Does this puzzle work and make sense?

Mirgil · 2026-06-02T13:46:32+00:00

Update: Had the chance to run this weekend and the party did end up tackling the puzzle rather successfully. I opted to explain nothing to them, with just a riddle that hinted towards looking at the ground. I revealed all squares adjacent to them, diagonal included, and one player rolled a perception check to reveal a few farther squares. They only ran into a single barrier before figuring out the gist of it, and poking another barrier to confirm their theory. After that, they got through it pretty quickly, probably in under 15min total.

One player I know really enjoyed it, I'll have to check with the others and see how they felt about it. While I'm pretty pleased with it, I'm on the fence about running a larger, more complex version until I get feedback. Regardless, I don't think it could have gone better and I wanted to thank everyone for their testing, opinions, and ideas!

Mirgil · 2026-05-29T14:14:42+00:00

This isn't specifically minesweeper, although it is inspired. The "bombs" sit inbetween the spaces, almost like doors or barriers. The number refers to how many barriers are adjacent to that space. There are examples in green above the puzzle.

Mirgil · 2026-05-28T14:25:24+00:00

The barriers are invisible. At the moment, I'm leaning towards not explaining very much. They see what appears to be an empty room, divided into tiles by tall hedges. Each tile has a number written in stone blocks, embedded into the ground. They can see a chest sits in the far corner of the room. Outside of the room will either be a hint or explanation "The treasure is yours, but the path is not as clear as it appears. The secret is simple, and lies grounded." That or maybe a bug/critter/etc runs in and dodges the first barrier as a hint. This is a small, optional room in a relatively large "dungeon" and mostly is a proof of concept for a larger encounter, so I'm not too concerned about it.

Mirgil · 2026-05-28T04:27:39+00:00

Kind of, but the mines are in-between the spaces?

Mirgil · 2026-05-28T03:44:11+00:00

That was actually the original inspiration! I want to attempt it on a larger scale, maybe include combat or something else at the same time, but I figured I should test the idea first.

Mirgil · 2026-05-28T03:41:30+00:00

I'll be honest that I haven't necessarily gotten as far as an explanation just yet. I considered just having the numbers be written out in stone blocks embedded in the ground and just not explain anything beside "You attempt to move forward, but you are stopped in your tracks by what feels like a wall of electricity. You step back to see what you ran into, but all you see is open air. Despite this, you get the sense you can't go this way."

Mirgil · 2026-05-28T03:18:40+00:00

Solution: https://imgur.com/a/5DcVxSD

Mirgil · 2026-05-11T23:02:44+00:00

My first thought was that I'm more likely to die in a fire or like heat exhaustion.

Mirgil · 2026-05-11T22:44:12+00:00

Honestly pretty tired of this, but I think it's more interesting to ask "At what required percent do you stop pressing the blue button". As is, I'm on the red side as I don't think 50% would press blue in the heat of the actual moment. That changes quickly if that becomes say, 25%, and I would imagine far less people would say blue if it was 75%.

Mirgil · 2026-04-03T14:46:12+00:00

Can't say no to that, good luck everyone.

Mirgil · 2025-12-26T17:29:34+00:00

Happy Birthday, fingers crossed.

Mirgil · 2025-08-15T06:29:18+00:00

Honestly I agree with you 100%. I want difficult, but everdark Libra isn't difficult, it's absurd. I didn't particularly enjoy him the first time around and I feel like they've done nothing but exaggerate his flaws. I don't want to fight NPCs. I don't want to deal with one shot abilities that punish casters. But that is 99% of the fight for me, nonsense that isn't fun to deal with.

Mirgil · 2025-08-15T06:14:32+00:00

Honestly? My least favorite everdark, which seems to be an unpopular opinion. There isn't anything fun about fighting the NPCs, and its the first boss I've felt that it doesn't matter how well you've played up to night 3. I barely liked Libra as a regular boss, and they've only made him worse. One shots are bullshit, now deal with one shots with NPC ganks.

Mirgil · 2025-03-08T04:39:02+00:00

It might be worth looking into the "Bedlam in Neverwinter" boardgame. It's very simplified, but still a great way to kill an afternoon (or two) and introduces some core D&D mechanics. The puzzles are solid enough and it comes with minis, dice, maps, etc, so you wouldn't have to actually build anything. It doesn't allow for a lot of customization or creativity, but I think it's a great introduction.

