General guide, tips, and strategies for TowerClimb

This guide will cover the brevity of how to play TowerClimb well, from basic mechanics to individual stage strategies.

Gameplay Basics

The mechanics for this game are really smooth take a lot of getting used to. I'm going to split all of this up into a few sections, feel free to skip this if this is inherent to you. I'm going to describe distance in blocks, as that's the easiest unit of measure in the game I've been able to describe in this game (a block being the size of a singular block in the game).

Walking/running
You can walk left or right. Holding the run button will both pick up items and allow you to run. I'd suggest holding that run button most of the time.

Jumping
There are two kinds of jumps:

• Walk speed jumps go up 2 blocks in height and always move at the speed of the default walk speed. It's important to note that when you do anything to get vertical height after this, it'll increase your movement speed to your running speed. For example, if you do a walking jump and then use a jump potion or item hop, you'll get running speed.
  
• Run speed jumps go one and a half blocks up in height and always move at the speed of your current run speed.

These are useful in different situations, and it really comes in handy to know how far you can jump. I'll go more into jumping later.

Climbing
Moving toward a wall while airborn and holding both up and the direction of the wall will cause you to climb the wall. You climb up and down at a rate of about 1 block/sec and left and right on a ceiling of about 1/2 block per second. When you reach a ledge, you stop climbing up - you can press the jump button to do a little jump up or away from the wall. Climb speed can be increased with gloves.

Potions
You have 4 types of potions.

• Jump potions: Gives you a purple jumper's aura, which allows you to jump again in mid air. Note that too many jump potions can kill you.
  
• Corrosion potions: Blow up blocks or enemies. Can be thrown into the air and caught again.
  
• Teleportation potions: Allows you to teleport in a radius of about 4 blocks anywhere around you.
  
• Revive potions: Will revive you after most deaths. Are automatically used shortly after death if available.

Jumper's Aura
When you use a jump potion, grab a purple berry, or enter jump gas, you will get a jumper's aura. You can stack a maximum of 4 of these, and if you get any more you die to gluttony. The screen will flash red and a noise will play when you get 4, so pay attention to this to prevent death.

Inventory
You can hold 7 items altogether. Your inventory can hold 6 items and you can hold 1 in your hands. These items are stored and retrieved with your store/retrieve button. If you want to bring the item into your hands, hold the run button while pressing the store/retrieve button, and it'll pop out into your hands.

Item throwing
If you have an item in your hand and you let go of the run button, you will throw it. You can throw in any direction, including down. You can also throw directly from the inventory without having to ready the item in hand by simply pressing the store/retrieve button without holding run.

Item hopping
If you throw an item down while in the air, most items will give you another block of vertical height upwards. This is useful for reaching heights above what your normal jumps can reach. This can be combined with horizontal movement in order to make larger gaps.

General tips

This section outlines just some general ways to play the game better.

• Get golden berries - You're going to die a lot and need to buy revive potions. You're going to use jump potions, corrosion potions, and teleport potions. All of these cost golden berries at the witch, so make sure to go out of your way to get these berries so that you can buy what you need.
  
  
• Be careful - Chances are, if you think doing something can or will get you killed, it will. In these instances, try to take a step back and assess the situation. Is there an alternative? Will said alternative use more resources? Less resources? Is there a safer approach? This kind of thinking can lead to doing better pathing in the game and finding safer/better ways to approach potentially dangerous situations.
  
  
• Observe - There is a rhyme and reason to everything in this game. While enemy behaviors may seem random at first, every enemy has a pattern. The best way to learn that pattern is to watch the enemy and try to understand it. While I will outline enemy behaviors in this guide, it is still a really good idea to try to learn them yourself to give you an innate understanding of how things work.
  
  
• Patience - You'll only be able to go through the game quickly when you get really good at it. If you're reading this guide, chances are you're not quite there yet, and that's okay. What you should be doing, unless you're speedrunning this game (separate guide), is taking your time. Rushing makes mistakes more common and more often leads to your death. When things become more instinctual, that's when you'll get quicker, and it becomes less rushing to your death and more just doing things faster.
  
  
• Be aware of your surroundings - Try to always look at your whole screen while you're playing. People have a tendency to tunnel vision and miss a lot as a result. You don't want to pass up golden berries that are on the other side of the screen or a chest that could possibly have climbing gauntlets. You'll also want to know what enemies are around so that you can deal with them should they start closing in on you. It'll give you time to formulate a plan to cope. It's also incredibly easy to carelessly toss a blast berry only to have it break spikes and have those spikes come back and kill you.
  
  
• Potions are your last resort - Throughout the game you will find a lot of items. Crates lying around, blast berries in vines, spring boxes on the ground, etc. These cost you nothing and are relatively plentiful. Your potions, on the other hand, cost golden berries, and they're slightly less plentiful. Learn to use your other items first for item hops or other utilities before resorting to your potions, and when you need that revive pot later on, you'll be able to buy it.
  
  
• Remember the golden resource rule - Certain resources are more useful than others. Here is a listing of the important of items in order (some subjectivity) - important inventory items (swords, gloves, boots, things you want to keep), potions, unimportant inventory items/found items (blast berries, spikes, crates, basically stuff you don't care about keeping), then found jump auras. There are obviously exceptions to the golden resource rule, but it's a great rule of thumb to stick to when possible.
  
  Consequently, the order of things to use first to last:
  Jump auras, unimportant items, potions, important inventory items.
  
  
• Keep a stock of golden berries - I personally generally like to keep a stock of at least 2x the cost of revive potions in case I severely mess up on a given level and need to buy 2 revive pots. On normal mode, this means keeping about 8 golden berries in inventory and not going below it, on easy mode, 4. Even better, try to stock up and just horde those golden berries. This will be very useful later in the game, and you really shouldn't need 20 jump pots in your inventory. If you do, start learning to minimize your potion usage.
  
  
• Be efficient with your items - Often times, you'll have many different ways to approach any given situation. Some of those situations might not require use of an item, and you should generally go with that option when possible. When forced to use an item though, try to get the most out of that item usage. If you're using a blast berry and you're low on items, try looking for nearby spikes. You can break the spikes with the blast berry and get 4 spikes out of the deal, effectively getting 3 more item hops out of the deal, 4 altogether. If you have a spear, try using that to kill an enemy instead of a blast berry, as the spear is reusable. If you might need to downclimb for some reason later, try breaking blocks with blast berries instead of item hopping to make the climb back up not use items.
  
  
• Learn to throw - Throwing is such an integral mechanic to this game, from throwing down, up, or across the screen, it's so useful. Learning to throw can save you resources, look cool, and make killing so much easier (it's safer to kill from afar then right in front of something). Learn the trajectories of your throws with items, as it differs from item to item. The spear especially has a weird trajectory that should be learned and is notably different. Learning all of this can be the difference between you killing a beetle and the beetle eating you for dinner.
  
  
• Practice - No one is instantly good. No one. Everything takes a lot of practice. All the skills I mention I may be able to pull off without much thought, but they had to be practiced a fair amount first. Find a safe place to try things and repeatedly do them until you're comfortable doing them. Then you can start usefully applying these skills in normal settings.
  
  
• Don't die - It's so easy, and it costs so much, so do everything you can to avoid dying. Again, if you think doing something will kill you, it probably will.
  
  
• Remember everything - This may go without saying, but this game is hard. There are so many things to keep in mind at any given time, and it's easy to forget one of them and die as a result. Try not to forget those things.
  
  
• Easy mode is always an option - Normal mode may be the default and many people have a diehard hatred for playing easy, but that doesn't mean you should avoid it entirely. Being able to buy 2 revives at the cost of 2 each can easily change the outcome of a game. You will be able to progress further and have more money overall. Easy mode will also save you from crush deaths.

Advanced Gameplay

It is important to note that while it is very worthwhile knowing these "moves", learning through experience is key. It's the difference between knowing how to do a certain move, and when to do a certain move. Practice will both build muscle memory and allow for smoother execution.

Movement

I'm really going to use this section to show different kinds of moves that you may or may not be aware that you can do which will help you should you encounter particular situations.

• Walk jump to a block 2 blocks above and 1 block away - Could also be called a 1x2 jump.
  
  Jump from a standing position and hold up to grab the block above.
  
  
  
• Wall to ceiling transfer - Transfer from the side of a block to the bottom by hitting the direction of the block and up as the climber begins to fall off the block. This can't be done well with high climbing speeds from gloves, but it can be done relatively consistently with default climbing speed.
  
  How this works is that you start falling off the block and end up below it. Since you're still touching the block, you end up grabbing onto it.
  
  
• Jump to ceiling hang - Corner Jump. There is one situation I have been able to find where you can consistently do a running jump to a ceiling hang, and it works better with more running speed.
  
  If you tap the jump button very quickly you will you'll jump to just below a block height. You can essentially use this to jump to that corner and grab the ceiling. It might take a few tries, so practice in a safe environment.
  
  
• Ledge hopping - This is relatively straightforward. Once you hit a ledge, you can jump off of the ledge for a height of about a 1/2 block. More importantly, you can jump in whatever direction you want. There are some situations where you don't want to jump onto the block you're on the ledge of and want to jump away instead, and this is one of the places where that matters.
  
  
  
• Utilizing air jumps - Specifically, I'm going to go into just how high an air jump will send you. They send you about 3 blocks into the air. Keeping that in mind, a running jump will give you a total height of of 4 1/2 blocks, where as a walking jump will give you a total height of 5 blocks. That extra height can mean the difference between reaching what you want to reach and falling to your death.
  
  
• Water - So you press jump to swim up. That much everyone figures out immediately. To best get away from fish though, it's best to move more than just up. Fish move slower going diagonally, so moving in diagonal directions usually gets you away from them. You can also dive in the water. Diving gets you to maximum dive velocity much faster than just falling. It is done by holding down and pressing the jump button. This will help you escape those scary situations that much faster.
  
  
• Multi-item hops - Hope you got item hops down because this is basically doing more than one of them in a row. This isn't terribly useful too often, but once in awhile it's a useful skill to utilize. I recommend starting with an item in hand for this and having your inventory set to the next item you want to hop with. Jump in the air and throw down your item like you normally for an item hop. Once you hit the peak of the item hop (it's quick, you'll really probably be immediately hitting the button for it), throw down the item from your inventory with your store button. Don't bring it to your hand, as that is unnecessary to do. If you want to do another item hop after that, hit the next inventory button and item hop from inventory again. You can do this, at most, 7 times, since you can have 6 items in the inventory and 1 item in hand. You'll definitely want to line up your items so that you use your items in the order you want, as opposed to accidentally throwing away those nice climbing gauntlets.
  
  
  
• BoomBoxing - This trick requires a boomerang and any reusable item that you can item hop with. To do this, you'll need the item in your hand and boomerang in your inventory or the other way around. It works a little better with boomerang in hand, but it still works well regardless. You jump into the air, throw the boomerang down (which very briefly cancels your downward momentum) and then item hop with your item. If done right, the item will be brought back to you with with the boomerang, and you can store both really quickly while on a wall, or get up on a floor where you can calmly grab both. if you're really quick with throwing the inventory item out (a frame or 2 after the first one), you can throw in any direction with the item hop down, but down tends to work the best. This can be harder with analog due to the amount of different directions that can be used. Even a slight change in joystick can result in you missing the initial item you threw.
  
  
  
• Mega Jumps - Technically, this should be called a running tall jump, but mega jump just sounds better. This is fairly simple to do, and you may have accidentally done it a few times. If you start to run and jump on the same frame, you'll get a tall jump with the momentum of a running jump. Specifically, hold run, then hit left or right and jump at the same time and you'll do the mega jump. Alternatively you could start walking then press run and jump at the same time. This takes a lot of practice to do consistently, but it will significantly increase the distance you can travel with your jumps.
  
  
• Item Switch Throw Up - Ever have a full inventory and an explosive in your hand but wanted to switch out one of your items for the explosive? This trick will help you out. Switch your inventory to the item you want to pull out, make sure there's space above you to throw into (4 blocks for a blast berry), and throw the item in your hand up. Now quickly throw the item in your inventory, doesn't much matter where, and try to catch the item you threw up. You can jump to grab it if you're afraid of it hitting the ground or if you wanted to throw your inventory item on the ground at your feet. If you did it right, you dropped out your inventory item and now have the explosive item in your hand, which you can simply store. Kind of pointless to do for non-explosive items, but great for those explosive items.
  
  
  
• Item Switch Hop - This is mostly like the previous item switch throw up, but instead of switching with your inventory, you'll be switching with an item on the ground.Often this is useful when you have an item in your hand, want to do an item hop, and there's an item where you want to do the item hop. So stand where there's an item, have an item in hand, and throw your item up. Now grab the item on the ground, jump, item hop, and then grab the item out of the air. This might take some practice to get consistent, but it looks really cool and also can help with item conservation.
  
  
  
• Peek-a-Boo Throws - This is used with a weapon. With weapon in hand, ledge hop without pressing any directions and you'll land back on the ledge at the end of the hop, and throw the weapon and immediately re-grab it. This is useful when there's an enemy right next to the ledge that you need to kill. If the weapon is a sword you can also throw the weapon while clinging to the ledge and it will hit them if they are close enough to the ledge.

Miscellaneous Items

• Crate - Can be found throughout most of chapter 1. They can be stood for an extra half block of height.
  
• Blast Berry - The same as a corrosion potion. Can be found throughout most of the tower. Causes explosive damage wherever it hits.
  
• Corrosion Potion - The very ones that you buy from the witch; they can be stored in the inventory. Exactly the same as a blast berry. Can be gotten from throwing a corrosion to your hand. Also found in the jump/corrode blocks in Segmentation Plant.
  
• Meat - Gotten from killing rats. Worthless on its own. Can be turned into cooked meat by throwing it into lava.
  
• Cooked Meat - If you press up while in hand or on the ground in front of it, you will eat it and gain a temporary adrenaline boost, just like an adrenaline berry. Disappears on use. Can be gotten from throwing meat in lava or crafted.
  
• Spring Box - When you jump onto it, it will bounce you 10 blocks into the air. You can use it in the air by throwing it up as you are falling. Once used, this becomes a spent spring box. Can be found lying around most of chapter 1 or found in a chest.
  
• Spent Spring Box - Can be jumped on to give you just over 2 1/2 blocks of height. If used to item hop, it will give you the same 2 1/2 block height in the air, making this one of the best item hop items in the game.
  
• Seed - Can be found in chests. Wherever it lands, it will sprout a vine with 4 different berries. These can be either a jump berry, blast berry, golden berry, adrenaline berry, adhesion berry, or another seed.
  
• Lantern - This exudes light that will scare ghosts away. If you throw it at anything, including the ground, it will do non-destructive explosive damage and splatter some lava drips that can kill you. Has a chance to be found from breaking lanterns.
  
• Junk - The result of a crafting that doesn't make anything. It's only use is crafting it with more junk to make a calling horn.
  
• Calling Horn - Hold jump to summon a witch to your location. She cannot be spawned on the big 2x2 unbreakable blocks. Can be found in a chest or crafted.
  
• Powder Keg - After a few seconds, this will explode, taking out a large area, 3 blocks in radius and doing a lot of damage if it hits any enemies. Will kill you if you are caught in the explosion.
  
• Timed Grenade - Explode after a few seconds of being out, only damaging you. If you store it, their timer will reset. Only useful for item hops. Can only be found from the blue golems in Chapter 2.
  
• Arcane Steak - If you press up while in hand or on the ground in front of it, you will gain a jumper's aura. Can be used infinitely. Can be gotten from picking up meat out of purple lava in the Centurial Trials or crafted.

Boot and Glove Items

• Leather Glove - These increase your climbing speed a little bit. They can be found in a chest or crafted.
  
• Climbing Gauntlets - These increase your climbing speed a lot. They are the equivalent of two leather gloves. They can be found in a chest or crafted.
  
• Arcane Gauntlets - These greatly increase your climbing speed. They are the equivalent of two climbing gauntlets. They can be crafted.
  
• Boots - These increase your running speed a little bit. They can be found in a chest or crafted.
  
• Golden Greaves - These increase your running speed a lot. They are the equivalent of two boots. They can be found in a chest or crafted.
  
• Arcane Sabatons - These greatly increase your running speed. They are the equivalent of two golden greaves. They can be crafted.
  
• Telejumpers - When doing a running jump, will teleport you forward a small distance. If you hold up and hit jump, these will teleport you up four blocks, just below where you will die. Can be crafted.
  
• Gunboots - If you press jump in the air, you will shoot a bullet below you that propels you up a small amount. Can be done 5 times before they need to be reloaded by grabbing a wall, ceiling, or touching the ground. Arguably one of the best items in the game. Can be crafted.

Weapon Items

• Spike - Can be gotten by gotten by blowing up a spike block. Will kill you if it hits you. Will do damage to anything you throw it at. Can only be used once.
  
