Grave of Origin
Mountain Base
Poison Forest
Green Abyss (BOSS: Forest Kraken)
Mountain Base II: Let’s Talk Housing Stones
Decayed Castle
Warped Castle (BOSS: Giant Bone Baker)
Mountain Base III: That Merchant Seems Iffy, Right?
Cave of Illusions
Thirsting Canal: Shortcut Opening
Cave of Illusions II
Black Rock Cave
Golden Path: Shortcut Opening
Golden Path
Labyrinth Desert
Sands of Mirage (BOSS: Buglord Lostworm)
Mountain Base IV: I Told You That Merchant Was Iffy
Soul Prison
Execution Ground
Black Fortress
Eternal Darkness (BOSS: Reaper Grimell)
Land of Fire
Den of Fire (BOSS: Firelord Ifrit)
Sands of Mirage: Path Opening
Skylands: Shortcut Opening
Skylands
Dragon King Road (BOSS: Dragon King Daidaros)
Gate of Purgatory/Optional Boss Rush/Sidequests/Trials
Defeating Darklord Desgamiel
Heaven or Hell?/Land of Lost Fools
What Is Inferno Climber?
I phrase that like it’s a deep question. Inferno Climber gives itself the genre
title of “Survival Action-RPG” and that is 100% correct, though I would also
throw “action-adventure” in there because of the game being strongly patterned
on the 3D Zelda titles in terms of its language. There’s the broad fantasy stuff
like swords, shields, and magic, but on a more specific design level, Inferno
Climber uses a lot of setpieces from those games such as: shooting arrows at
faraway targets to make treasure chests appear, shooting arrows through torches
to light other torches in the distance, bombable walls, and specifically the
system of potions becoming empty bottles after use, which you can then use to
refill them.
However, the empty bottles also show how the game’s simulationist philosophy
breaks that style of game wide open. You can refill the potions, but to do so
without just buying a new bottle of the stuff requires knowing how to mix one
via the recipe books you can find and read. But regardless of whether a bottle
is full or empty you can still throw it at any time. See you only need the
throwing option for really one reason: bombs. In one instance you need to
actually use the throwing arc for something other than bomb targeting. But since
they made a throw mechanic, it isn’t limited to just bombs, you can throw
whatever you want. The only real benefit to throwing an empty bottle is to pull
an enemy off course, likely to break up a group. But the sound still alerts
enemies to your presence in a game where virtually every enemy can be a threat.
Inferno Climber is one of these kinds of games that really doesn’t care about
the decisions you make and is hoping you’re paying close enough attention on a
moment to moment basis to be able to handle all of it yourself.
CHARACTERS
Nameless One - As the game says, the Nameless One has no special features of any
kind. I would leave the Nameless One for later in the game when you’ve built up
a lot of Development Points and know how the stat works, then you can whip this
friend out and build them however you want. I guess you can also see this
character as something of an optional challenge mode since they don’t have any
mechanical benefit going for them.
Innocent Prisoner - The Innocent Prisoner is a little overpowered. They have
double the maximum base hunger of any other character, but also has a high
natural strength stat without the naturally low MP of the Royal Knight. When
equipped with enough healing items to match the depth of his stomach, the
Innocent Prisoner tears through unexplored territory like no one’s business.
Popular Merchant - Here’s a meta one. The Merchant has a significantly higher
drop rate than the other characters. If you’re looking to max out the item and
monster books, this is your main guy. Other than that, vanilla stats-wise.
Renowned Priest - The game says their gimmick is that equipment breaks less for
them. They should’ve given one of Innocent Prisoners benefits to this character
because I never used them unless I was running out of choices.
Legendary Mage - Breaks weapons easily, BEWARE and pay attention. However, if
you can work with that, the Legendary Mage has one of the greatest strengths of
any character. Zero fall damage. I hate fall damage in videogames, and I also
hate it in Inferno Climber, but I’ll give the credit where it’s due that fall
damage fits with the simulationist/immersive-sim design approach in this game.
The Legendary Mage, however, allows you to take creative self-made shortcuts
through levels by falling as you please, making them especially effective every
area where fall damage is a major threat, particularly the “Bridge of Death”
we'll discuss later from the Execution Ground level. Really cool character. Oh,
obviously the Mage has low physical attack power but has the best natural magic
stats of any character, making them particularly effective with magic. This also
just in, grass is known to be green, and Lamar Jackson is the best quarterback
in football.
Forest Hunter - The Forest Hunter is a curious case. The consensus seems to be
that the Forest Hunter just has way too low of an HP pool, and I’d agree with
that having pumped that stat with this character. However, the low health of the
Forest Hunter is attempting to teach you a lesson I was too stubborn to learn:
just use a fucking bow. The armor for this character (shirts, hoods) tend to do
things like extend arrow range to make up for their lack in usable defense. All
of this reinforces a central idea: why are you getting hit? Stop getting hit.
Combined with a bow the Forest Hunter should be able to easily take care of all
enemies at a distance. The Hunter’s gimmick? They actually passively gain health
when poisoned. Don’t get too excited. Don’t get me wrong, drinking a poison
bottle to buff defense and also activate a slow health regen is a really fun
role-playing concept, but the truth is that in the same way that poison is a
little too weak in this game to feel threatening, when that effect is inverted
to health regen, it feels too slow to rely upon. The main idea here seems to be
that this character who stays away from danger and isn’t threatened by poison is
a good character to use in the introductory Poison Forest. I haven’t needed to
try this yet because I’m godlike. Big Truss. (Actually I should’ve tried this at
least once on my first playthrough and I didn’t.)
Royal Knight - Now we’re getting to the heavy hitters. The Royal Knight is just
a good character. They have low MP, but not so low that using magic is
impossible. They have a naturally high strength, which compliments their
character gimmick: the Knight can ignore the equipment requirements of any piece
of gear. So lets say the Royal Knight only has an ATK/STR of 6, they can still
equip the Golden Axe (STR required: 24) as soon as it is found. As such, the
Royal Knight can afford to ignore the STR stat for quite a while while you
instead buff Stamina or Guard. The Knight also has a good natural “handling”
stat which means they don’t break weaponry easily, meaning you can afford to
ignore the Skill stat for as long as you want. Super good. Pick this character.
Young Warrior - The cream of the crop. The Young Warrior is described as
“balanced and easy to use” and, well, at least one of those is true! The YW is
pretty overpowered in the context of a game like this, especially for the
beginning of the game. By “balanced” what the game is trying to say is that the
Young Warrior exceeds in virtually every category, matching the Royal Knight and
Innocent Prisoner for physical strength, and going toe-to-toe with the Legendary
Mage in magical prowess, with the only drawback in that category being a reduced
MP pool compared to the mage. However, remember when I said that even with a
reduced MP pool the RK can still use magic? Yeah they split the difference here
and made a character that can be played as an outright spellblade. The YW is
probably also very good with a bow but I haven’t checked. They don’t break
equipment easily either so once again the boring Skill stat can be ignored. They
have the same 100% base hunger stat as every other character that isn’t the
prisoner, except that in the mid/endgame eating food usually comes with buffs,
making Getting Hungry a thing that you kind of want to be happening so you have
an excuse to use your buffs. But all of this pales in comparison to the best
gimmick in the game: the YW gets a full HP/MP restoration upon every level up.
