Quesada's Swan

Part 1 | Part 2

I'm back, and it's the 50th part of my playthrough of Alundra! I didn't expect the game to be this long!

I now do some more treasure hunting around the map again!

I can also use a charge attack with the Fire Wand too!

After lifting a stone, I'm now inside the wall in the area north of the Fire Manor area.

I head to the left fork, where a Mimic awaits at the end! I burn the bed of thorns on the right fork, heading downstairs.

There's lots of Mimics in this cave!

The good thing about these monsters is that they drop more money whenever I hit them, ranging from 1 - 30 gilders per hit!

I get some herbs in a chest!

Now I'm at the bottom of the cavern, where there are fancy blue vases, and more treasure!

The left chest is a Mimic, the right has a Magic Elixyr, and the center chest has a Life Vessel!!!

My health is now maxed up to 31!!!

I use the Spring Bean on the pots to bounce back up, but not before collecting a Gilded Falcon!

Here's the map for that cave, and the area north of the Fire Manor.

Here are the treasures I've collected so far:
--A Gilded Falcon near the waterfall around the Coal Mine area
--A Strength Elixyr on a high cliff in the Mt. Torla area

I look through the guide (thank you again, to whoever wrote it!) and find out that a stray bed of thorns was covering up a hidden path eastward in the Mt. Torla area.

After going through lots of greenery through that path, I jump down to a temple surrounded by trees where a thornbed is covering an entrance. I burn off the thorns and head in.

---

It's the Ice Manor, and the devious sliding ice pillars from Kline's Dream make their return!

I check the room...there are three switches and six pillars total, and the switches need to be pressed at the same time.

Make that five switches, as I push the two middle pillars standing on them out of the way.

Out of my own silly need to prove myself, I dive into this puzzle without reading the guide.

I approach this puzzle like I would a chess game...hmmm...

After getting nowhere with this puzzle, I head out and save in the portal chamber and I stop the game...

At least three hours later, using my chess set as a simulator for this puzzle, I think I seem to have this puzzle down.

Honestly, this is one of the hardest puzzles I've ever faced so far! It takes me 11 careful moves to have the pillars press all four switches, and me pressing the fifth one to open the door forward.

I'm now in a room with four short flights of stairs and three passages at the top.

I take the left one, activating the turn lever right, but the lever does not want to move.

I go to the right passage, same problem.

After a little back and forth, I use the sword instead of the flail and the switch responds.

In the middle passage, there are four iron gates. After moving the switch right, the second and fourth gates open.

I manage to turn the left lever south and the right lever west to open all the gates.

Frack, more ice pillars! I head back and save again to think over this one more!

There are six ice pillars like the first one, but there is a short ledge that is in between the bottom row of pillars.

On a high ledge in the north end is a treasure chest. If I solve this puzzle, I'll get it. But that's one big "if" since this is so difficult!

I go back to that room, and have a few tries at it to know how to make sure I reach the ledge and grab what's in the chest.

Thank goodness the puzzles in the manor stay solved!

After a while, I stop the game to figure out how to solve this puzzle...