THREAD: WITNESS CHAMBER PUZZLE SOLUTION - Working Group
USER: LinguaLich
LinguaLich (Original Poster)
Okay, for those of you who aren’t following Zeke’s fanfic, he just dropped a pretty detailed description of the Witness Chamber puzzle. It sounds like one of the more fascinating puzzles that Horizons ever came up with and I’m eager to get started decoding it.
And no, we are NOT brute-forcing the solution the way that Zeke did in his fic. We are going to solve it properly and document it for everyone else.
Everyone who attempts the chamber will need to record their full playthrough. Post the raw footage here, and we’ll compile everything into a structured solution. Our end goal should be a full write up + a clean PDF guide.
Step one should be a full catalogue of all the languages present in the chamber. Based on Zeke’s description, we’re looking at German, French, SPanic, Cyrillic (unspecified) Japanese, and Mandarin. He also mentioned possible Farsi/Dari and I’d bet money that there are a bunch more languages that Zeke didn’t write about.
If you can read or speak any of these fluently, then we need you. I’m not talking about having taken two years in high school “fluency.” You’ve got to actually be able to read these languages.
Fake_Person
Why of all the language descriptions you only butcher Mandarin? That’s a spoken only language. Just use Chinese for the written part you’re talking about.
EdinburoughArchivist
The man was a bartender. He used to sling drinks for a living. It’s doubtful that he’s got a Master’s Degree in comparative linguistics. I’d be surprised if he knows another language other than English, so cut him some slack.
DeadMeinWalking
Hey Lingua, you’re skipping the real step one. If we want to decode this puzzle, we’re first going to need to farm a sensor stalk from the Hemocyte Swarm down in the Fossilized Factory Belt. No sensor stalk means no puzzle solution.
NinNin-Decoder
Ugh. I’m already exhausted thinking about all the work that needs to be done on this puzzle. Zeke said the markings changed based on where you’re standing in the room, so it’s not just translation that we need to worry about.
LinguaLich (Original Poster)
Already working on that. The room is circular, so we can map it like a clock face. We’ll treat the entrance as 6 o’clock and the opposite side as 12 o’clock. The stone dais in the middle of the room is obviously our starting point. We fill in every 15 degrees or so.
Each tester would have to log their position in the room, the lens configuration (which lenses are flipped) and then the observed text on the walls.
For example, player A would stand dead center in the room and log all the languages. Player B would stand near 3 o’clock, a few feet from the wall, and log all the languages they see. Player C would stand near 6 o’clock and do the same thing. Then we can layer all that data afterwards and reconstruct everything.
ClickWhirr
You’re forgetting something important. Who would sit in the chair?
Zeke was only able to escape the Witness Chambers because he had Patch who took over for the Witness. That suggests there’s a hidden exit mechanic that we don’t fully know about, and it would be tied to someone taking the place of the Witness.
Maybe a character with a high enough Pathfinding skill can take the place of Patch and sit in the chair (which, we should have someone do that anyway to see what would happen) but it seems like we’re going to need to hire a Pathfinder for this puzzle.
MercMarket
It’s not just any pathfinder though. It’ll need to be one with a high enough skill. Remember in the fic, the Witness said that Patch qualified to help. I can imagine that if you hire a pathfinder with only rank 4 or something in the skill, you’ll just end up stuck in the room because they can’t use the chair.
The only pathfinders I can think of that would fit the bill are Jacob Sauntin in North Coil and Mick in the Anchor Guild.
You might be able to train up a merc to their level in the Pathfinding Skill, but that would take forever.
DeconstructedAntlers
That only really matters if we’re trying to get our character out of the Witness Chambers. We can just head in there, solve the puzzle, and then reload a previous save from before we sent our characters into the place.
DataDatum
Ha, this is hilarious if you think about it from an in-world perspective. You need to find a merc to help solve this puzzle, and the only way you can survive is by telling the merc that he needs to sit in a moldy old chair.
