Forums » Epic Week 2018 » Archery symbol discussion (SOLVED)

It may not have to be a key itself, it says it is found with a key. It would be very difficult if it was something extremly detailed, but I'm not sure if they've done it before. Guild Wars 2 has several puzzles that require you to get keys, and they reset daily. While it is very unlikely to be GW2, that kind of event sticks in my mind.

The Hobbit could have something to do with it. They had to have a key in a lock that only showed up in one certain place at one certain time. They do run into wargs, trolls, and giant spiders along the way, and I'd say that's pretty interesting wildlife (not to mention the dragon). The "there are many of them" does trip me up, though. There are many dwarves that travel with them, but I'm not sure that is it.

I tried Erebor, Lonely Mountain, Dwarves, Hobbit...
I feel like that's a really good track, but it's not yielding any fruit yet.

I'm going to throw Harry Potter (maybe the newer movies, fantastical beasts) and Narnia series in there.

For giggles, I tried some stuff from Horizon Zero Dawn:

Cauldron
Cauldrons
Override
Triangle
Triangles
Blue triangle
Blue triangles

None of them worked.

That's a shame

Two peeps shared this in the bottle message thread:

"The archer had an odd interest in bees."

I actually had the same right now!!

The Fade-Touched Honeycomb is a thing in one of the Dragon Age games. I think you get it by delving into one of the eluvians?

Not it, though.

Sera, though... She was an archer. Had a thing about bees.

Waaaay too many pants, for sure, but a true friend to Red Jenny.

Alrighty! To give some insight into how I arrived at the answer for this symbol (and hopefully inspire you a little bit towards uncovering the others!), let me present to you:

Dragonfire Shows Her Work

So, firstly, a couple of ground rules that I usually follow, when hunting down puzzle/trivia answers:

A) Other people are valuable voices! It's easier to solve something when you listen to other people as well as contributing, yourself.
B ) Phrasing and symbolism is important! If something is worded a particular way in a clue, odds are fairly good that it's that way for a reason. Likewise, the seal symbol itself sometimes can be a clue. (Sometimes it isn't, mind, but...)
C) If something's not working, try something else for a bit! This can apply to many things, including other approaches to the symbol you're working on (like a different fandom, or potential meaning behind a word), working on another symbol for a while, or even going and doing *shudder* housework or schoolwork or something. Your brain works and ticks even if you're not paying attention to something 100%.

When I started work on this symbol, all three clues were already unlocked. That really helps - sometimes a missing clue has a vital piece of the puzzle.

So, three clues, plus the Archery symbol itself. We also knew that this particular symbol was fantasy-related, and a trivia question, not a puzzle question. Therefore, it would be about fandom-related topics, or perhaps history, and has nothing to do with the puzzle questions that are all based off the RPR itself.

For trivia symbols, the first clue, together with the symbol itself, is usually enough to figure out what kind of topic we're dealing with. (For example, the Klingon Empire symbol has always meant that the topic is Star Trek, in the past, and the first clue of the Precise symbol points heavily at the book Good Omens.) The Archery symbol didn't immediately speak to me about what kind of fandom it was about, but the first clue had some interesting wording: it spoke of 'an age' and 'unusual wildlife'. Because it was a fantasy topic, I figured it probably didn't mean something like the Bronze Age or the Mesozoic or something like that.

First things first, before I posted anything, I read through what other people had to say about the topic - see point A above! Among a lot of good suggestions, Claine brought up Dragon Age early in the thread. Combining her suggestion with point B (wordplay!) led me to believe that Dragon Age was a very likely target fandom.

A Possible Problem: I have not played Dragon Age. Mass Effect was always my Bioware series of choice.

However! This didn't mean I had to give up, since I didn't know anything about the topic at hand other than some very basic information. It just meant that I had to do some reading. "Eluvians" was a topic that was also brought up in the thread by other folks, so I went and learned about those on a Dragon Age Wikia page. I didn't really find anything that fit the context of the other two clues, however, and although I tried a couple of guesses in conjunction with the eluvians (for example, game locations), I wasn't really getting anywhere.

So I went and worked on some other things for a while! Point C.

Eventually, as people started pulling clues instead of quotes out of the bottles that they were fishing up, another clue was noted: "The archer had an odd interest in bees."

Well, now, that's definitely something, isn't it? We now know that the archer is a particular person, and that there are bees.

So I googled "Dragon Age eluvian bees". I got a Wikia page about the fade-touched honeycomb. But that didn't work, nor did locations from around where you get the honeycomb. And besides, there was only a single honeycomb in the game - that probably wasn't it, based on the second clue.

I refined my search to "Dragon Age bees", because bees are just so darned specific a thing to bring up. This very quickly brought me to the Jar of Bees item. Following links, I figured out that the Jar of Bees is gained through a recipe. The recipe is gotten from a quest in the game. The quest's text comes with a delightful note:

Know what ruins a party? Bees.
I know a man who teaches how
to jar them safe but angry.
Stingy, no good for honey,
but great for throwing!
He’s somewhere south.

The note's written by a person - a potential party member - named Sera. The very first sentence on her profile page in the Wikia? "Sera is an elven archer and companion in Dragon Age: Inquisition."

So this is definitely a lead! I posted what I'd found, and continued looking into the information on Sera's page.

I didn't find anything right off the bat, but looking into some of the quests associated with her, I came upon this information regarding the quest where the main character meets Sera: "The three clues put together reveal that you are being watched and followed. You now have a location on the world map (Secluded Courtyard), a key to access it, and a time to be there."

Well, that fits our third clue really nicely, doesn't it? By this time, I'm sure I'm on the right track; it's just a matter of finding what fits the 'many' in this context. Reading further into the Secluded Courtyard on the Wikia gives me the line: The perpetrator turns out to be an Elven woman named Sera. She is part of the Friends of Red Jenny and is the one who tipped you off to the ambush. With great amusement, she tells of how she stole the breeches off of all the guards, who then rush in to attack.

And then, noted below, is a Notable Item: The Too Many Breeches. And if that's not something that fits the 'many' in the second clue, why, I'd eat my pants.

I tried Breeches first on the symbol, and that didn't work, so then put in 'Too Many Breeches', and that was that.

So, I hope this is a little helpful in getting into my thought process for these things! Don't be discouraged just because you're not familiar with a topic. Listen and think, and it's always possible to open doors.