Secret of Kateen Forest - continued

[darkexiler]

I was intrigued by Kateen Flower Decoration and other mysteries related to Kateen Forest maps so I decided to give it a go at figuring it out.
If anyone has any useful information or feels like contributing, please go ahead and post! Knowing those secret ToS quests it will take more than one person to figure out.

First, here’s a list of old information I gathered up:

The Secret Of Kateen Forest

Kateen Forest has incompleted secrets that have yet to be discussed at much length here on the forums. The best I’ve been able to discover are some old necrod threads with some minor references and discussion but nothing of much weight or value. I believe that the Sleeping Owl statue in this forest can be awoken and the ghosts here can be sent on their way to the next world, for a tasty reward of some sort. So, I’ve been searching the place, today I’ve spent 14 hours on the map and I’ve got a …

Secret to entrance of kateen forest + hidden flower hat

theres been a mystery surrounding kateen forest for over a year now, and recently more and more people are requesting to know about the kateen flower headpiece now id like to bring up this topic again, as theres a secret npc in kateen forest named “troubadour” who appears in multiple different spots in kateen forest during different times of the day. personally ive encountered him twice, in 2 different spots. both times he says a few things then ends with “id like to help you, but i must go so…

Sleeping Owl Statue in Kateen Forest

[image] this is the only thing i found

Here’s some extra screenshots for convenience and info, which I consider, might be relevant:

• Soldier souls near owl statue at Entrance to Kateen Forest sometime speak of a “returning demon”.
  (Sounds to me like: a) he is referring to the cause of their death, or b) he apologizes for something that happened between soldiers and the owl. My bet is on a though and that it’s not relevant.)

  Returning demon

  

• Stone slab in Owls Burial Ground:

  Stone Slab

  

• There is an interactive gravestone in Owls Burial Ground that displays a message.

  Gravestone

  

• There is a large boulder in Owls Burial Ground:

  Boulder

  

• At the end of it’s quests Weak Old Sculpture at Nualpes Lowland in Owls Burial Ground asks you to pray at Garden of Consolation (in Owls Burial Ground) for souls of soldiers which it tended to (what was the purpose of it’s quests). (My bet is this is irrelevant though.)

• Supposedly there is a hidden achievement quest " Owl Burial Ground Test" at Owls Burial Ground. I haven’t yet seen it’s starting NPC though. It is likely unrelated to other hidden Kateen quests though.

• There is a soul collection gimmick in Saknis Plain.
  Knowing these kinds of gimmicks and the population of nearby monsters it is a SADISTIC one. I never tried to complete it. It probably takes a lot of effort while possibly being a dead end. If anyone has ever tried completing this, please post!
  Take note, that supposedly this stone pillar can be killed by a Puragi linking with it. Watch out for that!

  Gimmick

  

• The Saknis Plains’ Explaining Owl has always been at it’s spot for me. This owl has two dialogues.
  (To me this sounds a bit like “Hi fellow owls” - like it’s not a real spirit-guiding owl.)

  Explaining Owl

  

  Explaining Owl's texts

  

• There are a few dormant interactions in the bottom parts of Poslinkis forest.
  None of the quests of this map are using these interactions. This map is also related to Cryomancer quest “Private matter” (which temporarily spawns an altar on that map) and Nak Muai unlock quest but neither is using these interactions.

  Dormant interactions

  

• The Broken Horn is controversial. Supposedly it has never been confirmed to exist.

Here’s some of my thoughts, theories and tips:

