Sea of Stars Guide – Clockwork Castle
Mission List (Tap to jump down the page!) |
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The Castle Grounds |
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Ground Floor |
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Ground Floor Puzzle Room |
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First Floor |
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Second Floor |
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Third Floor |
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Dweller of Strife |
Prepare yourself, we’re into the endgame (kinda) now and Clockwork Castle is an intriguing and tough little dungeon, typified by a couple of big bosses. Before we enter the castle though, interact with the path on the left to reveal a shortcut way back to the start of Mesa Island, which is super useful to avoid trekking back through the marshes and hills again!
The Castle Grounds
When you’re ready, enter the castle grounds. When the linear path opens up, take a left all the way and climb the rock wall. Double back on yourself and keep zig-zagging up, where you’ll be greeted with another of those Douche enemies, this time a Boulder Douche. It basically has the same move set as the frosty one, so use the same tactics here. When it’s defeated, flip the switch and enter through the newly opened gate.
We’ll now be on the other side of the castle grounds, so progress through and climb down the rock wall at the far right of this section. There’s a chest at the bottom holding 1x Cog Prototype. Climb back up, defeating the rolling enemies en-route and use the save point and campfire.
After climbing the ladder, descend down the other side. Don’t interact with the door just yet and instead, keep moving to the left, up and down the ladder to the other side. Here, there’s a chest holding 1x Sturdy Cog.
Finally head back to the door and head inside. But wait, it’s Erlina and Brugraves! They’re here to fight.
Mini-Boss Fight – Erlina & Brugraves |
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We’re now onto a series of different big fights in this section, notably beginning with Erlina and Brugraves, ending with… well that’s spoiler territory! In terms of attacks, Erlina and Brugraves use the same move-set from the Haunted Mansion, albeit with slight variations (and less damage dealt!) You want to save your Combo for Mending Light and target one of your adversaries at a time. Both Erlina and Brugraves have simple physical strikes and three or four locks for their bigger magic attacks. If you get lucky and find a lot of them are marked with Moon symbols, Moonerang is an excellent choice here. Zale’s Sunball is a good damage dealer too. Erlina also uses several sun-based attacks. The first is Searing Pyramid that hits Zale or Valere for waves of damage. There’s also a sun-laser attack, where two small orbs travel either side of you and Zale, hitting both for damage. Given Erlina is much more magic-based, Brugraves is easier to handle and we’d recommend taking him out first so you can focus on breaking Erlina’s locks. The fight isn’t too difficult in truth, but be sure to preserve your Mending Light if the pair do substantial damage with their attacks. |
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| Rewards: | ||
| Progressing forward | ||
When you’re done, head back to the campfire and save point. Now we can progress in through the front door after being fully healed up.
You’ll find yourself in a garden area with loads of crops and a taste of the new enemies we’ll be facing. There’s also two doorways, one leading left and the other right, which will help open the locked door straight ahead of us.
Ground Floor
Left Room
Head into the room and you’ll be faced with a new type of puzzle we’ll be tackling throughout the castle. There’s a cog cube to the south of the room, a grappling platform and two cubed slots. The one on the right opens a platform allowing us to leave the room. The one on the left is our target.
The route in essentially one that sees us constantly spiralling around the room, although it’s worth noting that the starting position of the cube was in the bottom left of the room (pictured above). Keep winding the cube around, and a new pathway up will open. Climb the three platforms and use your grappling hook against the cog on the left. You may need to do it a few times so it’s fully unwound.
When you’re done, use the Graplou to push the cog block out. Push it to the right and up into the other gap. Climb up the platform and out the room, back into the garden and all the way to the right.
Right Room
When you enter the room on the right, jump down the gap and defeat the enemies. Step on the button at the back of the room, climb back up the ladder and cross over the bridge. Open the chest to reveal 1x Garden Key.
With the key and the lock sorted, interact with the door at the back of the garden. Proceed all the way through into the next large room, broken up with a hallway between them. We’ve got another puzzle room here.
Ground Floor Puzzle Room
Inside this room are three gaps for cog cubes and two switches, one on either side of the middle gap. Pull the switch on the left and the cube cog will open up from the ground. Next, pull the switch on the right to open a few obstacles in the puzzle area.
Our aim is to basically push the cube into the middle hole to open up a staircase to progress forward. In order to do that, push the cube up, to the left, down, then to the right (after flipping the right lever so the obstacle is raised) and then up again. (See picture below)
Once you’ve done this, climb up the stairs and there will be another cube cog up here too and another little mini puzzle. We’ve pictured the steps below but it’s written out as well.
