The Tale of Woe (Haunted Woods Plot) - Puzzle Solutions
We hope you enjoyed playing this plot as much as we enjoyed making it, and we hope you're looking forward to the next plot as much as we are!
- Prologue: The Gypsy Camp
- Puzzle 1: The Locket, the Carnies, and the Shack
- Puzzle 2: Bruno's Cave
- Puzzle 3: Finding Ilere
- Puzzle 4a: Fetching the Books
- Puzzle 4b: Gravedigging
- Puzzle 5: Process of Elimination
- Puzzle 6: The Summoning Potion
- Puzzle 7: The Curing Potion
- Puzzle 8: The Meepit Oaks Sanitorium for the Psychologically Fragile
Each plot puzzle (with one exception, puzzle 4, which was released in two parts) was released simultaneously with a comic chapter. Chapters that featured a "TO BE CONTINUED" message at the end meant that there were no further plot elements (puzzle or Battledome) to engage in, and that users could wait until the next chapter was released. Similarly, puzzles featured a "TO BE CONTINUED" image when each player had completed that puzzle. We will probably keep using this mechanism (or something very much like it) in future plots, since, as much fun as it is for us to watch users scramble around, trying to find if there's more to the plot when there isn't, the sense of satisfaction you get when seeing that "TO BE CONTINUED" image is probably better ;)
On the 2nd day of Collecting, the Haunted Woods main map changed to feature a band of gypsies camped outside the gates of the Deserted Fairgrounds. Entering the gypsy camp brought the player to a creepy, yellow-eyed Elephante, who began to tell a Tale of Woe...
Gypsy Camp |
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Creepy Elephante |
This led to the first part of a three-part prologue comic, released over the next four days. The prologue featured an Usul named Gilly (from The Castle of Eliv Thade), lost in the woods, stumbling across the gypsy camp. There she meets the aforementioned Elephante, who tells her a story about a town called Neovia, which had fallen prey to an epidemic introduced by a mysterious Krawk named Mr. Krawley.
Gilly |
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Mr. Krawley |
The story finished with the denizens of Neovia suffering a vague but almost certainly horrific fate, and Gilly leaving the gypsy camp to further explore the Haunted Woods.
When the third and final part of the prologue was released, a new link was added to the gypsy camp page that let users reach the deserted town of Neovia.
The only useful feature of the town was a burned-out shell of a house. Inside, players were able to search the house in order to find a mysterious locket, hidden in one of ten locations. Because we used a server-side image map, all pixels in the image of the house were clickable, but there were only ten small regions that would show close-ups when clicked. For each user, the locket would be found in one of the ten locations; the location for each user was random, and not related to anything else.
The Burned House |
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Interior (mouseover for clickable locations) |
Once the locket was acquired, the player could head to the Deserted Fairgrounds in order to try and find out if anyone knew anything about the locket. Before any of the carnies would talk to the player, however, the player would have to play at the Bagatelle stand, Cork Gun stand, Coconut Shy stand, or the Scratchcard Kiosk. After this, the carny at each of those four stands would speak with the player, telling them something about the locket.
Each carny had one of four different bits of text, randomly assigned between the four carnies for each user. Again, the order of assignment was completely random for each user and not related to anything. In order to proceed, each player had to speak with the carnies in a specific order.
Harker
(Bagatelle) |
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Sssidney
(Scratchcards) |
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Lyanka
(Cork Gun) |
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Leeroy
(Coconut Shy) |
But which order? The first line of dialogue for each carny contained a numerical word: "one", "ten", "hundred", or "thousand". This dictated the order in which the player had to talk to the carnies. So if the Bagatelle kiosk had the line containing "one," for example, then that's the first carny the player would have to talk to.
The conversations were depicted RPG-style, with each participant having a portrait image beside their dialogue. Once the player (in the guise of Gilly) talked to all four carnies in the correct order, Gilly would have an extra line of dialogue indicating that she should explore farther into the Haunted Woods, in order to find out about the locket.
At this point, the player could return to Neovia, and a new link would be available: the small path to the left of the shop with the large semicircular object atop it:
Clicking on the link would take the player to a spooky shack, deep in the swampy part of the Haunted Woods. Here, a "TO BE CONTINUED" image was presented.
Chapter 1 of the main comic recapped Gilly's discovery of Neovia and the locket, conversation with the carnies, and finding the spooky shack in the swamp. Inside, she met Sophie, the Swamp Witch, who was astonished to see the locket, but snatched it from Gilly and cruelly threw her out. It began to rain, and Gilly fled into the woods, seeking shelter in a damp cave.
