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The long road to the secret ending of Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Pathfinder: Kingmaker is an old-fashioned CRPG based on a desktop rule set, so complicated that even fans call it “Mathfinder”. This is a long and complicated game, but it is obviously not long and complicated enough for Owlcat Games. They hide a secret ending in it. Finding out how to unlock this ending requires data mining, machine translation, and the cooperation of multiple committed fan communities.
Players first stumbled upon the existence of a secret ending while fighting many other issues when Kingmaker was released. “I collected everything I could find from various sources because there are no captives in this game,” said Prototype00, one of the players who joined the game. Subsection with Steam Forum Learn about its opaque rules and cruel encounters at the end of 2018. “This is before concessions are made to at least inform new players such things as’The spider swarm will kill you completely’ or’There is not enough Vodaque’s Tomb supply to basically end the game’. You will always encounter fatalities. Case.”
Before fixing the loading interface prompts and redesigning the dungeon, many novice players were killed by small spiders in the primary dungeon of Fangbeili Cave and turned to the forum for help. But not everyone is delving into Kingmaker just to find out how to survive in spiders or get the most powerful characters in the smallest way.
Some people are trying to figure out how to romanticize its villains: Nyrissa, Nymph Queen.
Doom and bloom
“We knew from the beginning that we wanted a’secret’ and it was difficult to achieve the ending of the game,” said Alexander Komzolov, the chief narrative designer. “And it must be linked to Nyrissa’s romantic story. Our goal is to provide hints. We talk about it throughout the game and give a big reminder when we are close to the end. We plan that players will play Kingmaker “normally” to get regular romance and regular endings, while being “tempted” to end by the prospect of “secret romance”. ‘To stimulate ideas, such as’Is it in the game, or is the game messing with me?'”
When you meet Nyrissa, she is an ally, pretending to be a simple nature elf called the guardian of flowers. In the course of Kingmaker, you learn that she is behind the trouble of destroying your land. She dispatched hordes of monsters and manipulated other villains to attack.
but-Through a specific side mission, you won a debate organized by a demigod, and then by asking the demigod to tell you your true love as your prize, you risk wasting your reward-you know that this fairy tale character can be redemption. And, yes, romantic.
Not everyone is tempted.in a Steam forum topics The player has conducted a theoretical analysis of this possibility, and some people suggest that you are best to fall in love with any other NPC, because they “do not look like lettuce.” A player who was more interested in this possibility replied: “She has 36 charms, so she is a good-looking lettuce.”
These players discovered that Komzolov’s so-called “secret romantic ending” is possible, but they are only just beginning to understand how to achieve it.
“This is the biggest secret of the game,” said Alice Wu, who joined Ki Makes these conditions more difficult to figure out, “because no one is sure whether any complexity stems from design decisions or errors.”
In the first few weeks after Kingmaker’s release, any The ending-let alone the secret ending-is almost impossible. Act 5 may not even end, And part of the climax dungeon called The House at the End of Time is so fragmented that players have to teleport through certain areas to avoid interruption of their game. What if you got there and didn’t have the right spell to do this? that’s terrible.
After a few patches, things became smooth enough for Alice to complete Kingmaker with one of the normal endings.She put together everything she and other players found on Discord, and then Publish it on RedditIn the clues that follow, the community gathers together the comprehensive knowledge needed to unlock the secret ending.
Their understanding is somewhat obvious. For example, even after Nyrissa is betrayed, you must choose a non-aggressive dialogue option when talking to her.
The other steps are less obvious.
Clear the hexadecimal system, build a fortress, and become a research guide
As Prototype00 joked, Half of Kingmaker is a game where you take risks and fight trolls, “then you have kingdom management, and you tax there”.
The final stage of the early version of D&D was to clear the hex on the wilderness map, get rid of all monsters, and build a fortress there. Maybe it’s a fortress or a wizard tower. Then you slowly establish a domain and spend the remaining time dealing with the problems of local residents.
Few people can reach the final stage, but dreams are still part of the collective unconsciousness of long-term role players: Someday we will clear a hexadecimal and build a hold.
Kingmaker is about this dream, and kingdom management is about simulating the daily operations of the land. You assign consultants to deal with unexpected events and opportunities, and when they are free, you use them for long-term projects-reaching trade agreements with neighbors, upgrading roads and infrastructure, training troops, etc.
You can also assign your religious adviser (high priest) and your arcane adviser (magister) to study the curses you encounter repeatedly in various missions and side missions. There are many. The hunter becomes a werewolf, the murdered victim is destined to become a zombie, and the dryad becomes a big tree. Each curse requires weeks or even months of research to understand, during which the selected advisor will not be able to deal with disasters or improve your kingdom, leaving the land in a vulnerable position.
