A Thing of Wretchedness FAQ/Walkthrough v 1.0
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Written by AKheon.

This short guide has the potential to spoil most of the game experience, so please use it only as a last resort.

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How to win the game?
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The game has three endings in total (plus one game over sequence, if that counts).

One ending can be reached by poisoning the wretched thing three times and surviving. The poison is in the pantry. The chow is in the kitchen. A variety of commands (even "use poison") can be used to poison the chow. There will be some delay to how quickly the wretched thing will get around to eating the poisoned chow, so be patient.

Another ending can be reached by delivering the letter three times. It mysteriously keeps re-appearing inside the living room after a certain amount of turns. You need to wear a few extra articles of clothing to be able to deliver the letter, and the letter can become destroyed by the wretched thing's attacks, but otherwise this ending is not too difficult to accomplish.

The final ending requires accessing the workshop and interacting with the black box with different commands ("examine", "open", "close", "take"). The key to the workshop is inside the cupboard in the living room; the problem is, you can't get the drawer open by yourself. You have to get the wretched thing to destroy the cupboard for you, which can be quite luck-dependent.


How to survive?
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The wretched thing will rarely attempt to kill the player. This most often happens when it's "erratic" (i.e. in a frenzied state after eating some poisoned chow), but there's a very rare chance that it can come after you at any time (as long as turn count is over 30 and you are in the same room with it). The likelihood slowly increases as time passes, and it also increases a large amount if the player ever attacks the wretched thing.

You know you're in danger if you see the line "The wretched thing is coming." To avoid a game over, you have to go into a side room and close the door behind you, or alternatively, go outside (the wretched thing refuses to leave the house for now).


The wretched thing disappeared! What now?
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When erratic, the wretched thing can sometimes hide behind furniture. If this happens, its presence is mentioned in the main body of the room description text instead of being separately mentioned at the end of each turn, so it's pretty easy to miss. Typing "things" reveals all the things inside the room, including the wretched thing. To get the wretched thing to leave its hiding place, either wait long enough or try attacking the wretched thing or the furniture it's hiding behind.


Any tips on how to get the cupboard destroyed?
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Destroying the cupboard requires the wretched thing's random fits of violence. Unfortunately, they are indeed random, but there are some small things you can do to make the destruction of the cupboard more likely.

The wretched thing starts breaking items more and more frequently as its aggression increases and also while it's erratic, so poisoning the wretched thing once or twice may be a good idea when going for this ending.

You can manipulate the wretched thing's movement patterns. By keeping doors closed to all of the side rooms, it can only move between the living room, the kitchen and the entrance, which increases the frequency of it visiting the living room and breaking something there. Removing the letter and the clock from the living room reduces the number of breakable things in it. You can also actively lure the wretched thing into the living room and irritate it into breaking things with "whistle".

In general, the passing of time will make the apartment more wrecked, and this even includes sleeping (small chance that something is damaged inside the house) and delivering the letter (a guaranteed chance that something is damaged inside the house).


That's it for now... Hopefully this helped, have a nice IFComp.



