s length. The floor then slopes to form a ramp leading downwards from the level area of floor.
Exits: –EW ——– -D
-> d
Base of Ramp
You are in a dimly-lit room with walls of solid rock and no obvious roof. There are no exits other than a ramp leading upwards to the west.
Exits: —W ——– U-
-> u
Room of Descent
You are in a room lit by a suffuse glow. You are standing on a horizontal section of floor that stretches into the room for about a third of the room’s length. The floor then slopes to form a ramp leading downwards from the level area of floor.
Exits: –EW ——– -D
-> push west
As you lean your weight against the wall it revolves on a central axis, taking you with it.
You hear a dull thud.
Important is the “dull thud” at the end — that doesn’t appear anywhere else. I don’t know what it is but it likely is an item on the other side of the wall. I’ve tried to get the monk to filch it but somehow it hasn’t been happening.
Renga in Blue 
I am curious if this behavior is a bug I am experiencing or if I should spend time trying to figure out what is going on.
After having arranged so that I can move over the ravine, if I move N from the *west* side Sitting Room I come to the *east* side Lounge. That is, starting in the west side Sitting Room I can circle back to the same place with N->W->S.
Do you see the same thing? Could there be some point to this?
I’ve experienced the same thing. I think the room connections just get a bit bugged once the means to cross the ravine is in place.
Yeah, for a long time I completely missed the fact that I was actually on the west side because of this.
I must admit that even though I have studied what I think is a very obvious clue and have tried many different interpretations of it I still can’t make it through that dark connection from what I would call TC1 and end up at any seemingly meaningful position. I’m still lost in the dark and humbly ask for a hint regarding this.
If by clue you mean the [zntnmvar pbire], then yes, it’s all there. You *can* map it if you want (I mapped a few steps myself before I realized how to use the clue), but you don’t need to. There are two hints I can think of:
1. Gur fcnprf ner zvfyrnqvat.
2. Nyy gur 8 qverpgvbaf ner cbffvoyr.
Thanks, I got it! #2 I was aware of, but I trusted too much in the fcnprf. Of course the game would do that. Doh.
Can I ask you (off-topic) how you got Readfile to work? No matter what I do or where I put the files, it says they don’t exist. Are there some specific rules I don’t know about?
The easiest way to get started is to type MAKE (no extension, no spaces, keep it simple) and then play and then MAKE OFF. This will create a file with .fcf (Ferret Command File?) extension. It should be in your Ferret directory. You can then READFILE and it will play back.
(If this doesn’t work there is probably a permission issue in your Ferret folder, but then I can’t see your save (.fsf) files working either? Also, if you create your own files, make sure that Windows doesn’t trick you with hidden file extensions so that your files are actually named “filename.fcf.txt” or similar.)
I did it like this early on, but soon I stopped using the MAKE command and started creating/editing the FCF files in a text editor. It is just standard commands like you would type them in the game *with* an empty line between every command line.
Some related useful commands are STOP, INTERRUPT/CONTINUE, COMMENT, STEP, AUDIT and SUPPRESS/ENABLE. Note that the FCF files can do recursive READFILE as well as RESTORE, RESTART SAVE/SAVEOVER and more – enabling relatively powerful scripting work.
“The easiest way to get started is to type MAKE (no extension, no spaces, keep it simple) and then play and then MAKE OFF. This will create a file with .fcf (Ferret Command File?) extension. It should be in your Ferret directory. You can then READFILE and it will play back.”
I just noticed that the above paragraph got a bit unintentionally confusing, I think the comment system removed some of my words because I used the less-than/greater-than tag format around “filename”. I’ll try again here, in another way, to avoid potential confusion:
The easiest way to get started is to type “MAKE filename” (replace “filename” with a name of your choice, no extension, no spaces, keep it simple) and then play and then MAKE OFF. This will create a file with .fcf (Ferret Command File?) extension. It should be in your Ferret directory. You can then “READFILE filename” (using the same filename you used for MAKE) and it will play back.
I managed to get everything working, thanks! I realize now that most of the information is in the NEWS output, actually.
There is one extra thing about the touch screen that is not mentioned here, but I guess you guys have already noticed: [Nsgre gur phegnva bs yvtug pbzrf hc va gur Bhgre Fnapghz, gur vzntr ba gur fperra punatrf naq nyfb zragvbaf fbzr yvtug pbzvat sebz gur ebbs.]
Just a note to fellow Ferreteers here that I’ve not had the opportunity to progress further in the game due to real life work constraints, which will carry through the coming week – but that doesn’t mean I’ve given up! Hopefully will have an opportunity to get back to it in around or shortly after the end of the month.
