Rose's walkthrough



Rose Lalonde has created her own walkthrough for Sburb Beta on GameFAQS, going under the same nickname as her Pesterchum chumHandle, tentacleTherapist. She was regularly updating it as she still had something more to discover while playing the game with John Egbert.

The walkthrough is written from Rose's perspective, as it it written in the first person. It also is noted to detail her and John's game, as well as speculation on the other possible variants.

The walkthrough was apparently completed, yet remains incomplete for the whole game.

The following is the full walkthrough. The original contents of the walkthrough are preserved as correctly as possible even though they have been ripped from Earth's decaying networks and put as far as possible, while additional "author" notes not in the walkthrough are marked red.

The Walkthrough
Sburb Beta Walkthrough

Version 1.0, April 13, 2009

By tentacleTherapist

Table of Contents
1. Caveats and Condolences.......................... [0000] 2. Walkthrough (Incomplete)................................  2.1. An Examination of the Basics................... [A000] 2.2. So your cruxtruder is ticking. Do this to live. [A100] (missing) 2.3. The Long and Short. The Medium too............. [B100] C. Appendix 3 -- Screen Captures, pt. 1............. [Z301] ?. Rose: Egress..................................... [ZZZZ]

[0000] Caveats and Condolences
I'd be inclined to dispense with the trite even under less pressing circumstances. Needless to say I'll forego the inscrutable ASCII banner which typically heralds the striking freefall of these documents. I'll also resist the urge to brandish any copyright marks, or the particular neurosis that concerns itself with the theft of the utterly mundane -- I'll allow other deranged prospectors to stake claims on their worthless plots as the woods burn around them. My introduction will be sparse. There will be no majestic prose blustering into the sails of a galleon as we embark on this voyage together. Nor will there be any hamfisted prose whipping its limbs under a bedsheet like a retarded ghost, for that matter. I won't set the stage, or dim the lights. The mood, you will see, will be set soon enough.

Since you are reading this, chances are you have installed this game on your computer already. If this is true, like many others, you have just participated in bringing about the end of the world.

But don't beat yourself up about it. There was never anything you could have done to prevent it. The end is happening right now, as I type, and as you read. I have come to understand that we were always doomed through our collective ignorance, and now further doomed by those few who know, and struggle to flee. If you're lucky, you'll be among the smaller subset of the latter who are successful.

What I mean is, while that game you installed is just one more grinding slab of rock sealing our planet's crypt, it is also your only hope to live. I'm presently faced with the same conundrum as you, and though I speak with more experience, my own outcome is far from assured. I will "play the game", as much of it as there is to play, and record my findings here. If you want to live, you will do as I instruct.

My condolences.

~TT

[A000] An Examination of the Basics
Upon connecting with the client user, you, the server user, will be met with a control panel allowing you to manipulate your co-player's environment. You will find that you are allowed to deploy four items at no expense. Three of these are rather large machines, and one is a punch card.

It's quite possible that you have already deployed some of these items before reading this. If this is the case, and you have activated the machine called the "cruxtruder" such that it displays a countdown, YOU MUST PROCEED TO SECTION [A100] OF THIS WALKTHROUGH IMMEDIATELY. The life of the client user depends on it, and if your co-player has activated this device in your environment too, then yours does as well.

But if not, please refrain from doing anything with the cruxtruder, aside from merely deploying it. This will buy us some time to think things through properly, and to go over the basics of the game before you find your soft, easily-punctured head in the jaws of the lion.

As mentioned, there are four items to consider, each playing a role in a process which appears to have a singular purpose: to manufacture object out of thin air. The designers of the game, judging by the language used, regard this process as a sort of alchemy. This may allude to complexities in the production process yet to present themselves. But for now, the variety of objects you are able to create remains quite limited.

The items in question are the CRUXTRUDER (again, tread lightly with this one), the TOTEM LATHE, the ALCHEMITER, and the PRE-PUNCHED CARD. I will describe how these devices work in conjunction with each other, and I will use the analogy of having a key made at a hardware store to help you understand.

First, deploy all of these objects in convenient proximity to each other. Be sure not to block doors or pathways with them. You can always "revise" the dimensions of rooms to make space for them, but I'd advise against this, or even experimenting with the function. Doing so comes at the expense of "build grist", a commodity which appears to be at a premium at the onset, and one you'd best be advised to save for later.

The Cruxtruder
Removing the lid signals the moment your life becomes a great whirling batshit pandemonium, somewhat resembling the chaos of an especially ethnic wedding. Somewhere, a soused uncle deliberately shatters china on the floor. Muddy livestock is decorated, and then lost track of. The question "Who's mule is this?" at times can be heard over the din. This is now your reality.

But aside from that, it marks the beginning of the process I am about to describe. The countdown begins, yes. Also, an entity called the "Kernelsprite" is released. But neither of these things are all that relevant to this process, to my knowledge. More on these things later.