It doesn’t fill the hunger meter, but that would be absurd. Now, in any game
that would be good but in Inferno Climber it’s really good because IC is a game
that hands out level ups like candy so that you’ve got a lot of stat points to
spread around as you see fit, meaning the heal is available fairly frequently.
Now, it also has a curve of course, which means that free heal becomes less
available over the course of the game, but that’s when everything else comes
into view.
If I haven’t made it exceptionally clear, pick this
character to start the game. In all honesty, if you’re trying to use the best
tools available to you at any given time, this is your best tool. If this
character dies, prioritize corpse-running to them over anything else.
Grave of Origin
The game will open by allowing you to choose which character you want to start
with. It genuinely does not matter. For the record the Young Warrior is
definitely the easiest character to play for the vast majority of the game, I
may have said that (emphatically) in the character descriptions. The Innocent
Prisoner is great if you get lost easily since they have a double-full stomach,
but then why are you reading a walkthrough?
Fairly certain that Dragon King Daidaros is unbeatable here. Take the L, sign
the contract, and choose “Hell” and not “Heaven” otherwise the scene will start
over. Evidently “Hell” is the name of the game world according to the trailers.
You’ll awaken in the Grave of Origin in front of the creature known only as
“???” for now. They will guide you through this game, and they begin here by
guiding you through the tutorial. When you smash through the boxes here the game
will definitely chug a little bit, as it always happens on my PC and seems to
always happen on the Inferno Climber: Reborn port for PS4.
You should see some mushrooms next to a tree on the right. There are a lot of
mushrooms lying around this area. They’re edible. See that stomach lookin’ thing
in the GUI with the percentage? That’s your hunger. An uncooked mushroom is
worth a solid 25% hunger. You won’t be able to actually cook for a little while,
so these mushrooms will be your best friend. The chest contains a heal potion.
Heal potions restore 500 HP, which is equal to 5 of the emblems up top. I
dislike that health bar as much as you do. For a long time the basic heal potion
will restore full health. To the left of the heal potion chest is a small tree
that should ask you to “pour” with the circle button. Don’t yet, you need
bottled water to grow trees. But take note of this. There are four small trees
like this in the games early areas you can use to farm cooking ingredients.
Extremely useful resource. We’ll talk about them a little more the next time we
see one in Green Abyss. Note also if you’d like to pursue tree growth that you
can bottle water in the empty bottles left behind from healing potions. The tree
in this area seems to grow a little bit of everything except poison and oil
fruit.
Push further and you’ll see a well. Don’t you wanna go to the bottom of the
well? Do it. Jump. Trust me, you’ll be fine! No seriously, go down there. Learn
the mechanics a bit here: you can grab a wood stick and light it on fire to make
a torch, and that can then light other torches as you go. Go deep into the dark
hallway and you’ll find a Light Mushroom in the chest. Take the blocked route
from before and you’ll emerge from the well unscathed, as promised.
After exiting the well, you’ll see a wall of boxes. We’ll come back to this in
just a moment. First, open the bright big chest on the small hill to grab the
Starter Sword, so named because it has no strength requirement. These jelly-type
enemies near the chest will recur throughout the game so let’s talk about them
now. They have a weak charging attack that all shields can block. The real thing
to watch out for is an animation where the jelly jumps and will capture you in
its body before spitting you out, leaving you Coated in Oil, which amplifies
fire damage and the risk of the Burn status. (We’ll get to it.) Be wary of
swinging your sword to counter this attack as it seems to grab on to almost
anything. Sword acquired you may as well follow the small platforming path here
to get the Starter Key. Hold on to this even after you’ve used it to open the
door to the next area, you’ll need it for the endgame. Yes, seriously. In the
water below you can go down and find a health potion as well as get yourself
acquainted with the water mechanics as well as test one of the platforming
mechanics with the expanding platforms.
Go back to the wall of boxes and smack ‘em down. Jump up and fight the two
Jellies. Beware of swinging wildly at jellies, one of their two attacks is a
capture move that coats you in oil, and it seems to activate if you’re anywhere
near it. Go through the tight corner and you’ll be fired upon by a Bow Man
immediately. Just don’t stay stationary while fighting the jellies. Once they’re
done, jump up, you’ll be attacked by a Bone Man and once he’s down, you can
attack the structure that the one Bow Man is on until it breaks, then take care
of them. Your reward is a starting set of a Traveler’s Shirt and Hood.
Double back and up the stairs to the left and use the Starter Key to open the
door. Activate the switch to get the first shortcut and proceed. The next big
chest has a Fire Staff in it. Note: ANYONE can use magic as long as they meet
the INT requirements for the spell being used. (The Royal Knight’s gimmick does
not break this rule, you still need the INT.) Use this to your advantage.
There’s a group fight coming up where the distance damage this provides can be
quite useful. Before the next door, not only are there plainly visible
mushrooms, but there’s also a (Light Mushroom/Antidote Mushroom) hidden in the
boxes.
Heads up: when you enter the next door it’ll lock behind you with a red symbol,
and you’ll be forced to defeat every enemy in the area before you can proceed.
This will happen from time to time. If you hear battle music, the doors are
locked. Now’s a good time to note that you can turn down the music in the
options menu at any time, even in the middle of this battle, if you find it
tiring. It is quite tiring. My only advice here is something you should glean
naturally from this set piece: when open space is available, use it to your
advantage. Going into tight areas gives enemies a better chance to gang up on
you. There’s plenty of open areas that aren’t crammed between the gravestones.
This is especially important since weapons will bounce off of walls in cramped
spaces, whereas in the open space you can carve your weapon through multiple
enemies quite easily. Recall as well the distance advantage you can get with the
Fire Staff. However you engage it, find victory and proceed. Take note of these
graves as we’ll be returning here later. When we have bombs.
The path from here is fairly clear. Collect the shield, equip it, and relive
your experiences playing the original Dark Souls since this setpiece is more or
less plagiarized directly from the same one in that game where you first get the
shield. You know what to do: hold R1 and proceed. Attack the Bow Man between
arrow shots. Take the left, and before you go down the stairs, take note of
something here, it’s a cool little bit of the engine that goes underused.
There’s a pot on a ledge, and you can push it over to get a free kill on the
jelly below in one shot. Again, this rarely occurs, but hey, free kill. After
that there’s a bowman on a tower again. Break it, kill the bow man, proceed. One
of the graves opens up to reveal a staircase leading to a big chest and a book
table, where one reads books, of course.