I might drop a “stuck working process” post if we’re all still stalled by tomorrow. I took a few whacks this weekend but no real enlightenment. Spent a lot of time puzzling over the tiles. There are described five missing on the sign outside, and five we’ve found including inside and outside the cathedral, but no command I’ve found will link the tiles to the sign; I suspect it is more of an “information” thing, which might mean it’d be ok to have the go-in-and-out-of-ravine sequence with taking no items if the whole point is to see the other two tiles early.
I haven’t made any progress, but I did a few things that I think could be interesting to report:
1. I found a deterministic, reasonable way to navigate the Lift maze back in Phase 2: you have to combine TURN LEFT and TURN RIGHT with WALK. So, say, if you are initially looking north, and you TURN RIGHT, you are now looking northeast, which is the direction you will WALK. I mapped the entire thing exhaustively but found nothing more than what Voltgloss had already reported. It is almost unbelievable that entire area is optional…!
2. I bruteforced every combination from 001 to 999 *after* setting the first 423. I thought maybe there could be a second hidden combination that would only work the 2nd time. But nope.
3. I ran a list of over 1000 verbs through the parser just to see what would happen. Nothing super exciting came out, only a few funny joke verbs. One that caught my attention was FOLLOW, but it didn’t work with the monk. There is also GUIDE which I didn’t know about and gave some interesting information. The complete output (without unknown verbs and those the parser understood as a noun) is here: https://pastebin.com/K9JDfh45
I asked the Ferret Authors about what we should be focused on, and they indicated (as two separate things)
gur fjvzzvat cbby naq gur svir gvyrf j/ gur fvta jvgu zvffvat gvyrf
I might be doing a post tonight? I also have one coming doing a one-shot on a different game while we’re still trying to figure things out here.
(spoilers if you haven’t read the ROT13 part of the post I’m replying to)
I have been looking at ways to arrange the tiles to make them useful but even with some possible ideas there I can’t see it going forward without something to phone with/from, which I haven’t found. I haven’t made any progress through the second TC cave though so that may be my issue?
Still thinking about and trying new things to get some water into that pool…
Going backwards – did anyone find a way to unlock the steel door by the forest? Or any use for the “second” ledge on the west side of the cable-car? I can’t stop thinking that I might have missed something there.
My mind keeps going back to the vat of water and the drainpipe. Wonder if there’s a way to climb the pipe without breaking it? Or if somehow the broken pipe is what’s sticking up the valve? (This barely makes sense, but who knows – just throwing things out there).
It seems the game is making a point that the stuck valve is circular, don’t you think? I want to jam something in it to use as a lever to get it to budge. And then if we could get the hammer here…
The other thing I keep coming back to is the lower right section of the “night entry” sign. The dashes make a pattern of 5×5, the same as the layout of the inside of the cathedral. I keep thinking there must be a puzzle in this somehow. Putting the tiles together in various ways in an image editor, the only thing I can get out of them is an 8 with the upper right corner missing. I’ve tried matching the shapes on the tiles with parts of the layout of the cathedral interior, and it almost fits, but not quite.
There is also a typographical anomaly with the sign. The last E seems to have a bit cut off (compare to the first one). Maybe nothing meaningful of course.
Mostly to have some sense of accomplishment so far – here is a (spoiler for things up to approximately what is covered here in this post already) very zoomed out map view of everything up to (and partly including) Cathedral/TC2…
Maybe you can see something that you/I have missed. :)
update from the Ferret creator hive-mind, apparently I misunderstood something they sent last time so I’m just going to rot13 post the whole message
Whfg frra lbhe oybt cbfg ertneqvat nernf bs sbphf. Vg zvtug or n pnfr bs 2 pbhagevrf frcnengrq ol n pbzzba ynathntr, ohg:
“N abgvpr gung unf svir zvffvat gvyrf naq lbh whfg unccra gb svaq svir gvyrf – vfa’g gung n yvggyr gbb pbairavrag?” zrnaf gung vg pbhyq or n frg hc. Vs vg jnf n chmmyr, zvtug vg or gur pnfr gung gur gvyrf jrer zhpu zber qvssvphyg gb svaq.
Nccyl lbhefrys gb gur Fjvzzvat Cbby naq gnxr pner jvgu gur beqre bs riragf. Bar bs gur cbfgf zragvbarq gur inyir naq unzzre….
Abgvprq lbhe yvfg bs ireof va lbhe yngrfg oybt cbfg. Zber nggnpurq – fbzr ner pbzznaqf engure guna npgvba ireof, fbzr ner flabalzf sbe bgure ireof.
I have a bunch of ideas I’m dying to try. :D
Related to this I also must say that I have discovered that I am able to bring (almost?) everything with me up the slope with the wire. I don’t know how I failed to do this initially or what I am doing different now. In the process to find out more about this I also discovered that the game treats the Foot of Slope like two different rooms depending on if the wire is attached to the stake or not. Ie, if you drop things there, climb up with the wire and then get down without the wire, you will find the things are gone. Hmmm, just another bugginess I guess.