What is relevant is the un-lidded cruxtruder's ability to dispense "cruxite dowels". It will dispense at least one, though I suspect it is capable of producing more, given parameters I'm not yet familiar with. In my key-making analogy, these dowels represent the uncarved pieces of metal which the hardware store employee retrieves from a drawer or a rack, and sets about carving into a key. The two following items are needed to do the carving.

The Pre-Punched Card
It is a simple sylladex card containing an item. There is evidence to suggest the specific item it contains is variable from session-to-session. The card I deployed contained a blue apple. Yours may be different. It shouldn't matter, hopefully.

Additionally, the card as you may guess is "punched", like one used with antique computing systems. The pattern of holes comprises data, which I believe corresponds to the instructions for creating the item the card contains. That it is "pre-punched" suggests there is a way to punch an un-punched card, possibly imprinting it with the data for the item it contains, though no mechanism for this has presented itself yet. This mechanism would become known as the Punch Designix, which has enough shit just to not be available until you enter The Medium.

But the data on the card cannot be used to create the item directly. There is a middleman. That middleman is the totem lathe.

The Totem Lathe
This is essentially the key carving machine. It will carve into your cruxite dowel a pattern of grooves and contours, the sort which makes a key unique. The instructions for this pattern are supplied by the punch card, which is inserted into the lathe pre-activation to configure its chisels.

Once the dowel is carved, you have a totem serving as your "key", which can then be used to "unlock" the card item through the alchemiter. But at this point, I will diverge from my key-making analogy and switch to a bar code analogy. Which is not a terribly strenuous leap to make, since the concepts of a key and a bar code are essentially the same -- one being a unique pattern of grooves; the other, of varying black lines.

The Alchemiter
If you place a cruxite dowel, carved or uncarved, on the alchemiter's small pedestal, its robotic arm will scan the contours with a laser. Hence the bar code analogy. This is the machine's way of reading the data originally imprinted from the card, and transforming that data into a physical object.

Though typically, this is not done without expense, I believe. An uncarved dowel results in the creation of a "perfectly generic object", which is a seemingly useless green cube. It costs two units of build grist to make, and I do not advise you to waste resources on it. There appears to be many other varieties of grist, ostensibly used in combinations to create different sorts of items, which possibly offers some insight into the game's use of the term "alchemy".

But quite conveniently, there is an exception to this. Creating the item on the pre-punched card costs nothing. This is good, because creating this item turns out to be essential.

Now that you know this, you can in your own time begin the process. Once you initiate it, naturally there is no going back, so best to be prepared. But you probably shouldn't drag your feet too long. As I mentioned earlier, this is your only means of escape.

When you're ready, be prepared to follow the steps in the next section swiftly.

[A100] So your cruxtruder is ticking. Do this to live.
(This part is missing from the portions of the walkthrough given in the adventure, but it seems that a Cruxite item must be alchemized from the Pre-Punched Card and a Kernelsprite must appear, but not necessarily be prototyped. The Vanillasprite is also mentioned, as stated below.)

[B100] The Long and Short. The Medium too.
I may have been a bit hasty in advising you not to bother with the prototyping process. If I spared any detail, it was only to optimize your chances of survival. And if you find yourself begrudging the absence of certain instructions, which if followed would have resulted in your demise, then I guess that makes two of us.

Otherwise, you're welcome.

But the fact appears to be that prototyping the Kernelsprite before making your getaway may offer the only opportunity to exercise control over your new environment, a place known as The Medium. Also, if prototyped with one (or two) sufficiently -- albeit loosely -- humanoid and/or sentient element/s (living or otherwise), it offers the chance to have all this explained to you by an apparitional guide through whatever sort of cryptic, sketchy doublespeak your choice of prototyping element/s engender/s. In lieu of this, you may be forced to settle for my clear, thorough explanations and assiduous dissection of raw data.

Again, don't mention it.

If you have made it to The Medium with an unmolested Vanillasprite, well, I've already covered the bad news about this "missed opportunity", and I will go into this further soon. Though to what extent this actually is bad news, I'm not sure. I know only the result of my co-player's current configuration, wherein the sprite was prototyped once before the departure, and once after. Which brings us to the good news, which is that you can still prototype after your departure, and salvage the massively rewarding experience of haggling with an exposition-slinging phantom guide, so long as you avoid prototyping with terribly inert items, such as a brass doorknocker and your father's pornography collection.

Actually, that might be interesting. If you are struck by the spirit of such experimentation, please don't hesitate to contact me about it.

So, yes, you can enhance your sprite in this way, but doing so after your departure will no longer induce this "effect" on The Medium I alluded to. That can only be accomplished with one or more pre-departure prototypings. In fact, we can extrapolate there are only so many ways to prototype a sprite.

