You have chosen....*spoilers*

[Bobbin Threadbare]

and as of now, this thread has the 2nd largest replies in this forum, not counting the archives & announcements.

[edenwaith]

Why is it that people are getting stumped on this?

Food, Shelter, and Knowledge. How hard is that?

I admit to having messed up at first when I did it, but I only switched knowledge with tools because I thought it would be more important to know how to make tools and how to use them than to have tools you don't know how to use... but when I went for food, tools, then knowledge, I got it right and then understood the meaning behind the puzzle (and that I was originally overcomplicating it for myself.)

One would think the solution is obvious. Why are people having to even come here to ask?

I had the right idea, but kept getting the wrong order. I probably tried about every combination, except the correct one! My logic was:

1) Food -- need it to survive from day to day.
2) Knowledge -- so you know what to do (such as build a house)
3) Tools/Craftsmanship -- build shelter

When that didn't work, I tried a variety of different combinations. I died many, many times at this puzzle.

[BeerNutts]

I admit to having messed up at first when I did it...
One would think the solution is obvious. Why are people having to even come here to ask?

Wait, you missed it the 1st time, and you're claiming it's obvious? I don't think you know what obvious means. Also, people aren't coming here to "ask" for the solution. We know what AGDI's solution is. We're coming here to argue the "correctness" of the solution.

The point is, there isn't truly an "obvious" answer. As johnWWells has pointed out, all the priorities have arguable reasons to be ranked 1st.

IMO, I still stand by having "knowledge" as the most important priority. If I have nothing else but knowledge, I will be able to hunt/forage/fish for my own food, and I will be able to make my own tools and shelter. If I have no knowledge, I will eat the food once and die soon after because I'm out of food.

The point isn't this puzzle is impossible to get by, as a maximum of 6 restores will do that; it's that it's not a fair puzzle.

However, I hope the AGDI team doesn't let this one issue being brought up by their fans tarnish what is a great remake; all of us loved the game, and we are ok with one puzzle being questionable.

[Gronagor]

You know. The problem some of the modern academics have with Maslow is that there are influences in the civilized world (in the city) which could influence the importance of certain needs. Heck, Maslow admitted that himself.

But, Maslow's triangle is 100% viable when stranded on an island. There are no if's or maybe's. Eat, sleep, survive. It doesn't matter if you are a pirate, an adventerer, an escaped slave, a computer nerd or an antwerp. If you're stranded on an island, you're in trouble.

[BeerNutts]

You know. The problem some of the modern academics have with Maslow is that there are influences in the civilized world (in the city) which could influence the importance of certain needs. Heck, Maslow admitted that himself.

But, Maslow's triangle is 100% viable when stranded on an island. There are no if's or maybe's. Eat, sleep, survive. It doesn't matter if you are a pirate, an adventerer, an escaped slave, a computer nerd or an antwerp. If you're stranded on an island, you're in trouble.

If you're stranded on an island, you better KNOW how to survive. You won't be GIVEN anything.

[Xandarius]

I solved the puzzle correctly on the first try, and I felt it was maybe too easy at the time. It seems I was mistaken. I don't, however, feel this is a guess-the-developer's-intention design flaw, but rather it hinges on the fact that different players have different experiences, philosophies, and levels of education. When I was solving the puzzle, I first ruled out the jewel due to hints in Seran's dialogue, and then I chose the other three based on Maslow, whose hierarchy of needs I am already thoroughly familiar with. Had I not been, I probably would have been able to intuit the solution. At least I think so. Also, this kind of test is not dissimilar to puzzles I've encountered in other Sierra games.

The fact that so many people are flummoxed by the puzzle does suggest that maybe the design could be tweaked just a bit to lead players in the right direction without undue frustration. That notwithstanding, I think it's pretty neat that we get to actually discuss this with the designers themselves. Back in the old days, if a game had a seemingly unfair puzzle, we just had to live with it.

