Overview
A detailed Deadly Decadence guide provided with a map containing shards and secrets. In here, I’ll give you some tips on how to complete this level more efficiently and maybe even score S rank.
Basics
This level consists of two zones: the hedge maze (50 shards) and the manor (304 shards).
In both, your enemies are the Gold Watchers — seemingly inanimate smug golden statues. Their tactics are as follows:
- Just like the Monkeys, they always know your location.
- Gold Watchers stand still while you’re looking at their direction (even through walls). But as soon as you turn around, they start chasing you with distinctive sounds: feet rustling, giggling, gurgling, pssting, etc. And after you turn back around, they stop where they were.
- While pursuing, Gold Watchers never run faster than the player — they only accelerate just the way to almost catch you up, after all running a few steps behind you as fast as you are (this also applies to your walking speed!). Knowing that, they’ll only kill you if you suddenly stop or bump into an obstacle.
- Also like the Monkeys, they try and corner you whenever possible.
Zone 1. Layout
Here’s the map of this zone:
White lines are gates, and blue rectangles are something new: traps, namely spike pads. Here’s how they work:
1) They make a distinctive warning sound first.
2) A second later, they fire and go back down.
3) 2.5 seconds later, they make a warning sound again and the loop goes on.
Also, all spikes on the map fire simultaneously.
A secret on the right can only be taken after clearing the zone, but I don’t recommend taking it in the first place due to a bug where it is not counted in the level outcomes if you do so; we’ll get on with this later.
Zone 1. Tactics
There will be 3 Gold Watchers coming after you in this maze. Let’s see what you can do in order to beat this part.
- At the Ring Altar, buff the Teleportation rather than the Speed Boost — you’ll see why later.
- Devise a pivot route. Below is the one I’ve developed for a tabletless run, but it’s not ideal and full of tough moments. I only put it here to highlight the idea of how to construct a good route:
- Split the maze in two parts (left and right) and clear them consecutively. The motivation for doing so is that it will be easier for you to track the collected shards.
- Run over the spike pads as few as possible (ideally try and avoid or teleport over them). Also, construct your route as short as you can (e.g., rather don’t traverse same places twice).
- Devise it the easy way for yourself to memorize (at least the main points and directions). It’s always better when you know where to run than when you don’t.
- Be careful with traps. The best possible cure is to merely avoid them, but, of course, there are situations you can’t. That’s when you’ll need the Teleportation, and the further it’s able to put you, the better. Also, better DON’T challenge your fate, running over spike pads after the warning sound: it’s always easier to mistime the spikes than to time them right.
- When speed boosting and/or teleporting, be careful not to bump into the obstacles, spikes, or the Watchers themselves. It’s especially important for Teleportation: in some stacked places, you might fail to teleport where you intended to and get pierced by spikes or caught up by the Watcher.
- If the Watchers have cornered you, don’t panic. They are not the Monkeys and will never kill you in the first place unless you get close enough. Try and teleport through them, then flee.
- You may abuse the Watchers’ tactics by going behind while facing their direction when needed, but that’s what spikes here are for — you can easily get pierced where you least expect it, so don’t overuse this.
- Listen to the Watchers’ sound cues. Just like with Agatha, put your headsets on and detect from where the sounds are coming to find out the Watchers’ location and proximity.
- Unlike in my previous guides, I won’t give any specific recommendations on when to use the Reveal Shard and Stun Orb — just do it when you feel you need to, e.g. when you’re completely unsure about where the Watchers are or need to get away from them and collect the remaining shards.
Here’s my route:
Zone 2. Layout
Here’s the map of this zone:
Yet another kind of traps appears here: pendulum axes (dashed white lines). These swing quickly from left to right and might be a real (and sudden) danger if mistimed.
Two levers (green squares) by the Ring Altar (yellowish square) open the four gates in that hall (green lines). A lever a little bit above opens the two gates far above, unlocking the way to the secret.
As you can see, this is the REAL maze, but it consists of smaller chunks of different types, each can be handled separately with its own technique. That’s what we’ll discuss right away in the next part.
Zone 2. Tactics
Let’s talk through each type of rooms/hallways.
Corners
In Zone 2, these are your best friends: here, you can stand and relax after a tricky pursuit. Just remember to follow a simple tip:
- Turn around right after you entered such corner . Otherwise, you’ll lure one or two Watchers in there, which is most likely not what you’d want. However, sometimes it’s essential to do so, e.g. when surrounded by Watchers and need to rid of them anyhow.
Note: this rule also applies to all secret rooms here.
Pendulum axes
The most dangerous places in this zone. Follow some tips for maximum safety:
- Time the axes right. I use the following scheme whenever possible: wait for an ax to swing slightly right after the center, run past it and then teleport through the next ax (make sure that Teleportation circle is far ahead of the ax!). However, this is the best-case scenario, and when playing, you may end up in different dispositions, so it will be up to your practice to make it perfect.
- There are two rooms with both spikes and axes. Here, you’d better wait for the spikes to descend (if possible) and follow the similar scheme as above.
