Talk:The Barracks

With 15% NC, I was 8/9 in getting the non combat adventure vs a combat in this zone. Wonder what the actual combat rate is. --Darkwolf 16:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Spoilers ahead:

On first approach to the Barracks: Under cover of darkness, you sneak around to the back of the bandits' fort, and quickly spot the place the old man told you about -- it looks like a small landslide rolled down off of the volcano and smashed up the outer wall a bit. Not enough to make a hole, but the pockmarks and cracks provide perfect handholds for climbing. You quickly scale the wall and drop quietly into the compound on the other side. Keeping a sharp eye out for guards, you sneak up to the back door of the building and push it open a crack. You don't see anyone inside, so you enter cautiously.

Select Continue Button

You find yourself in the middle of a short hallway. The decor is, unexpectedly, quite nice: tasteful paintings of desert landscapes hang on the walls, the hardwood floors shine with the deep luster of careful and regular polishing, and across from the door you entered by, a bouquet of flowers in a cut-crystal vase stands on a very elegant antique end-table. Huh. Maybe you've been unfairly stereotyping these bandits.

Well, now's not the time for sociological musings -- you've got some keys to find.

Buttons are Head down the hall to the left , Head down the hall to the right , or Sneak out of the fort

Right hallway: The hallway turns a corner here, but further exploration in that direction reveals that it leads to the front door, which is probably best avoided. Anyway, there's plenty to investigate right here: three doors, which (peeked through carefully) reveal a large communal bedroom, a library, and some sort of living room or parlour.

Options are Enter the bedroom, Enter the library,Enter the parlour, or Sneak out of the fort

In the bedroom: As expected, this room is filled with rows of bunk-beds to accommodate a couple of dozen sleeping bandits. However, you've never seen finely-crafted antique solid-oak bunk-beds before. Also, the sheets and blankets look pretty expensive, and the beds are neatly made, to the point of fastidiousness. Some of the bunks have sets of silk pajamas carefully folded and placed on the foot of the bed. On the whole, it's a long way from the moth-eaten hammocks and burlap sacks stuffed with straw that you were expecting.

There are a number of carefully-matched antique dressers lined up along the walls, which look to be a likely place to find a key to Lopez's hacienda. You also spot a door to the bathroom on the far wall.

Choices are Search the beds, Search the dressers, Search the bathroom, or Sneak out of the fort

Dressers: You inspect the rows of antique dressers, noting that the drawers all have little brass plaques with the bandits' names on them. Presumably so the bandits don't accidentally get each others' drawers. Or socks.

You don't see any keys in the immediate vicinity, so you start pulling open the drawers and poking around. You still don't find any keys, so you steal a pair of sock garters instead. Because, seriously, mariachi bandit sock garters? That's just too weird to not steal.

You acquire an item: sock garters

Ran out of adventures after this, sorry. --Now I know why 17:28, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

http://images.kingdomofloathing.com/adventureimages/alley.gif You find yourself in the middle of a short hallway. The decor is, unexpectedly, quite nice: tasteful paintings of desert landscapes hang on the walls, the hardwood floors shine with the deep luster of careful and regular polishing, and across from the door you entered by, a bouquet of flowers in a cut-crystal vase stands on a very elegant antique end-table. Huh. Maybe you've been unfairly stereotyping these bandits.

Well, now's not the time for sociological musings -- you've got some keys to find.

• Head down the hall to the left

http://images.kingdomofloathing.com/adventureimages/2arch1door.gif At this end of the hall, two archways in the walls to the left and right lead into the kitchen and a large dining room, respectively. Facing you is a stout oak door, with a polished bronze plaque reading "Storage" in an elegant calligraphic font.

• • Enter the kitchen

http://images.kingdomofloathing.com/adventureimages/fridge.gif You step through the door and spend a moment just taking in the sight of the fanciest (and cleanest) kitchen you've ever seen. Gleaming marble countertops, a big professional-style gas stove, two big refrigerators recessed into the wall, a huge shiny copper cylinder covered with gauges and tubes that after a moment's examination you discover to be an espresso machine... Man, banditry must be working out really well for these guys.

The question is, where might someone have left a key in here? In one of the cupboards, maybe? A swinging door in one wall looks like it probably leads to a pantry, maybe they have a hook for keys in there. Or maybe someone might have absent-mindedly left their keys in the fridge while making a sandwich?