[edenwaith]

I probably died at this point ~20 times. Not sure if there is a glitch, or I just managed to try close to every imaginable combination EXCEPT for the correct one.

My initial logic was close, however. Since Seran didn't seem so fond of wealth, I disregarded the jewel.

That leaves us with food, construction/shelter, and the book. I then tried various combinations of the food, tools, and the book, with no luck. I even tried other combinations with the jewel, just in case I was missing something.

I reasoned this way:

1) Need food first to be able to live from day to day.
2) OK, I see some tools, but I'd rather have the book of all knowledge, which will then prepare me so I will then know how to build appropriate shelter.
3) Then build a shelter.

Perhaps if this puzzle was a little more flexible and had more than one answer (as long as the jewel isn't included).

[TriniMage]

I must say this is the best game I have ever played. I still occasionally fire up one of the old one but nothing comes close to this remake. The music, the lack of crashes, the artwork, the game play, the redone puzzles, the innovation like the Awards which make the player replay over and over. I haven’t been able to stop playing... Congratulations!!! And Thank you for it being free!!!

The first time I played the game I chose knowledge, food and shelter as obviously wealth is not as important in survival when the island is deserted. I still feel that knowledge is most important but it is understandable how someone can decide the basic needs of food and shelter have a higher priority... I feel the key to the prioritization lies in how your philosophy and culture defines knowledge... Therefore, I had absolutely no problem with the solution desired by the designers... We all think differently and diversity is the spice of living together...

A long long time ago... Somewhere in the Caribbean...
I have been playing adventure games since the days of text based CAVE. In my country there are national scholarships to attend University given to a small number of students who perform well in an external examination set by University of Cambridge. Back then I used most of this money to build a PC clone. While the IBMs ran at 4.77 MHz (yes MHz not Ghz) my XT had a turbo speed of 10Mz which was toggled to 4.77 MHz by a physical switch at the back on the mother board. It had a CGA graphics card with a composite colour monitor with double 5 ¼ inch floppy disk drives and a 5 Mb (yes MB not GB) HDD. I had upgraded up to 1Mb (yes Mb not Gb) RAM but typical PC at the University Lab had 64Mb. There were also some Apples and BBC Acorn in other labs where the language Basic was taught. The PC was considered a business machine and most home computers were Apple IIs or Commodore 64s in my country. There were lots of games for the Apples and Commodores and the scarcity of games for my PC lead to me resorting to typing in games from a magazine called COMPUTE in Basica and PC Magaazine. There was no Internet as we know it today but you were able to download games from BBS and get some cheat codes or cracks. Problem was most BBSs were in the US and that was an long distance overseas call... so downloads were too costly at 14.4K. I built a 286 PC clone with VGA, 1 Mb RAM and 20Mb HDD and ran a BBS out of my room with a 28.8 K modem and a single speed CDROM drive. Often these were arcade type games and we obtained a copy of a flight simulator. My room became a Friday night hangout for gamers and other computer people. In those days the Compaq laptop was a huge brief case... Now my Sony Vaio takes up less space than a book on my desk and my desktop Quad core processor is too fast for many games. It was funny when in replaying KQ7 as Valanice could not return the head to the headless horseman as the firecracker (tied to processor speed) went off almost immediately. It was still dicey when using a program to slow down the processor to 1%.
IBM got into the home market with the PX jr and PC users started getting games. Developers started releasing shareware but many games still came in shrink Wrap (I remember Karateka) with disk based copy protection. I lost my Apache Air Assault game to a virus which screwed up the disks...
I did not really like Arcade type games so when LSL1 and KQ1 were released by Sierra I was elated. I have played every Sierra and Lucas Arts adventure game. I remember excusing myself from attending a staff function to go home and play Willy Beamish. Sometimes the cultural realities made puzzle solving difficult and I might be stuck for weeks or months until me or one of my circle of gamer friend figured out the solution as there was not Internet to get cheats or walkthroughs.I distinctly remember in Monkey Island I that I did not get the fake grog so I was stuck for months until a friend told me about it. Sometimes a desperate memory dump to look at the text may have given a clue to the solution. We used PC TOOLS, DISKEDIT and DOS to do things we shouldn’t have done. In my country (in the Caribbean), I had to order LSL7 and KQ7 from Singapore. But then there was a dry period when new adventure games were slow to hit the market and I resorted to replaying the classics like Gabriel Knight, KQ, QFG, Indiana Jones, DOTT, MK, SQ etc. When the fan remakes started appearing on the Internet I was elated to find Tierra, and the glory days of Adventure games were back... KQI Quest for the Crown ... KQ2 Romancing the Stones...
Sorry to be so long in the reminiscing, but you guys have brought back my game life...
Thank you...

