17th July 2003
All the usual advice for solving adventure games applies to The Causes of Chaos:
Beyond this standard adventure-solving advice, there is a HELP facility in CoC that in many cases offers advice of real worth. You might like to hold back on asking for HELP until you've had a good stab at solving the problems on your own.
Finally, the path to the goal is smoothed by using abbreviations: besides the usual direction-of-movement abbreviations N, S, E, W, U and D, CoC recognises G as an abbreviation for GET, D for DROP (when used with a noun) and L for LOOK, which, when used with a noun, doubles as EXAMINE.
You need to WEAR BARREL, which I admit is a tad oblique. I wish now that this had not been pretty much the first puzzle you had to solve.
When you swim the lake, you'll be eaten by the piranha unless you have drunk the invulnerability potion found at the bottom of the waterfall.
Apart from looking through it, you can climb down to the ledge below if you tie the rope to it first.
It opens the door to the maze (in the rocky outcrop north of the start location), and the brig on the ship. It also has an important word written on it which you'll need to know later.
The path is so slippery that you if you're carrying too much, you fall off and die. If you're carrying either the cloak or the headdress, then you can't carry anything else at the same time (apart from the non-existent dagger.) You will need to ferry items back and forth a few at a time.
If you're not wearing the cloak, the heat in the fiery chamber overpowers you, and the demon eats you. If you're wearing it, you'll be able to get the headdress.
The maze is on the other side of the door set into the rock-face, just north of where you start the game. You need the key from ledge to open the door to the maze.
The standard technique for mapping an area in which all the locations look alike is to drop an object in each location so that you can tell them apart. Once you've done that, you should be able to find the optimum routes between the endpoints.
If you really want to know, then starting from the rocky outcrop, you can get to the pit by going N, E, N, U, U, N, W, D, N; and you can get back again by going S, W, S.
To get out of the pit on the far side of the maze, you must tie the rope to the rock, pick up the rock (you'll need to be wearing the gauntlets to protect against the heat) and throw the rock. Then you can climb the hanging rope.
The troll bars your way across the bridge unless you're wearing the headdress (in which case, presumably, he thinks you're one of the three Billy Goats Gruff.)
Who knows? Who cares? The important thing is to mend it, which you can only do if you have the bucket. Then you'll be able to use well and obtain the poisonous sausage that you can see at the bottom.
Sort of. It's magical, anyway. If you throw the coin (from the troll's chasm) into the well, and then immediately SAY KRINJ (which was written on the crystal key,), then the crown will magically appear. If you delay for even one turn, all is lost.
You need to pour the salt (from the end of the ledge) onto the steps by the rocky outcrop before you can climb them.
If you move it, you will reveal a trapdoor.
You must be carrying the iron rod in order to open the trapdoor (using it as a crowbar.)
Once you have poisonous sausage (from the bottom of the well on the far side of the maze), you can throw it into the cave; the guards will eat it and die, because it's poisonous (as you'll have found out if you tried to eat it yourself). You're supposed to be able to guess this because in the TV adaptation of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Ford Prefect finds an unsavoury-looking blue sausage in the galley of a spaceship crewed by Dentrassis. Obscure, I know: sorry.
You must search to find the fine silver chain, which is hidden in the cave.
Nothing; but there's something under. If you have the spade from the maze entrace, you can use it to dig here; you'll find a spell-book. (Digging anywhere else in the game is futile.)
You have to open it before you can read it.
If you examine it, you see a vision of the pieces of a broken rock. This is telling you that when you've finished on the far side of the well, just before dropping back down into the pit, you should break the rock: inside, you'll find the medallion.
You don't have to do anything: the ship is going to Ognid anyway. All you have to do is hide in the packing case in the ship's hold, and wait.
They find you because they're looking for the Captain's lost log. You can prevent that search from taking place by ensuring it's where it should be - in his cabin - before the ship sets sail.
Yes. That's because (duh!) they're hungry. If you satisfy their hunger before the ship sets sail, by giving them the cheese, they will fall asleep and not trouble you.
Bribe him with the rum.
Yes - there's no way to avoid this, and there's no way out of the brig once you're in. That is, unless you've already unlocked it from the outside (with the crystal key) before you get shut in, in which case they are too stupid to lock it again and you can just walk free!
You find your way through the forest maze using the same object-as-markers technique as for the main maze. If your heart quails with despair at the prospect, it may help you to know that the forest maze is less than half the size of the main maze.
If you insist. From the shore, go W, S, W, E, N and FOLLOW PATH to get to the location called End of Path. To return to the shore from there, just go east twice.
To break through the portcullis, you must blow up the conveniently placed dynamite. You die too, of course in the explosion: the trick is to tie the rope to the dynamite, light the rope and run away. It will explode very quickly; when you come back, there will be a new route north into the castle.
You first need to pacify the baby by giving him the doll from the hidden cave under the coal-mine refuse.
Sweep it up, of course!
You need to say a magic word. No, not KRINJ or ZX-81 or VAXLOX or even FROGBALL - another one. Abwahsi will tell you what it is. Got it? It's HMMPH.
You need to gas him, to prevent him from waking. He's inside the coffin, of course.
You need some help. The surprised servant and Abwahsi are no use, but you can make yourself a slave by carrying the frozen corpse into the sauna and waiting for him to defrost. Thereafter, he'll follow you around - spooky, but not threatening - and help when you try to open the coffin.
You can't. That's not the point, is it? You just want to reunite the crown jewels, not leave a trail of dead bodies in your wake. Er, Dentrassi guards excepted, of course.
By magic carpet. If you ring the bell at the top of Abwahsi's tower, a rolled-up carpet falls out. Unroll it, and say the magic word FROGBALL (from the captain's log) to be whisked back to the start location.
It's magically hidden. The only way to get it is by throwing a coin in the well and then saying the magic word KRINJ
It's hidden in the cave guarded by the Dentrassis. Having poisoned them with the sausage, you need to search to find it.
Like the crown, it's hidden by magic: you can bring it back into existence using the magic word from the spell-book buried under the beach.
It's inside the volcanic rock from the pit on the far side of the maze: break the rock to get it out.
It's in the cave whose trap-door is hidden in the coal-mine refuse near the Dentrassi' cave.
In Count Vladimir's secret treasury. To get there from the room where he sleeps, say the magic word that Abwahsi tells you, having first gassed the Count so that the noise of the door opening doesn't wake him.