Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan - Tea Room - hints and the origin of

IanthePez
Tea Room - hints and the origin of
For the 'unofficial' hints of the whereabouts of the Tea Room follow the link to Shadow Beast's site. PLEASE do NOT post any Tea Room hints on these forums. Save the agony of the search and the joy of the discovery for each player.
Tea Room Hints at SB's site

The hints have now been added to the Knowledge Archives: Tea Room Hints in Knowledge Archives

****And now the story of the origin of the Tea Room!****

Regis 'speaking':

:Start Raconteur Mode (Light pipe, Log on fire, Lean back in overstuffed chair with slippered feet up on ottoman, etc.)

Well, it started like this....

In the Before Time (or Once Upon a Time/Many Moons Ago/Long, Long Ago/ you get the
idea), there was a big brouhaha over Patrak. It started over the fact that you could pick up the item "Patrak's Remains", have it in your inventory, and it would still be there on the floor to pick up again (one of the unique twists to items in the game). This spawned the rumor that if you collected enough of them (666 seeming to be the most appealing estimate) and "Combined" them in the Store, you could bring Patrak back.

:Puff, stretch, allow audience attention to reach an eager, taut pitch, give up on that idea and continue

This, of course, led to the Great Questions: "Had anyone done it?", "If so, who?", and "Well, then, where is Patrak if he is, as rumored, alive?"...with the corollary Questions: "Can it only be done once?" and "If not, can I have my own Patrak?" (everybody wants to have their own Patrak for some reason...it's easy to project an unknown as an attainable 'Deus Ex Dungeona' if you think hard enough, I guess).

(BTW, this also led to the Great Questions: "Why is the sky blue?" and "What's the square
root of two?", but as they can never be satisfactorily answered, they do not come into this tale.)

So, I figured a story was needed to cover these contingencies....
"Patrak was revived, an event which can only be performed once. After it was done, a signal was sent out from the Master Server to all other games, thus disabling the possibility for a double-resurrection. He can occasionally be seen roaming the dungeon levels, but this is a very rare occurrence, as he spends most of his time in the (hidden) Tea Room on level 5. The Twisted Elf brings his new silver service and Flamie and Morgoth stop by from time to time. They exchange tales of their encounters with foolish mortals in the dungeon and, on especially cold nights, Flamie curls up at their feet to warm their toes."

-Not much as stories go, but I figured it would be nice to keep the possibility of a Live Patrak without having everyone running around trying to make one for no good reason. Also, bear in mind that the most anyone had seen of the dungeon at that time was the 10 levels of Mordor II, so Level 5 seemed a nice halfway place to put it.

:Relight Pipe/Puff/Draw out pregnant pause/Scan audience for appreciative looks of rapt profundity...Scan...Scan...give up

All this, of course, came to nothing. Everybody had a Patrak Story of their own to tell, most more interesting than mine, and it was quickly forgotten...

-But somewhere in the universe, the Forces of Fate were boiling...seething...giving off a noxious odor, in fact...coalescing to bring about one of those strange twists they are so often wont to do-

(See why you should pay attention in your English Class kiddies? You can write tripe like this)

:Bang pipe on ashtray, cleaning out dottle and waking up audience

Years later (well, maybe 9 or 10 months), a new person was chosen to take charge of Alpha Testing (you can almost hear cherubim in the background here :P ). After a while, Dave gave this person the DMS (Dungeon/Data Management System) in an effort to get him to shut up about fixing text errors (errrr, to ease the workload of fixing bugs...yeah, that's the ticket).

THAT PERSON WAS GEORGE ZIP

...uh, wait...

THAT PERSON WAS MOI (le plus beau de la famille).

:Speed up talking as the audience, in its vast dissappointment at that last statement, is donning coats and hats and preparing to exit en masse with various and sundry "Quick-out" excuses.

So, here you have this guy (see "MOI" statement above) with a new toy to play with, no real idea of its capabilities, and an old, leftover story to expand on:

Everyone wants to know:

How you can beat a monster to near death, not quite kill it, leave, come back and have to beat them up all the way again....Presto! A major Regen area accessible to the monsters.

If said monsters can get to this Regen, how can they get back?...also, when you visit their lairs and they're not in, where are they?...Presto! Teleporters to the principal lairs of the inhabitants of the Tea Room.

If you were Morgoth or Flamie, in the Tea Room, away from the prying eyes of adventurers and so having no need to "keep up appearances", what type of furniture would you use to lounge about on?

If you were one of the Big Guys who came here all the time, and you didn't want intruders, how would you set up the entrance?

:Assume esoteric look of wisdom as I am now talking to an empty room

So, the Tea Room (for Tea, not TP) was born. It was more or less an experiment in designing. It also provided an area for the Testers to recharge. I did that on purpose so they could continue testing the lower levels without having to return to town too often. At the time, I wasn't sure if I would leave it in, leave it in with no way to reach it, or take it out altogether, so I swore them to secrecy. No point telling people about something that they would never see. As it was left in for all to use, I saw the necessity of keeping it as secret as possible...it can be a serious debilitation to enjoyment of the game if you could recharge after every fight...if there's no challenge and no risk of danger/dismemberment/death, you lose alot of the sauce. This, in addition to previous dungeon design considerations, is also the reason it was placed where it is.

:End Raconteur Mode (Put out pipe I don't smoke anyway, turn off Yule Log, send back rental overstuffed chair and ottoman)

In any event, I didn't expect the secret to last this long. People being like they are, I figured it would stay secret for about a month before some lamer decided to blow it for everyone else and frankly, I'm amazed that it's lasted this long...a testament to something or other, I'm sure .

Regis