“If you try to do this from the beginning, you will put your kingdom underwater,” Prototype00 said.
The standard advice is not to disturb most research. This is one of Kingmaker’s many “novice traps” that allow new players to fall into it. “People are right, you can safely ignore most of them-from a normal game perspective,” Alice said. “But it turns out that they are actually one of the main requirements of romance.”
There are 16 curses. To get a secret ending, you need to study 13 of them, although Russian player FreeSergey discovered that 13 of them are not important. Although the English Kingmaker community is trying to solve the problem through 100 hours of games, FreeSergey is only data mining on the information. He even wrote a guide that not only explains how to reach the secret ending, but also explains how to track the variables in the player.json file to make sure you don’t make a mistake in the process.
The problem is that he Written in russian.
“Even if it is there, no one has translated it,” Prototype00 said, “So if you want to know what it says, you have to machine it yourself.” He did it, sentence by sentence. “I showed it again, adjusted some sentences slightly to improve readability, and then posted it on Reddit. You can go through Reddit post And combine it with Steam guide You will see some places where I left some funny translation errors. Thanks to the guide and FreeSergey, it was written in a clear and comprehensive way, so even if I made a lot of mistakes, what he wanted to convey was still very thorough. “
Knowledge (outcome) skills check passed
FreeSergey’s data mining not only confirmed the necessity of curse research. It also confirms that you must have a specific conversation with the boss at the end of the chapter, each of them being cursed by their own.You have to talk to the leader of the kobold, this is only possible after you kill his ally, the troll queen. Then Passing an intimidation check, or talking to a barbarian king who is slowly taken over by the cursed sword, is only possible to complete the mission within one of Kingmaker’s many hidden time limits.
Manage it, and then you have to have a specific conversation with the undead Cyclops, which will only be triggered when you pass the hidden skill check while talking to him.
“You don’t even know if you failed, unless you check your log and scroll all the way to where the hidden checks happened after the fact,” said Alice, who called it “the most difficult step so far.”
Somehow, there is more. As Redditor u/charlesatan noticed, you need to take a companion to the dungeon and then convince him to destroy the artifact you found there. The resulting series of events made it possible to obtain a different kind of artifact, a sword of thorns called thorns, which later became indispensable. This is absurdly specific.
With all these-thorns, curse knowledge gained from research projects and trigger a specific dialogue with the boss and say the right words when talking to Nyrissa-it is possible to make a secret ending. As long as you never try to fall in love with any other NPC in the process, or suggest abdication in a conversation with Nyrissa idly, this will completely shut you out.
Following FreeSergey’s guidance, Prototype00 got there on the first try.After confirming that the tour guide information is correct, he modified and corrected the text in the English dialogue option with his own screenshot instead of the machine-translated text and placed it in steam, It has now helped hundreds of players.
I followed the guide for the second pass, and reached the hidden ending in a relaxed 126 hours.
In Kingmaker’s climax, Nyrissa herself is the object of curse. In the distant past, a demigod called the Lantern King stole her emotions and compassion, turned them into thorns, and hid it from her. In the desktop version of Kingmaker, Briar is a spiny vorpal sword that players can use to defeat Nyrissa’s weapon. Her death is described in the text as “unfortunately beheaded by a sword forged by her own love power”.
The video game is more sympathetic, revealing that the Lantern King forced her to fill a magic cup called “apology” with sand, each of which was formed by a kingdom she destroyed. Your kingdom will be a thousand grains in this cup. If you choose to return the thorns to Nyrissa instead of cutting off her head, you will return her soul and empathy and make her aware of what she has done.
However, this was not enough to release her. You must combine this decision with the advanced knowledge of curses you obtained at the Kingdom Management and Hidden Skills Check University to convince Nyrissa that there is a way to turn the curse to its creator. Although Kingmaker’s video game version removes the hexagon on its map, it is still a game about clearing hexagons and building fortresses—it’s just that it’s the “hexagon” in another meaning of the word.
After the end of this branch, an optional multi-stage final battle between the boss and the Lantern King is mandatory, adding another layer of difficulty. A ridiculous fairy tale has a happy ending, but with God, you must win it.
The thing is, like everything about Kingmaker, from the spider colony in Fangbeli Cave to the complex kingdom management system, its creators really didn’t seem to realize how difficult it was for them to achieve it. “When you know where to look for it, we expect the secret ending will be easy to reach,” Alexander Komzolov told me. Easier, He said. I don’t want to know what the harder version will look like.