#triscarf

The Tuques

It seems like there's no placating these vicious little guys! But...

Triscarf

Triscarf won't attack you as long as you haven't killed any Tuques!

"Sorry about the cats! They get antsy and bitey around new people. Hmm... I know! Here, take this scarf! It smells like the family, so it should get the little buggers to leave you alone."

Frozen Scarf: A scarf that’s dusted with frost. You can see your breath while you wear it. Makes you weaker to ice damage and frostbite in exchange for incredible resistance to fire damage and burning. Tuques are passive to you while wearing this, and can even be pet if you interact with them on the overworld or in combat.

"Can hardly blame the little guys for acting up! It got so nippy all of a sudden... global warming, amiright?"

Earmuffs

If you deal damage to Earmuffs using the spade that you can find in their room, the cursed will end combat and attempt to speak to you.

The shivering man seems excited, gibbering incoherently before offering you a few bags of salt.

Obtained Ice Melt Salt (x3)!

Returning to Earmuffs after getting rid of each and every ice block throughout the apartment will have him ramble his incoherent thanks. You can only make out a few words through his intense shivering, but the gist of it is that he's grateful for your help clearing the 'driveway' before 'ma' got mad. In return, he offers you his shovel!

Snowy Shovel: A singlehanded melee weapon that grants +20 attack and deals cold damage. Has the skill Fling Snow, which costs 6 STM, deals light cold damage to all enemies plus a small chance to inflict freeze, and has a greatly increased chance to damage the weapon.

Trapper Hat

Using a gas bomb on Trapper Hat causes the parasite on their head to yelp and skitter away. Trapper Hat immediately falls asleep, and if you run away instead of continuing to fight them, they’ll be asleep on the overworld too.

They can still be fought but will never actually wake up once the parasite is off their head, making them a free kill at that point. You know. If you wanted to.

Scarf

Managing to deal fire damage to Scarf or inflicting them with a burn causes their icicle-head to melt away, revealing a frost-bitten skull with massive icicles jutting out of its eye sockets. Combat promptly ends.

“THANKS! I CAN SEE A LITTLE BETTER!! IT’S BEEN HARD TO SEE STUFF LATELY!!! I THINK I MIGHT NEED GLASSES!!!!”

If you have them, you can attempt to give Scarf the glasses item found in Vincent's apartment. They will, however, turn down your offer.

"HA! YOU'RE NICE!! BUT I WAS JUST JOKING BEFORE!!! I KNOW MY EYES ARE COMPLETELY TRASHED!!!!"

Balaclava

If you pet the Tuque that Balaclava is encountered alongside, he will quickly realize that you mean no harm.

"...Wait! You guys are cool? Sorry, sorry, thought you were one of those nutters from down the hall. I'll chill out. See? No funny business!"

Speaking with Balaclava after exiting the battle prompts him to fill you in on what's going on.

“Okay, so, my brothers and I were back home for the weekend visiting ma for her birthday, right? My oldest brother gets here last, the day before all this started, and he ice-olates himself in his old trophy room, really gives us the cold shoulder before anyone saw that he’d... changed. The rest of us start blocking off the windows like the news said to… but it just kept getting colder and colder! Took us a long while to realize that the cold wasn’t coming from outside, but from us! Blue skin, icicles, and shivering like bejesus… mom gave my older bro hell for giving us whatever he caught, and then he ran off in a flurry. Things only got worse since. I could use whatever help you can offer! I feel like I’m losing my cool here…! Nobody else in the family will acknowledge what the hell is going on… see these clothes? They don't freaking come off! I think they're just my skin now."

At this point, you can offer to help which brings up a whole menu of questions you can ask which has more options that more rooms you've seen.

> The guy with the scarves.

“Right, you must have already met Skyler? I can tell: the cats like you. He’s mostly sane, thank goodness… but he’s in denial or delirious or something, won't acknowledge that anything is weird. He should be fine... it might sound cold, but therapy will have to wait.”

(If Earmuff's room has been entered)

> The guy with the shovel.

“Yeah, Mitch is doing real bad… I think his sanity is on thin ice, you know? Keeps muttering about all these ice blockades. Maybe get rid of em?”

(If Trapper Hat's room has been entered)

> The guy with the weird hat.

“Yup, that sounds like Danny. He’s got some sort of parasite or something chewing up his head? It hasn’t let him sleep since it latched on, but I don’t know how to get it off without hurting him too.”

(If Scarf's room has been entered)

> The guy with the icicle head.

“I’m real worried about Jackie, they just keep attacking anyone who gets close… they might have lost their mind, but it’s hard to tell. There's snow way to tell if they can even see under all that ice…”

(Always available)

> Anything I should be wary of?

“God, yeah, look out for ma. She’s… well, she’s hanging in there! Really! She’s just… very very big. I keep meaning going in to check on her, but I always get cold feet. Would you mind? She's in the bedroom."

> What's with all the ice puns?

"...What ice puns?"