Another quirk I’ve stumbled upon is this:
> set lock to ***
You are blinded by an intense light and thrown with tremendous force against one of the walls. You momentarily lose consciousness.
-> l
Room of Past Hope
You are in a room lit by a suffuse glow.
-> push north
Outer Sanctum
-> push south
Room of Past Triumph
You are in a room lit by a suffuse glow. The north wall is a shimmering curtain of light.
I hadn’t noticed this before: the transformation from Past Hope to Past Triumph does not happen when I am entering the related lock code, but when I am (afterwards) re-entering and re-leaving the Outer Sanctum. Hmm… This may also be bugginess, but with less certainty than the Slope situation above.
(I guess I must have just confused my initial memories of slope+wire climbing with pipe+wire climbing.)
For what it’s worth, this post from the hivemind suggests to me that:
1. Gur svir gvyrf naq fvta ner nabgure “jbbqra qbbe” (urpx, gur fvta vf evtug ARKG gb n jbbqra qbbe);
2. Bhe tbny vf gb oevat gur unzzre gb gur inyir gb trg jngre sybjvat, gura pbaireg vgf ebbz vagb n Fjvzzvat Cbby gung jvyy svyy hc sbe sha naq cebsvg; juvpu fhttrfgf
3. Jr arrq gb svaq n jnl gb trg gur unzzre vafvqr gur pngurqeny.
oh, I suppose it would help if I put the attachment! here’s the verb list. Did we ever try “twist” on the valve?
Again
Apply
Audit
Audit Off
Board
Brief
Bug
Bye
Climb
Comment
Continue
Date
Deflate
Dial
Disembark
Divider
Divider Off
Drill
Drop In
Drop Through
Enable
Erect
Expose
Extinguish
Ferret
Get Out
Goto
Health
Hello
Help
Hint
Ignore
In
Incant
Inflate
Info
Interrupt
Juggle
Lift
Look At
Look In
Look Over
Look Through
Look Under
Look Up
Lower
Make
Make Off
Mode
News
No
Optional
Opt In
Opt Out
Out
Panic
Pause
Peek
Plugh
Point At
Press With
Prompt
Prompt Off
Pull Back
Pull With
Push Forward
Push Left
Push Right
Push Up
Readfile
Read Through
Release
Remark
Restart
Restore
Revision
Rotate
Row
Save
Savefile
Saveover
Savequit
Score
Set
Shift
Shout
Show
Show Off
Step
Step Off
Stop
Strike
Strip
Strip Off
Suppress
Test
Turn Left
Turn Right
Twist Anticlockwise
Twist Clockwise
Unload
Untie
Verbose
Wait For
What
Where
Wield
Yes
It seems like it should be possible to fbzrubj trg gur unzzre vagb gur onfr bs enzc ebbz va gur pngurqeny. Gung ebbz nccrnef gb unir ab ebbs. Vg zhfg or npprffvoyr sebz fbzrjurer.
yeah, I’ve been fiddling with:
Gurer vf n fvzvyneyl qrfpevorq “onfr bs enzc” vs lbh tb rnfg jurer gur iruvpyr fgbcf. Vg jnf zrffvat nebhaq jvgu qebccvat vgrzf qbja gurer naq gelvat gb trg gb gurz sebz gur ebbz bs qrfprag, ohg ab qvpr.
Try dropping stuff in the ravine and/or TC2 to see if it appears at the base of the ramp.
That had occurred to me as well, but I couldn’t figure out a way to get back down to the ravine after rolling the boulder in place.
I know how!
lbh pna zbir gur znggerff, naq whzc sebz gur ybhatr engure guna gur fvggvat ebbz
YES!
-> d
Base of Ramp
You are in a dimly-lit room with walls of solid rock and no obvious roof.
There are no exits other than a ramp leading upwards to the west.
Exits: —W ——– U-
There is a heavy hammer here
There is a violet tile here
There is an indigo tile here
… Have you tried murdering the monk yet? There’s a line from one of the riddles that seems to imply something might happen if he dies; it seems worth a shot (pun not intended).
[/violence in games is not corrupting me, promise]
Any attack on the monk except with the special tool we have constructed (which just chases him away) has been lethal only for me. But perhaps there is another tool.
He’ll drop what he’s carrying (he doesn’t die but he runs away and is functionally out of the game), so theoretically, if there is an item on the other side of the spinning wall to the northeast and you can induce him to pick it up, you’ll be able to get the item that way. In practice I haven’t been able to cause anything like that to happen, and I think the “Clunk” might simply be the parts moving back to where they were in the descent room.
woot!
Phase 5 (Inquisition)
Mode: Expert
You have scored 345 (out of 1670) points in 1488 moves.
Rooms visited: 234. Rank achieved: Hot Shot.
Beautiful! And here I was hoping to actually get some work done today…