Well of Aldur secrets !?

Spoiler: I've got an idea.

That seems to be the only one with a "knob." Maybe this is how you determine the order? Somehow, it kinda makes "sense" that either black or white would be first. I wonder if breaking it causes one of the others to change? Hopefully it's not red or purple...

Gonna break it, and see if any of the others change.

[EDIT] I was hoping the order would go

 

I think I've died more in the last two hours than I have since I started playing in 2016.

 

Spoiler: Well, I'm out of ideas.

Nope. For some reason that one plaque is different than the others, and breaking it doesn't seem to cause any other indicators to appear. I guess unless something else comes to mind, I'm'a have to leave this up to the puzzle master @Rinaldi to figure out. Maybe this weekend I'll see if I can get a group together to try and tackle spreading out and seeing if we can get all the plaques in quick order.

The only other thing that comes to mind is that a certain combination of colors is required to do... something. So maybe not lighting up all lights, but only certain ones. Sor tof like the magic stone puzzles in older scenes, where there's 4 or 5 stones in the scene, but only activateing a specific set of them opens a door somewhere. Unfortunately, I have not yet found any indicators as to what that combination might be.

 

Huh. Well of Aldur doesn't seem to have a day/night cycle. It's "Late Night" but the sun is up. Wanted to see what consteallations were up. Probably not a factor, but can't tell anyway without leaving the scene, Astrolabe won't work in the day.

 

Spoiler: Well, one more idea for tonight.

Tried a few combos.

Orange + Blue (the color of the giant aldurite crystals)
Various combinations of the colors found on the wood ducks
All of those plus yellow (air magic, since there's lotsa air elementals)

Nothing. At least, nothing I could see.

I think that about wraps it up for me, at least for tonight.

 

Spoiler: Some more plaque observations

The white plaque shown in Cora's post above has the nob in the middle by default. I sorta recalled this, and just to confirm, I logged in and checked it before I broke any plaques. The white plaque does have a thickened/bold area: the knob in the middle

The black plaque (on the island near Thadeus) does have a thickened/bold ring: the outer circular ring that surrounds the 3 smaller rings is thickened/bold.

So, all the plaques have a thickened/bold structure or structures.
And, as stated before, when a plaque is broken, a specific dot turns to a specific color on the unbroken plaques (the location of the dot and the color to appear to be constant, regardless of the order in which you break the plaques).

The rings and dots are kind of like a color wheel:
The dots inside only one ring are colored red, yellow, and blue (I'll call the rings in which these colored dots appear as follows: blue ring, yellow ring, and red ring).
The dot in the intersection of the blue and yellow rings is green (a combo of the colors blue and yellow).
The dot in the intersection of the yellow and red rings is orange (a combo of colors red and yellow).
The dot in the intersection of the red and blue rings is purple (a combo of colors red and blue).
Where all the rings intersect the dot is white (a combination of all colors)
The dot outside the rings is black (absence of all colors).

Solo, I am unable to break all the plaques before they start to respawn.
If ALL 8 plaques must be broken in a certain order, then it will likely require a party of people to break them in a short enough period of time.
Although, I am not sure all 8 plaques need to be broken.
Anyhow, I am not sure how the above helps in solving the puzzle, but it seems reasonable to assume that some or all of the plaques have to be broken in a specific order.
However, I have not been able to find anything in the zone that clearly hints at the order (at least nothing that I recognize as a hint).

Spoiler: Some possible color combinations

1. One possible solution is the color order of the 8 magic trees other than chaos (tho I am not sure where to start and whether to go clockwise or counterclockwise)
2. The order could also be the 8 colors of the magic trees used in Oracle Colossus to open the magic barrier, although this would seem unlikely to me because I can't think of lore linking these two zones.
3. Another possible solution: start with black (no color), then activate the 3 primary colors (blue, red, yellow), then activate the combo colors (orange, green, purple), then activate white (combination of all colors) - which would light-up the dots from the outer portion of the plaque toward the center of the plaque.
4. I think Sannio said the plaques were involved with an Easter egg, so maybe the color order refers to something outside the game? (such as the gem colors on Thanos' gauntlet). If this is the case, hopefully a hint is present somewhere to narrow down the possibilities.

