How do I finish Moon In The Man, and where is the hermit?

Steps

1. Get inside Hirom's house first; the intruder there is the quest giver. The door route is on the Locked Out page.
2. Talk to him until he mentions charcoal, a blank book and magic. Moon In The Man then appears in the journal.
3. For charcoal, search barrels and crates around town. If none turn up, Wizard Worm's guaranteed source is the charcoal burner south of town behind the mountain, where several pieces lie by the fire.
4. For the blank tome, complete Theodorus's own quest and it is granted automatically. If that is already done, buy one, or take one from the crate behind him.
5. Theodorus's quest is the snail. Leave town heading west, stick to the right side, pass two rocks, head towards a tree and descend into the canyon to the river. The snail, named voice of reason, sits under the bridge-like structure.
6. Return to the cursed man. He now speaks, and sends you to Chi'Alani.
7. Find Chi'Alani in the market square, up the staircase between the tavern and the shop, on the second floor.
8. She cannot lift the curse but names the hermit Detta, who is good with transformation magic.
9. Swim south along the shore to a small island on the southern beach. Wizard Worm's landmark is the neighbouring island of magical towers, visible from a distance.
10. Take the journal from the stool near the campfire. Then return the tome to the cursed man to finish the quest.
11. He reads the tome, appears normal to you, gives you something and teleports away. Tell the householder, who is relieved rather than grateful for anything else. What he gives you is covered below, because the one player who has it on tape could not work out what it was.

What two sources agree on, and what only one says

• Both recordings name the quest Moon In The Man, and both show charcoal as a requirement.
• Both reach a hermit on the southern beach. heistty reads the objective off the screen at 00:01:50 as 'Find the hermit on the southern beach', immediately after a line describing a spell that temporarily changes appearance. Wizard Worm narrates travelling far south to the southern beach for the same quest.
• Both find the island and loot a bow there, and both find the book. heistty reads its text aloud: diagrams and ramblings documenting the ability to change shape at will.
• Both find the hermit himself missing. That is the single most useful agreement on this page and it is covered below.
• Only Wizard Worm supplies the names Detta and Chi'Alani, the snail, the charcoal burner and the step-by-step route. Those are single-source and attributed.
• A third recording covers the start of the quest, which neither of the other two shows in full, and a fourth thing is true of it: RogueHeavy and Wizard Worm independently place the snail west of town. See the section on that recording below.
• Only heistty finishes the quest. Everything about the ending is one recording.

The third recording, re-read: it holds the beginning of the quest

RogueHeavy's ten-hour launch-week session, uploaded 18 August 2026, was first used here for one sentence — the objective text — and this page said so at length, arguing that a third witness to one line upgrades that line and not the page. The rule was right. The fact underneath it was wrong. Only the hours around that objective had been read. Twenty minutes earlier the same recording contains something no other source has: the conversation that starts the quest.

At 01:54:52 he walks up to the disfigured man and finds that he cannot speak. The player tries “Who are you?”, then “can you speak?”, then “Maybe you can write something down.” The being scratches a drawing of a book into the ground and the caption reads blank; the objective that appears is to find something to write with. That is where the charcoal comes from, and it is the only recording that shows why it is asked for.

The player had sold all of his charcoal, walks to a merchant, buys two pieces to be safe, and comes back. At 01:58:56 he hands them over and the game removes both the charcoal and a tome from his inventory. From that point the being communicates in drawings.

• The name Moonface is shown, not spoken: at 01:59:06 the being draws himself with an arrow pointing at the figure, labelled moonface. heistty's objective at 01:12:24 reads “Return the tome to moon face”. Two recordings, two different ways of reading the same name off the screen.
• The two recordings name the item differently. Wizard Worm calls it a blank tome; RogueHeavy's inventory notice reads depleted tome. The being's own drawing is captioned blank. The page therefore describes what the item is rather than asserting what it is called.
• At 01:59:12 the being draws a snail under an overpass with the word voice beside it, and the player reads the placement as just north of a small drain, west of town near the tower. Wizard Worm independently puts a snail named voice of reason in a canyon west of town. Two channels, two routes to the same corner of the map.
• The backstory is here and nowhere else. At 02:00:38 the being says the Saint did this to him: he entered the tower, found a grand amphitheater, confronted him, questioned his purpose and his motives, and “he made me taste every word”. His flesh bubbled and warped and he ran.
• He is squatting by accident. Asked why he is in the householder's house he answers that he does not know the man — “It was the first door I tried” — and that he cannot risk being seen.
• The step that sends the player to the seer is two-source as a step: at 02:01:34 he says find the woman here, she will know how to hide his outward shame. Only Wizard Worm supplies her name.
• His session predates Update 6 and Update 7, both of which changed quest directions and map markers, so none of his routing is used on this page.

The ending, recorded once

heistty is the only player in the pool who finishes this quest, so everything in this section is one recording and is marked as such. He returns the tome at 01:12:40 with the aside that it supposedly contains shape-shifting illusion magic — which identifies the book from the island as the item the quest wants, a link no other source makes explicitly.

What the being says next is the point of the whole quest. “This tome contains a divine spark. I will not be able to change my form, but merely how I am perceived.” He accepts that as a noble compromise. The player, seeing him change, says “You're back to normal”, and is corrected: “No, I am the same. I merely appear normal to you. That is all I can hope for. I cannot be restored, nor do I desire it.” Then he says “This is for you” and teleports out of the house.

