Are the puzzles and key fairy points logical?

[Evrain]

One question: I've been stuck for THREE hours after flooding the TotG when, BY SHEER CHANCE, I brought the key fairy to the point needed to unlock la mulana.
What the heck? Did I miss a clue or was it meant to be an absolutely sheer stroke of luck?

[Vil]

All key fairy things are completely 100% optional. Each of them makes combat easier in some way, though. Two of them, which reward inventory items, are hinted at by the game. The other two, which reward software, are not.

The Gate of Time area in particular, is like a giant developer's room. It's not really a big surprise that it's not hinted at.

But yes, finding places to use key fairies is mostly luck. On the bright side, they seem to have a relatively long duration compared to other fairies (item fairy in particular), so it's not entirely unreasonable to just do a tour of the ruins with a key fairy in tow, even for the un-hinted ones.

For *non* key fairy puzzles, almost everything has a hint or environmental observation *somewhere* to clue you in. So I wouldn't take key fairies as a metric for the other puzzles. The entrance to the TotG is one of the very few examples where it's simply a case of "wander around and stumble on it".

Since you mentioned being stuck, would you like any nudges on where to direct your attention next (inventory screenshot would help), or were you just curious about key fairies?

[Evrain]

Just curiosity about how some of the puzzles seem somewhat illogical (e.g. the "Mario" in Eden) whereas I got unstuck, and managed to get the TotG's upper floors and consequently the bomb and Chamber of Birth, out of a stroke of luck.
Boy, I can't wait for La Mulana 2.

[Vil]

TotG's upper floors don't require Gate of Time. Just climbing. (Upper left does involve flooding and upper right involves double jumping though...)

It is, however, a handy shortcut for getting there before killing Viy.

[Evrain]

Originally posted by Vilurum:

TotG's upper floors don't require Gate of Time. Just climbing. (Upper left does involve flooding and upper right involves double jumping though...)

It is, however, a handy shortcut for getting there before killing Viy.

How so? I'm unable to reach it through the lower floors (e.g. from the surface)

[Vil]

Like I said. Climbing. Not in the sense of hopping around and platforming, but in a more literal sense.

[Hidden Distance]

Originally posted by Evrain:

Just curiosity about how some of the puzzles seem somewhat illogical (e.g. the "Mario" in Eden)

This one was fairly tricky, the largest complaint I see for it is usually the control input for it and that it doesn't really make any sense in the context of the game. Anyway - here's what I worked from and thought about the controls after the fact.

There is a tablet in the Gate of Illusion that reads thusly:

Simply wandering will not lessen the illusion. Courage will grant thy wish--the courage to jump into the illusion. The courage to search on bended knee for a single fallen item.

So, every time you go through that area with the 'mario' and you smash that pot - you always get a single shuriken from breaking one of those pots. In that sense, it's an incredibly singular pot; no other pot in the game does that. Others have money, or if they do drop shurikens (or other items) they'll drop 10 (or some other amount) once, and then never again.

The part I think people get annoyed with is that they didn't know the control input (down) was required, or that they wouldn't know how to 'bend a knee' for the solution, but for my part it's like this: If you really know there's something funny about the item and think it's related to the above puzzle, you'll try anything in that spot to get it to work. Second, the 'down' input is more or less your primary interaction button for every dais you see, so I guess rather than just being a 'use weight' button, it was more like 'use'. I would have liked something of that nature on a separate key/control than movement, but that's the PC gamer in me and I understand that this title was originally on WiiWare, so I get it that they wouldn't necessarily have had many buttons to work with.

Hope that makes some sense!

[GeminiSaint]

Originally posted by Evrain:

One question: I've been stuck for THREE hours after flooding the TotG when, BY SHEER CHANCE, I brought the key fairy to the point needed to unlock la mulana.
What the heck? Did I miss a clue or was it meant to be an absolutely sheer stroke of luck?

Are you talking about the Gate of Time? If so, it's a completely optional area, and no, there are no hints regarding its location (...as far as I know anyway).
As for the "bended knee" puzzle, HD is right. That's the only vase in the entire game that always drops 1 shuriken (the "single fallen item" in the hint).

[Dentorhedge]

In order to complete either side you need to break both of the waterlocks in the Spring in the Sky. To get to one of them you need to SPOILER mario through the pipe the giant points to! And for that you just need to mess around with the pot a while (or not, there is a thread about all this in the backer forums, and I just asked the same questions. So many LA-MULANESE mysteries I thought were based around bad translations are just my terrible skills!! It blows my mind that I haven't known these things for so long!)

[Dentorhedge]

Viluru/GeminiSaint, are you on there? Oh, and I saw one of your speedruns HiddenDistance- you are awesome!! Is there a name for a no "cheats" run (without glitching through walls like you did to get to the room above Viy's/Palenque's darkness).

[Vil]

Am I on where? Oh, the La-Mulana 2 backer's forum? Yeah, I have access to it. Haven't gone there yet though.

[Hidden Distance]

@Dentor:

Thanks!

Sure, if a person wanted to do a category like that of the game in terms of a speedrun it would probably come with a tag like 'glitchless' so, "Glitchless any%" or "Glitchless 100% ACE" or like that. As for running it, well... It's not particularly in my personal interests; I trend (at least for this title) towards any% or other categories in which glitches in the code are exploited, but if anyone was interested no one will stop them =)

Splitting categories generally happens in games where there is a lot of potential for different categories or many runners who have varying interests. La-Mulana definitely has the former, but not really the latter - very few runners currently.

[GeminiSaint]

Originally posted by Dentorhedge_of_the_Victorious_Mu:

Viluru/GeminiSaint, are you on there?

Unfortunately, I can't back the project because I live in a country that heavily restricts sending money overseas. That means I can't access the La-Mulana 2 forum either :(