The Longing-ist Playthrough: Days 40-73 – 09/02/22 – 14/03/22

Ok, people – it’s terrible admission time. It’s been about a month since I set eyes on Monty and, truth be told – I feel pretty guilty about it 😅.

Between a flurry of PR reviews, a birthday and a whole lot of real life commitments, I didn’t have the time or energy to head down beneath the mountain, let alone chronicle the happenings. But I made a commitment to write about my time with Monty, and so I’ve dusted myself off and gotten back on the horse. I achieved very little between Days 40 and 73, so rather than plot a whole bunch of empty days, I’m going to clump everything into a single vague write up before jumping back on the daily stuff from now on – I promise.

After waking Monty from his deep sleep in his own bed for the first time, I decided to head to the [Halls of Eternity] in the hope of finding something -anything- of note. As always, it was a slow trek down there and Monty, it seemed, was finding the sudden lack of excitement as underwhelming as I was.

“There must be more to life than just waiting for things to happen.”

Monty

You’re telling me, buddy. We arrived at the Halls with 282 Days left to go, and of course, time stopped once we entered. I don’t know how long I left Monty down there, or how far we walked into Eternity, but it was a long, long way – further than we’ve ever gone before. As we walked, Monty found a new carpet for [Home] and a whopping 20 pieces of paper! Lots of scribbling for you to do once we get home now, my man!

After who-knows-how long scouring the gleaming white halls of infinity, I returned to Monty and finally asked him to turn back. We weren’t ever going to get anywhere (we knew that) and with nothing other than paper to be collected, it looks like we’ve found all that we can down there and there was no point continuing the endless walk. I asked Monty to head back to the [Treasure Room] again… Yes, I know I must seem like a broken record, but I’ve seen no sight of gold coins except behind that crystal glass, and I need some to pay [The Face in the Wall] for more secrets… There MUST be a way to crack it.

We arrived and I poked around for any signs that I may have missed earlier… Are there any cracks in the glass? Anything behind there that might be putting pressure on it? But it was to no avail – there was nothing more to it. Knowing there was only one thing for it, I took a deep breath and shielded my eyes as I pushed the button marked ‘Use Mattock’…

And it worked!

The third mattock was either stronger than the rest or we’d previously damaged the glass with the first two, as Monty managed to put a head-sized spiderweb crack in the crystal! Rather the keep swinging at the soft spot, Monty informed me that we just had to hang fire until the weight of the treasure beyond broke the glass and we could scoop up a few coins at last!

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When I returned to Monty, it was some 20 days later and I was feeling decidedly guilty. Now with 262 days left on the countdown, a small pile of shining, golden coins had accumulated on the floor of the [Treasure Room], having poured out from behind the glass. With a burst of excitement starting to dampen my guilt, but not wanting to be too greedy, I asked Monty to scoop up five of the coins before heading up to visit [The Face in the Wall] for some advice.

Eternally carved into the static stone, [The Face] showed no sign of having missed me or Monty for the past few weeks. Handing over the coins, we listened intently as he revealed some secrets of the mountain…

I spent a few minutes dissecting what he had to say and thought I had a pretty good idea of what was going on. “…if you try to breathe freely…” would seem to be a reference to the sulphur fire I lit at [home] and Monty walking up to the [mushroom caves] for fresh air. “…a birthday present in a most beautiful place….” has to be the [crystal pool] -it’s easily the prettiest place beneath the mountain- I just need to figure out when Monty’s birthday is 🤔 “…mysterious door where you can see the most…” – well, this one stumped me a little bit. It could be in relation to the brightest place, or the place with the broadest view… I’ll have to have a think on that one… it could be in the [mushroom caves] where there’s a load fungus clumped together, or maybe the [crystals windows] – that’s pretty bright. Maybe?

Since I had a pretty good feeling about the sulphur fire idea, I had Monty head home – I wasn’t sure if we had enough sulphur to put the plan into motion right away, but the only place I would be able to check was [home] anyway. What happened next was a very long winded and frustrating mess, and doesn’t merit writing about in any great detail whatsoever, but I will give a brief rundown of my annoyances.

Monty arrived home and we didn’t have enough sulphur for a ‘smelly fire’… No problem – I half expected that. We went to the mines and collected a few lumps before heading back and stoking the fireplace. As expected, Monty evacuated the cave and started walking all the way up to the [mushroom mines], but unlike last time, he just. kept. walking! He kept going and going and going to the point that I got worried he’d walk right off the edge of [The Pit] if I didn’t try to stop him! Thankfully, he listened to me when I pressed a button, but that just meant that I stopped him in the wrong place, and one that had no bearing on the air flow… Hmmm… maybe I need to try again and pay more attention next time...

The next few play sessions revolved around us walking back and forth between [home] and the [sulphur mines] because I wasn’t spending enough time with Monty to harvest enough sulphur, and I wasn’t paying close enough attention, and needlessly went home to try again on more than one (read: three!) occasion/s. The upside to all this back and forth is that we stumbled on a couple of books that had seemingly fallen through a hole in the roof near the [crystal crossroads] that definitely hadn’t been there before. I had thought about seeing whether they’d come from the library, but a quick glance at the map told me that was impossible. Who knows where they’ve come from, because there’s no rooms immediately above this place. I wonder if there’s more changes happening in other places? I’ll have to plan a sweep once I’ve done tinkering with this stuff...

Thankfully, we have now not only gathered enough minerals for a few attempts (we gathered 15 sulphur which I hope is plenty enough to get this right), but Monty is already waiting back at [home] so that we can get cracking right away when I check in on him tomorrow.

Thanks for everyone’s support with the playthrough blog and apologies for the break in service – now I’m back on the horse, I’m hoping to ride it all the way to the finish line! Saddle up, Monty – it’s pony time.