Legend of the Mantle Spelunk PART 12 PART 2: Mageless run walkthrough

Welcome back to the HELL DIVER'S VIDEOGAME SPELUNKINGS! Sorry it took me so long to post the follow up to my Legend of the Mantle's secret door blog; LIFE happened (I'm ok, at least alive, right?) BUT I'M BACK and I do, have a guide through this mystery...

To start this Mageless run (let's call it that from now on) you don’t have to NEVER recruit Freya in fact, you can still have her in your party up until the forest dungeon. (Not like you can traverse that dungeon without her anyways). Before reaching the castle to fight the Duke, there is a forest maze in which Seldanor shows the party where to go. And after a cutscene, all your companions rush towards the castle. But if you keep walking between the last maze room and the castle's entrance room, randomly, you will end up in an inbetween room that looks like this:

This is the first secret tree room out of 3 you need to find in the next dungeons to unlock the Mageless run! Have you ever seen a room like that? CHANCES ARE, NO YOU HAVEN'T!!! I'M THE FIRST ONE TO FIND THIS! (yes I did search online and no, no one has ANY IDEA this exists. They called me mad...)

The second tree room is between the Ocean Cave store and the ship bay before the battle against the Ocean Prince (again, walk between both rooms and you will get there eventually).

And the third room is between the Town's Plaza (after the first brawl) and the Dark Alleyway where you find Danse (Danse will be super important next so remember to find the tree room FIRST and talk to Danse SECOND, ok?)

In every tree room you must have found a “Broken Potion” which is just a Health Potion with a purple hue. It cures the same but leaves a weird purple filter on the screen. DON'T USE IT EVER BECAUSE YOU NEED THE 3 OF THEM! And they will NOT spawn in the tree rooms again (because you can only find them once too). Every dungeon is super short so I trust you won’t need to... (I trust). After you get the 3 of them, bring them over to Danse and you will notice he has a new dialogue option on his conversation menu:

Ask him about the key and he will get nervous, but if you push him enough he will give it to you for free, and a jingle will play (that's how you know you're in the right path)

After this, you can have a conversation with Freya about the Frost Castle; be sure to upset her with every dialogue choice until she decides to leave the party. The jingle from before will sound again; you have secured the path now.

NOW not only do you have the key to the “bunker” (the secret maze door) you also dismissed Freya before the Frost Castle. So proceed as you would usually (unfortunately, the enemies in the Frost Castle's dungeon WILL become ridiculously harder to beat without Freya, but you can keep asking Danse for potions since he is now scared of you, so it won't be as hard) and you will finally reach the maze). To lock the game from restarting you at the beginning of the maze, you have to go to the LEFT of the maze repeatedly for roughly 100 times or until you hear the jingle again. Once you hear it, try to come back where the maze starts; you will notice you can't go back to the previous room: YOU'RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK! The first time I got locked in the maze until I found the door the game really seemed the same and it took me like 4 hours to get there, but with the secret rooms and key, you will notice the Frost Castle’s music is waaay slower and you get to the door way easier. Here is the path you have to follow until you get there; start after you hear the jingle:

And there it is. The door to the “Bunker” right in front of you. At first I wondered “could this be related to the Riddling Cat????” As if I could fall for the “Riddling Cat is the true villain on Mantle” schtick. Unfortunately, it is NOT.

AS A MATTER OF FACT! THERE WAS NOTHING! WHAT THE HELL??? AN EMPTY ROOM???? LIKE I SAW IN THE GAME FILES??? LIKE, NOT EVEN THE (HERO CHARACTER) SPRITE WAS VISIBLE!!!! SO WHAT WAS ALL THAT ABOUT THE BROKEN POTIONS AND WEIRD JINGLES?? FRICK, I WAS SO MAD! ALL THAT EFFORT… for... nothing...

*Sighhhh* so you might be wondering “Hell Diver, if it leads to nothing, why are you posting it anyways?” Well nosy reader, I STILL BELIEVE there is something there. There is just NO WAY the game devs are going to give you ALL these details and secrets without a reason for it. Is it new armor? Maybe a weapon? A never before seen Danse variant? And why is it called a “bunker” despite the fact the door just looks like a regular castle door with its colors inverted?

Well... this is where YOU nosy readers come in. If you follow these steps while playing Mantle and find something I don't, PLEASE PLEASE write it in my guestbook because I NEED TO KNOW! (these past days school has been taking away ALL of my free time, ugh, and I can't play).

I will return with an answer for this impossible secret, and if I don't, THE GAME SUCKED ME INSIDE IT AND I'M TRAPPED INSIDE THE BUNKER DOOR!!!! (it's a joke Bonnie, please don't call 100 times to my house asking for me AGAIN, I will be fine).

EDIT:

I KNOW IT'S BEEN MORE THAN A YEAR I'M SO SORRY!!!! I got.. engaged… (jk, me and Bonnie are just dating but… I KNOW we will get married in a coffin under the full moon one day… sighhh) ANYWAYS! This blog got kind of locked out and I can't update on it anymore, but for those still curious, HERE'S THE LINK TO THE FINAL PART OF THE MAGELESS RUN! Also, I jump straight into it so uhhh, just so you know there is a new guestbook at the bottom aaaaand I go STRICTLY by she/they pronouns now; you may still call me the Hell Diver though, FANGS!!! (that means “thanks” in vampire lingo haha, ok see you there~).