Thirty Fathoms — hints
One nudge at a time. Nothing opens unless you click it, so you will not read the answer to a puzzle you have not reached.
Back to the game · Full walkthrough
Act I — The Salvage Barge Meredith
Ruth will not let me dive.
She tells you why: the compressor is running hot and nobody has told her why. Go out on the after deck and put your hand behind it.
What else do I need?
A hand torch and the lifting bag, both in the store aft, and the dive table read once properly. Type read table.
There is a coil of spare airline in the store.
There is. Nobody will ask you to take it and it is a nuisance to carry. Take it anyway.
Act II — The Boat Deck
The purser's door is jammed by a davit.
A quarter of a ton, and shoving it is a waste of air. Under water you do not lift things, you float them — and you are carrying a lifting bag.
Something bit me in the wireless room.
Put the light into a hole before you put your hand in it. That is the whole lesson and it is cheap here and expensive later.
The passage in the ward is blocked.
Four tons of cork and mattress wanting to go up, held down by one rove lashing. You are wearing a knife.
I cannot surface.
You owe decompression. Go back to the thirty-foot stage and wait until Ruth says you are clear. Your air runs the whole time you are hanging, which is the point.
Act III — The Engine Spaces
The watertight door will not move.
It is hydraulic and the accumulators are empty. The accumulators are in the workshop, and the workshop is through a fourteen-inch scuttle.
The hose will not go through the scuttle.
No, it will not. unclip — and understand what that costs before you do it: double air, no lamp but the torch, and no telephone.
I stirred up the silt and now I am blind.
Take hold of the hose and follow it back the way you came. That is what it is for. Do not swim about looking for the door, and never do this off the hose.
Is there a way across the stokehold that does not stir it?
Look up rather than down. They ran ash buckets along something.
Act IV — No. 4 Hold
The strongroom has no handle.
Three cuts with the oxy-arc will take a plate out of it. Each cut is eight minutes off your own supply, so count them and leave enough for the ascent and the hang.
Should I take the gold?
That depends how much you want it, because the bag is wedged under the one shored timber holding two hundred tons of cargo, and the cargo will settle onto your umbilical.
I am carrying this spare airline for nothing.
Rig it at the top rung of the hold trunk. It costs five minutes. Nobody will tell you why.
Act V — Below the Keel
I keep losing time.
Narcosis. Below two hundred and ten feet you lose about one minute in three and you will not notice going stupid. Do the next thing; do not stand there inventing a better plan.
The master is holding something.
He is, and moving him will drop it down the crevice, and the crevice will not take the umbilical.
I cannot save him and take the tin.
Not with two hands, no. Unless there happens to be a second airline already rigged and live at the hold trunk, in which case you can do both.
Still stuck, or found something that looks like a bug? Write to hello@freetextadventures.com — every message gets read, and it is also where to send an idea for a future adventure.