A Difficult Puzzle
 

Ok I am grasping for straws here... :) I know this is going to differ for different code based muds, but I play a heavily modified Diku mud. There is a puzzle where you are in a no exit room, there is a corpse (container) on the ground, it is locked, and then there is a ghost (mob) in the room. The room flags that Im sure of are: NO_MAGIC NO_HEAL SAFE_ZONE NOASTRAL LIGHT, there might be others. Apparently there is a way to unlock the corpse get the eq in the corpse and get out of the room, without any sort of exploits.

We have brought a charmed gasser into the room, and then a player with a killer flag, and order the gasser mob to kill the pflagged player. Which then the mob gasses the entire room and makes the mob start fighting also. We've killed the mob, but nothing came from that so apparently the mob doesn't have the key. We think it's in a container in the room, but the imm that created the zone said that it was something that hadn't been done before. Using regular Diku tools, but in a "new" way.. and locked containers are anything but new :) We figured out a way of getting NOTAKE items that are on a mob... we kill the mob, then have a cleric animate the corpse, give the corpse an uncurse scroll and have him recite it on said object and now the mob can give us the notake item. The imm said that the answer to this "riddle" is on the same lines.. as in.. you have to think outside of the box, think "around" the obvious things that room flags can do. What special things can a room do if certain flags are set on it, the.. not so obvious things. These are all hints he has given us.. but none of us can figure it out...

I know.. it's likely no one is going to be able to help.. but would love it if someone had some ideas :)

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

I would start by reading carefully the room, mob and object descriptions to see if they left any clues in those. Without some clue from the various descriptions i would never be about to work out how to do something, my brain just does not work that way.

I think your best bet would be to talk out the problem with other players of said game as they will already understand the nuances and subtleties that the building staff on said game employ in the various quests and puzzles on offer and would be able to offer much more insight into how the builder might have been thinking when making the zone.

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

NO_MAGIC. *ponders* Pick up the corpse, carry it out of the room, cast a spell on it?

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

Hmmm... How can you solve a text based puzzle, when you dont read the text.. to recap the first few sentences of the puzzle posed by the OP.

"There is a puzzle where you are in a no exit room"

Keep guessing Fizban :-)

*ponders* Wasnt Fizban a befuddled mage from Dragonlance... maybe you are just staying IC :-D

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

Facinating you cant solve this when you appear to have access to the code itself.. must be a real doozy of a puzzle... worthy of infocom.. All your work -assumes- the puzzle was completed and actually has a solution?

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

Whom? He stated it was DIKU derived, so none of us actually know what codebase it is so we're certainly not looking at the code of the mud in question.

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

Did you try talking to the ghost?

Or possibly figure out if there is something that you could give to the ghost, to make it respond in any desirable way.

In any case there should be a clue about what to do somewhere in any the descs of the room, mob or object.
If there isn't, it's not a fair puzzle.

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

Pick up the corpse and give it to the mob? It's the ghost's corpse and he thanks you for retrieving his body?

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

OK, sorry that it has taken me awhile to respond.. I didn't realize anyone had responded.. subscription not quite working I guess :)

Ok here.. is a massive amount of info :)

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

I'm confused, specifically by how the log gets from here:

to

with nothing between the two rooms.

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

It seems obvious that you should never have killed that girl.
At least in my Mud, she would have been planted there to rescue, not to kill.

Now that you did kill her, she or Dromit still must be the key to escape, so you should try to find a way to free her spirit.

(I assume that his hideway is somewhere else in the game, not connected to the pit, and that you only showed it to give the entire picture)?

I don't know how big your Mud is with scripts/mob_progs, but in my own game you might try begging her for forgiveness, or possibly mention Dromit's name to start her talking. Or you could try typing 'free spirit' - but that would be a cheap shot. 'Verb guessing' isn't my favorite design element.

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

I will modify the log to be a little clearer. Sorry it's become an intimate part of my thinking, since we've all been trying to figure this out for quite awhile :) Yeah we only killed the ghost to see if that was the answer since we were running out of ideas. And to kill her we had to be quite creative since the room is nokill. I hear that Elik Dromit was put in after the zone was already in... basically just so that mages could get a couple sanctuary potions. So Im not sure how much he's really involved in the answer to opening the corpse. And you're right the hideaway is it's own room that a mage has to telemove to, to get to it.

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

The corpse is !TAKE?

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

Yeah notake

Re: A Difficult Puzzle
 

Hi.

Since no one has ever escaped the 'Pit of Despair', is there a way you can lighten the mood? Once 'despair' is gone, it no longer is the pit it once was, and therefore would be escapable.

Anasadi