• • • Check the cupboards

You rummage through the kitchen cabinets, which are filled with silver and china serving dishes, expensive-looking copper-bottomed pots and pans, various kitchen gadgets such as garlic presses and lemon zesters, and other stuff that you'd expect to find in a fancy kitchen.You spend several minutes searching, but don't find any keys. You steal a fancy silver cheese-slicer instead. You acquire an item: silver cheese-slicer

• • • Check the pantry

You step into the pantry, which is lined floor to ceiling with shelves containing a wide variety of fancy foodstuffs: tins of caviar, paté, and anchovy filets; jars of olives, capers, and various pickled things, as well as a selection of marmalades and chutneys; boxes of dried saffron, bay leaves, ginger root, and other spices; whole wheels of cheese covered in wax; and so on. Several salamis hang from the ceiling, next to bundles of onions and garlic cloves.

After a brief search, confirming that there's no key to Lopez's hacienda in here, you leave the pantry and nearly walk directly into one of the bandits. Oops. Fight!

• • • Check the fridges

You open the two big refrigerators, discovering that the one on the left is actually a freezer, which contains most of a side of beef, along with some frozen chickens, smaller birds that you guess might be quail or Cornish game hens or something fancy like that, and some of those big plastic freezer bags filled with blocks of soup.

The inside of actual fridge, on the right, looks nothing like any fridge interior you've ever seen. It's filled with tubs of various soups and sauces, carefully labeled (and dated, no less!) and neatly organized. The ketchup bottle doesn't have that brown crusty ring around the top, because in fact it's a little plastic container of homemade tomato sauce. The crisper drawer is filled with vegetables, and they're actually crisp. Nothing has been spilled recently, and the little egg cups have actual eggs in them. There's nary a month-old half-package of bologna in sight. Weird!

Next to a jar of homemade boysenberry jam, you find a brass key. Looks like there is an absent-minded sandwich-maker living here after all. You acquire an item: hacienda key

• • Enter the dining room

http://images.kingdomofloathing.com/adventureimages/table.gif You sneak into the dining room, which is positively huge, though that's not really surprising since there's a lot of bandits to feed. What is surprising, though, is the fact that the long tables, sideboard, and china cabinets are all made of mahogany, the immaculate white tablecloths and napkins are silk, and the salt shakers and various condiment cruets are made of silver and crystal -- as is the gleaming chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

Enough gawking, though -- you need to find those keys before someone finds you in here.

• • • Search the tables

Looking at the long tables with their immaculately white silk tablecloths, you can hardly imagine a gang of bandits eating their meals here. Do they dress for dinner, you wonder? What would be more weirdly incongruous: three dozen bandits wearing tuxedos, or three dozen bandits in their normal bandit outfits, eating in a room like this?

You walk up and down the long tables, looking underneath the chairs and moving around the silver salt cellars and sugar bowls.

Eventually, with the tables thoroughly searched, you have to concede that there's no key here. So as not to leave empty-handed, you pilfer one of the salt-shakers. You acquire an item: silver salt-shaker

• • • Search the sideboard

You examine the antique mahogany sideboard, which is lined with ornate chafing-dishes. The cupboards underneath hold more of them, as well as spare cans of fuel, serving spoons and tongs, and other fancy accouterments.

You start moving the chafing-dishes around for a more thorough search, and find an ornate brass key lying underneath one of them. Sweet. You acquire an item: hacienda key

• • • Search the china cabinets

There are four large antique china cabinets here, filled with various sizes of bone china plates and bowls, each one no doubt intended for a very specific sort of food and probably matched with a specific size and shape of fork or spoon (which, since I mention them, are stacked neatly in drawers in the cabinets, and made of gleamingly-polished sterling silver). You have some trouble imagining a rough unshaven mariachi bandit eating off of a delicate china plate with elegant rose patterns on it... though, if you imagine the pattern being cacti or barbed wire or something instead, it doesn't really get any easier.

You hear footsteps out in the hall, and turn just as a bandit enters the room and blinks at you in surprise. Fight!

• • Enter the storeroom

http://images.kingdomofloathing.com/adventureimages/crates.gif This room is pretty much just what it says on the label: a storeroom. It's a very well-organized one, though -- crates are neatly-stacked with plenty of room to walk between them, everything is plainly labeled, and you don't see a speck of dust. Over to one side of the room is a large workbench, with tools hanging neatly on a rack above it; on the other side of the room is a cabinet full of rifles, with shelves of ammunition next to it and a table with gun-cleaning supplies nearby.

