So... with the caveat that I am biased (having just spent 600+% moves and 40 minutes of real time typing random sequences of n, w, e, s) I was curious about the rationale behind the 'mist-shrouded-forests' outside of Barovia.

I understand the appeal of someplace where the geography is a little quirky, but:

If navigation in the mist shrouded forest is random, would it not be just as cute (and less outright infuriating) for the chance of finding something other than the same two squares of forest to be increased to a reasonable amount?

Alternatively, if navigation does follow some pattern (time of day, lunar phase, whatever), it would seem preferable to place some indicator of this pattern inside the forest. Of course, if such a pattern exists, and there is a clue in the forest, I'll be rather embarrased.

worse maze.. All thanks for it you can send to Nepe :)

Such a pattern exists, and is readily obvious in the forest.

Hint: You can look in directions as well as scan in them, if you didn't know that already. Theoretically the Academy teaches you this.

hmmm . . . odd. Tried looking all six directions.

Results were something to the effect of 'its too misty to see anything.'

Though now that I think about it, I may not have looked in all of them from the same square of land . . . .

Hm. It appears I am embarrased.

Having been lost in mazes with just about every character I've ever played (even up to this year, after 10+years of playing), I've developed, or been taught, a few methods for finding your way out of a maze.


First, Scan all. Look in all directions. Don't forget you have an "exit" command. Look at the room your are in. There might be extra descriptions based on keywords in the room desc that might give you a hint.

Also. Know that day and night will effect the above strategies.

This works for most mazes.

There are, however, other mazes with no clues that you can get from the above.


My advice for those, it to make sure you bring enough coin, and be very methodical in your approach to escape.

Move east from rooms. Every room you move east from, drop 1 copper coin.

You come to a room with a copper coin, you know you have already moved east from that room, if so, drop a second copper coinand move south.

You come to a room with a pile of copper, drop a silver coin and move north.

you come to a room with a pile of copper and a silver, drop another silver coin and move west.

You come to a room with a pile of copper, and a pile of silver, move any direction till you find one where you haven't tried an exit from that room yet.


Following this pattern, you will often notice that while random, you can over time learn the pattern of exits and find your way out.

This has, admittedly, taken me over an hour in some of the more insidious mazes, but it worked.


And DON'T FORGET to keep on with the exit/scan all/look in all directions while you are doing this. This may save you from a death-trap or nasty mobs.

To generalize the (somewhat vague) descriptions offered above, here's something I think you should know that doesn't quite give away the keys to the kingdom.

A lot of mazes are structured such that there are two or more exits, with "paths" that lead between them, which are evident from looking in the various directions. If you are in a room, look in four directions, and see three similar descriptions and one oddball, then the oddball is likely your path. There are also, within those mazes, rooms not on the path in which you will not be able to differentiate between the exits. One more more of them will often put you back on the "path".

The nastier ones are often variants on this, where there is an in-path and out-path, separated by rooms without any discernable "path" in between.

In most of the mazes like the one you described, once you know what to "look" for, you can navigate them very quickly.

That said, I've spent an hour before trying to figure some of them out.

T

I do something slightly different to navigate mazes. It's imperfect (will explain later) but it tends to do alright.

Upon entering a room:

If there's 0 copper coins, look in all directions. If you don't see what you're looking for then drop 1 copper and move west. If the room has a "special exit" but it's not the one you're looking for, then drop 1 silver in addition to the copper.
If there's 1 copper coin, drop an additional copper coin and move north.
If there's 2 copper coins, drop an additional copper coin and move east.
If there's 3 copper coins, get them all and move south.

The problem with this is that you can get into a repeating cycle where you're just visiting the same rooms over and over again.

There is a certain 'logic' to CF mazes which you have to be aware of.

There are to my knowledge 3 types of mazes

1) Standard maze -
Same way in, same way out. Exits might be obvious, or you might need to scan/look for them. Either way the coin-dropping method works for this, and once you've mapped them you won't ever need to do it again.

2) Maze with random exits -
Typically these take the form of an entrance to the area where you need to look in all directions for a hint: e.g. "The vegetation starts to thin out in this direction" Once you go in that direction you are one correct step further down the maze. Rinse and repeat until you are through. You need to repeat every time you navigate such a maze. Creating an alias for looking in every direction with one command will help here enormously.

