Let's Play La-Mulana: The Mother Has Been Waiting

Seconded. What an amazing experience this was!

Now for La-Mulana 2, right? (it's a joke I'm sorry)

Excellent LP as always Yimmers.

Congrats Yimothy! I believe what shows up during the ending is dependent on what you do during the game, as it is possible to skip wide swaths of things once you know where things are and what's actually required to clear the game. There's a surprising number of optional puzzles and loot to acquire.


Ultra-Mega-Spoilers-For-That-One-Block-Puzzle:

It is literally unsolvable...in the original. In the remake it is solvable because the remake loves fucking with players of the original.

You did it! This game is very hard and nice work on solving it.

Hahaha, man, that's... something, alright. I can't decide if I love that or hate it.

I love that and hate it. Probably more love it. An anti-puzzle.

Anyway, thanks everyone. I expect to do at least one more post looking at what I missed (I’ve looked up a ROM location list already). I’m not sure if I’ll try the hidden dungeon - I’ve avoided spoilers on it but what I have seen makes it sound pretty onerous.

Well, congrats from me as well, that was an enormous and impressive effort on your part, and I'm nothing but amazed.

This clearly an impressive game very much worth experiencing but that I'd have never had the patience nor ability to get through, so thanks for allowing me to enjoy it vicariously.

Can't wait to see that bonus post and whatever you LP next. Do take all the time you need to rest first, though, of course. You very much earned it.

Fantastic job on the LP, Yimothy! Like everyone else has said, it's super impressive how much of this game you managed to solve on your own; it looks damn-near impenetrable in more than a few places. I have no hesitation calling this one of my favorite LP's both on Talking Time and in general. Looking forward to whatever you decide to do next!

Welcome back to Let's Play La-Mulana: The Mother Has Been Waiting. I just couldn't stay away. Last time, I beat the game. A sensible person would have left things there, but let's face it: a sensible person wouldn't have gotten this far in the first place. There was no option to save after the ending, so my save file is still as it was immediately before travelling to the Shrine and taking out the Mother.

I ended the last post with a list of clues and to-dos all crossed off, but I cheated a little. Anything that I hadn't managed to do, I deleted from the list. This time, I'm restoring the missing items on the to-do and looking up the solutions online.



But first, here's something I figured out for myself. These images are all from earlier in the LP, and relate to a puzzle in the Confusion Gate. When I first reached the stele in the first two images, I took the clue to be flavour text and didn't add it to my clues list, I guess because I hadn't realised I was playing La-Mulana yet. Much later, I got the "Become small!" clue in the Confusion Gate, which I accidentally solved by travelling to the Mausoleum. I didn't really get it at the time, but during my lengthy run through the ruins looking for things that I'd missed I re-read the first clue and realised it was a clue for this puzzle (and then forgot to mention it in that post). I needed to return to the Mausoleum and be dwarfed by the Giants.



I'm getting most of my information for this post from the La-Mulana Wiki. It's actually pretty hard to find info on the original version of the game. There's much more out there on the remake. Anyway, I'm starting off today by looking for the ROMs I didn't get. There are five. Apparently the first one is on top of this merman's belt. I can't believe I never tried this during the LP!



Huh. I don't seem to be able to jump there. Has the wiki got this wrong?



Nope, it was me. After checking my map I went to the other room with a big merman and found Ganbare Goemon, a 1987 port of a Famicom game that was the second in the Goemon series. This is slightly less obvious than the merman in the other room, because there's less reason to be jumping around in this room, but it still seems like something I should have found.

I went to the wrong room first because the wiki gives coordinates for a map whose numbers start at the top left. My map numbers start from whichever room I entered first, which I did so that I wouldn't have to re-number everything each time I reached a room further up or to the left of where my map had reached. It wasn't a problem before I started looking up spoilers.



While I'm in the area I stop by this block puzzle again. As has already come up in the thread, this puzzle has no solution (but was made solveable in the remake). Even though it caused me much frustration, I think this was a genius move by the developers.



More than anything else that I missed, I should have found this. By La-Mulana standards, it's not even hidden - you just have to scan here. Hyper Sports 3 is the third game in the Hyper Sports series. It's got curling!



This one's a bit obscure. There's no apparent reason to jump back up that shaft, but doing so removes one of the pillars (which, now that I look at it, was placed lower than it should have been - a clue I missed). Scanning where it was, I find Heaven and Earth, a strategy game set in feudal Japan. I think. The MSX version is unreleased, but it looks like it came out for PC-88 and PC-98. I'm not finding a lot of English-language info on this one.



The next ROM requires summoning the key fairy in the Spring of the Sky. Head up one screen from the summon point and it'll hover near the doorway.



Hang out in front of the doorway with the fairy and it'll get boarded up, while another doorway appears across the room. It's a shame I didn't find this for myself - I've had "Find other key fairy locatons" on my to-do list since forever, but it's such an open-ended goal that it remained in the too-hard basket until the end. As it turns out, all of the things unlocked are within a screen or two of the summon points, so it wouldn't have taken that long to try them all out.



I head in and find that the fish from the closed shop has moved across and changed its wares. I wonder if it would sell me the Shell Horn and Detector if I hadn't already picked them up? The other new item is Castlevania, aka Vampire Killer. If you're not familiar with Castlevania, then welcome to Talking Time, I hope you enjoy your stay. The MSX version has screen flipping instead of scrolling and more maze-like layouts which require you to find a key before finishing stages. Apparently you get three lives, no way to earn more, and no continues (unless you have Game Master).



The next ROM requires a trip to the Chamber of Extinction, and also involves the key fairy, so I have to wait for it to respawn. I equip the King Kong 2/Firebird combination, which according to the wiki is the one that reduces the wait time on the Fairy respawn and Lamp of Time recharge. Six minutes elapse between when the fairy faded away and when the spark reappears, though I didn't have the combo equipped the whole time and I don't think I've measured how long it takes without it. I'll take the wiki's word for it, I guess.



Once I have the fairy, I head for the end of this corridor, two screens to the right of the summon point. After a little while a door appears up top.



I head through the door and find myself in... The Maze of Galious? This looks a lot like the first screen of that game, though a bit more decayed.



The ladders went all the way up and down in Galious. Here, the lower one is blocked and the upper warps me to the area of the Chamber of Extinction where Palenque was.



I head back in and attempt to go right, but the way is blocked.



Heading left takes me to another familiar screen. In Galious this rock dropped the Halo, the Grail equivalent.



Here it drops what looks like a Great Key. In Galious that boosts your max VIT and unlocks the door to a boss stage. Nothing seems to happen when I pick this one up. My inventory is already full and I don't even get a VIT restore.