[chucklas]

This puzzle is absolutely fine. It doesn't matter if you make a mistake, you will eventually get the answer. The key here is that it doesn't have to be the best answer to you, but to Seran. What he says goes. If I were to decide for myself, the book would come first. I was wrong. Thats ok. Like people have said, the jewels are out from the beginning. That only leaves 6 choices. If it were a real situation, you would have a 1 in 6 chance of surviving. Good thing we can save our games.

[Erpy]

The logic behind the book/tools order was...if you had tools, but no formal education, you might still be able to build a shelter (although probably low-quality) by applying common sense and trail-and-error, but if you had formal education and lacked tools, you couldn't build said shelter ever. People have been building shelters long before literacy became a common trait.

[BeerNutts]

The logic behind the book/tools order was...if you had tools, but no formal education, you might still be able to build a shelter (although probably low-quality) by applying common sense and trail-and-error, but if you had formal education and lacked tools, you couldn't build said shelter ever. People have been building shelters long before literacy became a common trait.

I don't recall seeing anything about literacy in the description of the book, it only talked about the source of all knowledge (or something similar). With all knowledge, you can create tools.

Again, that's just how I saw it.

[Chyron_8472]

Erpy, I can't believe you still are having to justify the solution of this puzzle to people. Why are people complaining so much? It makes reasonable enough sense to me...


It's survival priority.

First is water and food (water is the most important)
Second is shelter from the elements.
Third is intelligence and/or knowledge of further survival skills.

Even if you are intelligent/learned, it won't matter if you can't make/find protective shelter from things that can kill you.

Even if you can find protective shelter, it won't matter if you starve to death.


Money is the least important, because if you are in the wilderness with lots of riches but no one is around to trade them for food, protective shelter or information which could aid your survival, then you can have all the riches in the world but you're still going to die.

[BeerNutts]

Yet, you still managed to answer incorrectly the first time.

IMO, this puzzle can't be justified as is. I won't be convinced Knowledge of all things isn't above shelter or food. Give me knowledge alone, without the food or shelter, and I'll forage/hunt/fish for my own food, and make tools and shelter myself because I'd know how to.

Erpy, I can't believe you still are having to justify the solution of this puzzle to people. Why are people complaining so much? It makes reasonable enough sense to me...


It's survival priority.

First is water and food (water is the most important)
Second is shelter from the elements.
Third is intelligence and/or knowledge of further survival skills.

Even if you are intelligent/learned, it won't matter if you can't make/find protective shelter from things that can kill you.

Even if you can find protective shelter, it won't matter if you starve to death.


Money is the least important, because if you are in the wilderness with lots of riches but no one is around to trade them for food, protective shelter or information which could aid your survival, then you can have all the riches in the world but you're still going to die.

[DrJones]

I think most troubles come from the specific choice of the word, because "knowledge" can mean a whole lot of things, and most people assume that you need knowledge first before using the tools. Well, according to that argument, you would also need knowledge before being able to eat, because if you don't know something is edible then you would also die.

Maybe switching "knowledge" for "culture", "education", or "literacy" would have removed some of the ambiguities of this puzzle, but I prefer to keep it the way it is now.

