We are stuck in a dungeon maze much like the film the cube. Each room has six exits, one in each wall, floor and ceiling. There are symbols above each exit with only one right exit to a safe room all others lead to a room with a monster. As each door is closed the rooms move so that if you can move through each enough you go from room 1 to 2 than three then four then possibly back to 1. The following shows the symbols above each exit for rooms 1,2 and 3. Then the next photo is the exit symbols for room 4. The correct exits found by luck are Room 2 Exit 3 and Room 3 Exit 2 and Room 4 Exit 1. The answer is "meant" to be simple and there should be enough info available to work it out but we've had no luck. Hope you can help?
The left picture shows the exit symbols for rooms 1 (top 6 rows), room 2 (middle 6 rows) and room 3 (bottom 6 rows). The right picture shows the six exits for room 4.
Have tried posting photos several times but although I can see them when I edit the post they don't seem to be there when I view the post.
Maybe post a link to them if you can find them on the web.
Photos uploaded succesfully another way. As of the last session we have found up to a 8 rooms but the DM says the info above should be more than enough to solve, but so far blind chance has found us svereal right exits but not the solution to be able to take all right exits to be able to leave the dungeon.
I'm assuming the DM won't let you figure it out by rolling intelligence checks?
30 years ago I might have ried to puzzle this out - before I realized that the DM most likely to have given me this sort of puzzle was (a) likely to miss the problems with his "logic" puzzles that made them unsolveable and (b) prone to mistakes in setup or description that made even his solveable puzzles unsolveable. Your DM may not be a clever as he thinks he is.
Now, I would cut the Gordian knot. Leave the dungeon, go back to town, hire a sage to figure it out for you. Or, if abandoning the dungeon doesn't lead to a risk of apocolypse, leave teh dungeon permanently and go find another dungeon.
You could try just killing monsters until you clear the area or stumble on the right exit, unless your DM is likely to have made it an infinite space and is randomly assigning exits whenever you enter a new room. In which case he will likely make a mistake in advising you of the exits at some point, and the puzle again becomes unsolveable.
In case someone wants to take a crack at this on these boards, you might want to explain or expand on your notes. There would actually be 2 safe exits to at least some of the cubes, since a completely safe path would include both the safe door from which you enter the cube, and the safe door from which you exit it. Your notes don't have either marked, which makes figuring out the puzzle more difficult. And is there a distinction between equilateral and right-angled triangles, or is that just the way you drew them? And the horizontal pencil lines, are those above the markings in the room, or below the markings in the room, or some sort of notation of your own?
The dungeon now that we are in it seems inescapable until we either solve or stumble upon all the right exits. As the rooms move when a door is shut on entering or leaving a room all the exits have only 1 right choice each time. The others will all lead to a monster of some kind even if you've been that way before. In the photos the first six lines represent the exits from the first room then underlined to separate from the next six exits from the next room then at the bottom the six exits from the third room. The underlining show that exit three room two was the first exit we found led to a safe room three with treasure. The asterisks mark exits we have taken or plan to.
Ignore any other underlining or marks as these are just our workings out. As far as we know there may well be something in the different triangle shapes.
If he resets the room every time, he probably has to recalculate the symbols every time, which leaves lots of room for him to make mistakes. Unless you are confident he is using a published adventure, which someone's peers would have reviewed?
(I remember one time when the answer, which should have been obvious, according to the DM, lay in a description of an image of a goddess in our father's palace (a few words in a 20 page handout), and the difference between that and the image of the goddess that was before us. Something about the positioning of her hands and/or the direction she was looking, neither of which had any logical relationship to the task at hand (I could have forgiven it if she had been looking or pointing at the answer). Which he misdescribed in the second instance, so that there was, in fact, no clue to the solution at all.
You could always fall on your sword, or fight monsters until you die, and roll up another character. I remember, in the games run by the DM who did this sort of thing, there were a lot of character attempts at suicide, either directly or by monster.
Of course, by DM fiat, those attempts always failed. Usually resulting in capture, and a couple of 8 hour sessions hearing descriptions of how our characters were being tortured. If you are in that sort of game, find a new DM, or pick up a DMG and start reading it.
You may have noticed I have a bias against this sort of puzzle.
The DM she assures us that all the symbols stay the same for each room, as in the photos, as stated any exit takes you to the next room with the same symbols above the doors for that room but all that changes is whether the room holds a monster or treasure.So in room two for example any exit will bring you to room three with the exits as shown in the middle of picture one but only exit 3 brings you to a room three with treasure (that we had already looted on the first discovery) The one right exit for each room will take you to the same safe room each time as we have been round the rooms a few times by trial and error.
I don't know what to tell you, then. Maybe someone else will weigh in. Do post the solution if you ever figure it out.
I'm with Beoric in post #6. In the last couple of decades (damn I'm old) I have rarely seen a DM designed puzzle work out and increase player enjoyment. You, OP, are already frustrated enough to post this stuff on the internet, because you could not work it out the session this was presented in.
Find some way out that does not involve solving the puzzle, Beoric had some good suggestions, though he failed to mentioned the extreme of making new characters.
Whatever you do, if you cannot solve it in a few hours, tell your DM.
which door did you use to go from room 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and 3 to 4?
