The Longing-ist Playthrough: Day 78 – 19/03/22 – 167 Days, 17 Hours, 13 Minutes and 24 Seconds to go…

After a frustrating and fruitless two day search for the hidden door, I was running out of ideas on how to move forwards. I was all about to start retreading old ground (again) when a chance observation led me to exactly the clue I needed… now, could I unravel the mystery and get inside?

I came [home] and found that Monty had ploughed through 22,393 pages of the Neverending Notebook and had seemingly done so without turning into a psychopath… 😅Lucky me! Having set a fire before I left last night (which I realise I forgot to mention in my last write up 😅), and leaving Monty reading for a long while, I was amazed to see that nearly 40 days had fallen off the calendar! Holy crap! I better get a move on if I’m gonna find this door!

Before heading out for the day, I had Monty check the huge pink crystal that we’d found in the [lab]; I wasn’t sure quite what it was that bugged me about it, but something about the noise that it made creeped me out. I’d half wondered if it might have some effect on the mushrooms growing in the cave, but other than the spooky sound, it didn’t seem to do anything… You’re going paranoid. You’ve been hanging out with the creepy Shade-boy for too long… 😅

What happened next was a rather ambling tour of the kingdom, with action button at the ready and Monty putting in the hard yards. First, we checked in the strange chapel looking rooms (that I didn’t find for weeks), and while there was no sign of the door in there, I was pleased to find another couple of books strewn around that had fallen through a hole in the roof. After snagging those I had Monty check out the [treasure room] again (to no avail), before heading for a tour of the [crystal lake] with an equal lack of success.

Next, in the hopes of securing that missing Disappointment that we needed for the [Face in the Wall], I asked Monty to look at the blocked door to the [library], but it seems we’d already collected this one (likely some time ago). Entirely out of ideas, I had a realisation… There was a collapsed doorway in the tunnels near the [Halls of Eternity]! I’d walked past it on Day 1 and it still prickled me that I hadn’t been able to get through, and so with no other ideas, I thought it was worth a go.

Monty ambled down to the tunnels and it took us a while to find the collapsed tunnel again amongst the labyrinth of doorways. Sadly, once we arrived it was just another dose of disappointment swallow as there was no way to interact with the rubble lining the entrance.

Where in the HELL is this door?! I must have missed something somewhere – I’ve checked the whole sodding place now!

More than a little annoyed, I asked Monty to head up near to the overworld again – the clue pointed to being able to “see more” and if I’d missed something then I figured it had to be where there was a tonne of bright sunshine. After a long and arduous march from the deep western corner to the upper-centre kingdom, Monty strode past the [map of the kingdom]… Maybe I’ll just have one more look…

…

…

What the hell is that?! A DOOR!

There it was, staring us in the face on the map… A pretty clear brown door where I knew there hadn’t been anything before! It was stood on one of the forks between the upper and lower chambers on the eastern side of the kingdom, and I ask Monty to dash over there as quick as his little legs would carry him!

I was excited as Monty walked through the final doorway to the forked road, and then a wave of disappointment crashed over me…

Where is it?! Have I sent him to the wrong place?

There was nothing there, where the door had been on the map. What the hell? Confused, I had Monty head back to the map and check it again… Yep – there’s definitely a door showing, and I DEFINITELY went to the right place…

Hold on a second… what are those?

Glancing over the map again, and with a keener eye this time, I noticed a few shadowy looking spots dotted around that I hadn’t noticed before… and they were quite clearly doorway shaped! Maybe the door on the map was one of many – a clue to a bigger puzzle, perhaps? Enthused by at least a nugget of progress, I sent Monty off to look at all the places where these ‘shadow doors’ were showing in the hopes of finally finding our prize… Maybe the obvious door is a decoy to make you look for the others, or maybe it moved around…? 🤞🏼

After a fair amount of trekking around, we were able to confirm that the doorway hadn’t appeared in any of the places I saw, but I was certain that they were a clue and not just an accidental smudge on the map. Thinking back on how the kingdom had been affected by time in the past, I theorised that maybe the door only appeared at a certain time of day, and had Monty to go back to the eastern fork and wait there until I popped in to check on him again. But what time might it be? I’ve not seen anything alluding to a time, and it surely wouldn’t just be something completely random…?

Over the course of the day, I took my Switch everywhere with me (including on a sunny walk down the canal side and a shopping trip!) and pulled out the machine to check whether the door had appeared on the hour, ever hour, which seemed like a logical place to start.

Nothing.

Each and every time, the door failed to appear and I was beginning to think that I didn’t have the right idea after all. I had Monty look back over the map each time I checked in and the door was still showing in the same place every time… Well that’s good – at least I know it hasn’t moved, meaning I probably haven’t missed the window…

It got to 11:00pm and I was about ready to call it a night… I mean, midnight would be a logical time for something mysterious to happen, but surely the developer wouldn’t expect players to stay up until the dead of night just to find a secret… It was then that I glanced at the in-game clock and realised that it was only about 40 minutes until the hours, minutes and seconds timer would all be at 00… Well that would be a pretty auspicious time for something to appear – maybe I’ll give it one last go…

I put my Switch off to one side and kept glancing over at Monty while I worked on a review. I was fiddling around, editing a troublesome paragraph and lost track of time… and when I looked over, I couldn’t believe my eyes…

The door had appeared! 😲

There is was – plain as day – a tall, round topped wooden door with a run-of-the-mill handle, just waiting to be opened. Flinging my laptop aside and snatching up my Switch, I moved Monty to the door and gleefully hammered the action button to go through – eagerly awaiting what was inside.

As we stepped through the door we were greeted by a tiny upwards-sloping cavern, maybe only half the size of [home] before Monty took the mattock to the walls. On the wall was a huge gold framed painting of the king, a couple of books littering the floor, and protruding from a pile of dust and ash at the far end was a gleaming golden crystal, twinkling out strange sounds, just like the pink one at [home] did. I was ecstatic. After three long days of scouring and soul searching, we had made it inside the secret room! 🤩 I was so excited, in fact, that I completely missed the sight of the door fading away behind Monty until only the cold, hard grey stone wall remained.

We were trapped inside. 😱

While the thought of being unable to leave was a daunting one, I wasn’t about to let a temporary setback upset my mood – we’d won this battle. Monty wasn’t quite so pleased and was worried about being holed up in such a small space, but I assured him that I knew when the door would reappear and so he’d only be trapped for a day at most… Which is decidedly better than that ten days you spent suspended in the [Halls of Eternity], so I wouldn’t worry about that, kiddo! 😅

Excited to claim the rewards of our hard work, I had Monty collect the painting of the king, the books and the shining crystal before settling down to wait. I had every faith that the door would reappear at the same time tomorrow, so all we could do was sit on our hands and wait until then. I set an alarm on my phone for 23:35 the following day so that I had a few minutes leeway and waved Monty goodbye for the day. See you tomorrow, matey.