JimothyTheBarber
“Hey Mick…good news and bad news. Bad news is you’re going to be stuck in this room for the rest of your life. But the good news is that you get to be the greatest pervert in the history of the world. So many bathrooms you get to peek into.”
LinguaLich (Original Poster)
To be fair, we don’t actually know if it’s permanent or not. Zeke hasn’t finished this arc yet, so there could be a way out.
But yea…it’s probably permanent.
SomeGuyWithADrone
Can we work on solving this puzzle instead of talking about the ethics of outsourcing eternal imprisonment?
I for one don’t really care about all the emotions and stuff that Zeke is writing about. I only care about the puzzles that he’s unlocking.
LinguaLich (Original Poster)
Okay. PM me if you’ve got translation abilities. Everyone else, make sure that you’re recording when you’re in the room.
Let’s get to work!
***
THREAD: I’m back
LucklessObserver
Anyone else think that Zeke is developing a reputation throughout The MIZ? He’s casually leaving a trail of dead NPCs behind him, and that’s got to be drawing all sorts of attention. The merc circles have to know all about Zeke by now.
In his first expedition he lost both Corva and Pell. In his latest outing he lost Patch. That’s 3 out of the 8 NPCs he’s worked with. That’s a 37.5% casualty rate. If I was a merc in The MIZ and I heard those numbers, I would be very unavailable for any adventure.
Word is going to get around that he’s bad luck and my man’s yelp reviews are about to hit rock bottom.
InkWell
You’ve just been debuffed!
“Zeke’s Party” - Survival chance significantly reduced.
PixelBaron
Well…Corva wasn’t a big loss though. I was mad about his death too, then Foppery showed up and exposed him as a complete asshole.
GraveyardShift
Yep. Corva’s death got retroactively justified. But Patch does NOT deserve that kind of treatment. He’s one of the best NPCs in Frontiers, hands down.
I swear, if it turns out that the devs had secretly turned Patch into a villain and this is all Zeke’s attempt to get us to dive deeper into his character and not be all angry about his death…I’m gonna be pissed.
CradleOfMirth
^Graveyard. Patch is top-tier comfort NPC. When you roll into the Roaring Drake, he’s always there behind the bar. He’s competent and hands out a couple quests. He doesn’t scam you and you can always sell him your vendor trash. But now he’s been turned into a chair.
FrontlineFan
NPCs in The MIZ are about to start ghosting Zeke. “Sorry, I would help you but I’ve got…uh…a thing…it’s a prior engagement with not dying.”
InnerMarrow
Whoever gets chosen as the next Primary is going to have to deal with that. It wouldn’t surprise me if the next time Zeke tries to hire someone, he comes back onto the forum and talks about how the guy died immediately. He’s going to spontaneously explode and Zeke’s not going to know what to do. It wasn’t even a dungeon run or anything. The guy was just sitting down with Zeke for drinks.
“He just was like a flash of green light…and that was it. Nothing was left. There was a little green globule on his seat.”
VoidWyrm69
Can we talk about how Binary completely dicked himself over? That’s gotta be the funniest part of all of this.
Binary tried to set up this elaborate trap for Zeke with tons of cryptic directions. He was nudging him into the Witness Chambers and thought he was going to soft lock the dood.
Then Zeke brute-forces the puzzle, finds the Witness, and drops lore on one of the biggest unresolved mysteries in Frontiers. It was a mystery, by the way, that none of us were even actively chasing until Binary started being weird about the whole thing.
DataDatum
Ha. Yea. I didn’t think the Witness was real until Binary. Ahh…it’s beautiful.
VoidWyrm
Dood fumbled so hard. If he’s just been normal about it and told Zeke to go check out a weird chamber in the Under-MIZ, he could’ve been part of the discovery. He could have taken credit.
Instead, I’m imagining him sitting in a darkened room somewhere being like: wait, no, that was supposed to kill you!
Shukuen
To add to the Binary bashing, Zeke took the camera module from the security bot without prompting. Everyone on this forum jeered him for picking up trash drops. Then he gets the sudden inspiration to use the trash drops on his flashlight and “solve” the Witness Chamber puzzle.
