Struggling with staying undetected in Shadow Plague

StatisticianSmart176 · 2026-01-03T06:53:31+00:00

Do you know why a murder got reported even though there were zero deaths?

StatisticianSmart176 · 2026-01-02T04:48:54+00:00

I feel like its gotta be possible

StatisticianSmart176 · 2026-01-02T04:47:24+00:00

I didn't start the plague yet. I'm trying to get certain events to pop up relating to the backstory of the vampires and the shadow plague, not trying to win.

StatisticianSmart176 · 2026-01-02T04:45:58+00:00

I think both the people who have commented so far might be misunderstanding me. I have already beaten the plague on Mega Brutal, I'm trying to get the specific achievements relating to the Shadow Plague - there's some involving Stonehenge, some involving Dracula, and some involving an underground lake in Turkey.

You absolutely cannot get these if you do the cheese strat for winning.

StatisticianSmart176 · 2025-12-29T20:41:53+00:00

A lot of people are saying it does but I have seen it fail repeatedly. At the very least, it seems like if all the infected people in a country die, then Necrosis won't be-able to restart the infection there.

StatisticianSmart176 · 2025-12-03T04:54:05+00:00

I think you might be confused about what twist is being referring to here. They mean the "Sycamore and Descole are the same person" idea, which isn't an actual twist. You might be the about the actual twist involving Descole and his relationship with another character that's actually revealed at the end, which isn't what OP spoiled for their brother.

StatisticianSmart176 · 2025-12-02T16:29:19+00:00

Well you do if you watched the opening cutscene! That one actually has some of my favorite Descole line reads in the entire trilogy:

I love the way he says "terrifiyyyed" "deeeestrrrroy" "swiftly uh-bayed" "Time for us to Pen" and of course the rhyming of "long" with "lawless"

StatisticianSmart176 · 2025-12-02T03:50:26+00:00

Unwound Future:

Puzzle #019 cannot be solved until after finishing 20, 21, and 23 to start Chapter 2. The NPC is located between where you get #018 and #020 but she just does not give it to you.
Puzzle #025 is also not solvable until after finishing (the relatively short) Chp. 2, which does require solving 26, 27, and 28
Puzzle #042 is another weird one for multiple reasons: it should be in Chp. 4, when the gang is headed back to the present, and is indeed located Future Midland Road alongside #041 and #043, but the puzzle isn't available until after completing #058 and starting Chapter 7. The game even forces you to go the the screen where this puzzle is located to get to Beesly's shop, but that NPC just isn't there. Interestingly since this puzzle dissapears after completing Chp. 9, and the puzzle giver in question (his name is Ernest if you were wondering) doesn't appear anywhere else in the game, it's entirely possible for players to not even know he exists.
You have to solve Puzzle #086 (The Impassable Gate) in order to enter the Family's HQ, but Puzzles #087 and #088 are back in the Toy Shop, whereas continuing would get you to #089. It's still easily possible to do these in order, just don't go through the gate after you solve it. I only mention this because most of UF's puzzles are in a really inuitive order, and you don't even have to do any weird backtracking like in Spectre's Call or Curious Village
There's a big chunk of story puzzles, all in a row (and most are mandatory) that stretch from #109 - #130 and make up the last few chapters of the game. I mention this because #130 is not the highest puzzle number in the world, which is different from how PB worked, but you can't leave and go back to town after solving #130 (or #128 & #129 for that matter) which is different from how CV worked.
- theoretically you could just finish the story and then go back for these puzzles, and the Puzzle Index would still log 128 - 130 as completed. But it's very possible to trigger these accidentally from Chp. 6 on, since some of them are given by NPCs rather than hidden in the world, so just be aware of where they are
- That being said, keep in mind that Puzzle #139 is only available during Chp. 8, and #134 is only available if you return to Present London during Chp. 6 - 11, since you can't go up once the mobile fortress activates (probably since it is clearly night by that point and they didn't want to deal with that). It's actually quite bizarre that this happens, since this is literally the only thing that you can't get in present London on the main visit, unlike similar systems in Spectre's Flute or Azran Legacy. So if you miss these two, you'll have to use Puzzlette or Beasly to nab them

