“How are you supposed to make the assumptions necessary to conclude that the recipe is read vertically?”Įasy, by observation. You started this puzzle with an assumption, where none was needed. While I understand the frustration this puzzle caused to you, I can’t agree with your statements about a few things. That’s a long post, I will try and go through it point-by-point explaining our thought process and reacting to your observarions.
I see dozens of horizontal graphs but none vertical.Īm I in fact the only player who had trouble with this? However, I was motivated to write this post because I have completed a pretty sizable number of puzzle games (usually 100% without breaking a sweat) and it has been a long time since I've encountered a puzzle like this where l ended up looking up the solution and it made me want to quit the game not because it was "hard" but because it made so little sense and required arbitrary assumptions without which you could be stuck for days.Ī quick Google search for "tally mark graphs" seems to confirm my recollection.which is that virtually nobody constructs graphs like that.
I can't "prove" that this puzzle is actually unfair or illogical. Observing that the missing fluid is supposedly "red" (from the colors beneath the Alchemy lab dispensers) is (a) meaningless unless you already made the leap that you must obtain that fluid in pure form and plant derivatives aren't combined directly and (b) would only serve as a validation if you knew that there aren't any other reds from the plant extractor's ~9 choose 6 combinations and (c) that it's not a distraction in the exact same way the barrels are distractionsĬlearly a significant number of people have complete this game and didn't run into this confusion. A hint such as "there is a spectrophotometer beside the juicer because the juicer outputs will be identified as liquid 1,2,3, or 4" would actually help.
A hint such as "this scoop is used for scooping" isn't helpful. Relating to the above, since it appears there isn't actually any parallel path you can take, you have no option to obtain hints on this puzzle by completing other puzzles, and the "inventory item hints" are borderline offensively obvious. Maybe one of the flowers is mislabeled or maybe there is another hidden scroll that explains how they cancel parts of each other out. Related to the above, you must make assumptions that you have all pieces of the puzzle and that you aren't working on something straight up unsolvable until something else is resolved. Their function as dumpsters makes no sense because it is a duplicate function of the cauldron drain and by that point you already have proof from the rejuvenation process and crystal distance that the devs have no compunction about wasting your time requiring running back and forth on even the slightest mistake. You cannot know whether they are distractions yet they are massively interactable with several fluid-related objects (I had to look up the fact that they are actually just dumpsters and apparently even people who have finished this game couldn't figure that out). The barrels serve as nonsensical distractions. Every attempt requires minutes of furious movement and clicking inputs to test To make this puzzle maximum anti-fun and unsatisfying, the devs made sure that:
This of course doesn't work, but it does work out mathematically given my chart interpretation. I tried to combine the *rows* as needed and multiply the corresponding powders to try to fit into the "6 flowers must be extracted at once" constraint while ending up with the correct overall proportions for the melting recipe. Even knowing that this is the answer (and I was well aware that the 6 slots for the flower "juicer" might be an intentional constraint hinting at something) it still seems wildly illogical.įor me, this was one of the least satisfying answers to any puzzle game I've ever played (granted incomplete information puzzle games tend to be the worst offenders with subjective design). In other words, everything up to that point in the game was almost blindingly obvious.but the idea that you're supposed to read a chart as summing downward but with the "total" at the top makes no sense. It's far more logically read as a list of the fluids comprising the extract of each flower (horizontally). The piece I was apparently missing (and still don't understand) is how you're supposed to make the assumptions necessary to conclude that the fluid "recipe" is read vertically. The problem I had had nothing to do with not knowing "where" to make the melting potion. The original post here is almost verbatim the post I was going to make.except I also had the red crystal.