So as not to hijack his goodbye thread, I decided to take it here.

My problem with exploring, and quests in general has always been that (for whatever reason) the puzzles always seem completely non-sensical to me. Perhaps it's just a factor of the way I think, or something, but I am an extraordinarily bright person who has spent hours trying to solve your loch quest and failed miserably. I'm sure some people "get it" but I'm not sure if that is because they've done enough quests to think in the counter-intuitive manner that it takes, or if I just have a serious brain blockage when it comes to this sort of stuff.

The short of it is, exploration has always been exceedingly frustrating for me because when I think something has to be there it invariably isn't, and when I know something is there, I can't figure it out/find it, no matter how hard I look.

I'm not saying these puzzles need to be dumbed down, as people obviously DO figure them out, but it sure would be nice if someone with exploring experience could give me some ideas as to what I'm doing wrong. Is it a matter of just brute force examining everything? Do I need to write everything down instead of relying on memory? What assumptions should I avoid? That sort of thing.... I'd love to explore, but other than finding some things that are useless or obvious, I've mostly found exploring to be more frustrating than playing a lone evil outlander against a horde of enemies.... and I think we all know how frustrating I find that.

Some people get the quests, others don't. Based on the emails I've received, people have problems with different areas. The one common thread on all the emails I've received concerning the quests is the sense of accomplishment everyone has gotten who has successfully completed any of them. That's why I wrote them (I do need to tweak the rewards just a bit...the progs are great, but the objects themselves need slight modification) - because of that sense of accomplishment.

I'll always answer emails concerning the quests if you get stuck.

As for hints, the best way I can describe my logic in creating the quests is by comparing it to a murder mystery, and those puzzles wherein you know 15 facts about ten people and have to deduce from those facts what order they stand in (Fact #1: Bob has red hair. Fact #2: Jim has pink pants. Fact #3: The girl with the nose ring stands to the left of the boy with the Trogdar tattoo).

Everyone in the Order knows a few facts about almost everyone else. You can learn these facts by speaking with them.

Everyone in the Order has information about themselves scattered throughout the area as well.

No one person has all the answers, and all the really important information is held by at least two of the members.

As with all murder mysteries, there is no crime without a body.

For the 'evil only' part of the quest, Brianna has pretty much all the information you're likely to get - and if she knew the answer, she'd complete the quest herself. That one is for the observant, and it's hard.

As for the blackberries, I'll double check that, but the required berries have always been in the Feanwyyn (unless someone changed that part of the quest).

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

Don't feel too bad; I can't do the Loch quests either.

>I'm not saying these puzzles need to be dumbed down, as people
>obviously DO figure them out, but it sure would be nice if
>someone with exploring experience could give me some ideas as
>to what I'm doing wrong.

It might be different things depending on the puzzle/area.

For an area like Kteng's, yeah, there's going to be a ton of hidden stuff in the area, and you're going to need to find nearly all of it. You're also going to need to get certain things exact, so you probably do need to write things down.

For an area like the Silent Tower, the thing that I've always found out most interesting about watching people go through it is that some chunk of the puzzles or tricky things, let's say 25%, stump everyone. The reason that it's interesting and not asinine on my part is that it's never the same 25%. For an area like that, maybe the solution is to find another 1-2 people that don't know it and explore it as a team. There again you might need to write some things down.

Other areas might require a shift in thinking or the ability to see a bigger pattern. Take Hell for example: I can't imagine how long it took someone to figure out the first to second circle transition. Once you know what a few transitions are, though, you might realize that they all follow a common pattern and deduce things about transitions you don't yet know.

One assumption to be careful with is that an area will be the same way for all characters or under all circumstances.

In some cases, mapping can be necessary or a really good idea, too. I've never drawn one of an area like Forest of Nowhere, instead learning my way around through experience and feel, but I sure did the first time I sat down and really explored Strange Island, just to get a feel for where all the dangerous things were and what the fastest routes through it would be.

There's at least one puzzle in the Silent Tower that I would say would be very difficult to deal with without a certain amount of notetaking and mapping. I can think of a few other things in areas I didn't write that might fall into the same boat.

Is Silent Tower explorable by all classes?

For example:

Can a Druid explore there and have a chance based on their inability to call animals, gather herbs, treant, etc?

Can a Paladin go there and fully explore it without being forced to fight good or sentient neutral mobs?

for druids there is a forest in the tower. I have always wonderd what CoW they might call there as well but i suspect it would be fairly badass like most of the mobs in that part of the tower.

For paladins there are some goody mobs in the tower but they are archmages and well if your still asking these questions you have a long way to go before your ready to even consider thinking about fighting them. And fighting/killing them is not neccesary except possibly for one quest but until your really up on your tower knowledge its not one to worry about.

Someday :)

Think it would be fun to see what its like. I've just been concerned I'm always playing the wrong classes to participate.

But definately have to try to find it and check it out :)

Once you hero, start re-exploring EVERY area and when you find a way in your very likely to stop and say wait I have seen this thing a million times and I had no idea.

Some classes will have an easier time than others, no question. A lone druid is going to have a rough time; a druid as part of a team can definitely make valuable contributions.

A paladin isn't in too bad of shape for it, all things considered. A paladin with Silent Prayer is near top of the list...

So I'm not sure I can offer much else besides sympathy. I *coded* the majority of the Loch quests, and with the last character I had it took me several hours to figure it all out.

That helps. One of the most frustrating parts is that I'll often know what I'm supposed to do, or where I'm supposed to go, or who I'm supposed to kill, or what item I'm supposed to get, but if there are steps between start of quest and end of quest, I will skip them, or miss them, or be utterly dumbfounded by them. The Loch is a perfect example of this. I know how it starts, I get the point, I know where to go, but getting there in the manner that is prescribed (required?) by the quest is apparently complely beyond my ability. It's like I know I'm supposed to go to place X and kill mob Y using item Z, but I can't find item Z, so even though I can wax mob Y any time I want, I can't finish the quest cause I'm not doing it "right" or something. Or I know that questy/hidden item is in area of a certain type, but what I think is area of a certain type, and what the person who wrote the stuff thinks is area of a certain type is widely divergent.

With Tac, I never did figure out the whole Ancient Instincts thing, and quite frankly still have no idea what it was that I was missing that everyone else seemed to understand.

The goodie/neutral version I've figured out.

That one quest where you're sent to Feanwynn needs to be adjusted, because those berries aren't in F'in Feanwynn. They're in a completely different, but adjacent, area.

the area is still the weald looking at 'where'...

Exploration tip: When you're exploring a new area, pick a mob that is seeable on 'where'. Check that mob is still in your area, and you'll know what rooms are in, and what rooms aren't in your same area...

-Cassman-