• Considering the number of mysterious spots and time that has passed since “Kateen Flower Decoration” has been in the game files I am assuming that there is a hidden undiscovered quest rather than an unfinished one.
• Take note that “Kateen Flower” referes to all maps of Kateen Forest, not necessarily just “Entrance of Kateen Forest”.
• I believe Awoooo’s “lighting up candles” theory is incorrect. It might be simply a matter of game visual settings. The candles in Entrance to Kateen Forest have never looked any different for me than like the ones of the screenshot.
• My guess is that Sleeping Owl Statue with soldier spirits need to be triggered manually upon meeting some condition. I assume this because of the interaction icon when you hover your mouse over it.
• The above should be true also for Stone Slab in Owls Burial Ground.
• It is probably safer to make experiments after completing all owl sculpture quests in ToS as some/all of them might be a part of trigger condition.
• WinterChase seems to be describing Storage Quarter’s “Freedom” quest of making an owl sculpture and leading lost souls.
  I have found no information on this “Emancipation” quest however. WinterChase is describing a “stone slab” and “cave”. Possibly that’s related to Owls Burial Ground’s stone slab and boulder?
  (I have yet to investigate Storage Quarter.)
• I don’t know how/where to find most of these texts from greyheim’s post. All I could find is the Scout’s message (he is at the very bottom of Entrance to Kateen Forest) and Tesla’s dialogue of regaining consciousness.

[praquenicknickpraque]

Soldier souls near owl statue at Entrance to Kateen Forest sometime speak of a “returning demon”.

I believe they are talking about the Deadborn boss.

Look at the description:
Usually referred to as a monster that returned from the dead. In reality, it underwent death to be reborn as a demon.

That boss is listed as mutant type in the database besides what the description says.

https://tos.neet.tv/npcs/57123
https://tos.neet.tv/npcs/58524
There are more versions of this boss in the database, but they are too high level, so my guess is that they aren’t related.

Deadborn hint in Fedimian

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/99012985040695296/450085674801168439/unknown.png
Sorry, image upload didn’t work properly so I’ll leave a link instead.

Since it mentions Kateen Forest and Deadborn for no apparent reason, I believe they want us to figure this out, like if it were their way to lead us.

Oh, I just noticed that this screenshot’s text is one of the Greyheim’s post that you were talking about. Good, looks like the right track.

The map Entrance of Kateen Forest is connected to Tenet Garden which is also connected to Guard’s Graveyard. So, close nearby there’s a gimmick inside that map where you also gather souls to an Owl Statue, I tried it but only managed to get junk pieces of armor.

I find it interesting because the job of the Owl Statues is to guide the souls and here we are doing the job for them.

Owl Statue in Guard's Graveyard

Please let me know if I can help you with anything, but we probably play on different servers.

[venetiansnare]

Kateens pretty mysterious, a lot of the owl maps have a ton of unimplimented quests, I’ve always thought the sleeping owl, boulder, and explaining owl are hidden quest

There’s a hidden quest in Lemprasa Pond that has to do with a chicken hat, but it’s not activated, and a hidden quest in Karolis Springs involving a owl, but it’s not active. I saw Troubadour one time in Kateen by the upper pond. If you look at Kule Peak, it has maybe like 5 quests you can finish, and like 30 un-implimented quests. Kateen also I think was supposed to have a Deadborn quest.

The stone slab in Owl Burial Ground, if you give it 20 or 25 fishing rods it gives a tiny mdef/pdef buff of like 80 for 15 mins

I’ve tried talking to the owls with the Watcher Gear set too, no effect.
I completed every single quest including hidden quests on one of my chars that I use to investigate these and haven’t found any change in the NPCs leading me to believe there’s some time based thing.
Also the Troubadour has 5 spawn points in the map, but they’re random and the time he spawns in the map is random I think too, he’s very hard to find.
I also tried having 5 people set bonfires next to each bonfire in the map and it did nothing

The bonfires in Kateen seem to sometimes be on, and sometimes not on from what I’ve noticed

More stuff I’ve seen here if you like tos secrets
http://toshidden.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-3.html

[venetiansnare]

There’s also a Kateen crossbow that’s no where to be found in game
https://tos.neet.tv/items/183102

[darkexiler]

@praquenicknickpraque
There is an easy boss fight event with Deadborn in Entrance to Kateen Forest so that’s definitely correct. Only question is, wheter that’s related to the hidden quest or not.

I did Guard’s Graveyard gimmicks once. I don’t think there’s much more to it than the equipment set you mentioned, unless completing Guard’s Graveyard gimmicks is one of secret trigger conditions. I’d bet that’s not the case though, considering that most other puzzle dungeons had no such importance.

