Free mod for The Witness. For those unaware, Archipelago is a piece of randomiser software that includes randomisers for many different games, and allows for multiple people playing their own instance of the game to send and recieve items from other players in the pool. If you haven’t finished The Witness yet, and discovered it’s secrets, I’d do that first
How do you randomise the witness though? Well there are two ways.
- Items such as doors and puzzle mechanics can be shuffled into the Archipelago item pool, and are then required in order to access locations in the game, or to solve puzzles.
- Puzzles themselves can be randomised using the Sigma Rando tool. Archipelago actually uses a modified Sigma Rando to make its own randomiser stuff play nice.
There are setup guides on the Archipelago website, but the short story is basically
- Download the client, witness patcher, and tracker software from the website (check the setup guide linked above).
- Create a Witness randomiser with the settings you want.
- You don’t strictly have to use sigma rando, or any kind of archipelago randomiser. You can just do one or the other
- If you decide to shuffle EPs, I recommend setting the EP difficulty to Normal, or if you’re feeling sadistic, Tedious. If you set it to eclipse, then logic may dictate that you have to complete the hour long eclipse EP.
- Hit the Generate Game button to create a single player seed, or Export Settings to create a settings file if you’re playing multiplayer.
- For multiplayer, the host will have to gather up all the settings files in the group, and generate a multiworld here.
- Run The Witness, and then start the Archipelago Client and type in the game host (probably archipelago.gg:####) and your seat name which is the “Player Name” on the settings page.
- You’ll also want to open PopTracker and click the “AP” icon to type in your host and seat name there for automatic tracking!
- Once everything is ready, you should see a “Game Randomised” message in game. If you’re using sigma rando, you’ll get further confirmation at the first door which tells you your seed number.
I’ve been playing a lot with Lilla recently, and have been trying out a lot of different options. Mostly door and mechanic randomisers, some with EPs, some without, some with weird lock sizes. We had one fun one where we set long lock to require fewer lasers than short lock, and progress ended up being locked behind challenge, which was very fun. Our time right now sits around the 5-6 hour mark for both of us to finish.
Use The Tracker. There is a map pack for PopTracker for the witness that keeps tracks of what panels you’ve done and what you havent, as well as which ones are logically available to you given the doors and mechanics you have access to. The metro map will also tell you which areas are accessable given your current doors.
Archipelago: https://archipelago.gg
The Witness Randomiser: https://archipelago.gg/games/The Witness/info/en
Sigma Rando FAQ: https://github.com/sigma144/witness-randomizer/wiki/FAQ
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