Part 26: Episode 26: Gas Gas Gas
Last time, we solved a puzzle through the magic of Wikipedia and retrieved a key that will allow us to ransack the remainder of the motel. Today, we ransack the remainder of the motel.
oh, sorry, fellas
I'm not sure why I bother carrying guns anymore, to be honest.
So, this is Room 4, the last room on the ground floor. Before we do anything else, there's something I gotta check.
Yup, everything in order here.
: Come to think of it, the well was filled with water, too.
Aya calls shenanigans on the naming scheme of ghost towns in the middle of the Mojave.
On the mirror, we find another one of those spooky riddles!
"S......e my r....dle, if yo.. ..are, Organs of sens.. un..der bristly ha..r, ..een with how ..any sil..er plates in the ..ronco's lair? ..nce you know, go fr..m there... To a jet-..lack do..r 'neath the ..oon's cold g..are."
Well, I'm sure that doesn't mean anything, so let's just move on.
: Probably the Mojave. An arid region reaching from So.(sic) California to the Sierra Nevadas... It's funny how the Mojave seems so close to L.A. And yet there's ghost towns like this out here.
This closet is a big ol' sack of dicks, because it is filled with lies.
See, it says shit like this, but if you search a third time, Aya finds a Belt Pouch. Fuck you, too, Squaresoft.
: "Billy the Kid" "1859 - 1881" Lived 21 years, shot 21 people. A famous outlaw of the Old West.
Even in her swank new job of professional monster hunting, Aya's still a cop at heart.
Well, there wasn't much in there, so we'll have to look upstairs for...wait, what were we looking for again?
Right, that. Thanks, Aya.
Got some more little irritants lurking around up here. The way they skitter around makes me think the Zebra Stalkers really, really want to be RE2's Lickers.
But then, Claire Redfield couldn't shit lightning, so the poor little bastards never stood a chance.
Time for Room 5.
I imagine all these Strangers were just settling down for a nice evening in with their loved ones and pet moths, and then a blonde lunatic kicks their doors in and starts shooting.
Although in this case, I got blinded by a moth, so we can probably chalk this one up to accidental electrocution.
Oh, wait, I can see again. Nevermind, still murder. Awesome murder, but murder nonetheless.
Man, fuck this place.
: "Calamity Jane" "1852 - 1903" A famous cross-dressing sharp-shooter from the Old West.
Seriously, though, I would play the fuck out of a Western game starring a female detective from New York who can shoot fireballs with her mind.
It's nigh impossible to see it in the dark, but yes, there is a toilet in the corner there. And yes, I did check.
The act of killing only serves to make Aya stronger
No gas container in Room 5, so that leaves only one place to look.
The storage room, of course! Honestly, we probably shoulda looked there first...
Yeah, we can probably find a gas can somewhere in this mess.
: I always forget my clothes in the dryer and they get all wrinkled.
SQUARESOFT
Fortunately for me, there's not that much flavor text in here.
Just stuff like this, shit you'd expect to find stashed away in a storage room.
Hmmm, this sure looks like a gas caHEY WHAT'S THAT?!
: "Geronimo" "1829-1909" An Apache leader, one of the last to fight the white settlers.No, not that. Although I do wonder why everyone else gets protraits prominently displayed in the bedrooms, except for the one not-white guy...
Yeah, that thing! Looks like the kind of place you'd stash something good, doesn't it?
But where do we find the combination? Well, would you believe we've already (mostly) found it?
Can YOU figure it out?
Nah, I'm just messin' with you. The answer is those kooky scrawled messages we've been finding. Unfortunately, the first two can be missed permanently, something I had no idea about until I reached this point in the playthrough. I thought for sure I remembered hunting all four down after finding the safe, but nope! S'okay, I have them all handy so I can fill in the blanks for you.
The first clue is actually in the can, next to the misspelled Spanish graffiti. If you come here any time after the showdown against
Solve my riddle, before you go
How many phones in Dryfield's streets?
Then proceed, go down below
To sunless mole hills where red blood sleeps.”
Well, that's what it says minus the "..." gaps in the words. The solution here is pretty simple: how many Phones/Save points are there in Dryfield? Well, before the Scavengers trashed the Gas Station, there were 4. So, after that, we need to go down somewhere, somewhere storing red liquid.
