Help an orc mix a potent brew.
A bone-pouch or 50-100 gold.
Find the correct mixture the orc is trying to produce.
There are several other ways to improve the number of guesses required, however the method gets more complicated to understand. With a little experimentation you can get the upper limit down to 6 guesses by applying a little more logic (hint: if you know one ingredient is correct and you know which one it is, then you can change both of the wrong ingredients).
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In this room you will find A hunchback orc. He is trying to find the right recipe for his brew (if you ask him about it he will tell you). There are 125 different possible combinations (though you will at most have to try 9 using my method).
Each time you mix, you will get a message telling you how close you are to the correct mix.
If you had no ingredient right you will see That can't be the right recipe..
If you had one ingredient right you will see The brew bubbles. You must have done something right..
If you had two ingredients right you will see The brew burbles. You're almost there!
If you have the correct recipe you will see The old orc jumps for joy. "Yer done it! Yer found the right recipe!" He walks over to you, and pulls something out from a hidden pocket. "Here, take this, yer glarrglubber!".
The only downside to completing this quest is that each time you try a new recipe it will cost you 35 gold. The method to find the recipe is as follows.
First, mix the following.
mix 1 1 1
You will then get a message telling you how close you were (taken from above). Unless you happened to hit on the exact right recipe (in which case stop).
If you got a message telling you that at least one of the ingredients was right, you should next do the next step. If you got a message telling you all the ingredients were wrong you should skip to "What happens if my first guess is completely wrong?".
mix 2 1 1
If the message improves, then you know that the first ingredient is correct and is 2.
If the message gets worse, then you know that the first ingredient is wrong and should stay at 1.
If the message stays the same, then you know that the first ingredient is wrong for both 1 and 2 and you should carry on to 3 then 4 until you get a message of improvement. If you get to 4 and have not received any message of improvement, you know the answer is 5 (this case is a little tricky to work out, I will explain more below).
Once you have figured out what ingredient one is, you should do exactly the same thing with the second ingredient.
Once you have found the second ingredient you should carry on to the third ingredient.
In the situation that you know 5 is the correct number for an ingredient then you should start increasing the next ingredient, however you need to interpret the next message a little differently. Lets assume we have just tried the following.
mix 4 1 1
and have gotten The brew bubbles. You must have done something right.. You should now try the following.
mix 5 2 1
There are only 2 possibilities here (as we know that the 5 moved to the correct value). If the message stays the same, then the second ingredient should have been 1 (making the first 2 incredients 5 and 1). If the message improved, then the second ingredient is neither 1 or 2.
What happens if my first guess is completely wrong?
If your first guess is completely wrong then we can remove several options immediately. Therefore your next mix should be as follows.
mix 2 2 2
Then you should treat that mix as your starting point and increase the numbers as before.
Below is an example solution with the responses.
mix 1 1 1
The brew bubbles. You must have done something right. - We have one ingredient right.
mix 2 1 1
The brew bubbles. You must have done something right. - Message stayed the same, both 1 and 2 are not right for the first ingredient.
mix 3 1 1
The brew bubbles. You must have done something right. - Message stayed the same 3 is wrong for the first ingredient.
mix 4 1 1
The brew bubbles. You must have done something right. - Message stayed the same, we now know that 5 is the correct answer for the first ingredient.
mix 5 2 1
The brew bubbles. You must have done something right. - Message stayed the same, therefore the second ingredient should have been 1.
mix 5 1 2
The old orc jumps for joy. "Yer done it! Yer found the right recipe!" He walks over to you, and pulls something out from a hidden pocket. "Here, take this, yer glarrglubber!"
Here is another example where your first guess was completely wrong.
mix 1 1 1
That can't be the right recipe. - Message is completely wrong, we know all three answers are wrong.
mix 2 2 2
The brew burbles. You're almost there! - Message says we now have 2 right, however we don't know which 2, so increase the first ingredient.
mix 3 2 2
The brew bubbles. You must have done something right. - Message decreased, we now know that the first ingredient is 2.
mix 2 3 2
The brew burbles. You're almost there! - Message has returned to 2 ingredients correct, so we know that ingredient 2 is not correct, keep increasing that one.
mix 2 4 2
The brew burbles. You're almost there! - Message unchanged keep increasing ingredient 2.
mix 2 5 2
The old orc jumps for joy. "Yer done it! Yer found the right recipe!" He walks over to you, and pulls something out from a hidden pocket. "Here, take this, yer glarrglubber!"
One final problem is that the quest reward is also random. You will either get gold (very likely) or the bone pouch (low chance, less than 10%). You will only get the quest point if you get the bone pouch.
If any of the information here is missing, or wrong, please let us know.