One, make no mistake: not only is this a Phoenix game, it's one about which the
author himself writes: "Beware: ... NOT a good game. ... should only be played
by ... completists." And from a technical point of view, he is hardly wrong.
Nidus is very strange, in places arbitrary, and often not fair. And it's still
also a Phoenix game, so you can die easily. You can lose or destroy a necessary
tool just as easily. Save often, and keep _all_ your save files until you've
finished the game.
That said, it is also whimsical, daft, and imbued with a spirit of fun which
does at least elicit a smile even when the command needed to get there extracts
a groan. One pleasantry which is even more present in Nidus than in most
Phoenix games is background jokes. It pays, in this game, to look about you at
what seems like flavour text. For example, the Collector's Room is well worth a
second look - you will be rewarded both with very vague hints and with
descriptions of considerable silliness.
Two, the parser is limited, but good. I have not found any place where using
prepositions or indirect objects ("hit tree with axe") is necessary or even
possible. By contrast, the game is good at giving you less to type. If there is
only one object, simply "get" will take it; if there are several, it will
assume the first one listed. Ditto for "drop", which will drop the first object
in your inventory; and ditto for several other verbs. "Get all" is provided
for, as well. Multiple objects (as in "get bread, cheese, and butter") are not,
though.
Three, this is an old-fashioned game. There are a lot of puzzles which you can
only realistically be expected to solve by dying first, sometimes more than
once. Often, your dying message will advise you on how to avoid that death;
sometimes, it will even give you a hint for another problem altogether. Since
this is a single walkthrough, such hints will not be found here. I'll just
present you with the correct solutions, omitting the process you could have
used to discover them. If this spoils the game for you, well, such is the risk
of reading walkthroughs. By the way, if you don't want to be spoiled quite so
drastically, you should find a ZCode file with hints for individual puzzles in
the same place where you found this document.
Finally, these notes are for the ZCode version generated from the original
Phoenix source, which is available at the IF Archive. I do not know whether it
works for other versions, as well, or even if any exist.
Still up for it? OK, then we're first going to get our stuff together.
Go sw, west and nw. Take the bag, sack, box and trunk. Then enter these as
direct commands: needle bag, bat bag, book sack, torch box, humbug box, robe
box, chariot trunk, koala trunk, doll trunk, and finally sack bag. And yes, I
could tell why we're entering all these weird commands, but but I won't. That's
the price you pay for reading walkthroughs. Anyway, you could easily have found
out why yourself.
Now we're outside and have a full kit, take the bat and the needle. Go ne, take
the thread, go north and down. Throw the thread and wave the needle. Take the
necklace. Go up and north twice. Go south and drop the bat. We won't be needing
it again. Go south again, ne and east. Take the ring; don't bother trying to
wear it yet.
Go west and read the graffiti. That sounds like a very obscure hint, doesn't
it? I know two things about Emmy Noether: she's a big name in group theory, and
group theory at that level is far above my level of mathematical knowledge. I
do know that all words used do have a meaning in group theory, but whether they
work together like that, I've no idea. It may be just a mathematician's joke.
Or it might also be a subtle hint - remember that the authors _and_ original
players of these games were students of mathematics at Cambridge. However, for
mere mortals like us, it doubles up as a hint at a much, much more trivial
level. We'll make use of it later - I won't tell you when, but you might be
able to figure it out.
Go sw, south, sw again and up. Cast the pearls before the swine. Take all. Go
south, get the flute, north and down, drop the ring and the needle. Go ne and
north. Give the piglet, pearls and flute to the collector - note that you get
he last one back - then go south and sw, and drop the flute.
We will go into some weird (-er) places, now. We'd better be well prepared.
Take the book, humbug, robe, doll and torch. Go se and east, get rod, and clean
it. Go back west and nw, then west and south. Drop the doll (be careful not to
drop anything else here, or you'll lose it) - then go south, then west into
real chaos. Eat the humbug, then wave the rod. Wait one turn. Clean the robe.
Now there is nothing to do here but wait until you are returned to somewhere
more familiar.
Go west and nw, and drop the now clean robe. Go south and sw. Take the "mater".
