Sky Island is breaking me

[Osmium]

I've been slowly and methodically working my way through the game without really getting stumped anywhere until now. I've done 3/4 of the volcano, water, and earth islands. About half the time the puzzles are unsolvable without first unlocking the boss item for that element for 6 crystals. My problem with the sky island is that ALL of the puzzles feel like I'm missing a gameplay mechanic in order to solve them. I've been spinning my wheels for 4 hours and I've managed to at least visit most of the rooms, but I've only solved a single puzzle.

I think the developer found the logical blind spot in my brain with these ice puzzles. It's amazing how the difficulty went from "ok, it's hard but I'm learning" to "this game is clearly designed for someone smarter than me and there's no way". The last time I felt this stupid was Steven Sausage Roll, which felt like dropping a Rubik's Cube down a flight of stairs in such a way that it solves itself on the way down. I'm not good with 40+ step puzzles that have zero tolerance for steps being out of order.

I know you can push the clouds and they'll leave temporary trails of snow on ice that let you walk without sliding into a wall. I haven't been able to effectively use that tidbit to solve a puzzle, but surely it's important. I feel like there's some similar thing that the current tools can allow me to do that I haven't recognized. I looked up the boss item and it's not even relevant for most of the puzzles I'm incorrectly labeling as unsolvable and mostly seems like it'd only be useful for getting stars. Is it really true that everything I need to get these crystals is present in the room that they are in?

[C123456]

You are not alone in experiencing 1) the difficulty hike with the ice world and 2) no way to tell if a room is solvable with the items you have. These are the most common complaints seen in reviews and forums.

It took me 55hrs to collect everything but only 20ish for others. What I realised is that don’t force myself and find an enjoyable way to play is more important with this game.

So I relied on guides for the ones I absolutely have no clues of and set the goal of only solving a few rooms per play session.

[Flayershutz]

In many ways the Air Island is the hardest area. It took me a while to understand the Air Elemental and that was after the challenge of getting the 6 Air gems.

The Air Rune mostly helps with navigation

Once you have 6 Air gems, you will want to awaken the Air Elementals. Air Elementals are very powerful and might be necessary to unlock the Air item upgrade. This is similar to how Earth Elementals were required to get the Earth Gloves (unlike the Water and Fire items which you can get without awakening the elementals.).

The Air Item upgrade is required for some puzzles. For others an Air Elemental is enough. It can be tough to tell while you are still learning about the Air Elementals. I suggest going after the Air Item upgrade ASAP after awakening the Air Elementals.

Everything in the Air Island can be solved with Air Rune + Air Elementals + Air Item Upgrade.

[Mauno]

For the ice level I noticed that some rooms have animated wind tiles and figured those require the 6 gem item and focused on ones that don't but I think one or two of those rooms still require another item you shouldn't have yet.

[Falco]

I have the same problem. I have 11 ground runes, 11 water runes, 10 fire runes. all the upgrades for the previuos worlds (ground claw, finns, volcano armor) I even unlocked the phenix fast travel. I have 7 dark crystals, 65 stars and only 3 ice runes. I visited most of the ice world, found 3 eggs and placed one, located the ice world's object (but couldn't get it). Yet, I still haven't found the Air Legend and can't continue to solve the world. Any help? How can I reach the Air Legend? Maybe from there I can continue on my own...

Originalmente postado por C123456:

You are not alone in experiencing 1) the difficulty hike with the ice world and 2) no way to tell if a room is solvable with the items you have. These are the most common complaints seen in reviews and forums.

It took me 55hrs to collect everything but only 20ish for others. What I realised is that don’t force myself and find an enjoyable way to play is more important with this game.

So I relied on guides for the ones I absolutely have no clues of and set the goal of only solving a few rooms per play session.

Where can I find the guides?

EDIT: I’m also missing the blue item to remove the blue blocks/barriers

[Osmium]

The ice rune, the thing that lets you break blue blocks can be obtained without any other items, which was helpful in opening up puzzles going forward. That one seemed impossible at first.

Now I'm trying to utilize the air elementals and I'm falling into despair. I couldn't handle the practice one in the boss room (I don't know what to call that area, you don't fight the big lady). After failing to get that key for half an hour in that extremely small test area, I went to the nearest unsolved puzzle and saw that this area has 4 elementals with a near infinite number of permutations. I shut the game off and reconsidered my life choices.

It really bothers me that it's rarely clear that a puzzle is unsolvable until you bang your head against it for a long time and give up. That doesn't respect my time. It's fine to have open world puzzles you have to come back to, but there needs to be some sort of feedback that you're not approaching a solution. Other game developers would have handled this by making the gems all obtainable on a first visit and the stars requiring a return visit with some other puzzle solving tool. I'm not saying that's the only way to do it, but it would have been better than the approach used here.

Maybe that's something I can do once I'm finished: make a spoiler-free guide that lists which gems are obtainable without an item that costs gems to get. It's info that should be communicated in-game, but I digress.

[Jovan]

Where are the eggs? I found one on D1 and one in B2... But can't find the last one.

[fakename]

I felt the same way, but it was clear enough that I must be able to complete some of the puzzles, so I went back through the rooms one by one and figured it out.

You can get the block/key jewel in the central room with the goddess. And I think you can get exactly 6 gems to unlock the elemental character dudes for that island.

[nouveuu]

Ahh, yes... Isles of Sea & Red Herring and my favorite Frozen Spire.

In Frozen Spire those puzzles doesn't contain an elemental: B0, B4, C0, C1, C4, D2, D4, E1. I can't promise that all are reachable, solvable and contain gem but this list can be a good starting point.

I also suffered a lot of frustration trying to obtain 5 gems. All puzzles looked like I need an item and/or elemental. Then I obtained elementals but rooms didn't changed which forced me to check for item which didn't help as well. After all those rooms were solvable from the very beginning...

[P4wn4g3]

Frozen spire is hard to spoil since its so randomized. The grid layout of the island remains the same, the seagulls go to different locations in every save. Sometimes you'll immediately warp to the screen with the Cape, sometimes you'll struggle through not knowing it even exists until you've gone through every other seagull (me). The eggs you have to find to get the cape are also in entirely random locations. The hint for them sucks, but I guess it shows what screen they are in if you can figure that out. There are 3 and you can find them with the help of the serpent's eyes, but that also detects music notes and secrets (the cloud room with the green arrow block in the clouds for example is unrelated to music notes, but if the eggs can appear here then you need to double check after unlocking that block). After getting the eggs, you'll want to think back on some screens in particular that had puzzle mechanics that seemed like they weren't immediately useful. Some aid with a video series is likely to save you some frustration with the confusing mechanics here. The puzzles here are harder than any in the game aside from the dark area, and due to the plethora of hidden secrets and obscure mechanic of the cape (it will become obvious what it does if you do everything else in the game, otherwise just know it lets you cross exactly 1 hole and is needed for a lot of other puzzles). Getting it early will allow you to cheese a bunch of other puzzles in the game, I'm curious if that's worth doing.

[P4wn4g3]

Oh one other thing, I don't know if this describes anyone else's experience, but there was no way for me to get to a certain room in Frozen Spire without warping to frozen spire with the phoenix fast travel, so if you're finding some impossible to remove green arrow tile that might be the problem. The warp tile is on E0, and for me was blocked by the green arrow tile below the seagull on B0, so there was no other way to get to it. This effectively locked me out of getting the cape until solving the little islands. Not sure if this is intended or was unlucky RNG with the seagulls.

I imagine the randomness of Frozen Spire will make speedruns of the game a bit arbitrary until someone comes up with a tool that can create the optimal seed for the game.