Blue Prince - meandeirng thoughts and discussion while playing

The Game Room
61

Sometimes I found that to be a help. You can ignore any interpretation where the gems end up in two boxes, since that couldn’t possibly be the case.

One trick I found helpful is that sometimes you get very limited information about which boxes have the gems. In that case, you can exclude the ambiguous situations. For instance, say only one box mentions the gems at all and says “The gems are in the blue box”. Since there’s nothing to disambiguate the answer if that message was false, then it must be true.

I did fail twice out of 40-something tries. The first was a dumb mistake when I was rushing. The second… well, I forgot to write it down, but I don’t believe I made a mistake. I wonder if it actually had an ambiguous answer.

62

I read online that:

  • you can upgrade the room to have two keys
  • If you put your current key in the Coat Check and get three keys the next day…all three boxes are empty!

Ha!

63

Yeah, two keys is one of the upgrades. But since I had such I high success rate, I took the upgrade that gives you 3 gems instead. I forget what the third upgrade was.

That is kinda funny about the coat check thing. I guess you could do it without that upgrade, if you got the room that allows duplicate rooms, and thus two coat checks and two stored keys. Or is coat check storage shared?

A more spoilery thing about keys in general:

You can only have one basement key at a time. If you check it, the antechamber pedestal is empty. Kinda annoying since I needed that key and was getting bad luck with the coat checks.

64

Felt very stupid today after many runs figuring out that the pump room works without being powered up. You only need to power to fill up the giant tank. After that the rest of the motors work fine.

65

Last few runs have been mostly meh. Usually got myself running out of keys or flat out dead-ending everywhere.

Day 13 was also mostly uneventful except for I drafted the Tomb, which completed my outdoors list. And if it wasn’t apparent before (note: it was, especially considering the dark area accessible from the outside with the crates and the torches in wall sconces), it’s certainly apparent that now that I need a fire source. Because there are obviously candles that need to be lit here. The weird thing is WHY DOES THIS GAME OPPRESS MY CHARACTER BY NOT LETTING ME PICK UP ANY OF THE STRAY CANDLES JUST RANDOMLY LYING AROUND IN THIS ROOM AND FORCING ME TO FIND A FIRE SOURCE SOMEWHERE ELSE???!!!

Also, those statues clearly need have their arms moved in some manner or order I’ve yet to figure out. Unfortunately, I remembered after ending the day that I read a portion in a book about the statue of Rynna, and maybe that one needs to be moved first, or by itself, or maybe there isn’t a likeness of Rynna in the tomb.

Day 14 was a good run, though. Managed to draft the Office at the northern exit of the Entrance Hall. First time I’ve drafted it. (I think I’ve only run across it once or twice before.)

Oh, look! Another safe. I have the combo from the conference room, but I doubt that’ll work. It was on a red post-it after all. Yep, no luck. But hey, upgrade disk. Let’s see…Closet. Okay, I’ll make it a Bedroom Closet. Oh, Email! I can finally read it. Oh, look, the final instructions to reset the fusebox. I’ll definitely have to draft the Utility Room when I get the chance. Eventually I drafted the Utility Room. Fixed the fusebox. Pulled the lever. Opened the Mine. Saw the letter in the Mine. Saw the valve in the mine. Figure if I turn it, it’ll light the last torch. Sure enough, last torch lit, and elevator now available. Shame I’m going to run out of steps before getting there.

Other than the office and the spoilered stuff, not much else noteworthy, but spoilered stuff alone was worth the Day.

66

Day 15.

Another good day. 36 rooms drafted. Nothing earth shattering as far as changing game state in a rogue-lite manner, but a lot of new information. Managed to open the Antechamber for a second time and managed to not be able to reach the part that was open for a second time. Oh, well, maybe someday. Drafted the Pump Room for the first time. It was fun. Drained the Pool, got some cash.

Drafted the Laundry Room for the second time. Actually got use out of it this time for keys.

Drafted the Music Room for the first time. Got the Prism Key. Need to find out the rest of the message that starts with the music on the piano.

