Private Detective

[Guest]

OK just completed with a perception bonus of 230.

Found 5 Clues on the body.

And eventually 5 clues in the hotel - spread across 3 rooms. (+1 fake)

Questioned everyone, but as someone else had started it and then left, was running out of time.

I accussed the most obvious candidate and got a message that I had accused the wrong person.

Accused every one until I found the right murderer.

So it seems that as long as you have all the clues you may not need to actually work out the murderer.

[Kanz]

Hangon, you accused everyone, in the same 'session', of the quest? without restarting it?

[Tsi]

I've only ever been able to accuse two people before losing. Which is fine, because there's normally only two people who fit the murder weapon.

[rhysy54]

I had the worst one ever.
Diane had been stabbed through the heart.
Three of my suspects were chefs, the others were employed by assassins.
Then to top it all off- every suspect had been in the room or around it at the time of the murder.

[Private Detective]

done it, i have a 196 bonus in ot.pe, set watch to high and looked at the body to get 5 clues.
1.It looks as if the victim put up a fight... handfuls of clothing have been torn from the corpse's body.
2.The corpse has a fine bloody line across the neck, and an expression of perpetual discomfort. The face is discoloured and purple.
3.One of the corpse's ears is torn, as if something had been ripped through it.
4.The left hand of the corpse has a band of slightly pale skin around the ring finger, quite distinct from the flesh tone of the rest of the hand.
5.The scent of roses is heavy in the air around the corpse.

I then found 1.scrap of cloth 2.garotte 3.earring from ear 4. ring and 5.the perfume bottle

not the actual game descriptions but hey, then I found out who the assassins where (diane and troi), I first accuse troi, that was wrong, jole was acting suspicious so i accused him, that was wrong, I then accused diane the only other sin and got the quest.

with one of my alts I could only accuse 1 person, with this alt I could accuse three for some reason, im guessing because my ot.pe is much higher with this alt, good luck, its all about the ot.pe

[Kanz]

I have a much higher ot.pe than that and I was only ever able to accuse 2. And I'd seen and found all the clues(and some bogus ones).

[tespis]

Okay... what would one do without you... solved this quest in the first attempt...

The minimum bonus is a bit lower, nevertheless... I only have 198 with watch high and flat cap. It took me 9 'examines' to find all the clues in the body. The items (2 fake) appeared without problems. I got stuck with the questioning (it is VERY ANNOYING when they just stop answering; or they lie, you ask again and they keep retaining the answer). I almost randomly fell on the 2 most suspect, the second accusation did it...

[guest]

tespis said:

I only have 198 with watch high and flat cap.

watch high looks at your unstated perception bonus, so things like prayer beads or the flat cap won't increase your watch high bonus.

[BadGirl]

Aaagh, had to give up on this one because the d**n hotel started crawling with hitmen - and the Coffee Nostra don't like me very much ... one I could avoid as I'd searched that room, 2 was silly.

Anyone know how long you have to wait before it resets and you can try solving another murder? Thanks.

[guest]

When you start the receptionist should tell you what time the police will arrive, I'm pretty sure you can redo the quest after that time.

[BadGirl]

May have reset already then, thanks.

No mention of how long the police were going to be either - just that she had called them.

Plus in a desperate attempt not to "lose" the quest, I recklessly accused everyone (and of course was told not to be silly as I didn't have enough evidence) - point is, I wasn't limited to the two accusations as indicated above. Perhaps that limit only kicks in when you have accumulated all the items and asked a certain number of questions - I'd found most clues but not really got stuck into questioning the NPCs at the time I had to leg it from the hitmen.

[shell]

i say murder in the reception room, and i get nothing, nada .. zip ... what's the go?

[Orani]

I'm doing it right now... I saw such a high level quest yesterday and decided I wanted to do it... my OT.PE bonus is only at 143 (with 1+wis beads). I have found 2 clues over about 20 examines, so maybe the requirement was nerfed or the higher it is just increases your chance of getting it dramatically.

[Elera]

First of all, I think there's a bug somewhere in the hiding of items in the quest. I've solved it several times, yet with the same bonuses, sometimes one item is never found despite trying all add_items etc several times. I bug repped it, and maybe they'll fix it (it's not AM after all).

Second of all, this quest is a great way to get ot.pe and ot.po TMs, even if you've already solved it before.

STARTING THE QUEST
I think the minimum ot.pe bonus is 175 or 180 (check yours with "watch high" to see if it's enough). Go the receptionist and say "murder". If you want to know when the real cops will arrive and you'll be out of time, say "murder" again. She'll tell you who the dead person is, where they died, and when they were found (IRRELEVANT).

Now make up an excel sheet or other type of chart, with the names of the suspects (everyone in the "game" area: drawing room, dining room, lower hallway, garden, kitchen, upper hallway, ballroom, balcony, and privy - 9 rooms) on the columns and the times of day (early morning, early mid morning, mid morning, late morning, early afternoon, early mid afternoon, mid afternoon, late afternoon, early evening, early mid evening, mid evening, late evening) on the rows.

FINDING CLUES
Go to the corpse, and look at it with "watch high" turned on until you see five clues (wound type + 4 of: earring, ring, perfume, cufflink, torn clothes, rope marks). This is ESSENTIAL. Even if you find all of the evidence in the hotel, you won't get credit for solving the murder unless you see all the clues on the corpse yourself. The clues will typically be apparent 1-3 at a time. Looking at the corpse uses a big chunk of gp (50?), so make sure you have enough other.points before looking, or you'll only see the wound.

