(Continued from my previous post.)
There are two different philosophies when it comes to deathtraps involving multiple choices (buttons, doors, etc.) from around this time.
Philosophy Type One (let’s call it “Signalism”) is that deathtraps should have a clue, and this might involve solving a puzzle (often given in the form of a cryptic message). If you read the clue wrong you get punished by death.
From Demon’s Forge.
The other (Philosophy Type Two, let’s call it “Experimentalism”) is that deathtraps don’t need a signal and the player is welcome to just experiment. In the puzzle shown above, designed from a Signalism standpoint, you go left, then keep going right repeatedly; in an Experimentalism game, there might be no sign, and you’re just supposed to test left-right directions and restore a save if you die.
The issue with the two philosophies co-existing at this time is that you might see a puzzle that you solve by Experimentalism (“brute force”, essentially) except the intent was Signalism (some clue you might not find until after solving the puzzle!) If you assume Signalism, you might get a game that clearly intends for you to just experiment (like the three buttons on The Missing People) and you waste play-time searching around for a clue when none exists. It helps to know what kind of game you’re playing (or if it’s the sort that mixes the two because the author never thought that hard about that design; it might even be intentional mixing like a four-digit code where you can only find the first three digits and you’re supposed to guess at the last digit).
And really, it’s only a few buttons (or directions). Is it worth spending all that time thinking about it? Some of the Signalism games introduce random aspects to force engagement with clues (the Cambridge mainframe games like Hezarin especially) but there is some level from the player’s perspective where the two are almost indistinguishable. Certainly I’ve never thought of myself as “cheating” when I apply brute force just because of how many games that really is the intended route.
Returning to Epic Hero 2…
…last time I was stuck trying to enact a ritual, as waving the wand (which seemed to be step 3 on a list) just had spirits laugh at me (“your poor attempt tp complete the ritual”).
It’s faded a bit. You can read :
“Draw pentagr…Chali…Fill with Blo…Frog…Wand wav
Lit Candl…Smo..Incen” The rest is unreadable.
John Myers guessed in the comments correctly: this isn’t in order, or at least left-to-right followed by top-to-bottom order. After drawing the pentagram and filling a chalice with frog blood, you can light the candle and smoke the incense, and then wave the wand. Waving the wand is just meant to be the last step. Matt W. speculated that
I guess the clue is that it says “Lit candle” so the candle must be lit already? Though I can’t make the chalice part come out grammatically. “Draw pentagram, Chalice Fill with Blood from From. Clean the Wand then wave it over a Lit Candle and Smoking Incense.” But “Fill” is not really in the right tense or place with respect to “Chalice.”
although I’m not sure there’s really supposed to be a “logic” here. I can accept a mangled magic book might be somewhat loose with the order of events and the intent is just to think it worthwhile to try (Experimentalism rather than Signalism, but without the deathtrap.)
From the fourth Scott Pilgrim book. Freestyle! It’s your book now! Don’t let the man tell you which direction to read.
To light the candle and the incense you need to have fire in the first place; the stick from the tree will do it, as long as you go over to the oven first and LIGHT STICK. With those two acts done, waving the wand will cause a zap effect and most of the ritual items to disappear.
The wand, stick, monocle, book, chalk, and knife stick around. At least the monocle gets used again.
You can GO PENTAGRAM to warp to the other side, and there’s a pool where GO POOL will easily send you back again. (This has an amusing side effect I’ll talk about later.)
Leduc shows up in person again, this time plugging Epic Hero 3. Sadly, you can’t stab him with the knife.
This is followed by a straightforward maze (drop items to map it out), although my finessing with map directions makes it look cleaner than it really is.
The last room of the tunnel maze contains a long pole (that seems straight out of Dungeons and Dragons) and a shovel. This is followed by a room with colored coloured discs.
You are in a room filled with coloured discs.
Objects you can see are: Red Disc ■ Green Disc ■ Blue Disc ■ Orange Disc ■ Black Disc
Possible exits: EAST ■ WEST ■ SOUTH
I immediately tried fiddling with the discs and they are oddly inconsistent in their parser responses.
What will you do now? TOUCH RED DISC
That is not quite possible .. right now!!
What will you do now? TOUCH GREEN DISC
That is not quite possible .. right now!!
What will you do now? TOUCH BLUE DISC
That is not quite possible .. right now!!
What will you do now? TOUCH ORANGE DISC
I am not quite sure what you mean
What will you do now? TOUCH BLACK DISC
I am not quite sure what you mean
Why do the red / green / blue have the “right now” message but the orange and black discs do not? Additionally, while three of the discs say “You find nothing special” when examining them, one gives an item (a “four pronged hook”)…
What will you do now? LOOK BLUE DISC
There is a puff of smoke and ….You find something!
…and the black disc states “There is something DIMENSIONALLY funny about it!” This is supposed to be a hint you can GO BLACK and enter the disc to a new room.