You cannot read books in the field, unfortunately, it requires at least
somewhere to sit and read the book, thus the table. From here you can read the
first book, which teaches you, mercifully, how to dash. Note also the Item Book
and Monster Book. The Item Book serves no practical use unless you want to read
the lighthearted item descriptions. The Monster Book is slightly different. At
some point you may have seen an enemy drop a Soul Stone. The lighthearted
descriptions of the Monster Book and Item Book are the same, but to unlock a
monster description in the item book, one must sacrifice their soul stone and
place it into the book, which grants a small, but permanent experience bonus
when that monster is defeated. Given the somewhat limited space of the Stash
(again, we’ll get to it) and the impracticality of holding onto many multiples
of a soul stone for practical use, plus the inherent benefit to the monster
book, it’s often wise to simply deposit the first copy of any soul stone you
find directly into the Monster Book instead of using it for its equipment
bonuses. (We’ll also get to this.) That said, I have not done the EXP
calculations on this to test how strong the benefit is to placing stones in the
enemy book.
Anyway, how long have we been reading? Dash right on outta that grave and you’ll
eventually come upon an enemy formation: straight ahead is a jelly, and hiding
behind a group of boxes to your left is a bone man who can be isolated and
defeated easily, granting you access to a nicely suggestive little corner with
some mushrooms and a Broken Sword. Every physical attacking weapon and shield
can break, and has a broken form that has its own slot in the item book. There
is a bombable wall we can come back to later, and from there we get to the
Mountain Base.
MOUNTAIN BASE
Welcome to home base! Good lord do we have a lot to go over here. So first of
all, once again, you can turn down the music at any time, and I’d highly
recommend it. If you talk to ??? they’ll give you the spiel about the game’s
plot. Talk to them again and hey-hey, that’s the game’s first merchant. But
before we get to that, a few Base Basics:
1) The Stash: You can store almost everything you find in here if you want to be
a hoarder or a collector. The stash is your inventory away from inventory. It’s
pretty self-explanatory. Note that it is not infinite. If you’re a collector,
try to limit yourself to one copy of each item. (I’m literally only pointing
this out because this is how I played the game.) There are multiple semi-hidden
stashes you can find in the game, and as well when you see one of these weird
auspicious platforms with an empty circle you can make a stash there by dropping
a Stash Housing Stone.
2) The Tent: Sleep here to recover full HP, MP, and hunger, as well as recover
from all status effects except the following: Silence, Curse. Yes, you can be
burning on fire, go to sleep, and wake up no longer on fire. Much like the
stash, you can create a tent by dropping an Inn Housing Stone.
3) The Cellar of Trials: This houses a collection of abstracted trials about the
game mechanics, as well as the tellingly-named Grave of Fortune where it would
seem one is to make a quick dollar or two. (For the record, the game’s
unfortunately named “CP” currency stat means “Copper Points.”)
4) Respawning goodies: until a certain event in the game, there’s always chests
in the southeast and southwest corners of this screen that contain a randomized
food item and a regular heal potion. There’s literally no reason not to open
these chest every time you come here. The food chest is in an obvious spot near
a torch, whereas the chest with the heal potion is behind a wall of boxes.
Since this is based on my playthroughs, we’re going to take the relatively
conservative route and begin by grinding a little bit of money and a few levels
to give ourselves access to the Leather Helm and Armor the merchant sells and
give ourselves a strong defensive base to work with. You should already have
more than 3 “development points” to work with, so put at least three into STR
and that’ll give you what you need to equip the leather armor and helmet. How do
we get money to buy them? By going to the Grave of Fortune of course.
GRAVE OF FORTUNE AND COMBAT BASICS
The Grave of Fortune is not immediately open upon your first visit to the
Mountain Base. To trigger it, leave the base and return, either by going to the
Poison Forest or Grave of Origin via the teleporters. The Grave of Fortune is
extremely simple. It is more or less three one-on-one encounters with enemies,
two in large rooms of the same size and shape, and one in a small area. Even
with your limited stats and hp pool and higher susceptibility to these basic
enemies, these encounters are easy to clear. You can use them as an opportunity
to get used to some Inferno Climber combat basics. Actually, let’s go over a
few.
Guarding: Easily the most important thing to remember. Block! Shields don’t suck
in this game and the game is loathe to put you in guard breaking situations
unless you test the limits yourself. You almost always take some amount of chip
damage while guarding but except for situations like “physical def shield vs
magic sword knight” you’ll typically not be eating tons of damage through your
shield. Actually, encounters with the top-tier enemies are basically the only
situation where guard damage is really a significant worry. Use common sense
when guarding as well: if the enemy is larger than you, you’ll likely need to
sidestep or backstep or dash away from damage rather than guard. However, as
shields get more powerful throughout the game, you can test the limits of this
to a great extent. We’ll talk more about shields later. Just remember to hold
the top right shoulder button to block. Easy.
Light and Heavy Attack: Learn how to use heavy attacks. You’ll be very pleased
with yourself with you’re slicing enemies with the tip of your sword at long
distance and causing big damage to knock them down or kill them in a single hit.
(Something a well placed heavy attack will often do.)
Jumping during Combat: This is not character action and jumping is not
invincible. You will need your aerial combat maneuvers for certain situations,
but consider these specialty attacks. Jumping is needed to avoid very specific
obvious shockwave attacks though. However, be careful not to be hit out of the
air as this can put you in a dangerous state.
Lock-On: Push in the right stick to activate lock-on and tap it in directions to
change targets. Lock-on state changes certain control functions and locks you
into walking speed, as sprinting breaks the lock on.
Jumping while Lock-On is Active: for whatever reason you get a really shitty
actual jump when locked on. If you need to jump, de-activate lock-on.
Down State: While knocked down, the player and enemies can be damaged, but at a
significantly lower rate than when standing. Take the hint. First off: don’t get
knocked down, and achieve that by not getting hit. Second: when you get the
enemy knocked down, unless you have them near death, use the opportunity to
reset position.
Counter: Counter hits are absurd in this game, and it becomes definitely worth
the time to learn how to either deflect (more on that later) or counter-hit most
common enemy attacks, as you can expect your typical damage to be outright
doubled. If you’re new to this kind of thing counter hitting means mostly what
you think: if you attack an enemy while they are preparing an attack you’ll be
awarded counter-hit damage that is supposed to be a numeric representation of
the enemy being caught with their guard down. It’s quite easy to practice with
the fast attack animations in this game, but if you don’t feel comfortable doing
it, it isn’t necessary.
Back Attack: I like this a lot. Instead of a finicky backstab, the game simply
rewards you damage for attacking at the back. No extra animations needed. Much
like counter hit, back attack is really good and boosts damage by basically
100%. Amazingly enough, it is absolutely possible to achieve both counterhit and
back attack at the same time for triple damage (or more?).
Lock-On Active+Guard+Direction+Jump: Much like Dark Souls, this activates a
forward dash/backstep/sidestep mechanic that I’m almost certain has zero actual
invincibility frames, however the speed is much more similar to a game like
Ocarina of Time or the “Soul Reaver Trilogy” as I call it: 1, 2, and Legacy of
Kain: Defiance. If you achieve knockdown, this is definitely the most efficient
to get a back attack if you have the open space around you. If you don’t, use
the sprint to break your lock on, zoom behind, and set yourself up.
