Permanently Stuck? [spoilers]

[x1372]

I love this game, but am curious if it has any workarounds for situations where it can become completely unwinnable. I've come up with a few possibilities, and there may be more - does anyone know if there's a way out of these, or if you manage to pull that off you're just SOL?

1) Saving Ellmac and Tiamat for last - It is possible to fight and defeat every boss except those two, using the Temple of Sun ankh jewel on Baphomet. However, if this is done, it seems that there should be no way to finish the game, because the top half of twin labyrinths (and the ankh jewel within) is blocked until completing the poison puzzle, which requires Ellmac be defeated. Is there another way to get an ankh jewel in such circumstances, or does the game just flat out stop you from fighting any boss but Ellmac 6th in such a case?

2) Saving in the temple of the moon without grail. Not a likely scenario, but if you enter through the pyramid warp very early and break the platform that is required to make the shortcut into twin labyrinths (or just run out of weights), there's no way out. Technically, there could be similar issues (saving in tower of the goddess without grail after backdooring your way into it from the gate of time, or in frontside twin labyrinth without triggering the platform, or in the true shrine of the mother if you somehow managed that without the grail)

I've been meaning to test these, since NIGORO clearly did think about getting permanently stuck when designing the game (as shown by the alternate angel shield in the graveyard shop) so maybe they have less-than-obvious workarounds, but I was wondering if anyone had already tried them yet, or found other ways to get permanently stuck.

[Vil]

1. Palenque requires Crystal Skull to open up the route to the Chamber of Birth GP (and subsequently hit that weight pedestal that lets you reach Skanda and get the Pochette Key). Tiamat, of course, requires Crystal Skull in several ways. Crystal Skull requires Mulana Talisman, which requires that you remove the bone walls in Shrine of the Mother (Crystal Skull itself also requires this), which requires (among other things) the Shrine of the Mother map. You have to bump off Ellmac to get that. So no, you can't lock yourself out that way.

2. I think these ones are valid, however, although only the Temple of the Moon is a relatively realistic risk. You could maybe make a case for saving in some obnoxiously deep area with no weights, no weight-selling shops, no weight-dropping enemies, and no grail. I don't know if such a case actually exists.

Still, if the moral of the story is that the only way to permanently screw yourself is to go on a serious exploration binge without picking up a basic game-mechanic item in the first proper area, that's actually quite good.

[Pod]

Don't use a walkthrough, that's how to get permantly stuck!

[x1372]

Good catch on the shrine of the mother map bit. I missed that one in my checking through for things that require access to upper twin labyrinth. And since you can get Palenque's ankh jewel from the chamber of birth with only the flywheel, that would close that method of getting yourself stuck permanently. Good catch there, I was actually about to go attempt it myself just to see what would happen.

And yeah, it seems like you'd really have to work hard to get yourself permanently stuck regardless, and its impressive how well they managed to catch everything with the ruins' design.

[Sakanaman]

I just got to the Temple of the Moon, and I just can't get out..! I went out over my head and started exploring, and before I knew it, I was stuck!
Also, I had no idea there was an item such as the Holy Grail. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to restart.

[Dr. Melon]

Ouch, SMario - not having the grail would have made your trips to the surface really tedious, right?

[Blazej]

Is it possiblE to gEt stuck in the gamE? I'm playing without guidE and I'm worriEd about that, bEcausE I alrEady wastEd my gun on Easy boss.

[x1372]

As far as we can tell, its impossible to get permanently stuck (as in, game in a situation where one cannot finish it after saving) unless you skip the holy grail found in the guidance gate.

[Vil]

It is, however, possible to type the letter E without the use of the shift key.

As for the gun, while that is admittedly a bit of a waste, bullets are in infinite supply... they just cost a lot. If you have access to fairies and the Chamber of Extinction grail point, you can grind out money pretty fast though. Until you can comfortably make money enough to buy more bullets though, it's probably a good idea not to use the gun unless you *really really need to*.

[Traysandor]

A general point to the game is always keep enough Weights on hand to navigate through the ruins. Generally speaking you don't need more than 50 unless you're in the Gate of Illusion, or maybe the Chamber of Birth puzzle area .If you don't get the Holy Grail, I suppose you could techniclly make the game unwinnable, but if you do that, obviously you're not playing the game as it was intended.

There are however a couple of items you can lose forever if you don't pick them up before a certain point in the game, but none of these items are required to finish the game:

- The Chain Whip can be permanently blocked off if you don't solve the puzzle in the Inferno Cavern correctly.

- The Flail Whip can also be rendered inaccessible if you fail to solve the weight balance puzzle in the Tower of the Goddess correctly. However, you can reset the puzzle by going to the Gate of Time to speak to the Fairy in the hidden shop after you've disposed of Tiamat.

