[klez]

[Max Cola]

I briefly thought that they were cans of soda... go environmental conservation?
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Everybody hurts sometimes

[Toups]

My strategy for the stone giant:

Stay in the bottom right corner of the screen at all times and jump over his blasts. At first his general pattern is that he'll shoot 3 fireballs before moving, shoot another 3, and then stretch his arm out. So after every 2 sets of fire, climb your way almost all the way to the top of the ladder (so you're still protected from falling rocks) and then just as he stops, climb all the way up, and the moment you see his arm outstretch leap across. If he's close you can usually score 3 hits on him, sometimes 4, but sometimes you can only get 2. As he takes more damage he'll change his pattern up a bit but this general strategy works. It's still a hard as fuck battle but when you finally beat him it feels really great.

How many life jewels have you found? I'd recommend at least 2, but 3 is preferable.
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[professor_scissors]

I've only found 2 life jewels, but I beat the battle so it's cool.

[Toups]

Well would you mind telling me where the heck the helmet is then? D:
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[klez]

[Mr. Business]

Just dropping in to provide a handy guide to spoilers:

[professor_scissors]

Also: The background color for quoted text is #636363.

[Clueless Gamer]

Postin to say how much I hate the fucking bats. But thanks to that hate I solved by accident a puzzle. The "walk between the angels" one.

La Mulana is truly a test of endurance.
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[Deets]

[klez]

[Toups]

[Swimmy]

To be honest, I'm using the guide that's already online, internet-translated into english. It gives me a few more hints than the game's tablets, but is still obscure enough to keep the puzzles complex.
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[dmauro]

Shit. This game is awesome. The bats are driving me crazy, but other than that I'm having a blast in the Guidance Gate. I managed to get the grail which is making my life so much easier. And I found the boss room, but I don't have the thing you offer up to the ankh yet. I saved up enough for the glyph reader, which hasn't helped me out any more than the tales the dead men offer, but I imagine it'll prove itself indespensible eventually.
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[Deets]

[Clueless Gamer]

Defeating the guardian of the Guidance Gate gives you something? I've beaten another guardian and got a new item. But after beating the Guidance Gate's boss I don't know what have changed.

Also. Any hint about an easy to pick life jewel? Because I'm still playing with just one.

Making progress in this game make me feel great. It's a good feeling of reward after all the almost (but never) frustrating parts.
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[klez]

Defeating guardian don't always give you things (it usually doesn't give you things), they do almost always opens up doorways and new paths though.

The life jewel in Giant's Mausoleum is around the two giants, and the life jewel in the sun's temple is related to two bats.

And if bats are driving you crazy, get used to the whip delay. Late game there're things MUCH more annoy than these small bats (they're still annoying, theses bats, mind you). Remember the whip whips BACK too and that can hit things too.

[Toups]

Yeah the bats drove me nuts until I realized that you do damage in the spot above your head the instant you press the whip button. This combined with a healthy supply of shurikens minimizes how threatening/annoying they are.

Though they're still pretty annoying!
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[Clueless Gamer]

The "overhead attack" with the whip is very useful indeed. And not only to kill bats. If there is an enemy in a platform over you, you can jump and attack when your head hit the platform. The first frame of the attack will hurt the enemy above! It's an awesome way to deal with small crawling enemies, like the green snake thing.
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[Deets]

Bats are pretty much annoying forever. It doesn't matter what weapons you have when they blend into the background/water and are placed directly on places where you are likely to jump. This doesn't happen very often, but just enough to remind you that they're out there.

Also klez when the hell does the lamp of time recharge? I was terrified of saving my game in case I totally used up the one use I had of it ever and was screwed for life, as unlikely as that seemed.

[klez]

[mauve]

Whenever I want to recharge that thing, I just hop back to start, save, and restart the game. It's pretty bad when hiking all the way back to where you were is faster than waiting around for it. There was one particular 'puzzle' in the Dimensional Corridor that caused me a large number of headaches related to that.

I hate the bats with a passion. Especially their upgraded form. If there is anything this game needed, it was an item that causes any bats that come within a 30 pixel radius of you to spontaneously combust. Sorta like the Anti-Cliff Racer Belt of Morrowind.

I haven't played it for a few days. I made it to the endgame then just kinda lost interest in getting any further. (Plus I've been a bit busy as of late as it is, which isn't helping!) Going to need to get back to it soon.

[professor_scissors]

[I just got the Bronze Mirror, and have been exploring several fields at once, and coming to a massive heap of dead ends. I don't seem to be able to make any meaningful progress in the Temple of the Moonlight, the Graveyard of the Giants, the Inferno Cavern, the Twin Labyrinths, the Eternal Corridor... the list goes on and on. I'm at a loss to where I'm supposed to be going or what I'm supposed to be doing. What are some items I should be able to get right now? Where the hell are they? Where should I be tackling next?]

[klez]

[professor_scissors]

[I cannot defeat the guardian of the Spring in the Sky, because I don't have the seal for it.
I can't get to the Confusion Gate because I can't figure out how to reach the upper half of the Temple of the Moonlight.
I got the Flare Gun, but the other two items in the Inferno Cavern are beyond my reach. One because it seems to be behind a solid stone wall, and the other because I can't go into lava. I can't get to the Ice Cape for aforementioned reasons.
And yes, I've been spoiling myself a bit with a website that has maps and item locations for every world, but I'm still getting stuck. How sad is that?]

