Mysteries Of The Metroplex

This page lists aspects of the game that are not yet fully understood, or at least fully understood by people who wish to share their understanding publicly. It's probably most productive to post your theories, speculation, and data on the individual discussion page(s) for the mysteries in question and leave this page as a reference for people looking for something to investigate.

In addition to the following ideas, see:

• Spading In Progress
• Podcast transcripts
• Probability Guide

Skills

As of April 2020, there are 11 undiscovered earthly skills and 2 undiscovered skills tied to unearthly items. (Additionally, the Firetamer skill is known but nobody has ever gotten it in a non-bugged way.) Some of these skills were added very recently, so they may not be available yet.

• One skill is tied to the blotted document.
• One skill is tied to the cellular differentiation report.
• According to Podcast 53 one unfound skill is mutually exclusive with either Unwavering Attention or Arsonist Training.
• According to Podcast 53, skill #46 is "From a known item. Don't want to say if item or encounter, but from a known thing that you run into. But it's pretty hard to get. So, tricky. Well, yeah tricky. Brute forcing would be very challenging. With some finesse (not the coding thing) it would be possible."
• According to Podcast 52: "There's a couple skills tied to something people have overlooked, possibly for that reason [low power], possibly because they think they've found all its content."
• According to Podcast 44, skill #88 is tied to an unearthly item. That skill lies between Patchwork Dreams and Harvest Dreams, so eligible items are: bullet-holed vest, lens focused on the unknown, incredibly abused pants, costume crown, ferry coin, classic writing desk, dueling jacket, Ecofuel flamethrower, tactical goggles. (Two coin items are in bold; other listed items cost only one coin.)
• According to Podcast 53, skill #98 is tied to an unearthly item. That skill lies between Harvest Dreams and the skills from the orbital watch, so eligible items are: shifting maze, trick top hat, moodlight glove, mascot adapter, personal tree, blood rose amulet. (Two coin items are in bold; other listed items cost only one coin.)

Major Content

• According to Podcast 53, there is some unfound content relating to holograms.
• What is the undiscovered content in The Missing Artist/The Black Sketchbook quest?
  • According to Podcast 28, there are still two things hidden in the sketchbook. One "insanely hidden" the other " a little bit tricky". Kinak confirms that Fire Dancer was the "a little bit tricky" secret.
    • According to Podcast 31 "There is some non-charnel house stuff (actually a fairly significant amount) to get the really terrifyingly complicated thing."
      • According to Podcast 54 we need to use "one very specific item" from outside the Charnel House. Furthermore, "the item has been known for quite a long time". Time for some brute force charnel house testing.
  • What can you do with the ghoulish crown?
  • Searching for sketches following the Ghoulish Trio looks like it ought to unlock something. Does it?
  • According to Podcast 36 "there's something missing you can do in both" the fiery lake in the original charnel house and the reopened one. What is it?
    • Is it possible somehow to fish in the lake of fire?
  • Is there some way to get memories from eating a raw heart?
• Having the preserved cell culture equipped with the Writhing Flesh effect active gives a different message depending on with Attribute is your highest one. Is there some way to use this to transform the culture into another item, or to gain a skill?
• It takes a very specific chain of choices to unlock the Squatter's Refuge, but even if you go out of your way to do it, there doesn't seem to be any real payoff for doing so. Is there a skill and/or an alternate resolution to the Problems on the Docks quest lurking here somewhere?
• Argeth says there's a way to get a grinning ghoul combat in the Midgard Warehouse, possibly by removing the Spider Drone encounter somehow. How do you unlock this combat and does it have any further significance?
• Does the odd sketchbook unlock anything special?
• There's a hard-to-get result about philosophy from the Post Archive (University Net) about testing the nature of consciousness with cyberware that looks like it ought to do or unlock something interesting. Does it?
• The foreign memory looks like it ought to do more than just give you a few XP. Is there more?
• What does the Strange Song that the Deep Hunter sings do?