Good job finding that clay tablet in Fedimian. It’s clearly related to Kateen Forest. I’d say that it’s fairly possible for it to be a part of a secret trigger (it’s much like how other hidden quests are done in ToS).

I play on Fedimian. We probably won’t be able to meet but we can still discuss here and share our thoughts and findings. Thanks!

@venetiansnare
Wow! This is a very useful link.

I haven’t found out that the Explaining Owl statue gives extra dialogue when pestered. Guess I didn’t try hard enough there. The extra lore it mentions could be enough of a reason for it being there but who knows if there isn’t more than that.

In my experience bonfires are sometimes out shortly after I enter the map. After a short while they all lit up. They are already related to a quest (and it’s a one where you gotta light them up) so I wouldn’t count on them being part of the secret.

Taking a closer look at the crossbow I notice that it comes from a recipe. One of the ingredients is High Vubbe Cross Stick which looks like leaves. This looks like a bug or placeholder visual.
The other ingredient is a level 170 Chaser. Crossbow itself is a level 75 weapon. That doesn’t make much sense.
Considering these two things I would bet on this crossbow to not be implemented.

Lately I did all quests in Storage Quarter. I still haven’t been able to start the Freedom quest though. I wonder what I’m missing for it. Anyway, considering that this quest does not unlock simply from completing “The Past of the Spirits” + level 211 as mentioned on tosbase it might not be a standard quest of Storage Quarter.

Here’s a few things I plan to try for now:

• I’ll be doing all or most of the owl statue quests.
• I also want to try out the Saknis Plains Gimmick. It’s a pain in the behind but I noticed one thing. If you kill enemies near the stone pillar they barely ever respawn. This leads me to assumption that spawning locations near the stone pillar must be shared with other parts of the map - if you kill an enemy near the pillar, it’s gonna spawn elsewhere and it’s not coming back. If that’s true, farming monsters all over Saknis Plains might speed up completing this gimmick. It would surely help to have multiple players work on that.
  One thing I want to try after completing this gimmick is talking with Explaining Owl (with unlocked extra dialogue already).
• Getting rods for stone slab gimmick in Owls Burial Ground. Gonna try interacting with boulder while gimmick buff is on.

All this is likely to produce no results, but it’s always worth to try.

Here’s a list of things that I wonder about:

• What’s the context of Owls Burial Ground’s gravestone? Who wrote that message and who is it referring to? Sounds like the latter person gotta be a ghost. Troubadour is not a ghost, is he?
• What’s that “Emancipation” quest that @WinterChase has? I can’t find any information about it.
• Where can I find/How to unlock the Tesla-related dialogues which I’m missing.

[nizidr]

Guard’s Graveyard has another gimmik, different from guiding souls to Owl statue:
on the second part of the map if you light a campfire in one of 9 square rooms with some sort of pollution/gas - all monsters will get a debuff.

And i have always pondered what if you were to light campfires in all 9 rooms? But to check that 9 players are needed, since each player can have only 1 active campfire.

[darkexiler]

I once did that during CBT (if I rember correctly). I had no effect, except for me feeling embarassed in front of 8 other players. <: |

[nizidr]

it may have been inactive back then…

Also, there are a metric crapton of places in Kateen forests where your character will try to interact with an invisible/unselectable/unnamed object and nothing happens upon interaction, except char turning toward that object, mainly they are graves in various parts of the map(s).

[venetiansnare]

usually if you want to find a hidden NPC you can use blessing because it will target the object, it doesn’t always mean though the objects on a spawn time or ingame like for example in Saknis

i’ve gone into kateen and at different times seen the bonfires lit in different numbers (one time 4 were lit, one time 0, one time all 5 and I’m convinced it wasn’t related to questers)

I’m at the point where I think there’s some hidden timer
Don’t forget there’s also quests in the game that get unlocked when you use specific emotes

https://tos.neet.tv/quests/50077 here’s the tesla quests for fortress btw

[venetiansnare]

i’ve tried interacting with boulder with the slab buff and its not related, the slab is like a small def buff for 15 mins, it goes away if you leave map, definitely curious tho

[greyhiem]

I received a tag for this post.

