Secret Combination

The Secret Combination is a real item you cannot find, craft or buy. Albert, the Plague Doctor, has it, and he parts with it only at the end of a long chain that starts nowhere near him. What he wants back is not an item but a way into the tower, which is why you keep the medallion.

It opens the Abandoned Tower, and the Study Table is inside, which makes this the lock on the whole technology-point economy. Nothing else in the game opens that door.

It starts with a fairy

You need to summon one, and the Head of the Village will only explain how once the Good Fellow quest has proved you are not, in his words, an egoist. Ask Januarius at the Village Tavern to call him, and Januarius vanishes for a second and returns as Jully.

I met Januarius, the owner of the Village tavern, and Jully, the head of the village. However, it seems like they’re the same person.

Your own notes, after the introductions

Jully’s answer is that a couple of teeth will do. Mention that the teeth you have in mind came off a dead man, which they did, and the price goes up to Dream Dust as well.

The Plague Doctor… that excuse of a man. He’s your one option… But I have to warn you… He’s cursed. His cursed home is somewhere… underground.

Jully, on where to find Dream Dust

Underground turns out to mean your own house, which is news to you and, it emerges, to nobody else. Larry has known the whole time.

The dungeon he means runs under the Inquisition Base, and the way in is a hatch you have walked past for hours. Larry has to point it out before you will look at it.

The hatch that was not there

Go home and talk to Larry. He tells you to check what is under the hatch, which is the first you have heard of any hatch, and the game knows exactly how that lands.

I swear that wasn’t there before… it just… appeared… / Sorry to disappoint you, but it was always there.

You and Larry, on the hatch in your house

It is locked, and opening it is the first thing in this chain that costs anything: one Bronze Detail and two Boards. Go down, and the dungeon under your house is where the rest of this happens. Larry is delighted, reckons it is big enough to connect to the town sewers, and points out whose dungeon it used to be.

Larry is delighted with the place, reckons it is big enough to reach the town sewers, and points out whose dungeon it used to be. The Inquisitors dug it, which is the first hint that the tower above is theirs as well.

Finding Albert

A blockage stops you going deeper and Larry is generous about who clears it: we need to get rid of it, and by we he mostly means you. Shifting it takes three Bronze Details and three Wooden Planks, which is where the chain stops being a conversation and starts wanting a forge.

Bronze Details come off a Wooden Anvil, six of them from a single Bronze Ingot, so the gate is cheap once you are smelting and impossible before it. Past the rubble there are footprints, and they lead to a door you knock on rather than kick in.

Albert has no interest in helping until you mention what you are carrying. You want the Dream Dust recipe, he sees no reason to give it, and then the conversation turns on one line.

Of course you do. I’ve been looking for one for years. And you just have one!

Albert, on your Inquisitor medallion

The tower gate needs a medallion and a combination, and you have one each. The medallion came out of the prison with you in the opening hours, alongside an ugly skull and a royal signet, and has been sitting in your bag ever since.

Opening the tower

Open the prison bars, enter the Abandoned Tower, then open the hatch inside and let Albert in. He is not an escort you can skip, because the gate wants both halves present.

Albert goes down ahead of the news and comes straight back up with it. The room is an alchemy laboratory, and he had been expecting a library.

Where the sard are all the books?! Where’s the library?

Albert, going down the tower hatch

He wanted a library and found an abandoned alchemy laboratory, which is why players remember this room as a library. His luck holds anyway, since Dream Dust needs exactly this sort of laboratory, and he pays up with the recipe and a set of alchemy notes that double as the game’s tutorial.

Worth knowing before you go in

On the way in Albert asks you to watch for a book with a screaming skull on the cover. That is the Necronomicon, and it is the most valuable thing you can ever put on the Study Table at 300 blue, four times the next best blue study anywhere. Albert never collects it, though: the book comes from Gunter the Astrologer once you reach 30 reputation with him.

If you are stuck, the usual cause is looking at the church. It is the other locked building at your base, it is the one you have been repairing for the Nun, and it never asks for a combination.