There’s a lot of intel and resources for Alwa’s Awakening floating around in the community, so the aim of this guide is to bring everything together in one place to enable all players easy access to a walkthrough, complete achievement guide, secrets, and annotated map resources.

In places I have linked to and/or built on the work of others – these instances are clearly labelled and huge thanks and recognition goes to the original authors.

Warning: Spoilers ahead! I’ll make modest use of spoiler tags but you have been warned.

These achievements are unmissable in a normal playthrough. The bosses can be frustrating at first but they all have a pattern. I highly recommend turning on Quick Respawn from the Assist menu for a less-frustrating trial-and-error experience. If you’re still struggling, there’s another guide here on Steam with some more tips.

Just Like Dana
Discover the potential of the magic staff
From your starting position in Forsaken Valley at the very beginning of the game, enter the castle and climb several screens up to obtain the Magic Staff and enable your basic attack.

Vicious Keeper
Defeat Vicious Keeper
Typically the 1st boss, fought in the Amber Sacellum. Fairly straight forward; takes 3x damage to the Lightning magic

Sea Monk
Defeat Sea Monk
Typically the 2nd boss, fought in the Shrine Of Sea Monk. Hide behind a Block when he fires off his projectiles, and use a Bubble to reach higher ground when he summons the water spouts. He stands still a long time so you can get plenty of hits in (especially if you sacrifice a HP or two)

Crimson Guardian
Defeat the Crimson Guardian
Typically the 3rd boss, fought in the Void Tower. Stay on the top platform, summon a Block to absorb the small shots and spam Lightning whenever possible. You can dodge the cluster projectiles with some skillful strafe jumping without leaving the platform. Remember to duck when he flies overhead.

The Beholder
Defeat The Beholder
Typically the 4th boss, fought in the Amethyst Passage after obtaining the Eye Of The Beholder from Solstice Mountain. A Block on the left-most platform will protect from the volley from the top eye. Always kill the left Bat as soon as it spawns, then use a Bubble to quickly get off a Lightning at the top eye – whilst tricky, this is the more reliable hit. After this, retreat back near the door on the left and crouch to avoid the volley. A second Lightning should kill the remaining two bats and hopefully hit the second eye, but it’s quite hard to pull off… aim to skim the top of the left platform. Too low and you’ll cancel out his projectile, too high and you’ll miss altogether.

It can take a while, but once you get this technique down it’s only a matter of time.

Alwa's Awakening
Complete the game
Defeat Vicar in the Altar Of Echoes. Actually one of the easiest bosses in the game – hang around on the very edge of the death pit, then Lightning when he spawns either left or right, and dodge if he spawns in either upper position.

Once defeated, head right and wait for the warp to activate, then press down on the altar.

Missable achievements that require more hunting around than required for basic progression. I will reference map areas / coordinates throughout this section – you can use these alongside the Full Map further down to get your bearings and choose your route.

A Helping Hand
Rescue someone who needs your help
There’s a prisoner in a room behind the door in the Shrine Of Sea Monk 33, 11. This can initially only be accessed via the Stone Cellar – when you first enter from 32, 15 and reach the fork beneath 7 destructible blocks (see below), take the right-hand route and follow the linear path straight up and back to Shine Of Sea Monk.



Freeing the prisoner is optional but if you do, he’ll show up before any boss you haven’t yet defeated to gives hints.

In The Mouth Of Madness
Find the book of Sutter
Located in the Underground Chamber 22, 12, but to obtain you must start in 17, 12 shown below, which you can access either from the Sacellum Depths entrance, or the Central Alwa entrance if you already have the Lightning magic. You will also need the upgraded Block and at least the first Bubble.



The book doubles the damage of your normal attacks. Its existence is hinted at by the chap in the room between the waterfall in Forsaken Valley 6, 11, and visiting him after obtaining it will reward you with an Orb and the third part of the word (‘vold’ – see 'The Secret Word' section below for more info)

Serious Collector
Gather all the blue orbs
There are 99 Orbs in total, and the final orb level is unlocked by the very last one. The in-game map shows you how many you have remaining in each area – use this information combined with the annotated in-game map below by SHINCHAN (original post without axes) to locate which ones you’re missing, then use the full screenshot map in the Full Map section below to determine exactly how to get them.


If you’re stuck, there’s also another guide by Evil Mr Henry with some help on some of the less obvious ones, or alternatively feel free to ask in the Comments 😊

What Lies Beneath
Find the hidden tomb
Unlocks when you enter the Tomb of Closkey, which is accessed by interacting with the right-most tombstone in the Lost Cemetery 35, 8, at the furthest east point of the world. You will need the Eye Of The Beholder to reach this area.