[Erpy]

I won't be convinced Knowledge of all things isn't above shelter or food. Give me knowledge alone, without the food or shelter, and I'll forage/hunt/fish for my own food, and make tools and shelter myself because I'd know how to.

Knowledge alone does not allow you to conjure eadible substances out of thin air, nor does it allow you magically create tools out of nothing. If you say you'll forage/hunt/fish for food, you're assuming the food in its "rawer" form is already there. Without that already there, the knowledge won't do you much good.

[Ayrus]

1) Need food first to be able to live from day to day.
2) OK, I see some tools, but I'd rather have the book of all knowledge, which will then prepare me so I will then know how to build appropriate shelter.
3) Then build a shelter.

Perhaps if this puzzle was a little more flexible and had more than one answer (as long as the jewel isn't included).

I agree that this puzzle is not the best possible. since it doesn't feel "fair". Accomplished hunter might not need food so much, and perhaps what they carried with them should matter too. And even the jewel, you could offer it as a payment if you knew some other ship would visit that island. Or a wizard might be able to enchant it with, say, teleportation abilities.

[MusicallyInspired]

"All knowledge" is a very broad term....too broad to argue that it's merely for the purpose of "knowing how to build a shelter." It's a little more all-encompassing than that. I'm thinking in a knowledge of "all the mysteries of the universe" kind of direction. None of which you can enjoy without food or shelter. Maybe it just needs to be worded differently to reflect that key difference.

[Roddly]

I thought this was a great puzzle, and a pretty easy one. I'm surprise there is so much discussion of it. I actually got it wrong the first time, even though what I personally believed to be the correct order was indeed right. I suspected the creators would think knowledge is needed before the item I guessed represented shelter, so I did that my first try. I think even if you were guessing, it wouldn't take long to figure it out by trial an error, because you ought to be able to eliminate the jewel/dainties as any sort of necessity right off the bat.

[Chyron_8472]

I'm thinking in a knowledge of "all the mysteries of the universe" kind of direction. None of which you can enjoy without food or shelter.

Saying "all mysteries of the universe" sounds too philosophical. "Education" sounds better.

The 'knowledge' part of this puzzle isn't representative of "give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime"; nor is it about the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. This is about basic learning, plain and simple.

Yet, you still managed to answer incorrectly the first time.

The logic of the puzzle is sound. My initial understanding of it was flawed.



Okay everyone, pay attention.

Say you are an adult and have a family in which you are raising small children.

What is the first and most important thing for them?
- Food. Keeping them fed (and ALIVE) is most important.

What is the second most important thing for them?
- Shelter. Keeping them SAFE is second only to food.

What is the third most important thing for them?
- Education. Learning. Teaching your children everything they need to know to survive on their own is key, but not as important to you as keeping them alive and safe.

And what is least important? Spoiling them with money.



...plain and simple.

[Loney Childress]

There should have been a fifth item. Video games.

[MusicallyInspired]

There should have been a fifth item. Video games.

FTW

[edenwaith]

All you really need is the jewel and the book of all knowledge. Use the book to learn how to con people and the jewel to bribe other people. Get those people to build you a house and find some food.

See, sarcasm can be a viewpoint, as well!

[Bobbin Threadbare]

That's an Ebenezer Scrooge for ya!

[Firestorm_Mon_Dae]

This was an interesting puzzle that I actually thought was too easy. There was a great deal of logic to the puzzle, some of which was based off of the exact wording of what the pirate said. However, every different person defines things differently, and these unique definitions stress different importance on different words and sentences. As an example, consider the prefix 'Mono'. This prefix can be interpreted as meaning 'one' or 'single' or some other synonymous word. But more important than this is word association. All people, including myself, associate different words to other words in their vocabulary. For example, when I first think of 'Mono', the word 'Monolithic' comes to mind. For somebody else, the word 'Monopoly' may come to mind. The very nature of word association is what people use to define different words and terms, and this definition has some basis on the associated words as well. This is why riddles can be difficult to figure out. Two people associate different things to a different word.