The second puzzle began here, with a link from Sophie's shack leading to the cave. The cave was a 3x3 grid of nearly identical connected rooms; however, each player's cave randomly had two of the cave doors removed, so as to provide some variability between user caves. Additionally, two of the nine rooms were illuminated by moonlight, making them appear lighter.
Within the cave were a variety of objects: A large lamppost, a table, a chest, a key, a chair, a stand-mirror, and a pile of rotting garbage. The table and chest could not be picked up, as they were too heavy; the pile of rotting garbage, if picked up, would yield instead a small pile of rotting food. The chest and key were red herrings, and nothing particularly useful could be done with them.
As the player moved around the cave (by clicking on doorways), they would occasionally find that something seemed to be following them. Other times, they would encounter the mysterious creature, a hulking, shapeless beast too dim to see in the darkness of the cave. The beast would frighten the player, sending them off to another random room in the cave.
The players could pick up one item at a time, and put it down in another room or another location in the same room. Through trial and error, players discovered that a pile of rotting food, the lamppost, the chair, and the mirror must be placed in proper locations so as to cause the mysterious creature to knock himself cold. Each "target area" (the valid locations for each object) had an acceptable margin of 10 pixels on either side. The sequence worked like this:
 Proper object positioning (food location irrelevant, as long as it was in the same room)
First, the pile of food had to be placed anywhere in the room. If the creature ventured into a room with rotting food in it (though not the room with the large pile of garbage), it would eat the food, and become dizzy with nausea.
Second, if the stand-mirror was located in the same room, in the proper location, the creature would dizzily see its reflection in the mirror, and panic, turning to flee. (If the mirror was not in the room, or placed incorrectly, the creature would simply recover from the nausea, and flee.)
Third, if the lamppost was placed correctly in the same room, the creature would trip over it while fleeing from its reflection. Again, if the lamppost was missing or improperly placed, the creature would simply flee.
Fourth, if the chair was also placed correctly in that room, the creature would hit its head after tripping, and be dazed. (As usual, if the chair was not placed correctly, the creature would scramble to its feet and flee.)
Finally, if the room where this had taken place was one of the seven rooms without moonlight, Gilly would be too afraid to approach the creature in the dark, and after a few moments, it would get up and flee. However, if the room contained moonlight, Gilly would see that the creature was, in fact, Bruno, lying pathetically on the floor.
 Bruno, post-ambush
At this point, the standard "TO BE CONTINUED" image was presented.
Chapter 2 of the comic recapped Gilly's ambush of Bruno. Upon approaching Bruno, however, he leapt up and attacked Gilly, chasing her out into the woods. Gilly retraced the path to Sophie's shack, the only place she knew she could reach, and when Bruno and Sophie saw one another, they were astonished to meet. Sophie had thought that Bruno was either dead or vanished along with the rest of the Neovians; and Bruno had, over the years, become bestial, forgetting that he was once a rational young man. He also had no idea whether Sophie had lived or died.
Chapter 3 of the comic showed Bruno and Sophie catching up on what happened to them after that Halloween night in Neovia. Eventually they, and Gilly, decided to visit Ilere, the Earth Faerie, who had brought Sophie to the shack years earlier. Sophie surmised that she might know more about the Spirit of Slumber who had cast the ghostly spell upon the denizens of Neovia.
The third puzzle was implemented in Flash, as a series of three puzzles exploring through the Haunted Woods in order to find Ilere's hidden home. Each section of the maze was organized as a series of rooms, with pathways leading to other rooms.
The Swamp
The first section, the Swamp, consisted of five "rooms". In one of these rooms stood a two-headed Hissi, one head of which always spoke the truth, and the other head of which always lied. Usually, in puzzles like this, the player is only allowed to ask one question in order to determine which one is the liar. (The correct answer is to ask one of them, "If I ask the other one which way to go, what will he say?")
 The two-headed Hissi, in the Swamp
However, in this puzzle, the two heads were bickering constantly and refused to listen to the player. As a result, the solution was to explore the swamp until the player found a pointy stick (it would only be placed in one of the rooms AFTER the player spoke to the Hissi), pick up the stick, and then poke one of the Hissi heads with it. This would cause that head to exclaim that the player had in fact not poked it, and that it hadn't hurt at all. This head was, of course, lying. At this point, the player would proceed to the next section of the maze: the High Woods.
The High Woods
The second section consisted of twenty rooms, all randomly connected. Strewn around these rooms were various lengths of vine. There were six each of five types of vine:
Icky Vine |
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Rotting Vine |
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Crumbling Vine |
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Gross Vine |
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Decaying Vine |
Also in the High Woods was one special room featuring a cliff:
 The High Woods cliff (center)
In order to proceed, the player had to collect vines in order to weave together a rope, so as to provide a way to descend safely down the cliff. When the player clicked on the cliff, they would attempt to braid together the vines; if the resulting braided rope was strong enough, then the rope would be cast over the edge of the cliff to see if it was long enough. If it was too short, the user would have to add pieces. If it was too long, a monster at the bottom of the cliff would steal the rope.
