Forums/ The 7th Continent/ General6 posts
Posted - Edited
My roommate and I recently beat The Forbidden Sanctuary! First time playing with the new cards from WGUMCD also. I'll share how it played out, and then I'll go over how we felt about it.

My roommate was Eliot Pendleton and I was Ferdinand Lachapelliière. We found that the starting location was right next to the entrance to the Forbidden Sanctuary, so we decided to go in right away. But we were immediately stopped by the first puzzle, which we couldn't solve as we had no clues, so we left to explore the archipelago (taking a short detour to go beach hunting) and the continent at large. At that point we knew we had to use the
Examine the Notes
card as much as we could.

The first thing of note we found was a
message in a bottle
. My roommate thought because it was so close to the start, solving it would lead to something that would help us for the curse, but more on that later.

We knew from previous curses that finding food was the most important thing to do, so we hunted and fished at every opportunity. This lead us to find the
Goat
pretty early on, allowing us to use the new
goat milk
card, which really came in handy. We also explored the
beached ship
and found a :card_pick:350 which turned out to be
Boots - and the "clothing" keyword turned out to be super helpful, because I later found a pirate hat and built the camouflage outfit which let me use the boots more than 10 times!
.

So we explored the island trying to get as many :card_pick:050s as we could. We first went to where the
message in a bottle
said to go - which turned out to
have nothing to do with the curse, but it was a nice bonus anyway
. We also were able to collect all
three "Secret of the Sanctuary"
cards from the ability on the curse clue card (but it really sucked that
one of them was a trap!
). Then we made our way back to the sanctuary to try again, but we were stopped at the second puzzle because
none of the clues from the :card_pick:450 results help with this room
. We went with just picking randomly, but we chose the wrong one and it
kicked us out of the sanctuary
. From then, we resolved to go searching for the clues that the curse mentioned.

It was at this point that I suddenly realized that I knew two of the locations that the clue was talking about:
"visited an underground temple ... a heavy portcullis ... comfortable bed"
and
"offered me shelter ... offered him ... to thank him ... for days ... there is snow everywhere ... the freezing wind" (which turns out to be two separate clues, one of which has nothing to do with this curse)
. So long story short, we first went to the
hut near the forest and offered the man some food
, then went to the
underground temple
and got into the
room that you need the rope to get into, behind the portcullis
, where we found
another "Secret of the Sanctuary"
. Then we went up north to the
icy cave with icicles in front of it
and used what we got
to find the secret passage
- which it turns out wasn't necessary but still a really cool discovery - and then went to the
frozen man
, where after a tough set of challenges we got
our fifth "Secret of the Sanctuary"
.

Somewhere along the line we had the opportunity to rest and spend our experience points. We chose to get the
spear
, which we knew we'd never build but we took because it had :7::icon_success-right::icon_succes::icon_success-left: on it - which soon became the subject of so many jokes, because chances to build it kept popping up when we didn't have it in hand, and when we did have it in hand we never had a chance to build it. Like we would enter a room with
wood and string
and I would say, "Hey, now I can build it for 3!" or we would find a room with
wood and bone
and I would say, "Hey, look at this!" and just point at the resource icons and we would burst into laughter, or even when I mentioned the new "Prodigy" mode to my roommate, showed him the cards and said "This mode lets you start with 5
spears
in your deck!"

Back to the story. Eventually we had enough
"Secrets of the Sanctuary"
to solve all the puzzles (the one that was missing, we had accidentally already solved by trial and error). So we
jumped into the river to get washed all the way down to the archipelago
and went back into the sanctuary. And to make a long story short, we
solved the puzzles, made our way to the end of the sanctuary and lifted the curse
.

Statistics from the game:

  • "Secret of the Sanctuary" cards found
    : 5
  • Advanced Skills purchased: about 5
  • Total time: about 15 hours, spread out over four or five sessions.


Overall we enjoyed this curse very much. We liked the interesting puzzles and we liked that it made us use everything we knew about the continent and let us explore an entirely new area. But we were left with a few questions after we solved the curse:

  1. Where's the 6th "Secret of the Sanctuary" card? (Even though we ended up not needing it.) I can't tell if there's a third card that's hinted at on the clue card. What is it referring to when it mentions "wind?"

  2. Some of the puzzles in the sanctuary, like pressing the buttons on the panel or turning the wheel to lower the water level in room H, feel like you're doing something at complete random. We ended up not pushing any of the buttons on the panel and by luck we guessed the right way to turn the wheel. So how do you know which option to pick and which option will screw you? Or were there hints to the button panel and/or the wheel on the 6th "Secret of the Sanctuary" card?

  3. We loved the puzzle in the steam tunnels where you have to activate the machines in a certain order, but we didn't like that, because we had no clue for it, it felt like we were doing it at complete random and we ended up getting screwed because we activated the first machine before the second one and had to do that awful skill challenge just to un-screw ourselves (or save and load the game to return the permanent event). Were there any clues for this, or is this something you just have to learn by trial and error?



That's all for now. This is my first in-depth review and session log so I hope you enjoyed it.
Posted
1.
You were supposed to get it from the old man. If you kill him you have the opportunity to take the clue from him.

2.
One of the hints is on the wall of the first room (next to the bloody handprint). The button doesn't really matter, so no hints.

3.
There's definitely a clue (I encountered it in a later curse), but I don't remember where it was exactly.
Posted
In one room, you get a hint along the lines of
"Where the fish eats the moon, do not alter! Anything!". The first of the buttons has shadows that looks like a moon shape on it, with a large fish-like shadow to the left of it.

As you may have found out, the other button banishes that card, replacing it with its gold equivalent, which in turn replaces the first button with its gold equivalent.
Posted
tobyskov wrote:
In one room, you get a hint along the lines of
"Where the fish eats the moon, do not alter! Anything!". The first of the buttons has shadows that looks like a moon shape on it, with a large fish-like shadow to the left of it.

As you may have found out, the other button banishes that card, replacing it with its gold equivalent, which in turn replaces the first button with its gold equivalent.


I am so confused by this -
it says DO NOT ALTER, ANYTHING, but the solution is to alter it...is Nichols not to be trusted? But then his advice about not touching the cup IS good. This and killing the old man
were my least favorite parts of the curse that otherwise I enjoyed very much.
Posted
I know it's been talked about elsewhere, but I don't think I ever had a satisfactory explanation:
Why do you have to kill the old man to get the sixth Clue?
I understand that is what must be done to get the card, but WHY? Why is that the only way?

I don't think I have ever seen a clue that tells you to do this (something like
"the old man stole my notes, damn him!"
would make it at least plausible, or that mentions that it should even be there.
Maybe the line about "offered him ... to thank him" is supposed to imply that the clue was given to the old man as a gift?
Is this a translation issue, that it is slightly incomplete information? Taking that action just felt really ... out of place. The other things you can get from that course of action make sense, but not that. I feel if there was one thing in this whole game I would change, it's that there would be an alternate way to get the sixth clue to the temple. Maybe
If the hut is empty, you can do an unlock action to take the clue from a hidden place? Or a secret number on one of the cards?
Forums/ The 7th Continent/ General6 posts