TVEye
Oh shit. I didn’t even think about that. You’re saying you think Zeke was always planning to introduce the Witness Chambers? It…kinda makes sense. Everyone was clowning on him for picking up something so useless, but it turned out to be pretty vital for the puzzle.
Holy hell, I would pay to hear what Binary thinks about all this right now. Unfortunately you know his salty ass is probably staying away from the forum for a good long while.
CalamitiesMostFoul
He’s probably sitting there, staring at his screen, re-reading Zeke’s write-up over and over again. He spent all that time setting up his little trap only for Zeke to walk straight through it, flip the whole thing on its head, and uncover actual lore.
TwoGirlsOneCuphead
It makes me think of a kid trying to outsmart an adult. Binary is out there laying out a plan and he can’t stop giggling to himself. Then Zeke is just like “meh…should be fun.”
AnywayHeresWonderwall
But my boy Patch tho.
The way Zeke talked about it, I don’t think he’s dead, but that somehow makes it so much worse. He’s stuck in that room forever, watching everything. Imagine going from running a bar to becoming some kind of omniscient surveillance system. That’s gotta suck.
UnhelpfullyHelpful
It’s like, how much more bleak could this be? And the answer is none. None more bleak.
Sinnohan
Zeke wasn’t trapped in that room for very long. I guess he spent most of his time during his radio silence helping Patch get his affairs in order.
anonymous_S
Okay, but Patch is still alive, right? I mean if people can now come and go here, he can easily get food and all.
SoftLocked
Oh…anonymous. It’s okay. Patch just went to a nice farm upstate. There’s so much room to run around up there and plenty of other…chairs to play with. He’s making so many friends right now. You’ll see him again some day.
Ch3micalBurst93
I’ve cracked it. I know why it had to play out like this. I know why Zeke disappeared for so long and it’s got nothing to do with coming up with a solution to the puzzle, getting revenge on Binary, or needing time to write everything up.
It’s all about the shippers.
Think about it. We already had someone starting up a Corva/Zeke smutfic. It was only a matter of time before Zeke/Patch started to get some traction. That’s why Zeke took so long to post his update. He needed to remove Patch from the equation entirely. He needed to tank the shippers before they even got started.
Hambone
“Sorry Patch, it’s not you, it’s the fact that you’re now fused to a chair in a subterranean data chamber.”
StoryLeech
Long distance relationships are difficult. Can’t blame the man for wanting his freedom.
Outofink
ZekexPatch
Bar.Tender Lovin’
Mchiavelli
OMG YES!
That gives me so many ideas for my next fic. I’m pretty shit at writing Victorian romance, but I can definitely work with Patch and Zeke.
Imagine it like Bar Rescue. Zeke is dropped into all these different worlds, each with a failing bar. He travels from place to place, fixing them up, helping people and rebuilding communities.
One day, he gets isekai’d into the Fracture-verse. The Roaring Drake has hit hard times. Patch is worried about bankruptcy. The whole business had started crashing ever since Patch lost his wife in a Black Teeth attack three years ago.
Zeke can fix a broken bar…but can he fix a broken heart?
VelvetCoffin
Jeezus…STOP!
VelvetCoffin
But also…keep going.
Sixty-Six
You’re a naughty one, Saucy Zeke. You’re a haughty one, Saucy Zeke.
SpicyShoyu
| Zeke wasn’t trapped in that room for very long. |
Yea, that puzzle is probably going to take a lot more time to work out than what Zeke did. It’s turning into a whole community project and I’m guessing it’ll be about a week before we get a full walkthrough on it.
The way Zeke wrote about it, he basically just brute forced the whole thing. In his defense, he couldn’t just pull up Google Translate. It’s got to be hard deciphering all those languages on the wall.
HexaDeweyDecimal
If he’d popped into the forum earlier, we could have cracked that puzzle for him. It would have been an amazing update.