Write down these 5 clues somewhere. Now you can either start looking for the evidence scattered around the hotel, or you can start interviewing people. I prefer to swap between the two since interviews eventually leave everyone unwilling to talk for a while, and searching gets stalled by waiting for gp regen.

INTERVIEWING THE SUSPECTS
On my excel sheet, I have the suspects listed at the top of 6 columns. I start with the first one, ask the 4 questions, and move onto each one in the order on my sheet. That way I don't waste any more time than necessary in waiting for someone to be ready to talk again. I suggest starting with getting everyone's movements during the evening because the murderer always has alibis in the evening resulting in all suspects seeing each other more frequently:
sayto <suspect> Where were you this evening?
Suspects lie. A lot. Even if they're totally innocent. Verify these locations by asking who they saw in the locations they claim they were in. They don't lie when they say they saw someone.
sayto <suspect> Who did you see in the <location>?
That will tell you who they saw there at any time throughout the day.

As you work through the suspects, they'll start corroborating each other, and provide details on who they saw at other times of day (afternoon and morning). Then you can ask where they were during the afternoon/morning, and verify it based on who they've seen in those locations.

I suggest doing this until you know where everyone was at all times of day. Next it can help to find out where the victim was prior to dying. The victim usually dies in late morning or early afternoon, but might not have been seen at all prior to death (except by the murderer).
sayto <suspect> Where did you see <victim> this morning?
sayto <suspect> Who did you see in <room> this morning?
It can be hard to fill in these blanks, since the suspects will all lie about half the time.

By now, you should know who was always in the room with someone else after the victim was murdered. This is your murderer. To verify, you can ask everyone about their occupation:
sayto <suspect> What is your job?
sayto <suspect> What is <other suspect>'s job?
Assassins seem only to do garroting and poisoning. The weapons used by the others should be clear based on their job descriptions.

Asking who everyone likes and dislikes seems extremely random and useless. Even with consistant replies, the murderer is rarely anyone that disliked the victim was was disliked by the victim. But the syntax is:
sayto <suspect> Who do you like?
sayto <suspect> Who does <other suspect> like?

You still might have multiple people that could be guilty. This is where the evidence come in.

GETTING THE EVIDENCE
You need to find the 5 items associated with the clues on the corpse. This is ESSENTIAL, and you will not get credit for solving the murder without doing this.

There seemed to be a highish ot.pe check (200-215) a few weeks ago when I did this quest, but I've also done it several times with bonuses between 182 and 192. My guess is that the perception check is fairly random with each search and/or piece of evidence. At any rate, use "watch high" and search in the limited number of hiding spots:
Balcony: chair, creeper, plant, pot
Ballroom: chair, cupboard, trapdoor
Dining room: buffet table, cupboard, trolley
Drawing room: cupboard, desk, drawer
Garden: bed, bush
Kitchen: cupboard, drawer, sink
Lower hallway: cupboard, drawer, plant, pot
Privy: cabinet, cupboard, privy, sink
Upper hallway: clock, couch
It's important to use the singular (pot, not pots) even if it's plural in the room description. This is just poor/lazy implementation by the creators. The hiding spots don't always match up to add_items either. Two items that look the same when looking at them will not both be the same hiding spot.

Hopefully you found all the items associated with the murder. If you're not sure who the murderer was, check the locations of the suspects to see who was in all of those rooms any time during or after the murder. Theoretically it could possible be multiple people that fit all the clues, but I've never seen it happen and the quest may be designed to avoid that.

SOLVING THE QUEST
Go to the room with your murderer and
accuse <murderer> of murder
If you're right and found all the clues and evidence, you'll get 400K xp.

[Panzy]

I just managed to figure this one out on my third attempt and thought I'd put down a good method of doing this that worked for me.

Make sure you keep track of everything you find out, from who said what, where you find evidence when you search, etc the more info you keep the better to look back at if you need to. The first times I did this I thought some things were irrelevant and found out that they weren't irrelevant later. This is also very important since you can't rely on any single thing someone says since they often lie ...

This took me about an hour and a half in total.

So my procedure is as follows:
1. examine the body to find the clues, do it multiple times if you have low perception. My ad.pe is over 250 bonus and I saw all 5 clues most times.

2. Go and find the clues around the rooms and keep track of which rooms you find the clues in. Make sure you find them all, there are some fakes. A list of searchable places is listed elsewhere in this thread.

3. Find out who is familiar with the murder weapon. You will get so many characters changing what they say, and other's not corroborating, you have to go by consensus. So go and ask every character what their job is and what the job of everyone else is and keep track of it in a table.
"What is your job?"
"What is <person>'s job?"
So then you'll have 6 responses as to each person's work. For me the murder weapon was poison, so I added up the responses that could be familiar with poison (assassin or alchemist). That gave me numbers of 4, 3, 5, 0, 0, 0 for the 6 people. That narrows it down to a possible 3 people at least.

4. Try to get some idea of when the murder happened. You could try asking them:
"When did you last see <victim>?"
This didn't help for me at all, they all said they hadn't seen the victim. But later on one of them did say they had seen the victim in the mid morning - very confusing! So at least I know it was probably after mid morning.

5. Now you have 6 rooms at the most you care about. The murder room and the 5 rooms with clues. One was double for me, so I only had 5 rooms. So basically go to everyone and ask them for each room:
"Who did you see in the <room?>"
Collate their answers in some kind of table. There will be some lies thrown in there, but by doing this you should be able to see if there is one stand out person that was in all of the rooms with clues after the murder happened and has a reasonable score from part 3.

6. Accuse them

I hope this is reasonably clear to understand and helps some people finish this. It was enough to get me over the line without having to go fully overboard with questioning.

Good luck!