• Spear - Pretty much a re-usable spike that doesn't kill you. Can be found from chests are crafted.
  
• Old Sword - The worst of the swords. This takes the time of a full tall jump to do a slash. When thrown, it does half damage. Can be swung to destroy some obstacles.
  
• Bitchbane/Challenger's Sword - Can be swung or thrown to kill enemies and can destroy some obstacles when swung. Will swing at the top of a runing jump. Will start swinging as soon as you hold jump at any point. Can be crafted or found upon killing 9 dogs.
  
• Kingshook - This is literally a Challenger's sword/bitchbane combined with an elastograp. Will swing with a jump and, when thrown, will pull you up like the elastograp. Holding down will prevent it from pulling you. Can only be crafted.
  
• Killatonne - A giant hammer that will break any block it hits in front of you. It will bump you up a little bit when used in the air, which can be used to jump just a little more than two blocks. This will also deal the same damage as a sword swing. Cannot be used to item hop, but will stop downward momentum if thrown down. Can be gotten from killing the Giant worm. It will also destroy fan blades if used on them.
  
• Exiled Blade - A huge sword (the size of a fan blade because it is one). Swung like a sword, but it takes a few seconds to charge up. It will do a slash that does a lot of damage to anything it hits, and will break any blocks it touches on the swing. It will also send you into the air a little bit with the swing. Cannot be used to item hop, but will stop downward momentum when thrown down. Can be gotten from breaking fan blades with the Killatonne.
  
• Ascender - A huge sword, the same size as the Exiled Blade. Swung like a sword, but it slashes after a second. It breaks any blocks it touches when it slashes. If you keep holding jump after the slash, another attack will charge up, and the blade will start spinning like the fans in fatal flight. Any blocks you come into contact with this will break and it will repeatedly hit anything it comes into contact with. Be careful with this, as any lava or spike blocks broken can still hit you. Cannot be used to item hop, but it will stop downward momentum when thrown down. Can be obtained by using shooting an Exiled Blade with a vapour wand.
  
• Brobash's Scimitar - A sword with an insanely fast swing speed. Will swing as soon as you hit the jump button. Can be mashed for a lot of hits. Can only be gotten from beating Brobash in the Coliseum.
  
• ???(ZSword) - Swings slightly slower than the Challenger's Sword, and it makes a multicolored slash that hits about two blocks away when swung. When not in hand or inventory, will slowly pull itself toward the player. Can only be found at the top of the tower.
  
• Boomerang - When thrown, will go in whatever direction it's aimed at about 4 blocks and return to the thrower. It will grab any item it goes over and do half damage to anything it touches. Do not grab spikes with it, as they will kill you. Cannot be used to item hop, but will stop downward momentum if thrown down. Can be found in chests.
  
• Boomerorb - Works just like a boomerang, but it does full damage to anything it touches, and it can be used to item hop. Can only be crafted.
  
• Zball - When this is item hopped with several times, it will become catch on fire and do full explosive damage to any enemy it touches. Does not break blocks. Can item hop with it to about a 3 block height. Can only be found in a dream.
  
• Vapour Wand - This shoots a ball of light that counts as explosive damage but doesn't break any blocks. The trajectory can be a bit random, so it can be a tad hard to use. Can only be gotten by beating Zardo in Chapter 1. It can be used to transform the Exiled Blade into the Ascender.
  
• Boiler Wand - Similar to the vapour wand, only the ball that it shoots out travels faster, is more accurate, and breaks blocks. Does not transform the Exiled Blade. Can only be gotten in the Hidden Keep.

Grappling Hook Items

• Adhesion Berry - When thrown, this will pull the climber towards wherever it attaches to but doesn't release upon arrival. Can kill if not used properly. When the run button is pressed again, it will impart the momentum that the climber has at the time. Very tricky to use. Can only be used once. Can be found from seeds and throughout the Volt Caves.
  
• Elastograp - Does the same exact thing as adhesion berries, but does not go away upon use. Can only be crafted.
  
• Hookshot - When thrown, will pull the climber to wherever it attaches to. Can impart a little bit of momentum, but not much. Can only be crafted.
  
• Winchshot - When thrown, will attach to a wall or ceiling, and the climber can raise themselves to the attachment point lower themselves away. Can move left or right one block while attached. Can impart a little bit of momentum if moving up while detaching. Can be crafted or found in the brutal boiler.

Orb Items

• Hadou Orb - When thrown, this throws a wave of energy about a block wide in whatever direction it's thrown and breaks any breakable blocks or does explosive damage to whatever it touches. Can be found in chests.
  
• Invulnerorb - When thrown, gives you invulnerability for about 8 seconds. This does not prevent death from falling, lava (not drips), crushing (unless on easy mode), or falling off of the tower. Can be found in chests.
  
• Jump Ampoule - When thrown, creates a cloud of jump gas that will give you 5 jumps. This will kill you if you grab the 5th jump. Can be found in a chest or crafted.

Quest Items

• Flour - Used as part of the Cake Quest in the Centurial Trials. If mixed with a bat egg and a blast berry in a block of water, it will make Blast Berry Dough. Can only be bought in floors 1-3 Centurial Trials. Can only be bought once.
  
• Blast Berry Dough - The second item in the Cake Quest in the Centurial Trials. Can be baked in an excruciating heat or !!! level to make a Blast Berry Cake.
  
• Blast Berry Cake - When thrown, it will cause an explosion that does massive damage to anything caught within and blows up a screen's worth of blocks (8 block radius). Will kill the giant worm and about anything that takes damage in one hit. Alternatively, carry it to the 101st floor of the Centurial Trials and give it to Cakeman (crafter) to finish the Cake Quest.
  
• Ascender - Required to complete the Arsenal of the Ascended quest. Fly with it while ontop of the giant sword in order to complete the quest. Fly with it a second time to complete the Centurial Trials.
  
• Krystelle's Orb - These are gotten from your first encounter with Krystelle. They can be given back to the statue in the room after this encounter to get a Legend Fragment.
  
• Legend Fragment - Part of the Legend Fragment quest. There are 7 of them altogether, and must be carried to the top of the tower to be completed. Found in various areas of the game. I will specify these areas in the related section.

The Witch and the Crafter

The Witch
The witch is really your lifeline in this game. All of your potions come from her, so chances are you'll breathe a sigh of relief whenever you see her. She theoretically shows up in every level, but sometimes she seems to just not appear, or you just happen to miss her. To help look for her, you can see her shadow from a distance. Keep your eye out for a shadow that's slightly out of place or a moving shadow, since she's always stirring her pots.

To use her little shop, press up when you are in front of her and a menu will pop up you can move through the menu by pressing up or down, and buy something with the jump button.

There are 4 things you can buy from the witch (except in Centurial Trials, where you can buy an additional quest item) In order of listing:

Jump potion - 1 golden berry
corrosion potion - 1 golden berry
teleport potion - 3 golden berries
Revive potion - 2 golden berries in easy, 4 golden berries in normal
Flour - 1 golden berry (only in your first witch encounter in the Centurial Trials)

The most important thing to remember is that the revive potion will always be at the bottom of the list. If you want to quickly access it once you open the menu, hit up to scroll directly to the bottom, hit jump potion, and move out.

The Crafter
The Crafter has a chance to show up in any level randomly, and only has one area in the whole game where he is guaranteed show up, which is at the end of Chapter 1 in the room with the stone head at the top. He will take two items you throw at him and combine them. To use him, walk up to him and press up. The next two items to move over him will be taken and combined.

Once he's done, you can walk over and buy whatever item he crafted, all of which have different prices. After you buy your item, you can use him again for the price of a golden berry. Since there are somewhere around 50 items in the game, there are a lot of combinations that are possible, and a lot of them give you junk, which is almost useless.I'll list all of the known combinations that don't give junk below with their costs for your convenience:

- cooked meat + cooked meat = 1 leather glove or boots (1)
- leather glove + leather glove = climbing gauntlet (free)
- climbing gauntlet + climbing gauntlet = arcane gauntlets (free)
- boots + boots = golden greaves (free)
- golden greaves + golden greaves = arcane sabatons (free)
- corrosion potion/blast berry + meat = cooked meat (1)
- arcane gauntlets + arcane sabatons = arcane steak (10)

- spike + crate = spear (1)
- spike + spike = old sword (1)
- old sword + old sword = challenger's sword (4)
- boomerang + vapour wand = boomerorb (4)
- elastograp + bitchbane/challenger's sword = kingshook (4)
- arcane sabatons + vapour wand = gun boots (4)
- ascender + vapour wand = brobash's scimitar (6)

- killatonne + golden greaves/arcane sabatons = telejumpers (4)
- bitchbane/challenger's sword + spear = hookshot (6)
- spear + vapour wand = winchshot (8)
- vapour wand + adhesion berry = elastograp (6)
- spring box + vapour wand = elastograp (8)

- vapour wand + vapour wand = Get paid 8 golden berries

- invulnorb + invulnorb = extra revive (2)

- spring box + blast berry = powder keg (1)
- timed grenade + timed grenade = powder keg (1)
- blast berry + blast berry = seed (1)
- blast berry/corrosion potion + crate = springbox (1)
- junk + junk = calling horn (1)
- crate + vapour wand = calling horn (1)
- krystelle's orb/legend fragment + krystelle's orb/legend fragment = calling horn (1)
- egg + blast berry = blast berry cake (20) (doesn't work in Centurial Trials)

- adhesion berry + adhesion berry = jump ampoule (1)
- corrosion potion + corrosion potion = hadou orb (1)

Ground Floor

This is the basic area. It's your introduction to the game and fairly straightforward as far as climbing goes. You get introduced to spikes, rats, hounds, lava, crush blocks, smooth blocks (blocks you can't hang from), flying balloons, wasps. Really a good portion of the stuff that will try to kill you in chapter 1. Overall it's a great place to really nail down your mechanics. If you can keep a calm head, you can also get through this area without difficulty. This section will cover how to approach this area and what to do in most of the situations you will encounter.

- First off, make sure to conserve your resources. My challenge to you is to get through all of chapter 1 without using any of your potions, and that is more than possible. I suggest attempting to meet this challenge especially starting here so that you don't come to rely on those oh so handy jump potions and corrosion potions. Get good with your item hopping, and make sure to grab whatever items you come across throughout this area. Crates, blast berries, treasure chests (whatever they may contain), and golden berries should be grabbed if seen. If you're full up on items, start prioritizing blast berries over crates and, if you're comfortable with them, spring boxes. They are like using 4 jumps all at once, which can be tricky to manage.

When you encounter a situation where you cannot progress with climbing and must use some resource, first use any jump auras you got from the level (those jump berries), then item hops with items if you don't have any jump auras, then keep potions as your last resort. You should, at worst, just have to use a jump potion in the very first part if you have bad luck.

- Spikes are those pointy looking things in the ground. You can safely walk through them, and you can drop down onto them from a block height or below. This means low jumps onto them won't kill you. If you drop onto them from above a block's height, you will die. If you break the block they are on, 4 spikes will explode out in random directions, so keep your distance when doing this.

- Lava will instantly kill you if you drop into it no matter what. If an item lands in the lava, it will throw out some lava drips in random directions. If you break any block connected directly to the lava, lava drips will explode out in random directions, but the lava will be gone.

- Rats are really tricky at first. Their movement is random, and they always seem to move in the most annoying way. However, they wait a random amount of time before they make their first move, but generally you have about five seconds after they appear on screen before they make their first move. Make sure to have a plan to deal with whatever path they choose to take before that time. Sometimes that may involve climbing back down or climbing past them and jumping over them. Don't worry, they can't jump after you! Once you start really observing them and figuring out their patterns though, they're no big deal.

- Hounds are really tricky at first, especially when you first encounter them and when you get a level that has an unbearable smell, you might be overwhelmed by all of the dogs. However, there are clear patterns to follow with them that make them a piece of cake to deal with. If you've played the game, you have probably learned by this point that once the dogs get up and get back down, they're safe to run past for a few seconds at least. What most don't realize is there are a lot more frames for safety then that. The way that dogs work is that they pick a random action from their assortment of possible actions every few seconds. They can either turn left, turn right, stand up and bark left, stand up and bark right, jump to the left, or jump to the right. After any of these actions, they are safe. They can also turn left five times in a row, in which case it seems like they don't move at all. I'd suggest waiting until they do an action that is discernible so that you can be certain they just did something. For example, if they're lying down facing left, and they turn to lying down facing right, they are now safe to run past for a few seconds.

There is something else to know about the hounds. If you get a level that has an unbearable smell, this is actually one of the greatest fortunes you can encounter. If you kill 9 hounds you can spawn a really great sword called the Bitchbane. This sword is a really useful tool throughout the whole game and should definitely be gotten if you have the opportunity. If you encountered a chest at some point and got spear, old sword, or a boomerang, then that's great! You have a weapon to kill those dogs right there. If you didn't get that though, you'll have to improvise because the game doesn't give you enough corrosion potions to kill 9 dogs. Luckily for us, when you break a spike block, it throws out 4 spikes per block. If you can get enough blast berries to break two of those blocks, you have all you need to kill those doggies! If you can't find any blast berries in the level, the two or three corrosion potions you would need to do it would be worth the cost.

- Some levels spawn with flying pods at the beginning. Use them, they're faster than climbing yourself and those levels tend to be more open. This also leads to a possibility that there aren't enough dogs to spawn a bitchbane if you get an unbearable smell level. It's all pretty straightforward from there. Learn how to manipulate the seed pod by moving onto the left or right sides.

- Some blocks are too smooth to grab. These are those blocks that are brown in color, and really just can't be hung from on the bottom. You can still grab the sides of those blocks. Keep this in mind while climbing so you don't accidentally try to use it and fall to your death.

- Some blocks are crush blocks. They have a little symbol on them. If you break the block under them and they fall onto you, you will die. If on easy mode, it's not instant game over, but on normal that's instant death regardless of revives. These blocks can also be moved if you push them. They can be pushed into positions that are more advantageous to you, such as being able to make that jump you just barely can't make.

- WASPS! Wasps everywhere! Watch out for them! The thing is though that they are very slow moving. If they touch you, it will move you a little bit and has a chance to stun you. This isn't too big a deal unless the stun throws you off to your death. You can purposefully let them stun you in a safe place to get them out of the way though. They spawn 3 bees per hive, and they home in on your position once you get within range of the beehives. If there are some berries close to a hive, you can lure the 3 bees that spawn out of the way and then safely grab the berries. If you blow up a hive, it will drop a golden berry, which is great! However, you also then get an angry swarm of wasps that will move very randomly. This is good if you are desperate for golden berries, but it can be very risky. I'd suggest not doing it if possible. You can use bees to increase your jump height slightly. This is generally more effort than it's worth though, unless you really wanna conserve those resources!

Hatchery

The hatchery is the second area you encounter in the game. This is where things start getting harder. You get introduced to worms, beetles, and the giant worm here. Things get a little more scary here, but it's not too much harder than ground floor.

- While climbing, keep your eyes out for orange on the ground or walls. These are the pincers of worms. They're safe to run by just after they finish shooting out of the ground. If you got the bitchbane from ground floor, you can also throw the sword at them or slash them to get rid of them. When you get the levels with a lot of worms in it, just take your time and work through it slowly. If you encounter a situation where you just can't get past the worms without getting hit somehow, use a resource to item hop past, blow them up, or jump past them.

- Beetles are rough at first. The way beetles work is that, while they are on screen, they will fly towards you. They don't change directions terribly well, so you can manipulate them to fly past you and then make your escape. If you hit them with something, they will stop all movement, including flying, and they will drop to the ground and stop for a few seconds. This can be used if you don't have any weapons and need to make a getaway. When the beetle first comes onto the screen, they will be in larval form for the first 5'ish seconds. After that they hatch and then they start chasing. If you can climb fast enough, you can climb past the beetle without it even hatching, since it won't hatch off screen. This is an incentive to climb faster. Keep in mind that the only way to hurt a beetle while it's in larval form is with swimg from a sword.

- The Giant Worm can be really scary at first, but as long as you jump around and don't climb too slow, he can't catch you. It's like lava, but it rubberbands to you and slows down when it gets close. Remember the golden rule of not panicking and just ascending without descending, and you should be fine. Be wary when he starts to break a block with spikes or lava on it, as the spikes and lava drips will splatter all over the place. Same with lanterns.

If you do have a sword, you can actually kill the giant worm! This is very much worth doing, as he drops a really great hammer when he dies. For this, I suggest using the bitchbane if possible, and understand how the worm works. So as aforementioned, he rubberbands to you. The further away, the quicker he comes towards you. The closer he comes to you, the slower he moves. When you hit him, he reels back in pain for a second or two, and then comes at you at something around double speed. Just move away after he's done reeling back and he won't eat you. You can slice him a few times until he starts coming back. I suggest around 4 times then move away. You can hit him again around twice before he resets reeling. Overall, he takes 25 hits to destroy with sword slashes. Make sure to manipulate him so that he doesn't destroy spikes or lava around you to keep yourself safe. I'd suggest climbing as you fight him, getting to safe spots, getting in some shots, then moving onto the next safe spot. With this strategy, he can be beaten fairly easily.

