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The Longing-ist Playthrough: Day 12 – 12/01/22 – 370 Days, 18 Hours, 57 Minutes and 42 Seconds to go…

13 January, 2022 - 7:53 pm by
About 7 mins to read

What a roller coaster of a emotion Day 12 turned out to be! 😅 The highs peaked immediately and then lows kept on coming, and while it was a little disappointing, we did manage a bit of a longer session than the past few evenings, which was nice. I picked up my Switch, closed down Knights of the Old Republic (it’s a great game, for anyone who’s not yet played it), and loaded up The Longing to see how Monty was doing and…

“What a wonderful day…”

Monty

Well that’s certainly an interesting message to open up to… Oh! Monty’s message was the first thing that registered when I fired up the game, but it wasn’t long before another realisation hit me – he had finished the new room! 😮 After moaning about his lack of progress the night before and expecting it to be at least a further three nights of toil, Monty had turned on the jets and carved out a cavern beneath the living room in just one night! What a turn up for the books! The ‘Use Mattock’ was still on screen too, suggesting he could go even further with time.

The space Monty had excavated certainly looked the right size to house a bed but nothing had spawned at the moment. Sad face. I moved Monty left, towards the stairs to the living room and my heart skipped a beat…

“Build Bed”

Screen Prompt
Look at that – what a space. Kevin McCloud would be proud

Um, YES! I hammered the ‘A’ button with glee, excited that I could finally give Monty a place to sleep that wasn’t just the cold stone floor of a cave or bolt-upright in his armchair 😅

“…To build one I’d need 20 Moss and 10 Wood.”

Monty

*Looks down at inventory, seeing 22 Moss and 5 Wood…* 😁-😀-😐-😶-😮-😦-😧-😨-💦😭💦

“What a disappointment.”

Monty

Ouch. That’s a dagger. 💔 Quite honestly, I was getting pissed off with the bed situation at this point. The game seemed to be sabotaging me at every turn and this had been going on for days. Frustrated, I asked Monty to play me some music while I formulated a plan for our evening, in the hopes it might cheer me up.

🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵

🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵-🎵

🎵—– 🎵—– 🎵—–

Did the music help? Not really, but it ticked a job off my list all the same. While Monty had been tooting away, I decided that I wanted to grab a red crystal for the gemstone collection and then head into the [mushroom mines] to check out the dead ends that we found, as well as destroy that huge ‘abomination’ mushroom that we had stumbled upon.

The red crystals were easy enough to find – there were four of them adorning the [crystal crossroads] which was one the first room you emerge from after leaving the [Hall of the Mountain King]. I ushered Monty up the steps and into the room, before asking him to get started chipping away at one of them. I’m going to have to harvest another one at some point – the decoration of the room being lopsided will annoy the life out of me! 10 minutes later the prize was won and we set off once again, this time to the [collapsed tunnel] in the maze down by the [Halls of Eternity].

It took a few minutes for Monty to make his way through the warren of tunnels and upon his arrival I was frustrated to find that the [collapsed doorway] seemed to be nothing more than a background image, and was not interactive in the slightest. Well that’s annoying… I must have imaged the ‘Use Mattock’ prompt down here. Doh.

See that, readers? That void in the bottom-right corner where the ‘Use Mattock’ prompt should be? 😠

With another annoyance logged alongside Bed-Gate, I sent Monty up to the [mushroom mines]There’s plenty of dead ends that needed the mattock up there, at least I have enough time left to make some good progress – maybe I’ll discover a new room or two. The mines are a pretty long walk from the [not a collapsed doorway but in fact a background 😒] and I made the decision that, regardless of how the rest of the session went, we wouldn’t be returning home tonight, so that we’d be able to save some travel time tomorrow. Monty trekked through the various tunnels, passed the [Map of the Kingdom], up the long stair case, up the spider ladder and finally made it to the [mushroom mines], where the purple fungi seemed to be thriving.

I had Monty pick five or so purple mushrooms as he was passing through and replant them a little further down the tunnel, hopefully ensuring a good crop over the next few days, should we need them. With a bit of horticulture complete, Monty headed a few shafts above to the [green mushroom tunnel] and that big mushroom we had discovered on Day 8. Once he got up there and confronted the huge fungus, Monty seemed really quite keen to smash the thing, though I have no idea why. Sounds like he wants that to be grown somewhere else – but where? And with one swift whack of the pickaxe, the big mushroom was no more, and there was no other drama surrounding it. Hmm. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Ok, calm down, pal. What did that ‘shroom ever do to you?

Looking at my remembered places, I sent Monty to the dead end that I thought was the closest, eager was I to have something productive happen in the session. He waddled over there and soon started digging with the mattock, only to be stopped within a few minutes by a layer of granite! This added both added a Disappointment to my inventory and one to my psyche, but I shrugged it off and moved on to the next digging spot on my list…

…where the same thing promptly happened again. Oh FFS. Seriously?

At this point there wasn’t long left in my play time for the evening, so I moved Monty off to the last dead end I could remember and asked him to try again. Third time is supposed to be a charm, right? I asked him to start his digging and shut down my Switch for the night – who knows, he might have dug his way to China by the time I check in on him again… but I doubt it. He’ll probably go no more than five feet in and then hit granite again, so I’m not holding my breath…

Continue reading: Day 13