3) Mazes with shifting, random exits -
(e.g. the Sands of Sorrow) The worst and most deviously evil invention ever. Coin dropping kind of works, but going through certain mazes will drop you more than one room away from the previous one (so it seems) so end up "teleporting" into a different part of the area. You can't really write maps for this because these "teleporting rooms" don't generally announce themselves. Again. And again. And again. Look around you on your crazed wanderings, and you might get lucky.

I'll echo the comment about a bad room made a few threads further down. Sometimes when you leave the correct path you enter an endless maze which you can only get out of by leaving via the opposite direction to that you came in by.

If you get off the "path" in that maze there are rooms that have no obvious correct exit. If you get off the path and end up in one of these, just take it one room at a time looking in each direction.

God I hate that F'ing place.

Big cosign. Man it's a pain in the ass. Nonveil's up there as well.

I hate that place--you can't have too much seaweed.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

Coins are highly useful in mazes...

Just kill someone for a pouch of nourishment. :)

Yay for laziness! Instead of working this afternoon I made sure that I never have to blindly wander around a maze EVER AGAIN! Hoooray for me! To bad tintin's regexp processing is garbage or I could really throw down the gauntlet.

Oh, and I was kind enough to share this one. If you can't find it, you aren't looking very well.

>Yay for laziness! Instead of working this afternoon I made
>sure that I never have to blindly wander around a maze EVER
>AGAIN!

Incidentally, there are a few mazes in the game that will beat this...

It's also poorly set up to run automatically and would be better off being done by an alias to get all coins or something, but it's good enough to get you through most places most of the time without any real effort other than loading it. Sort of like looping through every word of a description :P Not really ideal, but it'll work 90% of the time good enough.

The funny thing is, I always found bigger mazes like the Sands of Sorrow easiest with an Outlander because movement wasn't a concern and I could zip around the place fast.

I would basically run around in random directions until I hit the right spot, but sometimes it would be easier than others. Without some way to mark passage it did get a little frustrating at times when I just couldn't find the right path, or was stuck in a loop with only one way out that I couldn't find.

I always used a variety of different harvest foods for marking, for what it's worth. Different skin-crafted items if I was really desperate.

Not as easy as coins for some things, admittedly.

I got a title making fun of me because of the one Shok did. I don't need your brand of pain.

For any scroll using character, stock up on scrolls of continual light, and conjure up about 2000 balls of light, storing them in your container. They have no weight, so you can carry as many as you like. (I also find it amusing when someone kills you and takes you container, then has to deal with 2000 balls of light). Then when you go exploring, start fishing out balls of light to drop. These have the added benefit of giving you an exact number sitting in the room:

{Exites: north east south west}
(4) A glowing ball of light is here.


That way, each time you enter a new room, you can label it with a number, and keep notes. EXAMPLE:

ROOM #1:
Upon entering the maze, I started in room #1.
East from room #1 is room #2
North from room #1 is room #30
West from room #1 is room #10
South from room #1 is room #24
(NOTE: Room #1 might be the first room upon entering the maze, but it is NOT an exit)

This is kind of a long process and requires many balls of light, but you're sure to map the whole place out, as long as the maze doesn't change while you're in mid-process. If I'm not mistaken, there are a few of those around (this is quite possibly an error, but seems to be the case from my experiences). This sort of mapping is also possible with other items like food from a pouch of nourishment, etc. However, unless you have a way of keeping a large store of items with low weight (i.e. pouch of nourishment, chest of inhebriation), you could really weigh yourself down carrying enough to map the whole maze.

Couple windwalk with daylight + (syntax) "exit" and you can find your way through Sands of Sorrow quite easily.

nt

And they all #### with you in different ways, is what's worse.

I think what's more amazing is that there's at least one that I had nothing to do with.

finding mob or pool with right name is such a big pain in ass that I do not want to think that there is something worse :)

For some reason I've always found that maze quite simple, after all I have always found what I was looking for quite easily... But, but but... It did take some time, thanks to those pesky little mobs!