Soft lock on slopes in Ruins of Lemia

[Btk]

I believe there is a soft lock in the Ruins of Lemia, en route to a room with a heart piece a bit below and to the left of the Cathedral room with the golden circle that so far looks like it contains the final boss (I have not finished the game yet, so I don't know).

The area in question is fenced off by a wide sloped gap and an upside-down-v shape (two adjacent slopes tilted in opposite directions). The heart piece is a screen transition away to the left. To get to the heart piece, you are supposed to do some jumping around on a bunch of small platforms that have a slope one each side. There are some spirit bats in the area (they are probably spirits in order to prevent people from pogoing off them). I guess the idea is to access the area only after you have acquired the dash.
I hope you now have an idea about which area I am talking.

Unfortunately, it is possible to get into the area even without the dash ability by damage boosting off the spirit bats, and even to the heart piece by swinging back and forth between slopes and using the wall jump on top. It seems impossible to leave the area with only the wall jump and ghost abilities unlocked.
Because of the screen transition, progress gets saved and respawn tied to that location, even if you quit and restart the game. I eventually had to respawn back at the last statue, which is unfortunate as it caused my first and so far only "death" in the game.

I have several suggestions on how to possibly fix the soft lock:

1. Remove the spirit bats. The platforming will get marginally easier (not by much since you can always just clear the path using a ghost before going down yourself), but it will be impossible to damage boost and thus also to enter the area without dash.
   
2. Provide an additional exit from the heart container room. This way, people will still be able to damage boost to get the heart container early without getting stuck, rewarding (rather than punishing) exploration and creativity. My favourite option.
   
3. Put the heart container in the same room as the platforming section to remove the auto-save at screen transition. People will still be able to get into the section and get stuck, but they will not have to take a "death" and only lose a bit of progress when they do.
   
4. Add an option to return to the last statue, losing all progress, map reveal, items etc., but not taking a death in the process. Probably a good option to have, anyway.

[Hina - Inateno]

Hey, I see the heart you are talking about I think.

As you said you used damage boost jump which is not a feature that peoples normally use, it's more of a hack used by speedrunners !
That's the only reason you've been softlocked.

And we added the "restart to the last statue" in order to help for this case, but the death count must be counted (because some achievement are linked to that and it would be to easy to trackback by "respawning for free"), in fact some speedrunners use this feature in order to save time !

Sorry I can't help you on this one, genuinely been one of the first to report that aside speedrunners who know this "hack", maybe removing the bat could prevent normal players to get there that is true tho!

Thanks for the report :)

[Btk]

Thank you for the reply. It ended up being my only death on the run, of course. :(

I did not even want to damage boost, really, it just kinda happened while I was trying if I could make the jump and the bat just rammed into Kali from behind.

I understand that you need to attach that cost to the respawn if exploration and item collection is to be preserved. It would have been nice to just have a few earlier screen transitions as backup saves, like Ori does it, where going back to a previous version completely removes all progress, including map reveal and item pickup. Or just an additional exit to the bottom of the heart.

Guess I'll just have to play through the whole game again to get the deathless achievement. :)

[Hina - Inateno]

Originally posted by Btk:

Thank you for the reply. It ended up being my only death on the run, of course. :(

I did not even want to damage boost, really, it just kinda happened while I was trying if I could make the jump and the bat just rammed into Kali from behind.

I understand that you need to attach that cost to the respawn if exploration and item collection is to be preserved. It would have been nice to just have a few earlier screen transitions as backup saves, like Ori does it, where going back to a previous version completely removes all progress, including map reveal and item pickup. Or just an additional exit to the bottom of the heart.

Guess I'll just have to play through the whole game again to get the deathless achievement. :)

Yeah I'm sorry this happened, maybe indeed removing the bat would be the best option here.

And yeah well, let's see if you can manage to not die until the end :p