chapter 4 "The Town Well"
Ok, so you're now all set with a bunch of
money in the bank,
light-but-decent equipment, and a thirst for more
advancement.
Let's try a quest that requires a little fancy footwork
and
little (if any) fighting.
I'm going to assume that the portal gun
portals are where the
default distribution puts them. The blue portal in the
hazlab,
the orange portal...well, you'll see.
By now you should have
Kleiner's badge. If not, go back to where I
describe how to get it. If you sold
it, go buy it back. Also, get
yourself a flashlight. I recommend maglite, but
whatever you can
find is better than nothing. Now go back to Jennybot. Near her
is
a stairwell that leads to the campus basement. Turn on your
flashlight then
go 1n, 1w, 1s, 1d, 1w of Jennybot. You're now in
the western end of the campus
basement. Note the smudged wall?
push wall
Whee!
Go west until you can't go any further, then go 1s. Lying
there is a key you'll
need. Put it in your ruck, then go north
til you can't go north any further. Note
that the next couple of
things you need to do must be done quickly. You're about
to enter
a dangerous sewer service area, and you may get blasted with
harmful
steam if you hang around too long.
Go down into the sewer area.
See that pile of crap? Search it. Bonus!
Now go east twice, up, open grate, up.
You're now back up on the
cobblestone road, but with a shiny new ring to wear or
sell, and
a key you'll need. Head to the hazlab (4s, 1w, 1s). Now, just in
case
some joker put the orange portal somewhere dangerous, you should have
an
omni handy (you can buy one from Oana). Enter the blue portal. Unless
someone's
been playing around, you should now be in an underground
tunnel, with a large
metal door to the west. There's not much to
explore here...if you follow the
tunnel north and east, you'll find
a locked gate with a cave troll on the other
side. What you really
want to do is get past the door to the west. You got the
key to this door
from the campus underground, so go ahead and unlock it. Now
comes the
hard part...open the door.
Chances are that you can't. It's huge
and it's heavy...it requires having
a strength stat of at least 50 to open. You
have 2 possible ways of dealing
with this...one is expensive, the other a bit
tricky. The expensive way
is to buy strength potions from Oana and drink them
until your strength
is above 49, then rush back to this door before the potions
wear off,
and open the door. Like I said, expensive.
The other way is to
control something that is strong enough to open the
door. Go back to kleiner,
then type:
dial stargate lab
This takes you to a
secret area used by creators to test their npc's,
armor, and equipment. Go north,
then east. If you're lucky, nobody has
taken the landstrider mech for a joyride
and it's standing there, waiting
for you. Type: enter
mech
You are now inside your very own mech-type robot you control.
Cool!
Have it go back to the stargate:
drive
west
drive south
direct mech to dial campus lab
direct mech to enter gate
drive
south
drive south
Uh oh! The mech
can't enter the hazlab because it's not carrying Kleiner's
badge! What you need
to do is drop the badge. It will then be in the mech's
inventory, so that the
security door can see it.
drop badge
drive south
Now we have the mech enter the portal and
open the door for you.
direct mech to enter
portal
direct mech to open
door
Excellent! Now, the next part involves making this area kind
of
hostile for general use, so let's get the mech out of harm's way
get badge
wear badge
direct mech to enter portal
out
Now go back in the portal (just you, without the
mech), and
go west twice. This is the source of the problem. The town well is
dry
because someone shut off the water source!
To restore water to the
well, turn the metal wheel here, and
water will start rushing out of the pipe at
high pressure. There's a
grate-type door overhead through which the water is
supposed to flow up to
the bottom of the well. If the orange portal hadn't been
there, you'd have had
to do the alternate solution, which involves accessing
the
water source from that other direction.
Now, as you can imagine, this
area is going to fill up with water
very rapidly, so leave east right away. The
entire series of tunnels
will flood, so get back to the orange portal and enter
it quickly.
PROTIP: The water will also go
through the locked cavetroll
gate. And cavetrolls don't breathe
water.
Now, go to the town well (1n, 1e, 5n of the hazlab), and: enter well
Hopefully you did get the maglite. By now the
weaker flashlights may have
pooped out. See the lever on the wall? That operates
a set of two doors that
serve as a waterlock for the well. Pull it, and a door
will open, letting
water flood into the well, and solving the quest!
It
may be that someone has already been fooling with the water lock, though.
If the
door was already open when you got there, push the lever, wait a
few minutes for
water to flood the lock, then pull the lever. It could
take a while depending on
the water pressure for the lock to fill up, so
if it's dry, close it again and
wait a while before opening again.
Alternate
Resolution
It may be that the orange portal was not in the water
tunnel. It could
be that the hazardous materials labs was not accessible to you.
If that
is the case, you'll need to solve this quest by accessing the
water
source from the direction of the well. This is tricky because you
need
to be very strong to open the grate, *and* you need an extra set of
hands
to operate the water lock lever. Let's deal with one problem at a time.
First,
the strength issue. On the other side of the water lock is a
grate that you must
have at least 50 strength to open. If your strength
is already above 49, great.
If not, you need to decide whether you want
to boost it with strength potions
from Oana (expensive) or use the
landstrider mech (tricky). If the plan is to use
strength potions, go buy
them now and stick them in your ruck. If the plan is to
use the mech,
go get it. Go to Kleiner, and:
dial
stargate lab
enter gate
go north
go east
enter mech
drive
west
drive south
direct mech to dial campus lab
direct mech to enter gate
drive
south
drive east
drive north
drive
north
drive north
drive north
drive
north
direct mech to enter well
direct mech to pull lever
drive
west
out
go
east
The mech is now in the water lock. But neither you nor the
mech
can proceed further west...you need someone to pull the lever
for you.
You're going to need a servant...a slave...a ZOMBIE! Go
up and west, and buy a
dark scroll from Oana. The scroll can be
used to raise a corpse, but you must be
able to read English. If
you've chosen a race that doesn't speak English, you'll
need to
learn it now. Go to Bugg (1n, 2e, 1n of the well) and ask him
to
teach you English. Once you've learned it, you'll be ready to
create a
zombie. From Bugg, go to the campus square (1s, 2w, 5s)
and murder Tim. It's
important that you slay something that speaks
a language you know, so since
you're either human or just now
learned English, a human victim is suitable.
Plus Tim is a wuss.
Once he's slain: read scroll at
tim
There he is! Your very own zombie! We'll need to move
quickly
now. Zombies don't last forever...the clock is ticking. Do
the
following to get him to follow you:
speak in
english
say follow cratylus
Except, of
course, instead of "cratylus", put in your own name.
Note something important
here. Zombies are obedient, but not
smart. If someone else starts saying things
that the zombie understands
as a command, it will start obeying them. So remember
that while
you created this zombie, someone else can steal him if you're
not
careful.
Now, return to the well (4n) then enter the well and go
west.
You'll need to tell the zombie to leave the water lock and operate
it:
say go east
yell push lever
enter
mech
drive west
direct mech to open grate
Woohoo! If you don't have
the mech, of course, you just
walk your own self west, drink your strength
potions, and
open the grate yourself. If you *do* have the mech, let's get it
out
of harm's way...
drive east
out
go west
All
righty, now let's go resolve this well problem. Go down
and you'll see the metal
wheel and the water pipe. To get the water
flowing again, turn the wheel. Then
very quickly get yourself back to
the water lock...the area will fill with water
soon! When water
gets to the lock: yell pull
lever
Your zombie will then open the east door, allowing you and the water
to
get to the well, and solving the Town Well Quest. Congratulations!