Got the silver key from a chest I sledgehammered open. Used it. Unfortunately, unlike the last time I drafted that room there wasn’t an upgrade disk.

Got my keycard from Coat Check. Was unable to return it before running out of steps, alas.

But there were three really important things that I figured out that pertain to three puzzles and made the day successful:

  1. Getting to the Precipice unlocked from the previous day and seeing the chess puzzle and immediately knowing how to solve it. However, I haven’t been tracking which rooms have which pieces, so I’m going to have to start taking notes. I have at least one room for each piece at this point. And every room who doesn’t seem to have another piece or is completely undecorated (e.g. Pump Room) seems to have a pawn, it appears.

  2. Drafting the Chapel and realizing that the figures in the stained glass correspond to the statues in the Tomb. And they’re numbered. Another puzzle apparently figured out.

  3. Drafted the study. In the upper left corner of the estate. I now know the point of all the framed images on the walls. And find it amusing that the Pantry actually hints at this with an image on the wall next to one of its exits, but the likelihood at figuring it out from the pantry alone is next to none. And with 38 rooms drafted, I filled out a lot of the message. Interesting that some rooms are permanently undecorated. I have 21 of the letters filled. Ran out of steps before I could fill in more, but went mostly from top to bottom, so the bottom letters will be easy to fill out later.

67

Hey, all, I finally got this game recently, and I have a strategic question; non spoiler advice would be appreciated:

I am at day 50.

Edit: Deleted spoiler until I have time to redo.

68

Late to the party…I finally reached Room 46 on Day 144. Why did it take so long? Learn from my mistakes…

Don’t put off solving puzzles because you don’t like a particular kind of puzzle; if the game makes it obvious early on that a puzzle exists, you probably need to solve it in order to progress. I procrastinated on solving the lights in the fusebox for a long time.

Once you realize that there are a LOT of areas to explore that aren’t represented on the 5x9 grid, don’t make the mistake of assuming that you’ll need to thoroughly explore all of them before being able to find Room 46. (On the other hand, don’t imagine that you need to rush because Room 46 will be some great mind-blowing revelation when you do find it…this game is definitely about the journey more than the destination).

Lastly and crucially: in one room that it will take you a while to gain access to, there’s a blinking light. It wasn’t obvious to me that I needed to figure out how to do something with that, but I totally did.

69

Which room was that?

70

The basement. It’s in a place where you can easily see it, but figuring out how to get close enough to interact with it is a puzzle.

71

Another thing I wish I’d known: Don’t wrack your brain about the chess pieces. Make notes of which pieces you see in which room and forget about it. When you find the place where you need that information, it will be quite obvious.

72

the latter.

73

I’m impressed that you got to the Apple Orchard quickly, I would consider that one of the more difficult places to reach. You need to draft a particular room, draft another particular room and do something there, then go back to the first room while carrying a particular item. And I didn’t find any clues about any of that, so you kind of have to just luck into it.

Now editing to meet the demands of Discourse:

Radiation is generated by running Lab experiments. Every time I check on the Lab computer, though, the amount of radioactivity produced by so doing is trivial. I suspect, but don’t know, that you need to power up and operate the machine in the corner in order to unlock all the doors.

74

Update: I have inferred from chatter on the internet that the SECOND time you reach Room 46 on a particular run, you can actually go in and look around.

I am now at the “looking at online spoilers” stage, because life is too short. I don’t regret looking up the safe combinations at all, I see no way you’d ever figure them out short of brute force.

The next major thing I want to do is take a Sanctum Key into the Sanctum and see what happens. Anyone gotten there yet?

And since Discourse is apparently letting me post here again, I might as well share this stuff I wrote when it shut me down for dominating the conversation:

Various thoughts while I wait for Discourse to let me post again:

There was only one point where I got frustrated enough to look up spoilers online, and it turned out to be a good thing. It was regarding the statues in the tomb. Turned out that I did immediately figure out what you need to do with them, but I did it wrong (did the things in the wrong order, I guess) the first time I tried, and it would just never have occurred to me to try again.