The householder's reaction is the closest thing to a reward the recording captures clearly: “By the gods, that took forever. For once, I'm happy to have a visitor. You can be my very first invited guest.”

• The disguise is stated to be an illusion, not a cure. He appears normal to the player and is unchanged underneath.
• He fears being seen by the Saint. Before changing he says “Pray he does not see my betrayal. It could end badly.” Nothing in any source says whether that goes anywhere.
• The item he hands over is not identified. Thirty seconds after “This is for you” the player asks what he was given and answers himself: “I don't think he gave me anything.” He then examines a pair of boots the captions render as thriceworn tramplers and, a minute later, says he has heavy armour now. Whether either is the reward is not established and is not printed as one.
• This ending is the help-him branch. The other branch the journal offers — killing the squatter — is not taken by anyone in the pool, and the Locked Out page carries that gap.

The hermit's body is not reliably there

Wizard Worm looks for the hermit on the island, does not find him, and says outright that he found the corpse elsewhere on a previous run. heistty, playing separately, reaches the island, remarks that somebody lives there, fights something, and then states that the hermit is not there and speculates that a skeleton killed him.

Two players, two runs, two different outcomes, and neither can find a body in a fixed place. What both do find is the journal, and the journal is what the quest wants. Do not spend time hunting the corpse.

Reaching the southern beach is its own problem

Both sources above reach the island. The third spent most of a ten-hour session failing to, with the objective active and marked on his map, and never arrived. At 06:07:47 he says he has checked the entire coast. At 08:02:31, still looking, he says there is no information on this game yet. Nine and a half hours in he has still found neither the hermit nor the charcoal burner.

This is recorded because it is the ordinary experience an edited walkthrough removes. It is not a reason to doubt the route above. His session predates two updates that NerveLabs says clarified quest directions and added map markers, so a reader on the current build is not in his position.

• Two live objectives point south of town at the same time: the hermit on the southern beach and the charcoal burner south of town. At 06:36:02 he mixes them up out loud.
• He reports that the in-game compass and the map disagree about which way he is facing, saying at 06:44:00 that the compass reads south while the map shows him facing west. He reorients on that belief at 06:46:53 and still does not find the hermit, so it is recorded as his account and not as an explanation.
• He does meet an NPC on the southern coast who offers to teach swimming and speaks of the sea freeing him from sorcery, and decides at 07:51:11 that this is not the hermit he wants. No other source cited here mentions that character.

Requirements / limits

• Wizard Worm's recording is dated 22 August 2026, after Update 7 on 21 August. heistty's is dated 21 August, the same day Update 7 shipped, so it cannot be attributed to the build that update created.
• The route detail on this page is Wizard Worm's alone. The second source corroborates the quest, the objective, the island, the book and the missing hermit, not the turn-by-turn directions.
• No NerveLabs source cited here mentions this quest. Update 6 and Update 7 are cited only to date the recordings against the quest-direction and map-marker changes they describe.
• Proper nouns on this page come from Wizard Worm's own written video description and chapter list, not from machine captions, which render them unreliably.
• The ending is single-source. One player returns the tome on camera; nobody else in the pool gets that far, and no developer source describes the outcome.
• The item the being hands over at the end is not identified by anyone, including the player holding it. This page does not name a reward.
• The two recordings that show the item you must bring call it different things — a blank tome in one, a depleted tome in the other's inventory notice. The requirement is published; the item's name is not.
• The third recording is dated 18 August 2026, before both Update 6 and Update 7. It is used only for the objective text, the map marker and the charcoal burner's placement, and never for directions.

Common mistakes

• Searching the island for the hermit's corpse. Both recordings show it is not dependably there, and the objective is the journal.
• Grinding the town for charcoal and giving up. The charcoal burner south of town behind the mountain is Wizard Worm's guaranteed fallback.
• Confusing the blank tome you bring in with the finished tome you return at the end. They are two different steps.
• Trying to reach the island overland. Both players approach it from the water along the southern shore.
• Chasing the wrong southern objective. The charcoal burner also lives south of town, and at least one player spent hours searching for one while reading the other's directions.
• Selling your charcoal to a merchant before this quest starts. One player had sold all of his the moment he was asked for it, had to walk back to a shop, and bought two pieces rather than one to be safe.
• Expecting the curse to be lifted. The tome disguises him; it does not restore him, and he says so.

Still unverified

• Does the hermit's body ever appear in a fixed place?Not verifiedWizard Worm recalls finding a corpse in a different spot on an earlier run and does not find one this time; heistty finds none at all. Neither establishes a rule, and no developer source addresses it.
• Is the hermit's death scripted, or can a wandering enemy kill him?Not verifiedheistty guesses a skeleton killed him. That is a guess recorded as a guess, not evidence.
• What does the cursed man give you at the end?Not verifiedHe says “This is for you”. The only player to hear it checks his inventory twice and concludes he was given nothing, then handles a pair of boots and later mentions heavy armour. Nothing links them, so nothing is published.
• What is the snail drawing for in the recording that starts the quest?Not verifiedThe being draws a snail labelled voice and a placement west of town. In the other recording the snail belongs to a separate quest that grants the blank tome, and this player already had a tome. The placements agree; what the drawing asks for does not follow from the transcript.
• Do the compass and the map disagree about direction?Not verifiedOne player says the compass read south while the map showed him facing west, on a build two updates old. No second source mentions it, and acting on it did not help him, so it is not offered as a reason anyone fails to find the beach.