I head to the next screen and through a door. Possibly if I'd come here before getting the key it would have been closed? Dunno. Through the door is WORLD 1 !!. This is all a bit familiar.



Very familiar, down to the placement of the map. Unlike in Galious, though, collecting this doesn't allow me to view the map. Also different are the two statues. I think Popolon and Aphrodite were only a few pixels removed from being palette swaps, so presumably one of these identical statues is the former and the other the latter.



In my brief run at the MSX game Aphrodite landed on an enemy at this point and died, so I won't be able to compare the areas any more. Lemeza has a lot more VIT and the Mandrakes start off harmlessly underground anyway, so I'm able to scan the blank stele and continue to the next screen. I didn't get this far in Galious, but I imagine the room wasn't filled with Sonic the Hedgehogs in that version.



I collect the bottle at the upper right and take out some fireball turtles. The stele, like all but one in this place, is blank. I can't go through the red barrier at the bottom, so I have to go back around.

The next two screens are just paths downwards. I have to break the blue barriers in the second one with a weapon to proceed.



Dropping to the next screen lands me on a flying eye. Should have taken the ladder.



Incidentally, I think this is the first time I've tried spears on these enemies. Turns out they can be killed individually without starting them moving about the screen.



Heading left I take a door to the lower passageway, which takes me to the right. There's another item here, but I can't reach the upper level. That door was one-way, too, so I can't get back up to the top.



Taking out the mandrakes causes a ladder to appear allowing me to reach the rod. As with the other items here, it doesn't appear in my inventory or seem to do anything. Then I drop down the hole, which leads me straight down through the next screen.



I land in what at first appears to be an enclosed space. Killing the enemies opens the wall to allow my escape.



The next screen looks highly suspicious, but I can't do anything here. I think I tried to ZEUS password to no effect. I head back to the right and scan the stele, the only one in this place with something written on it.



I head to the left and through another door to collect a cape, then I return to the symbol on the wall. Let's just chant YOMAR...



It summons some kind of horned partially skeletal monster and I start to panic, realising I haven't saved since starting and I've almost never beat a boss in this game on the first try. I get out my shield and move in to attack, but it doesn't seem to have any effect and the creature isn't attacking me.



Oh! Uh... hello!

This is Yomar, the first boss of Maze of Galious. The release dates of Galious and La-Mulana were almost twenty years apart, so it has been a while. But in Galious Yomar was fully skeletal. What's happened?



Creepy, dude. They look creepy.



Anyway, Yomar gives me a souvenir: The ROM for Maze of Galious! With that, my collection is complete at last.



There's one more room to explore here. In it I find Demeter, who suggests returning to the main game. But how? The room is closed!



Or is it?



Coming back another two times gets me another couple of messages. The last one (which is pretty good, I think) repeats after that.

I wonder if I would have gotten a hint if I'm come here before defeating Yomar? Speaking of which, while I have the manual open:

I'm not 100% this is describing Yomar (the manual can't give the names because finding them out is part of the puzzle), but I think it is.



I return to this hut on the outskirts of the Village. Way back in part 18 I went here and met someone who told me something good would happen if I found all the ROMs. For some reason I added returning to the hut once I had all the ROMs to my list, but looking back it never said I needed to. I'm not sure what the good thing is, beyond my completionist tendencies being appeased slightly.



Now that I have all the ROMs, it's time to start playing with them. The wiki says that the Badlands/A1 Spirit combination (the PASSWORD: ZEUS one) displays "the La-Mulana Jukebox password". I thought maybe that meant I had to type in ZEUS somewhere in music mode (I was hoping for a track titled "Password" or similar), but it seems the La-Mulana Jukebox is an external program that lets you listen to tracks from the game. Entering the password in that program unlocks the full range of tracks.

I went with track 45 for the screenshot because I realised that it reveals the name of the boss of PR3, which might have saved Sensenic some work if I'd shown it. I did look at this screen when I was making the PR3 post because I didn't know the name of the music and I wanted to link to it, but I missed Paola.

Also on the subject of Music Mode, the wiki gives the Shin Synthesizer/Snatcher combination as "Music Mode Plus" and the Synth/SD Snatcher combo as "Music Mode Full". I still can't tell the difference between Music Mode and Music Mode Plus, but whatever.



Looking at the ROM combo list reminded me that I hadn't found the third developer laptop. I've spoken to Samieru and duplex, but not Naramura. According to the wiki, his laptop is hidden on this screen in the Tower of the Goddess, but it doesn't tell me how to reveal it. I try killing the enemies and attacking all the walls and floors (both of the other laptops were behind walls that broke in one hit), but don't find it. I even summoned the key fairy again and took it here, but nothing was revealed. Frustrating. While I'm on the subject of the developers, though, here's something I didn't realise until I saw it on the wiki: La-Mulana's name is derived from Naramura, by reversing the syllables. Elder Xelpud is named after duplex. Both of these I knew about, but what about Samieru? Why does he miss out? Well, take the syllables of his name and reverse them: Ru-mie-sa. That's where "Lemeza" comes from.



OK, back to the ROMs. I put in Contra/F1 Spirit 3D and my VIT starts to drain. This is a bad thing, but it's all according to plan:



I put in Maze of Galious and Knightmare (the previous game in the series). On a real MSX, this combination makes it possible to resurrect Popolon and Aphrodite.



In La-Mulana, running out of health with this combination active results in a second chance: I get a little bit of VIT back.



I swap Knightmare out for Seal of El Giza. With this combination active, breaking the pot and collecting the coin gets me eleven coins rather than ten. This one's actually listed in full in the manual: "Gives you an extra Coin whenever you pick one up."

Up next is Castlevania/Mahjong Wizard. According to the wiki, this will increase the power of the whip. It's also listed in the manual, but the ROMs aren't given, only the effect. Castlevania seems pretty obvious, but what's Mahjong got to do with it?



I find an enemy that takes a few hits to kill. Without the ROM combo active, these elephants take four hits. With it, it's two. Nice! Too bad I didn't find this before killing all the bosses.



There are a couple more combinations left, but I'm just gonna save first. OK, let's put F1 Spirit 3D and Contra in. I've already had these two in combination, but that was the other way around. As far as I know, that doesn't make a difference for any other combo, but for this one:



Instead of his VIT draining constantly, Lemeza dies in one hit. Good thing I saved! This one is also listed in the manual, though without the names of the ROMs. I was always a little nervous that I'd forget to save, find the combo that had this effect, and lose a bunch of progress because of it. I did find both of these ROMs, but until fairly late in the LP I wasn't very good about checking new ROMs against all my old ones for combinations, and once I had started doing that I had so many ROMs that checking every possible combo would have taken forever and I never got around to it. Plus I never thought to try reversing the order of combined ROMs for different effects.



