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Ok, I'll give you a hint because as it turns out I just got lucky. There is an ability you need that is dropped off of a regular enemy and it's not a 100% drop (I got it on the first kill). Said ability will get you past one of the things that's blocking you, and once you get it that should put you on the path to open up the rest of the game. Unless you're past that one and are instead stuck on the other major obstacle; in that case revisit one of the areas that you haven't filled in yet with the movement ability you recently acquired. There will be an item that will get you past this second obstacle.

The ability that you're talking about, the one that's an enemy item drop, is it...



This game is definitely a lot more balanced than SotN. I'm so use to SotN and just plowing through everything. I've gotten quite a few game overs so far. I'm at about 50% map coverage and I've already had way more game overs than I ever did in SotN. Heck, I think my first playthrough of SotN I only had a few game overs. I could probably count them on one hand!

Am I doing something wrong with food? I've only eaten 3 or 4 things so far. I have a lot of ingredients, but I've only been able to make 2 or 3 things so far.

Yup, that's the drop. You will get a way to open those chests, though it comes with its own downside. So yeah, you're on the right path now, just keep going.

As for the food, a lot of the ingredients are drops off of monsters, but it's a great way to build up stat boosts. Each individual one isn't much, but there's a ton of food.

Yeah you get more stuff to manage water, no worries.

Preparing recipes isn't anything I'd fret too much about, but it is cool when you make a full meal the first time you consume it, you get a permanent stat bonus, which the total is noted in the bottom right. Then a nice gold fork/knife icon showing which meals you've consumed once so far. After that, they're basically healing items or for the old lady's requests. Potions/High Potions are honestly nearly pointless in this, I think they definitely wanted you to invest more in the food system. By the end of the game, I didn't have many figured out myself, but for the post end game secret super boss, it came in handy to make a bunch more new meals. Some of them are hard to make because a few ingredients only drop from rare enemies, like apples, beast milk, or the steak's, etc. It gets easy to farm in the end game when your luck stat is way higher. Just remember that once you craft a full meal or ingredient (like pasta, sauce, etc), you can then buy them in the store. I'd do that instead of wasting more crafting materials for some of the basic ingredients used to make the full meals.

I don't know if any of that makes any sense whatsoever, but I think you'll have it figured out the more you tinker with it. What annoyed me is how costly it is to dismantle things with the Alkahest items. So I didn't dismantle much at all, maybe just one or two things.

Also... if you never found a Circlet in a random chest (I don't know if they spawn in one or not), do yourself a favor and buy one so that opens up a crafting tree to get through some of those memento requests. I beat the game and still had no clue why I was missing a Flame Circlet for her quests, lol. Needing a dang Circlet. After that I breezed through the rest of her quests and just need to make the final item now.

No, that makes sense. I have a gold fork and knife for 3 things right now. I was just wondering if I was missing something since I have half the map filled in but only prepared 3 meals so far. I see a TON more that I can make, I just don't have the ingredients to make any of them. That's why I was wondering if I'm doing something wrong LOL.

Are you remembering to buy ingredients from the store? A lot of the staples can be bought there.

I just finished the game. I was about 7 levels higher than I previously was and had better gear; a fully maxed out Optimizer and the best scarf and armor. I was able to take out the end boss no problem (just a bit of healing) as well as the bonus boss. Fun fact, you don't actually need to wait until the post game to do the bonus boss. If you fight and lose to the final boss, then left your save reload it apparently sets the flag that allows you to do the sequence to fight the bonus boss. He was a bit harder, but since I did him first it made the final boss seem super tame by comparison.

I've made it to the...





Here's some screen shots of the title screen that would make good desktop wallpapers (they're both 1920 x 1080).

Yup, you're on the home stretch!

I'm still not very far... I think like 3 hours in maybe. Level 15. Just very little time to game, so it's slow progress. But I do love what I've played of it.

I wanted to point out a couple of things that bug me about this game. I'm having blast playing this, so don't take these comments as me bashing the game.

Here's a minor thing. You know how there's tips shown when loading? Well my loading screen goes by so quick that 2 or 3 tips are shows but they change so fast that I can't even read them! Seems like it was set up for (I'm guessing) console load times, but not my blazing fast new PC.

This complaint contains spoilers of abilities...



But again, none of these are annoying enough to keep me from enjoying the game. I just think the game would have been that much better without these things.