Flawless Term

Flawless Term, for the devoted. The game describes it as: Solve all thirty required puzzles without a single failed attempt.

Narrated guide

Narrated video coming soon

What the game counts

The journey counts failed attempts, and the count must be zero when the 30th required room settles. Only four rooms have a failed state: the sagging gallery, the whispering stacks, the receiving shaft room and the choked cistern. A failure is recorded the moment the game notices it while you stand in that room. The cistern keeps flooding while you are elsewhere, and that failure is recorded as soon as you walk back in. A restart from the autosave keeps the count; only loading a manual save made before the failure takes it back. Not failures: a refused action, a wrong spell, a fall from a ledge ("Room entry restored after the fall; other progress is retained."), or a restart you choose. The optional rooms cannot fail, and after the 30th required room nothing is checked.

Before you start

• Make a manual save (pause, Save and restore) in the passage outside each of the four rooms before you step in.
• If a failure happens, do not use Restart from autosave: load that manual save instead.
• For the cistern, bind Supply liquid, Span, Suspend and Orient before stepping in.

The route

1. The sagging gallery: from the floor, cast Draw on the Cart (Lighten first if you have it bound) and wait until it stops at the near pier before you climb onto the gallery.
   The cracked middle of the beam carries you or the cart, not both. With you on it, the room fails once it has been overloaded for three seconds in all. A parked cart puts almost none of its weight on the crack. Brace on the Cracked beam, the Span or Climbing growth on the Wall avoid the problem altogether.
   What you see: "The cart travels toward the sound parking pier." If you hurry, "The load vane is rising." Step back off the crack at once and the count drains twice as fast as it filled.
2. The whispering stacks: cast Place sound on the Whistle and Tether on the Panel, wait until the listener reaches the far aisle, then walk (never hurry or jump) to the Ledger and on to the Keeper stand.
   The listener catches you after three seconds within 2 m of it while you move faster than a slow creep or carry the ledger. The whistle keeps it at the far aisle, and the tethered panel stops the ledger shelf rattling.
   What you see: "The listener is closing on your movement." means the count is running: move away. Once the ledger is on the Keeper stand, the room can no longer fail.
3. The receiving shaft room: cast Spring surface on the Pad, Handle the Pad once, wait about three seconds until it has slid under the shelf, then Handle the Release.
   The master weight breaks if it lands more than 0.4 m from the pad, or faster than 2.5 m/s on a pad with no elastic weave. From the shelf it falls far faster than that, so the weave is needed every time.
   What you see: "An elastic receiving weave deforms under impact." There is no warning before a break.
4. The choked cistern: quench Blossom 0 and Blossom 1 with Supply liquid as soon as you are inside. Then do the rest of the rescue at any pace.
   While either blossom burns, the inlet adds 400 litres a second to a basin that starts at 30,000. The refuge floods at 70,000, about a hundred seconds in. With both blossoms dark the inflow stops for good.
   What you see: "Water quenches the blossom seen by the protective inlet sensor." The warning "Rising water is reaching the refuge." comes at 60,000 litres, about 75 seconds in.
5. If any of the four fails, pause, open Save and restore and load the manual save from the door.
   The failure count is part of the journey save. Restart from autosave carries it across; an older manual save does not have it.
   What you see: "Restored slot N."

The four rooms that can fail

Watch for

• In the receiving shaft room, a second press on the Pad slides it back out. Handling the Weight releases it just like the Release does.
• In the stacks, Hurry, Hasten and jumping make you louder than the whistle and draw the listener to you. Rising draught is noisy too.
• In the cistern, Supply liquid aimed at the water instead of a blossom adds 5,000 litres, about twelve seconds of flooding. Two Heat casts on one quenched blossom relight it.
• Do not walk through the cistern to the thermal latch vestibule or the drip-ladder passage while a blossom still burns: the water keeps rising while you are away.
• The cistern fails even with you elsewhere. If you see "Rising water reached the refuge." on return, the failure is already recorded.

What breaks it

• Any failed attempt in the four rooms before the 30th required room settles, on this journey.
• Using Restart from autosave after a failure: the failure stays.
• Leaving the cistern with a blossom lit for more than about a minute and a half in all.

Rooms involved

The sagging gallery, The whispering stacks, Receiving shaft room, The choked cistern.

Spells

Draw, Lighten, Brace, Place sound, Tether, Spring surface, Supply liquid, Span, Suspend, Orient.