Hera

The requirement to meet Hera, one of the Esrohs on HI2, is to answer all the riddle post questions on the game. When we first started playing HI2, we were all over answering the three questions at any riddle post we came across. This was great - our total of answered riddle post questions climbed quickly. The problem: we failed to keep track of which riddle posts we had already hit. Even without keeping track, we eventually answered 192/195 riddle post questions. That left just one riddle post out there that we had somehow missed. But which one?

This question haunted us for years. Any time we happened upon a riddle post in our travels, we'd click it just to be sure it wasn't the one we'd missed. Recently, we finally got serious about the matter and started systematically visiting all the islands in each island complex with riddle posts to cross them off the list one by one. First we went through all the Plains isles. No luck. Second we went through the snowy isles. Again, no luck. Next up, the desert isles. The last desert isle we investigated, or rather Lily and Odette investigated, was Dry Isle itself.

Aha! Found it at long last!

When I heard Lily's victory cry from across the room, my first thoughts were that she'd just won the lottery or caught a high-stat sooty palomino Hanoverian or something. XD I'm so glad Lily decided to try the desert isles early on in the search, but don't ask me how we overlooked Dry Isle all this time!

All 195 riddles answered, we eagerly headed out to Flurry Isle to meet Hera. Julie and Sardonyx had
the honor of starting off the quest.

When Pepsi asked to learn from her wisdom, she replied:

So, Pepsi and Sardonyx turned around and headed straight back to the desert to complete the first labor. Having met Dionysus a long time ago, Pepsi had no trouble getting down the sinkhole on Golden Isle to deliver him his letter from Hera.

They then returned to Hera to tackle her second labor.

 The question:

We took one look at this and immediately opened up a new tab to Esroh Legends for some assistance. The help site came through as usual. The answer, if you care, is A=9 B=8.

We all took turns at the reins to collect the necessary ingredients for the cornucopias from the foreign isles. That adventure kayak sure comes in handy!

Thanks to Esroh Legends, we also knew we'd need to craft 2 Esroh materials for labor #4. As long as we were collecting ingredients, we figured we'd prepare for that too. So, we travelled to the Marshy Isles to collect one rare ingredient, some unfortunate unusual bugs from pitcher plants. (Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire!) After that came a journey to the Leaf Isles to collect another rare ingredient, colorful dust.

Once we finally had the cornucopias and Esroh materials crafted, we returned yet again to Hera.

From there we made the journey out to Shipwreck Isle and found LordDoubloon, who will row players out to Center Isle for a hefty fee of 20 doubloons.

For the first time, Pepsi visited Center Isle!  I was controlling Pepsi at the time and chose to go to the north east entrance first.


Center Isle is not as impressive as you might expect. Just three complicated but not very large tunnel systems and a leafy terrain center. To get to the center, we had to find and pull the lever in each of the three tunnel systems.

For whatever reason, Usko and I had a horrible time finding the lever in the first tunnel system. Then later when we tried looking again, we found it easily. Go figure.

Lever 1

After that we had to spend 20 more doubloons each for LordDoubloon to take us to the other two tunnel systems. Julie and Yellowstone found the levers in these without much difficulty. Show offs. XD

Lever 2

Lever 3

Finally, we arrived in the leafy terrain center!

Pepsi couldn't yet meet Zeus, obviously, as he requires all the other Esroh quests to be finished first, but she did get to meet his guardian and see his sinkhole.

Pepsi told the squirrel that we had been sent by Hera to pick up her gift. We passed her the Esroh material so that Zeus could make the finishing touches on it, and then...

So it was a crown! Too bad we didn't get a look at it. Pepsi made the trip back to Hera, who was thrilled with her gift.

The reward for all this was a competition boost in endurance. Since we don't compete much, this isn't a very big deal for us. Still, it doesn't hurt, and we're one Esroh closer to meeting Zeus!

Flurry helped us celebrate afterwards by providing Pepsi with a meteorite. We also fluted a pretty gray Norwegian Coldblooded Trotter there. :)