I am the seeker of help.

I was loving this game, I really was. The mood, the pacing, the writing, the feeling that my choices were having a meaningful impact on Harry's physique, and how that played out - all fascinating. Then came my 4th day. My skill checks dried up, the engaging dialogue options ran out, I began aimlessly wondering.

I felt like I was getting a good steam, the church is a rave, the body is gone, I've found my badge and coat, I've been on a date and unpicked a ghost story. The neighbor trusts me, as does the barman, who'll be sealing up the hole in the neighbors wall. I've discovered my name (my proper name), I've discovered my car, I only have half a dozen quests and none of those are currently accessible, so I am stuck, oh so very stuck.

I'm so very stuck that I resorted to conversing with every single NPC, attempting to find the few remaining XP points that would allow me to unlock just one skill that in turn would allow me to further some important conversations (Convincing Titus that's he's being manipulated, for example). But even when I finally managed to scrabble them together I failed the check. I then proceeded to take the quest lines that I had no desire of participating in (forcing the women out of the village, agreeing with Measurehead etc). This felt both unpleasant, and ultimately turned out to be useless as I still didn't get enough XP to progress the story.

I finally gave in and read online what to do next and discovered that I needed to speak to Ruby. Turns out I've not unlocked enough of the game to activate the shivvers on the sign, so here I am. In limbo, without any way to obviously progress. If anyone has any viable way that I can move the story forward, I just want it finished now, I went from having a really wonderful time to feeling like it is a really dull slog.

Not sure what you mean by not having unlocked enough of the game so everything after this may not be helpful at all, sorry if that's the case!

If you find yourself unable to pass the skill check, pretty much any side quest located in the area or involving the area where the sign is found will lower the difficulty of the skill check upon completion. It's been a hot minute since I played the game but I seem to recall getting it down to where I could only fail with snake eyes.

If all else fails, kill time until Day 7, finding Ruby isn't actually mandatory. Read a book (no really, this progresses time).

It seems there are certain steps you'd need to take before you get the shivvers check on the sign (currently I don't). I just presume I've not taken them yet, but I may have misinterpreted the walkthroughs I shuffled through.

I guess I'll dig into peoples dialogue trees deeper, see if there's anything buried I missed. Thanks for the tips, if all else fails I'll do your if all else fails tip.

That shivers check on the mural is a major structural flaw of the game. There are several ways to boost that check, which you may or may not have done already. Here's a list of ways to modify that check:

-3 for finding the empty trap while checking them for Morell

-3 for hearing Lena's true story.

-3 for going out with Lilienne for a date.

-3 for identifying the dead body at the boardwalk and delivering the news to the wife at Capeside apartments

-2 for using the payphone near the boardwalk fish market until you talk to Dolores Dei.

-2 for helping Andre establish the nightclub at the church

-2 for helping Soona with her project and discovering the anomaly at the church

-1 for finding Idiot Doom Spiral's jacket at the fish market and having it cleaned up at the fishing village.

-1 for using Visual Calculus to reconstruct the execution at the boardwalk entrance.

-1 for recovering your gun after confronting the Pigs

Your best bet is to go down the list performing any of the tasks you have access to, checking the mural after each one. Also recommend savescumming in case you exhaust all the available checks without succeeding.

@martyns: Ah I see. It's been a long time since I played so I can't say I know what those steps are. I would guess if there is some unlock condition it'd be things that help you narrow down your suspect list, though I also can't recall what those conversations would be except finding the bullet in the fishing village house and asking the lady about it.

@imhungry:

Thanks for your sage advice. Turns out there was a super important dialogue option buried deep deep in Titus's conversation tree. That triggered the next stage and now an awful lot has taken place.

Sadly I still feel tainted by my significant pause and largely want it to be over. Think I'll clamber to there end, take some time off and replay it at some point, just to wash the taste out of my mouth.

Disco.