Conservatory

This is where the game starts getting difficult. There can be a lot to keep track of in the Conservatory between seed spitters, the rare dog, and the occasional worm popping out of the ground. Be careful with the worms, as sometimes you can't see them while they are buried in the ground. It is a good idea to move slowly through these levels. If you have a sword, it will be extremely useful here. It can kill any of the seed spitters and worms should you be able to reach them with a slice.

The seed spitters are the enemy unique to this level, and when you understand how they work, they aren't too bad to deal with. They simply spit out a seed in a set arc after a few seconds. They'll start deflated, inflate up, hold it for half a second, then spit out a seed. It will always be the same arc.This is based on an on screen timer, which means it will not be spitting seeds while off screen and won't start until on screen. They tend to not be too bad, but sometimes they can cluster and make advancing tricky. A sword slice or explosive will take care of them. For the most part, if you are climbing on a wall over a seed spitter, it actually spits out the seed past your climber, so you can climb past them pretty safely. Once in a while it can hit you because of how angled it is, so try to be away from the mouth of the seed when they shoot.

Conservatory can spawn with varying heights of water, and this can be great, as seed spitters are inactive in the water.

There are three different level modifiers that can be encountered in the Conservatory: Zardo (strange feeling), lava, and a gas trap. The gas trap is unique to this area, and if it is in the level, will trigger when you hit the exit door. You'll here a click and the music will stop. Not exiting the level immediately will be your cue that this is happening. The gas will descend about halfway down the level and kills you upon touch, so it's a good idea to descend as well. The gas will not lower into water, so if you have a water level, you can just wait in the water near the surface or somewhere safe from fish. The Path of Exiles does not lock in this case, so you can choose to go there instead and skip all of Conservatory.

Of note is the half platforms that show up exclusively in this area. They can be reached with a tall jump, so keep that in mind when you encounter them. If there's a water block next to it, the water will be contained, but you can climb into the water from the bottom because physics. Sometimes these will have worms pop out of the bottom of them, and they are the only block in the game worms can be on the bottom of.

Path of Exiles

Sometimes in chapter 1 there are red doors with a skull on them. These take you to the Path of Exiles, a shortcut that gives you one of three possible stages to go through. Getting through this shortcut skips a whole section of levels. it can only possibly show up on the first level of an area, and the last area it can show up in is the Conservatory. Naturally, these shortcuts can be a bit harder than the normal areas, and they cut down on your resource gathering somewhat. This will help you to better get through these areas with ease.

Fatal Flight

I'll get the easiest shortcut out of the way first. It may seem really intimidating with all of the fans, but this is really simplified by one easy trick. To understand and do the trick well, it helps to understand how the fan blades work, so I'll go into that first. The fan blades work on an on-screen timer, and they always start at the same part of their cycle. When they first come onto screen, they're set to stop spinning when you reach the top part of the blade.

The trick is that if you do a hop of any height on your flying pod when the fan blades are on screen, you will guaranteed hit the part of the cycle where you can just float by the fan blade. If you jump more than once though, you'll end up at a different part of the cycle and things get more complicated, with you having to do multiple jumps to find the new timing through. Do this simple trick though, and Fatal Flight is the easiest of the shortcuts.

Zardo's Gallery
This place seems like a nightmare. Six blocks suspended over lava means one mistake can mean the end of the game. This game/level consists of 4 rounds where you have to collect 3 coins. You have about 15 seconds in each round to grab all 3 coins, and it is plenty of time. Each round after the first adds spikes to 2 random platforms in the gallery, making jumping between the blocks that much harder. Each round also puts a jump berry on one of the 3 blocks on the bottom. The third round spawns in a beetle on a random block that you are not occupying. Once the game ends, Zardo will despawn the lava and spawn in 3 chests as a prize for winning.

This is another place where knowing the trick of it makes it easy, and that involves knowing how spikes work. Spikes will only kill you if you fall on them from above a block's height. This means you can do small hops in spikes, meaning that here you can easily grab coins on spike blocks just by doing a little hop. The other part of this place is knowing how to move from platform to platform when there are spikes. Without boots on, if you jump from the middle of a block to the next block, you will land on the side of the next block, making you not land in the spikes. If you do have boots, especially golden greaves, do a lower hop, which takes a little bit of practice and control. Each round you get a jump berry. These are specifically so that you can quickly move from the bottom row of blocks to the top row of blocks. You should never have to climb up the walls of this place, but do climb down, as it is much safer than dropping. When the beetle spawns, kill it. it will make your life so much easier to get rid of this thing. Stand in the middle of the top or bottom, and it will have a chance to spawn to the left or right of you. With a blast berry or corrosion, you just have to do a small hop and throw towards it, and it will die. If it spawns elsewhere, try to collect your coins and kill it as you go. You have plenty of time to react to it. When climbing down, do it on the right side, not the left side. There's a block of space on the right side between the wall and the block platforms, whereas there are two blocks of space on the left side between the wall and the block platforms. It will be much easier getting onto the blocks from the wall on the right side than the left side, so just use the right side.

Overall, I suggest a pattern of collecting the coins of the level you're on and then switching to the next level to grab the last of the coins (go from bottom to top, then top to bottom on the next round). Sometimes the coins will all be on another level, and that's fine. In summary, the game should go like this: Game starts, you grab the coins on the bottom and the jump berry, jump to the top and grab the last coins, move to the left most block at the top. Next round starts, you collect the coins on the top, climb down the right side, collect all of the coins on the bottom and the jump berry and move to the middle block on the bottom. Next round starts, you kill the beetle if he's on your right or left, collect coins on bottom, grab jump berry, jump to top and collect coins on top. If the beetle's not on the bottom level, try and kill him safely as you go (I know, easier said than done sometimes). Next round starts, you collect coins on top, climb down right side, then collect coins on bottom. Lava despawns, you collect your treasure, and head out the door.

Soul Crossing

I saved the hardest for last. This place is tough on its own, and Zardo can spawn in here to only make it harder. There are ghosts to fly in and out of this area randomly that have a 50% chance to stun you and a 50% chance to kill you. Both can end in death anyway, so make sure to avoid the ghosts. If you happen to have a lantern, it will scare the ghosts off, so this is the lantern's chance to shine! There are fan blades here, and they give you very little time to move through them. Get used to their timings, and be liberal with your item usage here. Jump potions may be necessary to get through in time if you don't have gloves. Zardo can put you in a really tricky position where you have to move fast but will die if you do. At worst, give him a hit with anything if the moment isn't right to buy some time. You can climb the outside of the tower as well, but it doesn't always work out to be useful, and often times this can make climbing the wall not work out so well. Make sure to grab what berries and items you find and use them as necessary. This level is best done quick, so try to be fast!

Heart

This is easily the hardest area of Chapter 1. There is lava everywhere, and bats will be more than happy to carry you into it. If you're really unlucky, and you will be, you'll run into the excruciating heat levels, which have even more lava than the regular versions and a more red screen to really make you feel stressed. There are 4 things to worry about in Heart: lava, lava drips, lava geysers, and bats.

I haven't talked too much about lava to this point, and that's mostly because it has not been much of an issue. Once you reach Heart though, there's more of it just lying around on the ground, and you will have to avoid it somehow. Remember that lava can be cleared by breaking one of the blocks it's attached to, but it will spray lava drips everywhere, so make sure to get to a safe place when doing this. Make sure to remember that lava will instantly kill you, and you can easily die from a lava drip hitting you and then dropping into the lava from that. If there's a jump you're not sure about over some lava, either blow up some blocks to make the jump easier, clear the lava with an explosive item, or use a jump potion.

Lava drips are likely going to kill you a lot. They are that lava that's continuously dropping from the ceiling. They go down the center of a block every time, so, when in doubt, try to stand off center in blocks. This does mean that while climbing a wall, they will not touch you. Careful when trying to ceiling climb past these. Make sure to go just when the drip drops.

Lava geysers throw lava drips up every few seconds. These drips go up about 2 and a half blocks up but they can reach 3 blocks and erupt approximately every 5-6 seconds. If the geyser has 2 or more blocks of space above it then it can occasionally send a lava droplet over the edge of the block so be careful when climbing up the side of these! Often times you'll run into a lava drip over a geyser, and just make sure to wait until you see the drip after a geyser before passing. Of note with these geysers is that they only erupt while they are on screen, so they work on an on-screen timer. When they first appear on screen, they have about 5-6 seconds before they go off, so if you can get past it before then, you can really speed through the Heart. If you can't, stop and take your time. Speeding through takes experience and skill.

Bats are the most annoying thing in this area for sure. They don't kill you at all, but if you step into them while they are not attached to a ceiling, they will grab you and fly you around until they hit a ceiling or a few seconds pass. They can and will carry you right into lava, lava drips, and lava geysers, so really try not to get grabbed by them. In narrow corridors, they're actually pretty harmless. They'll grab you for half a second, fly into the ceiling, and then let you go. Alternatively, you can climb over them in those corridors and not get grabbed. They're about the same speed at default climbing speed. If you have a weapon or explosive of some sort, you can kill a bat. If you get grabbed, you can throw your weapon and hit grab to immediately grab it again and it'll kill the bat and get your weapon right back in your hands. Really handy for getting through quickly.

Ruins

Ruins is your chance to relax after the grueling Heart. There aren't any real dangers here except for falling and icicles, and both of those can be easily anticipated. Try keep up a stock of items for you to item hop with, as this area tends to have a lot openness that necessitates item hops or even double item hops or a jump. For the most part, you're intended to go through your items here.

The icicles can kill you if you're a bit careless. They hang from the ceiling and will fall if you fall from high enough or break a block somehow, usually with explosions. You can destroy them with an explosion or sword if you're worried about them, but they're harmless unless falling. It's important to note that when you trigger their falling, the only ones that fall are the ones that are on screen. Be careful with your item hops that involve explosives, as sometimes you could end up dropping one onto you that is just barely off screen or around where you are going. Make sure to plan accordingly.

The gusts of wind that you encounter can be very helpful in conserving items and getting higher. The way they work is when you move into them, they will slowly push you up. You can go down by hitting down. The trick is that it will add to your upward momentum while holding jump period. If you hold down, hit the ground, then jump and immediately stop holding down, you can jump to a much higher height. If you pair this with a mega jump, you can really move around quickly. Note that if you fall into a gust, you'll be safe if you dont hold down, as it will delete your downward momentum to non-lethal levels immediatly.

That's about all there is to say about Ruins. Be careful, think things out, and conserve your items and you should be fine.

Ascension

Ascension is intended to pump you up for what trials lie ahead, but also give you a bit of a break from difficulty for a bit. Not too hard a stage. You're given flying pods to float up on, and climbing is, for the most part, not an option, as all the blocks are covered in poisonous vines. These vines can be destroyed with explosions or sword cuts, but, for the most part, that's relatively dangerous and unnecessary. There will be berries every once in awhile that are safe to grab, but it can be a bit risky. Make sure to jump up to them rather then float into them, as that will likely lead to dying. Sometimes you will get bad luck and have no way of getting past some blocks blocking you. Keeping some blast berries handy or using corrodes at that point will help clear the progress impeding blocks. Do not forget that you can jump on the balloon repeatedly to push it down.

Stock up on what you can and prepare for the trials ahead!

Krystelle Fight

Technically, this area is labelled as ??(?), but you kinda fight Krystelle here. By fight, I really more mean get toyed with. As long as you pay attention and follow Krystelle's instructions, you should be fine. For your convenience though, I'll list out everything that happens in this fight and strategies, should you want them.

- Fish: The first part of this has 4 fish spawning over you. You'll see where they spawn by the magic overhead marking them. Just make sure you're not underneath them when they spawn. The fish will be bouncing in sync, so you can just run past them while they're in the air if you're getting into a corner. You can also climb to the ceiling and wait until the next part. If you have a weapon or explosives, you can give yourself some breathing room by killing one or two of them. Kill all of them if you feel like you can, but it's unnecessary.

After a little bit, Krystelle will cover the room in water, so if there are still fish around, they will swim around, likely after you. I suggest drawing them to a corner then swimming to another corner after they come close, as they seem to pay less attention to you the further away you are. After a little bit though, they disappear and you move onto the next part of the fight.

- Rats: They're a little unclean, but this part is even easier than the last phase. She'll spawn in 4 rats one at a time. You can kill them or climb the walls to the ceiling. You'll be safe in the middle of the ceiling. At least you should be. I've almost never had them get there. At worst, use an item for dropping down safely if that doesn't work out. They'll disappear after a little bit, and then you're onto the next phase.

- Orbs: Krystelle will teleport you to middle of the arena and tell you to place some orbs on some platforms. Just do that and you'll be fine. Interestingly enough, the game seems to simply require you to get rid of the platforms that she spawns. As a result, you can simply destroy the platforms instead. You also don't need to leave the orbs on the platforms, and, in fact, if you want to get the real ending for the game, you have to take them with you.

- Lava: After the orb part, climb to the top of the stage and hang out. Krystelle will cover the arena in lava and leave just the last block height uncovered. If you're at the top, you'll be fine. After a little bit, she'll get rid of it and teleport you above the arena. Just climb up from there and you're pretty much done with chapter 1!

End of Chapter 1

There are a few things in the area after Krystelle to note. For one thing, there's no danger other than falling (Please don't fall here. It's embarrassing). At the top of the water, there's a big stone head who asks if you've seen his eyes. If you're interested in doing a Legend Fragment run, it all starts here. If you carried the Krystelle's orbs from the fight up, you throw them into his eye sockets and get the very first Legend Fragment. If you didn't, don't worry about it, they're worthless unless you have them all anyway.

Other than that, there's a guaranteed crafter at the very top of the stage, so utilize him if you have a few recipes you want to utilize. After you're done, head through the door, and you'll see a flying pod in some water. Just jump on and ride it straight up. If you stray off of the sides of the tower, you can get hit by lighting, and it's just silly. You'll hit the start of chapter 2 and, if it's your first time getting here, you'll unlock the checkpoint for chapter 2 and Centurial Trials! The checkpoint will be really useful, as Chapter 2 is a lot harder than Chapter 1, and you'll want to be able to start from that checkpoint to really learn how to deal with that new hard stuff.

I'll cover the next room in here, but it technically is part of chapter 2. You come into a room with Krystelle sitting on a throne and she tells you a bit of story. It's some good back story to the game and gives you a clue on why you're in the tower to begin with. Right above Krystelle in the middle of the room there's a platform with 2 chests on it. I'd suggest getting this if you can, as it can be some good stuff. I suggest using an item to item hop there from the right wall, but you can also use a jump potion to get there if you're not that confident with your item hopping. Once you go through the next door, you end up where the checkpoint for Chapter 2 dumps you and the hard part of the game really begins.

Segmentation Plant

This area is incredibly intimidating at first. When you first step into this area, you have no idea of what's going on, but really there are only 5 dangers here: Crush blocks, spike blocks, corrode/jump blocks, lasers, and lava traps.

Crush blocks are the blocks that have yellow on the bottom of them. When you are within 2 blocks under them, they will start beeping, and after a second, it will fall down. They will also fall if you are standing on the block. If you're under it when this happens, you will die. On normal mode, it's an instant game over. If you're standing on a crush block and want it to not fall, repeatedly jump up in the air and you'll continuously reset the drop timer. You can drop them down in an advantageous way. You have time to get out of they way once you trigger the drop, and once it comes down you can now stand on or push the block. This can get you up higher and make jumps that you previously could not make. Just make sure you don't block your way when you do this.

Spike blocks are the blocks that have yellow on top of them. When you stand on top of them, they will beep for about a second and then release spikes up, likely into you if you're still on the blocks. These blocks can be safely set off in a way so that they don't kill you in several different fashions. You can run onto the block and run off right when it sets off. There is a period of time after the spikes arm where they're going to go off no matter what and you can get off. It's small though, so be careful. Another method is a tad more risky but more consistent. You stand on the block and, right when they're about to set off, do a really low jump that's high enough to get you above the spikes but low enough so that you can safely land on spikes. If you do it right, you live; if you do it wrong, you die.

Corrode/jump blocks are the blocks with a light in the middle of them and a small capsule at the top that opens when triggered. They have a 50/50 chance to either give you a jump or pop out a corrosion potion. They're not inherently deadly unless you overload on jumps, but if you're not careful the corrosions can catch you off guard and drop you somewhere dangerous. For the most part though, these are great blocks to use. The jumps are great to use for sketchy sections, and the corrosions can be grabbed when they pop out and saved for later.

