Walkthrough for Nidus by Adam Atkinson Written by Richard Bos A few notes, first. One, make no mistake: not only is this a Phoenix game, it's one about which the author himself writes: "Beware: ... NOT a good game. ... should only be played by ... completists." And from a technical point of view, he is hardly wrong. Nidus is very strange, in places arbitrary, and often not fair. And it's still also a Phoenix game, so you can die easily. You can lose or destroy a necessary tool just as easily. Save often, and keep _all_ your save files until you've finished the game. That said, it is also whimsical, daft, and imbued with a spirit of fun which does at least elicit a smile even when the command needed to get there extracts a groan. One pleasantry which is even more present in Nidus than in most Phoenix games is background jokes. It pays, in this game, to look about you at what seems like flavour text. For example, the Collector's Room is well worth a second look - you will be rewarded both with very vague hints and with descriptions of considerable silliness. Two, the parser is limited, but good. I have not found any place where using prepositions or indirect objects ("hit tree with axe") is necessary or even possible. By contrast, the game is good at giving you less to type. If there is only one object, simply "get" will take it; if there are several, it will assume the first one listed. Ditto for "drop", which will drop the first object in your inventory; and ditto for several other verbs. "Get all" is provided for, as well. Multiple objects (as in "get bread, cheese, and butter") are not, though. Three, this is an old-fashioned game. There are a lot of puzzles which you can only realistically be expected to solve by dying first, sometimes more than once. Often, your dying message will advise you on how to avoid that death; sometimes, it will even give you a hint for another problem altogether. Since this is a single walkthrough, such hints will not be found here. I'll just present you with the correct solutions, omitting the process you could have used to discover them. If this spoils the game for you, well, such is the risk of reading walkthroughs. By the way, if you don't want to be spoiled quite so drastically, you should find a ZCode file with hints for individual puzzles in the same place where you found this document. Finally, these notes are for the ZCode version generated from the original Phoenix source, which is available at the IF Archive. I do not know whether it works for other versions, as well, or even if any exist. Still up for it? OK, then we're first going to get our stuff together. Go sw, west and nw. Take the bag, sack, box and trunk. Then enter these as direct commands: needle bag, bat bag, book sack, torch box, humbug box, robe box, chariot trunk, koala trunk, doll trunk, and finally sack bag. And yes, I could tell why we're entering all these weird commands, but but I won't. That's the price you pay for reading walkthroughs. Anyway, you could easily have found out why yourself. Now we're outside and have a full kit, take the bat and the needle. Go ne, take the thread, go north and down. Throw the thread and wave the needle. Take the necklace. Go up and north twice. Go south and drop the bat. We won't be needing it again. Go south again, ne and east. Take the ring; don't bother trying to wear it yet. Go west and read the graffiti. That sounds like a very obscure hint, doesn't it? I know two things about Emmy Noether: she's a big name in group theory, and group theory at that level is far above my level of mathematical knowledge. I do know that all words used do have a meaning in group theory, but whether they work together like that, I've no idea. It may be just a mathematician's joke. Or it might also be a subtle hint - remember that the authors _and_ original players of these games were students of mathematics at Cambridge. However, for mere mortals like us, it doubles up as a hint at a much, much more trivial level. We'll make use of it later - I won't tell you when, but you might be able to figure it out. Go sw, south, sw again and up. Cast the pearls before the swine. Take all. Go south, get the flute, north and down, drop the ring and the needle. Go ne and north. Give the piglet, pearls and flute to the collector - note that you get he last one back - then go south and sw, and drop the flute. We will go into some weird (-er) places, now. We'd better be well prepared. Take the book, humbug, robe, doll and torch. Go se and east, get rod, and clean it. Go back west and nw, then west and south. Drop the doll (be careful not to drop anything else here, or you'll lose it) - then go south, then west into real chaos. Eat the humbug, then wave the rod. Wait one turn. Clean