Welcome to the third part of our walkthrough for Death Howl.
Gloomy Waters is the third Realm of the game that you can enter past the Realm of Piercing Winds. Now that we’ve defeated Tradontaz, this will be our next destination.
For more information on the game, check out their official website here.
Realm of Gloomy Waters Overview
The Realm of Gloomy Waters is split into the following zones:
- Dead Roots
- The Wailing Marshes
- Shores of Darkness
Since we’re entering from the Realm of Piercing Winds, our only way to access this zone is through Dead Roots.
First, you’ll have to travel to the southern Sacred Grove in The Hidden Vale. From here, you have to head west past a Spirit encounter.
Continue walking till you see the terrain change to enter the Dead Roots zone of the Realm of Gloomy Waters.
Dead Roots
Unlocking the First Sacred Grove and Map
Dead Roots is a pretty small region, and the first Sacred Grove shouldn’t take you too long to find. From the entrance of the zone, continue walking forward, due west.
You’ll spot a Spirit encounter above you as you walk down a road between two hills.
After defeating the Spirits, keep heading west to find the Sacred Grove. Activate it and reveal the map of the zone.
Take a moment to look at the map. As you can see, there are two more Sacred Groves here that you’ll want to unlock, along with a handful of Nests.
There are also two side quests that you can pick up in the area, which we will discuss below.
How to Complete the In Search of Beauty Side Quest
From the first Sacred Grove you unlocked, head directly north. There’s an Elder Spirit encounter that you have to clear first.
Continue heading north past the encounter. You can interact with the snowy mountain in the distance to trigger some dialogues. The trees will form the shape of an antler after this interaction.
From here, there’s a cave entrance directly to your right. Head inside. Don’t worry if you’re low on health.
Continue moving forward inside the cave to find the Cave Painter. Talk to it to get the Red Rock quest card. It also starts the In Search of Beauty quest.
To complete this quest, you need to go around the map and fight different Spirits. You need to kill 5 different Spirits with the Red Rock quest card. The Spirits have to be unique, so you can’t just kill 5 Gloomcroak and be done with it.
Once you’ve defeated 5 unique Spirits, the quest will update, and the Cave Painter will ask you to bring the Red Rock back to the cave.
Return to the northern cave and talk to the Cave Painter to complete the quest. As a reward, you’ll get the Red Rock Totem
| Red Rock (Totem) | Kill: Fill 2 Mana |
How to Complete the Root Out Corruption Side Quest
Start from the eastern Sacred Grove of the zone, the one that leads back to the Howling Mountains, and head west. There’s a Spirit encounter that you’ll have to get past.
You’ll spot a withered red tree trunk near the water. Interact with it.
This is the quest giver named Trunkrot. Run through the dialogue to get the Twig quest card and activate the quest.
Trunkrot wants you to bring back his Essence from the three Usurpers. Check your map to see three spots marked with a yellow X in different parts of the zone.
You have to go to each of these locations and interact with the objects to retrieve the Essence. Each time you drain an Essence, the quest card Twig in your deck will get upgraded.
After retrieving all three Essences, return to Trunkrot. Make sure you heal at the nearest Sacred Grove before you talk to it.
A few lines of dialogue later, a boss fight will begin against Trunkrot. Despite his massive health pool (100 Hitpoints), the fight isn’t too difficult. Defeating the boss completes the side quest and gives you three Teardrop points as a reward.
How to Enter the Wailing Marshes
We’re done with this zone for now. At this point, you can go directly to the Shores of Darkness zone if you want, through the western exit of the zone. However, we suggest clearing through The Wailing Marshes first.
To get there, you need to take the southern exit. From the eastern Sacred Grove, head downwards past a Spirit encounter to reach the entrance of The Wailing Marshes.
The Wailing Marshes
Unlocking the First Sacred Grove and Map
The Wailing Marshes is filled with plenty of encounters, but as always, our first goal is to activate the closest Sacred Grove to open up the map. As soon as you enter the zone, you’ll find a Spirit encounter blocking your progress. Take them down.
Continue moving forward, and as you cross the bridge, you’ll spot a giant Wounded Whale on the other side. You can talk to it to trigger a side quest, but we’ll ignore it for now.
Go south past the Whale. There’s another Spirit encounter up ahead.
Move right, after defeating the Spirits, to find the first Sacred Grove of the region and reveal the map.
How to Complete the Engangled Relationship Side Quest
After activating the Sacred Grove, rest up if you have to. Then return to the Wounded Whale you saw earlier to the north of the Sacred Grove.
Talk to it to trigger the Entangled Relationship side quest.
To complete the quest, go inside the Whale through its open mouth.
Walk to the end of the passage and interact with the Whale’s Beating Heart. You’ll receive the Vicious Algae quest card.
Once that’s done, all that’s left to do is carry the card out of the Whale. But your path will be blocked by a couple of Spirits. There are a total of three encounters that you’ll have to get past, but they are pretty easy.
Once you make it out of the Whale, run through the dialogues, and the quest will be complete. You’ll get the Algea Bubble Totem as a reward for completing this side quest.
| Algea Bubble (Totem) | Each Turn: Lose 1 Health & give a random enemy Fragile 1 |
How to find the Branch Realmless Card (Secret)
Before we head further south into the zone, there’s another Flyge card that we can collect. To find it, head to the northeastern edge of the zone toward the Sacred Grove. There are a couple of Spirit encounters along the way, so brace yourself.
You’ll find a giant floating eyeball in the canyon just before the Sacred Grove. Don’t worry, it won’t attack you.
