Asylum of Irony
Asylum of Irony is SageMatthis's submission in Ragefest Five. It is a hack of Blazing Sword.
This submission has been disqualified for being one of the most cryptic, tedious, glitchy submissions ever devised. Oh, and it also exploited a rules loophole to add a fourth map. However it still warrants a walkthrough so you get a feel for how hilariously bad it all is, and it is BAD. While it makes use of the engine in a few unique ways, the puzzles are too cryptic and require lots of trial-and-error to work through them, especially when things don't work out the way the creator wants them to. Markyjoe1990 actually had to look at the source code for the chapters for crying out loud. By all means, however, play it with a guide. You'll get a good laugh or two.
Walkthrough
Chapter 1
Start by waiting on the chest. We won't say why, just do it. Then talk to the cracked wall to open the door. Here's how the chapter works: The player must complete a chain of trades, but on turn ten, guards swarm the area. If the player does not talk to the Knight to close the door while they're out, the player will be killed instantly. Talking to the Knight to close the door resets the turn count, and this must be done at the first opportunity to have enough time to trade the first item. So, first talk to the Thief to open up a path for later. Then, talk to the characters in the following order, heading back to the Knight as necessary: the Shaman, the Pirate, the Brigand, the Myrmidon, and finally, the Archer. Finally, wait in the bottom-right corner of the hallway to get to the room with the door. Unlock it and go.
Chapter 2
The first thing to do is get the Knight and Myrmidon into positions where they won't die on the following turn. Move the Knight to the right of the chests. Move the Myrmidon all the way south, use the Boots to get a second move, and move one tile right. Now you need to find invisible items. Move the Knight one tile right, three tiles down. If he doesn't get the key, move the Myrmidon there instead. Now unlock the door. The Knights here can't hurt you unless they have a weapon triangle advantage, so don't worry about them. The row of thrones to the right has some weapons for you; the Lighter Brand is on the second throne from the right, and three tiles to the right of that is a Steel Lance. The Knight and Myrmidon can Support each other, and the bonus pushes the Myrmidon's damage high enough to kill four Knights that drop Longswords in a single hit. You need all of them to kill all the Cavaliers later, and the Lighter Brand only has four hits on it.
The Cavaliers are painful to deal with. The ones that don't have Heavy Spears can be lured in with the Knight, where the Longsword (again, with the support bonus) takes them down in one hit. Clear a path to the pillar on the left. If your Knight moves onto the tile two spaces right of the left-most pillar, a Thief joins you, and he has a Lockpick along with a weapon that grants +81 Speed to its wielder, BUT it has the Devil Reversal effect. Still, since it guarantees dodges, it's good for pulling in ranged attackers and allows the Knight to steal from anyone - oh, did we mention it's the KNIGHT that steals, and NOT the Thief?! Oh, and if you're wondering how to heal any injuries, the only way to do that is to move ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE THRONES AND WAIT SEVERAL TURNS TO HEAL.
So. With the Cavaliers out of the picture, you need to kill the Wyverns. Unlock the door to spawn a Fighter who will join you if you pay him 309 gold. To get gold, sell something to the invisible shop on the third pillar from the right in the bottom row. As for how to get that money, well, if you have a spare Longsword, sell that and the Steel Lance. If you used up all the Longswords (entirely possible if you're not killing them all in one hit due to stat variance) then you can sequence break the chapter. See, normally you're supposed to kill the Wyverns with the Fighter's Dragon Axe, but equipping the Knight with the sword (yeah yeah I know, I don't know why it works either) that gives +81 Speed lets him kill a Wyvern in four to five hits. Then you can have anyone wait on the second pillar from the right in the top row, which triggers an event that offers a choice between an Energy Ring, a Dragonshield, or a Speedwing.
Regular enemies spawn after recruiting the Fighter. As you approach the boss, a girl appears holding several items the Knight can steal, including a Member Card, an Elixir, and a Goddess Icon (which you could also sell.) The Fortify can't be stolen, we don't know why it's there. The boss is entirely unkillable unless you steal his Mine (don't worry, he doesn't initiate combat himself) and then take it ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE KNIGHTS AT THE START OF THE MAP and trigger the Mine Glitch (reset during the animation of them running over the Mine) to gain control of the boss and move him out of the way. Then you can unlock the door, Seize the staircase, and proceed on your merry adventure through this madness.
Chapter 3
This...this is actually a pretty normal chapter. Kill enemies, get chests, wait on the right-most column of forts to proceed. The poison traps are pretty obvious to spot. What's not obvious is that there are several tiles where characters join you if you wait on them. And they're not marked in ANY way. One of them is in front of a poison trap! Here's the coordinates, unless the map gets uploaded at some point:
- 8, 6 - An Archer joins you
- 5, 20 - A Nomad joins you
- 6, 33 - A Shaman joins you
- 28, 5 - A Pegasus Knight joins you
- 29, 19 - A Pirate joins you
- 21, 24 - A Wyvern Knight joins you
So when you make it to the forts...
Chapter 4
...Yeah. Now all you have to do is kill the boss. First get rid of the regular enemies. Then kill the Snipers above the boss (if you run out of items, the only way to heal is with the forts). Then attack the boss once with anyone but Marc. This triggers an event where Marc promotes but goes insane. Reisen appears and will head towards Marc, so your party must protect her until she gets there. Once she does, killing the boss is trivial. Submission over.