the robe. Now there is nothing to do here but wait until you are returned to somewhere more familiar. Go west and nw, and drop the now clean robe. Go south and sw. Take the "mater". Back ne and north, and get the chariot and flute. Now into chaos again, this time deeper: west, south twice, and drop the mater; south again and west again. Wave the rod. Get the oak. You can now explore this area - there is more to see, but nothing more to do - or just wait around until you return to the main area. Go se. Play the flute. Drop the chariot _first_, then drop everything else. This is to avoid a bug in the game which would crash the game with a stack overflow if we didn't do it like this. I don't know if this bug is original or a result of the translation to the ZMachine, but in any case, by using this order we avoid the bug. Go nw, west, up, ne, north and down. Enter the command "tonka". Get all, then go up and north twice. Tie the gibbon - another bad pun! Go south twice, and give the gibbon to the collector. South and sw, and drop the oak. Wear the vole. Go west, south once this time, and west, and wave the rod again. This is a tightly timed area, so be careful of typos here. Go east, take the can, back west, wait _one_ turn, go north, and enter "brutish tearoom" as your command that very turn. Go north, ne, and north thrice to that very tearoom, where all your stuff has ended up, and one new object as well. Take everything. Go south twice and give the vole, which has served its purpose, to the collector. South and sw, and drop all. Take the can and the ring. Go up and east, and immediately open the can. The next bit requires exact timing again - no wasted moves or you die! Take the insect. Go west, down and south. Wear the ring and touch the door. Go north and down, drop all, go east twice, and wait a turn. Phew! Go back west, get all (the insect does nothing the second time around), go up. Take the lemur and give it the ring. Go ne and north to the collector again, and give him the insect and the lemur. South and sw, and drop the can. Now we need to do some object and light source shuffling. Get the torch, go south, drop it. Go east, get (and thanks to the Phoenix game system that commands does what we want it to do, just like that), go west, north and down. Never mind the light, just drop what you picked up. Now back up and south, get the torch, north, se and east, and drop it here. Go west, nw and down, get, up, se, drop. East, get torch, east, drop torch. West twice, get the creature, nw, drop it. Go ne and back sw - this is only to reset the darkness counters. Get the creature and the koala, then go se, east twice past the torch (which you can ignore), and down. Go east twice. Close the granite, then open the granite again. Go west - odd, that - and back east. Close the granite, and now open the basalt. Go east. Enter the command "yucca lyptose". Yes, hints to this can be found somewhere in the game. No, I'm not saying where. Go back west, close the basalt, and open it a second time. Go east twice to familiar surroundings. Go ne and north and give your final gift to the collector: the koala. Take the flower, and go south and sw. We are now ready for the last part of the game. Take the book, rod, robe, and lump of energy. Go west, then south thrice. Drop the lump. Go south once more. Give her the robe, then the rod. Something will happen. Throw the talisman. Now we seem stuck, but we aren't: jump. We are now in the obligatory maze. It's the only one in the game, which is unusual for a Phoenix adventure. This place abounds in spells, which you can cast in a variety of different ways: shouting them, singing them, declaiming them, and so forth. Some modes work for some spells, and some don't. Each mode and each spell can be used only once. And some spells destroy others, or open up new passages in the maze. Confused already? It's really a giant resource allocation puzzle. There is more than one solution, too, although all are broadly similar and differ only in details. Here's one: Announce mungle. North. Cry snode. NE. Shout liiok, south. Intone mique, SE. Chant nyzth, and note the new stream of light being made. It's not in this spot here, but we'll go there right now. Go ne twice, sw - that's the new path. Leave the Serqe spell for now. Instead, go ne again. Call gombe, west, yodel hqxkf (quite a feat!), west, and now do exclaim serqe. Another new path! Go west, then up twice. Incant yufto, east, murmur pomyn, and go down, south and ne to our final spell. But where is it? Throw the flower. Look. Recite eedul. Read the closing cutscene. And that's it, the Nidus has been destroyed. I have to admit I liked this game more for its whimsy than for any game-technical reasons, but still, I liked it.