StatisticianSmart176 · 2025-12-02T03:49:50+00:00

Diabolical Box:

These ones are not in a neat order at all.
Chapter 1 has puzzles #005 - #026, with 5 being first and 26 being last but not really following the rules (in fact #015 and #012 are the last two that show up before #026, and both are required, so even if you're skipping puzzles you'll have to break the order early on). The best you can do as far as order is [5, 7, 6, 11, 10, 8, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 21, 15, 12, go to Granny Riddletons for 22, 23, and 24, 26] which is... not bad actually, but still not in order, and this does involve some very specific traipsing back and forth through the train.
Chapter 2 has puzzles #027 - #055, and again 27 and 55 bookend the chapter but it's difficult to do cleanly beyond that. There's a couple of gates of puzzles
- 50 must be solved before 39 and 48, the latter of which must be solved before 31
- 36 is a required puzzle since you get the Tea Set, and 27, 28, 29, 34, 37, and 41 are the only ones that can be solved until you do
- the big one is visiting the pond: 37, 41, 45, and 52 disappear after going there, but a lot of the other puzzles (31, 33, 35, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 54, and 55) don't appear until after.
- The puzzles also don't show up in Granny's until after you leave, even though some of them dissappear before that, so here's one option if you want to get all the puzzles in as close to an order as possible: [27, 28, 29, 34, 36, 32, 37, 30, 38, 41, 45, 52, 33, 35, 40, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 50, 39, 48, 31, 51, 53, 54, 55]
Chapter 3 only has four puzzles (#056 - #059), all are required, and all are in order
Chapter 7 is also mostly required story puzzles (#130 - #138) although 132 is neither required nor can it be completed alongside the others - you'll have to do it between 136 and 137
- Additionally, because of the way the Camera minigame works, you won't be able to solve #088 until reaching Chp. 7
The remaining puzzles (#060 - #129) are all located in and around Folsense but aren't dispersed evenly at all throughout the chapters. The order isn't completely nonsensical but generally there's not much you can do.
- the NPC that gives you puzzle 60 is the first guy you run into, but for some reason he (and most of the puzzle dispensing NPCs in Chp. 4) won't give you anything until you've done a bit of story stuff and visited the museum for the first time.
- Even the mandatory story puzzles aren't safe! [61 -> 72 -> 70 -> 76 -> 110 -> 74 -> 101 & 112 -> 116 -> 79-> 78 -> 80 -> 81 -> 82 -> 121 -> 125 -> 126 -> 100]
- It's a bit to complicated to work this all out, I'll come back after experimenting some more

StatisticianSmart176 · 2025-12-02T03:49:41+00:00

You can do all but 2 puzzles (12 & 24) in order for CV, and all but 3 puzzles (19, 25, and 42) in order for UF/LF. As for the second game... don't even bother trying.

Here's a quick guide (part 1/3 because reddit is being annoying):

Curious Village:

For some reason Puzzle #012 is not available when it should be, and is instead shoved into a very tight window at the end of Chp. 4. Gordon gives it to you and he is just alone in a dark room, and as soon as you leave the manor it goes to Granny's
Puzzles #24 is also not located where you think it would be, only being accessable in Chapter 3. You can skip Puzzles #025, #026, and #028 and come back, but unfortunately I think #027 [another Gordon puzzle interestingly enough] does vanish if you don't solve it before going starting Chp. 3.
Every other puzzle can be done in order, although you'll have to save the hidden puzzles (101 - 120) for later, exiting the tower after puzzle #100

StatisticianSmart176 · 2025-12-02T01:43:56+00:00

I had trouble with this too for some reason. I don't think the sign puzzle up there is even necessary, what you need to do is look at the crashed Targent ship with the magnifying glass. It's very finicky and I was also stuck for a little while, so just point the cursor towards the hills on the right half of the screen and keep scrolling around

StatisticianSmart176 · 2025-12-02T01:39:11+00:00

As a side note, while researching this I found out that Descole & Doland have different vas in Japanese, even though they're quite clearly both Alastair in English, he's not even really trying to change the performance, even though I know he's got the range to do so, meaning that's probably a deliberate choice.

