The Bridge Ablaze and "RPG veteran knowledge"

[omgFIREBALLS]

I made this mistake, and I'm reading scattered stories on Discord from people who made this mistake. What is the mistake?

 

If you've completed the Waidwen section of Beast of Winter, you'll know the puzzle with tinkering with his sundial to collect his soul fragments. Relevant to this topic, if you turn it to dusk when you're standing near him, a portal will open. You're supposed to enter this portal.

 

I didn't enter the portal. I was convinced that this portal was only there to help people who couldn't figure out that in order to exit the area, you need to turn the sundial back to dawn and use the normal entrance. I was stuck on this puzzle for forty minutes making no progress - to be clear, I didn't spend forty in total on the quest, I spent forty AVOIDING THE OBVIOUS PORTAL - just fine-combing the bridge, looking everywhere for secrets, trying to blow up doors by detonating gunpowder barrels. I even left the whole area and checked the sunbeams in the main HUB. Only after forty minutes of fruitless search did I actually try to enter that portal.

 

Obviously this has led to a real-life crisis where I question everything I "know" and wish for a child's innocent curiosity again ;_;

[Tick]

Yeah, I actively avoided it for the longest time, trying to figure out what I was missing or how to get there with the blown up bridges. I tried the gunpowder trick, too!

 

I think it was one of the last things I managed to do and it took an embarrassingly long time before I realized the portal wasn't an exit to the hub area, but the portal I needed to go through to get to the bottom of the map.

 

Edit : I said this all in the Discord, but I'll bring it up here too. I think it's really interesting how our brains have been trained into behavior that, mixed with the design of the area, actually worked against us. Very funny quirk of human behavior.

Edited August 6, 2018 by Tick

[PantherX14]

I voted "Yeah, right away" since that was the closest to what I actually did. Since I had already gone through the Inquisitor's area (and I might have gotten a hint from pressing Tab to highlight stuff and looking for what the portal was labelled), I wound back time to explore the early parts of the bridge before going back to Dusk and going through the portal, figuring it would go to somewhere else in the level. Maybe the issue is that the bridge only has that one portal, so if you haven't done the other areas first (considering that the bridge and St. Waidwen draw a lot of people's interest and probably is their first), it becomes less clear that it's part of the puzzle?

[eschu101]

this area is so confusing that i dont even remember which portal are you reffering to...

 

but i just couldnt get to the last fragment, near the dozen armor, i went back to the initial portal and used leap to get to it....then i realized how easy it easy to get there.

[Zap Gun For Hire]

I did that area after The Drowned Kingdom and The Endless Queries, so I was already primed to enter the random portal.  I saw that it didn't lead back to the main area of the White Void, so I figured it was impotant 

 

...

 

Fun fact thoguh, I actually entered it immediately after the bomb went off, saw it went to a strange area that I wasn't sure I should be in yet  and then waited until I was done exploring most of the zone before going back there.  But I knew it was there and that I should eventually go through it and see what was up.

 

Once I realized that I couldn't enter the south section of the map in the Dawn/Noon timezones, it became pretty apparent that I should go there and finish things up.

 

But, then again, I'm a nook-and-cranny RPGer where I stick my snout into everything, just to see where it might go.

[Hawke64]

I saw the exit portal, so I assumed that they were connected, but went there the last. Spent 15 minutes trying to reach the soul piece on the tower at the Dusk, though (didn't notice the path until opening the map).

[omgFIREBALLS]

Maybe the issue is that the bridge only has that one portal, so if you haven't done the other areas first (considering that the bridge and St. Waidwen draw a lot of people's interest and probably is their first), it becomes less clear that it's part of the puzzle?

Totes this. I should have had more poll options to account for whether the bridge was your first area or not.

[bugarup]

It's still better than my reason of not entering it, which is "because I somehow failed to see it for some time". Clearly I need that third eye not just for perfect eye contact with Vatnir. 

Edited August 7, 2018 by bugarup

[nonemoreblank]

I am not far enough removed from my Dishonored 2 playthrough to have hesitated. I figured out what was going on from the item name and descriptions pretty quickly and enjoyed the level quite a bit. It's ok to take your time and look for everything though.

[M4xw0lf]

Tried every other thing on the map before that portal, yes

 

Btw - maybe my favorite location in all of Deadfire.

Edited August 7, 2018 by M4xw0lf

[Hassat Hunter]

Nope.

Didn't mean something else in this area didn't throw me off for a fit, asking for help...

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/104517-bow-a-bridge-ablaze-help-solved/

 

The idea is good, but the loading times really ruin it IMO. If only the area load was faster.

[Tarlonniel]

I didn't notice the portal right away, but when I did, I went through it. What got me stuck was not stopping to loot the mobs who had the tower key. I didn't expect them to be carrying anything important and promptly forgot their existence once they were dead. I think I checked every other container in the area before appealing to the internet for help and finding the answer. Duh.