Like wine, perhaps? This clue is written on one of the barrels in glow in the dark ink you can only read with the lights off. I thought you could just switch them back off later and find it, but nope! Apparently turning them on at all erases the message somehow! Oh well, here it is anyway:
“Now solve my riddle two,
How many urinals in Dryfield's loo?
Once you know, to the next place,
A haunted house where only the sun dares show its face.”
Again, super simple when half the letters aren't blanked out. Anyway, the only bathroom in town with urinals is the public pisser where we found the first clue. And there's 4 in there, so that's that. After that, we obviously have to go to the boarded up house where we fought Ned.
Remember this? Yeah, well, here it is in normal people speak:
“Solve my riddle before you go,
How many barrels in the mole den's center row?
Once you know, go to the top room,
Where at 21 years, a boy met his doom,
Where you CAN see yourself.”
Once again, the number we need is in the room we just left. Anyway, there's 8 barrels in the middle of the game room. This time, we actually get two clues leading us to Room 4 of the motel.
Room 4 is the one with the portrait of Billy the Kid, who died at age 21. And the clue, as we saw earlier, is scrawled on the mirror.
“Solve my riddle, if you dare,
Organs of sense under bristly hair,
Seen with how many silver plates in the Bronco's lair?
Once you know, go from there
To a jet-black door 'neath the moon's cold glare.”
A little tricky, maybe, but it just wants to know how many mirrors there are in the Bronco. There's one in each room, but the mirror in Room 5 is broken in two, and thus counts as two. I don't know how long it's been broken if it can stand as the basis for a combination lock, but whatever, the answer is 7.
So, with a little leg work and a memory for numbers (or just Gamefaqs), we know the combination is 4487. And now you know, so if you're playing along at home, you can skip all that jumping through hoops and just open the damn safe.
Inside, we find a bottle of Holy Water, which is super awesome. If you use it like a healing item, it automatically gives you 1 free level of a Water Spell. BUT DON'T DO THAT, DUMMY! If you attach it to your armor, on the other hand, it reduces all damage Aya takes by 25%. Forever. For fucking free. Don't ever use the Holy Water for any other reason, because you will have bucket loads of EXP if you want to boost Metabolism or whatever like a chump. Take the free armor boost and never look back.
Anyway, we should probably do something about this thing, I guess.
: It's light... It must be empty.
Yeah, of course. I'm sure picking up this quest item will trigger nothing threatening to come bursting into the room.
Apparently, when planning this ambush, the Zebra Stalkers forgot that we've slaughtered at least a dozen on our way here, and also that we have both a machine gun AND super powers.
Things go about as expected.
Let's massacre a few more bumbling Stalkers and deliver this Gas Can to Douglas.
Oh. Doug's actually in the garage, working on his truck, during all this. Thanks to the camera angles, it's entirely possible to walk right through the garage without seeing him. Whoops!
At this point, I noticed I had a load of EXP, and assumed I had forgotten to purchase the spells chosen in the vote. So, I did so...again. It wasn't until a few screens later that I realized I had already done that back in the hotel room, so I accidentally applied the vote twice, bringing Necrosis up to lvl 2, and maxing out Plasma at lvl 3.
I decided to leave it since you guys seem to be enjoying the electric mayhem, and would probably vote those two up again anyway. If it really bugs you, I suppose I can go back to an earlier save and play back up to this point to correct my spell levels please don't make me do this
Anywho, here's Douglas and Flint.
Oh...OH. Right, I guess we can't accomplish much with an empty gas can. Here's hoping the Scavengers didn't thrash the gas station too thoroughly.
A short jog later, and we find everything still in working order!
Just use the gas can at the pump to fill 'er up, and head on back to Douglas. The nice thing about the Hot Zone system is that cleared out areas stay clear until the next plot event. So, even if you're an idiot like me and have to run all over town because you forgot something, you're not fighting mutants every step of the way.
Now we just let Doug know we've got gas.
A "skosh"?
: I'll call you when I'm done, eh? Go take a load off in yer room.
You can still buy things from Doug, if you need, but you should probably heed his advice here. Once we set off for the Shelter, we'll lose access to Dryfield and its various storage boxes for quite some time. Move anything you might need to the back of the pickup.
I opted to transfer over all the good shotgun ammo I have, along with a handful of healing items, just in case. Now all that's left is to go chill in our crib 'til our ride is ready.
Next Time: Things get HOT!
...no, I mean, shit's on fire, you perverts.