Based on online discussions, I seem to be in a small minority that liked the Gallery puzzle. A lot of people looked that one up and said they would never have gotten it on their own.

Someone mentioned it not being worth it to open the time lock safe more than once; maybe this has been patched since you played, but for me it stayed permanently open and always had a fresh gem each morning, as well as the other thing in case you want to look at it again. (ETA: this applies to all the other safes, too)

I know that I know Day One is November 7, but I forget where I learned that. (ETA: on the calendar hanging in the Drafting Room) Today’s date can always be found in the Drafting Room or Vault, btw.

One thing I find frustrating in the game is that your character apparently lacks any knowledge of not only his own society’s history, but even his personal history. We know that he has a good relationship with his Dad from having read the thing we found in the place, but who is his Dad? Why did he stop coming to visit Mount Holly, after apparently having done so frequently when he was a child? These seem like things you should be able to start the game already knowing…

As someone mentioned, it is theoretically possible to find Room 46 on the very first day. If you consider this, it may help focus your search, since you know any puzzle that requires multiple days to solve can’t be essential to finding Room 46. For instance, lighting all four braziers can’t be necessary, since you can’t draft all four valves on the same day. I got hung up on this for a while.

Anyone figured out the strategy for the (very minor spoiler) slot machines? Best I’ve come up with, just like IRL, is “don’t play them”.

(To Mahaloth’s question about the location of the blinking light): Oh, have you even found that room yet? There are three ways to reach it, but two of them require reaching the Antechamber, and the other seems like it would be really hard to stumble on by luck, although then again, I did just that.

To expand/digress: (this is about backstory, nothing under the spoiler is directly related to any game mechanics AS FAR AS I KNOW) One of the things you briefly glimpse in Room 46 before the fade to credits is a golden, bejeweled crown. I wonder if that may be the same crown mentioned in the scrapbook in the Archives, and discussed in more detail in the document in the time-lock safe.

75

I have. What happens is you figure out that you still have a long way to go until you completely solve the game.

76

It’s been a bit, so I’ll ask a question I have wondered ever since I read more about what happens post-find-46.

So let’s say you indeed open up the game more and realized that “wow, the main game is post finding the final room”.

How do you regularly explore the new-ish content if every freakin’ day reloads everything except for a few things you stored and the outside region.

I just can’t imagine getting deep in the game over and over and over. On day 50, aren’t people still having terrible luck and having to quit really quickly?

I don’t get how you learn to control the situation more so that you have more repeated success…leading to more late game success.

77

Well, not everything resets. Generally, the doors which are really difficult to find and/or unlock will remain permanently open once you unlock them. For instance, it took me a very long time to find the room I was just talking with Miller about, but now that I know where it is I can easily get to it whenever I want (the entrance is on the outer grounds, so I don’t even need to draft any particular room).

So it’s not like you have to make it all the way to the Antechamber and thence to Room 46 on any given run in order to keep making progress, which is good because that does remain very hard to do.

78

Really, the only thing that resets is inventory items and room placement. Anything you change inside of a room (excluding items you can pick up) stays changed between runs. If you solve a puzzle, you don’t have to solve it again on every run. It stays solved for the rest of the game, unless the puzzle reward is more inventory items (like the dart board, or the three box logic puzzle room).

79

OK, this is a spicy tip I just heard…apparently this is an intended part of the game design, not an exploit, but you’d probably never notice it just by playing the game.

Apparently, if you draft your first three rooms within 35 seconds of the day starting, the game thinks you are an experienced player and significantly improves your odds of finding good stuff in order to keep you from getting frustrated and quitting. I NEVER do that, I’ve always started with the outdoor room since I unlocked it. I’ll try and see if it makes a noticeable difference.

80

Wow, someone made a website where you can enter the things you have already found/done and get helpful hints about what to do next! Very cool. Thus far it says I am 68/168 done.