Having instant death available to me sets me up to show off a glitch. I head for the Twin Labyrinths and stick in F1 Spirit 3D and Contra.



I take a hit from the witch's projectile and all my VIT drains away. But I'm still alive! Sort of: I can't open any menus or use my weapons. I can walk through enemies, though. This is the "Zombie Lemeza" glitch. It happens when you lose the last of your VIT to an attack with a non-standard animation response from Lemeza, in this case the stun from the witch's projectile.



I can still climb up this ladder, but not back down it. Unable to enter the menu to warp out, I'm trapped, so I have to quit. Also, for some reason I wind up in the original version of the Shrine rather than the tentacle nightmare. That's glitches, I suppose.



I have one ROM combo outstanding, and to use it I need to beat the game again. My first attempt goes poorly, ending against the third form, but on the second I reach the Mother's final form in pretty good shape.



I put in Salamander and Gradius 2 and finish the boss off. On the MSX, this combination was required to get the true ending of Salamander, and supposedly it changes the ending of La-Mulana in some way. This is actually sort of hinted at by one of Xelpud's random MSX-related lines: "With my spare money, all I could buy was Salamander. I always got the bad ending." Without Gradius 2, Xelpud couldn't finish Salamander properly. At least initially, there's no obvious difference in the La-Mulana ending with this combo.



But then the Algol shows up. It's now green instead of blue and no longer covered in eyes.



At the end of the credits, the ship from PR3 shows up. I think that those two things are all that's changed. I'm not sure this was worth the effort.



With that, my ROM combo list is complete. Here it is.



OK, up next is another trip to the hidden woman in the Dimensional Corridor. What's this about? Well, it's a Minmay Doll. What's that? Good question. I found a bunch of "Development secret story" posts by Naramura about the original version of La-Mulana. From the one about the Dimensional Corridor (translated with Chrome's "Translate this page" feature):

This woman is a character from Macross. My exposure to Macross is in the form of bits and pieces of Robotech when I was a kid, so it took me a while to figure this one out. Minmay is a character in Macross, a pop star apparently popular with both humans and the alien enemy. There's a scene (at 22:30 if the timestamp doesn't work) where a dead alien soldier is shown with a Minmay doll that looks a lot like this one in La-Mulana in its hand. I'm not sure if the dolls shows up in other scenes as well, or if I've really made an accurate summary here, because I haven't actually watched the show I just looked for something showing the doll.

The word translated as Teguzha/Teksar/Texza here (テグザー) is Thexder, an old Game Arts number that also featured dolls (at 9:20) that looked a lot like this one hidden in its scenery. I think the quote here is saying that he wasn't able to find the hidden doll in Thexder for a reference, so he did his best with how he remembered it. Pretty close!

The machine translation isn't helping me here, but I think he's saying he put this in so that duplex and Samieru would have something they didn't know about to find in the game.



The other hidden figure, in the Graveyard of Giants, apparently represents Naramura himself:

There's a picture of Naramura figures sold at TGS 2013 at the start of the HG101 article about La-Mulana. They look like this guy.



The other reason I've come back to this room is to scan this stele. I'd taken this to refer to the fake Silver Shield sold in the screen above this one (the real one being one screen to the right), and I think that is what it's about, but according to the wiki scanning this is the second step towards unlocking Hell Temple, the game's super-hard bonus dungeon (the first step being to defeat all of the Guardians). No idea why.



Next, I jump onto this open mouth and enter a hidden door. I've gone back to old saves - this wasn't possible before beating Tiamat. I was able to do it with a save from after Tiamat and before re-reading the stele in the Graveyard, but I can't say for sure that I hadn't re-read it already, or perhaps even that reading it for the first time way back whenever that was didn't count.



Inside I find Duracuets. You might remember this name from the credits, when I had no idea who it was. Now we know: a failed Sage. He made some kind of treasure, and is now giving me clues on how to find it. I'll be honest: I looked up the whole sequence for how to unlock Hell without trying to figure it out myself. I have not spoiled myself on how to get through it once I'm there, though. Anyway, once I leave Duracuets' cave, the platform I stood on to enter it isn't there any more.



The statue that connects not with any riddle is this one in the Village. I probably could have figured this out for myself by looking at my maps, although there are a lot of statues in the game that don't do anything other than spit at you if you strike them. Even more if you count background graphics. Anyway, I need to wait here until night falls.



I'm very confident I would have figured this one out had I given myself the chance, even though I'd always kind of thought it was already nighttime in the Village.



I probably would then have tried going to Xelpud's place, though the closed door might have thrown me off.



Xelpud has a pretty cryptic clue for me.



Since I'm using a guide, knowing where to go is no problem - I have to return to the hut hidden behind the waterfall. Again, this is something I probably could have figured out myself - I got the Birth Seal from the chest in the third image, and the person in the hut claimed to be dead the first time I was here, so this hut is the home of "the corpse that watches the birth". But what do I do here?

I have to go beyond - I walk into the wall (not possible when I visited here earlier this same update, by the way) and enter a hidden door. The blue spot that flashes a couple of times is the tip of my whip - I'd forgotten what I had to do in this alcove.



Helpful! The friend would be one of the summoned fairies, and the store that can't be entered... maybe the boarded up shop in the Spring of the Sky where the fish merchant used to be?



Nope! It's this one in the Confusion Gate. I had this on my to-do list for ages, but dismissed it as probably impossible in my housekeeping update late in the game.



It's Duracuets again with another riddle. This one threw me briefly before I looked at the wiki again, but it's sort of simple: the gates are the normal paths between Fields, like the one at the bottom left of the last screenshot here and presumably also the doorways between front and rear. There are a few places where you can cross from one Field to another without going through a gate, like at the bottom of the Spring where you can drop through the floor to the Temple of the Sun, and at the bottom of that Temple where you can drop through the floor into the Twin Labyrinths, or the teleport in the Chamber of Birth that takes you to the Chamber of Extinction.



This is the one in question, though. Normally dropping down here would take me to the Chamber of Extinction, but instead I'm in a big lava pit.



A big, deep lava pit. This GIF is just one screen looping infinitely, so don't watch waiting for it to end, but I'm required to fall down nineteen screens for the next step.



Your guess as to what 'touch' means is as good as mine. I take it to mean I need to get right into the bottom corner of this screen (maybe - I lost count) without going to the next, and then whip the wall. It doesn't work for me, perhaps because I've done it wrong.



I allow Lemeza to drift down a few more screens to be sure of having touched the right place, then swim all the way back up to the surface and go down again, this time whipping the wall all the way. On the twentieth screen of the area, the strike in the third screenshot here makes a sound against the wall. Unfortunately, I don't manage to hit jump before Lemeza goes off the bottom of the screen, and when I swim back up the wall doesn't seem to make any sound any more. So I return to the surface.