Spacious rooms
Along with the Corners, these are your best friends in this zone. They are extremely useful in the level completion scheme I’ll discuss further: you can easily lure here all of the Watchers and manipulate them the needed way. Still, remember that one of these rooms has spike pads in it — so be careful.
MegaSpikey
This is a very special room: here, you got 52 spike pads split in 4 square regions! To collect shards here, you’ll need to act fast, yet precise and prudent. The problem is you’d like to grab 4 shards at a time from a region, but you’ve only got 2.5 seconds and Watchers coming after you! And here are some ways to solve it:
- Make sure the Watchers won’t hinder you. That is, leave them somewhere far behind and/or move backwards while in the room.
- Be fast. By this, I also mean you can use Speed Boost to help you out, just refine your moves so that you won’t run over and be late for the spikes timing. In any case, this is all about 4-5 simple moves that just need to be refined via practice.
- Don’t traverse too much regions at a time. It’s dangerous, I mean it. When you turn from one side to another, you might miss a Watcher coming somewhere aside. That’s why 2 zones at a time is an optimal number.
- As you can see, not all of the squares in a region are spike pads. Some of them are just decoys and, in game, are respectively marked with a big “+” sign. It means that, if you are getting late with the spikes’ timing, you may stand still on one of these dummy pads and survive. HOWEVER, make sure you’re not standing on it partially — otherwise the adjacent spike pad will pierce you.
Other rooms and hallways
In these, just follow the general recommendations about spikes and Watchers I gave before.
Now, let’s see the route to finally beat this zone!
Zone 2. Route
Here, I’ll, again, use the example route just to highlight the main benefits it gives. You might want to devise your own, using the ideas stated here, and follow it all the way to victory.
Part 1. Outer-most hallways
The idea here is pretty straightforward: first off, clear the outer-most hallways. Also, here I make a first dive in a MegaSpikey room, taking two regions at once and fleeing to corner right after. Then, you can see I run past the down right outer-most hallways, not entering them, and that’s because I wouldn’t want to make a risky 90° turn in an axe room. Finally, I end up in the Ring Altar hall, ready to proceed further.
Part 2. Secrets
Here, I take the second secret and clean a spacious room. Then, an important moment: I unlock the secret doors with the lever I mentioned. And here comes a vital tip: NEVER pull that lever while standing on spike pads beneath it. There is a bug when you might get stuck by the lever — so the spikes pierce you. To avoid that, get ahead of the spikes, quickly turn around and pull the lever, not coming too close to the spikes (time right for a Gold Watcher not to creep up on you from behind).
After that, I go to another spacious room, lure there all of the Watchers and move backwards to the secret room (don’t forget there are two spike pads on the way!). I keep staring at the direction of that room, take the secret and walk into the MegaSpikey room. There, I quickly grab the remaining shards (still staring at the Watchers’ direction) and run into another spacious room. The Watchers must come there after me, too.
Part 3. Going Backwards
Probably one of my least favorite parts, yet somewhat the easiest. After luring the Watchers into this room, I take the depicted route, always staring at the Watchers’ direction on it until I reach the pendulum axes. Here, to not challenge my fate, I turn around to face the axes and get past them, quickly running to the Ring Altar hall afterwards.
Part 4. Finalization
I return to the room where I left the Watchers. There, I carefully go backwards (timing the spikes in a twisted hallway!) up to the pendulum axes, where I turn to them, quickly brush past and turn back around to face the Watchers which start chasing me. They are pretty far away by this time, and I keep running all the way to the spikes while facing in the Watchers’ general direction. By the spikes, I turn to them and run over, ending up in a corner. Here, I brace myself for a final big leap, wait for the spikes to descend, and run, run, run past the axes, then forth, collect the last shards, hear Bierce say, “You’ve done it! Now get the ring piece while you still can”, and: Speed Boost and Teleport to the Ring Altar hall; wait while Teleportation recharges and Malak approaches close enough; just teleport through Malak, go down the stairs, carefully walk around three Watchers guarding the Altar and take the ring piece. That’s it!
PS. You may use Reveal Shard and Stun Orb the way you want to. For me in my scheme, they don’t matter very much (except for Reveal Shard for S Rank), but for you, they might come in a great handy.
Escape Sequence
Run here if you want to collect a secret:
Just watch out for the spikes. Also be careful when going back: a Watcher will spawn on your way after the spikes, so just teleport or run past him and, when leaving that side, make sure to close the gates for him not to chase you.
After that, proceed here:
And after opening the gates, you’ll get into the final escape sequences. Look at the following image to get the idea of what to do:
In the first part, there will be Watchers guarding the garden and the gate, so you’ll need to lure them out of there by staring down for several seconds in an X-marked spot. Then, follow the path, teleport through Malak (>>), get to the gate, open it, run or teleport past another Gold Watcher, open the second gate, go downstairs, take left, stare down for several seconds again to lure the Watchers out of the portal, and carefully run past them right to the finish. And that’s it!
Have fun and good luck!
Guide brought to you by Artemis Infin