Haven't confirmed this for all of these, but Hunting Fire at least can appear both indoors and underground, so I'm guessing it applies to the others as well.
Dusty Encounters / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page Dusty Encounters.
There seem to be choices you can make in one set of dusty encounters that lock you out of the other ones. I went through the orbital watch encounters, got the dove plaque, then hung it on my wall. Then I equipped the wispy hospital pants and the dusty clipboard. The dusty clipboard encounters came as expected (Ended with me getting Unchanging Survival), but I never got the wispy hospital pants encounters. According to Kinak, this is the intended behavior.
I strongly suspect that most of the content we've yet to find (Like the philosopher's stone and the infectious slime) from these three unearthly items will come from cross-encounter interaction, like the Soliders / Drone choices in Hunting Fire.
I think there's probably something to that, although I still think the philosopher's stone is probably for a win condition in the pants related to the alchemist… though it could require one of the other items to get to, perhaps.
But the victory encounters for the wispy hospital pants all end with:
Time seems to pass into dust, leaving you in a strange world filled with pain and strife, but perhaps a little less alone than you thought.
Which could easy refer to the Orbital Wars period. There's not as much of a common thread from the orbital watch, but in the Time of Peace result you get:
Joy spreads throughout the lands, save for one tiny corner of the world that still wars. You look on in sadness as a plume of flame licks the dusty night air.
And with the dove plaque result you also get:
For all your achievements, you are awarded with a plaque to mark your contributions to world peace, but it seems your work may not yet be done.
Both of which could refer to the Incident stuff with the dusty clipboard.
Also, the princess from Bedridden King and the woman in Sheltered Woman look pretty similar. It's also possible she's the woman running back and forth to broker peace at Well Appointed Tower. And the king in Bedridden King and Audience With The King could be the same guy.
Given that, I'm thinking the path might be to arrange a 'best' timeline, by using the draught of immortality to heal the king somehow, which is likely the princess victory route, then going for Time of Peace, possibly having to get a dove plaque, and then maybe from there you can save the Sheltered Woman. The trick is we still need to figure out how to get the draught to the king, which doesn't seem to have any obvious solution.
I like that idea. There does seem to be an order to the encounters: hospital pants -> watch -> clipboard.
Today, i had both the watch and clipboard equipped, and got only watch encounters until I played up to getting the Time of Collapse skill, then started getting clipboard encounters.
From chat and other wiki sleuthing, I've compiled a list of unsolved mysteries from the dusty saga:
- Dragon Blood doesn't craft with any known item.
- [Cryptodynamic]: odd that the flower of the dragon and the cellar documents are quest items, but the draught of immortality isn't;
- [Cryptodynamic]: I wonder if there's something that requires having the flower of the dragon equipped. It does seem a little odd that it's equipment.
- The Alchemist doesn't have known a No Trade reward item.
- Cap of fools isn't known to grant a technique.
- "Edge of the light?" is likely worth looking into from the Abandoned Cellar. Weird phrasing.
- Trying to give the queen dragon's blood ends with "When the pain stops, you find yourself somewhere entirely different… somewhere simultaneously clearer and more complicated." Is there a significance to that? Encounters seem to continue on as normal.
- Other old mysteries:
- Gimme Shelter: Abandon it — how to avoid judgement?
- Sheltered Woman: No successful results found here; and notable one failure message is different: "The world seems clearer, bereft of the cloud of dust lingering at its edges, but you feel as though you've received a message meant for someone else." Why is it different?
- Maybe test with consort crown equipped?
Further ideas:
- Some results only come from specific techniques in deck; to test learning all known dusty techniques and then check all encounter results.
- Possible results from completing the dusty encounters "in order": pants -> watch -> clipboard?
Found via bugs:
- A Crack The Stone technique, likely from crafting a Philospher Stone with Aqua Regia
- Infectious slime item is maybe somehow involved?
I'm still gathering items and techniques, but I'm wondering about what might be a proper order going from wispy hospital pants > orbital watch > dusty clipboard. I'm going to disagree with my esteemed colleague Crypto and doubt that the king in the orbital watch encounters is the king is the hospital pants ones. My read is that the wispy pants king is a goner, so the monarch in the orbital watch encounters is actually the Prince, after having taken over the realm in the first act.
No surprise that I agree the Sheltered Woman is the Princess:
she claims to the be the last princess of an ancient noble line and a general in the Orbital Wars
That bit about being a general does complicate things with the orbital watch, though. You'd think she'd be the peacemaker in the orbital watch since both characters ultimately give peace-themed techniques. In any case, there's no mention of who actually won the war that I can see in Sheltered Woman, so I'm pretty much at a loss about what the "right" way to resolve that stage would be.
It might be interesting to see if the Sheltered Woman encounter is any different if you get to ith the same day you get the princess bloom, because of this:
As you rest in the garden for what seems like years, you hear the distant sounds of fighting. When the war finally reaches you, when she is finally cut down, all that remains behind is a flower as the dust closes in around you.
Seems unlikely the woman wouldn't be there at all, but you never know. (The Alchemist also dies if you get his reward, but not the Prince, which might be more support for my theory that he's the orbital watch king.)
One other minor observation that might be important: you can't wear all the no-trade rewards from the hospital pants at once, but you can wear all the "noble" ones (consort crown, princess bloom, and princely sword) at once and similarly with the "commoner" set (charmed shirt, cap of fools, philosopher stone). Wearing the complete noble set didn't seem to do anything when I talked to the King in the orbital watch stage, but then I did get my crown eaten during scouting and so didn't have the complete set when I won the war for the nats. (I'm assuming noble items would go with nats and commoner ones with corps.)
There's no obvious differences with the Sheltered Woman encounter. I did a chain of helping the princess, achieving peace in the Orbital Wars, and then reaching that encounter. I don't remember which choice I picked at that point, but I do remember not seeing anything different as a result.
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