The third time is the charm, as I manage to break the wall and find a hidden doorway. Actually reaching it takes some extra time because of the way momentum works in the lava, but I get there. All of the other steps in this sequence I have at least been able to figure out retrospectively how you were supposed to know to do them. This one? No clue. Perhaps there's some clue that you don't actually have to see if you already know what to do and the guide I'm using left it out? Maybe the thing about touching the wall isn't true and you just have to whip it? I can imagine someone finding this by just falling down and whipping the walls as they went, but if you really have to brush the bottom of the twentieth screen without going to the next it's hard to see how anyone figured this out.



The clue is at least brief this time. But where is there a huge coffin?



It's this empty space on the wall where Palenque used to be - the coffin that housed the alien astronaut since whenever it came to this place. But wait! The usual way to reach this place is through the bottom of the Inferno Cavern, but that's the very location I just passed through to reach the infinite lava pit. How did I get back here?



It could well be that the lava pit doesn't appear a second time and I could have just gone through the Inferno Cavern again (I didn't check, but the guide I'm using makes no mention of how to get to Palenque's lair which suggests to me that the usual path reopens), but what I do is head to the Maze of Galious and up this ladder, which takes Lemeza to the same room dropping from the Cavern normally does.



Jumping into the coffin warps me to the Tower of the Goddess, into a little area I couldn't reach before. There's a door behind the water that's been on my list since before I flooded the room, which I enter.



Duracuets again, with one more puzzle. A gate in an area that cannot be entered? There aren't many places left that I haven't entered. Looking at my maps, I think it's just the areas of the True Shrine that are behind tentacles, and...



The upper part of this room. I'm following a guide, so I know that this is where I need to go, but I still save before coming here, just in case.



One screen to the left, I climb a ladder and start whipping walls. Note that the strike to the left shows in front of the wall, while the one on the right is behind it. That indicates that I can walk through the wall on the right, and it was not the case earlier in the game. But I can't get off a ladder in the middle of a climb, and I can't jump at the base of a ladder because the jump key and the go-up-a-ladder key are the same key. What do?



I take a running jump and make it through. This was actually my fifth attempt at this - it's tricky to find the right spot. I eventually thought "maybe the green spot on the ground is there to indicate where to jump", and whether that's the intent or not, it worked for me. The wiki suggests that a shield may make it easier. Can you jump in front of a ladder if you have the shield up? That would have been useful information if I'd known it a lot sooner.



I take out the enemies and attempt to scan the skeletons to no effect before finding the invisible door in the dark patch of background. Where will it take me?



To here! Wherever this is. The glyph at the upper left is for the number zero. I'm dropping the guide at this point. Perhaps I'll go back to it if things get too tough, but for now I'm back to figuring things out on my own. So where am I?



The big stele up top spills the beans. Hell Temple. How bad could it be?



After scanning the room and whipping the walls, I head up the ladder to the next room. The glyph up here is for the number one. Do I sense a pattern? Incidentally, these are normal glyphs, not the reversed versions seen on the rear Fields, so I guess I'm still in the front. At a glance, I seem to be in a closed space with no exits.



As I take out each enemy, a ladder appears allowing me to reach the next level. It's slow going, though, because I can only hit these guys in a brief window at the end of their fireball attack and because doing that is often interrupted by the projectiles from above. Kind of annoying, but not exactly hell. What's next?

This doesn't look too bad. Lots of reading, though. Clues for the rest of the area? The glyph, as expected, is for two.



Ah. Teleports. Perhaps this is hell.



On the plus side, the ladders are still there, so the trip back to room #2 is quicker.



It is a bit of a drag when you're doing it repeatedly, though. Long-term readers of this LP may recall that I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, and so I make several trips through room #1 only to hit the same teleport points in room #2. This is a pretty simple puzzle, really, requiring only endurance to find a clear pathway (I assume, not having solved it yet), but it'd be simpler if I could keep track of which paths I've already tried.



Frustrated, I save and quit. I'm gonna have to have a think about whether I really want to put myself through Hell Temple, or if I should just call it here.



Perhaps 20 minutes later, though, I'm back in the game. The wiki told me where Naramura's laptop was, but not how to actually reach it. I had a look at a video online and saw someone else get it, and now I'm back to do it myself.



You gotta jump twice at the left side of this screen to make the door appear. I feel like this is one of the more obscure puzzles in the game.



Kane Kosugi is an American actor of Japanese and Chinese descent who has worked in both Japan and America. I haven't found the curry ad mentioned here.



Way back at the start of the LP, Torzelbaum suggested Shorn Kosugi, Lemeza's dad, may have been named after Sho Kosugi, Kane's dad. Looks like he was probably right. According to wikipedia, Kane and Sho were feuding at one point, which fits with Lemeza and Shorn's relationship.



I love this - combining Contra and F1 Spirit 3D either drains Lemeza's VIT or makes him die in one hit depending on the order in which you do it. Samieru and duplex not liking those games is presumably why.



I'm a little fuzzy on this one. Who is Fishman? Castlevania was sold by the fish merchant in the Spring, who looks pretty similar to the master of fish who needs to be beaten to get the Ankh Jewel in the Spring, and to the fish that travels below Lemeza during the Bahamut fight, and to Gyonin in Mukimuki Memorial SD and the fish enemy in PR3. I guess those are the cameos. Is Fishman just the handle of someone the developers know? Is it a reference to the fishmen in Castlevania games? Dunno.



Anyway, as instructed, back to the game. I head for Hell Temple again. On arrival, I find that the ladders in room #1 are still there, meaning the place doesn't reset itself completely when you leave, so you don't have to do the whole thing in one sitting. On the one hand, that's good news because it will make it easier. On the other, if I were actually required to do it all in one go it would be a lot easier to just say "nope!" and end the LP here. Which I may still do. I'm going to take a shot at Hell, but I make no promises. If it's too hard, or too annoying, I reserve the right to bail.



For today, I take one last look at room #2. It seems like I'm making progress, but then a flying eye comes up behind me (odd - the glyphs aren't mirrored, suggesting a front Field, but the eyes are normally only seen in the back) and I foolishly turn to try to hit it and step into a teleport. Argh!



I've had enough. I head back to town and save (so the game will know I spoke to Naramura), then quit.

