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The Black Mirror Hints
How do I solve this puzzle altar?
1 of 24: NOTE: This puzzle won't be available until you finish with the three statues in the back of the chapel.
2 of 24: Try clicking on the tiles in the puzzle to see what happens. The cursor never turns red, so it may look like you can't do anything with the tiles, but you can.
3 of 24: This is a standard 4-by-4 sliding-tile mosaic puzzle, in which one tile is removed and all other tiles can slide horizontally and vertically (but only into the empty space).
4 of 24: NOTE: It is possible for a randomly generated sliding-tile puzzle to be unsolvable. The most common indication of such an unsolvable puzzle is when you have completed all but the last two tiles (wherever they may be), and two adjacent tiles are switched. If this happens, you will need to restart the puzzle from another random configuration, and try again.
5 of 24: The big catch with this puzzle is that you aren't explicitly told anywhere in the game what the ending pattern needs to be.
6 of 24: If you slide the tiles around at random to see what symbols are imprinted underneath them, you'll find that there are symbols engraved in each of the four corners of the board. Also, there's a symbol carved in the middle of the board in an interesting shape.
7 of 24: It's fairly easy to figure out that the four tiles without any symbols on them need to be arranged in the 2-by-2 center of the board around the central shape, with all of the symbol tiles being arranged around the outside. But exactly where does each symbol go?
8 of 24: Are you familiar with any of the symbols (from outside the game)?
9 of 24: How many are there? Perhaps they make up a "matched set" in some way.
10 of 24: Apparently, the game designers figured that everyone is heavily into astrology, and would instantly recognize the twelve symbols of the zodiac. (Personally, I didn't, and I had to turn to a walkthrough by MaGtRo on the GameBoomers website.)
11 of 24: Once you know those are the zodiac symbols, you can look up "zodiac" in just about any encyclopedia (or do an online search) to see what order the symbols go in.
12 of 24: But even given that information, where should the 12 symbols be placed, and in what order?
13 of 24: We know that they cannot be in the middle, since the four specially-shaped tiles need to go there.
14 of 24: So they will need to go around the outer edges.
15 of 24: Once you know the order of the 12 symbols (i.e., their order within the zodiac chart), look more closely at the symbols underneath the tiles in the four corners of the puzzle, and see where they fall in the list of 12 symbols.
16 of 24: It should become fairly clear that the order of the symbols is to start at the top left corner, and continue clockwise around the outside edge of the puzzle.
18 of 24: Knowing the solution is only part of solving the puzzle. The remainder is to execute a standard sliding-tile puzzle strategy to achieve the desired goal.
19 of 24: It is typically easiest to begin at one corner, and work outward from there. But which corner to start with?
20 of 24: Remember that the empty slot needs to end up in the top left corner because there's no tile with the symbol of Aries the Ram on it.
21 of 24: That would indicate that the best place to begin is the lower right corner, complete the lower row, and then "fan out" from there.
22 of 24: One mosaic-solving strategy is to get the tiles that go in a row or column together anywhere on the board in order, and then move this "train of tiles" around into position. That works well for all but the last few tiles.
23 of 24: Another classic sliding tile strategy is to carefully pry all the pieces out and then snap them back in in the correct order. Unfortunately, the game doesn't allow you to do that here. That's too bad, especially considering that the tiles start out in a random configuration, so there isn't a step-by-step sure-fire solution on this one. You'll just have to keep trying until you get it.
24 of 24: If it's just way too hard, then write to me at dunigase@yahoo.com and ask for a copy of a saved game that I made right after solving this puzzle. I'll send it to you so that you can install it and continue with the game.
