Goblins Quest 3 – Mixing potions

By Ilmari

The game’s definitely getting more and more complicated. This time, I faced a three-room level with an intricate puzzle sequence involving alchemy. But let’s start at the beginning. As you might remember from the last time, I was heading to the grocer, who supposedly had another way of transportation for me. Let’s take a look at the surroundings.

Unfortunately the grocer, the person at the right side of the screen, wanted nothing to do with me, even if I gave him a letter from the captain and a coin. In fact, he told me that the captain owed him money, so he wouldn’t do any favours for me either. Having no idea what I was supposed to do here, I checked what I could learn about this room from the Goblin news and what its goal was supposed to be.

It appeared that my task in this room was just to collect some ingredients to use elsewhere. But what was this about Were-Blount? Well, the left side of the room contained a moon lamp, and turning it on produced an interesting result.

It appears being eaten by a wolf had its consequences. I had become a werewolf, who turned into the wolf form, whenever moonlight was present. Unlike regular Blount, wolf-Blount was aggressive and willing to break the furniture in the grocer’s room (and to hit the grocer with a hammer). This was useful, because this kind of violence was needed for retrieving some of the items on my shopping list. At the end of my rampage tour, I had the egg of boa-boa, the key and the horn of gidouille, but I was still lacking the bone of crocomoth and the soap.

By the way, if you are wondering where Chump, my parrot friend, has disappeared, it seems to be hiding here. I guess parrots don’t like wolves

Blount’s wolf guise was linked to the appearance of moonlight, so when I left the room, Blount returned to his regular form.

The town screen worked as the central hub of the level, with access to both of the other rooms. As the task list above shows, the aim was again just to gather some further ingredients for the potions. I did help the old lady with a hole in her roof by using my umbrella to cover the hole. She thanked me with a hot water bottle, which I could use for hatching the big egg on the roof of the other house.

With nothing else to do, I knocked on the house of the local alchemist. He told me he had prepared the memorum potion I had used for the dragon, and let me in to do some further potions. I was in for a surprise, since the hands of Blount got a life of their own.

See, it truly happened

Really neat interface change!

So, instead of Blount, I was now controlling his detached hands. The right hand could pick up things and use them, while the left hand could manipulate the other objects. Furthermore, all my inventory objects came out from my regular inventory and found a place within the room.

My first task was to make Fulbert come alive. I had no idea who that was supposed to be, but I tested putting my boa-boa egg on the hot water bottle, and the trick worked again: Fulbert was born!

Isn’t it cute?

The main goal of the room – and indeed, of the whole level – was to prepare Flyixir, a potion that would make Blount grow wings, so that he could fly to his next destination. Before that, I had to also prepare two other potions: Growixir and Speedixir. The recipes for the two latter potions I could find in a book at the alchemist’s, while the page where the recipe for Flyixir was meant to be had been torn away. (The book also contained a recipe for a fourth potion, but this was apparently just a red herring.)

I won’t go into details as to what steps I had to do to make these potions, but I’ll explain the Growixir more fully. The ingredients I required were:

• Broken shell
• Cooked spaghetti
• Gidoville’s horn.

Luckily all of these were rather simple. When Fulbert had hatched, a pile of egg shells had been left, and all I had to do was to break them further in mortar. Spaghetti was something I could pick up at the grocer, and I could heat up some water at the alchemist’s to cook it up. Finally, I had the horn already in my inventory and I just had to burn it to ashes to get it in a more usable form. With all the ingredients combined, I received a bottle of Growixir.

Works also on worms/snakes

In comparison, I had no ingredients ready for Speedixir. Yet, now I had Fulbert to help with me in places where I needed to do the classic Goblins two character act. Furthermore, I now had that bottle of Growixir that I could use to grow plants – and Fulbert was really good at climbing these plants.

Check this, for instance. Pressing that lever at the right lowers a cannon ball, and pressing it the second time, raises the ball back up. By making Fulbert use the lever, I could place Blount on the ball and so get him to the roof. The plant was grown by Growixir, and you can see Fulbert climbing it, so that the worm can meet Blount at the roof top

Fulbert can also work as a bridge between two roofs

Soon, I had gathered all the ingredients for the Speedixir. As the name implies, it made Blount and Fulbert move really fast, which was essential for the most time-sensitive puzzle of the level, revolving around the bird that had hatched earlier from its egg. Firstly, I could use the Growixir to make the bird grow to adult size. Then, I could use a bird decoy I had found at the grocer on the top of the roof to call up a lady bird of the same species. The lady bird attracted the male bird so much that it puffed out one of its feathers, and then I had to run with full speed to the ground, so that I could pick up the feather when it was still flying around.

The feather was an essential part of the Flyixir potion, but how did I find the recipe for this elixir? The woman in the house next to the alchemist was actually his lover, and she was holding a love letter from him. Growing again a plant nearby gave Fulbert the opportunity to climb to her window and scare her, so that she would drop the letter. As was to be expected, the recipe was found at the back of that letter.

I already had the feather, but what about the other ingredients? Tears of joy was interesting, since it wasn’t available as such, but there was a note that memorium potion contained it also. I had still some left from the previous level, so I could use it to extract some tears for Flyixir.

The soap bubble posed also an interesting problem. Getting the soap was relatively easy (another puzzle where you had to quickly use both Fulbert and Blount at grocer's) but how to turn that into a bubble? Simple: the alchemist shop had a coin-operated fan, and my key had a convenient loop for collecting soapy water.

Flyixir is ready to use!

I watched a silly animation with Blount getting into a fight with a bird and falling down to a rocky island. This is a perfect spot to end the post, as the level changed. I’ll still say that I am enjoying the game immensely, and the last level has been the best so far with all the elaborate puzzle sequences. Let’s hope the game will keep this up to the end!

Session time: 2 h 30 min
Total time: 7 h 45 min