Elemental Workshop III

[BobbieK]

I'm stuck on the puzzle .. 

I did puzzle 1 no worries, the cutscene played

puzzle 2 I followed the tip.it guide, but nothing happened .. twas all a mystery

thought I did it wrong, read the guide wrong, so I reset and did it again very carefully, nothing happpened

I looked up puzzle 2 elsewhere in case the tip.it guide was misprinted, but Runescape Wiki has the same solution

I got p*d off, threw a tantrum, reset it and played with all the levers, any levers .. I don't know how many turns I used

Have I moved onto puzzle 3?

Have I failed in that case, having gone bonkers on the levers probably on puzzle 3?

How can I return to the start of the puzzle, puzzle 1, and do it over? Is there a do-over?

Have I messed up the quest completely never to have another go at it ever again?

I don't know, can't remember, if I pulled the reset lever yet again either

Was there supposed to be some sort of song and dance about having solved puzzle 2 or was there supposed to be a nothing specially happening?

All these questions and more have been weighing on my heart all day .. but you were away .. the dismay

[Sy_Accursed]

If memory serves puzzle two is the extra moves counter on the right hand side.

 

You can see if you beat it by whether or not it has turned up to 50 on the numeric display on the right hand edge of the thing.

 

There is no real overall reset lever - it just resets pieces back to default positions and restores the main move counter to max - the extra unlocks (the two raised corners with the taller blocks) and the extra move counters retain their current state between resets.

[BobbieK]

ok so I've worked out that I was up to puzzle 2 according to the pics on your more detailed guide looking at how the pieces were to start with on that one, and I may have just repeated it, and then I completed puzzle 3 and a bit of a song and dance happened with the tiny cutscene.

 

The thing that threw me off in the first place was that there was no acknowledgement from the game that I had completed puzzle 2.

I'd like to know how YOU knew you had, besides looking at the guide. If you didn't follow the guide, how would you have known?

 

Secondly I'd like to know how you knew where the line of cogs needed to end up in each puzzle, if you hadn't have been going by the guide?

That diagram from the crate is gobbledyspeak, I can't see the relationship between it and each of the puzzle objectives at all.  I'm not a dim person, I do usually work these sorts of things out myself, I hardly ever use the quest guides, in fact for the first few years that I played back in 2000 I didn't know there WERE guides, and managed to complete quests without help.

Like did everyone back then get stuck on this and Runescape ended up giving someone the solutions so now there's a guide everywhere everyone follows?

How many of you solved this whole series of puzzles in this quest all by yourself without looking at any guide?

Did there used to be an NPC to talk to about this quest that's now been removed?

Especially with realising what the objective of each stage of the puzzle is, and that there isn't any clue to start on puzzle 2 or acknowledgement upon completion of puzzle 2.

how did you know?

[Sy_Accursed]

For the move counter puzzles there are little counters above where the cogs are connect to that change when linked up.

The right one goes from 0 to 50

The left tries to change to 50 but jams and starts sparking, giving infinite moves.

 

You can tell what you need to connect up by the cog 'socket' points on the edges of various things. 

There's two on each of the left and right bits that links to lowering th back corners and the counters. (See the sides of F1, F7, C1 and C7)

There's one front centre which is already spinning - the source of power (where number 4 has a extra bit sticking out)

There's one at the centre back which links to dropping the centre pillar. (facing you on a4)

There's four around the centre pillar. (one can be seen in above pick)

 

The extra nuance is their heights - some are low down requiring the 'normal' blocks, some are mid-height needing the two high block and some are high up requiring the 3 high block.

 

As with most puzzles figuring out objectives is a combination of logic and guess work.

Puzzle 1 is puzzle one because if you look at things it is the only connection point available that is low down - the only other 2 are on the central pillar which is up in the air

Puzzle 2 isn't strictly required as puzzle three takes exactly 50 moves (the amount on the default move counter) but having done puzzle 1 you have a choice of two midheight sockets you can reach. The one used in puzzle 2 or the one used in puzzle 3.

Puzzle 4 then again is not strictly required, but having infinite moves is very useful and again with puzzle 3 done you have the 3 high block giving you a choice of two new sockets. The one from puzzle 4 or the one from puzzle 5.

With that done the central pillar drops and there's a socket on each side - 2 low, 1 mid, 1 high with the obvious goal being to hook up all 4, since connecting just 1 does not do anything.

Once that's spinning you then need to raise it back up, so you go back to the connection point that dropped it down.

 

It's true the counter things don't have as a big a fanfare as the 'main' puzzle solves but they do make the counters right near their socket points move and change to show their effect.

 

The art of solving puzzles is to pay attention to all details and not look for big sign posts and flashy cut scenes to indicate stuff.

 

As for it originally being solved - it was done by players. I myself solved it on my own merit and then spent a couple of hours double checking my noted down routines and taking pictures which are the very solutions and pictures used in tip.it's guides.