Tiers of prototyping in relation to departure: - Both before - One before, one after - Both after - Only one, either before or after - None

Those occurring before will affect the Medium through the kernel's "hatching" process, and your guide, i.e. the sprite. Those occurring after will only affect the sprite.

The effects this process has on The Medium, or more globally, The Incipisphere, are still vague to me. They have to do with flavoring the forces you will struggle against, and generally, all forces at odds with each other in this realm. It has given me some insight into the nature of the game, which again I derive through extrapolation. We appear to be engaging an instance of a dimension with a highly flexible set parameters, and a series of objectives surrounding an equally flexible mythological framework. This framework seems to begin as a sort of blank template, and evolves with the players' actions, and likely further evolves with the addition of more host/client connections, and thus more prototyped kernels.

I regret to say I can't be much more specific than that, without loosely extrapolating further. There are plenty of questions that have occurred to me, however. Questions concerning the Kernelsprite, which I've raised implicitly already, such as what is the effect of an un-prototyped kernel on The Medium? Or a doubly-prototyped kernel, for that matter? And even more salient are questions about this dimension itself. Do all players world-wide make it to this dimension id they successfully complete their departure? Or is a unique "blank" instance of the dimension created for each new player? I have no evidence, but instinct tells me it is closer to the latter situation. There is no indication of any other players present in this realm. Alterations in the realm seem singularly centered on the actions of my co-player and myself. If I had to stake anything on it, I would guess every separate client/server pair activates its own fresh copy of an Incipisphere, or a unique "session", if you will.

But the quantity of players is a further complication which invites more questions. It seems the game was designed to suit two players most naturally, the server and the client. But through a mishap, my co-player and I have slipped out of the obvious tandem arrangement, and the only logical course of action to continue playing is to string a daisy-chain of server/client connections together, until presumably the chain is complete. Theoretically, we could complete this chain with only one other player, functioning as a server to my client, and the client to my current co-player's server (assuming he can recover it).

The strange thing is though, in our instance of this dimension, there are four receptacles for divided kernels, not three. Does this mean we are "destined" to have a four player chain? How could the game "know" such a thing?

Perhaps it does, and if this proves to be the case, I trust I will be sufficiently numbed to the realization. I can consider nothing about this game surprising at this point, and in fact from the first moments of play, it managed to deviate so far from my expectations that I completely forgot what my original purpose with it was. I had chances to test some information I obtained on good authority during the prototyping phases, but it completely slipped my mind. Instead, the game's catacombs securing the dark twisting paths to necromancy were blundered into rather on accident.

But perhaps you don't need to know any of this.

[rethink organization? lead may be waist deep logorrheic sludge. trim down. bleh]

[Z301] Appendix 3 -- Screen Captures, pt. 1
I can't take as many as I'd like to for comprehensive documentation. For what it's worth, here's what I've managed to collect so far. More captures forthcoming.

http://tinyurl.com/0413sprite http://tinyurl.com/0413power http://tinyurl.com/0413internet http://tinyurl.com/0413build http://tinyurl.com/0413prototype http://tinyurl.com/0413disconnect http://tinyurl.com/0413nanna http://tinyurl.com/0413weirdo http://tinyurl.com/0413designix http://tinyurl.com/0413grist http://tinyurl.com/0413up http://tinyurl.com/0413steed http://tinyurl.com/0413barbasolbandit http://tinyurl.com/0413really http://tinyurl.com/0413hmm

[ZZZZ] Rose: Egress.
This is my final entry.

My co-players and I have made every earnest attempt, with occasional relapse, to play this game the right way. I have been meticulous in documenting the process to help our peers and successors through the trials should we fail. In my hubris I believed these classed were relegated to the Earth-bound, but in even this quaint supposition I was in error. Our otherworldly antagonists have assured us of our inevitable failure repeatedly, while the god whisper corroboration in my sleep. I believe them now.

I just blew up my first gate. I'm not sure why I did it, really.

I am not playing by the rules anymore. I will fly around this candy-coated rock and comb the white sand until I find answers. No one can tell me our fate can't be repaired. We've come too far. I jumped out of the way of a burning fucking tree, for God's sake.

I have used a spell to rip this walkthrough from Earth's decaying networks, and sealed it in one of the servers floating in the Furthest Ring. The gods may disperse the signal throughout the cosmos as they wish. Perhaps it will be of use to past or future species who like us have been ensnared by Skaia's maleviolent tendrils.

In case it wasn't clear, magic is real.

Pardon my egress. You're on your own now.

This part is followed by the true Rose's initials and some more weird shit that doesn't even belong to a GameFAQS walkthrough.

Trivia

 * There are three other walkthroughs on GameFAQS for the game, edited by SanctuaryRemix, winnie the poop 2 and ChaosDemon. They however are never seen before they disappear simultaneously with Rose's walkthrough.