I imagine he could have been posting in the Witness Chambers, giving us all the different sentences he saw and we’d all be arguing over phrasing and translations. It would have been amazing. So how come he didn’t tell us about it sooner?
HollowHeartsClub
Hey Zeke, tftc. I do have a small bit of criticism though. Please don’t rip my head off. It’s not a big deal but you introduced a bit of a plothole and you might want to fix it.
Patch has the Pathfinder class, and it’s pretty well-known that he’s already capped out his skill at Rank 10. There’s a few quests he gives in Frontiers where he talks about it. So when your update ends with him gaining another rank…that’s not possible.
It’s not a huge deal, but it’s something you’re going to want to tweak later.
DeadMeinWalking
Ooo. That’s a solid catch Hollow.
It’s a small mistake he made and I bet it’s because Zeke wanted a strong closing moment for the chapter. He wanted something memorable, so he decided giving Patch a rank would be a way to end the chapter on an upbeat tone.
But yea, you know a bunch of people are going to complain about it. I’m honestly surprised someone hasn’t started up a thread and posted a four page diatribe about how Zeke is messing with canon again.
StoryLeech
| a bunch of people are going to complain about it. |
Mad Arses. Stuff like this happens all the time with stories this convoluted. Zeke is juggling all sorts of game mechanics, NPC rules, a personal narrative and a bunch of world building. It’s a lot, and I for one am okay with the occasional need for editing.
As for why nobody else has come in here ripping into him, it’s probably because of how he dropped the answer to the Witness Chamber puzzle AND his crashout earlier. Nobody is exactly lining up to nitpick him to death right now. We’re all still walking on eggshells.
PaperSnakes
Hmmmm. I don’t know about all that.
Zeke doesn’t usually mess up mechanics though. He’s had some typos here and there in all his updates, and that’s understandable. The man is basically writing a novel whenever he posts. Missing a comma here or there is expected.
But he doesn’t normally make mistakes with the core mechanics in the game. He’s been weirdly consistent about all that, despite the fact that his OC has “never played the games.” Whenever he does make a “mistake” it always turns into something that we all thought we knew but there’s actually hidden lore there.
Fogbarrel
You just said a whole lot of nothing Paper.
Shukuen
Wait, hold up.
DID ZEKE JUST REVEAL IT’S POSSIBLE TO GO TO ELEVEN?
ClickWhirr
Bullshit.*
BULLSHIT!!!**
* Hey Foppery, remember when you asked about why someone would write bosheet instead of bullshit? Bosheet is a somewhat cartoonish version of bullshit. It’s used when someone is saying something like “Malenia’s Waterfowl dance is such bosheet because how do you dodge it?”. Bullshit is used to express genuine surprise and/or anger. The ending of Game of Thrones was such bullshit.
** I am not trying to shit on Zeke’s fanfic. Please do not ban me Grave. I’m merely expressing surprise at the possible revelation.
FourOhFour
Uh…holy shit. HOLY SHIT!!!
HOLY HOLY HOLY SHIT!
That’s not possible. That’s never happened in any of the games.
SomeGuyWithADrone
OH MY GOD. BINARY HAS GOT TO BE SHITTING HIMSELF RIGHT NOW.
Caboodle
Wait wait wait. I don’t really believe that it’s true, but if it is…has anyone told the puzzle solving threads about this? If ranking up is something you can do after solving the puzzle, they need to know.
BrokenKing42
Okay. First, I think that Zeke just made a mistake and we’re all taking it way too seriously. It’s kind of his own fault for that because he keeps dropping game breaking lore. But, at the same time, we need to temper our expectations.
Now, if Zeke didn’t make a mistake and we can actually get a skill to move above Rank 10…that means the cap isn’t actually a cap. And THAT means that every single assumption we’ve all made about builds is completely wrong.
Liminal_Archivist
Everyone, breathe! In. Out. In. Out. Deep breaths. Calm down.
We don’t know if this is a mistake or not yet. The first thing we need to do is solve that Witness Chamber puzzle ourselves. Then, and only then, can we all freak out about the skill progression.