A set of five strength values (integers from 1 to 5) were randomly distributed among the five vine types. (Each value was only used once, so the vine strengths might be 3, 2, 4, 1, 5, for example.) The assignments differed for each person, and had no relationship to anything else.
When an attempt was made to go over the cliff, two checks were made: First, whether the vine's average strength exceeded 3.5. (Note that since the rope was braided together from the vines, rather than being a series of vines tied together, we used the average strength, instead of assuming that the rope was only as strong as the weakest vine in the chain.) A message was sent corresponding to the strength of the vine:
<= 1.5: Your rope is extremely weak! You doubt it would even support Gilly's weight.
<= 2.0: Your rope is very weak! Gilly might be able to climb it, but it wouldn't support anyone else.
<= 2.5: Your rope is weak! It wouldn't even be able to survive Sophie climbing on it.
<= 3.0: Your rope isn't very strong! Sophie might be able to climb it... but Bruno would snap it in half.
<= 3.5: Your rope isn't strong enough! Bruno's weight would probably overload it.
<= 4.0: Your rope is barely strong enough! It'll support Bruno's weight, but you probably shouldn't leave him on it too long.
<= 4.5: Your rope is fairly strong! It could support Gilly and Sophie at the same time, or Bruno by himself, but you should be able to climb down safely.
<= 5.0: Your rope is extremely strong! It can easily support Gilly, Sophie, and Bruno at the same time.
Assuming the rope's strength was higher than 3.5, a length check was then made. The length of the rope was simply the number of pieces of rope the player was currently carrying. For each player, a rope length of between 15 and 20 was required; the exact value was random per-user, and, as usual, not related to anything else.
If the user's rope was strong enough and exactly the right length, the user would proceed to the final section of the maze: the Deep Woods.
The Deep Woods
This section of the maze contained 30 rooms. Scattered around the maze were seven Ghost Meepits.
 Ghooooost Meeeeepit!
At first, the Ghost Meepits would flee if the player tried to pick them up. In order to catch them, the player needed to acquire Ghost Meepit Juice, the favourite drink of Ghost Meepits everywhere. Ghost Meepit Juice could be acquired by playing Meepit Juice Break and submitting a score of 300 or higher. Upon returning to the maze, the player would have Meepit Juice, and could try to feed a Ghost Meepit. This would cause the Meepit to flee once again, but this time Sophie would turn the Meepit Juice into Ghost Meepit Juice. Now, if the player fed a Ghost Meepit, it would follow the player.
Once all seven Ghost Meepits had been collected, the player could visit Ilere's gate, one of the rooms in the maze:
 Ilere's gate and the Ghost Meepit dancing circle
The runes across the top of the gate read "DANCE FRIEND AND ENTER".
Placing the Ghost Meepits into the dancing circle would randomly place the seven meepits, causing them to appear sad, neutral, happy, or dancing:
Sad |
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Neutral |
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Happy |
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Dancing |
The player had to rearrange the Meepits until all seven were dancing. Each Meepit's mood indicated how far from its correct spot it was: Sad Meepits were three spots away, neutral Meepits were two spots away, and happy Meepits were one spot away.
Once all seven Meepits were dancing, the gate would open, admitting the player to Ilere's abode, and providing the standard "TO BE CONTINUED" image.
Chapter 4 of the comic had our heroes meeting up with Ilere in her abode. After a bit of conflict between Bruno and Ilere, Sophie stepped in to separate them, and Ilere finally told them what she knew about the Spirit of Slumber.
After leaving Ilere's home, they visited the Brain Tree and the Esophagor, who proved to be a dead end. Sophie claimed that she could summon the Spirit of Slumber if they could find the bones of the Neopet he had been in life. But without knowing his name, they would have to dig up every grave in the Haunted Woods in order to find him.
However, there are many, many graveyards in the Haunted Woods, and most of them are hidden deep within the forest and difficult to find. In order to even begin searching the individual graves, Sophie, Gilly, and Bruno would first have to be able to find the graveyards.
Upon leaving Ilere's house, players could visit the Caretaker's Vault, near the Game Graveyard. The Caretaker, a suspiciously familiar Yurble, kept detailed lists of the location of every graveyard in the Haunted Woods. However, players discovered that his graveyard reference books had been stolen by unknown thieves.