Maps:

Maze of Galious:



Hell Temple:

To-Do:

Anywhere:
-Complete the software use and software combinations lists in the manual
-Find other key fairy locations, if they exist
-Get all the ROMs
-Figure out where/how to use PASSWORD: ZEUS

Village:
-Return to hidden door at 4/2 with all the ROMs

Confusion Gate:
-Enter door -4/1 (upside down)

Tower of the Goddess:
-Enter door: 1/-1 (behind water)

Hell Temple:
-Reach the end of Hell Temple or give up on it


ROMs:
-A1 Spirit
-Antarctic Adventure
-Athletic Land
-Badlands
-Break Shot
-Cabbage Patch Kids
-Castlevania
-Circus Charlie
-Comic Bakery
-Contra
-Diviner Sensation
-F1 Spirit
-F1 Spirit 3D Special
-Firebird
-Frogger
-Game Collection 1
-Game Collection 2
-Game Collection 3
-Game Collection 4
-Game Collection EX
-Game Master
-Game Master 2
-Ganbare Goemon
-Glyph Reader
-Goonies
-GR3
-Gradius
-Gradius 2
-Gradius 2 Beta
-Heaven and Earth
-Hyper Olympic 1
-Hyper Olympic 2
-Hyper Olympic 3
-Hyper Rally
-Hyper Sports 1
-Hyper Sports 2
-Hyper Sports 3
-King Kong 2
-King's Valley
-King's Valley Disk
-Knightmare
-Konami Baseball
-Konami Boxing
-Konami Golf
-Konami Pinball
-Konami Ping-pong
-Konami Soccer
-Konami Tennis
-Magical Tree
-Mahjong Dojo
-Mahjong Wizard
-Maze of Galious
-Metal Gear
-Metal Gear 2
-Monkey Academy
-Mopi Ranger
-Nemesis 3
-Parodius
-Penguin Adventure
-Pennant Race
-Pennant Race 2
-Pippols
-PR3
-Q-bert
-Quarth
-Road Fighter
-Ruins RAM 8K
-Ruins RAM 16K
-Salamander
-SD Snatcher
-Seal of El Giza
-Shalom
-Shin Synthesizer
-Sky Jaguar
-Snatcher
-Space Manbow
-Super Cobra
-Time Pilot
-Twinbee
-Unreleased ROM
-Usas
-Video Hustler
-Yie Ar Kung Fu
-Yie Ar Kung Fu 2

An encore performance?

Yay, completion! Finally got to "legitimately" listen to those missing tracks in the OST, haha.

Best of luck with the Hell Temple, and yeah, absolutely don't sweat it if it's too hard/annoying, you've already gone above and beyond with this LP.

Haha, it's okay, I'd seen the name of the track in the soundtrack playlist I listen along while reading, so I already had that bit of help. Just googled "meisou" to confirm that it meant "meditation", really.

You're a madman, Yimothy. An absolute madman.

And I'm here for it.

Welcome back. Last time, I opened the path to Hell Temple and made a brief foray within. Today, I return. Once I get through the false wall here.



It turns out holding up the shield does allow me to jump in front of ladders. This could have spared me a lot of inconvenience, though swapping in and out of the menu to activate the shield would be just as inconvenient a lot of the time.



I enter the Temple and head through to room #2. This is as far as I got last time, thanks to the many teleport spots that send Lemeza back to the start of the Field.



After the difficulty I had with this room last time, I drew myself a map of it, and planned my approach. The dotted line was my attempt at answering the question, "If I were designing the path through this room to make it as long and annoying as possible, where would it go?". The solid line is the path I eventually found through it, with the crosses being teleport spots. Uh, spoiler warning, I guess. I should have taken a picture of my guess before solving it. My dotted line is pretty close, only really being different at the right side where I thought it would be more circuitous. I'm not complaining about that!



For my first attempt I try walking straight across the top. This wasn't my guessed path, but I thought it might be worth a go. Nope!



My next attempt, while slow, goes pretty well. It turns out I've guessed most of the route correctly, but not the whole thing.



Instead of going down here, I need to jump across the gap. But only as far as the ladder! This slight step beyond gets me sent back to the beginning. This is actually the sixth time this has happened so far this update, I've been skipping over the attempts that failed at points I already knew were teleports.



I make it through on the next attempt. Even knowing the way it's a tense trip because of the possibility of being thrown into a teleport by a flying eye (if you watch the hit I take in this GIF closely you can see me starting up a ladder just before it - being on a ladder makes Lemeza fall straight down instead of backwards, making this a rare nice save on my part), or just accidentally overstepping into a teleport. OK, what's next?



This doesn't look too bad. I guess I have to weight all the daises? The flying eyes will make that a little difficult down the bottom of the room, but it should be doable.



Ah. That's a little worse than I thought.



I give it a go and fail miserably. I wonder what's down below?



"Land of Hell"? That doesn't sound good. There are several of the more annoying enemy types here. The witch I took out right at the start was the one with the stun attack, so I've spared myself a hassle there, but the teleporting weasel and the swooping demons are a pain.



I get out the flares and manage to take out one of the demons and the scythe guy, but I don't have a lot of flares and I'm not very far into the level yet. This approach may not be sustainable.



I take the fight directly to the enemies. Once I finish off the last one, a ladder appears and I climb it back to room #3. I'll just have to be more careful this time.



<Sigh>



It takes me a minute and a half to clear all the enemies again, thirty seconds standing on the one little platform to take out the bats, and another thirty seconds of hopping from platform to platform without reaching any daises before I fall back down again. <Sigh>



I get marginally smarter and put in the whip-powering-up ROM combo to speed up taking out the enemies in the Land of Hell.



Argh.



The next attempt starts off promising, but after forty-odd seconds of jumping about I wind up falling down again. Aside from the cycling trap doors, there are several places where the floors are false, meaning Lemeza will pass straight through them. Trying to remember where they are, as well as which floors will give way and when, is a major headache.



My visits to the Land of Hell are getting quicker, at least.



I make a pretty good pass, then pause at the top to consider how to reach the last two.



I make a quick trip down to weight the right side dais.



I did it! A ladder appears at the upper right to allow me to continue.

Room #4, unless I've missed some secret, is as simple as it looks. Which I'm not going to complain about after room #3. I use the axe to allow me to attack the shield guys from the front, but there's nothing else notable about it. Room #5 looks like a dead end, though. How am I gonna reach that dais?



Oh. More teleports. Looks like I'll need to find the invisible spot in the room that will take me to the dais. Great.



There's a playfulness to this that I enjoy.



After a little while spent randomly jumping about the room, I get methodical, advancing slowly across the room testing the airspace as I go. This seems like as good a time as any to mention the smirk on those background faces, which I didn't notice on my first trip to Hell Temple but which seems very obvious now.



It turns out I need to cling to the left wall and jump away to a teleport point that takes me to the dais. One more room solved!



Room #6 looks like a variant on #3. I need to weight the dais, but the demon enemies will swoop on me while I try, so it's safest to take them out first. I probably don't want to fall off the bottom of the screen.