MushroomCleric
Speak for yourself Liminal. I enjoy a good freakout.
Zeke the prophet has descended from down on high and delivered unto us the forbidden knowledge.
Rank 11 is real.
The veil has been lifted.
We have all been made aware of how blind we once were.
VeneratedWitchHunter
Jeezus Mushroom. It’s much more likely that Zeke just made a mistake when he was posting his chapter. Like DeadMein said, he probably was trying to end the chapter in a cool way and just got carried away.
StoryLeech
You going to dig your heels in on that Venerated?
VeneratedWitchHunter
Until proven otherwise, then yes. We’ve had years of gameplay with thousands of players pouring through these games. We’ve got data mining and theorycrafting and people like Binary who - as horrible as everyone views him right now, has made it his life to discover the lore in these games.
No one has ever pushed a skill past rank 10. No one ever even looked for it, because it’s basically impossible to even think about pushing a skill past rank 10. It wasn’t even a theory that anyone has ever genuinely put forward before.
ShivSays
Zeke: the numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…
Forum: Oh, I see. And most skills go up to ten?
Zeke: Exactly.
Forum: Does that mean it’s stronger? Is it any stronger?
Zeke: Well, it’s one stronger, innit? It’s not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be at rank ten in their skill. You’re on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you’re on ten on your skills. Where can you go from there? Where?
Forum: I don’t know.
Zeke: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff to get out of the Witness Chambers, you know what we do?
Forum: Put it up to eleven.
Zeke: Eleven. Exactly. One stronger.
Forum: Why don’t you just make ten stronger and make ten be the top number and make that a little stronger?
Zeke: …These skills go up to eleven.
NullSigil
Oh Venerated, keep saying that it’s impossible. Don’t let anyone stop you. In fact, let me be the first one to encourage you to speak out. Double down. Triple down. Plant your flag. Build a little house on that hill.
If I remember correctly, there was a very loud and very confident group of people in this very forum who once declared, with absolute certainty: Corva being a villain is impossible and that it breaks established characterization.
Now, the thread they built to make fun of Zeke is quiet. The only sound coming from it is the soft, gentle sound of eggs being wiped off faces.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
I’m back and there are a lot of replies waiting for me. I’m not going to read any of that because I know how you all work.
Somewhere in all that noise someone said something incredibly stupid. Or you all were trying to be clever or funny or edgy, and you tried to turn something into a joke. If I read all your replies right now, I know it’s just gonna piss me off even more.
I’m not going to do that to myself. I’m just gonna finish up my story and take my break.
Patch was in the chair now. That’s where I left off in my last update. Before anyone asks, no. I’m not going to talk about what we said to each other after that. I’m not going to talk about what he asked me to do, and I’m not going to share about how I went back up to the Roaring Drake and spoke with Garrick and Grom at the bar.
Those days are going to stay between me and them. I don’t trust any of you to handle that moment without turning it into something stupid. I don’t trust any of you to just let something be without dissecting it or twisting it or turning it into some kind of stupid joke. You all don’t get that part of the story.
What you get is this: I left him there. I left Patch in that room. He’s not dead, and I know a bunch of you are probably sitting there typing up your arguments. I don’t really care to read those either, especially because nothing you all said can change the decisions that I made. Nothing that you say can change the fact that I walked out of that room and he didn’t.
Patch is stuck in that room and that chair. That’s his entire world now. I’ve had a few days to sit with that, and I’ve had a few days to actually think about what that means, and it’s made everything so much worse.
I never really understood his skill before this. He talked about being a pathfinder, and in my eyes he’s probably like Daryl in that he can read a city or something. He gets those vibes about the city, but the skill doesn’t really translate cleanly for me. It’s something that I don’t think I’d really understand unless I actually lived with the skill. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the past few days.
He can see the whole city. He can see everything moving and everything happening, but it’s also so much more than that. He can push his awareness out past The MIZ. He can look out past the Deadlands and past the edges of the map. He can see places I’ve never heard of and see things I’ve never known existed. He can see all of it, but he can’t actually go to any of it.