 Just another angry Yurble
The books turned out to have been lost within the game of Fetch!, and only by playing the game on the third difficulty level (hard) could players find the books. All the player had to do was locate the books in the center of the maze, rather than escaping successfully with them.
 The graveyard list books (sadly, just out of reach)
Once the books were returned to the Yurble, he spent a day or so going over them in order to make sure they were intact.
Once the Caretaker had verified that his books were unharmed, he allowed the players to peruse them. Not entirely aware of why they wanted to visit the many graveyards of the Haunted Woods, the Caretaker gave them information on how to find the first 25 to 30 graveyards in the list. Due to a complex and probably randomly-generated naming system, the graveyards could only be accessed via specific directions from the Caretaker.
Upon visiting a given graveyard, players would find Sophie, with her portable cauldron, standing at the gates. At this point, players had one of three options: They could fetch potion ingredients for Sophie; they could dig up graves; or they could use bone-testing potion to analyze a particular grave's bones and see whether they belonged to the Spirit of Slumber.
Once a graveyard had all of its graves dug up, and all of the bones tested, it would be removed from the graveyard list and a new one would be added. In total, 759 graveyards were completely dug up, and 12 more were partially dug up during this phase of the puzzle.
Fetching Ingredients
If the player accepted a task to fetch potion ingredients for Sophie, she would provide them with the name of an ingredient to fetch from her potion shelves in her shack, and send them off. Sophie, distracted by the complex work of creating the bone-testing potion, naturally forgot to specify exactly which of the twenty-six ingredient bottles on the shelf corresponded to the ingredient she had asked for.
At first, Sophie only asked for one of eight ingredients, and players had to learn (by trial and error) which bottle matched which ingredient. After several hours of this, Sophie started asking for an additional eight ingredients; and the day after that, she expanded the list of potions to twenty-four of the twenty-six bottles. (Two of the bottles were permanent red herrings and never used.)
Top Shelf
1. Bagguss Juice
2. Juppie Extract
3. Kadoatie Essence
4. Tanglevine Sap
5. Liquid Chokato Mould
6. Moonwater
7. Liquid Meepit
8. Slorg Slime
9. Bloatershroom Extract
10. Liquefied Bumroot
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Middle Shelf
11. Crushweed Juice
12. Boiled Tree Bark
13. Worm Snot
14. Soaked Babaa Wool
15. Spicy Mortogberry
16. Jurple Butter
17. Boiled Meowclops Saliva
18. Barkroot Dew
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Bottom Shelf
19. Watery Dung
20. Grundo Goo
21. Powdered Bloodfern
22. Pureed Sharpgrass
23. Mutant Gruel
24. Evaporated Snorkle Juice
25. Ghostbeef Essence
26. Glowing Zomutt Mucus
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First group Sophie requested: 1, 3, 7, 12, 13, 16, 22, 26
Second group: 2, 6, 10, 11, 17, 20, 21, 25
Third group: 4, 5, 9, 14, 15, 18, 23, 24
There was a global pool of available bone-testing potion, and each time a user brought back the correct ingredient, the number of available units of bone-testing potion increased by 1. Additionally, once the player completed or failed an ingredient-fetching task, Sophie would refuse to give the player the same task again for five minutes.
At first, the stock of available potion remained low; as time went on, though, it eventually began to grow rather large. A gating mechanism was put in place so that Sophie would only start to give out fetching tasks once the stock fell below 50 units; and she would stop giving out those tasks once the stock rose past 1,000 units. (On average, during the busiest periods, the available potion stock would cycle from 50 to 1000 and back down to 50 about every 20-25 minutes.)
In total, 178,985 ingredients were correctly fetched for Sophie.
Digging Graves
The second task involved entering the graveyard itself and finding a grave to help dig. There were five basic graveyard shapes, with two to four variations on each shape (the variations simply altered the layout of the gravestones). Here's two images of a partly dug-up graveyard.
Graveyard close-up |
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Wide view |
On the map, each gravestone had a pile of dirt in front of it indicating what progress had been made with that grave.
No digging done |
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Partly dug-up |
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Completely dug-up |
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Bone tested |
Players could click on blank spaces on the map to move there, and could click on gravestones adjacent to their position in order to view that particular gravestone.
 The grave interface
If there were any unoccupied spaces, the player could join this grave (assuming he or she wasn't already involved with an ingredient-fetching or potion-testing task). Once there were four players at a grave, they could take turns digging up the grave, until it had been completely exhumed.
