(This walkthrough written by Quiztis, not me!)

No, there won’t be a "Super-short quick-coverage edition".

General Tips: BUY ELIXERS CONSTANTLY IN THIS DMOD. Also, spending some stat points in defense or health will help if you plan on defeating the secret boss as that aura is a pain and defense/health helps.

An Anti-cheat system developed by iplaydink reigns over Grasp of Darkness. You won’t get far with your increased stats made by some other script or third party software.

During the intro you can choose to get a stat boost or not, this will not affect the game in any way further on.

FREG ISLAND

After the intro, walk 2 screens right to find the Old Man’s house. The game will become easier in the form of Herb Boots if you buy them from him using the gold found outside. If you buy them, you should always use them instead of the long/clawsword. From the Old Man’s house go 2 screens up to get the elixir message. You can buy them at the little cabin. On the main island there are some important stuff:

• You can hardly level in this area. The pillbugs are forever dead if you kill them.

• If you walk behind the castle past the entrance to the forest, a secret bomb lies lurking behind a bush, pick it up for later. Also, 1 screen down from this area is a strength potion.

• Walk 1 screen up from the tavern in town to find a secret bomb behind a tree and some gold.

• In the desert part to the east there’s some gold 1 screen down from the castle.

• If you walk to the most western part of the island, you’ll find some gold behind a tree and a rock. Blow up the rock with a secret bomb and talk to the madman below. You’ll get the bow.

That’s all secrets and stuff for the main island. Go talk to Frank and find out his story from yesterday. After the cutscene, head to the castle to the west. IF you talk to Frank he’ll say that you’re too weak to enter Farmer Bob’s house. You have to be at least level 3 to enter the house and get the secret ending. There’s no other things of interest in the castle so talk to the king and then to the red knight.

CHARLIE’S BASEMENT

• Level 2 will be achieved here.

• Pillbugs and screenlocks, kill ’em all.

• In the southern part of the basement are 150 total gold scattered and are guarded by some Slimers.

• Use the second secret bomb to blow up a rock in the area with the savebot, be sure to save your game at this point because it’s time for the Secret Stage. Enter the portal in the area guarded by the rock to get started. You must complete the challenges within 1 minute and 50 seconds. If the time’s up, you fail it and can’t try again unless you load a saved game. DO NOT touch the thorns, they’ll hurt you badly and try to gather the pillbugs in groups to kill them faster, spamming the CTRL button. Punch the blockers in the face to get rid of them. After the course you’ll be rewarded with the Ice Orb spell. It’ll stun enemies for a short duration when it hits and do some damage.

• BOSSTIME! In the most northern part of the basement except the entrance is a Slimer boss. She’ll try to trick you to believe that if you kill her babies, they’ll award huge experience bonuses. If you read the clue scroll 1 screen down from the savebot area, they aren’t worth your fists, so do not bother attacking them, they’re in fact invincible and will speed up greatly if you hit them during the fight, so avoid them at all costs. If you feel that you are not ready for the fight yet you can bail out and return to the savebot area. When you’re ready though, go all out on the boss Slimer when the screenlock reigns. She’s not invincible and got 100 hitpoints and will award 60 experience if killed. During the fight the smaller Slimers will spawn randomly in the room with faster intervals to annoy you. You must survive for 1 minute and 15 seconds. It is optional to kill the boss Slimer as long as you survive ’til the end. Try to get as many hits as possible on the boss at the start of the fight, avoid hitting the boss while a baby is close. When the boss is down, try to find a "safe-spot" to stand by or dodge the Slimers. When the timer is up you get a golden heart and can go back to Bernard at the entrance.

After you’ve cleaned the king’s basement, talk to the king. He tells you to go and visit his brother, Hank. Go stock up elixers with the money you’ve earned and head east into a vast desert area of 4 screens.

HANK’S CASTLE

You can now enter the small castle there. Inside, be sure to save your game ’cause a boss is coming up.

• There is nothing of interest in Hank’s castle, besides junk. Go talk to Hank. The main villain, Darius the Cruel shows up and attacks you with his latest creation, the Dragon Pillbug.

• BOSSTIME! The Dragon Pillbug got 200 hitpoints and a defense value of a whopping 25. The Dragon pillbug will scuttle around and casting hurt on you, dragon style. If you got the Ice Orb spell, you should have some points in magic and Dink will resist the spell now and then. After a while Darius gets impatient and summons another beast of his creations: the mightiest bonca there is. The bonca got 8 hitpoints but a whopping 70 strength value. If you defeat the bonca first you’ll never be able to defeat the pillbug because of the immense defense value and hitpoints. The trick is to lure the bonca to attack the pillbug as the bonca is immune to the hurt spell somehow. If you’re low on hitpoints use an elixer but beware of the boncas tail swipe as it will crush every bone in Dinks body if it hits him and you got no time to replenish your hitpoints. The Ice Orb spell is useful to stun the pillbug to make things easier.

After the fight the shocking truth is revealed, Hank had nothing to do with everything and Dink leaves the castle. Head back to Charlie’s castle and have a talk with him. Wizards lives in forests and there happen to be a large forest nearby, Rynth Forest. Go stock up elixers and have the bow and/or Ice Orb spell ready. It’s going to get messy and confusing as this is the most annoying part of the game.

RYNTH FOREST

This forest is a maze of portals, mushrooms, slayers, screenlocks and witches. It’s a pain and if you do not feel like writing down where the portals lead or walking randomly ’til you’ve found the right place and so on, read these guidelines.

• The slayers in the forest got 30 hitpoints and slow movement speed but hits hard with 23 strength. If you don’t have any of the Ice Orb spell or the bow, this area might be a pain so get the bow if you haven’t got it or is playing a hardcore run. Kill them somehow anyway as they’ll award 20 experience points when killed.

• Here’s a map (it’s a mess though). The red dots are already existing portals and the pink lines shows where in the forest you’ll be teleported to. The green dots and green lines are portals that will appear after you’ve helped a witch. Gold is scattered in the forest as well are secret stairs, the locations are marked on the map with yellow and blue dots. S stands for Savebot and W1, W2, W3 shows where the witches huts are located.

• Navigate to the first hut, W1. The witch asks for a mushroom that grows somewhere in the forest. It’s location is Mu on the map, go get it and head back to W1. The witch opens up a portal, but the harmony of the forest is disturbed by the shadow energies so the portal has opened up somewhere else than in the house. Mushrooms tend to grow on spots where a witch portal will appear or near an existing portal that’ll lead you forward in the maze so keep an eye out for those. They also grow near where the spinning wheel will appear.

• Go to the first witch portal which is marked on the map and navigate to W2 and W3. W2 wants a spinning wheel and W3 wants a log be sure to talk to both before proceeding or the items won’t be visible. Find ’em and bring them to the witches to open more witch portals. The spinning wheel will cover your elixer pocket so you can’t use them while carrying the wheel. The same goes to the log, except that it covers everything in your backpack and you can only use your fists while carrying it. To get to the log you must’ve gotten the spinning wheel and entered the corresponding portal. When you’ve given the log to W3 she’ll open the last witch portal. It’s at the entrance to the forest. Enter it and face the final challenge before beating the game.

FOREST OF DARKNESS

The final area of the DMOD, a part of Rynth Woods is being hold with grasp of darkness by Darius the Cruel. This is his base of operations, a dangerous area but not for our hero. (hopefully) Be sure to head back and stock up elixers with the money you’ve found.

• A new kind of enemy, Shadows, will attack Dink. Screenlock engage and the fight is on. They do not differ much in behavior from a normal pillbug but they got 40 hitpoints, a speed of 2 and will award 35 experience when killed. If you’ve done the farmer Bob story, these enemies will be tougher with 65 hitpoints, 9 defense, a speed boost and a touch damage of 15.

• The electro-walls got a touch damage of 18 so try to avoid them. A tree covers one passage through the electro-wall, use the bow to shoot arrows and see where it passes through and if it’s safe to go through.

• When in the savebot area, look through the pile as it contains throwing axes which will help a lot in the final boss fight. Pick up the extra elixers and save the game. The portal will teleport you to the entrance of Rynth Forest.

• BOSSTIME! When you go south from the savebot area you will see two generators powering the base. Darius will use a small swarm of Shadows to finish you off. They got a high speed so they’ll catch up with you quickly and start sapping away your hitpoints. High risk of spending some elixers here. After the fight, Darius will appear and fight Dink. He casts Anti-Magic zone that’ll disable your Ice Orb spell. The surrounding walls will power up with electricity to make things worse. Darius got 250 hitpoints, 24 strength and 1 defense. If you have done the farmer Bob story explained further down, Darius will have 500 hitpoints, 32 strength and 5 defense (making him immune to the throwing axes). Use the throwing axes and attack from a distance as he’s rather slow. The bow is kinda useless and swords or fists are not recommended as Darius hits hard. After some early hits, Darius speed will be boosted. Try to get him "stuck" behind a generator and go to a safe distance and start spamming axes or let him walk behind you, turn around, wait for him to miss an attack and throw an axe in his face. If you avoid the electro-walls and Darius attacks, this fight will be harder and Darius will not speed up if you haven’t done the farmer Bob story. Use the claw/longsword to inflict damage to Darius and try to avoid his blows and use elixers if you’re low on health.

• After the fight you watch a cutscene and chooses what to say to Darius. If you pick Kill him or Spare his life you’ll get the normal ending. Nice! But you’ll want the secret ending next...

When you were ready to head into Rynth Woods, the barkeep in town revealed that Frank can be beaten by someone who is level 3. When Dink has reached level 3 or higher, go to Charlie’s castle and talk to Frank. He’ll remove the barricade leading to farmer Bob’s house. Enter the eerie house and walk into the walk right ahead of you.

THE DARKLANDS

Once a nice town, now covered in darkness that may be explained in a future DMOD. In this DMOD though, we’ll follow the traces of a farmer called Bob. Be sure to stack up your inventory with elixers before entering this area.

• Many powerups in this area, be sure to find them all and explore every corner. Destroy the barrel 1 screen west of the entrance with a ranged weapon or spell to move a rock 2 screens north of the entrance. The Isle of Death has a familiar feeling I’m afraid. Get the powerups and head back. The boncas got 60 hitpoints and 14 strength. Try to save as many elixers as possible as there are few of spares lying around, and the boss fight is tough.

• The thorns shouldn’t hurt you much at this point, maybe 3-4 damage.

Go south until you find a dark house, enter it, save the game and press space at the dark stairs to enter a new area. Be sure to head back and buy a full set of elixers and get as many powerups as possible even those in the dark part of Rynth Forest and the Ice Orb spell is highly recommended. There is no turning back to Freg Island until you’ve defeated the secret boss.

• This area is also filled with lots powerups. The dragons are very powerful and you should try to find as many powerups as you can before facing them. They got 130 hitpoints and 9 defense and casts hurt. The screenlock will be removed if you kill the grey boncas only, you can leave the dragons for later. Great place to level up as the enemies got a fairly fast respawn timer of 3 minutes.

• There’s one secret stairs in this area. Go to the most north-eastern part of the Darklands until you get to an elixer and a house, behind the house is some stairs and you’ll find the clawsword inside.

• All the doors to the houses are locked, except one. The church in the western part of the darklands is unlocked. Inside are shadow enemies that got 60 hitpoints and are relatively easy if you got all the powerups in the area. When you’ve reached the savebot, prepare for a tough boss fight.

• BOSSTIME! Farmer Bob is easily the hardest boss in the game. If you haven’t found the a sword or nearly all the powerups in the game and the Ice Orb spell or isn’t at least level 5 you shouldn’t take him on yet (or you could start the game over and find all the powerups). After the cutscene, he’ll begin the fight by lowering your strength with 4 and your defense with 1 and cast Perish Aura which will slowly sap your hitpoints away during the fight. On top of that you got a timer of 1 minute and 50 seconds to kill him. Farmer Bob shoots Hellfire-pellets that will damage Dink as if he’s hit by an improved Hellfire spell. He got a massive hitpoint pool of 1000 and has a defense value of 5. He also has a touch damage of a whopping 27. The bow, fists and throwing axes are useless in this fight. Use the Ice Orb to stun him and the long/clawsword to inflict damage. You have to position Dink slightly below Bob and strike, walk a few steps away, strike etc. Use elixers to keep you alive from the hellfire-pellets. When there are 30 seconds left on the timer, Bob will cast the Improved Perish aura that’ll do increased damage to you every 350 milliseconds. Use your newly gained nerd-rage, ignore the aura for now and hack the ******* crap out of the farmer as he couldn’t have that much hitpoints left now. Use your last elixers constantly to keep you alive from the aura.

After you’ve defeated him, a cutscene will take place and you’ll be teleported outside Farmer Bob’s house that’ll disappear. If you walk 1 screen up from where the house was you can enter a new area, the dungeon of Erufutu. You can’t enter it yet as it will play a role in some other DMOD in the future. Now, go beat Darius the Cruel (boss instructions in the forest chapter of this walkthrough) and choose the new option of what to do with the wizard. I hope the too-freaking-long walkthrough helped you out and thank you for playing my game!

 Quiztis