Guard+Jump: Pressing this with the control stick neutral will activate a forward
roll, or you can roll in any direction. You can only roll with Lock-On inactive,
otherwise you will perform a lock-on state jump (bad) or a quick-step
(situational.) You don’t have this ability yet but it’s worth bringing up now.
Later on we’ll also learn deflection, tackling, and charging up, but we’ll go
over those as they arrive since they won’t show up until we’ve beaten the first
boss and after.
Take note as you clear the Cellar of Trials to break the pots at a low level as
each small drop of single-digit exp really does help at this stage. You can
decide when they stop being worth it but they definitely help in the first 25
levels at least. With a stock of potions and hopefully some food, we should head
to Guardian Forest.
GUARDIAN FOREST
The first “room” of the Guardian Forest is a sprawling open area with many
enemies in many spots, as well as a few small pit openings into pink poison
lakes. Be careful to fight enemies in their groups and not overlap too many
aggressors, although the hitbox of your sword in front of you will make clearing
groups easy as long as you aren’t taking hits. Be especially aware of the
snipers in this area. We’ll be able to take care of them very soon, but without
a bow they are a dangerous prospect. Attached to the river at either end are
wooden bridges. Go down the first wood bridge and talk to the Talkative Man who
tells you about something, whatever. We’ll want to find these Talkative Men in
their many locations as quickly as possible to open up a door later in the game
for valuable goodies, even if his advice seems obvious.
Down the second path of wood bridges lies our route to the wood bow. There will
be one singular bone man on the bridge waiting, but be careful about the lock-on
as it will try to lock on to these stupid fish you can’t really hit. If you get
a fish to jump at you and dodge, it’ll flop on the deck, flop like a fish,
croak, and that’s some free exp. At the end of the bridge, there’s a wood bow in
the big chest. A wood bow always spawns in this chest, if you find yourself
needing a bow for a fresh character. Why you can’t buy wood bows from the
merchant after this I really don’t understand. None of the merchants sell bows,
you have to find them all in the field like guns in a Metal Gear game. Inside a
small hut you can see a Smithing Stone, but be ready for a bone man on the
inside to ambush you from out of sight. There’s always free wood arrows here.
Let’s go over the smithing stone. Items have durability. You can spend money at
the smithing stone to repair that durability to 100%. The more damaged the item
is, the more that costs. You can also spend money to reinforce weapons and armor
and give yourself marginal boosts, though this is less useful than its secondary
effect. Although like cooking your blacksmith level improves by reading books,
it is also improved by doing repairs and reinforcing weapons. It’s especially
important to get your smithing to a high level as early as possible so you can
use the Level 3 magic stones you’ll be finding, you need to up smithing to Lv. 3
to be able to do so. Repairing items will build experience, but what can build
experience at a truly rapid rate is reinforcing your weapons and armor. The
long-term strategy I would recommend for smithing is to upgrade your leather
armor set (spread the reinforcements between the items in the armor set to keep
costs low) until you reach at least smithing lv. 3 and do not reinforce swords,
as they’re more commonly replaced.
Reaching higher levels of smithing also makes repairing items cost significantly
less as the skill levels up.
At the smithing stone you can also set Magic Stones in your weapons and armor as
I’ve been mentioning. There are various types of magic stones in the game that
all function essentially like Materia from Final Fantasy VII, benefiting a
particular stat, granting a certain passive ability, or placing a spell for the
character to cast. As aforementioned, there are three levels of these stones and
stone slots in weapons and armor. Level 1 slots can only house level 1 stones,
but level 2 slots can house level 2 or 1 stones, and a level 3 slot can house
all three. Once again, you’ll want to level up smithing as quickly as possible
to take advantage of this.
Anyway, when you’re done there, head back the way you came and be prepared to be
ambushed from over the hills by two bone men. Once again, being careful with the
lock-on is key here as your camera may swing wildly. Again, a great chance to
learn how to use your heavy attack.I guess you can use wood arrows to target the
fish, but I’ve never tried it and it seems like a waste of time.
Take notice of the game teaching you how to play here: there’s a pretty obvious
bow target on one of the hills for you to hit, and when you do you’ll earn a
Heal Potion. If you go back to the locked door at the north of the forest, you
can hit the same type of target to proceed deeper into the forest. (We’ll get
back here in a moment.) Close to that door is an antidote mushroom. Grab it.
Earlier in the forest you may have noticed a glowing ball. If you touch it it’ll
take you on a small chase where at the end it will unlock a door leading to an
antidote bottle. This will also be useful. Throughout the initial screen of the
forest are a number of mushrooms to collect, which in their raw form are worth
25%, they’re extremely useful. Return to the northern door and let’s proceed.
You’ll notice purple clouds. There’s a sign warning you of poison. Unlike Dark
Souls, to the delight of this writer, avoiding the poison in this area is a
fairly simple task. Just stay off the ground. There are some chests tacked
within the poison that you may want to investigate, but we can avoid these for a
moment, let’s investigate everything else. If you curl around the area to the
west, first you’ll notice a shootable target to get a heal potion. For now, skip
the doorway guarded by a floating eye, you’ll come to the door we need to open
to proceed, as well as a gate that is rusted shut. Spoilers: to open a rusted
gate, you need an oil bottle, which is not accessible until the first boss is
beaten. To get the key, we need to return to the doorway guarded by the floating
eye.
Before we take care of that, note that you’ll be rewarded for exploring the
area. Continue curling in a circle around the poison gas and you’ll come to not
only a target to make a chest appear In particular, you can find a Demonic Short
Sword in a big chest somewhere in the center of the tree tops. This area is also
where Traveler’s Gloves and Pants drop. Unfortunately, certain chests are
randomized in Inferno Climber and most chests restock upon the area being loaded
again. As of yet I don’t have the loot tables for every treasure chest because
christ almighty that sounds boring to catalogue, but suffice to say you should
find usable gear in this area, as well as antidotes. If you want to take the
plunge, you can also find at least one chest in the poison clouds, which
realistically isn’t that bad if you’ve already found multiple antidote sources
with which to cure poison.