- Push the cube to the left.
- Grapple the platform at the back of the room.
- Push the cube left again, through the opened gate to the other side of the track.
- Grapple the platform at the back before the gate closes.
- Push the cube back to the right but wait for the first platform to spring back to its original position so the gate in the middle closes. When it does, push the cube to the right and down the gap.
If you do miss your timing on number 5, you can circle back around and pull that platform and then the one on the left afterwards to make life easier for yourself!
Hop back down to the original starting position and grapple the platform to pull the cube out the middle slot. We now want to move the cubes to the left and right openings, which may require you to flip the lever on the right so there’s no obstacles in the way.
Once you’ve done that, a much larger staircase will present itself, and allow us to progress up.
Head through the doorway and the proceeding hallway. Save at the save point and talk to the strange elder in the top right corner of the room. This is Cael, and he’s not really an elder for reasons he’ll explain through dialogue. I won’t spoil that here! More importantly, he’ll task you with collecting The Watchmaker’s master key at the top of the clock tower in order to open the room at the back.
In the next area, we’ll have a slightly smaller physics puzzle to solve, which will require some quick movements.
- Head down into the large area and to the far left. Use your grappling hook on the platform. This will raise a platform at the back of the room.
- Scramble up the ladder and head over the bridge. Hop over the gap and flip the lever.
- Jump down and stand on the button.
- Progress over the new bridge.
Progress into the next room and interact with the green lever on the right to ascend up a level.
First Floor
On the next level will be a choice of two areas. Proceed north of the elevator and step on one of the two buttons, it doesn’t matter which one. We stood on the right one first because we’ve been doing left first all the way through this walkthrough so let’s live a little and shake things up! Ironically, this is actually the correct room we need to go in, believe it or not.
Right Room
In the next room will be some enemies. Take these out and you’ll notice three levers, some platforms and a cog. Essentially we want to level everything out so all the platforms are at the same height. Here’s the solution:
If the image isn’t loading for whatever reason, the solution is as follows:
- Left Lever (pointing right),
- Middle Lever (pointing left),
- Right Lever (pointing right).
Climb up the wall, across the platforms and use your grappling hook to unscrew the cog.
Left Room (optional)
If you choose to go in the left room, return to the elevator and head north. Flip the lever to reset the bridge and then stand on the button to the left. Inside is a cube with a Graplou point and two weight-activated platforms, one on the left and right.
Move the cube to either corner of the room, and grapple over. Once you’ve hopped on the new platform, grapple the platform on the wall to open up the gates blocking the chest. Inside the chest is 1x Evergreen Leaf.
Return to the elevator and proceed up to the next floor.
Second Floor
Grapple over to the room on the left and proceed into this next little puzzle area. There will be a movable cube with a ladder on the front and also some enemies too. Take out the enemies and then move the cube so it opens a series of gateways and switches.
- Move the cube ladder so it’s resting against the middle balcony. Flip the switch at the back of the room.
- Climb up the ladder and flip the switch at the top.
- Jump down, flip the lever at the back of the room, and push the cube down and to the left, so it’s resting against the left balcony.
- Flip the switch and jump back down.
- Move the cube ladder all the way to the right of the track. Climb up and use your grappling hook to unscrew the cog.
- Climb up the ladder and open the chest to grab 1x Rainbow Conch.
Head back out this room and proceed immediately to the right, hopping over the platforms and stepping on the middle button. Before returning to the elevator, keep going to the right.
Grapple the platform and shimmy over the wall, eventually dropping down and into the open doorway.
In this next area, grapple over the large gap and use your grapple on the cog to unscrew and get the elevator working again. Now, you can just grapple back and head to the elevator, but if you’re looking to do everything, there’s an optional chest to our left.
Hop over the platforms and use the Graplou on the wall at the back of the room. This will raise up a brand new room to slot into place, and a couple of enemies to fight.
Defeat the enemies and climb the wall on the far left, opening the chest to collect 1x Blue Leaf.
Return to the elevator and ascend up once more.
Third Floor
On the third floor, there’s not a whole lot to see but the Watchmaker is up here, along with a Wheels table. We can’t challenge him unless you’ve defeated other Wheels players, so ignore that for now. More importantly, the Watchmaker will hand over the Master Key. Just like that, with no fuss. What a bonus! From here, return to Cael.
Rest up and save before interacting with the door at the back of Cael’s location, as we have a couple of big boss fights coming up. When you’re ready, head into the next room and prepare for a boss fight!
