Act II Walkthrough

This is a rough walkthrough/route of Act II. Act II being the part of the game where (stop reading here if you want to avoid spoilers) you get a map and it turns into a Metroidvania.

What's Act II?

So, you just beat Barthanzanel...Barthandelus...Beelzebub...Barmath...

So you just beat the demon guy and have discovered that you have a map. This is the second act of the game, which this walkthrough covers.

Overview

Your goal is to get the 6 remaining musical notes from the following areas:

1. Sunken Shrine
2. Autumn Hills
3. Searing Crags
4. Underworld
5. Skylands
6. Corrupted Future

Additionally, you want to save the three remaining Phobekin in the following areas:

1. Searing Crags (pyro)
2. Cloud Ruins (acro)
3. Bamboo Creek (claustro)

Speedrunning Tip: It's possible to entirely skip the phobekin, but you'll have to go to Bamboo Creek and exploit a clipping glitch in a certain room to skip to the Forlorn Temple Boss.

The route that this guide will take you through goes in the following order:

Quillshroom Marsh
Howling Grotto
Sunken Shrine
Ninja Village
Autumn Hills
Searing Crags
Underworld
Ninja Village
Catacombs
Dark Cave
Riviere Turquoise
Quillshroom Marsh
Cloud Ruins
Glacial Peak
Skylands
Bamboo Creek
Forlorn Temple
Corrupted Future

Note: While this is not a speedrunning guide, I've offered some speedrunning tips throughout. Most of said tips come from Andy Laso's speedrun

Quillshroom Marsh (1)

Objectives:
* Obtain Conch Artifact

Go through the portal to Howling Grotto. Immediately go up as high as you can go in the map, and this will give you a convenient path to Quillshroom Marsh.


You will want to fall into quicksand and obtain the Shell artifact. Which patch of quicksand is marked roughly in the map below. Also, you'll be doing this in 8-bit mode, because if you go there in the future, the artifact will be missing.


Following that path, you'll nab the Shell, and refer to the next step.

It may seem like a long way to go, but it's a pretty long walk regardless of whether you go through H. Grotto's boss room or take the shortcut. In the former, you have to go through H. Grotto and deal with time puzzles and rock throwers. In the latter, you have to go through Q. Marsh and deal with trickier enemies. Pick your poison.

Speedrunning Tip: It's possible to do the next section without the Conch and entirely avoid this area for now. Read the note for the next section for more details.

Howling Grotto

Objectives:
* Use Conch to access Sunken Shrine

After obtaining the shell, return to Howling Grotto and go here:


The music should stop and be replaced with new music that's barely audible. You will need to go near every exit and listen. The volume will rise when you're near the correct exit (just to save you some time, said exit is NEVER at the top). Do this a bunch of times and you'll eventually wind up in the Sunken Shrine.

Speedrunning Tip: If you didn't get the shell, you can still do this, but you'll have to memorize the route either by watching a speedrun or having done it yourself.

Sunken Shrine

Objectives:
* obtain water running shoes
* obtain musical note (1)

The main hub of this place is a room with a door that looks like a face. There are three major paths. One on top, and two below, on each side of the door.

Start off by taking the upper path. This route will give you the water running shoes, which are required for this area.

After that, take the two lower paths. Order doesn't matter. This area's pretty difficult, but when you're finished, you'll have your first musical note.

Now would be a good time to visit the nearest shop and use it to go back to the Tower of Time.

Ninja Village (1)

Objectives:
* Get seed from sensei

This is pretty straightforward. Enter the portal to Autumn Hills and backtrack to the village to speak to your sensei. Regardless of whether you've discovered the Dark Cave, he'll bring up the Power of True Sight and give you a seed that takes 500 years to grow.

Speedrunning Tip: This whole thing is not actually necessary. With a lot of patience, you can get through the Dark Cavern with zero visibility, although it is IMO the most difficult thing to do in the entire game, and the PoTS itself overlaps heavily with the existing route. Unless you're after the achievement, a speedrun, or just want to make your life harder, you might as well get the power of true sight.

Autumn Hills

Objectives:
* Obtain Musical Note (2)

On your way out of the Ninja Village, go down through the marked path and pick up the musical note.

Searing Crags

Objectives:
* Plant Your Seed (past)
* Collect Boss Flower (future)
* Collect Your Plant (future)
* Give Boss Their Flower (past)
* Obtain Musical Note (3)
* Rescue Pyro the Phobekin (2)
* Go to hell

There's a lot to do here.

First, use the portal to go to Glacial Peak, and go all the way down to the Crags. Yes. All the way. This is the shortest route I know of. Do NOT fall into the Crags. You will die. You need to climb down the rope like a civilized Ninja.

You will find yourself in the Boss room, of course. What you want to do is go two rooms to the right, and--this is gonna get repetitive, so brace yourself--go to the bottom right corner of said room to switch Time Periods, then go back up to the boss room. In the past, plant your seed where the boss' flower bed is. Now go back to the future, and collect both plants. Now go back to the past and give them their flower.

After this exhausting back-and-forth fiasco, you will be again kicked out of the Crags. Except their aim sucks this time, so you wind up in a different part of the Crags. Continue through this route until you get the next musical note (can't miss it), and then make your way back to the big room that you spend 20 minutes going back and forth in.

Don't worry, you don't have to talk to the bosses any more. This time, you're making sure that you're in 16-bit mode so that you can go down. All the way down.