There are some pots near that guarded doorway where you can find a pickled fish
to buff your defense and restore your hunger, and it always spawns. May as well
get the defense buff for what’s next. This segment is a light stealth segment
taking place in a dwarf encampment. Make sure you avoid the seeing eyeballs as
being caught in their vision will cause enemies in the area to be alerted to
your presence. The area is dangerous for this point in the game because each
enemy is an Aggressive Bones, equipped with a Demonic Short Sword and possessing
elevated speed. If you aggro too many of these enemies at a time you will
definitely die. The trick, as always in this genre, is to pull them off their
patrol path. You can do this by throwing an empty bottle to make noise, but the
more expedient option is definitely hitting them with the bow and quickly
swapping to the sword to dispose of them. (L1+Square is a quick switch between
your three most recently equipped weapons.) Be aware of small hits you take in
these encounters and be sure to heal. You can see why eating that pickled fish
was a good idea. There’s a door close to where you enter that will lock the
first time an enemy notices you. It is virtually impossible at this point in the
game to kill these enemies without being noticed first, so try not to worry
about it. We’ll come back later. The first sub-area here is basically a square
where you start at the bottom right-ish and need to proceed to the top left. If
you want, you don’t need to kill all of these enemies, but I highly advise you
do so as you can be easily surprised later on. As you proceed there’s another
area that’s especially dangerous. On the east is a building where a number of
Aggressive Bones have grouped up. Contrary to the last segment I would leave
these bones be. If you follow the path you’ll naturally deposit into a small
slot on the west where you’ll be noticed by an Aggressive Bones at some point,
take care of them and then fire an arrow at the one further in the distance, as
this will aggro only them, not the group. From then on the task is fairly
simple. On the northern side there’s another patrolman, pick them off. The west
side contains a hut with a banana, meat, magic mushroom, and other goodies you
may want to take. On the opposite end you should see a big chest and small chest
next to each other. There’s a doorway leading to the hut with the grouped-up
aggressive bones, but having picked off one of them on the other side should
allow you to hug the walls and remain unseen to grab the Forest Passage Key and
then sneak back out. With that we can reach the . . .
GREEN ABYSS
This was the part when I first played the game that I said “alright, this game’s
got some juice.”
We have a lot to go over in this area so I’m just gonna cover the important
shit, and we’ll come back for goodies later because the goodies ain’t that good
in this area. Follow the path until you come to the chest guarded by the bone
man. Grab its contents, then turn east and sneak up on the bone man for a back
attack. Track north from there and begin to climb this vertical structure. Beat
the upcoming bone man, then curl up the rock and under the stairs to give
yourself advantageous positioning against the bone man and floating eye combo.
Hitting the switch will cause a platform above you to rotate. If you’d prefer,
you can also just skip to the other platform and hit this switch with a bow. To
get to the rotating platform we’ll need to go around.
You can jump from this vertical structure to the next one over easily, just be
ready for the bone man. Be cautious as you climb and face the hell jellies and
demon eye, that can be tricky, note that the shield can block the hell jelly
charging attack, and those enemies are also easily bated off of their position.
Then there’s a floating demon eye to your right (just use arrows or magic) and
then a distant bone man who’s really no trouble. Your lock-on may not reach the
distant bow man and if so I still recommend using the bow to take them out via
manual aiming via the top-right shoulder button. With them cleared out, cross
the bridge to the far side where you can see a bow man standing and take them
out from behind so they can’t harass you later. Hop back, and use the rotating
platform to cross to the area where a dropping demon eye awaits you. This is a
fun gimmick, they drop an enemy in front of you as a sacrificial distraction and
then hop down, but if you move quickly it’s easily avoided. Going down, you can
really easily position a jump here off of one of the posts for the stairs to get
into a keyed-off area, just be aware of the ambush of Bone Man “Baker.” You can
use the Stash found here to deposit some unneeded goodies as well as deposit
your money, then hop on it and the boxes to climb out. The boxes here clearly
indicate the developers knew you could make this jump, otherwise you’d have to
reset in this situation. That’s a great nod. Precariously avoid falling and go
back forward to the east down the stairs to fight another bone man and activate
a switch, this will activate the floating platforms we need to progress.
To reach those floating platforms, we need to fall down to the ground, so now’s
a good time to learn how to stall your falling with aerial light attacks to
avoid fall damage. Remember also that the Legendary Mage avoids all falling
damage, so if you’re having trouble with the games controls, it would be wise to
bring that character. There’s a small nook in the hills containing a switch to
activate the platforms. I love how the pot placements here show you that hitting
a switch physically also works to activate it in the same way as touching it
with the circle command. It's a good way to show the player that the same thing
works with arrows which is relevant both earlier (with the first switch) and the
next switch coming up.
From here we need to learn how to engage these platform generators. I’m not sure
if they have a proper name, but the short version is that they look like
diamonds and they make temporary platforms. If you strike the diamond physically
rather than shoot it with an arrow or use magic then you’ll most likely be
lifted and bounced upward with it. Simply hit each of them in order and wait for
the rising and falling platforms to meet up.
From the first or second vertical platform you can jump to the tower where the
bow man was placed and open the chest on that small tower. To proceed, you’ll
need to cross the entire set of platforms, and the key thing here is to be
patient and avoid taking fall damage. There are even some falls between
platforms where you can fall from a far enough height to initiate fall damage,
much less falling from a platform to the earth below which in most cases will
simply kill you outright.
When the path is crossed you’ll be met by many, many hell jellies. You can draw
very small groups of them off by approaching the group cautiously, and using
magic here to remove threats from a distance is also a good idea. Use arrows if
you want, but hold on to some. Once they’re cleared out there’s an obvious
treasure chest that I think always has leather boots but I may be wrong. (Some
chests in Inferno Climber, including all the Big Chests, have the same contents
every time, but many if not most of the smaller chest have loot tables to them.
To be honest I can’t say I’m a huge fan of this because the loot tables are
balanced pretty strongly against the player: you find useless broken swords,
which aren’t even a good sell, all the time.)
Proceeding onward: be wary of the wood walkways between platforms as these are
rickety falling platforms. You can be cornered by the floating demon eye enemies
if you aren’t careful. By the end of this path you’ll see a switch out of reach.
You can of course reach it by shooting an arrow at it, which will allow you to
make it to the big chest with the Forest Boss Key. The door here is locked. I
don’t know where the key is to open it.
Now that we have the boss key, we need to go to the poison section of the area
to move onward. My sense of direction is weak but to get your bearings do this:
attached to one of the hills we climbed earlier to circle around to the boss
key, there’s a bridge to another elevated hill guarded by a Floating Demon Eye.
We want to cross there and then curl around the structure to the right. This
puts us exactly where we want in relation to the poison and the other
objectives. First, coming off the structure and to the left we can defeat a Bone
Man and then find a switch semi-hidden which opens up a really useful teleporter
back in the Guardian Forest that acts as a shortcut back to the Green Abyss. (As
well as the Cave of Mystery, more on that soon enough.) Coming back out and
still hugging the left, we’ll come to a wooden doorway that leads to a well.
Jump down the well and collect the book in the chest before reading it at the
book table to learn how to roll. If you spoke the Talkative Man back in the
Guardian Forest, he’ll be here now before disappearing for a little bit. You can
curl around either side to escape the well, but there’s no reason not to fight
each fish here for the EXP. On the way back out you’ll need to dodge the rolling
spike pins, which is easier than it looks. Leave the area and from here it’s
literally a straight shot directly north to the boss fight.
BOSS: FOREST KRAKEN
Be prepared for this. You’ll see one jelly and think you’re good, but check it:
look at the color. It’s red. It’s a dividing jelly. According to the game
dividing jellies don’t divide when damaged with magic, but I haven’t been able
to test that theory thoroughly on this boss. Suffice to say, you need to be
aware when the boss hits 50% health it will divide. When any of those divisions
hits 25%, they will also split in two. When three of those four are finally
reduced to near-death, they’ll split into a group of small jellies that are
dangerous by way of nuisance. Try and keep your focus on one jelly at a time and
don’t get too trigger happy hitting the divided two as you could end up with
four onscreen at a time rather than three. Be careful as well when they divide
into the mini kraken jellies as well just because they can really screw with
you.
