I make it a case to pirate games. I play through them fully. If i enjoyed myself after the game I'll buy a new copy.
This allows me to give all games an equal chance even if I am skeptical about them.
Grimrock was one of those games I was skeptical about but I gave it an attempt.
I really enjoyed the game but the 4 item puzzle on floor 9 ruined it for me.
The developer had to know that not all parties would have an archer to provide arrows
I stopped collecting rocks at like level 3
My minitaur didn't have the skull collecting feat so I never bothered to pick the things up.
It would probably take me 2 hours to run around empty floors looking for these items.
I know you're trying to make the puzzles difficult but theres a difference between difficult and just tedious and time consuming. The other puzzles were nice this one made me stop playing.
There are many ways you could have done it better.
-You could have added a counsel command that let players drop items into their bag (games much older and more difficult than grimrock let you do this.)
-You could have made there be more than one solution to the puzzles (an axe is beats bane and does indeed have a steel head, any of the random alchemy plants could be considered tears of the earth, any chunk of monster could be considered a severed dead)
-You could have made this one of the optional puzzles.
-You could have required that the player only need some of the items to solve the puzzle (like you only need to fill 2 pedastals instead of all 4)
Good game I had fun until the this part but this is unacceptably bad. I'm not gonna buy a retail copy or recommend it to my friends.