It's a storeroom to be proud of, really. Hopefully you'll be able to be proud of finding a key somewhere in it.

• • • Search the crates

You walk up and down the rows of crates, looking at the neatly-stenciled labels: "Bandoleers", "Guitar Strings", "Beef Jerky" ..."Napkin Rings"? "Egg Cups"? Out of disbelief, you start levering open the crates. They are indeed filled with silver napkin rings and porcelain egg cups. What kind of bandits are these guys?

You carefully search the area, but don't manage to find a key to Lopez's hacienda. You do find the lid from a can of sterno, however, which strikes you as oddly out of place considering how fastidiously tidy these bandits seem to be. Hmm.

• • • Search the workbench

The workbench is impressively neat and tidy -- no sawdust or wood shavings lying around, different sizes of screws and nails all have their own little jars... the bin of scrap wood nearby is carefully sorted by size and type, even. A wide variety of tools are hanging from a pegboard on the wall behind the bench, all of them clean and well-maintained -- nobody's used a chisel as a screwdriver, or the handle of a screwdriver as a hammer.

One of the bandits is in the process of building a little wooden birdhouse. It's pretty nice, and has a sort of Art Deco style to it.

You search the bench and rack of tools carefully, but don't find a key. You take a monkey wrench instead -- maybe you can throw it into Lopez's plans. Ha ha, see what I did there? You acquire an item: crescent wrench

• • • Search the gun cabinet

Sadly, the gun cabinet is securely locked. You gaze wistfully through the glass at the rifles and pistols arranged inside, but decide breaking into it would be too noisy. Turning your attention to the nearby table, you find several bottles of oil and cleaning solution, plus a stack of neatly-folded rags, as well as various cleaning swabs and little tools arranged in organized rows. The ammunition shelves are similarly well-organized, with boxes of shells sorted by size and type, and little labels on the shelf-edges below them. The obsessive neatness displayed by these bandits is starting to grate on your nerves just a little.

You poke around the stuff on the table for a bit, but don't find any keys. Then you turn to the ammunition shelves, and find a bandit standing there looking at you quizzically. Uh-oh. Fight!

• Head down the hall to the right

http://images.kingdomofloathing.com/adventureimages/3doors.gif The hallway turns a corner here, but further exploration in that direction reveals that it leads to the front door, which is probably best avoided. Anyway, there's plenty to investigate right here: three doors, which (peeked through carefully) reveal a large communal bedroom, a library, and some sort of living room or parlour.

• • Enter the bedroom

http://images.kingdomofloathing.com/adventureimages/nightstand.gif As expected, this room is filled with rows of bunk-beds to accommodate a couple of dozen sleeping bandits. However, you've never seen finely-crafted antique solid-oak bunk-beds before. Also, the sheets and blankets look pretty expensive, and the beds are neatly made, to the point of fastidiousness. Some of the bunks have sets of silk pajamas carefully folded and placed on the foot of the bed. On the whole, it's a long way from the moth-eaten hammocks and burlap sacks stuffed with straw that you were expecting.

There are a number of carefully-matched antique dressers lined up along the walls, which look to be a likely place to find a key to Lopez's hacienda. You also spot a door to the bathroom on the far wall.

• • • Search the beds

Man, just look at these beds. Soft feather mattresses, thick fluffy pillows, absurdly high thread-count sheets... these look like handmade Amish quilts, too. You think back to your campsite and wonder briefly if they'd let you join. Then you smack yourself in the head and start searching for that key.

You carefully search the area, but don't manage to find a key to Lopez's hacienda. You do find an apple core, however, which strikes you as oddly out of place considering how fastidiously tidy these bandits seem to be. Hmm.

• • • Search the dressers

You inspect the rows of antique dressers, noting that the drawers all have little brass plaques with the bandits' names on them. Presumably so the bandits don't accidentally get each others' drawers. Or socks.

You don't see any keys in the immediate vicinity, so you start pulling open the drawers and poking around. You still don't find any keys, so you steal a pair of sock garters instead. Because, seriously, mariachi bandit sock garters? That's just too weird to not steal. You acquire an item: sock garters

• • • Search the bathroom

This is the least horrifying communal bathroom you've ever seen -- all the shower stalls have partitions (with doors!), and all the surfaces are gleaming and polished. The toilets look clean enough to use as soup tureens (though you'd have to be careful not to accidentally flush your dinner). There aren't even any toothpaste splatters on the mirrors over the sinks. You wonder if all the bandits are neat-freaks, or do they just have one very tired OCD guy?