Back ne and north, and get the chariot and flute. Now into chaos again, this
time deeper: west, south twice, and drop the mater; south again and west again.
Wave the rod. Get the oak. You can now explore this area - there is more to
see, but nothing more to do - or just wait around until you return to the main
area.
Go se. Play the flute. Drop the chariot _first_, then drop everything else.
This is to avoid a bug in the game which would crash the game with a stack
overflow if we didn't do it like this. I don't know if this bug is original or
a result of the translation to the ZMachine, but in any case, by using this
order we avoid the bug.
Go nw, west, up, ne, north and down. Enter the command "tonka". Get all, then
go up and north twice. Tie the gibbon - another bad pun! Go south twice, and
give the gibbon to the collector. South and sw, and drop the oak.
Wear the vole. Go west, south once this time, and west, and wave the rod again.
This is a tightly timed area, so be careful of typos here. Go east, take the
can, back west, wait _one_ turn, go north, and enter "brutish tearoom" as your
command that very turn.
Go north, ne, and north thrice to that very tearoom, where all your stuff has
ended up, and one new object as well. Take everything. Go south twice and give
the vole, which has served its purpose, to the collector. South and sw, and
drop all.
Take the can and the ring. Go up and east, and immediately open the can. The
next bit requires exact timing again - no wasted moves or you die! Take the
insect. Go west, down and south. Wear the ring and touch the door. Go north and
down, drop all, go east twice, and wait a turn. Phew!
Go back west, get all (the insect does nothing the second time around), go up.
Take the lemur and give it the ring. Go ne and north to the collector again,
and give him the insect and the lemur. South and sw, and drop the can.
Now we need to do some object and light source shuffling. Get the torch, go
south, drop it. Go east, get (and thanks to the Phoenix game system that
commands does what we want it to do, just like that), go west, north and down.
Never mind the light, just drop what you picked up. Now back up and south, get
the torch, north, se and east, and drop it here.
Go west, nw and down, get, up, se, drop. East, get torch, east, drop torch.
West twice, get the creature, nw, drop it. Go ne and back sw - this is only to
reset the darkness counters. Get the creature and the koala, then go se, east
twice past the torch (which you can ignore), and down.
Go east twice. Close the granite, then open the granite again. Go west - odd,
that - and back east. Close the granite, and now open the basalt. Go east.
Enter the command "yucca lyptose". Yes, hints to this can be found somewhere in
the game. No, I'm not saying where. Go back west, close the basalt, and open it
a second time. Go east twice to familiar surroundings.
Go ne and north and give your final gift to the collector: the koala. Take the
flower, and go south and sw.
We are now ready for the last part of the game. Take the book, rod, robe, and
lump of energy. Go west, then south thrice. Drop the lump. Go south once more.
Give her the robe, then the rod. Something will happen. Throw the talisman. Now
we seem stuck, but we aren't: jump.
We are now in the obligatory maze. It's the only one in the game, which is
unusual for a Phoenix adventure. This place abounds in spells, which you can
cast in a variety of different ways: shouting them, singing them, declaiming
them, and so forth. Some modes work for some spells, and some don't. Each mode
and each spell can be used only once. And some spells destroy others, or open
up new passages in the maze. Confused already? It's really a giant resource
allocation puzzle. There is more than one solution, too, although all are
broadly similar and differ only in details. Here's one:
Announce mungle. North. Cry snode. NE. Shout liiok, south. Intone mique, SE.
Chant nyzth, and note the new stream of light being made. It's not in this spot
here, but we'll go there right now. Go ne twice, sw - that's the new path.
Leave the Serqe spell for now. Instead, go ne again.
Call gombe, west, yodel hqxkf (quite a feat!), west, and now do exclaim serqe.
Another new path! Go west, then up twice. Incant yufto, east, murmur pomyn, and
go down, south and ne to our final spell. But where is it? Throw the flower.
Look. Recite eedul. Read the closing cutscene.
And that's it, the Nidus has been destroyed. I have to admit I liked this game
more for its whimsy than for any game-technical reasons, but still, I liked it.