Lasers might be the most dangerous thing in this area. They are always facing either up or right. They kill you on touch and activate every few seconds. The lasers activate going from left to right for the upwards facing ones and from down to up for the right facing ones. The activation checks go block to block, so you won't see them all activate at once, maybe a quarter of a second between starts. The lasers work on an on level timer. What this means is that for right facing blocks, if they are on the level of your screen, they can activate, if they are not on the level of your screen, they won't activate. For up facing lasers, they will activate if they are in the area above and below your screen. This is slightly different from on screen timers in that it extends past the on screen based on its horizontal or vertical axis. I would recommend taking your time in this area if only to be aware of the all of the lasers that are around.

Lava traps are the big 2x2 blocks with a skull on it and lava inside. When it explodes, it takes out an area of blocks around it in a fat + shape and splashes lava drips everywhere. When this happens, the safest place to be is about 3 blocks above the trap, as the drops don't seem to go higher than 2 to 2 and a half blocks above. If you're somehow caught below, try to get under something not in the blast radius, and it should shield you from the lava drips unless it's at an angle where they can get under. In that case, try to be at an angle from the lava trap where the drips won't hit you. This might take some practice. You can utilize a trap to blow up some spikes if you need to and don't want to use an item to do it, but I'd advise making sure you can do it safely if you're going to do it.

With the obstacles out of the way, I'll talk about the specifics of the 3 different areas of Segmentation Plant.

The first area is a wide open area with obstacles laid through out. Try to use crush traps and jump/corrosion blocks to your advantage to climb up without using potions. Be wary of lasers hitting you from off screen and take your time. Once you learn how to deal with all of the obstacles, this area goes from scary to relatively easy and fun.

The second area is the first time in the game where you actually have to climb down, and it's a three part area that goes down into water first, then up, then back down in water. If you haven't learned how to climb down yet, this is where you will learn. You can take crush blocks down relatively safely by standing on top of them and riding them down, but remember to watch out for lasers, especially if you're dropping off screen. My suggested strategy in this area is to drop slowly and safely down the sides of the walls when possible, collecting stray golden berries along the way and getting jumps from the jump/corrosion blocks. Then swim down and then up, and climb up while being cautious of lasers. Use your jumps when you need to either to get past lasers or tricky situations with crush blocks. Once you get to the top, break any lasers that are in your way with corrosions, and swim down again to the door.

The third area is just a swim up through another area like the last, but it's quick. It's actually a transition area from the Segmentation Plant to the Volt Caves, and it introduces volt blocks and adhesion berries. Keep in mind that volt blocks kill you when active, and adhesion berries take a lot of practice to get used to, but I'll touch on all of this in the next section.

Volt Caves

The Volt Caves is easily one of the most difficult sections of the game. There's only one enemy in this area, Beebles (the blue bugs that scream, jump and run), but there's still plenty that can kill you here between volt blocks and jump gas nightmare creatures (not really sure what name this things have). There are also the spores flying around, but they don't kill you and end up being more of an annoyance than anything. There are also new mechanics introduced here with the adhesion berries and the jump pads. Beeble strategies will be saved for last, as approaching them will also require an understanding of the rest of the mechanics of the Volt Caves first.

The first thing you should notice when entering this area is the volt blocks. These are the dark blue blocks in the area that occasionally start glowing and make a noise. While active, they will kill you. When not active, they are safe. When they not active, they are off for about 5 seconds. When active, they will be on for about 4 seconds. Use the time when they are inactive to advance and do what you need to do, and use the active time as a rest period unless you are comfortable moving around in that time.

Jump pads will be arranged around the level on top of various blocks. These are extremely helpful mechanisms for getting through this area. They work just like a spent spring box, where if you are on them and not holding jump, they'll bounce you up about a one and a half block's height. If you're holding jump when you are on them, they will bounce you up 3 blocks. The jumpless bouce lets your reach about a running jumps height if you were on the ground (1.5 blocks high). The jump bounce just barely lets you grab the underside of the 4th block or the edge of the 3rd block (3 blocks high). Just be careful with ceilings while on these blocks and let go of and hold jump accordingly.

Adhesion berries are a new item here that could have been encountered earlier with a seed. These are very tricky to use, but they are extremely useful for climbing quickly. They're basically like a grappling hook that launches you. Here's how they work: When you let go of run, you'll throw them in whatever direction you're throwing. Once they hit something, they will pull you toward whatever it's sticking to (the grapple point). Once you hit run again, you will detach/destroy the adhesion berry and get whatever momentum it's giving you at that momentum. If you don't detach, it'll hold on for about 2 seconds and then release, which is usually ineffective. These are all about gaining the momentum, so, for the most part, you should throw it and detach it very soon after it attaches to something to get the momentum for gaining height. It takes some practice, so try to mess with it in a safe environment when possible. A good starting point is to use it directly upward. When you are about halfway to the grapple point, release/break the grapple and you should be able to reach your destination.

Spores are the most harmless thing in this area. They simply distort your vision and make the screen move up and down in different parts of it, similar to touch fuzzy get dizzy from Yoshi's Island if you've played it. For the most part, this can be disorienting until you get used to it, but there is an advantage of it. The distortion can show you parts of the level that are technically not on screen yet, such as beebles. This means you can see them without triggering them. It's very slight and minor, but every advantage against them is important to survival.

Jump gas nightmare creatures (JGNC for short) are the giant pink nightmarish creatures floating around in the level. They do not directly kill you, they simply explode when touched or killed. The explosion is a large cloud of jump gas that will continuously give you jumps and obscures your view. This will quickly lead to an overdose, so you'll want to quickly get out of the gas or quickly waste jumps safely when this occurs. They can be quite helpful and supply you with free jumps if you can figure out how to safely utilize them. I recommend scouting out the area and figuring out a safe path away before triggering them. It's also just a good idea to trigger them at the end of a volt block active cycle to give you safety in getting away. It's very easy to blindly hit a volt block in the gas, so them being inactive can be pretty important.

I'm going to go very in-depth into how beebles work. They seem like they home in on you and murder you no matter where you are, but this actually is not the case. They have a horizontal tracking when it comes to you. This means that they will move left or right based on your position. Every time that they screech they are restarting their run and will readjust their direction based on your position. When they hit the end of a platform they will either jump or fall. If they hit a wall they will jump. Their jumps will take them 4 blocks into the air with with a speed relative to the speed they had when running. With ends of platforms, its a 50% chance of jumping or falling. Beebles will only be able to start moving if you are on screen. This means that if they start moving, they will finish out their movement even if they are off screen, but once it ends they don't do anything. Keep in mind that if the beeble is still running after its run time is over it will keep idling along until it hits a wall or falls off a ledge. It will not jump and it will come to a stop upon landing.

This leads to strategies of how to deal with Beebles. The most important thing is DON'T PANIC! Their are volt blocks all around you, and the wrong move will end up with you getting electrocuted instead of eviscerated. Keep your calm and think of an approach appropriate to the situation. There are two ways of dealing with a beeble: kill them or get them into a place where they can't get you and/or are no longer a danger. Killing them can be dicey and requires you to get in their faces, which puts you at risk. You can always set an explosive trap with a jump pad where you throw down a blast berry or corrosion potion onto a jump pad and lure the beeble into it, but that has a chance of failure. My advice is to avoid the Beeble when possible and move it out of your way. Often times you can see them as they appear on the screen if you're looking up. If you're not sure what to do yet, climb down and come up with a plan. You can go around them by going to the other end of the level and climbing up there and they won't bother you. You can also lure them away by getting them to drop down below where they can't jump up.You can lure them into a trap where they can't jump or fall because they are caged in by blocks. They are effectively harmless in all of these situations. Decide which is the best approach and utilize the mechanics of the beeble in said approach. Try not to get electrocuted in the process.

Zardoland

Zardoland introduces some new mechanics and enemies that will take some getting used to. From the very start, it throws two of the big ones at us: wheels and balls. Later, it throws 3 new enemies at us: yellow, pink, and blue golems. Then we get mines, disappearing blocks, and cannons. A lot of new stuff, but they are definitely some of the most fresh additions.

Balls are very straightforward. You will hold onto them while holding jump. When you let go of jump, you let go. You can swing them left or right, and they max out when completely sideways. When you let go, you get the momentum that you the ball has at the moment and go into the air. You can try to fall back onto a ball, and it completely negates falling momentum and damage. If you hit it with a sword, it will swing even more, so be careful if you're carrying a sword around.

Wheels are tricky little buggers. When you stand on the right side of them, you will push them forward. When you stand on the left side of them, they will go backwards. The more to the side you are on them, the faster they will go. When they hit a chain, they will automatically move along the track regardless of what you do until the chain section ends. There are two ways to approach the wheel: the safe way, and the fast way. The safe way entails standing on the right side of the wheel and jumping back to the middle as it moves. Once it moves a little, jump back to the middle, drift to the right a little bit, jump to the middle, and keep repeating. If you hit a chain section, try to stay in the middle and just keep jumping. It's slow, but it's very safe. The fast method is a little different, takes some practice, but is so much faster.

Imagine the wheel as a clock. The 2 o'clock position is about where the wheel starts moving to its max velocity. What you'll be doing is trying to maintain your climber on the 2 o'clock position. When you start slipping down, just do a jump toward the middle and balance back to the 2. You can keep running during chain sections without much trouble. This method does come with some risk, as you can relatively easily slip off and have to waste jumps getting back to your wheel, so be careful! As far as the track goes, it does have an effect on how easy it is to run on the wheel, so pay attention to it and learn the effects through practice.

There are 3 different types of golems that you can encounter throughout Zardoland. Yellow golems do nothing but move left and right. They stun and knock you around if they touch you and that's it. The stun can knock you off of a platform, so be careful around them. Pink golems are just like yellow golems except they will punch and kill you if you are next to them. You can jump over it, but you're better off killing them or avoiding them if possible. Blue golems are just like yellow golems except they throw timed grenades, which blow up and kill you after a few seconds, and that makes them one of the most dangerous of the three. Periodically, they will throw a timed grenade to your position while on screen. It can and will hit any obstacles in between, so it may be a good idea to position yourself with blocks blocking them. They tend to be really accurate with them, so don't count on them missing. You can store the timed grenades safely if you have inventory space, but they're only good for item jumps, as they won't break any blocks or kill any enemies (which makes them good for the upcoming area. For the most part, just try to avoid the blue golems and avoid their timed grenades, unless you want to farm them for extra items because you're low on items.

Mines are both a mechanic and an obstacle at the same time. When they get close to you they start beeping and explode after a few seconds. Once they explode, they send out a small explosion and a bunch of lava drips. These drips go out in all directions, so try and get underneath something to block the drips when you set them off. You can also use them like you would a ball exept it floats. You can simply grab it and immediatly let go again to get a little more than 1 block of hight off it. You can also move it left or right some before jumping.

Disappearing blocks are the colorful blocks that have question marks inside of them. Once you step on the top of them, they'll count down from 1, 2, or 3, and then the block disappears. You can safely hang from the sides of the blocks however, and if you have boots, you can ledge hop from one side of the block to the other without touching the top, preserving the blocks. Try to plan your climbing with these keeping the possible disappearing in mind.

Cannons come in at the 3rd and 4th Zardoland, and they require some accuracy. Once you jump into it you get locked into the cannon and can rotate it 360 degrees. Once you hit jump, it shoots you out in whatever direction you are aimed. Shooting straight up, it'll launch you about 6 or 7 blocks. It stuns you for the first second or so during the shot, so make sure to take that into account when shooting. You can use items from the cannon too, so if you have a boomerang, you can throw it from there to safely grab berries or use a winchshot to get to another position safely.

With all of the new mechanics and enemies out of the way, let's get into the levels of Zardoland proper. This is the only area in the game that has 4 levels. The first one has a ball and wheel at the start, and you have to ride the wheel all the way to the top of the level. Every once in awhile the track stops and you have to jump to a ball or wheel. It's always really safe to do, so it shouldn't be too much difficulty. The second level has you ride wheels down to a switch that will open a door. Here, when the track ends, you'll have to drop down onto another wheel. These are always set up so that you can just walk off onto the next one. Once you get down to the bottom, you'll have to climb a relatively small area filled with disappearing blocks, golems, and mines. At the top will be a wheel that you have to roll to a switch very closely over lava. If you fall off of the wheel here, you will fall in the lava and die, so make sure you don't fall here. The track might break up and give you some balls to swing from onto the wheel. If they're at the top, they can possibly be blocked by the blocks at the top, so it could be necessary to item hop or jump potion to the next wheel safely.

The third level is an open area that adds cannons into the mix.Just make sure to be careful of the blue golems and use the balls and cannons for good progression here and you should be fine. The fourth level has 4 switches that you need to roll wheels to. They are in the 4 corners of the screen as you would expect. I suggest starting in the lower left and working counter clockwise from there, ending up on the upper left switch as your last one. There are a few set things in this level that you can always count on: the set layout of 2 cannons from the bottom of the level to the top on both sides, the 4 doors, the 4 switches in the corners, and a ball just next to the start of the top wheels. Utilize them for your navigation. Once you hit every switch, there is always a cannon within a jump's reach, so use those to send you toward your area you need to go through. Once you hit all 4 switches, head for the door at the top and you are done.

Club Z

Club Z is easily the weirdest area in the whole game. The first time you get there it is best to stop for a few minutes and observe. Everything is actually relatively straightforward and can be figured out by watching. It is a dance club full of giants dancing and raving. It's also incredibly dangerous for little people like the climber. There are glowstickers, rave girls, dancers, boxing gorillas, fire dancers, witches, and the bouncer, To be able to leave the club, you have to collect 3 Zardo coins spread out around the club. This is one of the shortest stages in the game, coming in at just two stages, but it can be one of the most crazy if you're unlucky and get a bunch of glowstickers. Thankfully, you can touch all of the people in the club without dying unless they're doing something that interacts with you.

Glowstickers are probably the most dangerous giants in Club Z. They are the guys wearing sunglasses and throwing around glowsticks. They throw a glowstick with a bit of an arc, then turn around and throw one in the opposite direction, and they always throw them in the same place. If the glowstick touches you, you die, so watch out. If possible, make sure to observe their movements and figure out your path rather than blindly rushing in and hoping you don't get hit. That usually gets you hit. The glowstickers don't throw glowsticks while they're off screen, so use that to your advantage when possible.

Rave girls are the pink haired giants swinging around wands in a square pattern. Well, really more like a lower case n. Touching the wand means death, and she consistently goes from left, to top, to right and then repeats. Touching Ravers is safe, so you can move through when the wand isn't blocking you. Sometimes you'll have more than one raver next to each other, and that's when moving through gets really tricky. If it's the only path you can take, you have to move through one step at a time with each movement of the ravers. It's pretty hard to do, and it's really easier just to teleport through if you have no other options. Keep in mind all of the ravers are on the same beat and will always be in he same movement at the same time.

Dancers are the short blonde giants that turn around every few seconds. They do not directly kill you. Instead, when they turn around, they do a 'kick' and knock you away several blocks. Usually this knocks you into something that will kill you or off a platform to your death, so try not to let this happen. The 'kick' only happens on the bottom part of a block, so you can be hanging from the ceiling or in the air just above the shine that happens when they kick and be okay. The dancers are actually in sync with the rave girls, so when the rave girls finish their right wand movement, all of the dancers will 'kick'. If you watch the ravers, you'll be able to track the dancer movements.

Boxing Gorillas are the blue gorillas with boxing gloves that constantly do uppercuts. If you get hit by the fist while they're punching, they'll knock you about 4 blocks into the air. You're stunned for the upward part of this, but once you start coming down, you regain control. You can use this to get up without having to use resources. The drop down has a good chance to kill you, so try not get knocked up unless you plan on not coming back down.

Fire Dancers are more of a complication than a threat. Every ten seconds or so they start dancing really fast and throw lava drips everywhere. When that happens, make sure to get behind cover and not get hit. Usually they're not too much of a problem, they just make situations a little more complicated. You can touch them as with everyone else, so just make sure to plan your path well.

Witches are one of the few things in the club that don't kill you. The witches here specifically carry around golden berries that you can grab and can give you an adrenaline boost when you press up on them. This means that you'll climb faster for a little bit. This can be really useful when you need to climb faster to get past some dangers. Sadly, you can't buy any potions from them, but the normal witch can also be in the level somewhere.

The Bouncer will never be a problem as long as you don't break any blocks. He warns you not to break anything when you walk into the club, and if you do, he'll start chasing you around and trying to grab you. If he grabs you, he'll toss you out of the tower and kill you. There's no recovery from this. he can be very hard to avoid, but if you find yourself in the situation where you need to escape him, make sure to jump when he makes to grab you. That's really the trick to it. It can be easy to run into a situation where you can't quite do this though, so just try not to get on the bouncer's bad side and you should be okay.

