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Sep-8-2006 04:41

Having solved the Heart of Darkness, which is supposedly harder than this case, I am really confused about the outcome. I have all my subjects and have pumped all of them for all their information except for the one that can't be questioned (don't wanna spoil). However I still have no idea who kidnapped Ravenna. I have done the research and (I think) had all the twists, and found out the origin of all the physical evidence. Have other people found this featured mystery very difficult?!

Jul-14-2007 07:20

I tried it a sixth time, and this time I guessed right. I did it again to get to read the conclusion to figure out what went wrong. See I never had any problems of the kind where people clammed on me or such. The problem was that in the end I had missed one crucial detail that is specific to scripted mysteries: I didn't go back to read the intro again. So I take back what I wrote about this being a bad mystery. I *do* however agree that it was way too hard to be set as "Really hard".

Here are the statistics:

- It cost me more than $1000.
- It took me six tries to solve and the last time I had a fifty-fifty chance to pick the right suspect.
- My reward for solving the mystery was 160 experience points and 1 skill point.

You can do the maths yourself.

Again, if you're having any sort of trouble solving this mystery at the end scene (or any other scripted mystery for that matter)

READ THROUGH THE INTRO, CRIME SCENE AND ALL YOUR CASE NOTES AGAIN AND COMPARE EVERY CLUE YOU HAVE ACCUMULATED.

If you don't you'll get stuck. If you have any questions about this case I will give you advice on how to proceed via sleuth mail, but I will *not* give away any info or spoil anything.

Jul-14-2007 10:08

Don't let this one SM put you off, you may find other more interesting and entertaining depending on your tastes.

Remember one other thing. The SM's are supposed to provide an alternative to the strait normal cases and be a bit of fun. They're not intended as a way to grab big experience points or rewards (although it is a shame the author can't set a reasonable reward level).

Also when writing there is no guide on how to set the difficulty and it seems quite arbitrary and subjective. What I might find hard (what I set my SM - currently awaiting the administrators! - at was hard) may be incredibly hard to some and easy to others.

Jul-14-2007 17:06

Well.. in this case however it is pretty bottlenecky. And if you miss that little subtle hint you're out. <BUZZ> Next contestant!

Now, I don't know if you *can* change the difficulty of the SM after it's gone out, but if it can be done I definately say pump it up a step or two.

And since the point about my math obviously failed to get across: It was to show that the earnings and losses wasn't even close to balanced. I literally *lost* money (and time I could have used for other cases, which would have meant more fun) solving it. I am not after great rewards, but if your detective improves during the course of a game and his wallet doesn't you'll have a problem since with your experience level and the difficulty of mysteries the prices for bribes and equipment go up. You need to stand a *fair* chance of at least raising enough money to pay for it.