This boss has four attacks, none of which are really a problem on their own. The
most dangerous is when the boss spins in place and creates a ground shockwave.
Jump over this to avoid it or you’ll be hit with the Defense Down status and
that suuuuuuucks. I’m not sure exactly how bad Defense Down is statistically,
but it’s bad enough that you feel it. Bear in mind there’s no timer here except
for hunger, so if you do get hit with DefDown consider just waiting it out. The
moving fires that it can summon from the same animation hurt, but I’m not sure
they even inflict the Burn status, so just avoid them. (We’ll talk about it
later since it’s basically a zero risk here, just pay attention to the damage
accumulation and try to maximize when you use healing potions.) The boss’ other
two attacks are the same animations as their smaller brethren, a forward charge,
and a jump into the air, although I think the jump attack merely crushes you and
doesn’t initiate the hell jelly “eating” animation.
One thing worth noting is that all jelly-type enemies are weak against Salt
Fruit. If you die to the first boss too many times (I’m not sure how many,
forgive me), a holy chicken of some sort will greet you and give you a salt
fruit to throw at the boss. (The holy chicken shows up when you get yourself in
trouble, not sure all the places why or how.) You can also get salt fruit off of
the tree in the Grave of Origin, as that tree seems to produce a wide variety of
fruit. If the boss is giving you trouble, farming salt fruit will be a good way
to cheese it.
If you need to maximize damage, I’d also recommend trying to punish the boss for
using the DefDown Wave by using jumping attacks. Jumping attack counter hits do
tons of damage, and it may be more worthwhile to use the aerial light attack on
most occasions.
With the boss defeated, be sure to collect the Purgatory stone, and the boss
soul stone as well as any mini-kraken soul stones. There’s a door to the east of
where you entered the boss arena that has a floating platform to take you across
to a small enclave. In two chests you’ll find a spell stone for Fireball, the
game’s basic fire attack spell (this can be set in other staves rather than
being permanently stuck in the weapon like a Fire Staff,) and even better you’ll
find a Return Bottle which can be used to return to base. However! Before you
use it, I would recommend taking any empty bottles you have right now and
filling them with water. If you have at least three water bottles, you can grow
the tree in the Green Abyss that grows poison fruit and oil fruit. It’s hard to
miss with a sign right next to it. With that task achieved, return to home base.
MOUNTAIN BASE + GATE OF PURGATORY
With the Purgatory Stone in hand ??? will not be in the usual spot and will
instead await you before the gate of purgatory. If you’re not sure where it is,
go to the Food chest, turn around, take a left into the corridors, then take a
left and follow the path. Continue to follow the path after the teleporter and
you’ll see ??? in front of the Gate. Placing the Purgatory Stone in the gate
opens up a new route in Mountain Base, as well as grants you the services of a
new merchant. This one’s really friendly and cool!
Actually, let’s talk about this friend a bit. He’s got a new set of items to
buy, and a few of them you’ll probably want to grab straight away. First off, he
sells raw meat. Note as well that he also collects bones. You’ll get the bones
of enemies in the field to take to him, but you also get a Small Bone item
anytime you eat a piece of meat. (And when we get a cooking table later, we can
turn one piece of meat into many quite easily.) Thus, if you so choose, you can
spend money on raw meat, eat it right there, and give the bones right back to
him. Videogames are quite silly. Now, the reason you’ll want to do this is that
this Bone Collector mechanic is more or less this games version of Mini Medals
from Dragon Quest where you collect them and turn them in for rewards of
somewhat randomized but generally escalating value. In particular this is a good
way to get all of the Level 3 Shield Stones that grant status resistance buffs.
(Hint: These are good.)
Now don’t let that cloud the value of other food in the game. In particular:
Fish! In my first playthrough I favored Meat because of the bone collecting
mechanic as well as the ridiculously high hunger values meat restores, (raw meat
alone restores 50%, whereas any variety of cooked or salted meat will grant even
more) but in my following playthroughs I was quick to observe that fish may
restore less hunger than meat and not give you any bone rewards, but as a
balance, not only does eating fish restore MP, but it’s also much faster than
eating meat. (Mushrooms and eggs also have this benefit.) This is particularly
useful to note for the third, fourth, and fifth boss fights which can end up
being marathons under particular circumstances, thus, having food quick to eat
has some value.
Fire Insurance is a decent investment if you’re a beginner. In the second level
and beyond many enemies will be able to inflict the “Burn” status. As ??? has
explained, to restore a corpse from death you need the Death Contract item,
which is itself a literal piece of paper in your inventory. When inflicted with
the burn status, paper items in the bag burn, (as do parasites, more on that
later,) which means any death contract you are carrying. (There are other paper
items but we’ll get to those when they become available.) This is annoying if
you’re inexperienced and don’t know how to avoid the burn status, (which is not
easy, but becomes easier over time,) but that’s where the good news comes in!
With fire insurance, if you’re inflicted with burn, not only will this item burn
instead of your other paper items but you’ll also avoid being burned altogether
meaning no damage taken from the burn status itself. Consider it.
I wouldn’t buy a Thunder Staff as they’re often found easily in the field. Don’t
know anything about Mage’s Gear. At some point before the third boss grab a
Lantern. A regular Lantern will serve you well for the vast majority of the game
if you hold onto it, and you will need a lantern for essential gameplay sections
further along, as well as for some optional rooms coming up soon.
Return Bottles are very important. You already know what they do. Without giving
it away: you’re going to need two of these later to advance in the game because
you’ll be giving them to NPCs. Buy the two you’ll need ASAP and store them in
the stash and just remember not to waste them. You’ll seriously regret it if you
don’t.
Bombs: Really expensive when not found in the field, but I’d recommend grabbing
at least two or three bombs to open up some things in the upcoming castle area
Just In Case. Sealing Arrows will prevent mages from using spells, but I’d call
that a pretty specific use case. Iron Arrows are the better investment, they
automatically improve bow damage. (If you’re wondering where to get bow
upgrades, there just aren’t that many so don’t worry about it.)
I already explained the smithing stone, but take note that you can now place a
smithing stone here at home base for your benefit. Repairing your items is
necessary of course, but I’d also recommend spreading around some
reinforcements, at least until you reach smithing level 3, as previously
mentioned.
With the first purgatory stone set a new path is open from the Mountain Base,
but in reality the game actually does give you a choice. Life will be easier if
you follow the game’s seemingly-intended route and go to the Decayed Castle
before tackling the Cave of Illusions, so I’m going to cover the Decayed Castle
and that sequence first, but if you’d like to gather some abilities or high
level gear earlier, you can challenge yourself with the Cave of Illusions and
then come back and read the Decayed Castle segment.