With the obstacles out of the way, I'll give you some strategies for getting through the levels. For both levels, you have to collect all 3 zardo coins before the bouncer will let you go to the next level. In the first level, the coins are in the top corners and the bottom right corner, with the bottom right corner covered in water. My suggested order for this part is to go top left, top right, then climb down to the bottom. Once you get near the exit, of area 1, visit the bar with the suspicious looking figure and you'll find what may be the most useful shop in the game. Here you can buy a jump shot, which will max out your jumps (effectively useless), and extra revive potions, which will cost you 5 golden berries for every one. I suggest stocking up on as many as you possibly can and hope you don't need any of them. Hopefully you've been saving up your golden berries for this.

For the second area, the area seems to get a bit more dense with dancers.The coins in this area are in the bottom right, middle right, and middle left. I suggest going for bottom right first, then middle right, then middle left, though here that can very much differ depending on which has the path of least resistance. There is always a wall between you and the first coin to start, so you'll have to climb up a bit so that you can get down to the lower right. Just make sure to be careful climbing and, if a path looks really dangerous, try to find an alternate path or teleport through. Make sure you have a teleport or two just for this area or you'll find you might have to sacrifice a few of your lives. After you have all of your coins, climb to the top of the level and exit out to be done with Club Z.

Temple of Devotion

This can easily be one of the hardest places to try to rush through. As a result, I highly recommend taking this place very slowly. There are only 4 enemies in the Temple, but they can be downright terrifying. There is the devout praying guys, worms, watchers, and corrupted watchers. If you have a weapon, any weapon, this place can be much easier. The best weapon to have is a bitchbane, but a spear, old sword, or a boomerang can also serve. In the absence of weapons, Corrosion potions will serve. The Temple can also have a modifier of sensing bloodlust, the only place in chapter 2 that has a modifier, and that's where you encounter the corrupted watchers.

The devout praying guys are the simplest threat to deal with in this area. They are standing for most of the time and then kneel over after about 8 seconds. When they kneel over, they will kill you if you are underneath of them. If you have a weapon, I recommend just killing them as you go. They're not particularly dangerous as they don't move around. They're more like an obstacle. In the bloodshed temples (where the area is red), you'll find fewer of these guys and the corpses of these guys, which you will bounce off of if you jump onto.

The worms are quite the annoyance in this area. They crawl crawl along a designated area, going back and forth. If they touch you, they latch onto you and stun you 2 times before they kill you. You can kill them with just about anything. If they latch onto you, throw a spear, sword, boomerang, or corrosion and you'll kill them. If you do throw an explosive, it'll create an explosion on your body, so you'll break any blocks you are attached to.

The watchers are your big concern in this area.They are the big pink guys with one eye and one hand. They move randomly throughout the level, looking around in circles as they go. Their vision is shown by the red and green cone that moves around them. If you move while in the red part, the watcher will start to pursue you. If you are still while the red vision goes over you, nothing will happen. If the green part touches you at all, they will pursue you. Obviously, it's usually much better to not have them pursue you, so try and be still when these guys are around.

If you do draw the ire of the watcher, you have two options: Fight or climb! To do either of these things effectively, it helps to understand how the watcher moves while pursuing. Simply put, they rubber band to you.They will move very quickly toward your position incrementally by about 2 or 3 blocks. Once they get within a block's range of you, they will throw their hand toward you and attempt to grab you. If you overlap with their hand when they squeeze, they will kill you. If you touch their body, they will temporarily stun you for a split second. It's very easy to touch them if you're running away from them since they follow so closely, so you might have to maneuver them to a spot further away to create an opening for yourself. Use the time while they're grabbing to get further away and have some breathing room.

If you plan on fighting the watcher, you'll have to use either explosives or a sword. They take 9 hits altogether, so sword is the much preferred method, unless you choose to carry 9 corrode pots just for this area. If you are using a sword, bitchbane is definitely the best weapon for this and will allow the safest and quickest kill. Old sword will still work, but you have to lure them close to the ground to actually hit them. The watcher has a wind up time for his attack. With bitchbane, you can hit him 2-3 times in this wind up time and then run away, come back, and hit again. With the old sword, you have to attack after they finish their attack, and you can only get one hit in. Every 3 hits, the watcher will close its eye and move away from you, then come back and attack again. After you've killed the watcher, or gotten away from it, you'll be good.

The last enemy is also the worst enemy. The corrupted watchers apparently got corrupted by eating all the devout praying people, and that is why there are a bunch of dead bodies around when you sense bloodlust. These guys move toward you when close enough, so if you're idle they can possibly converge on you. Unlike the normal watcher, these guys can see in a 360 degree area around them that grows and shrinks over time. Once you come into contact with that area, they will start chasing you, and their chasing is much more aggressive than the normal watcher. They do a lunge toward you occasionally, and it can cover a very large distance. They will bite you if they touch you near the end of the lunge. Luckily, if you get far enough away, they will stop chasing you, so your best option is really to run away from them as quickly as you can. If you choose to fight them, I'd highly suggest the bitchbane, and you'll simply slash them as much as you can after they do their lunge. Definitely run instead though. Be aware that if you hurt them they will never stop chasing you.

Onto general getting through the Temple itself now. There are 3 levels to the Temple, and the first two are identical. Just progress normally through these dealing with any enemies you encounter along the way. If you get spotted by a watcher and can't fight them, make sure to have a surplus of jump potions for escaping to the exit door. There does tend to be jump berries arranged around the level, so find these if you are in need of jumps.

The third level is a little different from the first two. It has 5 bells arranged throughout in a T shape, with two on the top sides of the level, and three up the middle. You can grab onto the ball part of the bell at the bottom and swing back and forth, ringing the bell. I'll touch on the reason for doing this later in another section. The exit to the level will always be in the middle part of the level at the top, so if you want to get through this area quickly, stick to the middle and take it slow. The bells can help you swing up to higher or out of reach areas if necessary, so use them as you can. The middle part tends to have a small hole to get up to the top, so use a corrode to open it up if you're in a sticky situation and can't find your way through. After this, you're onto Zenith.

Zenith

This is the last set of levels before you get to the end of the game, so you're almost there if you got here! Before you get into Zenith proper, you have to run through a transition level that has you run through a gauntlet of guillotines that ends in lava and a witch. This serves as a hint that there are guillotines hidden in the ceilings that can pop out at any time, and the witch is your last guaranteed chance to stock up on potions before this last area. Once you climb up, you're in Zenith and all the traps that entail.

Zenith itself is 3 parts, all with about the same kind of layout. Everything here can kill you, and you can count on at least one death in this area if you're rushing through. Hopefully you still have extra lives from Club Z to help you through this. There are no enemies here, but there are traps and threats that you haven't seen in a good while here to take you down. The traps you will encounter are hidden guillotines, spinning blades, fans, and laser eyes. The other threats that you've seen before are lava and spikes, and I'll touch on those just a little bit just to give strategy in regards to them in this particular area. Since this is the last area, this is the place to use up all of your resources if you have any, as they won't be useful later on. If you conserved resources well, you should have plenty of extra berries and potions floating around in your inventory, so don't feel bad about jumping through and blowing up this whole level if you need to.

Guillotines are hidden in ceilings. They reveal themselves when the block they are in is onscreen and you are directly beneath them, then they drop after about a second or two after that. You can break them with an explosive if you have one handy, so just throw one up if you're somehow trapped and can't get away. You can also just trigger them and then just move to the side so that you don't get cut. For the most part, the strategy for these things is to either move really quickly or slowly.

Spinning blades are a trap that can help you in addition to killing you. They are low to the ground, and if they touch you while they are spinning, they will kill you. The blades extend about a half a block past the block they rest on, so watch out for that. If you're in a narrow hallway, you can actually climb over them without them being able to touch you. You can also jump on the peg in the middle of them and stand on them safely. This also gives a half a block's additional height to be able to access a higher area. You can safely cling to the corners of blocks that the blades cover.

Fans are another trap that can help you in addition to killing you. They spin every 4 seconds for 4 seconds, and in between spins you can jump onto the top of the fan if they're on the ground and jump off of it for an additional block's height. If you're standing on the fan when it starts up, you're completely safe unless you move off. This can't be done if they're upside down though. While the fans are spinning, they'll either suck in or blow away 2 blocks above or below (3 blocks total). If you touch the blades themselves while spinning, you will die. If it's blowing away from itself, you can use the air for a boost to your jump, providing you don't land in the blades themselves. Use this strategically to get to higher areas.

Laser eyes are yet another trap here that can help you and kill you. They are the balls attached to chains that spin a laser around the room when you get close. They move at a steady pace with their laser in a clockwise motion. They start when you get within about a 3 block range of them, and they stop a little after you leave that range. Make sure to get behind something safe and think out a path to safely get by. The balls themselves act just like any other ball in the game, so you can grab onto it if you hold jump. This actually ends up blocking the laser and giving you a little boost after you let go. You can use this time to think if you're in a tense situation, and you can even move the ball left and right to get out of the way of any danger that may be around, such as a guillotine. Be aware that they give you effectively no height if you try to jump off them.

Lava and spikes make a return in this area, and somehow they became scarier when paired with the traps. The thing to remember with these is that if they are in your way or a danger, just blow them up. Watch out for the spikes and lava drips that fly everywhere after, and you'll be much safer. Make sure not to drop in either of these traps, especially the lava, as that's a game over no matter what. Sometimes there will be traps inside of the lava, so try not to get hit by them or you'll drop right into the lava right after. Guillotines can drop into the lava, and when it does, it'll throw up some lava droplets into the air. Keep this mind or you might climb into them when you thought the way was safe.

Zardo

After Zenith, you're at the final boss of the game. Upon climbing up, there will be a sword on a podium, and you have to grab it to progress. Once you do, Zardo comes out, calls you a thief, and the fight begins. There are 4 phases to this fight, each one longer and harder than the last. Each phase ends with a tennis sequence with Zardo where you hit a ball back and forth until he can't hit it back and gets hit, starting the next phase.The whole fight needs you to use the sword that you steal, and it's one of the neatest weapons in the game., with it having a hitbox very far in front of you when you swing. Make sure to get used to the swing speed and distance as quickly as you can for this, as it will benefit you throughout the fight.

The first phase is really easy for this. Zardo shoots a few slow moving balls of energy at you. Just walk around and avoid them. Then he goes into the first tennis match with you. On this phase, you have to hit the ball back to him 3 times before it hits him and you get to the second phase.

The second phase phase gets a little harder. Zardo starts by turning big and shooting out a semicircle of magic bolts. You'll have to cut some of them with your sword to be able to get through. He does this 3 times, and the bolts move relatively slowly in this phase, so it shouldn't be too hard to hit them. After the bolts, he starts throwing energy balls down a little faster than the last phase. If he gets close and you can't move between the energy balls, do a jump and Zardo will move higher in the air and shoot higher from the air. Then Zardo will go to another tennis match. This phase has you hit the ball five times before it hits Zardo and you move onto the third phase.

The third phase gets more challenging. It starts with Zardo getting big again, especially his hands, which he detaches from his body. He starts by shooting bolts down the platform. Just watch for where he's shooting them, and get in an area he won't be shooting in. He comes back, but just do the same thing and you'll be fine. Then he drops one hand on the side of the arena and starts shooting horizontally across the stage and vertically off the stage. Just jump over the bolts here as he shoots them with a tall jump and don't go off of the edge of the platform. Once he finishes that, he starts trying to slap down onto the stage with his big hands. He picks out where you are when he starts moving his hand and slaps that position, so start moving away from that position when he starts his movement. He starts with the right hand, so get to the left side after the last phase and start moving right after he starts his hand movement. Then keep switching until he finishes up.

Next, Zardo gets small again and starts another energy ball phase that's even faster than the last time. A good way to do this one is just take little steps when he shoots each ball and just move back across the stage going the other way when you hit the end of the stage. Jump if necessary to bump him up. Next, he'll drop down a big energy ball onto the stage and start dragging it back and forth. He goes off the ends when he does this, and you have two options which both work just as well: You can slash at the ball with the sword, which will knock it up in the air and over you, or you can item hop over it with the sword. You could also use jump pots or item hop with something else, but those are really kind of pointless options. He does this a couple of times then switches to big mode again to shoot some homing bolts at you. He does this a few times, and each time he shoots 4 bolts that lightly guide towards you. These are really easy to avoid if you move just as they get near. Finally, after he finishes with this, Zardo gets small again and starts another tennis match, wherein you have to hit the ball back 11 times until it hits him and you move on to the fourth and last phase. You might have to move back to have enough time to react and hit the ball, so consider doing this from the middle of the platform.

The fourth phase is the hardest phase, and it brings back most of the stuff you already saw in the last phases. It is also the longest phase, so try not to stay tense the whole time, relaxation is key here. He starts with something entirely new and quite deadly. He gets big, sends out some laser beams from his hands sideways, summons a bunch of cannons, starts filling up the arena with purple lava, and rises into the air. You have to jump into the cannons and shoot yourself up to where he goes then, where you will be shooting yourself in circles around him while he spins the laser around in a circle. You have to aim each cannon to the next one, and I suggest trying to aim for the big parts of the cannons so that you don't miss. If you miss and fall into the lava, it's game over, which means starting the game over again from the bottom. He starts by spinning clockwise and speeds up as he goes. You can shoot yourself from cannon to cannon as quickly as you land in the next cannon, but try not to go too fast or you'll end up hitting his laser and dying. At some point he'll say, "Time's up!", which means he'll do one more rotation and then switch directions to counter-clockwise. He starts slow, so that you have time to re-orient the cannons to the other direction. I suggest lining up directly for where the next cannon is pointing toward and you'll always shoot right in. Once you have all the cannons lined up, just keep shooting the opposite way. After it starts getting decently fast, Zardo will stop the rotations and rise up into the sky, bringing up the purple lava with him. Get to the top most cannon and wait for him to start descending. He'll come down with the purple lava, so you have to shoot to the next cannon when the lava isn't over it. If you don't, Zardo will laser you to death. Thankfully, all the cannons are already lined up with the next one, you don't have to aim any until you hit the lower part of the circle, then just aim them straight down and keep going until you get to the ground.

After this part is over, Zardo despawns the cannons and starts with the hand slapping part again, so get to the left side and start running back and forth to avoid the hands. Then he goes to shoot bolts into the ground then horizontally across the stage, so just repeat what you did the last time and you'll be okay. Next, he does the fastest energy ball phase yet, then goes into a Dragonball Z'esque shooting a bunch of energy balls down at the stage from the center. Just move out of the way when they're coming near you and focus on the balls that are coming near you so that you can avoid them. This gets faster and faster until it can get hard to get track of. He then moves onto the wall of bolts, which he does 3 times again. This time they move much faster, so you'll have to slash just a second or two after he fires them off to not get hit by them. After this, you have the last tennis match with Zardo, and it's the hardest one by far. You have to hit the ball 17 times, and it gets pretty fast, to the point where you'll be jumping up and attacking before the ball even gets to Zardo. This requires some good timing, and the further away you are on the platform, the more time you have to prepare. You can do this from the far right of the platform, but it's possible to do from the middle too. Once the ball hits Zardo, he's knocked out, and a portal opens to the next area.

The next room is another transition room, and it has a door with 7 slots in it for you to insert something into. This is a whole big quest that will be covered in another section. Move on to the next door and you'll end up in the last room of the game, the credits room! There are two statues here, one for each developer, and it tells you who made the game and who did what. Enjoy the climb, exit through the door, and enjoy your victory!

Secret Area: Brutal Boiler

This place sucks. There's a barrier that takes all of your items (including revive potions) at the beginning, and it is filled to the brim with lava blocks. It gives you a winchshot and you have to navigate your way through the area without touching the lava blocks or it's game over. Before you even go here, I highly recommend crafting a winchshot in another part of the game, such as the Centurial Trials, and practicing using it to get around as much as you can, as you'll need those skills to not die here.

A lot of this boils down to just knowing how to use the winchshot, and for most people, this is their first encounter with it, so you can expect to die your first time here. Probably really your first ten times here at least. That, coupled with having to trek through to Zardoland 2 just to get here can really make this a frustrating endeavor. I'll give some general tips on how to get through here and how to use the winchshot, but first I'll cover how to even get to the boiler.

In Zardoland 2, just before the part where you run a wheel over lava, there are some doors on the side of the level, the same kind that opens up when you run a wheel to a switch. Putting one and one together, running that wheel you're on to the switch near the end of the level will open up those doors. This involves coming back over the lava and climbing back to the doors. You can use some jump potions for this or, if you have the killatonne or ascender, you can break the blocks at the top and climb back over. The left door goes back to the beginning of Zardoland 2, but the right one opens up to a wall you can climb that leads to the door to the brutal boiler. An alternate way to get there skips the entirety of the area. Simply go straight up from the entrance door of the area using jumps or a spring box, and climb onto the top of the level. You can then run on the roof of the area and drop down into the door for the brutal boiler. The way you take to it should depend on your resources and largely on if you need to get to the witch or not.