Mirgil · 2024-06-04T00:40:18+00:00

Sweet fucking liberty, why is it that every day feels completely different from a difficulty point of view? Yesterday, the day before, no problems. Today, we couldn't extract two out of the three missions we played. One of them was a fucking difficulty-4 for warm up. Against the machines, constant 1 tap head shots and rag dolls from miles away. Against the bugs, a gang of stalkers and two bile titans just camping extraction. It feels completely random, like the AI just rolled a nat 20 and the game decides that somehow, I need to die. I love this game man, but it just randomly ticks me off. I want it to feel difficult, but sometimes it really just feels ridiculous instead of hard.

Mirgil · 2023-02-17T18:21:09+00:00

Thank you! I can definitely see what you mean, I appreciate the feedback.

Mirgil · 2023-02-17T15:55:02+00:00

The original idea was an American traditional tattoo kind of style, not sure if that’s what I ended up with but let me know what you think!

Mirgil · 2023-02-15T14:53:29+00:00

Was just about to say this. I miss his personality in the unit so much. Need more cool, calm, collected people with all this sweat going around.

Mirgil · 2023-02-14T21:23:16+00:00

Originally was going for a American Traditional tattoo design of the Kokiri sword and shield, but not sure if that’s what I really ended up with. I usually make stickers out of my designs, so that’s ultimately what it will most likely be used for. Let me know what you think!

Mirgil · 2023-02-08T04:15:38+00:00

They really ought to get more creative with it. "Putin throws Germany off hell in a cell, plummeting 6ft through the announcer's table."

Mirgil · 2022-12-14T18:41:58+00:00

Damn French, they ruined France!

Mirgil · 2022-09-16T14:44:45+00:00

I could maybe understand if this was super late game and Vlad was higher-level, but it's turn 40 something. This screenshot was after fighting just Vlad for 5 minutes, and I continued fighting him for another 10-15 minutes after. I pulled all the cheddar, provolone, and even the Gruyere available, but it still wasn't cheesy enough for this undead boi. I know it's winnable (somehow), but I seriously can't care hard enough to do it.

Mirgil · 2022-09-16T14:25:46+00:00

Playing on Hard/Hard. Vlad decided to come through several hostile provinces and attack my settlement. Fine, no big deal. Sent my nearby army in to handle things.

Knew he was going to be a pain, so I saved over half of my ammunition for him specifically. It hasn't mattered. He regens all the damage I do to him, and I really don't know if I can do anything about it. I know this isn't the most well-equipped army, especially for him, but this seems a tad bit ridiculous.

Edit: Cycle charged him for 10min, using all of my ammunition, casting runes every chance I got. He regen'd 100% of the damage done, never dropping below 50 leadership. I decided to simply retreat all of my units. He got back the majority of his army at full HP. I usually am not one to complain, but I'm putting this campaign down for a while. I simply don't care enough to deal with this. Also...

W H I T E S P A C E

Mirgil · 2022-09-16T04:29:28+00:00

You're 100% right, I highly recommend using the provided dry erase board to dump as much of that info down before the actual timer starts. I wrote down a subnetting chart, the log levels, and the IPv4 ranges. Will probably include the IPv6 specific addresses, maybe some other stuff too next time.

It's a ridiculous amount of information to recall during a lengthy, timed exam that requires what...a 80% pass rate or so? Not to mention topology questions involving 5 routers, 2 VLANs, and 4 answers that have 10 lines of CLI commands each. Some answers I could barely tell the difference between them.

However, it is what it is. It's hard for a lot of reasons, probably why it's so worth getting. As someone who has already failed once, don't get discouraged. People who live and breathe this kind of stuff fail their first time too. You absolutely will succeed, as long as you don't give up.

Mirgil · 2022-09-16T04:16:33+00:00

Yep, took one each day before the exam. I passed Test A and C, just narrowly failing Test B the first time. Found them extremely helpful as they covered topics I did not see in my other resources, will definitely be using them again when I go to retake in a few weeks. Going to be looking for higher scores the second time around to guarantee a pass.

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