A quick introduction on how to set up and use the Zereth Mortis Puzzle Helper addon in WoW
Patch 9.2 introduced the land of Zereth Mortis and a slew of puzzles that are already making some players want to pull their hair out. If you want to make your life a little easier and protect your beautiful head of hair, you should check out the Zereth Mortis Puzzle Helper addon.
What is Zereth Mortis Puzzle Helper?
As the name implies, Zereth Mortis Puzzle Helper is an addon that helps you with the 3 puzzles in Zereth Mortis. At a high level, the addon works by giving you a cheat sheet window that you’ll input some information into, and then you’ll click a solve button.
If you are a purist and want to struggle through the puzzles, or you are just amazing at them, you won’t need the addon. However, for the rest of us mere mortals who spend 30 minutes working on a single puzzle, this addon is for you!
How to use Zereth Mortis Puzzle Helper
To start using Zereth Mortis Puzzle Helper (ZMPH), you will need to install it first. You can do this manually by downloading it from CurseForge or through an addon manager like WowUp. If you need a more detailed guide on installing addons, check out my article here.
Once it is installed, you can begin solving the cantaric, mezzonic, and fugueal puzzles with ease.
Cantaric Protolock Puzzle
The first type of puzzle you’ll encounter in Zereth Mortis is the cantaric protolock. This is the one that has a grid with icons glowing on the vertical and horizontal axis. Each time you click on an icon, it will turn off every square in that row or column.
Your goal is to turn off every square all at once, and that is where ZMPH comes in.
To solve this puzzle with the addon, you simply need to have the addon installed and then open the puzzle window. A small black grid that looks like the cantaric puzzle with numbers along the left and bottom side should pop up. If it doesn’t, try accessing the addon menu by typing /zmph in chat and make sure the checkbox for cantaric is enabled.
If you don’t like the size (scale) of the addon window, you can also change it in this menu!
To use the addon, you need to match the light-grey or “on” squares in the puzzle to the numbers in the addon window. Luckily you don’t need to match every square, just the ones in the first column and bottom row. As an example, let’s look at the puzzle I showed an image of a second ago.
You’ll notice that there are 3 squares “on” in the column closest to the left side. There are 5 more squares “on” along the bottom row.
To translate this into the addon, I would need to click on the number that cooresponds to each of the squares that are “on” in the first column or row. To make this more clear, here is another full example of a puzzle that I used the addon to solve. You’ll notice that the lights in the addon match the squares that are “on” in the first column and row of the puzzle.
Now that I’ve selected the numbers for my grid, I can hit the solve button to see the solution. You’ll notice that the addon now matches my puzzle exactly, and the numbers have changed locations. This tells you in what order you need to hit the switches to open the protolock.
And that is all there is to use the addon for cantaric puzzles!
Mezzonic Protolock Puzzle
The next type of puzzle you’ll encounter is Zereth Mortis is the mezzonic protolock. The idea behind this one is pretty similar to cantaric puzzles, but I personally find it to be a much greater challenge. Like the first puzzle, your goal is to turn every square off in the grid.
However, this time things are trickier because the lights turn off in a plus sign shape when you click on a square. This can be painful when you’ve spent 10 minutes on one puzzle and can’t get that last square to turn off in the dead center.
Luckily the Zereth Mortis Puzzle Helper addon works great on mezzonic protolocks. All you need to do is click on the squares in the addon grid until it looks like the puzzle.
Once it is matched up, you need to click solve. If you are like me, it might make you feel stupid when you clicked 50 times and couldn’t solve the puzzle that can be done in 5 steps.
Fugueal Protolock Puzzle
As mind-boggling as the mezzonic puzzles are, they have nothing on fugueal protolocks. The fugueal protolock is basically the Mists of Tirna Scythe maze on steroids.
The goal of fugueal puzzles is to group a set of 9 symbols into 3 collections of 3. To figure out which 3 should go together, you are supposed to look at 4 different properties:
- The shape of the icon outline (circle, square, hexagon)
- The number of lines in the shape outline (1, 2, 3)
- The symbols in the middle
- The number of symbols
The rule is that “each rune must be either all identical or all different for each property.” While this seems like a relatively simple concept, it can be mind-numbing.
Fortunately, solving fugueal locks is also possible with Zereth Mortis Puzzle Helper. Let’s look at how it works.
When you start a fugueal puzzle, the addon will open a grid nearby with 9 boxes that each have 12 symbols. This will allow you to select the properties for each icon in the puzzle.
Before you get overwhelmed, let’s dive in and look at one of the icons by itself first. I’m just going to start with the top left symbol because that makes sense to me.
But how does the shape translate to the addon?
In each of the 9 squares, you’ll see 12 symbols. The first row of symbols represents the shape of that icon. In our case, it is a hexagon.
The second row is the number of lines in the hexagon. For us, that is just one line.
Next is the icon used in the middle of the shape, which for us, is a square.
The final row is the number of icons inside the shape. Since we have 2 squares, we can click on 2.
The end result looks something like this:
Now that we have selected all the properties for the top left rune, it is time to do all the others. After a moment of matching, here is what I have:
With the properties all inputted, all that is left to do is click solve. If everything is done right, another window with colored squares will pop up with the solution.
Now you just need to click on the runes based on their color and enjoy your loot!
Final Thoughts
If you or your beloved hairline is suffering from Zereth Mortis Puzzle Syndrome, you may be entitled to assistance from the Zereth Mortis Puzzle Helper addon.
Thanks for reading!
