Zeusthecat

The Big LucasArts Playthrough

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Don't read to much into what I said, I just have that line stuck in my head because I spent so long trying to solve that puzzle.

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The sign one is actually a favourite of mine. It's face-slappingly obvious once you get it. :tup:

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It's more that signs don't actually behave that way in real life, and there's no reason to believe that that sign in that room has very different behaviour to everywhere else.

 

Also, you can hold down the use key when you find the fire extinguisher. That will save you some time.

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Basically, both the sign and the tree puzzles are constructed as playing around with a system to see what effect you can have on it...

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Just in case nobody mentioned it already, this is a good time to point out that ResidualVM runs Grim Fandango pretty much flawlessly right now, apart from perhaps a very occasional animation glitch or something. But more importantly, ResidualVM actually includes a lot of bug fixes for issues with the original game; there were surprisingly many, including one that infamously caused a long and important part of the game's dialogue to never occur.

 

 

Which line is that? The ResidualVM forum page is unavailable.

 

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Which line is that? The ResidualVM forum page is unavailable.

 

 

I just so happen to have it up for listening here:

 

 

That was put up back when the conversation's appearance within the game was mere legend, known to exist but heard by very few due to the specific and unusual actions needed to prevent triggering the bug.

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Thanks to some of the hints provided above, I managed to get through the rest of the Petrified Forest last night.

 

Yes.

 

So this hint turned out to be very helpful. I figured I had to be close to solving it once I had noticed that sound that was made when pushing the wheelbarrow over the conduit and thanks to this hint, I resolved to beat the dead horse a little bit longer than I normally would. Once again, I tried letting the wheelbarrow rest on each conduit and when I had exhausted all options I decided to just try pushing it all the way forward over all four conduits, then pulling it all the way back a couple times in a row to see if something would happen. Sure enough, that did the trick and the tree came down. Then Glottis was able to upgrade the car to make it capable of going over rough terrain.

 

As for the other puzzle:

 

Is the arrow always pointing at an exit?

 

This one took me a little longer. Even with this hint I still stubbornly stuck to what I was trying to do and kept putting the sign down and going to wherever it pointed. I eventually got frustrated and decided to take a break from this and go to the rough terrain area to see if there was something I needed to do there first. Upon entering, I had to go through a door where I found a bunch of fire beavers building a big dam out of bones. After getting scared off a couple of times I noticed a path to the left that I was able to follow to the edge of the tar pond that the beavers kept jumping in. I quickly found that I could throw a bone into the tar pond and when I saw one of the fire beavers jump in, my first thought was that I should throw another bone in and try to spray the beaver down with the fire extinguisher as it jumped over the edge (I think Merus deserves some credit for this one as I might not have jumped to this conclusion so quickly if I didn't have the "hold the use key down with the fire extinguisher" advice in the front of my brain). That did the trick and I repeated the process until all the beavers were gone.

 

At this point, Glottis still insisted that he couldn't drive the car through the gate and told me that we would need the key to get through. So I headed back to the area with all the paths to beat dead horse number 2 a little bit more. As I went about trying to figure this out, I had a moment of clarity that fit perfectly with mikemariano's hint. I had thought up until this point that the sign was just pointing in a random direction based on where I placed it. But then I realized that the "Is the arrow really pointing at an exit?" comment was just another way of saying "The arrow is pointing at something else in the room". With that in mind, I picked up the sign, walked a little ways in the direction it was pointing, placed it again, and repeated the process until it was in the magic spot, causing an underground passage to open up. Then I followed this passage, got the key I needed from a nearby sign, and was finally able to get the fuck out of the petrified forest. Once I pulled up to the next city area (I assume this is Rubacava?) I stopped playing.

 

Even though I ended up using some hints that you guys provided, I really don't think the puzzles in the petrified forest were all that bad. The tree one was a little bullshitty but I think I would have solved it eventually considering how close I already was. It definitely didn't make a lot of logical sense but I think Ben X's comment about these puzzles being designed around playing with a system to see what effect you can have is apt. And the sign puzzle ended up being pretty cool in my opinion. It was definitely face-slappingly obvious as Thrik pointed out and I think it is awesome that they try to distract you with all of those paths when the real path is right under your feet. 

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 I decided to just try pushing it all the way forward over all four conduits, then pulling it all the way back a couple times in a row to see if something would happen. Sure enough, that did the trick and the tree came down.

