Wizards & Warriors/Forest of Elrond 2

Return to the surface
You will begin the second Forest of Elrond much like the way you ended the first forest: underground at the bottom of a tree. You can expand the thumbnail of the map to the right to see the layout of the platforms. This time, you must use the various platforms to make your way up to the door at the very top, which leads to the surface of the forest. Along the way, spiders will continuously drop down on lines of webbing. They should only serve as a slight nuisance, and you can usually remove them easily by jumping into them, or landing on top of them, with your feet.

There will be two elements that slow your ascent, one bad and one good. The bad element are the root structures which lie between the platforms. You can safely jump through them as long as you are rising, but if you begin to fall and your feet touch the roots, you will begin to slide down one side of the roots or the other. The good element are hidden caches of diamonds. Of course, finding diamonds is always a good thing, but these caches tend to be low above certain platforms, and if you're not anticipating them, you are likely to fall off the platform after you hit your head on them. Test the space above you before making a long jump to be on the safe side.

Back among the trees
You enter the forest through the bottom left corner. Compared with the first forest, this forest has relatively few useful items to offer besides the Boots of Force near the top, and another opportunity to collect the rare Feather of Feather Fall inside of a tree. At this point, you are once again free to roam the various tree stumps and tree interiors, provided you can gain access to them. There is one tree with pink doors, another tree with red doors, and the guardian knight, who requires that you collect 100 diamonds, stands in front of a blue door. In truth, the blue key is only one that you need to escape from the level, but the stage is designed in such a way that it is easier if you go about collecting all three keys, instead of trying to find some way to bounce off an enemy as it damages you.

To start, the pink key is relatively easy to access, placed atop one of the higher stumps that you can access from the ground. Use the branches below to climb up to the nest at the top of a skinny tree trunk to collect the key. Then head to the right side of the forest to access the tree with the pink doors (map shown to the right). Begin climbing up the tree just as you did in the first stage, and watch out for the red and pink bats that attack you. Along the way, be sure to check out the pink treasure chest (D) near the middle. If you missed the Feather of Feather Fall in the Ice Cave, you can easily collect it now. This item is particularly useful to having in the upcoming stages. As you get near the top, it's somewhat easy to miss the presence of the red key along the right side of the tree, depending on how well it blends in with the background on your display. Be sure to grab it if you intend to collect the Boots of Force before you leave. Then exit through the top pink door.

The blue key
Reaching the tree canopy where the blue key awaits is difficult without the Potion of Levitation. If you have the potion, you can easily reach it by collecting the pink potion that appears to the left of the top pink door, levitating up, and jumping to the branches above. From there, the Boots of Force can be collected to the left (A), and then you can levitate again, and jump up into the canopy.

Without the Potion of Levitation, you'll have to resort to climb up the interior of the red tree (map shown to the left) (don't miss the chest full of diamonds at E), and using the branch to the right of the top red door to launch yourself over to the right where the Boots of Force treasure chest is. After reaching the chest, continue jumping over to the right until you reach the very tall tree stump that lets you jump right up into the canopy.

The blue key is found over on the left side, right above the top red door. While you're up here, you can make two hidden treasures appear by standing on the far sides of the two smaller canopies. Stand to the far right of the right small canopy (up against the screen edge), and stand to the far left of the left small canopy (don't fall off the tree), and two treasures will rise from the central canopy at B and C respectively. Collect them each for 10,000 bonus points.

Once you have the blue key, drop down alongside the tree with the red doors. Below the bottom red door is the blue door, guarded by a knight who demands 100 diamonds be collected. By now, you should have, or be very close to, the required 100 diamonds, so head in through the exit to face the boss.

Boss: Giant Spider
For this late in the game, the Giant Spider boss is surprisingly easy. When you first arrive, stand on the far left side of the screen, face the spider, and throw daggers or axes at it until it rises to the top of the screen. Wait just a moment, and then run across the screen to the opposite side. As you do, the spider should appear behind you. When you reach the opposite side, toss more weapons at it until it is defeated and souls appear. If you didn't wait long enough after the spider rises, the spider will appear in the middle of the screen, and is likely to hit you, so delay crossing in order to ensure that it appears farther away from you, and gives you more time to safely attack it. Destroy the souls that appear, collect the treasure pile, and you will run through the door to rescue Penelope for 40,000 points.