When you reach the bottom, go left and activate the portal. Take it to the Tower of Time and then take it right back to trigger a save, and then go right.

Remember your water running powerup from the Sunken Shrine? The one that got you killed every time you stopped moving? Use that on the lava. Talk to the phobekin to rescue him. Continue on this path and you will go to hell.

Underworld

Objectives:
* Obtain Musical Note (4)

Go through the area like normal. Except you'll want to take this bottom path.


At the end of this, you'll receive another Musical Note, and use the save point to go back to the Tower of Time.

Ninja Village (2)

Objectives:
* Obtain the Power of True Sight

Talk to sensei and he'll give you the Power of True Sight.

Moving on.

Catacombs

Objectives:
* Obtain Amulet
* Go to Dark Cave

This one's kind of obnoxious.

First, go to the boss room in 16-bit mode. Open his sarcophagus and read his letter. You will obtain his amulets. These will let you use his staff to go to the Cloud Ruins later on.

Now, backtrack all the way to the Dark Cave, located here:


If you got the PoTS, this will be a piece of cake.

If you didn't...prepare to spend the next 40 minutes banging your head against a wall, because without that candle, this is HARD. Skipping the PoTS is an essential speedrunning strat.

Riviere Turquoise

Objectives:
* Obtain Firefly

Your exodus from Dark Cave will take you to Riviere Turquoise, a difficult, puzzle-y and all-around pretty fun area.

Just go through it. You'll fight a boss, and then they'll send you off with a Firefly that can uncorrupt things.

Or are they butterflies? I've been calling them fireflies this whole time...

Quillshroom Marsh (2)

Objectives:
* Free the Queen of Quills from her curse.

Go to the boss room in 8-bit mode. The firefly will do its thing and the QoQ will become "Monk".

Glacial Peak (1)

Objectives:
* Use the necromancer's staff to go to the Cloud Ruins

You have the amulet now, so do it.

Cloud Ruins

Objectives:
* Rescue Acro the Phobekin (3)

He's at the end. Just rescue him and use the next save point to return to the Tower.

Glacial Peak (2)

Objectives:
* Free Manfred
* Use Manfred to take on the Skylands

Go down the mountain again. But before you go to where Manfred is, make sure you're in 8-bit mode. You will meet the other messenger (Monk), and she will break the ice that prevents you from getting above Manfred.

Now go back to 16-bit mode and free manfred. Talk to him, and he'll take you to the Elemental Skylands to fight a robot butler.

Elemental Skylands

Objectives:
* Obtain Musical Note (5)

The game has just turned into a horizontal sh'mup!

This area is very linear, just do what you gotta do and you'll eventually get the note.

Bamboo Creek

Objectives:
* Free Claustro the Phobekin (4)

To get to Bamboo Creek, enter Howling Grotto and back track to the beginning.

Now go here:


You'll free the fourth and final Phobekin. Trust me, this is important.

Forlorn Temple

Objectives:
* Defeat the Demon King

Now that you've rescued the Phobekins, you can return to Autumn Hill, go all the way to the end, and walk through the next area (in 16-bit mode) without falling into the catacombs.

Here, you will fight the Demon King and obtain his crown.

Corrupted Future

Objectives:
* Obtain Musical Note (6)
* Don't get eaten

Straightforward. Corrupted Future is the area on the right wing of the Tower of Time. Use the Demon King's crown to activate the portal, get to the end, nab the note and get chased by a horrible abomination that wants to eat you. No big deal.

Speedrunning tip (courtesy of Dehydrated Dryhyder and Andy Laso): It is possible to skip the chase if you kill yourself and collect the note simultaneously. Refer to the below video:

Source: Andy Laso

End of Act II

Objectives:
* Enter the final act.

We're done here. Go plop up those musical notes and beat the game.

Translations

I will post links to alternate language translations in this section

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1556547193

[Loren]

Thank you. I would drop this game without your help.

[爆杀GGST小鬼全家]

You are right man. I was at spike tunnel and pulling my hair too hard. Now I'm about to go bald.

[Braden]

It's been a couple years since I last played the game, but I probably had a good reason for using that route. "toughest shit in the game" is very debatable. I can think of two parts in the game that are easily way, way harder than climbing down glacial peak. The first is in the sky level (IIRC) when you first transition to 16-bit, there's an area where you have to go under a wall and cloudstep on three enemy fireballs to get up to the next screen, and then there's the spike tunnel right before you fight the demon king. These aren't hard on a normal playthrough, but on weak mode (no shop upgrades)? Hoo boy, I died over and over again on that stuff.

[爆杀GGST小鬼全家]

"use the portal to go to Glacial Peak, and go all the way down to the Crags"
lmao that's the toughest shit in this game. Shit is not designed to go backward. Are you serious? Isn't there any other way to reach Crags?

[liliannina]

Nice

[Danny Dark Soul]

Your guide has made the Metroidvania portion much, MUCH more tolerable

[Braden]

Ohhhhhh. So those new bosses are picnic panic. I completely forgot that DLC existed

[OHSHIET]

Well, they added Picnic Panic, some other additional stuff and fixed some bugs, nothing so serious with the Act II. Should be accurate.

[Braden]

Is this guide even still accurate since they apparently changed so much of the game?

[OHSHIET]

I kinda forgot to keep you in touch with the latest updates, so you might want to join the official Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/themessenger People are very nice and friendly there so you won't regret it. Also we started our work with Ru and En Messenger wikis. We are doing great so far!