I'm going to start this guide with something you probably don't want to read, but it truly is the main idea you need to accept if you're going to make steady progress. This game requires a certain mindset to play. Odds are you've read the Steam reviews that say getting stuck is a "skill issue" and found them patronizing.

The main thing to understand, though, is that Mount Holly is overflowing with things to do. If you look for them, you will find them. And looking for them, specifically, is the skill you need to practice.

The rest of this guide elaborates on that idea. But the main thing to avoid is deciding that you know the solution to a puzzle, and that therefore must be the next thing you do. You probably are right about how to solve that particular puzzle, and you're probably right that the only thing keeping you from solving it is getting the right rooms drafted in a single day. But at the same time, each individual room you draft is part of at least one other puzzle, usually many more.

If you look for these other puzzles, you will be constantly making forward progress, discovering connections, and finding even more puzzles to tackle. Eventually, the rooms you need to complete the puzzles you've already solved will fall into place, but in the meantime you need not be at a standstill.

This is ultimately a change in mindset. It might not be for you, and if it isn't, that's ok. Not every game is fun for every person, especially not one as opinionated, reasonably or not, about what it expects from the player as Blue Prince. If you want a game where you can go straight from point A to point B as soon as you know what to do, then unfortunately this is probably not a game you'll enjoy. But if you find yourself wanting to like Blue Prince, then this is what will allow you to open up the game.

You have discovered a puzzle and realized that if the right rooms are drafted while you have the right items, you'll be able to complete it. Great! When those pieces fall into place, put it to rest.

But don't stop at that one thing. While you're waiting for Mount Holly to cooperate with you on that specific puzzle, it will be offering dozens of others up for you. Add them to your list of things to do as you uncover them, and you'll quickly realize while it's rare to get a specific combination of rooms, most days give you several useful combinations - even if they weren't the ones presently on your to-do list.

This does mean that you have to keep track of which puzzles you have made progress on and be able to remember which ones are available to you as you're drafting. This is one of the reasons the game encourages you to keep pen-and-paper notes as you play. Check your notes regularly, or at least take the time to write them down so they stick in your head more readily. Oftentimes the act of taking notes is more important than the fact you have them.

Blue Prince is both a roguelike and a puzzle game. And unless you go out of your way to avoid puzzle games, it should not come a surprise that the first step of solving a good puzzle is realizing that there is a puzzle in the first place.

Puzzle video games have a long tradition of hiding puzzles underneath the player's nose. There is a unique joy in sniffing out the initial trail of a puzzle and chasing it out into the open. The Myst franchise makes its puzzle contraptions easy to find, but the first step is always figuring out their controls and logic for yourself. Braid popularized a style of puzzle design where the player is presented with a basic set of mechanics, but each puzzle asks them to discover a new specific interaction or implication of those rules on their own. Since then, games like A Monster's Expedition, Can of Wormholes, and Baba is You have taken that idea and run with it. Baba is You is a great example of another common trope in puzzle games: You can solve the hardest "vanilla" puzzle in the game and watch the credits roll, but if you stay curious, the game folds in on itself and reveals meta puzzles that re-contextualize everything you've seen up to that point. The Witness, Taji, and A Good Snowman are other examples of the same. And Tunic and Outer Wilds take all these ideas and apply them to their narratives, tying grand metafictional puzzles spanning their entire games to their true endings.

Blue Prince uses all of these tropes. It's not unique in doing so; you can easily argue that all of the examples above do as well. But this shouldn't be a surprise. Discovering a secret is fun. Games are about fun. So a good puzzle game will tuck puzzles underneath every little corner it can.

The upshot of all of this is that if you keep an open mind and look for puzzles in Mount Holly, you will find that the mansion is filthy with them! If you're stuck, you probably past two dozen puzzles on your way to drafting the final dead end of the day and didn't realize it. You won't be able to engage with all of those puzzles right away, as many of them are obscured underneath multiple layers of hidden information and meta progression. But there are just as many you can play with presently if you're willing to simply look for them - and you only need to find one or two to make progress.

One specific, immediately practical thing you can and should do with this information is aggressively draft new rooms as they are offered. Oftentimes, willingly drawing a new dead end that ends drafting for the day proves more fruitful than exploring another half of the mansion. The rarer rooms especially are stuffed to the brim with overlapping puzzles and information that re-contextualizes other parts of the house. If you take several new rooms every day, you will finish more days having made very real, permanent changes to the house than not.

The flip side of Blue Prince being both a puzzle game and a roguelike is that it is a roguelike. And in any other roguelike, the idea that you'll only be able to attempt secrets on the rare run where the stars align isn't objectionable at all. Not every run of Enter the Gungeon or Star of Providence will even be offered the opportunity to go to secret dungeons, let alone have a strong enough build to take advantage of them. Some runs of FTL or Balatro get all the pieces needed for a game-busting synergy except one, but never find that final piece. Sometimes Slay the Spire doesn't give you decent attacks before you have to fight an elite, sometimes Inscryption doesn't offer you the totem or sacrifice fodder you're looking for, sometimes you don't have the momentum to confront the DLC final boss in Monster Train.

But very few people complain about any of those games. The fact that some runs are more privileged than others is a strength, not a weakness. It makes the rare run where everything comes together all the more exciting. And unlucky runs push the skill floor and ceiling higher to allow masterful players to prove themselves with win rates and streaks.

Blue Prince will reward you for taking some of this attitude into it. If you take the rest of the advice in this guide, you'll rarely have a run where you can't accomplish anything at all, and those few unfortunate runs will wrap up very quickly. But be patient for the windfalls. Roguelikes ask you to prove yourself by making steady progress across many mediocre runs before rewarding you with a high roll, and there's no reason Blue Prince shouldn't be allowed the same pacing.

It's not all so dour, though. Blue Prince also has roguelike-style permanent meta upgrades. As you complete puzzles, you'll gradually increase the number of resources you have at the start of each day and the number of tools at your disposal to manipulate drafting luck. As you solve earlier puzzles, the game rewards you with opportunities to force the rare room combinations you need to work through later puzzles.

These upgrades aren't subtle! You'll start days with more steps, a handful of coins, permanent new abilities that allow you to skip steps in some of the recurring puzzles, and the like. If you're frustrated because drafting seems to be tuned against you, it's worth pressing forward. Mount Holly will eventually yield to you and allow you more freedom in your exploration.

There are strategies for drafting rooms that allow you to explore further, see more rooms, and improve your odds of having the right tools at the right time. I am deliberately not describing them here because Blue Prince itself gives excellent advice on these strategies, and I promised this would be a spoiler-free guide. So I won't ruin the opportunity to discover drafting strategies for you.

Keep an eye out for volumes of Drafting Strategy: Architectural Digest throughout the mansion. They are the sources for these strategies. And they are intelligently placed so that you will almost certainly have the experience needed to fully take advantage of their advice as you come across them.

(If you would rather have this information now, I recommend this guide: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3466462051 It provides you with the contents of the most easily available drafting guide in Blue Prince. Its advice is outstanding and has made my journey through Mount Holly far more fruitful!)

I'll leave you with Herbert Sinclair's own advice to Simon. It is no mistake that this is one of the first things Blue Prince has you read.