Balaclava won’t react if you’ve killed any of his family or the tuques, as he will be unaware if you have done so. Successfully pacifying the rest of the family and returning to speak to Balaclava prompts new dialogue:

“Oh man, I really can't thank you enough! I would reward you... but you’ve kiiiiinda been stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, so… how about your reward is that I overlook that you did that. Cool? Cool."

If you haven't actually taken anything from the apartment up to this point, Balaclava will instead reward you by giving you the go ahead to take whatever you want! Which changes nothing, but hey, your conscience is clearer.

Pompom

The massive, elongated creature shivers and shuffles in place, futilely trying to warm up. She seems unaware that her body is what's producing the cold in the first place. "Suh-Suh-So c-c-cold... this suh-suh-stupid buh-buh-buh-building, the c-c-central air muh-must be on the fuh-fritz again... cuh-could I buh-borrow some c-c-c-c-clothes? Puh-Please! Anything w-w-warm w-w-will do!"

She will then accept any clothing item you offer up! Each one has a hidden 'insulation' value, which I am not QUITE insane enough to make up and type out a full list of. The short of it is that something like the padded jacket is worth more insulation points than something like the tank top, and let's leave it at that.

Running out of clothing before Pompom is satisfied or trying to back out of the menu results in her preventing you from leaving.

"Suh-Suh-Suh-Seems l-l-like you suh-suh-still huh-have one c-c-c-coat l-l-left. A n-nice... s-s-soft... w-w-w-warm... c-coat of s-skin! Don't buh-be selfish, sh-sh-share it! P-Please!!"

At this point, Pompom will attack you and must either be fled from... or fought and killed as normal, of course.

Upon returning with enough warm articles of clothing (or just giving her enough the first time), she will be properly pacified.

"Ahhhhh... much buh-better... how to repay yuh-you? H-How about some hot ch-chocolate? It's an old fuh-family recipe!”

Obtained 'Hot' Chocolate (x5): An impossibly cold chocolatey drink. It stings your hands through the mug when you hold it. Can be thrown at an enemy in battle, dealing ice damage and inflicting the frozen status.

"Sigh... it's always b-been our little hockey star's f-favorite... if you find him out th-there, you tell him that his fuh-family is worried about him, okay?"

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And that’s a wrap! Round four is complete at long last, after a small delay! Don't work on long posts through Tumblr mobile, you will lose massive chunks of text, and you will weep.

Tune in next time as we cover the door encounters and the giant rats who make all of the rules!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

It seems that the freezing temperature within the apartment is coming from the bodies of the residents themselves as opposed to a malfunctioning air conditioning unit, or something else along those lines.

Supporting this idea is the fact that most of their bodies seem to be actively growing ice, and nearly all of them have an ice breath attack that can freeze.

It's a neat Spin! They aren't merely in a cold area, they are the reason the area is cold in the first place! And judging by just how uncomfortably freezing they all look, these guys all seem to be victims to one of those 'constant agony' types of mutations. Imagine if your body was partially made of ice, but said body is also constantly telling you that this new state is impossibly, unbearably cold. You shiver, but it is mostly a reflex and offers you no semblance of warmth. Warmth is a thing that your body can no longer create. Chilling stuff.

I assume they're all a family unit, or at least very close! Mostly because of the layout of the apartment itself. I, personally, would not have a double wide bed with someone I only consider a roomie.

Assuming the family idea is correct, I like to think Pompom is the matriarch! Balaclava strikes me as the owner of all the video game consoles and games we find around the apartment.

My thought regarding the Tuques is that they are, or rather, used to be cats! This explains why there's more than one. The poor things started climbing into loose piles of winter gear once the apartment grew too chilly for comfort and eventually began fusing with them.

On that note. I like to think that, in the same way that Baby Teeth’s condition is spread via biting, this mutation is airborne. Specially, in the frosted over breath of those afflicted. Because damn wouldn’t that be so cool?

The apartment sure does have a LOT of winter gear, right? Though it could be argued that some of the clothes are grown from the resident's bodies, most of them do appear to be normal clothes functioning, well, normally (minus whatever's going on with Trapper Hat). That, plus the hockey gear and trophy in the closet make it clear that somebody who lives here is a hockey player! This goes a long way to explaining the quantity of the gear, since you need to dress warm to attend a hockey game.

But it's still odd, right? That somebody in the apartment would be a hockey player, but all of them look so extremely uncomfortable in their frozen states. Well, it might be a fairly obvious leap, but I believe that the Enforcer found in the sewers is the hockey player in question!

I know that it's fairly logical that the Enforcer is tied to apartment 34.

Like. Duh.

But seriously, his style of mutation matches that of the other frozen residents FLAWLESSLY, not to mention how glaringly out of place he is in the waterways! He also seems to be the only enemy in the entire game capable of inflicting the frozen status, apart from the apartment 34 residents.

But, unlike them, he is notably not visibly miserable.

My guess is that the Enforcer returned home after looking outside, and while everyone is holed up and shutting themselves in, he gradually spread his mutated status to the other members of his family. Each victim lowering the temperature of the apartment further and further and exacerbating the process.