How to make event appear?

Hello all, thanks for deciding to give this thread a read.

Because I don't know how to go about asking for help, this post is going to be kind of long-winded. Most of it will be an explanation of how my sloppy project works. My issue is at the bottom.

I've been making a small puzzle game to familiarize myself with RPGMaker's several functions. Currently there's only one puzzle which consists of flipping the switches in the right order to make a portal for escape to appear. (based off this thread - thanks!). Completing the level turns on the "piano done" switch which makes the portal event appear:


This is how the initial switches are programmed, along with the common event:


After the player finishes the level, they're transported back to the lobby from which they can now access a level selection room. In that room this event autoruns:
Which resets all the switches and variables of that level every time you enter the lobby. ("pianoexit" is a switch for an additional exit portal if you don't want to replay a level.)

(All autoruns are taken care of, DW).

However, once you go back into the level, even if you re-solve the puzzle correctly, the portal event won't appear. Depending on what I tried, sometimes the portal would be there before the puzzle was even solved, and sometimes it refused to appear at all even though I've solved the puzzle correctly and turned on all the switches (I tried it in debug mode as well - nothing).

Addendum: Before posting this, I've fiddled around with this a bit more, and now it refuses to load during the first play as well... Oh boy.

Anyway, I'd really love if someone could help me out on this. It seems like the fix is so simple and yet it's out of my reach, haha. Cheers!

Sorry if I haven't explained my issue well; it's currently 2am and I've been trying to solve this for an hour...

In your second screenshot, event named switch 1, why do you turn on the self-switch first? And what is on the second page that is presumably triggered by that self-switch?

If your page 2 requires that self switch and you turned on the self switch as the first command on page 1, all other next commands to it normally wont work anymore since your event will transfer to Page 2 right away. Put your Self Switch ON as the last command instead of first

Actually, when the self switch is in the first row, it still works as intended, so that's confusing. Am going to try it out, though.

...Switched it over, and it doesn't change anything. In fact, the common event doesn't seem to check in anymore, weird. It was working the first time around. When I go around the switches, it doesn't reset them if I got one in incorrect order. I'm guessing it's not executing properly, but why?

EDIT: going into debug mode, it seems the variable is never properly filled out.

EDIT2: going back into the room, I've encountered another oddity. The switches' "pressed" animation wasn't supposed to appear until you hit the right switch, since it'd lock the player out of selecting them again.
This happened. The switches should be triggered in the order blue - red - green - yellow, and yet when I pressed yellow it immediately activated and stayed that way, and when I went to get the correct switch it didn't reset... Locking the player out of inputting the whole variable.

At this point, I'm considering simply rebuilding the level.

that sounds as if the switches and variables are used somewhere else as well - either by a forgotten other event or by a plugin you forgot to configure correctly.
you need to find that other use of the switches and variables and repair the double-use, because especially with a plugin you will never know what other variables are already configured (at least not until you got to the next bug caused by them)

@Andar it's used here, although this simply resets the vars/switches before entering the room. Could this be it?

I need this to make the optional exit available though.

OK SO, I made a new common event to reset the switches in the level lobby - and it works! The game doesn't let me turn on switches in the incorrect order and thus doesn't block the player from inputting the whole variable.

Now I got a problem with making the portal to the exit show up, though. I've set it's event to activate when the switch "piano done" is triggered, and when the variable is 1234. However, even through debug, it doesn't work. Help??