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Post by lee82 on Jan 20, 2018 13:09:55 GMT -5
Hello all, I’ve finally pushed the button on my first order, the Volume III complete collection with newspapers from volumes I and II.
Whilst I wait for my delivery (and birthday as it’s a present for myself), I was hoping to learn more about where to start. Given the package I have ordered where would the best place to start be to catch up? Are there things I can do online or am I best to wait for my package? And what things will I have missed by only getting the newspapers for volume 1 and 2?
This is my first foray in to the world of mysterious packages and I love puzzles. My most recent puzzling has been The Witness on my iPad which I managed to work through without looking for any answers online. Not sure how the difficulty of these puzzles might compare.
Any pointers or hellos would be most welcome :-)
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Post by wortelboer on Jan 20, 2018 13:43:43 GMT -5
It is best for you to wait for your package. When you start with Volume 1, you will need to head over to the Wiki page. curios-and-conundrums.wikia.com/wiki/Curios_and_Conundrums_WikiThere you will find pictures of the Curios that originally came with the paper. You will need to refer back to those later on down the road. Bunches of people here to help guide you if you get stuck along the way. Enjoy!
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Post by dmikester on Jan 20, 2018 13:47:49 GMT -5
First off, welcome! Always great to have a new member and puzzler on board.
You've arrived at a significant time of transition for the Mysterious Package Company (MPC) and Curios and Conundrums (C&C). Unfortunately, and to the great dismay of all of us here, the MPC has decided to cancel C&C, and without much warning, they decided to take offline the very aspect of C&C that catered most to us puzzlers, namely The Vaults, which is where you would put in answers and check your work. A number of us have archived what was in the Vaults and we have the answers to all of the puzzles, so you'll always be able to PM us and check your work. Rest assured that the Vaults did not have anything flashy in them that you'd be missing out on, such as videos, but for Volume 3 in particular, there are metapuzzles that only appear in The Vaults that connect to puzzles in the paper, and we have those archived and can help you.
In terms of where to start, I would definitely say start with Volume 1 and make sure to go in order of each issue. Just know that Volumes 1 and 2 are very different than Volume 3; they are more like alternate-reality games with puzzles included. Volume 3 is more of a puzzle hunt with dozens of puzzles. With Volumes 1 and 2, you'll need to use threads here and likely the Wiki in order to solve many of the puzzles, as a number of them are dependent on curios that you will not get in your package. I was in the same boat as you in terms of not getting the curios for Volumes 1 and 2 and was able to solve the puzzles with the help of the Wiki and the friendly people here, and it's great to be able to give back and help people in turn.
We also cover many non-MPC experiences with puzzles in them if you discover that you enjoy this style of puzzling and storytelling, and we're in the process of reorganizing the board to better reflect those other companies' offerings now that C&C has been canceled. And by the way, the newspapers themselves are a lot of fun to read and get lost in even without the puzzles. You're in for a fun time with C&C, no question.
Again, welcome to this community and happy puzzling!
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Post by lee82 on Jan 20, 2018 18:27:16 GMT -5
Hi, thanks for the comments. So the vaults were for checking progress and the only way to do that now is via those people in the know on here? Are the vaults in any way essential to working through the puzzles?
The larger MPC experiences are of interest but obviously more costly. I got a good deal I think with C&C and it’s a good entry to the mystery package world for me.
What sort of puzzle difficulty are we talking here; is it going to take weeks/months to work through the 3 volumes and is it anyway possible solo?
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Post by wortelboer on Jan 20, 2018 18:37:26 GMT -5
Yes, it is possible to do it solo...I did...but I also discovered that I needed lots of help and found the nudges and hints here to do that with the help of the people here. There are all types of puzzles at all different kinds of levels. You may be doing this solo, but you are not alone. For Volume III, yes, the Locks for the Vault are sometimes are puzzles themselves or lead to other Locks and with MPC taking down the webpages and Vaults, you will need this forum. You will need to ask people here to send you the Lock images you will need. Let's see for me I started in January of last year and finished at the end of March or April to go through all three Volumes. and that was putting in some time each night and weekend. So it depends upon how good you are at the puzzles and how much time you put into working on it each week.
