Chester Field/Stage 6

Stage


Stage 6 occurs at the fall of night. Like Stage 2 and Stage 4 before it, this stage consists of a short town section followed by exploration through a large fortress. This level represent another large jump in difficulty as the enemies in the fortress can be quite difficult to fight against. As a result, you may wish to spend some time outside the fortress, fighting Wasps in an effort to collect money, although this can be tedious. Ideally, you should have as close to 480 metal as possible before you enter.

Before you reach the fortress, you will pass by several homes. The first door is locked, but the next door (A) is a medicine shop. If you have not kept one or two yellow potions on hand thus far, you may wish to consider doing so from now on. The house to the right is also locked. After walking past some trees (shoot the stump for an extra item and some experience points), you will reach another door (B) which is an Inn. It's not a bad idea to stay here if your health is much lower than 200. Beyond the Inn is a gap in the ground that you must jump over before you reach the entrance (C) to the castle.

Once inside, you will not have to worry about any enemies right away. Instead, you must overcome two sets of rotating platforms. These are not as deadly as the rotating platforms you have faced earlier, but when they come together, you stand a very high chance of getting knocked off and killed unless you are standing on the very top platform. Always strive to jump on a platform that is highest and clear of any other platforms.

Once you reach the platforms beyond, you must now pay attention to enemies. The single most important advice is as follows: Do not run down the hallway! Instead of holding the control pad to the right, it is far better and safer to tap it. Magicians are very fond of materializing right on top of you when you run. By tapping right, you will cause the Magicians to materialize far enough away from you that you will have a chance to strike them before they strike you.

Another difficult enemy that you will encounter throughout the fortress is the Hyper Armor. They behave a lot like Normal Armors in that they leap forward when you attack them. However, they are equipped with a shield which makes them invulnerable to attack from the front. You can only hope to damage and kill them when you attack from behind. There are two ways to deal with Hyper Armors in order to avoid taking damage. One is to simply jump over them and continue on. The other is to wait until they are within striking distance, and then attack them. If done at the proper distance, they will jump over you, and you will have plenty of time to either run away from them before they turn around, or possibly turn and attack their back.

Regardless of which strategy you use, this is not a very safe place to spend time attacking enemies, building up health and experience, and collecting money. It is far safer to take care of those things in the labyrinth. However, there is a shop at the end of the first corridor of the fortress that you should visit before proceeding deeper into the fortress. For this reason, it is important to have the 480 metal on hand to purchase the armor sold in the shop. It is considerably more difficult to collect the money in the labyrinth, and then turn around and try to return to this shop.

To reach this shop, continue running right through the first hallway. Eventually, the floor will be lined by a set of blocks. The method to advance further into the fortress is to fall in the gap between the first and second blocks, but you must wait if you wish to visit the shop first. Jump over the blocks, and eventually you will see a set of bricks above you. Wheels may begin to appear and attack you. You can smash these bricks with your mace by finding a false wall on the right. You should be able to expose the hidden door (C) to the shop, and purchase the Plate Armor for 480 metal. Once you have collected this, proceed to drop down between the first and second blocks on the left to reach a new room.

When you land, break the blocks to the right to access the small passage with the vertical floating block. Safely pass through it (remember that it can kill you instantly so either move while it is floating down, or when it comes to rest at the bottom), and drop down to the floor. Walk to the left to find the invisible gap to the room below. In the next room, you can ignore the two right-most blocks. Break the bricks and walk to the right so that you can fall on the left block while it is moving left. Then break some of the lowest bricks and jump to the column on the left. Drop down to the floor and fall through the next invisible gap.

You will now be on the left side of another very long hallway. Below the platform you land on, you will see another door (D). However, passing through this door will take you all the way back to the beginning of the stage. You are only advised to use this door if you need to purchase medicine, or need an Inn. To reach it, you must pass through the blocks beneath the statue at the very end of the top platform.

Proceed through this hallway in the same manner that you did earlier; by tapping right instead of holding it down. This will prevent the Magicians from hurting you when they appear. Also be aware of the increased presence of Hyper Armors. Jumping over them is the preferred strategy as there are simply too many to fight on a one-on-one basis.