After activating the Sacred Grove, click on the mountain to your right to reveal the cave entrance. Head inside.
Defeat the enemies inside.
Once defeated, head to the end of the cave and interact with the Branch. This will trigger a short cutscene where you’ll see Olvi playing with a stick. After the cutscene, you’ll have the Branch Branch Flyge card added to your collection.
How to Complete the Bowl Side Quest (Secret)
Before moving on from this zone, there’s one more secret side quest here that you can complete. To find it, you have to head to the location marked on the map above.
It can be easily reached from the central Sacred Grove of the region. The Nest along the path gives you a Teardrop point.
Once you reach the location, Ro will call out to her son. After some brief dialogue, you’ll see a Bowl float up on the water. Interact with it to collect the Bowl quest card.
With the quest card in hand, the first thing you have to do is get your Hitpoints down to 5 or less. You can fight any Spirit encounters on the map to do that.
Then, you must make your way to the location marked in the image above. There’s an Elder Spirit encounter along the way.
Interact with the altar when your health is 5 or under, interact with the altar. You’ll see Ro pouring the Bowl of blood into the altar. This will create a bridge that you can use to cross over.
You’ll be healed once the bridge is created. Move along the bridge to reach a small island.
This will lead you to a mini-boss encounter against The Soother.
The Soother is a pretty straightforward fight. Whenever it takes damage, it splits up into two pieces. It’s health also splits evenly among all its pieces, and when you drop one of them, they explode, damaging any other units nearby.
Defeat the mini-boss to complete the secret side quest and receive 3 Teardrop points.
How to Reach the Shores of Darkness
To get to the Shores of Darkness, you’ll have to activate the final Sacred Grove to the southwest of the zone. But there’s another secret encounter you can find in the zone along the way. Head to the location marked in the image above to trigger it.
Once you reach the location, the Stag Spirit that you saw at the start of the game will appear again. After some lines of dialogue from Ro, you’ll get ambushed by a group of Spirits.
Defeat the spirits to receive a free Teardrop point.
Keep moving towards the Sacred Grove and activate it once you get past the Elder Spirit encounter blocking your path.
Continue heading west, and you’ll soon reach the final zone of the Realm of Gloomy Waters.
Shores of Darkness
Unlocking the First Sacred Grove and Map
Continue heading east along the Shore of Darkness, and you’ll face your first group of Spirits. Since this is a boss zone, there will be a Tolemite in this fight. So make sure you take down the enemies within 7 turns.
Stay on the path and keep moving forward for another Spirit encounter.
There’s a Nest on your right after defeating the enemies that you can loot for a free Teardrop point. Once you pick it up, get back on the main path to defeat another group of Spirits.
After taking down this group, you’ll see the path split off. If you go right, you’ll loop back to Dead Roots. So take the left path instead.
You’ll find the Sacred Grove just up ahead. This will also open up the map for you to see where you need to go next.
Check your map to see that the left path heading north leads to the Great Spirit. Of course, you’ll have to get past three Elder Spirit battles to reach the next Sacred Grove just before the boss fight.
By now, you should have a pretty solid deck to tackle whatever this zone throws at you. So take your time, defeat the Spirits, and activate the next Sacred Grove of the zone.
When you’re ready, continue forward toward the Great Spirit, Cephagloom.
How to Beat Cephagloom, Great Spirit of Gloomy Waters
Cephagloom isn’t necessarily a hard boss, but the fight can get pretty frustrating. When the battle begins, you’ll see four Tentacles spread out in a square formation.
Each of these Tentacles has 5 Hitpoints, and they don’t attack you directly. To actually see the boss’s Hitpoints, you have to take out all four Tentacles.
What makes things tricky is that these Tentacles keep respawning one by one after each turn. So you have to take them out quickly so that all of them are dead at the same time to move on to the next phase of the fight.
Poison is your best friend in this battle. Cards like Poisonous Grounds and Poisonous Winds let you hit multiple or all four Tentacles at the same time so that you can apply consistent damage across all of them. The Branch secret Flyge Card is also a good card to add to your deck for this fight.
As for Cephagloom’s attacks, it just keeps adding the Heavy Thoughts debuff card to your hand each turn. It will also summon Woeful Seashrooms and Elder Woeful Seashrooms after a few turns. If you manage to take down the summons quickly, you can use their Spirit Cards to deal massive damage to the boss.
However, it’s also important to keep in mind that they will kill you in one hit. So position yourself away from their attack range.
When you manage to take down all four of Cephagloom’s Tentacles, the boss’s health bar appears.
At this phase, Cephagloom isn’t much of a threat. It only has 30 Hit points. You have three turns to take down the boss’s HP. After three turns, the giant balloon overhead will pick up Cephagloom, and you’ll have to take down the Tentacles again for the boss to reappear.
By now, you should have at least three Totem Slots available. We suggest using the following:
- Tree Root
- Red Rock
- Infected Tooth
Once you defeat the boss, a cutscene will trigger.
After the cutscene ends, you’ll get the A Touch of Gloom Realmless Card.
This concludes the third part of our walkthrough for Death Howl. For other interesting articles related to indie games, check out the links below:
- Into Indie Games Home Page
- Routine Walkthrough Hub
- Sleep Awake Complete Walkthrough – All Chapters
- Marvel Cosmic Invasion Review
- Winter Burrow Review
Muhit Rahman lives off two things: gaming marathons and endless cups of tea. He writes guides, reviews, and occasionally forgets that real life doesn’t come with checkpoints. His favorite genres are Soulslike and Metroidvania, with Dark Souls III, Hollow Knight, and Dota 2 forever holding top spots on his all-time list.