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Post by dmikester on Jan 20, 2018 18:47:05 GMT -5
Hi, thanks for the comments. So the vaults were for checking progress and the only way to do that now is via those people in the know on here? Are the vaults in any way essential to working through the puzzles? The larger MPC experiences are of interest but obviously more costly. I got a good deal I think with C&C and it’s a good entry to the mystery package world for me. What sort of puzzle difficulty are we talking here; is it going to take weeks/months to work through the 3 volumes and is it anyway possible solo? For Volumes 1 and 2, the Vaults are not essential to the puzzles per se, though as you go through the puzzles you'll find messages that won't make sense without the Vaults. Feel free to PM me and I can explain in more quasi-spoilery detail. For Volume 3, the Vault is not essential for the puzzles that are actually in the paper itself, but there are many metapuzzles that are only available via the Vault, so in that sense yes. We're going to try to add photos of what the Vault locks looked like to each thread so you can get a sense of what it was like. The puzzle difficulty is all over the place, but I would say that none of them are easy, a good number are intermediate, and a solid number are advanced to super difficult. Some of them are straightforward while others require some extreme out of the box thinking to solve. I would also say that unless you're an utterly mad genius and are brilliant at many different kinds of puzzles that this isn't completely doable solo, but part of what's so much fun about this community is working collectively on the puzzles and figuring them out together. Also, this will likely take a long time to solve; months is possible, but certainly more than a couple of days, and likely more than several weeks. Editing based on wortelboer's comment: It's certainly doable solo in the sense that there's no time limit and you can certainly figure out all the puzzles on your own, but you will likely need to refer to some of the threads here for a nudge on what to do next.
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Post by wortelboer on Jan 20, 2018 18:57:55 GMT -5
As you start working your way through these issues and if you find yourself enjoying it....then I'm going to suggest that you think about getting in on the Kickstarter from Simulacra Games - Wilson Wolfe. It should be available to purchase for a couple more months. There are very versions of the game that will be coming out in July at different price points. There are many of us here have purchased it and are anxiously waiting for its release.
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Post by lee82 on Jan 21, 2018 8:43:49 GMT -5
Wilson Wolfe looks great, might have to get on board and gives me 6 months to do C&C.
With WW, how do the games work in terms of what you're ordering? If I get silver say, does that give me one full game, and the higher packages give more games? Will there others be able to be bought as addons later? I've read through the info I could see and watched the YouTube video about puzzle types but unclear if this is an ongoing thing or one off.
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Post by wortelboer on Jan 21, 2018 8:57:43 GMT -5
Wilson Wolfe looks great, might have to get on board and gives me 6 months to do C&C. With WW, how do the games work in terms of what you're ordering? If I get silver say, does that give me one full game, and the higher packages give more games? Will there others be able to be bought as addons later? I've read through the info I could see and watched the YouTube video about puzzle types but unclear if this is an ongoing thing or one off. Silver has less puzzles than the other two. You will not be able to add on additional puzzles later. For a while, if you purchase Silver you will be able to go back and upgrade to Gold or Platinum. But one the window to purchase the game closes you cannot upgrade. Add-ons are for extras like t-shirts and stuff like that. The Silver is the full game. The Gold game adds "more about the shadowy organisation behind the conspiracy, and uncover their side of the story". Platinum is the Silver, plus the Gold, plus get the story from every angle, examine every object, solve every puzzle. Silver includes 20+ individual cases and estimated game play time is 20-30 hours; Gold includes 35+ individual cases and estimated game play time is 30-50 hours; Platinum is 50+ individual cases and estimated game time of 50-75 hours. So the Platinum level has over twice the content of Silver. I went for the Platinum. People here have bought all versions of the game...so whichever version you purchase, there will be others here working on the same version.
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Post by lee82 on Jan 21, 2018 9:30:25 GMT -5
Wilson Wolfe looks great, might have to get on board and gives me 6 months to do C&C. With WW, how do the games work in terms of what you're ordering? If I get silver say, does that give me one full game, and the higher packages give more games? Will there others be able to be bought as addons later? I've read through the info I could see and watched the YouTube video about puzzle types but unclear if this is an ongoing thing or one off. Silver has less puzzles than the other two. You will not be able to add on additional puzzles later. For a while, if you purchase Silver you will be able to go back and upgrade to Gold or Platinum. But one the window to purchase the game closes you cannot upgrade. Add-ons are for extras like t-shirts and stuff like that. The Silver is the full game. The Gold game adds "more about the shadowy organisation behind the conspiracy, and uncover their side of the story". Platinum is the Silver, plus the Gold, plus get the story from every angle, examine every object, solve every puzzle. Silver includes 20+ individual cases and estimated game play time is 20-30 hours; Gold includes 35+ individual cases and estimated game play time is 30-50 hours; Platinum is 50+ individual cases and estimated game time of 50-75 hours. So the Platinum level has over twice the content of Silver. I went for the Platinum. People here have bought all versions of the game...so whichever version you purchase, there will be others here working on the same version. Thanks for the info. So once it's out that it's, no expansion and no more packages planned? To be honest that's less appealing than a new series/collection and has a higher upfront cost to get everything. Will have to have a think about it.
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Post by wortelboer on Jan 21, 2018 9:48:31 GMT -5
The developers did say that if Wilson Wolfe is successful, they have have ideas for two more games. Given the size and depth of the product, I expect probably a least a year in between each release, if they continue.
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