Sounds like you stumbled onto the solution, but there was a little bit of adventure game logic behind the correct state. Glottis alone doesn't have enough strength to pull the tree down. You can observe the tree shaking a bit when the pumps fire, but it's still not enough to bring it down. The conduits let you alter the timing of each pump. The pumps would have a larger effect when the pumps' forces don't cancel each other out, so the greatest destabilization occurs when pumps on the same side are firing in sync and alternating with the ones on the other side.

 

That said, I totally walkthrough'd the sign puzzle when I played it the first time. :getmecoat

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I really liked the sign puzzle.  For me it was similar to Jake and the

Tuesday is Kitty Hat Day

puzzle where I had a sudden moment of insight and the world magically revealed how awesome it and I both were.  Those are incredibly rare moments in any game, but I feel like Grim produced the best ones when they occured.

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I just so happen to have it up for listening here:

 

 

That was put up back when the conversation's appearance within the game was mere legend, known to exist but heard by very few due to the specific and unusual actions needed to prevent triggering the bug.

Thanks! I'd definitely heard parts of that, but not the bit that explains the whole frigging plot of the game.

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I just so happen to have it up for listening here:

 

 

That was put up back when the conversation's appearance within the game was mere legend, known to exist but heard by very few due to the specific and unusual actions needed to prevent triggering the bug.

Wow, I think I vaguely remember this, I'm so glad to hear it. Didn't some of this dialogue appear in the text log somehow? I forgot how I heard about it before.

 

Thanks Thrik!

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I like the tree puzzle but that's about it in the Petrified Forest. I greatly prefer puzzles where I can infer what I'm trying to achieve, but not how. I don't care for puzzles where what I'm trying to achieve is as ambivalent as the signpost puzzle, and I also don't care for 'puzzles' where the solution is that the interface does something odd with this one thing.

 

There are some great puzzles in Year 2, especially since not everything you can do in Rubacava actually advances a puzzle. The bit where I usually get stuck is how the docks behind the worker bees (is there are reason this skeleton world suddenly has giant bees?) continue on to a lighthouse.

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Agreed, chuck some

tags in there. I think saying anything specific about anything that happens later in the game from where Zeus is should be off limits, as this thread is totally all about him and us poring over his wonderful experiences of experiencing all this random madness for the first time!  :tup:

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I can never tell what people here consider spoilers, so I'm just going to stay out of this thread and come back later.

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It's like Thrik said, this thread is about the wacky adventures of a cat named Zeus in Lucasarts Land.  Pretty much anything he has yet to encounter is spoiler territory, even if it's not a puzzle solution.

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I played some more last night but it pretty much exclusively involved me just exploring Rubacava. The only real puzzle-y thing I did was to give a portrait of the mopping dude's wife to the dockmaster guy and then take the log he gave me back to the mopping dude to show him that his wife had already come through Rubacava with another guy several weeks earlier. After that, Manny took over mopping and a year went by.

 

When the game picked back up, I learned that Manny had taken up residence in Rubacava and had built up a restaurant/bar/casino over the last year and seemed to be living pretty comfortably. Glottis also seemed to be pretty happy and had turned out to be a pretty awesome pianist. After I had walked around my establishment and talked to the people there, I went outside and witnessed a cutscene where some freaky ass bird seemed to be impersonating Mercedes and pretty much made Manny crap his pants. After the bird flew off, Manny tracked it through some binoculars and saw it fly right near Mercedes, who was about to board a boat (it also looked like she was possibly being forced onto the boat). Manny then ran to the boat and managed to grab onto the boarding ramp but was knocked off by Mercedes. I'm kind of confused with what is going on between Mercedes and Manny at this point and am wondering if I missed something. From what I've seen, they barely seem to know each other to begin with and I don't understand why Mercedes seems to be trying to escape from Manny and why Manny is under the impression that he needs to rescue her. She seems like she is doing perfectly fine in the land of the dead.

 

After this sequence, I talked to the dockmaster guy and learned of the things I would need to do before he would give me a ride on his boat so I could go after Mercedes. It looks like I will need to get tools for Glottis, make sure the missing guy doesn't show up so I can have his spot on the boat, and obtain a union card. From here, I looked at the moon like five times so I could hear Manny and the dockmaster recite a cool poem in unison. Then I moved on and explored a couple more areas before quitting for the evening.

 

It looks like I still have a few areas left to explore and I'm quite enjoying just soaking up the atmosphere and getting to know the characters in Rubacava.