I could attack objects with this buff, but I have forgotten where to get it. It was very strange so I took that screenshot of the effect. It might have been a bug too.

It was a long time ago I encountered the tesla quotes. I don’t think it’s relevant.

Back in the day I also did some mercenary post party-quests (solo with F6 to create party) to get gems. I cannot remember all party quests. One party quest did redirect me to Poslinkis forest for a quest, but it did not affect Kateen forest.

This was the quest:

[Guide] Dungeon guide (type /indun in game) -Version 2017 May 3-

Private Matter: during the quest you have to travel to Klaipeda and speak to the Cryomancer master. He is at the bottom left of the map. He will ask you to travel to the map Poslinkis Forest and kill enemies to collect ice fragments. You will have to hunt enemies, and bring those fragments back to a specific location at the map. The drop chance of the ice fragment is very low.

This might be a clue for you, though I do not believe it is related. Maybe a hidden unlock once you repeat the quest multiple times? I tried it once only.

I did explore all party quests for the guide outdated guide here<< but I cannot remember another quest for Kateen forest owl.

Unless you feel very adventurous, it’s best and easiest to find someone who is able to look into game files to check Kateen forest quests.

[venetiansnare]

There also used to be a lv16 guild mission that involved stopping Sequoia from running amok in Karolis Springs but it got taken out I think recently

Lorewise Tesla created Sequoia to help guard the forests with the owls or something, here’s another thing worth looking at

https://tos.neet.tv/zones/1191

tons of quests not in game yet on this map, alot of them have to do with the owls

[Entwy]

I got this

Explaining Owl

Kateen Forest

[Edelgard]

[darkexiler]

It seems to me like the bofires in Entrance to Kateen Forest always light up when I see them for the second time. Might be just me though. I haven’t spent much time experimenting with them.

I’ve seen the Storage Quarter quest info. The thing is: I’ve met the requirements but I am not able to start the Freedom quest. Tesla never offers it.

I’ve been trying to offer rods to the stone slab as well. It gave me a few options:

Stone slab offerings

I picked the “20” one and received a defensive buff. It was different than the one greyhiem got. I guess there’s multiple options here. Guess we gotta try all of these. Take note that stone slab’s message is pretty enigmatic.
I’ve been trying to get myself another buff but the stone slab has been igoring me since. Possibly I have not enough Fishing Rods with me. I had 64 when I got the buff the first time. I got 50 now and getting no response.
How many Fishing Rods did you guys have when you got your buffs?

I finished all quests at Karolis Springs and Letas Stream. There’s lots of graves in Karolis Springs that give me an interesting behavior.

Karolis Springs graves

When I pass through these graves they spawn a visual effect and one of a few possible messages about praying for the souls or wondering if they are at ease. I tried triggering all of these graves that I could find but nothing seemed to happen.

@Edelgard
That’s an interesting spot. Where is it?

[venetiansnare]

i can confirm the graves message in karolis is recently put in

Edelgard’s pic is from Kvailas Forest near the entrance

[darkexiler]

I tried Owls Burial Ground buff again. It was the same one as before. It gave me exactly 70 defense and magic defense.
This time I was sacrificing Fishing Rods one by one. Then at some point I gave 15 and that’s when I got the buff. It seems the amount you sacrifice is just added up to a counter which eventually gives you a buff. That’s probably also what stone slabs message is about.

There’s one idea I had though: perhaps a large group of players could try approaching the boulder at once. Maybe that does something. I was inspired to this by the stone slab message.

[darkexiler]

I made a map of those graves at Karolis Springs.

[Jiyuu]

Have any one do/try this quest? Positive of curiosity.

Or any Lv 9999 quests that probably related to kateen (katyn), owl sculpture and Tesla.

[Csiko]

Have any one do/try this quest? Positive of curiosity.

Or any Lv 9999 quests that probably related to kateen (katyn), owl sculpture and Tesla.

I saw this quest listed in my efforts to uncover the headgear mystery myself, and could never figure it out.

I also recall seeing changes to Main Chamber a few months ago, and despite running around and redoing all the quests in there I had previously missed, I couldn’t uncover anything.