The winchshot is easy to use and hard to master. When you throw it, it attaches to whatever it touches and you can lower yourself up and down from that spot and move a block left or right. If you let go of holding left or right, you go to a neutral underneath the spot you're winched to. When you release the hook (by pressing run), it comes back to you, and you keep any momentum you have when it releases. The winch will retract to you and float for a split second. If you don't hold run then the winch will drop. There is a small period of time when the winch is coming back to you where you can't throw it because it's technically already out. After it gets back to you, it can be thrown again. You can throw the winchshot in any direction, but it will only cancel your momentum if you try to item hop with it. When you throw the winchshot diagonally or horizontally, you will get dragged to the point under the winch. This is the important point for navigating through the brutal boiler, as this helps you to move relatively quickly through it.

The boiler has safe spots that you are pretty much going to be going between for the entirety of the ordeal. I'll describe a good method for moving from part to part, but it is not the only method and there are safer and more dangerous methods to utilize. My suggestion is to throw diagonally through most of the boiler, except for the few parts where you need to go straight up. This is usually safe.

As you've probably noticed, the brutal boiler has a static layout. It doesn't change at all, so you can actually know exactly what to do every time you come here. The only thing that changes is that golden berries can spawn throughout. From the start, use 3 jump potions before you go into the barrier. You can't use them after, and every single one will be utilized. You'll move forward onto a platform with a jump berry on it, and you'll have to use one jump here to get to the platform that has the winchshot on it. From here, do a running jump off the edge of the platform and throw the winch up left around the top of the jump. If done right, you'll end up right next to the next safe spot in the boiler. Now climb up to the end of this safe section and you'll be facing right. Do a tall jump and use a mid air jump to get higher; move right and throw the winch up right to the next ceiling. If done right, you'll be very close to the next safe part and can just let go and drop to it.

In the next part, you will do a tall jump off the end of the platform and do an up right throw from the top of the jump. If you can do a mega jump instead, that's even better, but that can be a bit risky and inconsistent, so don't count on it. This will get you about half way to the next platform, so move up higher and you'll release while holding right and moving up, then do another up right throw, and you should be next to the safe spot and can drop down safely to it. Now do a tall jump and throw the winchshot straight up from the right side of your safe block. Pull yourself up until you're just past the lava block on your right, and then release and quickly use a jump to go right to the next safe space. This safe space has a jump berry on it, so make sure to grab it. From here get on the left side of the safe space and throw the winchshot straight up so that it attaches to the right most edge of lava blocks above.

Once you are just below the lava blocks (don't touch them!), pull yourself to the right, release the winchshot, and use a jump. Throw the winchshot up at the height of that jump (you won't go that far up) and pull yourself straight up. Get yourself as close to the lava as you can without touching it, hold left, let go of the winchshot, and throw it up left. This is the most dangerous part of the whole boiler, and if you feel like you weren't high enough, use a jump to recover before you touch the lava and die. If you safely land the winch and don't die, you're through the hard part, and the rest is pretty easy. From here, pull yourself up a bit so you don't fall on the lava and do another up left throw, and you should be able to lower yourself to the next safe space, where there's another jump berry, which you should grab. Get to the edge of the safe space, do a running jump to the left, use a mid air jump, and winch up left during the jump or at the top. From here you should be able to lower yourself below the lava blocks directly in front of your face and drop onto the spring box below. You have to drop onto this to get to the cannon above. Once in the cannon, shoot yourself straight up, and what you do depends on whether you used a jump earlier at the most dangerous section.

If you didn't use a jump, use your last jump at the peak of the cannon shot and move to the mines to the right. If you did use a jump, throw the winch straight up at the peak of the cannon shot, and you'll move right and throw up in steps up the lava blocks until you can drop to the mines. You're going to jump off every other one if you do it right, which means skipping every other mine. Make sure to aim for your fall to hit the floating mine. At the end of the series of mines, the lava blocks end and it's safe again. If you fling off the last mine too high, you can item hop with the winch. Climb up the blocks with the winch, go through the barrier, grab your items, and the door is to your left.

Here's a video of the quick method being utilized, just keep in mind where a mega jump is used, you can just as well do a walking jump.

Secret Area: ZBall

This little mini-game is possibly the most bizarre thing in this game. It's a basketball game in the dream of the game's antagonist Zardo. You play 1v1 basketball to 11 points with one net with a crowd consisting of some enemies you've encountered in the game. Anyway, this takes some learning and absolutely requires you to know how to throw to get through. You must quickly figure out how throw mechanics work with the zball so that you can properly aim it into the net. For the most part, I can't impart good throwing ability here, but there are a few tricks you can use to keep control of the ball and not let Zardo score on you.

First, how to get to Zball. After getting through Zardoland, there's a very small transition stage that you can quickly walk through. Instead of heading for the door, go straight up. If you have the winchshot, you can use this to get up without using any resources, otherwise you'll have to use some jumps, possibly a corrode, and maybe some item hops to get to the top. A hadou orb will be useful getting through to the top too. If you have a spring you can use it to launch yourself up most/all of the way. Once on top, there's a house you can enter into, and inside you'll see Zardo sleeping. Walk to him, press up, and you can enter his dream. Then you end up in the ZBall stadium/Zardo's dream. Go talk to Zardo, and after some dialogue, the game will begin!

From the start, the ball gets thrown into the air, and you can immediately jump up and grab it. Line up your shots and throw them as you can. If you brought boots, they'll help you move faster and help you to maneuver yourself better or get to the ball faster, which helps a lot. Doing a series of small hops will help you move faster than running, so be constantly jumping through the area to keep your speed up. If you're good, you can do shots off of the wall behind the hoop, but that can be tricky. If you feel like Zardo is hemming you into the wall, throw the ball diagonally up into the wall and it'll bounce over him, whereupon you can run to the ball, grab it, and have more breathing space. If you have jumps to spare, you can use an item jump to get above the hoop and throw the ball down through the hoop, but it can be hard to line up and generally not worth it. Make sure to grab the net after by holding up, or you'll die because the item hop will give you more height than you can handle.

If Zardo gets the ball, he does a lot of dodging and keeping away. He'll do some shots once in a while, which more often than not go in, and sometimes he'll do a slam dunk, which is guaranteed to go in. You can hit the basketball net with a weapon or corrode to shake it and make his shot possibly miss, but you're really better off not letting him shoot. Once he grabs the ball, start jumping towards him and hitting the run button in the air to try and grab the ball from him. You can quickly mash the run button to have a high chance of grabbing the ball, but make sure you hold it when you do get it or you'll just end up throwing it away, possibly to Zardo. If you're late grabbing the ball, sometimes you just won't grab it and Zardo will shoot anyway, or he'll drag you up with him when he slam dunks, and that can possibly kill you. Every few points you make, Zardo starts moving faster and gets harder. You can tell when this happens because the music changes. For the most part, there's nothing different between the phases except that on the last phase the ball will turn red while Zardo is dribbling it and it can shoot off lava drips, so just watch out for those so that you don't die.

If Zardo gets to 11 first, he makes fun of you, grabs you, and slam dunks you, giving you a really sweet death card. If you get to 11 first, Zardo tells you not to steal his ball and spawns a door to exit through. If possible, you should definitely steal his ball, as it has very useful item hop potential and great weapon uses with repeated dribbles. When you win for the first time, you unlock the ZBall mini-game, which you can play with other people or by yourself. This can get really frenetic and fun, and it also makes for good practice for when you come challenge Zardo again.

Secret Area: Arcade

This is one of the most difficult sections in the game because of how random it is. There are no enemies in this area, but there are blocks that can kill you directly or indirectly. The whole gimmick of the arcade is that all of the blocks change every few seconds to something different. The different blocks you can encounter are green smiley blocks, yellow bounce down blocks, blue bounce up blocks, purple stun blocks, and red death blocks. There are three stages to go through, with slight differences between them.

To get to the arcade, once you get through Club Z, you'll go into a transition level to the temple. On the ground next to the starting door will be some breakable blocks. Blow these up or break them however you can, and you can drop all the way down the hole safely into a pool of water. To the right of the water is an arcade machine, which will activate when you get near it. You can go into the machine and you'll get taken to the arcade when you do.

Green smiley blocks are like normal blocks and don't do anything to you but be safe. Yellow bounce down blocks bounce you down when touch the underside of them at a high momentum. Often this can result in bouncing to death or onto another block that can kill you. Blue bounce up blocks bounce you up just shy of 3 blocks of height. Purple stun blocks bounce you away and stun you for a second. Often this ends up with you bouncing off to your death in some fashion. Red death blocks kill you in a manner similar to volt blocks in the volt caves. The difference with these blocks is that any item that touches them except explosives will be destroyed.

The stage will switch all of the blocks every few seconds.They can be any of the blocks above. After it switches, you have about 2 seconds before they go into effect, giving you time to get to a safe place. Sometimes it'll switch to a deadly cycle where there's almost nothing but death blocks with a few green blocks here and there. These cycles give you more time to get to a safe place, at the sacrifice of fewer safe places.

The first stage is a thin climb to the top. There's a lot of wall are to use and the layout can be completely random. The second stage is a much wider climb with a few empty spots at the bottom you can fall down and die in. The third area starts with a thin climb much like the first area, then you have to climb down a small chute once you get to the top to get to the third part of it, where you have to climb a tower of blocks to get to the door. The chute has blocks on either side of it, so just watch out for those death and stun blocks as you're descending. The random tower has no wall you can climb on for safety, so you are purely subjected to the mercy of the random blocks. Don't be afraid to use potions here where necessary to stay alive, as a bad fall can make you have to start over back from the bottom of it.

Overall, it's hard to really impart a particular strategy for the arcade because of how random it really is, but there are a few things that will help you get through to keep in mind. Make sure you just don't let items touch those death blocks. If even the tip of your sword touches it, it disappears. Also keep in mind that any time you die to a death block, whatever item is in your hand will almost certainly touch the block and disappear. You hear a little zap noise when this happens. If you happen to have the winchshot from the brutal boiler, it is immensely helpful here, as it can safely attach to any block (including the stun blocks) except the death block. The blue bounce blocks can be used to avoid having to use jump potions, just keep in mind that landing on them does not cancel falling momentum, so you can die landing on them. You can also safely bounce off of them and not touch blocks that are 3 blocks up because you just barely don't touch them. For the tower in the 3rd section, you can skip the whole thing by jumping to the wall on the side of the level and then using some jumps or item hops to get to the door from the top of the wall. This is easily the safer method, but it will plausibly use more resources.

Secret Area: Coliseum

To get to the Coliseum, you have to get to the third level of the Temple of the Devoted and then ring all five bells spread through out the level by moving back and forth on the ball part of it until it rings. Once you ring the fifth one, a door will appear under the bottom bell which you can go to the Coliseum through. Since they're spread out in a capital T pattern, it makes sense to ring the bells by going straight up the center and ringing them as you go, then ringing the left or right bell, depending on the level layout. Then switch and do whichever side you didn't do. You can also ring them from top to bottom since you have to go back down anyway.

The Coliseum is an arena consisting of 10 waves of enemies for you to fight through, ending with a nasty boss on the last wave. This place can be very hard, especially if you don't know how to fight with a sword very well. The area gives you a Challenger's Sword right at the entrance, and it's all you need to get through this. Once you grab the sword, you drop down in an elevator into the arena and the challenge begins.

The arena is comprised of a series of platforms, two of which are on the ground the elevator you rode in on, and some hanging balls that you can jump to and swing to the next platform with. From the start, I highly recommend getting rid of the bottom blocks on the bottom platforms for the challenge. It makes some of the waves and strategies much easier to deal with. Try to keep the top parts of those platforms intact though, as those are useful to keep around. The rest of the platforms can be kept intact, but it's not too big a deal if they get broken.

Learn to use a sword. If you don't know how to fight, or haven't use a sword yet, you're screwed. It is often more useful to throw your sword and keep your distance than to slash at something and kill it. This can be useful when trying to kill beetles especially, as you can hit them while they're above you.

Wave 1 spawns in a bunch of hounds for you to fight. They're permanently aggressive, which is a state they usually enter in when something is thrown at them. Try to throw the sword where possible to keep distance and don't get too close overall.

Wave 2 spawns in a bunch of rats for you to deal with. For the most part, this is similar to the last round. Lots of sword throwing and keeping distance is recommended.

Wave 3 spawns in a bunch of beetle larva for you to take care of. These hatch at random, so you could have a lot or a few beetles to deal with very suddenly. Try to kill as many as you can while they're in their larva form with sword slashes, and try to take out the ones that hatch with well placed sword swings. Often times you'll have to go up to the platforms to take care of not hatching beetles.

Wave 4 spawns in a slew of small worms on random breakable blocks and a giant worm. Prioritize taking care of the giant worm over the small worms, but kill the little ones if they're in your way somehow. You can really quickly take out the giant worm by slashing it as quickly as you can. I won't cover the strategy for fighting him too much because I already covered it in the hatchery, but make sure he doesn't break your platforms near the ground because they'll be useful for other waves.

Wave 5 spawns in a bunch of pink and blue golems. The pink ones are on the ground, and the blue ones are on the platforms. I suggest killing the pink golems first with some sword throws, then taking care of the blue golems, but kill the bottom most blue golems on your way. As long as you keep moving, the timed grenades won't be too bad to deal with. For the blue golems, you can slash them just before touching the top of the platform to kill them, or you can jump to the platform and throw your sword diagonally up at them to safely kill them without the chance of getting bumped.

Wave 6 spawns in the temple praying guys and two watchers that auto come after you. You'll want to pull the watchers away so they're in sync, and then just move toward them, let them start lunging, and then slash them 1 or 2 times if you can, then repeat until they're dead. They're very easy to get rid of when you get good at this. After they're gone, just kill off the praying guys.

Wave 7 spawns in a flame golem. He's like the pink golems, but he punches out lava and tosses out lava drips into the air at random. He can be a challenge, but not too much of a challenge. If you have a spear or zball, he's really easy, as a spear or charged ball tossed directly down onto him will hit him repeatedly until he's dead or moves. If you have a sword like usual, it gets a bit more complicated. You can run up, slash him, have him punch, run away before he punches and avoid lava drips, then run up and repeat until he dies. You can also instead run up, slash him, then jump over him and throw your sword down onto his head to have it hit him a few times before it falls through. Then you wait for him to move away, go in and grab your sword, and repeat. This does involve using the platforms above to stay safely away from him.

Wave 8 spawns in a bunch of beebles, and this is a big reason why you should have gotten rid of those bottom blocks. Since beebles will jump when they hit a wall, they won't jump at those points, giving you safe platforms to stand on. You can try timing the slashes at the beebles to kill them, but I only recommend doing this if they're not moving unless you're good with them. Otherwise, I suggest jumping into the air over them and item hopping your sword diagonally onto them. This is much safer and you can quickly grab your sword after for the next one. Sometimes you'll hit them with the jump slash anyway, and then the item hop is just a caution that won't cost you anything.

Wave 9 spawns in two mother hounds, and this is the reason you left those top parts of the bottom platforms intact. The easy way to do this fight is to attach yourself to that top block on the side opposite the mother hound, and just keep slashing. The mother hound will jump into it, and you'll be able to hit her through the block. Do this until she's dead, move to the other side over the platforms, and repeat. If you lost the blocks or want more of a challenge, the mother hound will randomly jump and jump when you hit her. When you hit her, she'll recoil first then jump. You want to hit her, let her jump over you, then hit her again and repeat until you have a dead hound.

Secret Area: Coliseum pt 2

Wave 10 spawns in Brobash, who is arguably the hardest enemy in the game and probably the reason why anyone should have trouble with this area. He starts off above on the lift and tracks you horizontally and vertically. He has a sword that has slightly less range than yours, and we're going to use that to our advantage. He also stops to taunt every once in awhile, giving you a reasonable amount of time to hit him during, but he can still hit you while he's doing this. He can use jump potions and throw corrosion potions just like you can, but thankfully they don't hurt you.

The main strategy here is to run away from Brobash and, when you're at an appropriate distance away, turn around, do a very low short hop sword slash, then turn around, run away, and repeat. When you reach the blocks that you hopefully left in place, you can jump and manipulate him into jumping onto it, where he will climb it and keep going. You can then use this time to safely turn around and repeat the running to the other side. If you don't have the blocks in place, you can use the balls at the end to jump up to and swing past him with, but it's a tad more tricky to pull off.

If you have extra corrode potions, you can toss them at him and hope to hit him, but chances are he'll just run out of range and they'll end up useless. Anything you throw at him causes him to run away at a quick speed. This can be dangerous because he can double back and catch up to you with that speed, and he'll get that speed boost if he runs into an item on the floor and throw the item away so be careful with what you leave lying around.

After 9 hits, Brobash will go down and seem dead, but then he'll use a revive potion and come back. He doesn't change after this except for the amount of hits he takes and having invulnerability for a few seconds after getting up. For this second phase, he takes 7 hits.