Sidenote: using the tombstone acts as a save/load checkpoint.

Missing Pieces
Find all the pieces of the broken tablet
There are 4 in total, and all of them require the Eye Of The Beholder to reach. They are marked on the map by SHINCHAN above – from west to east once you have the Eye:

1. Forsaken Valley in 4, 9 – the chasm is now bridged
   
2. Sacellum Depths in 13, 16 – a door appears in the room behind the girl overlooking the very tall central room
   
3. Stone Cellar in 25, 15 – the unreachable door is now reachable
   
4. Tomb of Closkey (see above on how to reach) – follow this mini area to its conclusion and leave by the same method you came in

When you have on all 4, a ‘secret ending’ can be viewed by waiting for 3 minutes on the end-game screen after the credits.

As Cool As Bell
Find all the items
To unlock you need the following:

• All 5 Magic items/upgrades (the Lightning does not have an upgrade)
  
• The Ornaments from beating all 4 bosses
  
• The Book Of Sutter, Eye Of The Beholder, Flask and Copper Coin. Only the Book Of Sutter is missable and is covered above, as the others are required for progression
  
• All 4 Tablet pieces, covered above

Note you do not need the Useless Stone (see Secrets... section below) for this achievement, otherwise I guess it would have a use after all…

These achievements will require a couple of dedicated runs due to specific requirements that make them unobtainable on a 'normal' run.

Go Your Own Way
Defeat Crimson Guardian before any other bosses
Do this on your second run once you’re familiar with the world and the mechanics. Can be paired nicely with In A Hurry – see below for explanation.

In A Hurry
Defeat Vicious Keeper in less than 10 seconds
Easier than it sounds – the Vicious Keeper has 6 HP, but is weak to Lightning from which he takes 3 damage per hit. Therefore, all we need is 35 Orbs for orb level 3 (which is easy enough given we’re killing the Crimson Guardian first per Go Your Own Way) and a single shot of Lightning to finish him off:

1. Get the Magic Staff as usual, tag the checkpoint next to the warp in Forsaken Valley and head to the Town of Westwood to talk to the old man and collect the Map
   
   
2. Go to the Amber Sacellum and proceed straight to the Block item. You can either not tag any checkpoints inside Amber Sacellum so you can save & quit to restart back up in Forsaken Valley, or go all the way west once climbing back up to the room with two spike pits and two skeletons.
   
   
3. Head to Shrine Of Sea Monk, collecting all available Orbs in Central Alwa along the way.
   
   
4. Progress normally to get the Bubble item
   
   
5. Once you have the Bubble, go left one room and up one room until you reach the room below. Use the block & bubble together to reach the left-hand ladder, through the Stone Cellar briefly until you get to the warp in Underground Chamber. Warp back to Forsaken Valley.
   
   
   
   
6. Climb up to Void Tower, and again progress normally until you reach the Crimson Guardian, who can be defeated as easily as usual via the normal method despite you potentially having a slightly lower orb level than usual
   
   
7. Plain sailing from here – collect any more Orbs required to get you to a total of 35 as you head back to the Vicious Keeper and snuff him in 10 seconds flat 😊

Got To Go Fast
Finish the game in less than 120 minutes and with less than 5 deaths
The hardest achievement in the game by far, requiring a maximum of 4 deaths, and all but mandating at least some use of speed-running techniques and creative checkpoint saving & loading.

General tips:

• If you haven’t already, turn all Assist Mode options on
  
• Use your tip toes… by which I mean, the controls for this game are extremely tight, and you can walk right up to the edge of a platform to your very last pixel before needing to jump. Same applies for creating/pushing blocks and bubbles. Once you get a feel for this, you’ll be surprised how many jumps you can make without needing blocks.
  