The vampire will eventually “suck all the blood from your body”. “Eventually” is a vague span because it seems to be dictated by RNG, and I’ve had the vampire kill me immediately upon entering the room. Usually you get a chance to do things or even run away, and the vampire will follow. This includes through the pool and you can visit King Brion with vampire in tow (no reaction) or go outside (either it’s night-time or this is the type of vampire that doesn’t care about the sun). The vampire will prevent you from going into the hole and we don’t have the right item yet to defeat it, so I’ll come back here later.
Going back to the disc room (red, green, and orange remain unused), heading south leads to a room with a soft floor. The shovel from earlier comes in handy, sort of.
The old manuscript and rope are already there; the “mirror of neo-madness” appears from digging. Looking at the mirror kills you. I tried to use it on the vampire with no luck (although to be fair, I wouldn’t have expected it to work). I suspect the mirror may simply be a deathtrap for amusement (for the author, if not ours). Regarding the manuscript, as long as you’ve got the monocle, it tells you to say Mekleh and then beware.
The vampire lair is the Crypt of the Helkem (so just Mekleh backwards) so that’s logically where the word works, but the game just says
Okay
with no apparent effect. What this does is unlock the coffin, where the “master of the vampires” hypnotizes you and sucks out your blood if you open it, so I think this might also be just a deathtrap gag.
The master of the vampires rises up,
hypnotises you and sucks all your blood!
Heading back to the disc room, there’s one more straightforward exit to the west, that leads to a “Tiny Alcove”, with a rod sticking out of the wall.
Trying to pull the rod kills you (Experimentalism, there is absolutely no indicator).
You can instead either PUSH or TOUCH the rod and it will reveal some stairs (“A panel in the wall slides open.”). These stairs go to a “Hall of the Cunning”, and another dose of Experimentalism.
You are in the first ‘Hall of the Cunning’.
Objects you can see are: Green stone ■ Blue stone ■ Red stone ■ Lighted archway
Possible exits: UP
UP returns to the alcove; the goal here is to make the lighted archway save for passage; it will kill you if you try to enter right away. (“A spell completely inverts your body!”) Two out of the three stones kill you right away as well. I managed to safely TOUCH BLUE and TOUCH GREEN and went for TOUCH RED and died again.
Kerzappp !!!!!!!!
You are DEAD!!
This EPIC is over.
The right sequence is BLUE, GREEN, BLUE (again!), RED, and there really is no clue to this at all. (Having to touch the same color twice really makes it seem like a Signalism puzzle and I even combed over previous rooms to see if I had missed something. No luck. It really does seem to want you to test at random.)
What will you do now? TOUCH RED
There is a puff of smoke and ….
Look what happened!
The archway is now safe to enter, resulting in a second hall of cunning.
Sometimes you’ll get the message
Something in the pit snickers ….
although it seems to be at random. The glass ball has “a diameter of about two inches” and the shield has no description. GO PIT, predictably, kills you.
Silly!
The rim of the pit forms teeth and swallows you whole!
You are DEAD!!
This EPIC is over.
The key is to combine the hook randomly found from the disc with the rope, although I had unfortunate results the first time.
What will you do now? TIE ROPE
To what. (I.E. TO TREE)
What will you do now? TO HOOK
Okay
What will you do now? THROW HOOK
The rope and hook are thrown over the pit ….
…. and disappears!
I was thinking maybe I was hooking the ring somehow, but I think the ring is supposed to be positioned on the ground next to the pit. So you can TIE ROPE / TO RING in addition to tying it to the hook, and then throw the rope successfully.
What will you do now? THROW HOOK
The rope and hook are thrown over the pit ….
…. and catches onto something across the pit!
What will you do now? GO ROPE
Okay
You lost your balance and fell in the pit!
The rim of the pit forms teeth and swallows you whole!
You are DEAD!!
Except: now you need the pole that was back at the end of the maze (with the shovel).
The hole is described as being about two inches in diameter; you can INSERT BALL and a vial will appear. The vial is glowing. This seems to be the end of the line as far as the rooms of cunning go (it’s safe to go back as long as you keep the pole), but the vial is fortunately the thing we need to take down the vampire.
Going down from here is a crypt.
You are in the ‘Crypt of Static Enchantment’.
Objects you can see are:
Completely still Guard of the Eternal Keeper ■ Lever ■ Passageway
Possible exits: UP
Pulling the lever will activate the Keeper. If you’re holding the shield, it will (sometimes) defend you.
What will you do now? PULL LEVER
Okay
The guard moves in and attacks you with his sword ….
You stop his blow with your shield!
Sometimes (at random, I think) it will get through your defense and kill you, so you can’t stand here forever. I’ve tried KILL KEEPER and the game says I don’t have a weapon (even while I have a knife) so I’m not sure what to do here. There is one last room, going down the passage, but it hasn’t helped me either.
The name Final Judgment suggests this is the final room to me, and I suspect the Keeper has the key and I just need to defeat it, and to defeat it I just need a weapon, so… I’m close? My guess is I missed something, maybe an extra manipulation with the colored discs, maybe something to do with the creature in the pit.
Unfortunately I’m not ending at a point conducive to audience-solving this time, but I’ll still take suggestions if anyone has an idea. I’m still not interested in plunging into machine code yet; even with all the Experimentalism this game has generally been fair.
Renga in Blue 
Leave a comment