It took 60 successful digs to fully dig up a grave. Once each player dug, the next player in sequence (going clockwise around the grave) had 15 seconds to dig. Each time a player dug, there was a 1 in 3 chance of finding an item buried in the dirt. Here's the list of items, from lowest to highest rarity:
1. Pile of Grave Soil (this object was never actually granted, to avoid filling up players' inventories with useless dirt)
2. Spooky Doughnut
3. Ghost Marshmallows
4. Fetch! Stamp
5. Meowclops Statue
6. Sludgy
7. Mystery Of Halloween
8. Halloween Ixi Plushie
9. Crystal Ball Table
10. Slorg
11. Magic Ghost Marshmallows
12. Halloween Kau Plushie
13. Halloween Wocky Plushie
14. Halloween Koi Plushie
15. Halloween Kacheek Plushie
16. Halloween Lupe Plushie
17. Pink Spooky Popcorn
18. Candy Skull
19. Halloween Petpet Paint Brush
20. Halloween Paint Brush
As the grave was dug up, the image of the grave would change. After 5 digs, the ground would break up a little. After 35 digs, there'd be a substantial hole. At 60 digs, the coffin would be revealed.
If a player failed to dig within their 15 second turn, this would enrage the other pets involved in digging up that grave. If a player failed to dig 3 times, they would be kicked out of the grave for failing to keep up. At this point, another player could join. Players could also voluntarily abandon the grave.
If a player finished a grave or left or was kicked out, as with all the tasks, there was a 5 minute delay before they could attempt that task again.
All in all, 129,764 graves were completely dug up, and an additional 220 graves had been partially dug up when the Spirit of Slumber's bones were found (as soon as this happened, all graveyard activity was suspended).
Testing Bones
Once a grave had been dug up, a player with some bone-testing potion (acquired from Sophie, outside the graveyard) could try to test the bone in the grave in order to determine whether it belonged to the Spirit of Slumber. Upon finding a grave not occupied by a tester, the player was presented with information about the bone's volume and mass, and then asked how many drops of testing potion they wanted to use (between 1 and 250 drops).
The number of drops necessary was equal to (5x)2, where x was the density of the bone. The density was calculated by dividing the mass by the volume. If the player provided more or fewer drops than were required, Gilly would either get sick from fumes, or charred by an explosion. If they got it right, she would test the bone, determining (in all cases but one) that it did not belong to the Spirit of Slumber. In total, 129,700 bones were tested.
 Ouch.
After a few days, the Spirit of Slumber's bones were found, and the puzzle ended.
Chapter 6 of the comic recapped the gravedigging, but then our heroes discovered that the Spirit of Slumber's grave was unmarked -- the headstone had been shattered. They now knew which grave the bones came from, but not who the grave belonged to. In order to solve this problem, they decided to go through the Caretaker's death registries and cross off every name in every graveyard in the Haunted Woods. By process of elimination, this would leave the one broken grave. (And it's a good thing there was only one broken grave in all the Haunted Woods.)
Finding names to cross off was a simple matter of finding a grave in any graveyard that hadn't yet been marked off, writing down the name of its inhabitant, and then taking that name to the Caretaker's registries and crossing it off in the appropriate book. In total, 269,636 names were crossed off of the lists, leaving only one: Jubart Igig, the name the Spirit of Slumber had had in life. Those 269,636 names were spread across graves in 1,586 graveyards. As with puzzle 4B, when a graveyard had been completed (by having all its names successfully crossed off) it was removed from the list, and another one was added.
Clever users who saved the names of the graveyards from the digging portion were able to input those names manually, so as to go directly to them instead of having to rely on the provided list.
Chapter 7 of the comic recapped the discovery of the Spirit of Slumber's name. Sophie then realized that the potion she could make to summon him would require a host body to inhabit. It was very dangerous, but Bruno volunteered.
Returning to Sophie's shack, players discovered that Sophie needed assistance to prepare the potion. The recipe for the potion did not precisely specify the ingredients needed, and so it would take some trial and error to figure out how to do it.
This puzzle occurred in three stages. At the end of each stage, Bruno sampled the potion to see whether it would have the desired effect. In order to complete a stage, players had to turn the potion a certain colour by putting in specific ingredients.
The potion's colour changes were determined by way of a simple state table. For a given colour of the current potion, adding a certain ingredient would always change the potion to the same target colour. Here's a chart indicating a sample state table for stage 1:
If the cauldron is the colour in the leftmost column, adding an ingredient at the top will cause the cauldron to change to the colour at the intersection of that row and column. The "success" colour has a red background.
The cauldron always starts as red (the top colour). In this example, adding bumroot or crushed jurpleberries to a red cauldron would turn it green; adding leafy slorgblossom to it would leave it red. In order to finish this stage, the user would have to go from red to green (by adding bumroot or crushed jurpleberries), and then from green to blue (by adding leafy slorgblossom -- with a green cauldron, adding either of the other two ingredients would turn it back to red), and finally to purple, by adding leafy slorgblossom again.