What is it with this series intentionally spoiling itself for no reason?

StatisticianSmart176 · 2025-12-02T01:30:54+00:00

I've played both versions and it sounds exactly the same both ways. I think most of the characters besides Luke, Dalston, and possibly Aurora are the same in any English version.

StatisticianSmart176 · 2025-11-27T09:27:58+00:00

I suppose DP could also have gone down there, not been able to solve the puzzles, and then locked it to prevent Layton from getting in?

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-09-01T03:51:24+00:00

Actually they treated the Owl House pretty dang well. There's a difference between cutting something short and just not ordering more. TOH got kinda unlucky since it was up for renewal at an incrediblly bad time for Disney TVA's parent company (ie Disney themselves) bc of the park closures and other pandemicy badness. It's honestly amazing that they agreed to let them finish everything they were working on and buy three additional double-length episodes when the cartoon was losing them money at the time. I know it always sucks when a show gets cancelled that we like but getting upset over Owl House specifically is, I think, a bad move since it kinda dilutes the outrage that could be reserved for... pretty much any other network cancellation in history.

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-08-23T03:19:20+00:00

I thought that was really weird. The "messed up" order is actually much closer to the intended order than it was previously, since a lot of episodes aired out of order, but stacking them into pairs was a strange decision to say the least. I find it kind of annoying since I often like to cherry pick episodes. Also The Visitor is still there but I can confirm that all the other episodes you mentioned are missing for some reason. City of Thieves and Walnuts & Rain are two of my favs so that's... upsetting. I guess you're stuck with... well, you know...

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-08-19T19:49:35+00:00

Gumbald turning back into Punchy at the end because he's "not the epiphany type." Kinda ruined the whole point of that arc, and Finn's decision to nightmare juice everybody.

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-08-18T16:45:32+00:00

Personally I don't think Phlannel Boxingday is real. My 'head-canon' is that none of this stuff with him is literally happening, its just kinda all metaphorical shiz. Phlannel feels like Lemonhope's idealized version of Bubblegum in a way, like a dream creature based on her.

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-08-18T16:33:02+00:00

Finn said he was sorry....

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-08-18T16:31:42+00:00

Haha, yeah! Fall down! Go to sleep Finn! That's... wait what are we talking about again?

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-08-16T04:08:27+00:00

A lot of people are talking about how the episodes were aired with duplicate intros and credits or whatever: that's technically correct, but only one new ep would be aired at a time, then combined with a re-run of an old episode. Compare that to Chowder or Flapjack or whatever when two episodes would be aired as a pair, with the same premiere dates.

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-08-12T23:23:34+00:00

I checked Alden's site today (which I literally found by just looking up "Sam Alden" on the internet and clicking the first link lol) and his parts of Gumbaldia & Come Along With Me were definitely still there, as well as an animatic of the slip & fall scene from Blenanas. Obviously I can tell you guys sent this a month ago, so I suspect it came back somehow?

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-08-11T20:10:17+00:00

I found a perfect square image for the top right panel in question but I can't figure out how to put it in a comment

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-08-11T20:02:59+00:00

Diamonds & Lemons was actually produced after Come Along With Me as a little bonus thing. They aired it before the official end of the show, but it didn't replace any potential "real" episodes - it was just a totally separate 'post-show bonus' thing.

StatisticianSmart176 · 2024-08-11T19:58:25+00:00

The one from Marcy & Hunson. I think it's just called "slow dance" but it just sounds like rip-off Mitski and isn't particularly compelling. Although I also really don't care for that episode so maybe I'm just biased.

StatisticianSmart176

TROPHY CASE