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Mercedes, who was about to board a boat (it also looked like she was possibly being forced onto the boat). Manny then ran to the boat and managed to grab onto the boarding ramp but was knocked off by Mercedes. I'm kind of confused with what is going on between Mercedes and Manny at this point and am wondering if I missed something. From what I've seen, they barely seem to know each other to begin with and I don't understand why Mercedes seems to be trying to escape from Manny and why Manny is under the impression that he needs to rescue her. She seems like she is doing perfectly fine in the land of the dead.

 

You haven't missed anything, possibly except that it was Domino who was struggling with Mercedes and that Manny wants to rescue her because he feels it was his fault that she ended up wandering the petrified forest alone after he pulled all his shenanigans (basically what Don yelled at him for in his office).

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I do agree the one Manny/Mercedes conversation you get in year one doesn't give you a ton to go on, but Manny needs something to chase after, doesn't he? I mean emotionally, not just for the game to progress.

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So I still don't have much to post about since my last progress update. I did finish exploring Rubacava which took a little while since there are quite a few rooms to go through and people to talk to. But beyond that I've just been poking and prodding at things to get familiar with what I have to work with. The items I have in my inventory now are a series of notes from Sal, a bottle of goldschlager, a ticket printing machine, and a can opener (there may be another item but that's all I recall at the moment).

 

So far I think I've identified 4-5 puzzles in this area. The first puzzle seems to involve leaving a refrigerator drawer open to block the fridge door from closing which causes the tattoo artist's drill to slow down, distracting the artist and the guy getting the tattoo for a few seconds. I saw some coffin shooters in the poetry club area that I suspect I will somehow need to obtain to spike the tattoo recipient's drink but at this point I don't have anything that can hold the hookah water that is used in the coffin shooters, unless I can somehow empty my goldschlager bottle. The second puzzle has something to do with the cat races and Tuesday being Kitty Hat Day. I know I need to use my ticket printer here but I'm not yet sure what combination of numbers I need on the ticket. The third puzzle involves me reciting some kind of poem which I hope will somehow convince the patrons there to give me their book. To do this I suspect I need to pay close attention to whatever poem the poetry lady recites when I ask her to go up there. I am finding this confusing so far because it looks like each time I ask her to go up there after me she just repeats what I said. The fourth puzzle seems to involve me using the contraption at my desk to either cause a certain person to win or lose in the casino downstairs. And finally, there are some bees. I suspect there is a puzzle here but I'm not sure what it is yet.

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The second puzzle has something to do with the cat races and Tuesday being Kitty Hat Day.

 

 

Did you figure this out on your own, or was it from the podcast when Jake talked about it?  From the way you describe it, it sounds like you heard it from someone else, which is a shame because I think this puzzle is either the best (by noticing the exact thing you needed to notice and feeling amazingly clever) or the worst (by brute forcing it or being forced to use a guide).

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Did you figure this out on your own, or was it from the podcast when Jake talked about it?  From the way you describe it, it sounds like you heard it from someone else, which is a shame because I think this puzzle is either the best (by noticing the exact thing you needed to notice and feeling amazingly clever) or the worst (by brute forcing it or being forced to use a guide).

 

I have definitely heard "Tuesday is Kitty Hat Day" mentioned several times around here so when I heard the guy say it I expected it was something I should remember. Beyond that I have no idea what it means beyond just assuming that whatever ticket I print should probably have Tuesday as the day.

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In my most recent playthough I solved that by

looking at the generic image for a ticket in Manny's inventory - it always says Tuesday!

I had even

looked at the hats in the photo but not remembered to put two and two together because they weren't clearly kitty hats to me. I was hoping to get Zeus to get a grab of the photo because I solved the puzzle then went to find out how I was supposed to do it but then couldn't look at the photo again to see how clear those hats really are. I can't find an image of it anywhere online, but it's pretty much impossible to ask Zeus for it without spoiling the puzzle a bit for him.

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In my most recent playthough I solved that by

looking at the generic image for a ticket in Manny's inventory - it always says Tuesday!

I had even

looked at the hats in the photo but not remembered to put two and two together because they weren't clearly kitty hats to me. I was hoping to get Zeus to get a grab of the photo because I solved the puzzle then went to find out how I was supposed to do it but then couldn't look at the photo again to see how clear those hats really are. I can't find an image of it anywhere online, but it's pretty much impossible to ask Zeus for it without spoiling the puzzle a bit for him.

 

Simple solution, just ask him to take a picture of every item he thinks is associated with that puzzle.  It's not like there's that many items, or that it's terribly onerous to take a screenshot. 

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