Adventure Gamers - Forums

Here’s what I think. The game indirectly tells us in the cellar that we don’t know what to look for. And we get a point for escaping the cellar with nothing (we get out by knocking on the hatch). I think this indicates the wine is somewhere else. Could Hawksmoor be involved? The chapel or secret passage which goes under the kitchen? What about this JF on the gargoyle?

Was looking behind and we got the name Vauhan from the bottle we picked up in the secret passage that is brown. I wonder if the wine bottle is the same

>search bin 3 for brown bottle

Vaughan must be the skeleton we found in the fireplace passage.

>search bin 3 for brown bottle
You search among the bottles, but there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, all very much alike (though all exquisitely different, no doubt, once on the table). You stop searching, dispirited. Maybe if you knew what you were supposed to be looking for you would have more success.

You didn’t try these, Oscar

giom - 12 March 2017 08:52 PM

Other than that let’s continue testing:

> pull bin 3
> search bin 3
> smash bottles
> scream
> knock on hatch (let’s see if we can get out of here)

Anyway, I’m out for today

>pull bin 3
You are unable to.

>search bin 3
You search among the bottles, but there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, all very much alike (though all exquisitely different, no doubt, once on the table). You stop searching, dispirited. Maybe if you knew what you were supposed to be looking for you would have more success.

>smash bottles
There are so many bottles here, you don’t know which to choose. Perhaps if you’re looking for a specific bottle you should search the bin in which you think you’ll find it.

>scream
Pull yourself together! Now is no time for behaving like a silly girl!

>help
If you’re completely stuck and can make no more progress, then type “help please”, which gives access to the hints system. There are explicit hints for the first two puzzles in the game, to get you started, and vague but helpful nudges in the right direction for the remainder of the game.

If you’re still getting nowhere, try asking for help on the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.int-fiction.

[Please press SPACE.]

>help please
You should now be at a point where you can put to use all the knowledge you’ve gathered and all the things you’ve found.

[Please press SPACE.]

So that wasn’t much help. But… bear with me. What if spittle of lune is simply water? We have all the other ingredients.

But the Introitus does seem to indicate the Milk is the start of making the Elixir. Odd that it is called two different things.

>look up 364 in lully
On page 364, you find a description of how to make the “Elixir of Life” (assuming that one starts out with a quantity of the “Spittle of Lune”, whatever that might be). It reads:

“Be of good heart, and pray to God for guidance in the Work. Take thou the Spittle, and in a glass retort heat it continually. First, make it sweet with the Sap of the Wood of Hermes, that is named also the Honey of the Egyptians. Second, make it bitter with the Bath of the King. Third, make it salt with the Water of the Sages, for thou desirest the spiritual elements to rise and the terrestrial elements to sink.”

You wonder if this nonsense was what Malcolm’s lab book was referring to.

That’s truly a worthless hint the game gives  
I don’t think it can be water, it all seems to point to Spittle=Virgin’s Milk that is in the cellar. Now something might be missing or the parser is just being annoying

Maybe. But there’s another thing - we need an extra flask. Assuming we find the correct wine, we need to put it in the retort, which now has the tears in it. We still wouldn’t be able to cook. So I don’t see how the game can say we have everything we need.

Didn’t we have both a bottle and a retort? But yes, that hint is pretty much worthless. If I were playing alone, this would be the point where I start looking at a walkthrough

The bottle is holding the honey.

Go ahead then, check the walkthrough. If it’s not something entirely stupid then you can nudge us in the right direction.

Karlok - 13 March 2017 08:39 AM

Oscar - 13 March 2017 08:13 AM

The bottle is holding the honey.

Meaning we should have gotten the wine first, so we have an extra bottle and an empty retort. I’m starting to hate this game…

That wouldn’t work. We would need to heat the wine in the retort, and Edward’s room only opens after we have got the tears and honey. That means three flasks.

Not quite sure what you’re asking, but here’s the inventory:
>i
You are carrying:
  a retort
  some tears
  a corkscrew
  a rusty key
  your handbag (which is open)
  a voltmeter
  a power pack
  five peanuts
  a bee-keeper’s veil
  a lacquer box (which is closed)
  a brown glass bottle
    some honey
  a dinner ticket
  a telegram
  a note
  a map of Biblioll College
  four keys:
    one steel
    one copper
    one iron
    one brass
  five books:
    “Introitus Apertus”
    “De Gloriae Coelestis”
    “The Clavicula”
    “Letter Substitution Ciphers”
    a lab book
  “Men of Biblioll”