Techniques

• According to Podcast 52 there's a way to make a broad set of techniques smoky, and also a puzzle in the Intertwined Serpents fight that would allow them to be beaten without known smoky techniques.
• There are apparently several unfound techniques in The Charnel House (Reopened). How do you get them?
• According to Podcast 53, there is exactly one unfound technique that gets a bonus as filler. It's related to an unearthly item.

Mechanics

• How do we influence which kinds of shipping drones we encounter (besides the filters)
• How do we influence what kinds of sites we encounter in the university net?
• Podcast 39: " I think that the way that the drones work makes a lot of sense. But I also think that the way that the sites work on campus makes a lot of sense but those have not been figured out at all."
• Reactive Defense was made to work with non-combat encounters around 8 Sep 2018; it is entirely unknown how this works.

Unearthly Items

According to Podcast 53, the classic writing desk and the Midgard player are the two unearthly items with the greatest amount of unfound content.

When Kinak has explicitly talked about unfound content associated with an unearthly item, those hints appear in a "Remaining Mysteries" section at the end of the main item page. In some cases, items were the subject of podcast hints and then later had more associated content discovered, but it is unclear whether the new discoveries corresponded to the hinted-at material. For a fair number of other unearthly items, Kinak has simply never commented one way or another about how many mysteries (if any) remain with them.

+ Unearthly items whose spading status is unclear

Urban Legends, Vol. 1: (Podcast 12 says "Yeah, there's something more with the Dark Spectre There actually some stuff I intend to add to it, but at present that's everything. The Dark Spectre stuff is related to a different unsolved mystery, so if you figure that one out, it might help, or vice versa." But the Smoke Talons technique wasn't discovered until 2012, so that may be what Kinak had in mind.)
Zalian defense tool: (According to Podcast 17 "More or less figured out. Neat stuff behind the scenes.")
shield of scales: (According to Podcast 25 "still some stuff to find. Looking back, it might not look like a 1-coin item. There are some techniques that haven't been found that it interacts with". The Serpent Pattern technique was later discovered. Unclear if there is other undiscovered content too.)
grappler gauntlets
holosight rifle: (From Podcast 53: "I feel like there's one more technique there but I might be completely full of lies. I'm looking. Still some weird stuff out there, for sure. Yeah. Tricksy stuff." Later in the podcast he mentions a mystery with holograms in general, so not clear whether there's specifically a technique associated with the holosight rifle or not.)
designer vines: (Podcast references to unfound content all predate the discovery of the Sunless Slime technique. No word on whether there's other undiscovered content here.)
anniversary pocket mirror
coat of mysterious circuitry: (It's still not clear how to upgrade this to a coat of masterful circuitry.)
abstract domino mask
black tablet shard
charmed chain
lens focused on the unknown: (May be associated with skill #88, but the classic writing desk seems like a more likely candidate.)
incredibly abused pants
costume crown: (May be associated with skill #88, but the classic writing desk seems like a more likely candidate.)
dueling jacket
tactical goggles: (The tactical neural mesh from this item is the most likely candidate for producing extra Code Finesse people can't otherwise explain.)
Moodlight glove: (May be associated with skill #98, but the personal tree seems like a more likely candidate.)
dusty clipboard
orbital watch
wispy hospital pants
bloodied coat
smoldering gun

Avatars, Conducts, etc.

Unfound avatars that are confirmed to exist:

• Cyborg
• Wolfman

Confirmed not to exist, at least for now:

• Matsuo the Demonslayer

From Podcast 35:

Q: A week of pvp with the wolfbelt hasn't given any avatars, including infecting a bunch of people and doing a full moon cycle in pvp. Any hints there?

A: … You're not on a bad track, you just sort of might need some persistence, or some focus and persistence. It's a pretty conniving one. It would be difficult to get by accident. I don't believe it specifically requires pvp.