You search the room carefully, but don't find any keys. However, as you're looking around the sinks, you happen to look up at the mirror and see a bandit standing behind you with a towel and a puzzled expression on his face. (The towel isn't on his face. Just the expression.) Fight!

• • Enter the library

http://images.kingdomofloathing.com/adventureimages/bookshelf.gif You sneak into the bandits' library, which is unexpected just by its very existence, and find it to be as well-appointed as any you might find in a fancy gentleman's club (the kind with actual gentlemen, not the kind with poles on the dance floor). Plush carpets, plusher armchairs, tall bookshelves stocked with expensive-looking leather-bound volumes... there's even a little table with an exquisite ivory chess set on it. When you start using words like 'exquisite', you know it's a fancy place.

All in all, it's really nice in here, and definitely incongruous to what the outside of the fort looks like, with its broken bottles and bullet holes. Maybe it's like putting duct tape on the frame of a really nice bicycle, so no one will bother to steal it. Or maybe having good taste in furnishings is frowned on in bandit society? You begin to wonder if they have to hide all the nice furniture and pin nudie calendars on the walls when the bandit regional manager comes for a visit.

• • • search the bookshelves

You walk down the length of the bookshelves, looking at the authors on display: Balzac, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Joyce; the collected works of Shakespeare and Sophocles; treatises by Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Descartes... Then there's a shelf of books on theoretical physics and chaos theory. The lightest fare you can find is a shelf of novels by G. K. Chesterton, Alexandre Dumas, and Haruki Murikami. Man, what's with these guys?

After a more thorough search of the shelves, you spot a shiny brass key lying next to a three-volume set of Dante's Divina Commedia in the original Italian. You acquire an item: hacienda key

• • • Search the chairs

The room houses a collection of extremely comfortable-looking overstuffed leather armchairs, each with a matching hassock and a reading lamp standing beside it. You sit in one experimentally, and find it so comfortable that it's a wonder anyone could read more than a few pages this way before falling asleep.

A few minutes go by before you realize you really should get on with searching for those keys. After a few more minutes, you think that you really definitely need to get back to searching before someone comes in and finds you here. A few more minutes pass before you finally manage, grudgingly, to get back on your feet.

You start looking under all the chair cushions, only to be interrupted when a bandit sitting on one of them objects. Fight!

• • • Examine the chess set

A table in the corner of the room supports a finely-detailed hand-carved ebony and ivory chess set. The white pieces seem to be famous historical adventurers -- you think the king must be Boris, and the queen appears to be Jarlsberg, which is something Jarlsberg probably wouldn't have been very happy about. The black figures are various monsters, with Knob goblins as the pawns, and the Naughty Sorceress as the queen. The king is a sort of vague swirly demonic-looking thing that you don't recognize.

Someone has left a book entitled "Chess Problems of the Grand-Masters" on one of the chairs. It's bookmarked to a page describing a very complicated zugzwang situation, which you can't really make heads or tails of because you can never remember how the little horses are supposed to move.

You don't find any keys here, sadly. And although you are a thief, you just can't bring yourself to steal one of the chesspieces -- breaking up the set would be terribly rude. You make do with stealing the bookmark out of the chess problems book. Now they won't know what page they were on! Ha ha! Take that, bandits! You acquire an item: leather bookmark

• • Enter the parlour

http://images.kingdomofloathing.com/adventureimages/fireplace.gif You step into the parlour, which is lit by a crackling fireplace that fills the room with cozy warmth. The hardwood floor is mostly covered by a large intricately-patterned Persian carpet, on top of which is a fancy antique pool table with elegant maroon felt. You think the balls might be actual ivory, too. The walls are covered with glossy wood paneling, further covered with expensive-looking paintings and stuffed hunting trophies. Over in one corner you see what must be a small bar, except instead of regular bottles of booze it's all crystal decanters.

You're beginning to feel a little jealous; your Guild hall's lounge isn't nearly as nice as this.

• • • Examine the pool table

As I said, this is a finely-crafted antique pool table. The felt is a deep elegant maroon color, with not a scratch or cigarette-burn to be seen. The balls do appear to be made of ivory, as you guessed --you roll one across the table toward another, and the click they make has a rich, cultured tone.