- The Angel Shield can be lost if you forget to finish the puzzle before obliterating Tiamat, but you can fix this by going to a shop in the Graveyard of the Giants and purchasing the Angel Shield there for 400 Coins. (The Angel Shield is required for a puzzle in the Chamber of Birth)

- The Sacred Orb in the Dimensional Corridor. If you kill Ushumgallu (the flying dragonlike thing) before going up to claim the Orb there, you can make it almost impossible to reach by normal means. It is possible though with a double jump and a frame perfect damage boost from the enemies laser in that room if you come back afterwards.

- The Sacred Orb in the Shrine of the Mother. This one requires all four Seals to open. If you do not pick this up before oblitarating all 8 Guardians, it becomes inaccessible once the Shrine transforms.

- bounce.exe in the Shrine of the Mother. this one you can use any throwing subweapon to open the semi-hidden chest, like a Shuriken or Chakram. Like the Sacred Orb here, this software cannot be picked up after you've obliterated all 8 Guardians.

Also Tiamat is designed to be the last of the 8 guardians you fight, no matter what order you obliterate all the other bosses. In a speedrun, the boss order is 4, 3, 2, 5, 7, 1, 6, and 8. (Bahamut, Ellmac, Sakit, Viy, Baphomet, Amphisbaena, Palenqe, and Tiamat). The way the game is designed though, even if you forget the Pochette Key on Palenque, you can still get another Ankh Jewel to replace the one you lost.

[Vil]

Strictly speaking, bosses 6/7/8 can be killed in any order if you know the puzzle solutions. If you don't know the puzzle solutions, 6 and 7 have to die before 8 (because one of the important clues to the Mushussu puzzle in Dimensional Corridor, is at the top of the pyramid in Tower of Ruin). And in general it's more convenient to bump off 6 and 7 first anyway. But you don't *have* to.

Djed Pillar requires 6 and 7 to be dead, while mantra.exe requires 6 and 8 to be dead. So actually *using* mantras requires all three to be dead. Fighting 6 requires 5 to be dead (killing 5 is also a more direct, but optional, way into the Tower of the Goddess), and similarly fighting 5 requires 4 to be dead.

An awful lot of stuff is sealed behind 3, and while you can shenanigan your way around direct access to lower Temple of Moonlight, lifting the poison in Twin Labyrinths very definitely requires 3 to be dead. Without doing so, you're not getting the Shrine of the Mother map, Twin Labyrinths jewel, or entering Dimensional Corridor. Shrine of the Mother bone wall removal (and in turn, Mulana Talisman, Crystal Skull, etc.) requires, among other things, 1 to be dead.

That just leaves 2, Sakit. The only reason he *has* to die is because you can't use a mantra to seal a guardian until the guardian is actually dead, and because the endgame proper (and True Shrine transformation) doesn't kick in until all the guardians are dead. Otherwise, it's pure convenience. Granted, pure convenience and easy access to Gauntlet, mirai.exe, Silver Shield, and (pre-Gate of Illusion) Tower of Ruin. But nothing you can't accomplish by other means.

[x1372]

Just a couple odd notes of random trivia to go with that boss list explanation

Sakit and Baphomet share the dubious honor of being possible to be the first or last guardians killed. As stated above, Sakit is the only one who can be alive at the time you start the mantras.

You can actually get an incredible number of items and passages completed throughout the ruins without fighting any of the 8 guardians. This can make beating them (without sub-weapons, and especially on hard mode, which can be activated after getting all of that stuff) significantly easier. However, getting to some of them is an... INTERESTING...challenge in itself, because you're forcing yourself to go through a lot of the game without a double jump and massively out of sequence. Ultimately, its possible to get both the twins statue and the maternity statue while at 288 HP before being forced to bring down a guardian to make progress. If anyone wants the route for that I can list it.

Its possible to be holding 6 unspent ankh jewels at once. You can gain access to all except the one from the dimensional corridor with only Ellmac defeated.

[an Aki]

Originally posted by MarioG:

I just got to the Temple of the Moon, and I just can't get out..! I went out over my head and started exploring, and before I knew it, I was stuck!
Also, I had no idea there was an item such as the Holy Grail. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to restart.

Hmmm. There MIGHT be a way, but that requires a glitch exploit and maybe a weight drop. There's a floor you can get stuck in and if you jump around enough, you'll be instantly warped to the Surface. I think it may be fixed by now, but I remember it going off a few times.

[Blazej]

ThAnk you TrAysAndor for explAIning thIngs :D

[Captain Suave]

I'll confirm getting stuck in the Temple of Moonlight as described in the first post. I was just exploring around, broke the block, saved, ran out of weights, and as far as I can tell there is nowhere for me to go and no way to get out.

[Honorable_D]

Originally posted by Captain Suave:

I'll confirm getting stuck in the Temple of Moonlight as described in the first post. I was just exploring around, broke the block, saved, ran out of weights, and as far as I can tell there is nowhere for me to go and no way to get out.

So you don't have the Grail either? Thats the most important item in the game and whenever you get stuck you can use it to simply warp out.