During stage 1, players were given 4 tries before the potion became unstable and turned into horrible black goo:
 Ick
If the player managed to turn the cauldron purple within 4 tries, they proceeded to the second stage (after a short dialogue scene). In the second stage, there were 4 ingredients to use, and seven possible colours; the player had to get the cauldron from red all the way to a bizarre four-colour mishmash. In this stage, players were allowed 6 cauldron changes before it overflowed into goo. This time, Sophie started with a slightly different basic potion (still coloured red), which caused the ingredients to have a different effect than before.
The third stage was similar, expanding to ten possible colours and 9 changes allowed. Again, players started with a red cauldron, and the state table was different.
Here are all three of YOUR state tables for this puzzle:
- Stage 1 -- Stage 2 -- Stage 3 -
As with all the puzzles, the state tables for each user were randomly generated, and had no bearing on anything else. Changing the colour of the potion was as simple as looking up the target in the state table; and there was no "memory" of what colour the potion had been before. Also note that each of the three "success" colours (light purple, four-colour swirl, and silver/red) were only accessible from the colour immediately preceding them; however other colours in the sequence could sometimes be reached by skipping over one or more colours (however, there was always a direct, single-change path from red to the success colour).
Once the third-stage potion was created, Bruno drank it down, and the familiar "TO BE CONTINUED" image appeared.
Chapter 8 of the comic showed Bruno becoming possessed by the Spirit of Slumber, and Gilly, Sophie, and Bruno/Spirit returning to Neovia in order to have the Spirit undo his curse on the town's inhabitants. The timing was crucial, as the inhabitants only appeared one day a year: Halloween.
Upon arriving, the Spirit undid his spell, and then departed Bruno's body, leaving Bruno weakened. The townspeople seemed to have returned to normal, but after a few moments they transformed into huge, monstrous versions of themselves. Sophie watched her family change, as well, and so she went temporarily insane and fled Neovia, leaving Gilly and Bruno to fend for themselves.
In the crowd, Bruno and Gilly spotted the diabolical Krawk, Mr. Krawley, lurking. Gilly chased after him while Bruno distracted the enraged townspeople. Krawley led Gilly on a chase through the woods, and she had to fight off animated gravestones and evil trees. Eventually, Krawley led Gilly to an abandoned insane asylum, and told her that what she sought was inside. Suddenly finding Krawley vanished, and herself surrounded by zombies, Gilly took refuge in the asylum.
Meanwhile, Bruno used his own brute strength to fend off the townspeople (as well as some mysterious creeping shadows) and hide in a cellar. He watched as the townspeople (including his monstrously changed parents and younger brother, Reginald) searched the town for him.
At the same time, Sophie, still terrified, reached her shack. But soon she calmed down and inspiration struck: Reasoning that Krawley's potion had caused the horrible effect on the townspeople, she began to work on a counter-potion that would cure the Neovians of their monstrous state.
This puzzle was by far the most complicated. Rather than merely combining a few ingredients to change the colour of a potion, Sophie used her full set of laboratory equipment in order to perform precise experiments on the potions she was attempting. Since no potion like this had ever been made before, Sophie had to invent the entire thing from scratch.
Like puzzle 6, this puzzle had multiple stages (five, in this case). In each stage, Sophie made a list of various composite ingredients she needed in order to create the potion she wanted. Players were presented with Sophie's workbench, which allowed them to take ingredients out of a cabinet; work with those ingredients to change their magical properties; and combine those ingredients to form composites.
Composites would appear to be a different colour (or combination of colours) depending on their properties. The basic logic was that the absolute value of each property was taken, and the two highest values were considered. Here's a chart of each basic composite colour and what properties would cause that colour:
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All properties at 0 |
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Highest property: Conjuration; second-highest property at least 10 points below Conjuration, or equal to 0 |
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Highest property: Divination; second-highest property at least 10 points below Divination, or equal to 0 |
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Highest property: Enchantment; second-highest property at least 10 points below Enchantment, or equal to 0 |
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Highest property: Power; second-highest property at least 10 points below Power, or equal to 0 |
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Highest properties: Conjuration, Divination, within 10 points of each other |
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Highest properties: Conjuration, Enchantment, within 10 points of each other |
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Highest properties: Conjuration, Power, within 10 points of each other |
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Highest properties: Divination, Enchantment, within 10 points of each other |
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Highest properties: Divination, Power, within 10 points of each other |
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Highest properties: Enchantment, Power, within 10 points of each other |
Stage 1
The first stage had only 3 available ingredients:
Bumroot |
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Leafy Slorgblossom |
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Bagguss Pulp |
Each basic ingredient could be taken out of the cupboard in any quantity from 1 to 10 grams, and then manipulated. The four basic manipulations were as follows:
Burning |
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Crushing |
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Soaking |
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Desiccating |
Players could perform each of the four actions on a quantity of ingredient for a certain amount of time. The time limits were 30 seconds per gram for burning, 60 seconds per gram for crushing, 90 seconds per gram for soaking, and 120 seconds per gram for desiccating. (This means that, for example, the player could crush a one gram mass of bumroot for 60 seconds, or three grams for 180 seconds.)