You start searching the pool table for a key, even taking the balls out of the various pockets. Soon, you look up and find a bandit standing there looking at you, obviously wondering why you've got your hands in his pockets and are playing with his... well, anyway. Fight!

• • • Examine the bar

You take a moment to peruse the collection of crystal decanters covering the top of the antique mahogany cabinet. Just about every kind of booze you can think of is represented here, with little brass plaques on the bottles so you don't confuse the bourbon for rye. Above the bottles is a shelf full of various types of glasses, as well as (naturally) a stack of coasters. The cabinet itself proves to be a cleverly-concealed mini-fridge, with one side being an ice-maker and the other storage for various mixers and garnishes. Man, you could get a seriously fancy drunk on with this setup. What do rich people call getting trashed? "Blotto", or something?

You search the bar for a while, but don't turn up any keys. You decide to help yourself to a drink, instead. In fact, you help yourself to several drinks, and a crystal decanter to keep them in until you need them. You acquire an item: decanter of fine Scotch

• • • Examine the fireplace

A fire crackles cheerfully in the fireplace, shedding a warm orange glow -- you can feel yourself relaxing automatically, despite the danger of your mission. Three comfortable-looking leather armchairs stand in a semicircle facing the hearth, and on the wall above is a large stuffed rhinoceros head (its facial expression the same one used by every rhinoceros ever, at all times: "..."). Below the rhino, the mantelpiece holds an array of knickknacks: a vase of flowers, some framed photographs of people you don't recognize, a box of expensive cigars with a cigar-cutter and a box of matches lying next to it, a little bronze bust of Mozart, and an errant cube of chalk from the pool table. You brush some dust from Mozart's head and return the chalk to its proper location, then stop and wonder what the heck came over you.

Shaking your head, you return to the fireplace and poke around for a key to Lopez's hacienda. You find it behind the cigar box and pocket it, but not before turning Mozart to face the wall and putting the photographs in disarray, just out of spite. You acquire an item: hacienda key

There, that should cover it. Except that leaves me with only four keys. --Xero storm 06:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

• Apparently the way to find the keys is to look for the sentence about something that "strikes you as oddly out of place" appended to the room descriptions. For example, if you see an out of place toothbrush in the kitchen, the key will be in the bathroom. And judging from the text above, this is randomized per character/ascension. Also, you can pickpocket keys (or at least 1 key) from the mariachis. --Prestige 08:57, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Actually, I'm going to append my theory and say that each location can contain one of the following: a key, a clue (out of place item), a fight, a location-specific item drop, or nothing. --Prestige 09:18, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I FOUND a key at the fire place in the lounge. In the same description where i found the key, I also found an out of place pool chalk on the fire place mantle. When I went to the pool table during the next adventure, I found a combat (Sleepy Mariachi) (in which I stole a key, but none the less). Though Maybe the Sleepy Mariachi is considered a favorable encounter. --Darkwolf 16:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Also got the out of place gun rack text whcih lead me to find a key in the gun rack room. So I think the clues do lead you to either a key or a safe combat. Where as the other areas could be an item, nothing, or an Alert Mariachi --Darkwolf 16:57, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Regarding pickpocketting keys. I "auto-pickpocketted" one from the first sleepy mariachi I met, but not the second. I didn't have to try to pickpocket them. Darzil 22:50, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I auto-pickpocketted a spangly sombrero from a sleepy mariachi and then had it drop from the same monster after he turned into a surprised mariachi after two rounds of combat. Not sure if it's a bug or just interesting. --Quince23 19:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Opening "The Island Barracks"

Despite having visited the fishing village, I killed a couple of mariachis (and got my first key) early: Didn't get the "under cover of darkness .... [continue]" until I'd thrown some sneakiness on.--ArgghFW 11:15, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Combat rate

I just got a fight with -26% Combat. So the combat rate is higher than 25% >.>

13/2 noncombat-combat, if I remember correctly. If needed, I can check logs. --Raijinili 23:29, 6 May 2012 (CEST)

• I'm actually somewhat inclined to believe that it may be some set rate that is unaffected by +/- combat%. A lot of the nemesis island content seems to ignore the general mechanics of combat (olfaction and banishing don't work). So it wouldn't be a leap to think that combat modifiers also don't work. --RoyalTonberry 00:00, 7 May 2012 (CEST)