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Hi all

We have just started playing and seem to be stuck on the first level (snow). We have been tasked with moving the snowman but we can't lift or kick/break him :/

Do we need to find a certain item hidden in the rocks? Or has the game glitched? We did start playing the demo and then bought the game from an in game promt :/ has this caused an issue?

Thanks for your help

You have to use the button to select a different item to select the blueprint sitting under the snowman. I too had to come to these forums to get past that.

Can't move the snowman? Don't recall that quest, unless it the quest to Thaw out Doug... which requires you to grab Doug and move him in front of the Fire Pit... which then allows you to punch him and break him out.

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New GamerTag : MaxSterling

Ahhh... that one. It's not really a quest per say. Just walk up to the snowman near the broken gate on the left of the map. Press B (red button) until the Blueprints are highlighted. Then pick them up.

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New GamerTag : MaxSterling

Can you guys help me with some feedback on this issue?

How many of you got confused by this?
Can you pinpoint why?
Were you playing a single player game or a multiplayer game when you first hit this?
Did you have tutorials turned off? (if so, why?)

Before you can even try to pick up the snowman, a tutorial message pops up explaining that hitting B will change your target. If you hit B, it will target the blueprint, which you can pick up.

Details:

Let me apologize for this. I regret it. I didn't realize it would cause so much confusion. The idea was to push the player to learn how to use the B button, since it's so useful, and so many players in playtest sessions were not getting it, and were running into problems later. But evidently it's a real problem. So, I'd like to hear why and how this was confusing, so we can possibly fix it in an update.

One possible source of the problem is that tutorials get turned off automatically in multiplayer games, for technical reasons. That's why I ask about multiplayer and tutorials. But maybe it's still confusing even with tutorials on?

Having played AKoK, I turned the tutorial off and had no issues with that quest. It was common sense for me since I paid attention to the buttons that show up when you are highlighting an object. As a matter of fact, as soon as I started the game I started assigning keflings to jobs and noticed the "B" option when assigning keflings to ice and shambles.

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New GamerTag : MaxSterling

I was playing together with the wife, so tutorials were automatically off. I knew how to select between things with B already, but neither me or my wife could figure out how to get past the quest. We finally did so accidentally, and I had to come on here to figure out how we did it.

A more robust solution in my mind, would have been having the blueprint at least visible, even if it wasn't directly selectable without the B button.

Made it like the eyeballs and silkworms... showered with glitter or whatever that annoying effect was.

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New GamerTag : MaxSterling

I'm fairly certain there was glitter or fireworks, but it appeared to be coming from the snowman, no indication it was coming from a hidden blueprint.

Yeah, I agree. That fat-butted snowman is all over that blueprint. The stars look like they're coming from the snowman. It's easy to follow when you know what's going on, but for new players I think it's pretty confusing.

Of course, "What's Next" tells you to pick up a blueprint, not a snowman...

I'm curious: Did you turn tutorials off entirely, or set them to "advanced"?

That "advanced" feature was essentially designed for you, people who had played AKFK, since it limits tutorials to only new features (e.g. builder brothers, cannons, warp gates...) and a couple of critical controls. Of course, we didn't say that, we just called it "advanced" to make it simple.

I think the blueprint pickup caught me out the second time I played through and my 5 year old daughter took a little bit of time to work it out as well

BTW - she loves the game and has her little keflings working very efficiently

Tell me more about this, please...

Can she read? Is all the text a problem? There's a lot of text. In particular, I worry about the made-up words the king uses, and the complicated language the scientist uses.

She can't read properly yet but she looks at the colors as prompts. She's a gamer already, plays her DS and internet games heaps so has a natural talent for picking things up in games without being able to read. I was sitting with her when she got to that point. She went to the snow man and tried some button combinations, but eventually sorted it out, I'm sure it was the sparkly fireworks things she saw that she knew she had to "unlock" by some combination/button press. I'd turned off all the tips for her because there's no point given she can't read them. Eventually she got it on her own. She's now finished her first section in the forest kingdom and is back in the tundra trying to mine rocks for ore to make metal. For the most part she refuses to do ANY work at all and assigns pretty much everything to keflings.

She was a bit upset when I told her she had to destroy a house to get a special item to build the keep as she'd used all the provided special items to build houses. She wouldn't have worked that one out on her own. In fact, that's one issue I found difficult to pass in my last two playthroughs, because if you destroy the houses before you build the parts for the keep then the factory generally shuts down (as the kefling running it gets sad since you destoryed his house) and you can't build the parts you need. Anyway - that's an aside - and as longs as you build the parts first, then destroy the house(s) for the special items you're all good.

EDIT: just to add more to the above, I realise your question is more generic on how she gets through the game. I've explained to her how to use the left trigger, right and left bumpers to bring up the "goal" and blueprints etc. She knows where to build building items based on the colour of the square so goes straight to whichever building she needs to and understands how many of each building part she needs based on the yellow hammer icon in the blueprint. Her forest kingdom is actually really well layed out, she even built a "jail" to keep the princess in for laughs, LOL.

There is actually a "Sculptor" building that can make new "Special" pieces for you. It has a yellow pad on it.