Each of these four actions would cause the four magical properties of the ingredients to change in some way. The four properties were Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, and Power. The amount that each property would increase or decrease was different for each ingredient (but the same for all users). For example, burning one gram of bumroot for 30 seconds (the maximum burn time for one gram) would increase its Divination property by 15. Similarly, burning three grams of bumroot for 90 seconds would increase Divination by 15.
Here's a table showing the maximum property changes for the first ingredient, bumroot:
Bumroot | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | +30 | +15 | +15 | +8 | | crush | +36 | +18 | +18 | +9 | | soak | +42 | +21 | +21 | +11 | | desiccate | +48 | +24 | +24 | +12 |
One or more quantities of basic ingredients could be converted into a "composite." Players could have up to three composites on their workbench at once, and up to four quantities of basic ingredients. Composites could then be thrown into the cauldron, all at once, to see if they made the potion Sophie was trying for.
In stage 1, Sophie wanted only one composite. The composite needed to be 5 grams of material, with one of the four basic properties somewhere between +50 and +70. There was a margin of error of +/- 5 for whichever property was selected (it was random for each user).
Say, for example, that the user was required to provide 5 grams of composite with +55 Conjuration. In order to achieve this using bumroot, the user could burn the 5 grams of bumroot for 150 seconds (5 grams * 30 seconds per gram = 150 seconds or 2.5 minutes) to increase its Conjuration to +30. This leaves another +25 Conjuration needed. All of the other actions, if done to the maximum duration, would increase Conjuration by too much. So the player could, for example, partially crush the bumroot, just enough to give another +25 Conjuration.
How long should the player crush it, though? Well, the maximum change to Conjuration from crushing bumroot is +36. In order to do this to 5 grams of bumroot, the player would have to crush it for 60 seconds per gram, or 300 seconds (5 minutes) total. But that's too much; we only want +25. Well, 25 out of 36 is about 69.4%, so if we only crushed the bumroot for 69.4% of the maximum time, that should add +25 Conjuration. The maximum time for 5 grams is 300 seconds; 69.4% of 300 is about 208 seconds. Thus, crushing the five grams of bumroot for another 208 seconds would add +25 Conjuration.
This would result in a 5 gram quantity of bumroot with +55 Conjuration. The player could then turn this ingredient into a composite, and, needing no other ingredients, dump it into the cauldron in order to move on to the next step.
Stage 2
The second stage provided an additional ingredient, and required two composites. The new ingredient:
 Sharpgrass
The two composites each required a different random property, meaning that players now had to deal with two of the four properties. The first composite required 15-20 grams with a final value of +40-45 (+/- 5), and the second composite required exactly 25 grams of another property with a final value of +80-90 (+/- 5). The second composite also could not contain more than 10 grams of any single base ingredient. (Due to a bug in the code, this check was not enforced, though many users obeyed it anyway. Way to go! Have a metaphorical gold star.)
The new ingredient, sharpgrass, would sometimes decrease in certain properties when experimented with, so players had to take this into account as well. (At the end of this section is a chart with all the ingredients' property change matrices.)
Stage 3
The third stage provided two new ingredients, and again required two composites. The new ingredients:
Bloodfern Loam |
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Crushed Jurpleberries |
One of the composites required was called a "special" composite, and given a name: Spectral Essence. No information was provided on how to make Spectral Essence, however, and after about 24 hours, Sophie vaguely remembered which ingredients might be used to make it, though not how it was made.
 Spectral Essence
It turned out that the recipe for Spectral Essence was to combine at least one gram each of leafy slorgblossom and bloodfern loam, with a total Power property of +350 or higher. Any composite that fit those criteria would appear as Spectral Essence.
The second composite was a "normal" composite, requiring two random properties that each had a value of between 78 and 83 (with a margin of error of +/- 3). The composite had to be exactly 12 grams, and could not contain more than 3 grams of any one basic ingredient.