At the end of the long platform, you will jump across two statue heads before reaching another short platform that leads to a passage above a set of bricks. This passage is important for two reasons. Near the left side, you can jump through the ceiling above the passage to more rooms which lead to the labyrinth. The other reason is that there are two L Hearts hidden in the bricks below. You can break the bricks to collect the hearts, jump through the ceiling, fall back down, and repeat the process to increase your health until it is closer to 200. While it is tedious, it is free and valuable.

When you are ready to proceed, jump to the room above the passage. You do not have to deal with either of the blocks since you have the Kazaremo Shoes. You can simply jump up and break some of the bricks in order to stand on the column to your right, then jump from the column to break even more bricks until you can access the shaft that leads to the next room.

You will then proceed to pass through two considerably easy rooms, one with moving platforms and one with floating blocks. There is no trick to these rooms, you can make it through with relatively little effort. In fact, the hardest part of these rooms is finding the correct position that will allow you to jump up through the gap in the ceiling to the rooms above.

When you make it to the top, you will be in a hallway that contains a number of bricked areas. If you break all of the bricks, you will find doors behind all of them. The first low door (G) contains a Spell Book shop, and the secnod low door (H) contains a person with not-so-useful information. The first high door (6) is the entrance to the labyrinth, while the second high door is locked. However, there is one more door (I) that can be tricky to access to the far right. To reach it, you must leap up from the middle floating block and break some of the bricks on the lowest level. You can either proceed from that location, or jump up to the left side of the containing wall, and break through the rest of the bricks to access the door. Behind this door is a weapon shop, and it is worth visiting. Inside, you can purchase the Magic Sword for 450 metal. Be careful when returning via the floating blocks below. When you are fully prepared, head back to the door to the labyrinth and enter.

Labyrinth
The sixth labyrinth is another large dungeon, but deceptively so. It is possible to ignore the majority of it and reach the boss by staying entirely near the top. Explore the lower regions at your own discretion, there are a few rooms that contain Skulltas.

From the entrance climb down to the room below, and head to the right. Defeat the Fire Demons while you climb down and around to return through the lower door, a one way trip. From here, continue all the way to the right until you can't proceed any further. Then climb down the ladder in the last room. This will actually send you to the room above.

Watch out for the EW2s that show up here and attack. Climb down the ladders to the lower level and the room below. Attack the Metal Armor, and proceed to the right. Deal with the Fire Demon on the upper level and the two Metal Armors on the lower level, and you will now be directly over the boss room. Climb down the ladder when you are ready.

The boss of this labyrinth is a Blue Dragon. Other than it's color and strength, it is no different than any of the other dragons you have faced previously. Stand in the position that it is jumping to and rapidly stab your sword to strike its head until it is defeated. As a reward, you will receive the Moil candle. This special candle will immediately warp you out of a labyrinth as soon as you defeat the boss and collect the treasure, and its effects apply right away. Therefore, you will be whisked out of the labyrinth without the need to retrace your steps and find your own way out.

Before you proceed to the end of the stage, it's not a bad idea to spend some more time in the labyrinth building up your experience points to their max for the stage, as well as building up your supply of metal, as items become increasingly expensive in the next two stages.

Proceed to Stage 7
From the labyrinth door, head all the way to the left, and fall down between the first and second blocks on the floor. You will end up passing through all three rooms that you visited on your way to the labyrinth until you arrive at the passage in the hallway below. Once again, if you are low on health, you can take advantage of the two L Hearts which are buried in the bricks below the passage.

When you are prepared, continue on to the right. There are a few Hyper Armors on the floor below. Do your best to avoid them while you begin to crack a hole in the brick wall to the right with your mace. If you break far enough in and off the ground, the Armors will be unable to trouble you any longer. Continue to create a path for yourself through the bricks until you reach the opposite side and see a floating block moving back and forth.

Very carefully jump onto the floating block and over to the floor beyond. A few steps further and you will encounter the boss of this stage, the Death Messenger. He rides atop a horse which walks back and forth along the floor. He tosses sickles out much like the Madman enemies. Your best strategy is the standard practice of holding one position and stabbing upwards as quickly as possible. As long as you have sufficient health, you will survive the fight easily while removing the messenger quite quickly.

Just beyond the boss is one last door (J) where you will find the man who can send you along to the next stage.