Once you win, you get Brobash's scimitar as a reward and unlock Colossus! Unfortunately, the scimitar is utterly useless from here on, but it's a really cool weapon nonetheless.

Legend Fragment Run

This is easily the hardest thing you can do in this game. It involves taking all 7 of the legend fragments found throughout to the game to the top of the tower. That means getting the random ones in the transition stages, the one from chapter 1 (which means you have to start from chapter 1 just to get this one), and do all of the side quests, which themselves are quite difficult. This then means you need to accumulate extra resources for the side quests, be able to do them flawlessly, and beat the game. On top of all of that, you'll slowly be losing your inventory to the fragments until Zenith, where you can't even carry something other than a fragment in your hand and have to rely more upon potions and what you find to get you through. Not to mention what you find at the end (I'll touch more on that later).

So to start, you'll need to know where all the legend fragments are.

1. End of Chapter 1. Collect Krystelle's orbs during the fight with her and give them to the stone statue in the next room.
2. Transition between Segmentation Plant and Volt Caves. On the outside above the segmentation section, there's an orb sitting there. You'll need to bomb through several blocks to get to it or teleport. I suggest using a powder keg if possible to take care of most of the blocks.
3. Brutal Boiler. After getting through the ordeal and getting your items back, go to the underside of where the barrier that gives you your items back is and there will be a breakable wall. The legend fragment lies just past this. Make use of your winchshot to get here and back without using items.
4. Zball. Once you enter Zardo's house, the whole ceiling is breakable, and the legend fragment waits sits near the top on a platform.
5. Transition between Zardoland and Club Z. In the upper right corner to the right of the entrance to the club. You can get here without using items with the winchshot or use jumps, which would be faster. You can also safely lower yourself down with the winchshot.
6. Arcade. In the last area, the legend fragment is in the lower right corner of the area.
7. Coliseum. On the elevator ride down, there's a breakable wall on the left side about halfway down. You'll need at least 3 corrodes to get through it. After, you have to climb down yourself without dying. You can safely climb down and grab the ceiling blocks or do an item hop to break falling momentum safely.

You'll need to be skilled enough to be able to do everything in the game with minimal deaths. The brutal boiler can end this run, so practice that and get it down perfectly. For the most part, I'm not going to give you advice on these areas because I already have, but there are a few pointers to give on the run as a whole to keep in mind.

• Conserve berries. You're going to need more than you usually do for the side quests. You shouldn't need more than 10-15 jumps in your inventory at any given point, and try to keep a stock of around 10 corrodes if possible (remember to have at least 5 when you get to the coliseum). By the time you get to Zenith, you shouldn't need more than 5. Teleports can be situationally useful, but you shouldn't need more than 2 throughout the whole run. Try to keep some extra for what comes after Zardo.
  
  
• Manage your items. Think logically about what you're carrying at any given time, as your inventory space is limited. I suggest getting a sword or keeping the zball for safety in the Temple, keeping the winchshot for as long as you can when you get it because it helps so much with conserving resources and the Arcade, climbing gauntlets if you get them (completely optional) and boots for making Zball easier. That's four important items, which gives you 3 item slots (including hands) to play with, and makes inventory management start being necessary once you get out of the boiler. Once you get past zball, that's when you can ditch the boots, and the next legend fragment you get right after should probably get you to start holding the winchshot. After getting through the arcade, you can ditch the winchshot and start carrying your weapon of choice or you can opt for keeping the gloves to move speedily through temple, hopefully not losing it to a volt block. After Coliseum, you're stuck with nothing but fragments.
  
  
• Use the winchshot. It seriously is so useful while you have it. You can eliminate the need for jump potions and safely lower yourself into particular areas, or even eliminate bouncing around from dancers in the club. Try not to die in the arcade and lose it either, though the chances of that happening can be pretty high because of how hard the arcade can be. Maybe even consider keeping it for the temple rather than a weapon to conserve further on resources.
  
  
• Take your time. You have a lot of time to think throughout this, and you don't want to rush into things and end everything, having to start all over again. When you feel yourself start rushing and possibly making mistakes, stop and collect yourself, maybe walk away for a minute and come back more calm and capable of making decisions.
  
  
• In the Coliseum, make sure to dump your extra legend fragment or two off to the way side of the level so Brobash doesn't run into it. You don't want him running into it being what ends your run.

Legend Fragment Run pt. 2

After Zardo, you'll end up at the room where you dump your legend fragments. 7 slots for seven fragments. Once you put them all in, the face under the slots opens its eyes and mouth, and you enter the mouth to end up at the Hidden Keep. It has a barrier right at the start of it that takes all of your items, specifically your revives, corrodes, jumps, and teleports, so if you had a surplus of these at this point, they were a waste. They give you 15 golden berries in the next part, and you'll want to grab all of these. There's a witch around them that will sell you as many revive potions as you can buy, which is 3 if you don't have any berries going in. Definitely just buy as many revives as you possibly can and put the rest into jump potions for what's coming up. After this, go down the elevator, and you'll end up in a little arena area where Krystelle is sitting on a throne. After some dialogue, she'll throw you a challenger's sword, and you get to really fight her.

This is the hardest fight in the game, and it is so hard to get to that it can really take the wind out of your sails if this is your first time getting here and you end up dying. If she touches you, she'll bounce you off and stun you for a second like when you touch a golem, and if you throw anything at her, she bounces it off in a random direction like when you throw something at Brobash. If you throw anything near her (like your sword), she'll bounce back to avoid it. She has 5 attacks that she does at random, all of which can be tough to avoid, especially if you're nearby. You can only hit her while she's doing these attacks, so you're going to have to be relatively nearby when she starts throwing them out.

1. Throwing purple orbs: She'll stop and charge her wand, which will be purple. After a few seconds, she'll shoot out a quick moving purple orb in your direction, which you can hit with your sword if your timing is good enough. The amount she throws out is random, but you can possibly hit her a few times between shots.

2. Throwing green orbs: This is one of her most annoying attacks. She throws out a green orb after charging her wand, which will be green, in your direction which, if it misses, will stay and move around the arena, usually where you want to be. It also seems to have tracking properties. You have to it it with your sword to get rid of it, so I suggest trying to time hitting it when she shoots it at you to get rid of it immediately. You can possibly hit her a few times between shots.

3. Throwing red orbs: She'll start charging her wand, which will be red and start splattering lava drips all over the place, and then throw out a big red orb, which will throw out more lava drips upon exploding. You can get in a lot of hits at the beginning of this, but make sure to clear out before getting hit by the drips and before she throws out the orb.

4. Purple lasers: She will charge her wand, which will be purple, and shoot out purple lasers that track to your position when it shoots. She does it a random amount of times, and she shoots relatively quickly. This is the best phase to get hits in, as you can hit her while she's shooting the lasers and you can stay close to her. Just make sure you're not where she shoots them.

5. Blue Bubbles: She charges her wand, which will be blue, and she will throw out a lot of bubbles that will kill you on touch. This is easily the most frustrating attack she has, as the bubbles won't go away until you hit them with the sword, and your sword can bounce off of them at odd angles if you throw it at them. She does sit still for a long time while she charges this up though, so you can get in a lot of hits until she starts.

For this fight in general, it's not a great idea to run all over the arena and trying to avoid her the whole time. The bottom right or left seem to be good places to fight her, and you can escape to the other side of the middle platform to get away from her attacks for safety. If you die, use the invulnerability frames upon reviving to get in free hits when possible, but make sure to get to safety before you die again. I recommend trying to keep Krystelle in one of the corners, which might make sending up the elevators on the sides before you fight her a good idea. Use a combo of attacking her once to push her back and then throwing your sword straight up in the air to keep her jumping back. Continually attacking her can sometimes end up with her pushing through you anyway, but you want to start getting hits in on her as soon as possible, so you can't just keep throwing your sword into the air. This ends up with you hitting her almost as quickly as you can.

Krystelle has a whole lot of health. So much I can't even keep track of it at this point. When she eventually dies, she keels over and drops the boiler wand, which is an awesome item that has no use at this point except for joyfully breaking blocks. Once she dies, a door spawns on the upper left corner and you get to the credits. You'll get a new death card that looks really awesome and likely be able to take on anything else the game has to offer. Congratulations!

Game Mode: Centurial Trials

You unlock the Centurial Trials after you complete Chapter 1 for the first time. I firmly believe that this mode can really aid in improving mechanical acuity for this game. It is comprised of 100 floors of mash ups of all of the chapter 1 levels minus ascension with a few extra things added in. This means you can have bats in a ground floor or ruins level, or encounter beetles in a ruins floor, etc. This can get really difficult really fast, especially with new level modifiers thrown in to really mix things up. These new modifiers are throbbing levels, !!! levels, and purple lava. Modifiers also can apply to any level type, so you can get gas on a heart stage now. The Path of Exiles can be in any level here, and they come with modifiers now too. There are two quests you can do however, the Ascender and Cake quests, and they produce some interesting results. Every ten levels you will encounter a segmentation plant level in the fashion of a chapter 1 level.

You start the trials with arcane guantlets, an invulnerorb, and a hadou orb. The arcane gauntlets are important, as you'll need higher climbing speed to not only get through these 100 floors faster, but to out climb the purple lava. The invulnorb and hadou orb are somewhat less imporant, but they can be used for item hops, clearing out blocks, or getting through a particularly hard situation. You also start with 15 jump and corrosion potions, 5 teleport potions, and 1 revive potion. My first big suggestion for this mode is to go for every golden berry you see, getting them without using potions. You'll start learning how to do neat little mechanical tricks and other such things that will save you on potions and running out. In fact, go to the advanced gameplay section and learn/practice every single trick there until you can do them relatively consistently, with the exception of the wall to ceiling transfer trick, that doesn't work well at high climbing speeds for some reason.

My second big suggestion is to get used to having boots, especially golden greaves. The extra speed will help you make bigger jumps and help you to conserve even more resources. You might die a lot at first, but it'll be very helpful once you master the speed.

Third big suggestion, think about your item layout. You have six inventory slots and can hold one item in your hand. You need to plan your layout for every situation you could possibly encounter in the trials, of which there are a lot. The general layout I like to go for, and is absolutely subjective and not necessarily perfect, is: arcane gauntlets, golden greaves, climbing gauntlets, bitchbane/challenger's sword, killatonne, and Ascender. The extra climbing speed from the climbing gauntlets makes escaping purple lava even easier. The bitchbane can kill pretty much anything and everything with good skill, the killatonne is an amazing movement items which basically makes it so that you never need to use jump potions again and also breaks pesky blocks that are in the way, and the ascender can break blocks above you and is necessary to complete the Ascender quest. If I want to do both the ascender and cake quests, I'll ditch the killatonne in favor of carrying the cake.

Now, definitely tinker around with different inventory layouts in this mode. You have access to the crafter and all of the really awesome items that you can craft. Gun boots, boomerorb, telejumpers, and kingshook all are additionally very useful items that should not be overlooked as being used in this mode, but I do suggest having a sword item of some sort, as those can kill beetles out of their lava state and can really hurt just about anything.

Game Mode: Centurial Trials pt. 2

The new room types can throw anyone off, but as long you keep your cool, they can be surmounted. A general tip for all of them is to go fast, and this is really a general theme in Centurial Trials. Learn to go quickly, and you can get past obstacles before they become a concern.

The segmentation plant levels aresimilar to the ones in chapter 2 but much more cramped. Practice this in chapter 2 and this area will become easier.

In !!! levels, there are lava geysers that look like stone heads, which spit out lava sideways all throughout the level. This is very intimidating at first, and they go off every 5-6 seconds to start, giving you what seems like very little time to get by. They work with an on-screen timer, and are really identical to lava geysers in every way except that they spit lava sideways and look different. They even throw out lava drips if you blow them up, so be careful if you take that approach to them. The secret to this level is really to go through it very quickly. Use jump potions if you need to, and grab whatever items you can on the way to aid you in getting through this as quickly as possible. The stage becomes fun when you get the hang of it, and even almost a joke. It helps to have a weapon besides a blast berry because of all of the lava around, and the bats can be in the worst possible locations sometimes. I recommend a spear or bitchbane for killing them. Ideally, you can just run into them, throw the spear or bitchbane, grab it real quick, and barely break your stride as you continue along your way. If you happen to get held up, I suggest breaking blocks, teleporting, and waiting for safe crossing times to continue progress, but really try not to get held up.

In throbbing levels, there are a lot of beetles and worms, and those worms can be much bigger. You should either go through this stage very quickly or very slowly, and only go through slowly if you have a weapon and are good at fighting. If you're not good at fighting, it's a good time to learn. The bitchbane is best for this, but you can definitely make do with a spear if you know how to use it. Make use of small corridors and corners to manipulate the beetles to coming at you one at a time or not being able to get to you at all with you being able to kill them. Also kill the worms because they are really the biggest danger in this area. If you are going quickly through here. Keep your eyes out for worms, as they can easily be covered by beetles in the larva stage or something else. They can easily snap out and catch you without you knowing they're there. Be liberal with potion use here, and if you can stick to one side of the wall and just climb up, that is your best option. If you get stuck and start getting beetles hatching, start using teleports to get ahead and get them off screen so that they're not a problem anymore.

Purple lava levels can easily be the worst levels in all of the trials if you're unlucky, especially if they're in a ruins area. Obviously, you need to go fast here, and the surplus of jump berries and adrenaline berries that fall at the beginning of the level are both a cue to get going and a way to get going quickly. Definitely make sure to get the berries to speed things up. It can be easy to accidentally get too many jump berries and die to gluttony, so keep track of how many jumps you have as you go and use them if you can't progress without grabbing jump berries that would kill you. The purple lava also spawns a lot of chests in the area that are meant to tempt you to them. These are usually a trap to delay you and get you killed, but if you're way ahead and have the time to spare, these can contribute to your inventory horde nicely. Usually though, they'll end up getting you killed, so be careful with them.

If you happen to gets a ruins area with purple lava, you're really in for a hard time. The purple lava will break any ice blocks that it comes into contact with, and that means any icicles that are on your screen at the time will also drop. With these levels being filled with ice, that really means any icicles that come onto screen usually immediately drop down. This requires some really quick thinking, but there are some good ways to deal with this. You can toss a corrode up to blow up the icicle, or bomb into a wall to avoid it. You can use a teleport as it's about to hit you to telefrag the icicle, or just move out of the way. All good options, especially moving out of the way.

There is one good thing about purple lava levels, and that's getting arcane steak from them. These are the only places you can get this other than a really involved crafting recipe. You just have to soak meat in the purple lava, grab it, and exit the level. Seems impossible, but there's a trick to do it without dying. Carry some meat to the exit door of the level, and clear the area underneath so that there are two blocks of space underneath. Toss the meat straight down and wait for the purple lava to get to you. It'll carry the arcane steak up, throwing out lava drips when the meat comes in contact (this is why you clear the space). When it becomes possible to do so, grab the steak and hit up to exit the level. There's a very small window where you can safely grab the steak without dying, and that's what you need to take advantage of. Another method involves boomboxing the meat into the lava, but it's much more dangerous, tricky, and unreliable.

Now's a good time to talk about the Path of Exiles in the trials. For the most part, they are never worth going to. The only problem is that they're the only place to get the exiled blade, which you need to find to finish the Ascender quest. They only skip the rest of the level you are on and they can now include all of the modifiers that the normal levels can have with the exception of Zardo's Gallery, which will always have either a giant worm, excruciating heat, or a lot of beetles. Fatal Flight can become a nightmare if you encounter a gas trap at the door, whereupon you have work your way back down through the fan blades, which can be impossible to do on the balloon. In that particular scenario, I recommend climbing down and teleporting as much as you can. If you have an invulnerorb in your inventory, that's a great place to use it. If you get purple lava in fatal flight, forget the balloons and start using your jump potions. Start climbing the walls where you can, and teleport through the really tough situations. These are the worst possible level you can encounter.

In Zardo's Gallery, everything becomes harder, but it's very much still the same beast at heart. The excruciating heat version is very easy, as all you have to do is explode the lava drips at the top of the level and they won't drip lava anymore, and the lava geysers barely reach the sides of the platforms anyway (make sure to time those). Otherwise, just stay in time with the drips if you want to challenge yourself. If you get a throbbing gallery, this is the best place to have an exiled blade or ascender, as the gallery is just above the start of the level. You can simply cut through the blocks up above where you start and hit the beetles through the unbreakable blocks where they spawn on. If you don't have those, use your resources to kill those beetles as quickly as you can when the level starts. Hadou orbs or gun boots help tremendously at this point. The giant worm gallery presents a tough problem if you don't have a weapon to kill it with. If you do have a weapon, kill it before you go into the gallery, it's a great arena for the fight. If you don't, you can follow the vanilla strategy for the gallery, except you have to start using the left wall and lead the worm in circles.

