Well of Aldur secrets !?

Watch it turn out that the plaques don't actually do anything (yet).

 

I thought that. In last week's stream, @Sannio confirmed they do something, but nobody had found it yet.

That said, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the intended "reward" isn't working, and since we don't know what's actually supposed to happen, we have no way of knowing whether or not to post a bug report...

Hopefully he's following this thread, and if he sees somebody post the solution as a failed attempt, he'll weigh in as well as fix it.

 

At this point, I'm just hoping I don't have to come up with a copy of Caddyshack to figure the puzzle out...

 

Well, I got that going for me. Which is nice.

 

Spoiler

that trine arrangement of the eight virtues dates back to ultima 4:



and here in color:



the virtue statue from the student quest is similar, eliminating white and black, and is also on a book cover:



but this particular iteration on the plaques is more similar to the blade of the avatar:



and is a direct copy of the tomb in the crypt of the avatar:




(which i'm suprised is not in your easter egg thread: it's LB's face, complete with rat-tail braid)

 

I always wondered about that last one. I mean, LB is still alive in the game, so who is that? Shamino?

 

hehe...it is in the Easter egg thread (it's just gotten buried among the many posts).
There is even side-by-side photos of real life and in-game Garriott for comparison.

Spoiler: Summary to this point

Welp, i think the symbol on the plaques definitely refers to the ethos/principles/virtues symbol that is on the students virtue statue and on the cover of Blade of the Avatar, which in turn derives from the Ultima series.

As stated before, for SOTA there are 3 principles that give rise to 8 virtues, so the dots (and their color) on the plaques seem to refer to the 8 virtues (since there are 8 plaques and 8 dots, with each dot having a color that represents a virtue).

So, now we just gotta find the correct color sequence and/or a virtue sequence to determine the order in which we break the plaques.

 

Spoiler

Hopefully, it's just a subset of virtues/colors. And even more hopefully, it doesn't require a specific order. But anything is possible.

Later tonight, I was going to catalog the books that are found there, and see if there might be another interpretation of them.

 

Thanks everyone for the hints and especially @Saesa for helping me, I believe that the plaques do represent virtues.
Anyway here goes if you solve their mystery:

Spoiler: Breaking all 8 plaques

Break all 8 before they respawn and you get access to the secret room: You can get +15 Moon / -20 Sun att buff, and loot 2 skeleton chests with the usual treasure loot.

 

Well, crap. I guess I wasn't fast enough after all. The first plaque must have respawned just as I broke the last one. If I was a little faster, I coulda been the first...

Kinda bummed it wasn't a little more complicated than that, though. Especially given the designs of the plaques. I think using the sequence of colors from one of the books on the professor's table would have been more gratifying. Hopefully all the work that went into the design was so the system could be used in future scenes.

 

On the up side, I can go back to farming envy bows and shrine components...

 

Spoiler

What is the buff?

 

It's in that post. Or do you mean the name of it?

 

Spoiler: Couple questions...

Just checking, but did the order you break them in matter?

Also, does the door stay open once you get it open? or does it close once the plaques begin respawning? (Can you get trapped in there if that happens?)

 

Spoiler: Answers

I do not think the order matter. We were doing it with Saesa together, I started at wyverns, she started at the opposite end of the map, that way we had plenty of time even though I had to resurrect at ankh
You will not get trapped, there is a teleporter leading outside. The door will close once the broken fragile plaques start respawning. I think that if you are really fast and do not die, you might be able to make it in time, but it is much easier with two people.

 

Thanks!

Yeah, I was able to get pretty dang close to opening it. I did it leaving the one outside the room for last, so I could see if it opened. I got to it, and all the lights except the one for the last plaque were lit. Respawn must have started just as I broke the last one.

I think it could be done, maybe with some Cat's Grace and Froggy rings/pots for a few spots. But probably not really worth it, unless you're a moon mage. It doesn't hurt to wear light armor and be air/tactics spec for move speed bonuses. Plus I picked up a few time saving tricks involving jumping off platforms/teleporting that save a lot of time. Mainly, I think it comes down to not dying on those last three platforms. If you can pull that off, you should be able to get all eight in time.

 

Btw, I was told, that the scene contains a jumping puzzle. I have climbed every possible location and several impossible ones, is there some real jumping puzzle or is it the plaque one?

 

Not that anybody has found. (Unless they're keeping quiet.) But yeah, you're right... one of the older announcements that introduced it as a n upcoming scene did mention jumping puzzles. I've tried to get to as many of the "out of bounds" areas as I could, but haven't found anything yet.

Unless there's something at the wyvern spot or the other two elemental platforms. I haven't been able to explore them much, with all the dying. I could get to the area below the wyverns easily enough, but haven't found anything there.