Stage 4
Stage 4 again added two new ingredients, and required three composites. The new ingredients:
Babaa Wool |
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Bronze Sansam |
Two of the three composites were special composites: the first one was a new material called "Anti-Gravitic Goo". This was created by combining at least one gram each of bagguss pulp, crushed jurpleberries, and Babaa wool. The composite had to have +200 or greater in both Conjuration and Divination, and no single basic ingredient could constitute more than 40% of the composite by mass. This composite required a mass of 10 grams.
 Anti-Gravitic Goo
The second composite was 10 grams of Spectral Essence, only this time it had to have a Conjuration of +275 +/- 1 in addition to its other properties.
The third composite was a "normal" composite, again needing two precise properties, only this time the properties had vastly different ranges: one would be +65-70 +/- 2, and the other would be +100-105 +/- 2. Again, 12 grams were required, and no more than 3 grams of any one basic ingredient could be used.
Stage 5
The fifth and final stage again required three composites. It also introduced the last two basic ingredients:
Madvine Root |
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Nova Essence |
In this stage, three new special composites were introduced, and each player was randomly assigned one of them as their first composite. The composite was required to be 10 grams. The three new composites:
Platinum Mist |
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Ice Plasma |
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Psionic Singularity |
Platinum Mist was created by combining sharpgrass, bronze sansam, and madvine root. It had to have at least twice as much bronze sansam as sharpgrass (by mass), and all four properties had to be +300 or higher.
Ice Plasma was created by combining bumroot, sharpgrass, and nova essence. It had to have exactly two properties with negative values, and had to contain exactly one gram of nova essence. As it turned out, this composite's recipe was discovered much earlier than the other two.
Psionic Singularity was created by combining madvine root and nova essence. It had to contain exactly four times as much nova essence as madvine root, and must have had any single action (burn, soak, etc.) performed on exactly one of the two ingredients for exactly one second per gram of the ingredient. So players could have crushed (or burned, or soaked, or desiccated) the 8 grams of nova essence for 8 seconds, or the 2 grams of madvine root for 2 seconds.
The second composite was 10 grams of Anti-Gravitic Goo, with two specific properties: Enchantment at -406 +/- 1, and Power at +151 +/- 1.
The third composite was, as usual, a "normal" composite, needing two random properties at exactly +300 +/- 1. The composite had to consist of 5 grams of material, with no more than 1 gram of any one basic ingredient.
Once these three composites were dumped into the cauldron correctly, the puzzle ended and the usual "TO BE CONTINUED" image appeared.
For reference, here's the transition tables for all ten ingredients:
Bumroot | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | +30 | +15 | +15 | +8 | | crush | +36 | +18 | +18 | +9 | | soak | +42 | +21 | +21 | +11 | | desiccate | +48 | +24 | +24 | +12 |
Leafy Slorgblossom | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | +8 | +30 | +15 | +15 | | crush | +9 | +36 | +18 | +18 | | soak | +11 | +42 | +21 | +21 | | desiccate | +12 | +48 | +24 | +24 |
Bagguss Pulp | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | +15 | +8 | +36 | +30 | | crush | +18 | +9 | +43 | +36 | | soak | +21 | +11 | +51 | +42 | | desiccate | +24 | +12 | +58 | +48 |
Sharpgrass | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | +60 | -6 | -3 | +60 | | crush | -6 | +60 | +60 | -12 | | soak | +90 | +90 | -18 | -9 | | desiccate | -24 | -12 | +90 | +90 |
Bloodfern Loam | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | +60 | -30 | -30 | -30 | | crush | +390 | +120 | -90 | +180 | | soak | -90 | -90 | +90 | +270 | | desiccate | -30 | +330 | +360 | -90 |
Crushed Jurpleberries | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | 0 | 0 | +180 | 0 | | crush | +180 | 0 | 0 | 0 | | soak | 0 | +180 | 0 | 0 | | desiccate | 0 | 0 | 0 | +180 |
Babaa Wool | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | +300 | +300 | +300 | -1,200 | | crush | +300 | +300 | -1,200 | +300 | | soak | +300 | -1,200 | +300 | +300 | | desiccate | -1,200 | +300 | +300 | +300 |
Bronze Sansam | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | +120 | +150 | +90 | +180 | | crush | +180 | +240 | +180 | +240 | | soak | +180 | +270 | +180 | +90 | | desiccate | +120 | +240 | +60 | +12 |
Madvine Root | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | +120 | +300 | +240 | +660 | | crush | +360 | -120 | +240 | -480 | | soak | -270 | +300 | +540 | +480 | | desiccate | +180 | -240 | -120 | +60 |
Nova Essence | | Conjuring | Divination | Enchantment | Power | | burn | -540 | +420 | -360 | +240 | | crush | +600 | +420 | +180 | -540 | | soak | +540 | -360 | -240 | +660 | | desiccate | +360 | -120 | |
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