Sylvan Temple Softlock

[KINGGpatrick]

I'm on my first playthrough, and managed to softlock myself.
I'd already played Alwa's Awakening, so I knew how to do infinite bubble jumps, and it did not end well.

This is where I'm at and what I have: https://i.imgur.com/L5GAhol.png

Pretty sure there's no way out and I'll have to restart the game, so I'd like the devs to know so they can make sure it doesn't happen to others :)

[Elden Pixels]

Oh, you came across that one thing we talked about a few weeks before releasing the game in June 2020. If someone skips the Yellow Gemstone and heads into Sylvan Temple. Yeah, you're unfortunately stuck. :(

We spent a lot of time trying to come up with a way forcing the player to have the Yellow Gemstone before entering Sylvan Temple but with each idea we had it caused a lot of other issues. In the end we decided it would cause more problems to fix this so we decided to leave it as it is. This is the only place we know of where players can get stuck if they use sequence break techniques like bubble jumping or blockjumping. We think we've fixed all other issues.

We're really sorry. It was a massive task to design a game this big with all these different techniques and different ways to play the game. We're really proud it did turn out really well for 99.9% of all players. You're the first one in a year that has this happened to that have let us know about it. And we're really sorry we aren't able to fix this. As we mentioned all the ideas we had about fixing this issue would cause a lot of other issues for casual players.

Once again, we're sorry.

[KINGGpatrick]

No trouble, It didn't take me that long to get this far.
I don't see why you couldn't just have the room that opens the gate into the Temple have a button that you need to shoot with Lightning, as opposed to the bubble button in that room for example, but I guess it's not a big deal if you say this happens very rarely.

[Radiant]

I've got another apparent softlock in the Sylvan temple.

In pacifist mode, once you make it to the gravestone, the water level drops. If you die shortly after that, you return to the save point before the gravestone, and the water level raises one screen. At this point, you have no way of dropping the water level again, and I believe the room just below the gravestone is not passable without breaking the pacifist conduct. And of course, going right and up is no longer an option at this point.

[Elden Pixels]

Originally posted by KINGGpatrick:

I don't see why you couldn't just have the room that opens the gate into the Temple have a button that you need to shoot with Lightning,

We did consider three options.

1. Having a burnable vine in the first room in Sylvan Temple. That would require players to have the Yellow Gemstone. Problem? Since this would be the first time players came across this type of door it wouldn't be clear that players should use the Lightning Bolt and we anticipated they'd probably just leave the temple instead, trying to find the right item. First time you come across a burnable vine in Sylvan Temple you're softlocked until you try all buttons and magics so you're unable to go anywhere until you can progress.

2. Placing some kind of burnable lock to the Sylvan Temple but once again that would be hard to explain for the player and it would have required more art, more sound effects and could potentially cause other issues for players.

3. Something we did consider was just putting a Lightning Bolt door somewhere in Ancient Catacombs, judging from your map you went through Ancient Catacombs to reach Central Alwa. This would solve your issue but the reason we didn't do this is because we saw a lot of speedrunners (and we did this ourselves) sequence break out of the intended order and just putting a door there would end their route abruptly

However, your idea of switching one of the buttons to a yellow button in the Farm puzzle to unlock the Temple door seems like a good idea. We'll talk this through and see if we can think of any reason we didn't already think of this and said no. Thank you!

[Elden Pixels]

Originally posted by Radiant:

I've got another apparent softlock in the Sylvan temple.

Are you able to give us more info? We can't seem to understand where you're stuck. Feel free to use our maps available here: https://eldenpixels.com/alwas-legacy-maps/

[Radiant]

Assuming the top left corner is (0,0), I'm at the savepoint in room (7,6). The water level is at the bottom of this room.

I go left to (4,6) and touch the gravestone. A cutscene happens, the boss disappears, and notably the water level drops to the bottom of (4,7) now. Room (4,7) is passable since there is no water. I continue to the boss room and die somewhere.

I respawn at (7,6). The water level is again at the bottom of THIS room. I go left to (4,6) and nothing happens if I touch the gravestone a second time. Room (4,7) is NOT passable since it's full of water and the fish kill me. I'm on pacifist mode so I can't kill the fish.

I can't go up at (8,6) or at (9,4) since I don't have the infinite-height bubble powerup.

HTH.

[Elden Pixels]

Originally posted by Radiant:

I've got another apparent softlock in the Sylvan temple.

So, we spent this morning discussing your issue and it appears you're 100% correct, you're unfortunately stuck.
We've now identified there possible softlocks (Two in this dungeon, and one in Monk's Mire) and our goal is to fix them all but we unfortunately don't know when. Since it took almost a year for two of them to surface (both last week) and the third one no one has found yet (as far as we know) the game should still be safe to 99.9% of all players. But rest assured this is on our "Must Fix-list".

To solve your issue the only thing we can think of right now is if you can email our programmer [e-mail] your save files and we can place you outside the boss room or something.

We apologize for this inconvenience.

[Radiant]

Thanks for your response! But I figured it wasn't that far in the game, so I replayed and now have the pacifist achievement.

[Radiant]

By the way, if you're talking about fixing things, please consider this one: in Eydie's keep, in (2,9), if I start at the save point and climb the left ladder, the door triggers (if I have a key, and even though I'm not trying to go through the door).

Why is that a big deal? The first time I played this, I was aiming for the equilibrium achievement and was surprised to lose my key that way. When I played on pacifist, I figured I needed extra keys for Arcane Halls (since I can't kill the miniboss at (3,8) on pacifist); so losing the key by accident again felt like I had to restart pacifist from the beginning.

[Stubbsy]

Originally posted by Elden Pixels:

and one in Monk's Mire

I think I might have spotted this one during my Pacifist run, but fortunately I had the right gear so it didn't catch me out. Is it here by any chance? (I came back later to take this screenshot)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2479063382

Fighting the Architect to the right is out of the question, so if you miss the switch to open the left-hand door (in order to get the Tear to convert the Save Point), then you must either have infinite Bubble, or a spare Tear... if you have neither and you hit the Save Point already, then game over

Whilst we're on the subject - not as dire given it doesn't involve a save point to create a stalemate, but I'll also point out the one below in Arcane Halls You can use the Block Projectile ability to create a ledge and then Umbra through the thick part of the wall to collect the orb before turning off the red walls. If you do, you better have the infinite Bubble, or you're not getting out again!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2479072840