Boss Fight – The Acolytes |
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After the tasters over the past few levels of these guys, it’s finally time to tackle One, Two, Three & Four together. Their move-sets are identical to what we’ve seen before, so I won’t write them out here again, but suffice to say we now have to be mindful of our health. With a four-on-three advantage, the moves can very quickly clock up and whittle down your HP in a big way. In terms of tactics, Serai’s Vespertine Cannons ultimate move is a great play, while Valere’s Moonerang, which can hit everyone, is definitely recommended to break locks and whittle down the amount of damage dealt while this is occurring. The idea here is to take out the teamwork attacks, so target either Three or Two first. If you get these guys out, Four only has his physical attack and there’s no more team-moves to hit you hard so the fight will end up considerably easier. In all honesty, the fight isn’t too hard once you get one of the guys down, so focus all your energy and attention on Three or Two first. Keep Serai in your party at all times to boost her Ultimate attack, and switch out Valere or Zale when low on health, using Garl as a tank to soak up damage. You can also use Cooker Surprise and Nourish in equal measure too. |
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| Rewards: | ||
| 10994 EXP | ||
With the Acolytes defeated, there’s a bigger problem afoot. The Dweller of Strife has awoken. Proceed into the next room, save and rest up. It’s highly advisable here to cook up as many dishes that replenish lots of HP and MP together. Bouillabaisse is a personal favourite, as is Mooncradle Fish Pie. When you’re ready, head out into the next area on the right.
Halfway up the bridge, we’ll be attacked by a strange winged creature. Keep moving to the right, along the linear pathway, grappling over where needed and up rock walls. Eventually you’ll find a merchant at the end of the bridge. Buy what you need and then climb up the rock wall to the right so you reach the top of the tower.
Cael will show up and reveal that he’s got the crystal all ready to go but we need to charge it up first. Resh’an is going to sit this one out, given it’s a fight against a Dweller, so it’s up to the four of you to try and defeat this menacing foe.
Dweller of Strife
Boss Fight – Dweller of Strife |
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Phase 1The Dweller of Strife is a tough customer and the fight essentially plays out partly like the Haunted Mansion boss, in that we have interludes in the middle to break up different phases of play. You’ll immediately notice that all of your attacks are hitting for around 1 or 2 damage each time. The idea here is that we need to charge up the pink crystal. To do that, we need to use mana attacks or (and this is more preferable) boosted physical attacks. Each time you hit the Dweller with vulnerable attacks (ie. boosted or magic) then it’ll charge up the crystal behind you. Do enough damage and the crystal will be fully charged and hit the Dweller for a lot of damage with Eclipse Laser. However, Dweller will also use some nasty charged attacks here to do big damage. Eye Beam is the worst, which will see Dweller smash you with a big beam of energy, dealing a lot of damage to one character. You’ll see it coming because its eye will be glowing yellow and unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of locks to break either. Your best bet is Lunar Shield from Valere, or using Garl’s Nourish and those aforementioned items to replenish health quickly. It’s worth noting that there’s also a small projectile variation of Eyebeam too, where Dweller of Strife will blink and just hit you with a tiny laser. Phase 2After hitting the Dweller a few times, it’ll destroy the tower you’re on and it’ll topple down, rendering everyone incapacitated. Zale (or Valere) are off-screen to the right so follow and start fighting again. This time, it’s all about damage control and without Garl in the fight, you’ll want to make use of Zale’s Healing Light for the small window of time we’re fighting. Dweller of Strife may well use Eyebeam a few times too so be mindful of that. The fight won’t really go on for too long and after dealing a bit of damage, we’ll be at the end of the fight/ |
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| Rewards: | ||
| The Real Big Boss Has Arrived | ||
The Fleshmancer is back. Aephorul is among us. There’s a long sequence that ensues after this, eventually leading to Garl sacrificing himself for his friends, taking Fleshmancer’s dark magic hit dead-on. Ouch.
This will consequently awaken the inner-power in both Zale and Valere, who will reconvene over at the Mountain Trail, desperate for the Elder Mist to help.
Garl, remembering the prophecy given to him by the Oracle of Tides, will ask for a Flask of Borrowed Time. This will allow him to continue – but only for a limited period of time.
Hiker’s Rest
When you gain control of your characters again, sail down to Hiker’s Rest. It’s a little island on the map that you may have explored earlier in the game. Either way, this is where we want to go.
Once you depart, head up and Valere will realize her prophecy about walking on water is talking about this very moment. Oh my! Step on the watery bridge and proceed over, ready for the Skyward Shrine. And that also brings this mammoth chapter to a close!
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You can check out our full walkthrough and game guide here! |
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