He’ll never walk the streets again. He’ll never feel the ground under his feet or the sun on his face or the wind on his skin. He’ll never be able to sit behind his bar and wipe down a counter and complain about the customers. All those small, normal things that we all take for granted are gone for him now. He gave it all up to get me out of that room.
He gets to watch the world now. That’s it. That’s his existence. And again, I know what you’re all gonna say. You’re all gonna talk about how this is some kind of power spike for him and it’s some hidden mechanic and it’s some video game…thing. You know what? I don’t give a shit. Write your threads and talk about your theories, but don’t bring it up to me.
That’s my problem with this forum. You all get to stand outside of all my experiences. You guys get to treat this whole thing like a game. You can break it down and optimize it and test it and you get to reload your saves if it all goes wrong. But I don’t get that.
I have to live with what just happened here. I had to look someone in the eye and tell them to sit in that chair and give up the rest of their life. I had to consign someone to a lifetime of imprisonment. You all get to stay detached from all this, but I don’t.
NullSigil
Hey Zeke, I’m going to try something new here and not be a complete ass about all this. No promises, but I’ll try.
You’re right in that this forum is not a great place to come to when you’re dealing with emotional baggage. Our average ages are probably in the high double digits, but our average mental maturity is probably around middle school level.
But you’re also not thinking everything through.
First, you’re talking about Patch like you dragged him into that chair kicking and screaming and that’s not what happened. He’s a pathfinder, and Pathfinders with a high enough skill don’t stumble into situations blindly.
He knew what the Witness Chambers was. By the way you described it, he probably had a pretty good idea before you both descended down into the Under-MIZ. If he didn’t want to go through with it, you wouldn’t have been able to make him. I mean, you’re scrappy but you’re not all that great in a fight. You feel me?
Patch chose to go with you. You didn’t force him into that chair.
I’m not saying that what you’re feeling is a little easier now. I’m not saying you should just shrug and move on. But there’s a difference between what you think happened and what Patch chose to do. You’re treating yourself like you’re the villain in the story, but you're not.
(It’s actually Binary.)
Second, and this is important, you’re staring at the cost of what happened but completely ignoring the benefits.
RANK 11.
Do you understand how stupid that is? Seriously, sit with that for a second. Every single guide on this forum, and every single min-maxing goblin who writes about builds, all have operated under the unassailable assumption that ten is the ceiling. You casually walk in here and are like “Binary can suck it…oh, and there’s an eleven.”
Here’s what I don’t think you, or any of us, have fully wrapped our heads around yet. Why would Rank 11 only be unlocked in the Witness Chambers?
Frontiers is ONE game in the entire Fracture-verse. There are many more like it. So, if Frontiers does prove that you can break past the skill cap and get an 11 in one of your skills…why wouldn’t you be able to do it in the other games?
Think about that for a second. Marinate in that thought. Bask in the juices of what you’ve just unlocked. Every game in the Fracture-verse might have something like the Witness Chambers. They might have some buried, reality-breaking method to push a skill past ten.
Now, let’s bring it back to you. Your whole goal hasn’t changed, right? You want to go back to New York and what makes sense. That was what you stated your goal to be back when we first started this whole adventure, yet no one here on the forum has given you a real plan to get you back home.
Because I am your favorite Primary, I’m going to help you again. If Rank 11 is a thing, it’s probably not just a stronger ability than Rank 10. It’s EXPONENTIALLY stronger.
It’s something like a transcendence or a reality-warping ability or…whatever. I don’t know. It’s a lever in this universe that lets you do the impossible. If you can find the Null Protocol version of the Witness Chambers…that might raise another skill up to 11. How about Fracture:the Fall? How about Tech Reign?
There are a bunch of different chances out there for you to raise a skill to 11, and if that’s possible, you might just have your best chance at going back home.
Sure, you can hate the cost of finding all this out. You can hate what the Witness Chambers took from you. But Patch just gave you your first real lead on getting out of this world.
See? I can be reasonable. Just don’t get used to it.