The Tunnels of Kingsmouth

Daily Ramble 99: The Tunnels of Kingsmouth

The town of Kingsmouth has many secrets some difficult to decipher and others hidden away. Today I decided to take a look underneath the city, but not in the sewers – I’ve already been there – but in the tunnels. Back before the town was founded and before all the streets and buildings were in place, the Illuminati built a series of tunnels down below. These tunnels allowed them to access places all over the town and to store secret items where prying eyes would not be able to spot them. Minister Henry Hawthorne knows a bit about these things and he pointed me in the direction of where to search for more information.

Digging Deeper

After my time at the airport with Ellis Hill, I decided it was time to head back into town and finish off the last of my missions from Kingsmouth Church. I had already completed the Kingsmouth Code from here and the minister, Henry Hawthorne seemed to know even more about the Illuminati and the strange happenings in the area so I asked him for more info. He told me about the tunnels dug under the town where the Illuminati used to meet and conduct rituals. Henry mentioned that an entrance to these passages could be found on Main Street so I headed there, and I figured the logical place to start was the Town Hall.

After taking out a few zombie groups I ran around the building until I found a spot where I could investigate further – there was something inlaid in an old segment of sidewalk out front so I took a closer look…

Clavis Aurea means Golden Key in Latin and I seem to recall a golden key to the city last time I ran through the government building. I ran upstairs so I could grab it and sure enough, it fits the lock in the sidewalk and I’m into the tunnels. They seemed to go in multiple directions but most ended in dead ends until I saw some symbols recessed in one of the walls. After some decoding and running back and forth, I figured out how to go further into the passages where I found Solomon Priest’s coffin.

Only, there was nothing inside except for a note and an artifact. If I was gonna find out more about the Illuminati here in Kingsmouth, I’d have to continue my search of the tunnels. So I set off to the other end of the tunnels where I saw some more recessed symbols to play with. These opened another passage that lead to a library filled with Illuminati books.

But there was no discernible way out of the room other than back the way I came. I did see a note on the floor though and from there, I had to figure out a few puzzles to advance.

This is one of the cool things about this game that I love. So much of the progression through missions require puzzle solving, logic, historical knowledge, or research and things are not solely dependent on combat (or jumping). Sure, you can level up in this game simply by combat but if you want to truly explore the game, you’re gonna have to work on some puzzles.

By solving a couple puzzles I was able to keep moving deeper and deeper into the tunnels until I found this room with a bunch of statues.

This required a bit of figuring out and actually required me to use “emotes” to complete the puzzle which, up to this point, I didn’t even know there were “emotes” in the game. In any case, I solved the final riddle and was able to reach the final resting place of Solomon Priest and I have to say this was a fun mission. No combat involved but still I died a few times figuring out the puzzles and I really feel a sense of accomplishment having got to the end – it was not easy.

New Blade Skills

Along my travels through the Kingsmouth tunnels I reached the point where I needed to spend some of my Ability and Skill Points. I had already filled out the Blood Magic tab of abilities and thought it would be nice to try something different so I looked around and landed on Blade.

Blade skills seem to be focused on close range damage so I figured that’d be a nice addition to my healing from Blood Magic. So, with Blood Magic as my secondary skill set, I added Hurricane and Spirit Blade from Blade to my ability bar and dropped my Assault Rifle skills for now. And things worked pretty well.

Hurricane is my main ability which causes damage to everyone around me in a 5 meter radius. At this point, it’s really effective against the Zombies since they tend to come at me and try to surround me. This just cuts through them like butter.

If things last a bit longer, I use Spirit Blade to finish the monsters off and so far I haven’t had too much difficulty with anything. If things actually hit me, I just throw my blood bubble on myself and it absorbes most incoming damage as I continue causing damage to the bad guys.

I’m sure I’m not optimizing my build, but at this point there’s no need for me to min/max. I will take a look at things before I head into the first dungeon since I’ll be on a team and I expect the bad guys to be a bit tougher. For everyday stuff, though, I’m happy just leveling up my abilities and finishing off the missions in Kingsmouth.