 

Spoiler: Technically...

For additive colors, red + green make yellow, blue + green make cyan and blue + red make magenta (purple).

 

Spoiler: color wheel and plaque design

Oops, I noted an error in my post with regard to purple, which i corrected.
But, the rings don't seem to combine the other colors in the way you suggest, e.g. red and green are not in the same circle (and so I would not expect to see their combination). Also, cyan is not one of the colors on the plaque.
So, I was thinking of 6 color wheel, something like the middle image below, which shows the 6 colors seen on the plaque, and this color wheel correlates perfectly with the combined colors in the wheel showing up as the combined colors in the intersection of the rings on the plaque.

 

Spoiler

Hm. Didn't notice that. Was looking only at the three inner ones. Kind of a weird system for black and white, though. Seems like it would have made more sense if white was all three rings raised, and black was no rings raised.

Interestingly, if you look really closely, all plaques do have a small raised bit at the center. I don't think it means anything, because it's only partially sticking out. More likely the the cylinder of the nub from the white plaque wasn't removed/adequately pushed behind the other geometry in the other instances.

Despite that, I would think whatever the solution is, it would be sort of lazy if something somewhere in the scene didn't point in the right direction. That's one of the reasons I thought of the wood ducks; they don't really seem to have much to do with anything else. But they have a lot of colors going on, and it's not completely clear exactly which ones are there. You could make a case for pretty much everything except purple. And I would hope for something more "A-ha!" than "well, maybe..."

The only other one that came to mind was the colors of the wyverns that spawn. But I don't know what all colors are over there or spawn in later waves.

 

Per Sannio's answer to the question below on the last Friday Stream, there is a hidden easter egg with a reward from the fragile plaques.

See Sannio's answers at about 00:24:55 and 1:03:30.

Friday Stream Questions - February 5, 2021
Shroud of the Avatar stream with Atos and Sannio!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/902443515

14:30 randomdude611: !question
@Sannio What's up with the fragile plaques in the Well of Aldur scene? Is there a hidden quest for them?
- Sannio answered about 00:24:55, more about 1:03:30
25:44 Coswald_Dirthmire: I tried to break the one that used to not break and it wasn't even spawned :/
26:27 IamSannio: @Coswald_Dirthmire Do you remember where it was? Or can you submit a big for it after you get the location coordinates?
27:16 Coswald_Dirthmire: @IamSannio I'll get the exact coordinates, I remembered it being on the wall behind the large shrine on the alst platform befor the wyverns
27:59 IamSannio: Thanks. That's the one I fixed. I fixed it by moving it about 8 feet to the left. Same wall area, but not in the recessed area.
37:19 Coswald_Dirthmire: @IamSannio I think I found the plaque at its new location, 276,-1,-370. Spawned and breakable, I just wasn't observant enough after the move
38:03 IamSannio: @Coswald_Dirthmire Thanks for checking!

----------

 

Hm. So, I wonder if we'll be able to tell if we get it right, since we don't really know what is supposed to happen. Hopefully a message of some sort, or something that let's us know if we've figured it out.

 

Those are subtractive (think paint). Light is additive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_color

 

Ooh... I just had an idea...

 

Spoiler

Maybe, but the colors are derived from the eight colors that have been in Ultima forever, and the colors "add" together the way they have hisotrically in Ultima games.

 

I wasn't saying that it's wrong as far as the game is concerned, just technically not correct.

 

Spoiler: Dang, I thought maybe I was on to something.

I remembered the books the professor had lying around, and started reading them looking for references to colors. One of the books mentions (in order) black, green, red, and blue. Another mentions blue, green, red, and yellow. There are two others that mention one color each, red and green. I'm not counting those, since it's unlikely the solution is just a single color, and both those colors are repeated in both other books.

I tried the first set of four, then the second set of four, as well as all five mentioned colors. I suppose I don't actually know if any of those did anything, but nothing happened that I was aware of. In each case I went and checked the second big stone door just in case the correct combo opens it, but nothing had happened there either. (Conveniently, since I didn't need to break the plaque there, it also confirmed that all of the lights were indeed lit.)