There are also hidden swooping guys here. I'm taking quite a few hits, but the floor layout is a lot friendlier than in #3 - no false floors or trapdoors. I still manage to fall down eventually, though.



The room below looks familiar. I deal with it in the same way as the room below room #3.



I only last a second and two-thirds back in room #6 before I fall down again. Not even long enough to notice that:



It's not room #6 at all! The room below #6 doesn't just look like the one below #3, it is the one below #3. No!



Bear in mind that in between each of these attempts to climb up from the bottom of this room is at least a full minute of clearing out the room below. For some reason the eyes seem to be getting me more often than they were when I was trying to solve this room rather than just climb out of it.



Eventually I realise that it's going to be quicker to just warp back to the Guidance Gate and go from the start of Hell Temple rather than keep trying and failing to recover from the Land of Hell.



It takes me just under two minutes to get from the altar in the Guidance Gate to the ladder at the upper right of room #3, which is probably comparable to how long it takes to clear out the Land of Hell and climb up from the bottom of #3 if I don't fall down, so this is a much better approach.



<Sigh>



Two and a bit minutes later, I'm back to try again.



I try staying in the entrance so I won't be thrown to the bottom of the room. It gives mixed results.



At least this time I'm thrown to the teleport that lets me jump to the path back to the next room. Watch this GIF twice, because the exact same thing happened on my next attempt.



The next try goes a lot better. Now I just need to reach the dais without falling down.



And deal with a few of these guys. Fortunately, I manage to stay in the room.



Next!



Room #7 has three big bats. There was a similar enemy at the top of the Confusion Gate, but that one had the added challenge of an absent floor. With solid ground to stand on, this shouldn't be too bad.



I decide to take them all on at once to speed things up. It still takes an age. This is sloppy play, but it's actually a pretty low risk situation. I'm not taking much damage, and all these room guard type enemies give heaps of EXP, so my VIT is getting topped up regularly.

Room #8 is another one that looks like a dead end, but there's a clue: the little gap between pillars at the upper middle of the room. Lemeza can't fit through, but a Bomb can!



If I can find the right place to throw one from. Bombs explode when they hit ceilings, but I haven't really figured out why sometimes they bounce off walls and sometimes they don't. They also do more damage than any of the enemies so far in this place.



OK, now we're getting somewhere. When this one explodes, I hear the sound of a successful hit on a wall.



The next one doesn't go so well (I'd moved slightly from where I threw the good shot from, like a fool), but the one after that succeeds in breaking the wall. Presumably I just need to take out the mandrake now.



I get sloppy. Bear in mind I don't have my GIFs to refer to at this point to tell me where I was standing for the good throws.



This is particularly painful. A perfect shot, completely mistimed.



Low on VIT after a few more bad shots, I head back up to #7 for some EXP and a VIT top-up. It does the job, but when I return to #8 the wall I blew open has reappeared. Argh.



After several more misses and without even reopening the wall, I head back up for another VIT top-up. It's not until I get down again that I realise I don't have enough bombs left. Even if I manage perfect shots, I need two to open the wall and another for the mandrake.



I try anyway, hoping that by some miracle I'll get a Bomb through the small gap in the wall leading to the enemy. Doesn't happen. What now?



I warp out and visit various pots that I remember holding Bombs to restock.



Then it's back to Hell Temple. On my way back through I manage to fall down in room #6 again, so I warp out and re-return. <Sigh>



Sixteen and a half minutes after running out of Bombs, I'm back in room #8 with one Bomb more than I started with last time. Let's try this again.



After a few bad shots, I manage to get one through the gap. It falls to the floor, missing the wall I needed it to hit. <Sigh>



Of my next six shots, two go where I want them to, and the wall is open again. It's taking a toll on my VIT, though. Can I pull this off?



I wait for the mandrake to emerge and take my shot. Success! Sweet, sweet, success!



Jumping down the hole lets me reach the left edge of room #1. Progress!



<Sigh>. Back to the start.



But what's this? Now that I've cleared the first eight rooms, I can open a shortcut up here. I said earlier that I hadn't spoiled myself on the contents of Hell Temple, but there are actually two things I did read about. This was one of them, and I'm glad it was. Going through the first eight rooms every time I wanted to reach the ninth would be miserable, even if I have already opened their exits.



Take two on room #9 starts off better than take one, but I soon discover a false floor leading back to the Land of Hell. Is it still the one below room #3?



Yep. I warp out again and return to room #9.



This time I manage to avoid the hole in the floor and reach the upper dais, opening the left wall to allow me to reach the next room. There's not actually a path to the left wall yet, though, so I still need to reach the other one. Besides it being less work for me to just do a big long GIF rather than multiple small ones or screenshots, I've gone with a long GIF for this so you can watch the behaviour of the two red enemies at the lower right - they don't walk the full lengths of their platforms because they're avoiding the false floors.



I struggle a bit. At least it's not a long walk back (relatively speaking) from the Guidance Gate altar to here.



Eventually, I get it. A ladder appears to allow me access to the room's exit, but I misjudge the location of the false floor and fall down again. <Sigh>

I come back yet again, and this time make it to the new ladder and from there to room #10. Having run out of single glyphs, for this room there's one at the upper left and zero at the upper right. The "puzzle" here requires me to defeat another bat and a retread of the wind dragon from the Dimensional Corridor.



It's one of the tougher Room Guards, mainly because of the whirlwind attack and its movement pattern making it hard to get to, but really a combat-only room is pretty unremarkable. I take out the dragon and the bat having suffered minimal damage and without any more trips to the Land of Hell and get an EXP overflow VIT top-up and path to the next room for my troubles. Room #11 looks similarly straightforward.



And so it proves to be. Their halo makes these guys a bit annoying to get close to, but once I do they're quickly disposed of. They do hardly any damage and drop generous EXP. I'm not complaining!



Room #12 is more combat. I bust out the Bombs, which is how I beat these guys in the Chamber of Extinction. Though I seem to have forgotten that the fire needs to be directed at their heads. I'm not sure if the assassins jumping down from the roof are infinitely spawning or not.



Once I remember where to aim, it doesn't take long.



I'm getting into the habit of entering new rooms with the Shield up after being thrown back from room #9's entryway a few times. It turns out to be unnecessary this time. After a few rooms of combat, it looks like I'm facing a puzzle here. As well as a path downwards that I presumably don't want to take. These slime enemies I think are new.



The wall block pings when struck with the whip, so I guess I'll need to break it to reach the dais. Before I can do that, though, I'm thrown down a hole.



It's the Land of Hell again! This one is different, though still annoying. Hell Temple just loves teleporting enemies. Anyway, I clear it out and take the ladder back up. Will it take me to #3 again?