[klez]

[professor_scissors]

[To clarify, I have done everything that needs doing in the Spring, with the exception of actually fighting the boss there (I'm one Seal short for that).
Anyways, I have no idea what you're talking about regarding the three women puzzle. If they're in the Temple of the Sun, then I know where they are, I know what I get for them, and the third woman is completely impossible to reach. If they're in the Temple of the Moonlight, then either I'm completely blind or they're in some area that I can't reach. I SHOULD be fine with that guide, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm still completely balls-out stuck, a fact that none of your guidance seems to be able to change. There must be SOMETHING massive and forehead-smacking that I'm not seeing SOMEWHERE, because this is getting ridiculous.]

[dmauro]

I whipped a wall and I died.

Why the hell would you guys want to use a guide with this game?

I got into a lava world and at about the second screen in, there was this floating rock-thing that was slowly coming after me. I couldn't quite get away from it without just running back to the previous screen and I was just thinking "shit, I should not be in here yet."

I didn't even like Super Metroid so much, but man, this game...
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[klez]

[professor_scissors]

Okay, that was what I was missing.
Got two new items.
Spent 20 minutes trying to climb a tower infested with bats, only to find nothing at the top but a locked treasure chest. I won't be able to play this for a while until that's no longer fresh in my memory. That whole area seems to be about falling immense distances that you just worked your ass off to climb up because you touched one enemy at the wrong moment. I really don't like that aspect of the level design.
I'm making progress again, I guess. Still don't know where the Spring Guardian is.

[Swimmy]

I'm completely stuck on [the boss of the fire cavern]. Not only can he do a ridiculous amount of damage if you make the tiniest little mistake, he is also very glitchy!

Here is an image of the background becoming completely ruined during the screen transition. That was an interesting fight.

In this picture he killed me but the game didn't give me a game over. I was invincible and could still run and jump, but I couldn't use any weapons or open any menus.

He's impassably hard. Unless I can figure out something else to do for a while this is going to piss me off to the point that I quit.
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[Deets]

Swimmy: I just now killed that dude. My lifebar is pretty much maxed out, I have all the weapons besides the super upgraded whip, over 150 spears, and he was still a pain in the ass. He never glitched out on me though. What I'm trying to say is that you should definitely come back later. Much later.

[klez]

He's probably one of the hardest boss in the game. The thing to do is ignore the tentacles once his eye is popping out (dodge the shot from the tentacles), and stay in the centre as much as you can (jumping one floor to another, you should be able to jump that high). If you hit him fast enough his eye can't pull out any attacks. If he's spraying bullets with the eye you can still force him to retreat the eye with spears (it's better that way so you don't get knock back). If you have the roms to double your "flashing" time use it to your advantage. I can beat him with half the max life and ~60 spears, but he's a pain definitily.

[dmauro]

I have five places memorized with my grail, but I still haven't even fought a boss. I'm sure I'll find the jewel in the guidance gate one of these days.
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[Clueless Gamer]

I'm spending a lot of time looking for the guardian in the giants mausoleum, but the ankh is nowhere to be found. I'm sure that it's related to the astronomy room, but there is no way to get the three moons.

This archeology thing seemed so easy in the Indiana Jones' movies...

EDIT: Ankh found.

EDIT2: This boss is hard!
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[professor_scissors]

That boss is about a hojillion times easier once you get the boots.
Edit: As a side note, I have concluded that it is thoroughly impossible for me to make any headway into the [Confusion Gate]. All the paths are dead ends. Is there something I'm missing? I'm reading the elaborate riddles on the glyphs, but not gleaning the slightest knowledge from them.

EDIT 2: You know what? Fuck it. I give up. I can't get more than 5 minutes into the game without getting stuck, and if I play it for more than 20 minutes at a time I get so frustrated that it can ruin a good chunk of my day. It's just not worth it anymore. La Mulana wins.

[dmauro]

I finally got the ankh jewel for the guidance gate and killed the snake. I was a little disappointed by the lack of reward, but that also gets to the point of why the game is awesome. It doesn't give you any freebies. I know, it wouldn't have been a freebie because I had to beat the boss, but because you usually expect to get something after beating the boss, it would have felt like a freebie. Instead, I was really pleased with myself for deciphering a broken tablet that I didn't even have the second half of and getting the throwing knives.

I also figured out most of the secrets to the mausoleum. I still haven't found the ankh jewel, but I figured out the star, sun, moon things, which definitely felt awesome. I'm actually surprised I didn't accidentally find it out sooner because I had matched them up previously, but never figured it out. I did get the switch on Bud's chest to appear, but I have no idea what it activated, and it did not open the chest I expected it to.

I've been trying to venture up into the water level, since I got the helmet, and some tablets have me thinking I should probably go there, but I can't get anywhere, and it's such a pain in the ass because all the monsters try to knock me in the water, which I can't handle yet. I opened the chest with the stone that needs polishing I think, but I have no idea how to get to it, so I geuss I'm just going to wait on all that. I've still got plenty to explore I think.

I guess at the top of my list is figuring out these thing about the twins. I thought it was refencing the double-headed snake, but I guess it wasn't.

[dmauro]

This mausoleum boss is driving me a little bit crazy. The snake was nice and easy because I could spam him with throwing stars, but I've got to hit this guy with the whip.
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[Deets]

I didn't kill that guy for a long, long time. If a boss has you stumped, chances are good that your best bet is to come back much later.

Also yeah, this game pretty much crushed by soul around the point when I finished going through the Goddess Tower. I don't know why, either. It's been significantly less annoying lately, but I can't muster up the strength to finish.

[dmauro]

Okay, I've beat that guy and the next one, but now I'm stuck on the sky spring guardian. It seems like sometimes it's just impossible to not get hit by the boss or jump into the water which also does damage.

I kind of feel like a chump now because I had to look at a guide to figure out who the hell Udjat is. Honestly, how are you supposed to figure that one out? Is there a tablet that explains it?
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[Wilkes]

hey dave I want to play this with a USB controller how do I do that.