Soul Crossing is terrible anyway, and getting a throbbing or purple lava crossing can really ruin a run. Hope you don't get these possibilities, but try your best if you do and go through quickly.

Game Mode: Centurial Trials: Quests

There are two quests in Centurial Trials: The Ascender quest and the Cake quest. Both of these involve getting to the 101st floor, so you'll have to complete the whole thing to finish them. The Cake quest is simple and directs you on how to do it, but I'll give you some direction on it anyway. The Ascender quest is harder to do, and you only learn how to do it after you finish the trials or through trial and error (or someone told you, like me). Completing these quests gets you a file in a hidden folder that only has once purpose. The quests can both be done at the same time, and that can save you from having to do the trials multiple times, but doing them separately is fine. You might as well do the ascender quest if you're doing the cake quest though because the ascender is a great tool to have anyway.

The cake quest starts when you buy flour from the first witch you encounter. It costs one golden berry, so make sure you have one before you start shopping. Once you have the flour, you need a bat egg, which bats drop and a blast berry to get to the next step. Bats drop eggs randomly while they're flying, so find some bats and wait some random amount of time (I've waited almost ten minutes for them to drop one) and get an egg. Blast berries are all over the place, so they shouldn't be too much trouble to carry. Once you have all of this, find a water block and throw the flour into it. It should be noted that water blocks specifically are one block of water, so water stages don't count in this, though there can oddly be a water block underwater. Once you throw the flour in, it directs you to throw an egg, then a blast berry into the water. Then you have to jump in and out of the water to mix it up, and after that it gives you some blast berry dough. This you have to take to a hot level and hold out in the air for it to bake. Either a !!! or excruciating heat level can work for this, and you can really just hold it in your hand as you run through the level and store it when it's done. After it's done baking, you get a blast berry cake, which will make a huge explosion and instantly kills the giant worm. If you want to finish this quest, DO NOT THROW IT. You have to keep it in your inventory until the 101st floor, whereupon you will encounter the crafter guy. You give him the cake and he starts waving his arms in happiness. This is why he is called Cakeman.

The ascender quest starts either when you kill 9 dogs and spawn the Bitchbane or kill the giant worm and spawn the Killatonne. If you kill the giant worm first, you lost the ability to get the bitchbane from the dogs. The quest gives you cryptic clues on what you need to do next, but they are very vague. There's also a giant statue thing on the 101st floor that kind of hints at the steps, but knowing what to do is easier. So either kill the giant worm and/or get the bitchbane and then kill the giant worm, and then you have to go to the path of exiles with the killatonne. Here, you'll have to encounter a level with fan blades, either soul crossing or fatal flight. With the killatonne, you can break the fan blades if you hit them with it, so do that and you will get an exiled blade, the next part of the quest. The last step requires you to get a vapour wand and hit the exiled blade with it. You can only get those from beating up Zardo, so hope you encounter Zardo and take his wand. Using it on the exiled blade will make into an ascender, which is an amazing item on its own. Now carry the ascender all the way to the 101st floor, and at the top of the statue in the middle of the room, you'll see some floating orbs above. Use the spinning attack the ascender has to fly straight up and you'll activate the orbs (there are 3 altogether). Just fly straight up without moving and you'll land on a platform just below the exit portal at the top of the room. Activating the last orb will finish the quest and fill the room with a bright light.

Game Mode: Colossus

This, like Centurial Trials and a legend fragment run, is right up there in the hardest challenges of the game. The Colossus consists of 50 waves of randomly generated enemies that you have to make your way through one after the other. At the end of it all, there's a very tough boss wave to deal with before victory. This is a place where learning to use items to the best of their potential is essential, and this can be a good place to test things out really get some learning done.

You begin this challenge with 15 jump potions, 15 corrode potions, 5 teleport potions, and 3 revive potions. Use them wisely! Each wave is going to be different from the others because of the randomly generated enemies, but there are two different types of waves. The first wave will be a regular enemy wave, which usually consists of beetles, worms, beebles, rats, hounds, blue and pink golems, and the praying devotees from the temple. Sometimes bosses will spawn in this wave, but it's relatively uncommon. The next wave will be a boss wave where you'll generally get two of the boss enemies from the game, consisting of mother hounds, fire golems, watchers, corrupted watchers, giant worms, and brobash. Sometimes you'll get more than 2, but that is relatively uncommon (you'll definitely encounter it!). Once through a boss wave, you get another regular enemy wave, and they just keep alternating all the way to 50. After each boss wave, you can get a random item from an item box at the top level of the arena. This can have any number of items, and some items won't spawn until you complete certain challenges in the game. The sword from the end of the game won't spawn until you beat the game, the zball won't spawn until you beat Zardo in Zball, blast berry cake won't spawn until you complete the cake quest, the ascender won't spawn until you finish the Arsenal of the Ascended quest (unconfirmed on this, zball, and the cake quest), and the boiler wand won't spawn until you finish a legend fragment run. As a result of all of this, it's not a bad idea to leave Colossus as one of the last things you accomplish in the game. The boiler wand isn't terribly necessary, but the other items can be nice to have.

The Colossus consists of 3 levels, with an elevator on both sides of the arena to carry you up and down between levels. The bottom has two platforms where two of the old swords you can get spawn. It has balls hanging from the ceiling on the far end and next to the elevator which may or may not come in handy. The middle floor is mostly made up of breakable blocks and can have a random amount of torches on those blocks. It has two platforms on the far end of either side the rise up and somewhat enclose the area. On the far ends of the level, there are 4 block platforms that rise into the air. The top floor has two two block platforms on either end with two old swords starting on them, two three block platforms in the middle, the item box in the middle below and between those platforms, a crafter, and a witch.

The witch and crafter are important to note, as they can be invaluable in your efforts to survive. The witch will sell you revive potions at the price of 4 + x, with x being the amount of revive potions you've bought. Therefore the price starts at 4, then goes up to 5, 6, 7, etc. This ends up really limiting how many you can buy, so your best option is still to be really good and not die. You can buy the other potions, but they're not nearly as useful, and you shouldn't really need them anyway. The crafter allows you to combine some items together to get some really fantastic stuff that doesn't spawn in the item box. The most useful things to use him for are arcane sabatons and a vapour wand forgun boots, two invulnerorbs for a revive, and free berries from two vapour wands. These are all circumstantial based on what you get from the item box, but if you can do these, they very much come in handy. Just remember that these recipes cost golden berries (except the free berries from vapour wands), and these berries come out of possible revive potions.

With the basic mechanics and layout out of the way, let's get into some strategies and tips for this place. I'll start with a good way setting up for better success and then go into some more general tips and strategies.

You start out at the bottom of the level with two platforms that have a challenger's sword and an old sword on them and an elevator that will carry you into the arena. Make sure to grab both of these swords before going up. After getting into the arena proper, there are platforms to your left and right with old swords on them. Quickly grab the one on the right and break the bottom block of the right platform with a corrode, then do the same thing for the other platform. Next, if you're quick enough, you can jump onto the ball to the right of the left elevator and swing up to the 4 block platform on the left side of the middle level. Using 2 corrodes, broke all the blocks of these platforms. Make your way back down to the bottom floor and, once the first wave starts, clear the bottom floor and take the right elevator up to the top floor. As you're going up, use 2 corrodes to break the 4 block platform on the right side of the middle floor, and ride up the rest of the way to the top floor. Once you get there, grab your sword on the right, swing up to the blocks at the top, kill what's there, and break the 3 block platforms with your corrodes. You can plausibly leave these here, but it's more convenient to get rid of them. If you want to save your corrodes, at least break the top two blocks of these platforms for convenience. Then grab your other sword and go back to the elevator you took up, making sure to clear the enemies on the top. Go to the middle level and break the part of the right side that juts up into the air, just the 2 blocks that stick up. After this, your arena is all set up pretty ideally for the rest of the waves for the price of 9 to 11 corrosion potions.

The reason for all of this is involves a bit of explanation. The first two blocks you destroyed on the ground floor are to make fights against brobash, mother hounds, beebles, and various other enemies that can be a pain much easier, just like in the coliseum, but on a bigger scale. It's possibly the most important thing you can do in the arena, and if you don't believe me, try it both ways and see the difference. For the next sets of blocks on the far ends of the middle level and the blocks from the top level, there's another mechanic to take not of that you broke these for. Except for the ground level, enemies (except for bosses) can only spawn on breakable blocks. As a result, you're really cutting off fighting enemies on the side of the levels that are just way out of the way and annoying to deal with, and the enemies at the top you also are just cutting out for ease. You could theoretically break all of the breakable blocks and only have to deal with the ground level enemies, but that introduces some complications in the boss round that can be a little trickier to deal with, but it would certainly speed things up dramatically. The last blocks you broke, on the middle level on the right side, make it a lot easier to approach the middle level. Usually the platform that juts out you have to climb up and jump into the thick of the enemies. This can be very tricky and usually requires throwing some swords to make it a little safer. Then also the blue golems tend to throw their grenades into the blocks, which end up being able to hit you on the other side despite being in the platform. Clearing this out allows you to get right into the thick of things more safely and effectively.

Game Mode: Colossus pt. 2

With the set up out of the way, I generally recommend going through the enemy levels about the same way as when you set things up, start on the left side of the bottom level, clear the enemies moving to the right, take the elevator up, clear the enemies that are left, and check for what item you got after the boss wave. Then take the elevator down to the middle level and clear through the middle enemies. Then make your way to the right of the middle level and wait for the boss wave to start. What you do here depends on what bosses you get. If you get a giant worm, go down to the bottom part of the side of the middle level and wait until it gets to you and try to hit it, then drop to the elevator and lure it to the top level and fight it there. You don't want it to break any blocks. If you get any of the watchers, take them to the middle of the middle level and fight them there. Note that if you get both of either of the watchers and a worm, it gets much more complicated, but you want to end up luring the worm to the middle right while trying to chip away at the watchers as you go. That takes practice.

If you get brobash, you're going to hang off of the top of the side of the middle level and try to lure him to the middle level. Once you get him starting to jump up there, book it to the other side of the level and climb down the left side to take care of whatever is on the bottom. If you get brobash and a worm, do the worm strategy, but be more careful and you might need to move faster so you can separate brobash from the worm. If you get brobash and watchers, move to the middle of the middle level and dispatch of the watchers, then take care of brobash. Keep in mind that brobash can and will throw corrodes, so try not to let him destroy any blocks that might be in a valuable place, like the ones you left on the lower level.

If you get any combination of mother hound or fire golems, you can just drop down onto them and take care of them using the same strategies from the coliseum. They're the bosses you hope for. If you get them on top of a brobash, use the brobash lure strategy from above to separate him from them and take care of them first, after which you can lure brobash down safely by waiting under the block you left on the right side and fighting him normally after he comes down.

These are general strategies of how to deal with the various bosses you can encounter, and there may be better strategies, most of which you'll likely improvise and make work. Don't be afraid to stray from my formulas, as they may not necessarily work for you.

I'm not going to go too in-depth on how to fight the bosses or other enemies because I've covered them pretty in-depth in other sections of the guide, but keep in mind you will have to adapt these strategies to dealing with multiple other enemies at the same time. This takes practice and mechanical consistency that is largely unneeded in the main game. Master your skills and learn how to deal with any situation and you'll make it through all 50 of the waves. With that said, I do have item recommendations for making things easier for you.

- The spear is fairly useless through all of this with the exception of one enemy: The fire golem. It demolishes him so quickly it's not even funny. Just throw it straight down onto his head and it'll hit him multiple times quickly until death. Keeping one in the inventory is worth it for this use alone.

- Gloves are nice to have for making climbing less of a chore and making the brobash lure more effective. Grab some when you can, but you don't need more than one pair of any kind.

- You don't need boots except for crafting. They're not worth losing an inventory slot over.

- Gun boots are amazing. They can hurt anything, and hanging from the ceiling allows you to repeatedly shoot without having to reload. Arguably the most useful thing you can carry, but it will mess up your sword swings for taking care of beetle larvae.

- Zball has the same utility as the spear except it has to be charged up and you can hurt anything with its throw. Having it for keeping distance and killing is not a bad idea if you encounter it, and you can effectively replace the spear with it.

- The Zsword (???) is amazing for its slashing range. It can replace your challenger sword as your main weapon if you get it, but make sure to take into account the slightly slower swinging speed. Brobash's scimitar can also replace the challenger's sword, but remember that it has a slightly shorter cutting distance. Use the scimitar and the zsword together to kill very effectively. The worm, watchers, and the fire golem. can be killed very quickly with the scimitar, while the zsword makes killing brobash much safer. The scimitar also has the same utility that the spear has on fire golems, so it can replace the spear once you get it.

- All of the grappling items are relatively useless here, so don't bother with them.

- Keep in mind that you don't have to pull an item out of the item box if you don't want it. If you leave it in there until the next boss wave, it'll just give you a new item and it won't clutter up your space.

- If you choose to use a boomerang weapon, just remember that they don't go well together with the timed grenades that the blue golems throw. It'll bring them to you, and you have a chance of blowing yourself up with it unless you think quickly enough to store it first. Generally, they end up not being worth using except on fire golems from a distance, or with a thrown sword to stack on damage.

- The Ascender and Exiled Blade are really useful just for laying on damage and breaking blocks. Don't get too arrogant with them though, and try not to break blocks you want to keep. I especially recommend getting the Ascender for the last wave, as it can be exploited a bit for a really safe strategy. If you get a vapour wand, you can also transform the exiled blade into the ascender, so keep that in mind.

- Powder kegs and blast berry cakes should be saved for emergencies. They will break large amounts of blocks, but they also do a lot of damage in really big areas. I'd suggest saving the cake for the last wave if possible, and same with the powder keg. Just watch out that the keg doesn't get hit back to you by brobash or the last wave enemy.

- Keep invulnorbs for extra revives.

- Hadou orbs are kind of worthless, but they can be used to shave some damage off of the giant worm or wipe out a lot of the enemies on the bottom floor if you want.

- If you get arcane steak, that's a good time to get rid of all of the blocks on the top level and leave it up there to use to get to the elevator. It's just that much less that you have to deal with.

Now I'll talk a bit about the final wave. In this wave, two enemies spawn that are ridiculously hard. They throw out lava drips, lasers, and can cut you with their sword. They're kind of like brobash and fire golems combined with a laser attack. They even have a revive potion! I suggest being careful with them and throwing whatever explosives you have to start to knock out most of their health. If they kill you, use the invincibility time to cut off as much of their health as you can. If you have multiple revives, you can just facetank them and just cut them to death with ease.

The easy strategy for them is to lure them to the top level, and get them on the item box, then use the ascender or exiled blade to hit them repeatedly through it. It's hard to set up, but very safe once done. It's even easy to lure them one at a time. Outside of this easy strategy, I don't actually have a good method of fighting them effectively, so I'm open to suggestions in this field.

[Snage]

damn i didnt want to spoil too much for myself so i only read the guides for areas ive reached, but after seeing your comment saying you were the trailblazer i kinda regret looking lol

[peesauce]

amazing guide

[Torgo]

What a guide!

[Tobash]

In response to you ethercircuitpath, I actually was the trailblazer of this game. I didn't have prior knowledge of anything and was the first to legitimately beat the game with all of the endings (some people did cheat to beat the game. I was instrumental in gathering the data for the wiki and crafting guide too. At this point, as far as I can tell, most people don't beat the game completely blind anymore, but it was really nice when they did. If you haven't already, you should hop on the towerclimb discord, which has an awesome community. https://discord.gg/Geyssap

[TheFlow]

Awsome guide Tobash! After I beat towerclimb I scrolled your guide to see what things or secrets I may have missed (I missed a lot). I also watched some of your recorded streams on youtube. I have a quesiton about your history/experience with the game: the first time you beat Towerclimb (non legendary fragment run) did you do the entire thing blind or did you at that point already have predisposed knowledge from wikis/crafting recipes? I imagine with later game content (fragment runs, ect) that you may at that point already had some online guide/wiki knowledge going in, but I could be wrong. I am trying to find how common it is for this game to be beaten completely blind the first time (again, non legendary fragment run).

[Anton]

In Colossus, I had obtained the Ascender without having completed the centurial trials. My guess is that it becomes available in Colossus once the weapon is just obtained somewhere.

[Yowaiko]

I thought it was odd I got the chests so soon after each other without ever seeing them before as well. I was wondering if it was a mechanic to give an edge to players who are doing worse, as I had died like a trillion times before seing each of them. Doesn't seem like what Davioware/Quazi are going for here though.

[Tobash]

I'm kind of salty you've found 2 within such a short span of each other when I've found one with so many hours. It was a recent addition, and it just has a possibility of giving you a rare item. I haven't mentioned it mostly cause it's so rare.

[Yowaiko]

Found another one with the kingshook in it in the centurial trials. Must be a recent addition, right?

[Yowaiko]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=756990701

There's a screenie of the aforementioned red chest if anyone's interested