All doors lead to rooms with the next rooms exit symbols the only difference in the rooms is whether they contain treasure or monsters as only one exit from each room is the safe one each time. We'll get out it's just going to be a matter of trial and error. what's annoying us is that the DM keeps saying it's a simple puzzle that we are all over thinking. Plus one of the players, who is not currently able to play with us, she showed her the puzzle and she solved it in 5mins and we can get her to tell us the solution but we each lose 2,000xp to cheat our way out. Just hoping fresh eyes can see the pattern that we're missing!
roggwil wrote:
My questions would be: as already asked by Beoric, is the DM using a published adventure or an exert from one? If so, you could hit up a couple different forums (enworld.org, forum.rpg.net, rpg.stockexchange.com ect.) to find someone who has done it before.
If not, then how well do you know the DM? If he did design the puzzle, try using your knowledge of how he thinks to figure it out. If you still can't figure it out, ask the DM how many sessions is he willing to waste while the group stumbles around. See if he'll set a time limit on it and make an honest attempt to do it, but agree as a group that when the time elapses, call it done.
roggwil wrote:
These are the correct exits found so far! As stated in the begining this dungeon is like the cube as whenever you enter a room the rooms around, above and below move around. The symbols above each exit stay the same in room order. So room 1 always has the symbols shown above each exit then no matter what exit taken the next room always has the symbols for the exits from room 2, then no matter what exit taken from room 2 the next room will have the exit symbols for room 3 etc and back to the begining sometimes. BUT any exit taken from room 2 other than exit 3 will take you to a room with the exits for room three but the room will contain a trap or monster of some kind, while exit 3 from room 2 always takes you to a room three with all the exits same as the other but instead having treasure (now empty as we took the treasure the first time we wenr through). I've only given the first four rooms exit symbols as they are meant to be more than enough to guess the solution to our DM's own made up puzzle.I see this dungeon as being like rubix cube with each block being a room. Whether we work it out or find all safe exits and get out I'll let you know.
How many combat encounters did it take to find those six safe exits?
Has to be about 15 rooms, we got frustrated and just took exits at random and either fought or avoided traps/monsters and had our rogue open the next exit as fast as possible and we'd run through. That got us by luck quite a few safe rooms, one of which just also had a teleport circle that we hoped would get us out but instead took us to room 5. Previously the wrong exit from room 4 had taken us back to room 1 and so on etc. What's bugging us is we just can't seem to see the pattern even when all the right exits are shown together. Something somewhere links them or seperates them from the wrong choices but we just can't see it. Was hoping fresh eyes would see it as it 'meant' to be simple. Sigh
I suspect the only way out of this scenario ... is to start tracking your food.
roggwil wrote:
Room 1 ALL exits lead to rooms with room 2 exit symbols, ALL exits room 2 lead to rooms with room 3 exit symbols, Room 3 ALL exits lead to rooms with room 4 exit symbols. Room 4 wrong exits lead back to room 1 with a monster but the safe exit "had a teleport circle that we hoped would get us out but instead took us to a room 5. Previously the wrong exit from room 4 had taken us back to room 1 and so on "now out of that loop room 5 safe exit went to a safe room 6, then room 6 the safe exit went to room 7. We took the wrong exit room 7 but still went to a room 8 found the safe exit to room 9 and are there now. Luck got us a few good safe exits in a row. If this is built like a shifting 3d rubix cube then there would be a minimum of a 3x3x3 room arrangement giving 27 rooms in total to explore.
The key thing to focus on are the symbols in the photos! We have the safe exits for 3 out of the first four rooms but what is it that makes those exits different from the others! What is the relationship between the symbols so we can find the correct exit in room 1 and therefore all other rooms!
roggwill, I think the important question is here:"are you still having fun with this?"
We can beat the beasts/traps as we can rest up in safe rooms and the xp is nice but we're all exhausted/annoyed trying to work out something we keep getting told is easy. Nice to see at least that no one here has solved it so far also.
roggwil wrote:
I have amended the original photos to show more clearly what rooms symbols they show. We entered the first room and only had those exit symbols so it was luck as to the exit we took, then as we entered each subsequent room we added their exit symbols to our list. Once we had found the first four rooms and that exit 3 room 2 was a safe exit we where told by the DM that this should be enough information to work out the puzzle as to which exits are the safe ones.
What identifies them as "Exit #"? Is that coming from the DM, or is that just the order you're writing them down in? Is "Exit 1" the exit you came through, to the right ... ?
Would your DM want you to ask for help on the internet? I would probably feel hurt if my players tried to cheat like this.
roggwil wrote:
You still didn't asnwer the most valid question:
baldhermit wrote:
Well tonight we finally managed to get out of the dungeon! One of our party got the solution with a bit of help from the DM.He was going through with her the ideas we had already, we had spotted that the right exits have a triangle near the front and back, we had spotted that the circle was always in between the triangles but had progressed no further. We got told we where on the right track and they worked out that if there was a square it had to be to the right of the circle or one symbol seperate to the left or more to be a safe exit.
Clear as mud and not easy we would say but at least that's done!
I'm curious about how much playing time that took, and how much time did you spend trying to work it out when you weren't playing?
roggwil wrote:
Have amended my last comment to make it clearer (well as clear as that solution can be ) It took us three sessions plus we all spent time outside gaming trying to work it out, I think by the end the DM wanted it over with as well. Thanks for all the advice and ideas!
I would introduce that DM to my gnomish cockpunch trap.
Zathris wrote: