Broken Age Tips: How to Beat Mog Chothra & More

This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.

Act 1 of Double Fine's Broken Age is out and about for Kickstarter backers, while the Steam Early Access version is coming to a PC near you on January 28. If you're already playing this charming little tale, you may be stumped here and there, since each puzzle has a single solution. Here, I endeavor to give you a few quick tips for the puzzles that I think may stymie some players. The tips are split by character.

Before we get to these tips, I will say that you can complete most of the puzzles if you use every dialog option available to you. This is not like Telltale's adventure games where different dialog options take you in different directions. Just use every option on every character you meet.

And if it's not already clear, spoilers ahoy.

Vella's Tale

• Wondering where mother's knife is? Go talk to Grandpa Beastender. Wondering how to get the knife from him? Bring him a cupcake and offer to split it.
• To leave Meriloft, you'll need three golden eggs, as they're the heaviest item in the cloud-based town. You'll be placing them on the offering mounds below Lightbeard's throne. To help grab some eggs, put the over-sized cloudshoes you get from Car'l onto the ladder you get from M'ggie.
• You'll get the third egg by finding the Jessie's (the blue bird) real egg. Use your new ladder to walk up into her nest. Walk behind it to get to a new area with some trees. Fall through the top-most hole to knock Gus free and retrieve the egg he had.
• To solve the guards' Riddle of Yorn in Shellmound, you need a fruit from Meriloft. This can be found in the screen behind Jessie's nest.
• To defeat Mog Chothra, you have to blast off three of his tentacles. Once that's done, he grabs Vella. While he's holding her, use the ladder on his mouth. This leaves his mount open for the final strike. Seriously, the ladder is the most useful item Vella has.

Shay's Tale

• To get out of the fake mission loop, just fail the train mission. How? Talk to the mountain a second time to get it to retract the bridge.
• To change your warp destination to Prima Doom, start the warp sequence with the Space Weaver (choose Cozy Quadrant) and walk down the latter. Use the crochet hook, which you'll find in the back of one of your yarn friends, to change the NavScarf pattern to match the Space Chart you were given.
• Need a helmet to put the Omicron Inhibitor on the Fusion Orb? Grab Shay's childhood spacesuit from the junk room. Go through each teleporter once without going back again, which requires a good deal of walking and planning. This will make your head small enough to put on the child-size helmet.
• Wondering how to increase your range in space? Grab the Whipped Cream Gun from the room with the ice cream avalanche and the knife from the kitchen. Use the tank of compressed air and the Whipped Cream Gun on your suit, then cut your air hose with the knife.