It is possible that if this is the key, they have to be activated in the order they appear in the books. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do them in that order quickly enough, because the stupid red one is on that second platform full of elementals, and getting to it, activating it, and getting back to the mover as well as back across the first platform full of elementals without dying is tricky. I might be able to pull off the bl-g-r-y combo if I get lucky, since the yellow is the first one you encounter on the way back from red. The other sequence (bk-g-r-bl) is gonna be about impossible solo, since you need to start at the professor, go all the way to the red, then back to the professor.

If it involves all five mentioned colors, and there's a specific order, I'm not sure how that would be worked out. The two books are both from the Sorcerer's Daughter series, so maybe doing the sequence from the lower numbered book, then the extra color from the other book. But that seems maybe too clunky to be the answer.

It's late. I'ma try again tomorrow, and re-check the books, just in case I missed a color or something. I'd feel better about this possible solution if only one of the books mentioned colors in it, instead of several.

One other possibility would be to scan the books for references to the names of magic trees. I recall one of the Sorcerer's Daughter books mentioning fire and earth. Not in the context of magic trees, but those words appeared. It's something to try, anyway.

 

To be fair, Rinaldi used the words "combo" and "intersection." He never said whether those were additive or subtractive combos/intersections.

Also, it's not the lights themselves actually "combining." The plaques are basically indicator lights, and he's describing colors light up corresponding to the results of a subtractive color system. So he's technically correct.

 

Spoiler: Cora, your post sparked an idea in my head

When I saw your virtue diagram, it made me think of the virtue students quest, and the statue you get when you complete the quest. The diagram and colors on the statue below are an exact match for the plaque & colored dots (including the fact that the location of the colored dots on the plaque exactly matches the location of the color in the rings of the statue shown below).


Also, the books may indeed be a clue.
I thought perhaps the books may also be a reference to the students quest.
Of the books on the table in Well of Aldur, there are only 3 from the students quest, and 3 books of these books are grouped together on the table:

• Monkey & dolphin - sought by student of Truth (Blue is truth on the virtue statue)
• Lion Tattoo - sought by the student of courage (Red is courage on the virtue statue)
• Most beautiful heart - sought by the student of Love (Yellow is love on the virtue statue)

I tried the sequence blue>red>yellow, and also Yellow>red>blue and I did not notice anything happening (e.g. inner door remained closed).

It is possible that the other books may also refer to a virtue/color (but they are not involved in the students quest). Although the exact virtue may not be stated in the book, perhaps the story refers to a virtue? So maybe Godric & Stag is justice (green), and Crow & Fox is humility (black)?

I did not have time to delve deeper, but I think you sre on to something Cora.

 

Spoiler

I'd seen that symbol (or something like it, showing how the colors/virtues combine) in connection with Ultima for ages. I'd forgotten it was also used in the books quest.

I think the issue, though, is finding something in the scene that points the way. As you noted, there's a few different ways to interpret the books there. And, the books may be entirely unconnected. But it was the only thing I could find in the scene that seems to point to colors/virtues/magic schools.

One other possibility is to figure out which specific principle/virtue each of the student's books represents- given there are twelve books, I would guess that 8 of them represent virtues, three of them principles, and one is... um... I always forget what the infintiy symbol one is called. The truth student wants The Monkey and the Dolphin, but is that book the "truth" book, or is it maybe justice or honor? (I don't know, I don't remember the story, and I'm not able to hop in game right now.) As in, it might not be the "alignment" of the student that wants the book, but the "alignment" of the book the student wants. (Though, lions are usually associated with courage, and hearts with love, so those two may be both the book and the student.)

I was also going to try talking to Thaddeus and Rodney about virtues, in case they have something to say there. But I didn't think of that until after I'd gone to bed last night.

Also possible, is to check the covers of the books. If they have a magic school book cover, that might also be an indicator. Even better if some of them have virtue symbols on them...

 

Whatever it is, I just hope @Sannio put in a pop-up message or something so we know if we got it right.

(Or, if opening that door is the result, that the door stays open even if the plaques start respawning.)