To access the Decayed Castle you need to find a gate on the east side of the
base which will contain a switch that you need to hit with a bow to open the
door. You’ll be awarded a free stack of arrows for making the easy shot. The</pre><pre id="faqspan-2">
door to our right will stay locked for a while, take a left and head up the
stairs. Before the teleporter is a chest on the side containing an oil bottle.
This first oil bottle is most likely to be used either in the inner walls of the
Warped Castle to access some good loot or to open the rusted gate in the
Guardian Forest to access the Cave of Illusion. That choice is yours. Choose
your own adventure in Inferno Climber.
DECAYED CASTLE
Food was plentiful in the forest. It is not in the castle. Make sure to bring
some, and also some healing potions, which are not as commonly found either. I
highly recommend getting Iron Arrows for your bow along with whatever Wood
Arrows you still have that can be used as “torch shots.” Since enemy types
advance to the next stage here, it’s also advisable to have a full armor set,
which can not all be purchased from a merchant. You’ll need to find gloves and
boots in the field, though they spawn commonly in Guardian Forest/Green Abyss
chests, so just re-explore those areas if underequipped.
After the teleporter, hit the switch to knock down the bridge. There is a lone
mushroom that spawns next to the tree. Let's do ourselves a favor here: use your
bow and manually aim up, you should see two different floating demon eyes. Use
the bow to pull them away from the rooftop and pick them off. This will make an
upcoming section quite easier. The entrance of the castle feels a little bit
like a trap, when you walk inside you’ll immediately be being shot at by these
projectile trap enemies and be charged by two bone men. I recommend quickly
stepping through the door and drawing the aggro of the two bone men and stepping
right back out. The bone men will congest in the door and your weapon can even
hit through thin walls like this quite easily.
Once inside, be aware of the weapon durability damage you’ll take if you swing
on the turrets for the easy EXP. There’s nowhere to go at this point except
left. Shoot the target far across and you’ll summon an elevator to take you up.
Further ahead is a Fiery Bone Man that’s dangerous so be sure not to get him on
your tail while fighting the Bone Man that greets you as you exit the elevator.
Approach the fiery bone man and get the back attack to dispose of him quickly
before he can inflict Burn. Any clean hit taken from his torch will inflict you
with burn. Burn sucks. Avoid it.
Just past that enemy is a tight area that can be dangerous if you didn’t pull
some of these enemies off course earlier. (You can see where you started to the
left.) I may not have already addressed the Dropping Demon Eye enemy which can
be a bit of a pain in this situation since they can cause you to lose some level
progress while also taking fall damage. Yikes. The way I always approach them is
locking on, waiting for the mob to drop, killing them quickly, and then hitting
the backstep to avoid getting picked up. (Lock-on+R1+X+back in PS4 terms.) From
there you’ve pretty much won.
A few things of note as we go forward here, if you climb the structure and then
turn to your right you’ll see bridge ropes you can cut to lower a bridge for a
chest we need to access later. After that, if you climb up the boxes, you can
reach a chest. As we head back down, there’s a Fiery Bone Man and a Carrion Dog
patrolling in crossing routes. It looks far, but you can use the jars up here to
drop onto the bone man’s head and then take him out with a falling heavy attack,
then the dog will be isolated. One main thing to advise here is just don’t get
hit by dogs. I know “don’t get hit” is terrible advice but the dogs tend to have
quite a bit of windup to signal they’re going to to do a bite. If you do get
bitten you’ll get hit with Defense Down which is really bad in combination with
the burn status. Basically, make sure to take out one of these enemies before
the other has the chance to get involved, this was a small choke point for me
early on. Proceed on and use the switch to lower the bridge.
As you cross the bridge you’ll see a door to your left. (I would avoid this room
for now, we’ll get to it in a second, but here’s my warning if you attack it
now: there’s a Sword and Shield Bones right as you open the door, and the chest
on the right is a mimic.) Going straight you’ll be able to get a back attack on
the game’s first Rolling Demon Eye, if you walk in front of it, it’ll get a back
attack on you, so take the gift the game is giving here. The locked door to the
right is our next objective. Turn around and confront the Sword and Shield
bones. Sword and Shield Bones may be a tad intimidating at first but it’s fairly
simple to take care of them: wait for them to quit swinging and then use the
kick command (R1+Triangle) to break their guard. Guard-Broken enemies tend to
just . . . stand there. It’s really weird. Perhaps if the enemies run off of the
same logic as the player character then maybe their movement is limited by the
stamina bar. When the player character is inflicted with guard break, that
usually also empties the stamina bar entirely, although you can still walk and
jump in that state, perhaps it is not so for the enemies. I’m probably
completely wrong. In any case, take care of the new enemy and proceed.
Past that enemy is the back entrance to the area I warned you of before, which
may be guarded by another Sword and Shield Bones on the outside of the door.
(I’m doing this from memory to get through the first draft quickly.) If you
enter from this door you’ll get a free back attack on the enemy that would’ve
otherwise had the drop on you. I believe there’s also another bone man sitting
at the table. What I do remember is the table will always have a piece of raw
meat, a bottle of water, and a healing potion to grab. The left chest has stuff,
the right chest is a mimic.
Let’s quickly address mimics: just don’t bother. Here’s how to tell if a chest
is a mimic, you have two options. 1) Smack the chest. If it’s a real chest there
will be an impact and if you do it too many times you’ll destroy the chest and
its contents. Mimic chests do not have an impact response to weapon attacks. The
real method is to check the sides, easiest to do in first-person view with the
bow. Mimic chests will have a different design on them that looks like sinister
teeth. Be wary of mimics from here on out. If the Treasure Bone Man inside a
mimic chest hits you, you’ll be silenced, which is one of the worst status
effects in the game. Silence closes your mouth, preventing you from drinking
healing potions or eating food. The only cure for it is to find a level
teleporter. I’m not sure why that solves the problem logistically but, it does.
From there circle back around to the back entrance and then lets take care of
the next Rolling Demon Eye that awaits us across the bridge. Once they’re
cleared out you can either walk down the regular way or go the cool person route
and use the pots up top to damage the patrolling Sword and Shield Bones and then
jump down. If you curl around the right side you’ll come up on an ambush,
there’s a Bone Man and a Dropping Demon Eye, but possibly more notable is a
switch on the other side of the tree that will activate a trap. Just avoid that,
triggering it isn’t really useful. There’s a small chest for your reward.
Heading back the other way is what will allow us to progress. You may see a
tightrope leading back to the level entrance. Avoid it for now, we’ll be back in
just a second. Here is the games first Throw Man. If you get hit by a bomb you
will have a bad time. If you try to block a bomb with your shield at this stage
of the game, you will have a bad time. You have two options. The first is the
method we need to eventually learn to always safely clear this enemy. Get them
in sight and allow them to line up their shot, and look for the throw animation
before side-stepping, and you should steer clear of the bomb. In this case, we
have a second option: from further away you can use a bow and arrow to fire an
arrow through a torch into the exploding barrels nearby. This is a guaranteed
kill of the bomber.
