Gharib: You know me as The Stranger
Gharib: In my youth, I could rarely afford the time spent on children's games...
Gharib: And today I can ill afford the time spent on games of adults.
Gharib: But occasionally, I have been known to take part in one particularly complex and devious game.
Gharib: One that requires a quick wit, and a sharp mind.
Gharib: For those of you that think you have the ability, you may find that the design of these games is as challenging as playing them.
Gharib: Though I suspect that such simple minds as yours will yield equally simple puzzles.
Gharib: Are you up to this challenge?
Gharib: I give you...
Gharib: The Venery!
Venery is a test of thought that involves creating a puzzle that may cover a large portion of land. A very simple venery would have a series of lockboxes in a chain, each requiring a previous key and providing a new key along with a clue about where to find the next lockbox. Lockboxes can be attached to buildings, objects (trees, altars, etc), and people (!).
When you're designing a venery, hide a number of lockboxes in your local area (or in all of Egypt, if you so desire). One key (predefined at the venery base) can be hidden in each lockbox. ff you want to allow alternate branches, the same key can be assigned to the final lockbox in each branch. Each box may be configured to need 0, 1, or more keys to open it, so you can force completion of multiple branches. The lockbox may also have a hint on the outside (a hint suggests where to find the keys needed to open that box), and a clue on the inside (a clue points to the next lockbox).
You can be the designer on multiple veneries, they don't interfere with each other, but you can only configure one venery at a time. Don't forget to go to your ESC > Utility > Interface > next to last option and active/deactivate the Tests menu that allows you to attach lockboxes to objects in the game.
The backend code for The Test Of The Venery was significantly revised in early September 2005.
Possible bugs or features that were requested but not implemented, for guilded veneries.
A lockbox must be attached to the Venery Base to complete the venery. This lockbox is technically the last lockbox in the venery, rather than the first lockbox, so conceptually it operates backwards because the users will think of it as the first lockbox.
The Venery Base Lockbox closes the loop. It's logically the last lockbox for the designer, but the user will think of it as the first of the loop, even though it's not, really. The Venery Base Lockbox Hint entry should be written as if it were a clue for how to find the first lockbox, while the actual clue is just a throwaway about judging the completed venery.The text pattern on a very simple venery would be:
Technically, the Welcome Text could point to the First Lockbox in which case the Venery Base Lockbox wouldn't need a Hint. In practice, the runner can't get at the Welcome Text a second time without resetting and losing all accumulated keys, so the smart approach is a very simple Welcome message that says "Click on the Venery Base and Search for Keys to get your first clue."
And yes, you and I know that the user is actually getting the first hint, but who cares <G>. Because the Venery Base lockbox is really at the end of the venery, not at the beginning, it works backwards when you're writing the hints and clues. The Venery Base Lockbox hint is important, and the clue is a throwaway. For all the other lockboxes, the Clue is the important entry, and the Hint is just additional advice for a lost runner.
Judging changes log here - needs writing up.
Once you've signed up to design a Venery, every object in the game will have a new Tests menu (if you've enabled it in ESC > Utilities > Interface > near the bottom of the second page) with a Venery submenu. This menu allows you to do a variety of lockbox-related tasks, including adding/removing lockboxes from the object, setting the hint and clue for the lockbox, hiding keys in the lockbox, and configuring which keys are needed to open the lockbox. You can shut off the test menu, under interface options, when you're done designing the Venery. (The details of exactly how to pass the test are still pretty vague.)
You can, and should, build your lockboxes ahead of time. You can remove and reuse lockboxes, and your guild is likely to have some available. If an object with an attached lockbox is torn down, the lockbox is one of the salvage items, and appears to always be available. This is much nicer than most upgrades, which are not recovered.
A Simple Lockbox (there aren't any complex ones) is built at a forge and takes 2 minutes to cool. The materials required are:
It appears that you can attach lockboxes to things even if you're not configuring a venery, and that you can retrieve an orphaned lockbox, but you don't want to go there. Set up the venery base, then attach associated lockboxes.
A Venery Gathering Point is the first building that needs to be constructed. It costs 100 boards and 250 papyrus paper, along with a small construction site. It's a small pedestal, about 2/3 of the height of a person and the same general size as a person.
You must name each key that you intend to assign in any lockbox associated with the Venery. Long key names work great, they are displayed as a banner on the Clue popup, and you should include the name of the Venery in the name of each key. The lock boxes will present you with a selection list of previously defined keys that you can hide in the lock box, and you can configure keys that are required before the lock box can be opened.
If you delete a keyname, it zaps the hints and clues at the associated lockboxes. Renaming a key works fine, but avoid duplicate names. Things can get really messy that way as the position of the key, not the name of the key, is what the venery is tracking. It's not a simple keyname to hint/clue linkage, as you can use the same key in multiple lockboxes that have different hints and clues. The safe way to do it is to remove the associated lockboxes, then delete the key name. The keys are listed in the order that you enter them and no, you can't reorder them.
The Welcome Text appears only when a user initially joins the Venery. As the Welcome Message can't be repeated without resetting all of the keys, the Welcome Text should be a general feel-good message, without any critical content, that asks the user to click again and Search for Keys.
Once the Venery Gathering Point is built, you can begin installing lockboxes (and assigning keys that you have prenamed at the venery base) on most of the objects in the game.
Each lockbox has a Hint (on the outside) and a Clue (on the inside with a required key) that will appear in a LARGE popup. There's no need to be careful with line length as word wrapping will take care of itself. The popup is scrollable and has a clipboard button, so it's easy for a player to print out your hints and clues.
Hints should provide information about where to go back and find the key for a lock box that was found "accidently".
Clues should indicate what to do with a newly found key. Found keys are listed under ESC > Tests > Venery > Keyring.
There is an analysis menu item on each Lockbox that displays the first line of the Hint, the configured keys, the first line of the Clue, and the hidden key. There's a similar menu item on the Venery Base that reports on the entire Venery. Both reports are in a popup window with a clipboard button, so it's easy to document your Venery.
Note: The Venery Gathering Point always needs a lockbox that's the final lockbox in the chain. Triggering the Venery Base Lockbox is how the players complete the Venery.
To actually solve a venery, a player needs to visit the starting point and click on "Attempt this Venery!". Veneries <Thank You, Teppy!> now run unattended.
Some notes:
Some Venery Locations to help get started.