Loot Boxes

Herzwesten and I got together to make another puzzle! I'll let him do the talking, but first we'd both like to thank juff for the very helpful test solve!

"Hi folks! I was basically raised by text adventures, so I jumped at the chance to work with Joe on this puzzle. We went through a lot of iterations on how we could pull off such a theme, landing on something that was fun to write (and hopefully fun to solve). If you have played a lot of text adventures, feel free to give me a shout (at herzwesten on social media sites) to tell me some of your favorites! If you haven't, and want to dip your toe in the waters with games that also use wordplay (sometimes in a very cryptic crossword way), I can recommend two games.

The first is an Infocom game called Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It, and though I'm not certain about whether you can play it online for free, a quick internet search will turn up something, I'm sure (wink). 

The second is the more recent Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short, an excellent game about removing and adding letters to words to make other words. Enjoy!"

[online]