The Tale starts with players meeting up with the Alchemist NPC in their shack near the center of the island. The NPC explains what they are doing and why they need the player’s help. Optionally there could be an additional step in the Tale here that sends player off to another nearby island to pick up an extra ritual ingredient.

Next, players make their way through the island’s caves to the special, ancient ritual site. The cave system is a series of spatial awareness puzzles and small combat encounters. The puzzles feature a new interactable object: a winch with a wooden handle at the end of the rope. When players interact with the winch, they have to walk backwards in order to pull the rope.

This winch is introduced with a simple door. Players see the door, then find the winch, which opens it. Players have a view of the door while pulling to see the effects.

The next room has a door and winch, but this time a bridge needs to be lowered so there is space to pull the winch. If players attempt to use the winch without the bridge, they fall off a short ledge and let go of the winch’s handle, resetting it. Players must find the mechanism that lowers the bridge while being attacked by skeletons. Optionally, players can cross the bridge before it’s lowered to take another path to bonus treasure (etc.). Once player’s open the door, the skeletons stop spawning which encourages players to move on to the next room.

This room is a much larger cave and makes up the majority of the puzzle segment of the Tall Tale. The large chamber, however, is divided up into 3 sections by ramshackle, wooden walls. The middle of the cave and across the 3 sections is a pool of water that is deep enough to swim in the center. When players enter the first section, they immediately get a view of two large doors (one in the wooden wall and one in the side of the cave) and one winch. players cross the water to a raised platform on the other side and see that the winch is again too close to the edge of the platform to use correctly. However, skeletons spawn further along the ledge, which draws players’ eyes to a second winch. This winch opens the door in the wooden wall.

The second section introduces a new mechanic for the winches: you can use a harpoon to pull them. The section features a winch on an inaccessible ledge. There is a harpoon on a platform across from it that player use to interact with the winch, thus opening the next door in the wooden wall. Additional skeletons can spawn to disrupt players using the harpoon.

The last section of the large cave room features another door (in the cave wall) and winch on a ledge, but this time there is a harpoon rowboat in an alcove in the back. Players must row the boat into position to use on the winch. The door only leads to a dead-end room (with treasure), however.

The real puzzle is that players must remember the unopened door they encountered at the beginning of the big room and realize they can row the boat back through the two doors in the wooden walls in order to open it with the harpoon.

The last room has two doors with ropes that lead up through holes in the celling and outside. Players head back outside and find two winches on a small cliff facing the sea. If players had stumbled upon these earlier, they would not have known how to interact with them, but now that they learned how to use harpoons on the winches, they know they can use their ship’s two harpoons to pull the winches.

Passed the last set of doors and through a tunnel is a small ritual chamber. Here the alchemist NPC is waiting. On a table in the center of the room is a humanoid shaped pile of rocks, minus the head. Players initiate the ritual by interacting with the NPC (e.g. giving the NPC the last ingredient). The NPC starts the ritual by placing a skull on the table where the rocks’ head should go. After a bit of magical flourish, the skull snaps into position against the wall or ceiling and the whole room begins to shake.

The ritual room is actually directly underneath the big rock at the center of the Hollow Shores, and now that rock and a few other boulders nearby all stand up together as a giant Rock Monster with the skull as it’s head. This also opens the ceiling of the ritual room to the sky and creates a path back out to the surface. The NPC celebrates their success as they and the players climb out onto the shore. Players get to run around the Rock Monster and get a good look at him while the Monster get accustomed to his new body.

After a brief period of calm, skeleton ships burst out of the water off shore and skeletons start swarming the shore. An enemy skeleton captain/lord has been spying on the alchemist NPC and is now here to steal the ritual’s recipe. This combat’s main purpose is to demonstrate the Rock Monster’s abilities in an interesting way, but also in a safe way for players as this Rock Monster that they summoned is on the players’ team. The Monster can stomp the hordes of skeletons to defeat many of them at once. The Rock Monster also picks/digs up rocks from the ground to toss at the skeleton ships.

The players’ ship is incapacitated during the fight so they can watch the Rock Monster’s actions. One potential way for the boat to be stationary is for the skeletons to shoot "Anchor Ball" type cursed cannonballs at it as they appear.

The mission ends with the captain ship getting a barrage of shots onto the Rock Monster’s head. Defeated, the Monster “happens” to fall back into place right where the boulders started: blocking the hole to the ritual room, resetting the island.

The captain has stole the ingredients/recipe for the ritual! This can be explained through dialogue from either the skeleton captain as they leave, or the alchemist NPC. Maybe he runs back to his shack and finds stuff missing. After players finish the conclusion dialogue, they receive their mission rewards and the tall tale ends.