From Podcast 37:

Q: In the previous podcast you mentioned that a "Wolfman" avatar was available. Naturally, we scrambled to find it and failed. Perhaps you can tell me which one of the following methods was closest to correct (while still being wrong, because I did not get the avatar… ) I did the following things:
-Used Call-of-the-moon following each of the Moon tides in a single combat (huge pain in the butt)
-Used Call-of-the-moon following each of the Moon tides in order from 0 (skin-of-the-wolf) to 4 (full-moon-tide) in sequential combats (not necessarily the very next combat each time, but not using that combination of skills (5/6) in any combat unless it fit the squence)
-doing both of the above DURING an actual Full moon (On friday the 13th no less, June 13th 2014) (Kinak: that is totally sweet. I don't have any way to check the moon phases in Metroplexity but totally should.)
-wearing a ton of "wolf-like" gear and winning combats
-Completing a full Moon Tide Cycle back to 0 in a single combat.
-Having one of each of the Moon Tide Cycle in the action list in a single round (yes…1, 2, 3, 4 moon tide phases and a 5th item, which happened to be Call of the Moon. Agony but I did it once or twice.)

So, yes… which of these is closest to correct, or are they all so far away from correct that I should wipe the whiteboard and start from scratch?

A: Probably probably completing a full moon tide cycle in a single combat… but none are particularly close.

Old Mysteries

The hidden section below has been largely untouched since 2014. Click on it … if you dare.

+ Blow the dust off the cover and consult the Tome of Ancient Mysteries

Minor Mysteries

Even if solving these minor mysteries won't fundamentally change the way we play the game, the answers would be nice to know, and would probably save a lot of people a lot of frustration and wasted turns.

• According to Podcast 32, there is "At least one item (and recipe) and at least one technique" yet to be found in the Nightmarish Artistry/Glittering Artistry block of content. Where and how?
• What are the precise triggers for one's ability to get:
  • The Trauma Tech skill?
  • The Programmed Terror skill?
  • The Expert Salvager skill?
  • The Art Appreciation skill?
  • The Boundless Patience skill?
  • The Bloody Solution skill?
  • Several undiscovered ones

• One of {polar cable, the Hammer's sledge, haunted bat} has some unfound "minor stuff" associated with it
• Is there more to be found in the Slags medical files?
• What is the special interaction in Path of War, Path of Peace, and Forked Path? Kinak: "I seem to recall there's a cool interaction related to those. I think that they're strategically interesting and will be more interesting when skill perming goes in."
• What's the very subtle thing the protein reader does?

Narrative

Narrative information about the character's amnesia shrouded history.

Various mysterious groups or characters:

• the Four
• the weavers
• the brothers
• Dr. Johnson
• the maelstrom
• the Raven
• the Whi[…]
• many mysterious Midgard codenames and projects

Mealtime, Medicinal, Multiuse, and other Miscellaneous Message Mysteries

Many pages are tagged as needs_[whatever]. If you have hunger, body, or several of the appropriate items to spare, you can help to complete these wiki entries.

Methodology for Mystery Mavens

• Pay attention to line breaks
• Pay attention to combat messages
  • Read carefully, sometimes only a single word will change
• Pay attention to when things don't happen
• Try things both with and without Etheric
• Don't write off seemingly sub-optimal equipment or techniques
  • Pay attention to doing less damage than you can (see skeletal rider, slags guard, helidrone antenna)
• Look for gaps in the lists by ID
• When looking for gaps, note that all items associated with a given update are often roughly adjacent. Look for missing items in the same quest as the nearest found items.
• Share your data
• If you're really hardcore, keep a log
• Consider how PvP might interact with the rest of the game
• Watch out for "jealous" items and zones (where unequipping/leaving them resets hidden counters)
• Check the "Bonuses" tab from your character screen for hidden effects that aren't reflected item/effect descriptions
• Remember that your character cannot read the wiki, but rather learns by the school of hard knocks. Going straight for the big payoff instead of "wasting" energy on seemingly-useless encounters and options often makes you miss key unlocks.
• Items retrieved from beta resets do not always count the same as the finding the item first hand. (See Lotus Map for an example)
• Try drinking an orange juice sample the day before you test things (and remember that you did it!) just in case
• Try running away or losing to opponents on purpose
• Be evil and depraved. Many people tend to take the "good" path when confronted with choice encounters.
• If an item can be multiused, try using more than two at once.
• Listen to Kinak's podcast or look through the transcripts for clues
• If all else fails, try to cadge a hint from Kinak