Assuming that it is understood that the scenario is of a person trapped on a desert island, and the person is to choose what is of highest importance (note that the word 'importance' can be associated with the word 'value'), the logic I used to figure out the puzzle was as follows:

First, it was my understanding that the pirate had learned that treasure was not the most important thing in the world. Therefore, the treasure had to be last. But even if I didn't think this way, the nature of the puzzle itself would seem to indicate that the treasure itself is bad, and therefore should be the last choice. Obviously, that left six possible combinations (only 24 in total).

The three choices are a bit tricky, because, like word association, the pictures themselves can be interpreted in different ways.

Starting with the food, if someone interprets the image as just food, then it does make sense that one of the other options might be considered to be of higher priority than the food. I also considered this until I noticed that there was water in the image as well. It is true that an average person can survive without food for many days, but without water, an average person would be dead after three. In a hot scorching sun, this would be even worse. Shelter may slow this down, but it cannot stop dehydration. In my interpretation, water was key to solving the puzzle.

That being said, it is somewhat difficult to prioritize between food and shelter. I can think of different situations where one might prioritize shelter before food and others where food takes priority over shelter. In the case that one has to build shelter, they may need the energy of food to do this, thus food may take priority. If a storm is on the horizon, food may fall to the wayside. Do note that in the case of a storm, if their is rain, the water requirement is fulfilled. On the other hand, if one is dying of thirst and hunger, one may be willing to brave harsh conditions and even sacrifice shelter to satisfy this need, which would seem to signify that shelter is actually less important. It doesn't matter if one does or does not have shelter and/or knowledge. When hungry and/or thirsty, the need to satisfy this becomes greatest, even in harsh conditions. Therefore, my complex and backwards logic led me to believe that food and water were of first and foremost priority.

The shelter or knowledge stumped me for a bit, especially because the planks looked more like tools than planks from my perspective. In the case of shelter, one might think that one needs knowledge to build a shelter. However, in the case that one doesn't have such knowledge and shelter is needed immediately, one does not go seeking out this knowledge. Rather, they build the best shelter they can using what little knowledge they posses. Building a good shelter is a luxury of knowledge. Therefore, shelter is second, followed by knowledge.

But all this being said, there is a much simpler way of interpreting the puzzle. Of everything I have read so far, nobody has interpreted the images literally. What I mean by this is: "If you are stranded on a desert island, these are the items you have. Prioritize." In other words, one can literally interpret the book as being just that, a book. One can literally interpret the jewel as being just that, a jewel. One can literally interpret the planks as being just that, planks. And finally, one can literally interpret the food and water as simply being the food and water the person has with them. From this definition, the order is actually quite easy to see. The safety of the food and water supplies comes first. The planks, being necessary for shelter, comes second. The book, a source of entertainment, comes third. The jewel could be used as raw material for something, but nothing of more importance than the first three. Until it is made useful, the jewel is completely useless.

I actually would have thought that this puzzle needed another element to it, but seeing as there are so many ways to interpret this, I guess I was wrong.

[calvinfoo]

Made it to the end of the pirate's little treasure hunt and now I need to "choose wisely". If anyone has figured this out please PM me with a hint or tip.

Thanks!

I am sure by now you could've solved this, but I am not sure why it is nessasary for you to ask this...

Even if you have no clue at all, you only have 24 combinations! (4 x 3 x 2 x 1=24)

All you need is just try it all.

When I tried that time, I have no clue either, but obviously Gold should be last one, so I only tried total of 12 combination.

To me, I was thinking, logically, I need KNOWDEDGE how to farm, then TOOLS to farm, in order to get the FOOD farmed. But it is the wrong answer. without thinking too much, I tried all 3 possible combinations.