Nope! I'm in #12, only one step back from where I started. That's a relief! I return to #13 and start trying my weapons against the block. None of the main weapons work. Meanwhile, the blue slimes are throwing bombs about the place. I go down below to try flares on the bricks. They don't work, although they help me clear out the slimes. Then I'm knocked in the hole by a flying eye. <Sigh>



After two more trips to the Land of Hell, I make it to the lower right corner of the room. All of the blocks I've been able to reach so far have pinged to all the weapons I try. Finally, I give Bombs a go. Will the firey conflagration I've engulfed myself in do the job?



It will! I clear a few more blocks, but then get caught by enemy fire and fall below once more. <Sigh>



On my return I play a bit more cautiously, taking out the upper jelly with flares before breaking the bricks. I make it to the dais and open a path through the wall on the right. Unfortunately, I need to break more bricks to actually reach the path, and I've run out of Bombs again. <Sigh>



I warp to the Tower of Ruin and visit my supplier to buy all the Bombs I can afford. After two more trips to the Land of Hell I make it to the block at the lower right and blow it open. At least the gap in the wall remains without my having to weight the dais again.



Room #14 offers a bit of respite from the trials suffered so far. There's even a shop! Could have used that one screen ago. There are also two potential paths to take: upwards and rightwards. Judging by the path I've taken, I suspect the ladder leads back to the entrance. Perhaps taking it up there will open a shortcut back to this room? That would be nice.



Doesn't seem to be so, though. I'm back at the entrance, but there's no sign of a ladder or hole back down. I come very close to quitting the game here and now.



I remember just in time that I haven't saved, and warp back to town to take care of that. Even though it would be easier now that I know what to do, it would probably still take me quite a while to repeat all the stuff I've just done.

And that's it for today! I was (foolishly) hoping to get all of Hell Temple done in one update, so that I could end on update #50, but this will be a monumental post if I do that. This is about an hour and a half of play. It's been frustrating, but actually more fun than I expected. I listened to podcasts while playing to give my brain something to do during each setback, and the eventual clearing of the more irritating rooms was quite satisfying. Presumably it's only going to get worse, but I'm coming to think this might be manageable.

Map:

Hell Temple:



To-Do:

Hell Temple:
-Reach the end of Hell Temple or give up on it

I remember watching DeceasedCrab play through part of this long, long ago. I'm not a DeceasedCrab fan, nor did I watch the rest of his LP or anything else of his, so I don't know why I watched this, but I did, and it's hard to exaggerate how annoying the hell rooms are.

I'm not sure if he thought to warp out of those rooms where applicable, though.

I don’t know if I’ll be doing any more warping out of those rooms, myself. The further in to Hell Temple I get, the worse the recovery would have to be before it became quicker to go all the way back to the entrance.

Part of the problem with Hell Temple is that it's not actually difficult in the same way the rest of the game has been. Everything else has either been about deduction using clues, or difficult battles. The Lands of Hell pose no real challenge and keep you constantly healed, but they do waste your time, and most of the puzzle rooms are halfway between trial-and-error and obnoxious execution, where failure is not a traditional GAME OVER so much as it is just wasting even more of your time as you scramble back to the point where you can attempt it once more.

And without that GAME OVER screen to really remind you how long you've been playing and that you might need to take a break, the time spent on all of these attempts can REALLY wear you down.

Welcome back to Let's Play La-Mulana. As is becoming my habit, I start today by running around to get more Bombs and other subweapons. After about eight minutes of this, I head for Hell Temple. After about four or five minutes and only two trips to the Land of Hell I've made it back to room #14, the farthest point reached last time. Before moving on, let's check the lava pits in case there's anything hiding there:



Oh, Hell Temple. You scamp.



After just one more trip downstairs, I decide not to investigate the lava any further and instead head for room #15. Looks like a block puzzle!



Weighting the uppermost dais causes a platform to disappear and he big blocks on it to fall.



The lower left dais takes away another platform, but the blocks on it remain aloft. Odd.



The next one disappears another platform and drops a block further, obscuring another dais in the process.



I push a small block to allow me to reach another dais, which disappears another platform but otherwise does nothing. I'm obviously missing something here.



I leave and come back to try doing it in a different order. The first two daises I try remove their platforms and make no other difference.



Changing the order makes no difference whatsoever. Once I've weighted the four daises, everything is in the same place as the first time.



I start trying to break the big blocks, and this one goes. Lemeza gets a thump on the head for his troubles, but it makes no apparent difference to the state of the puzzle beyond revealing a few more daises that I can't reach. None of the other blocks seem to be breakable.



I reset the room and try breaking the block first. It seems unlikely I'll find a way to reach the upper left dais like this.



This time I do the top dais first, then break the block. This allows me to push the small block down from the top platform, but once I do the other daises I'm no closer to solving the puzzle. If I could get that small block across the gap between big blocks I'd be able to weigh the daises on the left...



This was never going to work.



Each of these screenshots is another failed attempt. I've been at this for about ten minutes at this point, and let's face it: I've already looked at several spoilers to get this far. What difference will another make? I go to the wiki to find their solution. It's a link to an image file. The link seems to be broken. Looks like I'm on my own.



After a few more failed attempts I hit upon an idea while pushing this block to the right. What if I pushed it to the left instead?



A-ha! This is the key insight for this puzzle. Odd how the blocks fall through each other, though.



I'm able to reach a new dais. It causes another small block to appear up top, though it's trapped in the bigger block. I probably need to weight the now-unreachable upper left dais to lower the upper right blocks before doing this.



I weight the upper left dais, then the lower left, then push the block over and break the big block. I can now reach two daises I couldn't before.



The upper one removes a platform at the bottom right, dropping a big block and allowing me to move the small block next to it to the left if I want to.



The middle left one again summons a block, this time not inside another block.

The remaining two daises don't get me any closer to solving this thing, but I feel like I've made progress. Still, the number of actions in this puzzle is growing - it's getting hard to remember which dais does what.



I start my next attempt in the same way, but this time instead of pushing the lower right block all the way down I leave it here. Let's see what happens when I remove the platform above it:



Ah. No immediate difference. I wanted to have the block fall onto the little block, but I need to remove the other platform first, which requires a block on the ground level so I can reach the dais there.



I push the little block down and replace it with the summoned one, then get rid of the platform. It works! I can now reach another dais. Let's see what it does:



Huh. Looks like it doesn't do anything. I guess I need to find a way to get a weight on the other dais, too.



I try pushing the block under load at the lower left. It moves freely, but doesn't improve my current situation any. Still, if I can remember which piece of the puzzle does what and what order I need to go in, I'm all set to solve this thing now:



The key word in that last sentence of course being "if".



Step one: weight upper left dais to drop the two blocks on the right.