• Practice casting magic on the fly. Mid-air lightning shots are time savers (and close-up air shots are the optimum strategy for the flying cloaked enemies in Altar Of Echoes), whilst nimble block/bubble making is critical for speed running techniques

I highly recommend the video below by Leon Kennedy, which I followed myself to get the achievement. In summary, he covers:

• The high-level map route
  
• Wall Jump – stand with your back to a wall; press Jump then simultaneously press Back + Attack, then press Jump again
  
• Double Block – create a block and stand on it. Press Jump and then towards the top of your jump, create another block and immediately mash Jump to try to jump off it again
  
• Double Bubble – create a bubble and stand on it. Press Jump and as soon as you do, create another bubble and hold forward to get on top of it

Check out my comment on the video with time stamps and other tips… good luck! 😊

• Arrows/Letters denote the warp destinations for Doors
  
• Two Doors are hidden behind waterfalls – these are shown and ringed in red
  
• Blocks with an Eye can only be seen with the Eye Of The Beholder item, obtained from Solstice Mountain. There are also two Doors that are only visible with the Eye – I’ve ringed these in purple and put a symbol of the Eye next to the them
  
• Fake (pass-thru) walls are highlighted in green
  
• Four torches in Void Tower must be lit using the Lightning magic in order to activate the portal to the boss – these are ringed in yellow
  
• An Easter Egg is activated to the far right in Lost Cemetery – more details below

[click here to download full size image][drive.google.com]

Credit and thanks also go to duckfist for creating the basis of the screenshot map, shared in this Twitter post.

Altar Of Echoes shortcuts
There are two shortcuts available in Alter Of Echoes (30, 7 and 31, 3 via a secret passage from below), each requiring that you hold back 3 keys to unlock 3 doors in a row. However, since there are exactly enough keys in the game to unlock every door excluding these six, to make use of the shortcuts you must save some keys back. This is done either by forgoing Orbs, or by some clever route manipulation / sequence breaking (possibly with use of speed-running techniques mentioned in the ‘Achievements – Special Requirement’ section).

Whilst this is a nice idea in theory, and the Altar Of Echoes certainly is challenging, in practice the time, effort and opportunity cost of holding back 6 keys far outweighs the benefit. I never used these shortcuts, and I don’t suggest that you do either (except maybe for the intrinsic challenge of doing so!)



Useless Stone
Located in Darkmoon Village 21, 1 at the very top & centre of the world map (ringed in cyan on the Full Map above). Walk into it to activate, and find that it does nothing.

Houlihan Warp
Cryptically hinted at by the cat in the Town of Westwood, which says “Do not look too long at the light” … Directions are marked on Full Map, or follow as below:

1. Obtain the Lightning and Eye Of The Beholder, then go to the far east in Lost Cemetery
   
2. Stand directly beneath the lantern on the wall, select the Lightning magic and hold up
   
3. After a few seconds you’ll hear a sound and the light will turn blue
   
4. Go to any warp room and go to the Houlihan Warp

The word is in 3 parts and is referenced several times by NPCs & objects in the game… the first and third part are straight forward enough, but the second is quite obscure:

1. BAG – on the 2nd tombstone from the right in Lost Cemetery
   
2. STE – on a plaque between a door in the Amethyst Passage 22, 5… to open the door, make a Block and push it to the far left of the top step (i.e. one step below the door) in the room before the Beholder boss fight, as below (also marked on the Full Map). There’s an invisible switch, you’ll hear a sound when you get it.
   
   
   
   
3. VOLD – given by the NPC behind the waterfall in Forsaken Valley 6, 11, providing you have the Book Of Sutter in your inventory

Put it all together and you get BAGSTEVOLD, which is as far as 99.9% of people would ever hope to get…

Absolutely all of the credit for this next part goes to the users of this thread, who through a superb community effort over the course of several weeks cracked an incredibly obscure enigma hidden in-game to uncover the use for the secret word – if you’re interested to learn more and have 30 minutes to kill, I thoroughly recommend having a read.

In summary, once the Eye Of The Beholder is obtained, a handful of tiny letters (as well as a few numbers) appear scattered in the backgrounds of rooms throughout the map. Through piecing these together, along with a few other hints from in-game and a whole lot of guesswork, you can construct a URL: http://bookofzoe.com. In the words of the site itself, this contains ‘behind the scenes material, old art assets, things that were cut from the game and other fun stuff’. The password is the secret word.

Thanks for reading – hope this guide is helpful and comments/suggestions are very much welcome! 😊

Special thanks again to:

• duckfist for the basis of the screenshot map, which I annotated and updated
  
• Leon Kennedy for techniques and Got To Go Fast video
  
• SHINCHAN for original annotated in-game map
  
• Elden Pixels for a great game (and an OST I can't stop listening to)
  
• The users of this thread who cracked the seemingly impossible ARG

You can also check out my Alwa’s Legacy guide for 100% Achievements with videos, Pacifist Walkthrough & Secrets – this sequel improves on the original in almost all aspects so I thoroughly recommend checking it out!

https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2490232794