Behind him lies the Castle West Key we need to open the locked door. Double back
to the previous locked door. After we clear out the small area behind this
locked door, we’ll have both keys, the Castle Central Key, and the Castle
Eastern Key, that we need to proceed to the next area, the inner Warped Castle.
As we proceed, two Bow Men will attack us from ledges, it is easiest to dispatch
them both with arrows. Proceed into the building and be cautious going down the
stairs as a Bone Man awaits near the bottom. After you exit if you curl around
the side there is a chest. To the left as you exit that area is an optional
encounter where you can get a chest if you take out a few jellies and the first
Statue Bones, which is a tougher variant of the Sword and Shield Bones. Be aware
of these for later. To the right (or the left if you took the optional
encounter) is a path we need to go down that is lined with enemies, including
Floating Demon Eyes and one Fiery Bone Man. Thankfully it is fairly easy to pull
each of them off of their course and isolate them. You’ll also notice a
breakable wall that can be broken via powderkeg and bow, as we did with the
previous Throw Man. Take the turnabout to the large staircase and you’ll come
upon one more torch guy, so stay aware, and then one last floating demon eye is
a bit of a hard to see surprise at the top. Take note as well of the trap floor
at your feet that will drop you back down to the bottom and avoid it. Next to
that trap door is the Castle East Key. Cut the rope to lower the bridge and that
will connect to the bridge we lowered earlier leading us to the Castle Central
Key.
You may have noticed at that summit earlier that there was also another
tightrope leading backwards. If we follow the tightrope and then make a small
jump, there’s a stash box as well as a chest waiting for us at the other side.
Use this as an opportunity to empty your inventory of unwanteds like cooking
ingredients (Magic Fruit, Salt Fruit, Garlic if you’ve got any) or excess wood
rods, etc.
With both keys in hand, take your preferred route (while keeping fall damage in
mind) back to the castle entrance. Going back through the front door we can now
head forward and right to use the Castle Central Key and open our way into the
deeper part of the castle.
As soon as you open the door you’ll be greeted by an isolated Sword and Shield
Bones, easier to beat them in the room before the locked door than after, no
other notes. You’ll see the big lasers, what you may not know is that even your
current shield can easily block these, thus, if you block, you can block and
walk your way through the lasers to access a back room. There’s a chest in the
open as well as one contained behind a cracked wall that will require a bomb to
open. Headed back the other way, across from the previously locked door is an
alcove where there are two Sword and Shield Bone separated by a Shield Bone Man,
which if you clear out you can get a chest on the other side before opening the
shortcut back into the previous room, you may recognize the traps from your view
earlier on the other side. We need to hit the switch on the other side to go up
the elevator.
After the elevator makes its slow ascent you’ll be attacked by two Sword and
Shield Bones on either side, fortunately this is one of the game’s few gift
spots so have no fear: you’ll notice on the other side of the two small bridges
is a moving blade trap. Don’t get hit by it! But if you can get to the left side
of it safely the two enemies will chase you and be victimized by the blade.
You’ll want to go to the left side because the right side is basically a trap
itself: this is the other side of a dead-end platforming segment that we can
more easily grab later, and the door in the middle of the blade path leads to a
Magic Sword Knight, which is one of the game’s most dangerous regular enemies,
especially at this point where you’ll take significant damage while blocking.
Just avoid this for now. Do note, however, that this enemy is non-respawning.
The first time you feel ready to take this enemy on and gamble correctly, you’ll
get this shortcut reward for the rest of the game, and you’ll definitely want
that at some point later on.
Getting back to the point: as we move forward we’ll be greeted by another Sword
and Shield Bones in between two doors, the right of which is locked. This is
where we use the Castle East Key. The left door contains a throw man, so don’t
get surprised by him, however you’ll also need to contend with the debuting
Ceiling Jellies, so this can be a dangerous encounter, I often skipped it.
There’s a chest deeper in the room for your reward.
Now to start tying the whole area together. Going back through the door we
unlocked, there’re lasers that you can either block like we did earlier, or jump
between since there’s a wider walking path. Beware the ambush of a Bone Man as
you escape the lasers and follow the path until an elevator. At the top of an
elevator is a room I would recommend leaving as quickly as possible. There are
four corners. One has debris, its opposite has a mimic. The other two corners
feature Statue Bone Men on either side. Like I said, just leave.
As you leave around the corner is the last switch we need to hit before going
forward. If you’d like to do that, you can do a few strategic drops here and go
right on ahead. We’ll discuss how to do the regularly scheduled platforming near
the bottom after we clear out the rest of the optional stuff in this area.
We have a few different optional areas to address before moving on. First off
there is a chest behind a one-way gate (get used to these as a trope in this
game) that when I opened it last contained a heal potion. To reach it, you’ll
need to tiptoe along the tops of the gates to curl around. There’re the corners
of these structures that have the pillars that push deeper into the walking
space below, you can use these to set up a friendlier jump across the gates, and
then drop into the gated area, open the chest, and curl around to a Sword and
Shield Bones. At the end of the path is a door back into the structure. This
level has some of those turrets again guarding a heal potion in the corner
closest to you when you enter. In the opposite corner is the elevator to the
next floor. At the top you’ll be challenged by a Bone Man before proceeding to
the top floor where our path branches once again.
Follow the immediate path and pick off the Floating Demon Eye before fighting
the Sword and Shield Bones that patrols the bridge. Cross the bridge and follow
the path down the stairs and you’ll see a sword and shield bones patrolling
outside the gate. Enemies can’t open doors so it’ll keep running into the gates.
You can easily space out your light attacks here to hit the enemy through the
gates without triggering the gate to let them in and defeat this enemy with zero
risk. Once they’re done, cross that gate, and follow the path to a chest that
may contain a 5-pack of Bombs. Then return across the bridge.
You’ll see a small fixture in the ground that will launch your character into
the air and up to a high ledge where ropes are connected on two paths. At the
end of one long, precarious rope is a chest that I think usually has a Demonic
Short Sword. Even better, across the way is a tent and bonfire where we can rest
up to 100% health and hunger and save our game. (Note that every time you use a
teleporter to a new area the game autosaves as well.)
That’s it! There’ll be some new enemy placements here but we’re a few hours off
from that happening. Cross the bridge you just lowered and get to the next area.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
Hey everybody! I bought this game and, like many, found out there was basically
nothing on it to try and help you through. I’m starting this guide as a really
basic walkthrough and I intend to expand on it. You can expect a full
walkthrough, a guide to the game’s smattering of sidequests. There’re a few
things in this game I have yet to master but hopefully this guide will
eventually be a reliable way to learn anything you could want to know about
Inferno Climber. In the meantime, if you have questions about deeper parts of
the game that have yet to be covered, you can fire me a tweet @AustinCHowe or
message me on GameFAQs (expect a faster response to a tweet) and I’ll try and
get you moving. I really enjoy this bizarre game, I’d be more than happy to
educate anyone who wants the education.