Step two: break the big block on the left to drop the two blocks above it.



Step three: push the little block down twice.



Step four: think about it for a while.



Step five: screw it up.



Step six: repeat steps one-three, then push the lower block to the left.



Step seven: weight the lower left dais to drop the left blocks further.



Step eight: weight the middle left dais to summon small block.



Step nine: weight the middle bottom dais to drop upper right block.



Step ten: push the summoned block left into gap.



Step eleven: weight upper middle dais to drop lower right block.



Step twelve: push right side small block underneath big block.



Step thirteen: weight middle dais to summon another block.

Step fourteen: push lower right small block all the way down and replace it with new summoned block (my plan had been to push the leftmost small block down to the bottom and across to the right, but this is probably the intended solution).



Step fifteen: weight lower right dais to drop block revealing last dais.



Step sixteen: weight middle right dais to open path to next room. Whew! Even once you take out steps four and five, that's a fourteen step puzzle. I've been in this one room for about half an hour now. I'm glad it's over, and also that I solved it for myself after trying and failing to give up on it.



I move on to room #16. It looks moderately challenging: I've got to navigate these gaps while avoiding fire from the red turtle and contact with the flying eyes.



Also this. Spikes from above and below.



I start by taking out one of the eyes. These things, and their bat equivalents, are more a test of patience than anything else. Do I want to sit around forever waiting for them to come into range, or would I prefer to risk having one come at me when I'm not in a good position to react and potentially be thrown to the room below?



I decide to take my chances with the second eye, which is mostly sticking to the other side of the screen. I go over slowly, waiting for the spikes to recede. The fireballs are no danger so long as I keep the shield up and don't turn my back. The biggest risk is that the eye might approach me from behind, forcing me to take a hit from one direction or the other, but it doesn't happen. I make it over and take out the enemies without falling down.



Room #17 is a maze of one-way doors. But not much of one - there's nowhere for me to go in the last image. Both of the doors on Lemeza's level can only be opened from the other side. I could go through the middle door in the top row, but I'd wind up trapped between it and the next one.



For once a false floor works in my favour. I'm able to reach the next level. There are still doors going the wrong way between me and the left side of the screen, but it seems likely there'll be another hole to fall through for that.



I hit up the pots on the right for some Spears, then head back through the hole to where I was.



As expected, there's another hole at the upper left that lets me reach the dais. Putting a weight on it reveals a ladder leading downwards.



Looks like another avoid-flying-eyes-while-jumping-between-small-platforms type situation. These are always tricky.



Aw cripes. As I reach the first platform the lights go out.



Going back up brings them back, but only until I step off the ladder again.



Calling on the can-do attitude that's gotten me this far, and a vague idea that there are some platforms beneath the starting one, I take a shot. Predictably, it fails and I wind up in the Land of Hell again. Looks like a new one. Are those holes at the ground level?



Yep! This is a double decker Land of Hell, taking me back to the second LoH. Ugh.



The lower Land of Hell leads back to the room where I fought Ox-Head and Horse-Face. That's a long way back! Fortunately, the block puzzle remains solved. Five minutes after falling from the dark room, I'm back (I had a few more trips to the Land of Hell on the way). Let's try this again:



I manage to clear the room of eyes, which isn't bad considering the situation, I think, but then I fail to navigate and wind up back in the Land.



Despite falling down to the lower Land again, this time it only takes me two minutes to get back to room #18. I stop on the ladder, throw Throwing Knives at the bats until they're all gone, and then take a photo of the screen using my phone.



I move around the room slowly and carefully using the photo as a reference, dropping weights as I go. It takes almost a full minute, but I get them all without falling down and the room lights up as the bottom left exit opens.

Making the jump is a tense moment. I don't want to fall down again. Fortunately, I don't.



Room #19 is more combat. I've still got Throwing Knives equipped from taking out the eyes in the previous room, so I use 'em on the faceless Hsing-t'ien. Curiously, the exit opens once I take out the Room Guards even though there's a regular enemy still alive. I wonder if that matters? This long GIF also shows what makes those weasels particularly annoying - their projectiles hang around forever.



The next room is another combat situation, again with an annoying teleporting enemy. There are two things that make it notable: an honest-to-goodness clue, and that the glyphs here tell me this is room #28. That's a bit of a jump from the previous room, #19.



I try going to sleep, like the stele says, but nothing happens, so I move on. The next room is #22, also a seemingly out of sequence number, and it appears to be a dead end. I try napping here, too, to no effect. Maybe there's an invisible bridge or a teleport point or something that will get me across this?



If there is, then I have failed to find it. I could try jumping in various arcs looking for something, but if I'm going to a Land of Hell in between each attempt that's going to take a long time.



I manage to clear this room without falling down this time thanks to a lot of Throwing Knives. That's not going to be sustainable if I wind up down here as often as I have the other Lands, though. The ladder up takes me back to what used to be the dark room, #18. That's much less of a setback than returning to #12 from the lower Land.



I pretty much immediately get knocked back down. I manage to clear the room with the whip instead of the Knives, but then fall down again. At this point I'm running out of time before I have to go to work, so I head back to town, save my progress, and then quit.



Almost immediately I realise that the "Sleep within three lands" clue must refer to the three "Land of Hell" rooms I've encountered, so when I get home from work I fire up the game for another look. After running around to stock up on sub-weapons, I return to Hell Temple. In room #16 I find something I didn't last time:



A new path to this Land of Hell. <Sigh>



Almost ten minutes later, having fallen to the land of hell five more times, I make it back to room #19. But something has changed: that fairy spark was not here last time.



I summon the key fairy, but it doesn't seem to take an interest in anything in this room.



Or the next one.



Or in the hole.



After a while I take the plunge again. I figure if there's a teleport or invisible platform here, it's probably either at the end of a long jump (which I tried last time I was here), or just over the edge. But nope: it's back to the Land of Hell.



Which is ok, because I need a nap anyway. This attempt to sleep in the land has no apparent effect.



I head downstairs for another snooze. If this is achieving anything, it's not obvious.



I return to the first Land (I left it for last because it's such a pain to get out of - if I have to warp to get out, I want the puzzle fully solved first in case it resets). I go to sleep and again nothing happens. I was really sure I was on to the right idea here, too.



I hike all the way back to room #28, but nothing has changed. #22 is the same as well. I resummon the key fairy and try taking it to #18, but it doesn't seem to find anything.



Frustrated, I warp back to town and save. Obviously I'm doing something wrong, but what?

Map:




Clues:

"Sleep within three lands"

To-Do:
-Reach the end of Hell Temple or give up on it

Maybe use software combos to force different fairy spawns?

What exactly constitutes a "land" for that puzzle, anyway?