Part 4: Meandering In Search Of Clues

Blame finals, procrastination and me generally being a lazy bastard for the delay in getting this out. However, now that I'm done for the semester, I should be able to push new updates out fast and should be able to finish this in two weeks tops. Now watch as I miss that deadline simply because I mentioned it. Anyway, let's get back to the game:



We kick things off from the reception. Now, we know what's to the left, and we know what's to the right, but what's through that door in the middle? The most terrible room in the game, of course!

Room #18: Stairwell



I despise this room. Not because of any puzzles, or because of its layout or anything like that, no, it's the fucking music. Back when I first played this game, this BGM downright terrified me, and while I'm no longer scared of this room, I'm still mad at it because of the past. Doesn't help that it has a pretty annoying safe. Not that it's hard to crack, or anything, it's just finding the damn thing is tougher than the average safe. You're not given any clues regarding the location of this one, either. Where is it? Well, just make your way up those stairs...



...and there it is. That chestplate is actually a safe. Pretty ingenious design, especially with a few other identical chestplates strewn about the room. Anyway, let's crack this bastard.



Puzzle #11: The Chestplate Safe

Well, this one looks fairly basic. Three dials, each with four numbers, making for 64 combinations, so it shouldn't take too long to figure... wait, what's that to the left?



Hm. That simplifies matters. From then, it's basically match-the-numbers - you have one head, two eyes and four limbs, so you set the dials to I - II - IV and presto, the safe is open! What's our haul?




Another part of the T-1001 scrolls and a key (room 24). Pretty decent.

And the whole thing in video form.



With that done, let's head back down and go to the left.



Over in this little alcove, we find the elevator to the second floor, which we'll be using eventually, but not for now, since we don't have the code yet. Instead, we go through the door and find ourselves in...

Room #27: Technical Design

BGM




Technical Design is somewhat of a hub for the right side of the first floor of Crabb and Sons. Just look at all the doors! But first, I see a safe, so let's get right to that one:



Puzzle #12: Abraham's Switch-Safe

This one is tedious as all hell if you don't bother to look around. However, we bothered to look around, and in the second update we found a diagram for this safe, making this easy if you wrote it down. It works exactly the same way as what I called a sequence safe back in the small showroom. Either through sheer trial and error or through reading the diagram, we eventually end up with this combination:

1 C 8 9
2 B 7 A

G D 3 6
F E 4 5

And with that, the safe reveals our spoils:





A code to the final safe and a T-1001 scroll. Useful, but unexciting. And the whole thing in video form.



Moving on, we find this door. Since we know we're looking for a safe in a bathroom, let's check this one out:

Room #24: WC

This one's got a spooky tune, too.




Hand-dryer! Jackpot!



Puzzle #13: The Hand-dryer Safe

About as basic as it gets. We shove the key we got from the chestplate safe into the keyhole, and bam, the safe is open. The only trick is that if you fumble in the menu for too long, the hand-dryer stops working and the ping-pong ball falls in front of the keyhole, forcing you to back out of the safe and try again. We open it up and get...



...another T-1001 scroll. Boring. Here's the video. Let's head back to the Technical Design department and check out another door.



Looks like we've stumbled upon a small store room. And is that a locked box I see?



Yes, it is! And we just so happen to have the key we need to open it, so let's unlock its secrets:



Treasure haul! A note from the strongbox, 3x 3d coins, 3x 50p coins and a key (room 09). Let's check out the note:



This one is kind of a mystery to me. Is it pointing me towards the cabinet in the security guard's office that had the schematics for the hand-dryer safe in them? And what does "lock bust." mean? Should the filing cabinet have been locked, and this is supposed to tell me "you don't need a key"? That's the best explanation I can come up with. Either way, we've got a key for the security guard's office, so let's head back there:



And here we are, back in the secur- is that a suitcase?



It is! I wonder what's in this one...



Hm. Ah, yes, Playsafe - the magazine for the distinguished safe connoisseur. I read it for the articles.



Anyway, we've got a box to be opening, so let's jam that key in there and check it out:



Jackpot - a key (room 07; #3), a key (room 52), a key (room 13; #1), and a note from the keybox:



I assume this will make more sense when we find the safe this clue belongs to. Now, there's two more rooms to check out in this update, so let's hop to it. From customer support, we make our way to:

Room #14: Sick Room

Some sweet elevator music going on here. Hell, this song's internal name even is ELEV.AIF. Oddly enough, the actual elevator doesn't get any music, just keeps playing that dreadful stairwell music. Just another reason for me to hate that room.



This seems to be some sort of mini-medical bay for the occasional problem. Pretty interesting setup, and it does paint Crabb and Sons as a pretty nice place to work.



Some fidgeting around the room nets us a good look at this book here:



Rampant? Wasn't that the guy mentioned in the clue for the Liberty safe?




Bingo. So that's the solution for that safe.




Double bingo! This'll come in handy when decoding that Braille safe.



Looking around the room some more leads to this little snippet, another piece to this code thing. As far as I know, there's no way to actually get this piece out of there, but the necessary information is still easily retained. Moving on...

Room #08: Cloak Room

The cloak room re-uses the small showroom's BGM.




Just the public wardrobe. However, there's a bulletin board to the right that has a few interesting world-building bits:



We'll be checking that out eventually, but we're going to be cleaning up the first floor entirely first.



Badminton, bridge and cricket. This sure is England, alright.



Looks like somebody really phoned it in when writing this postcard, or I'm missing out on a joke. Also, I'm not even sure if we've previously established that this takes place in England, but here's definite confirmation. For those interested, Longborough, Gloucestershire is a village, mostly known for the Longborough Festival Opera, a season of opera performances in June and July.

With that, I'll be cutting this update short, mostly because it ended up a lot longer than I expected (I'm roughly half-way through what I originally envisioned as part IV). Next time, we'll kick off a flood of safes to be opened.