Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening, Heros, and good luck in your quest to explore the lands and drive out the witch who has corrupted the lands, taken over the castle, and given rise to dangerous monsters. This game is honestly best explored without too much direction, but I remember when I was first discovering things, that it became very hard to progress. To try and spare that issue for some of the new explorers out there, I thought it might be useful to give guidance towards the more critical items on your quest.

Now, to start with the major items;
The Hammer: This allows you to break the round brown blocks stopping many paths of progression. It rests in a valley in the Verdant Coast, but the road is blocked by boulders. It could be useful to look around in the blue cavern, South Mundeman, to find a back route to this item.

The Compass: This item is fairly deceptive. If you look at it's icon at the top of your screen, it will point you towards the nearest save crystal. Some maps, don't have a crystal, so it will just be spinning. In addition to that, you may or may not notice that several mountains are now passable. This will open many routes throughout the game, including access to other critical items. This item is deep inside a fairly weird cave, hidden in the Southern Swamps. Roam around in the forests in the southwest corner of the map and you should find your way in.

The Boots: The boots will prevent you from being slowed down while you walk through anything considered difficult. Forest, spider webs, and a few more as well. This handy item is hidden on a map you might have missed if you explored the western mountains of the Tundra without a compass.

The Magma Charm: Magma in this game is both dangerous and surprisingly passable. If you touch it for a single tile, you will become heated, and if you touch it again while heated, you will die. This does mean many magma obstacles can be bypassed with planning, before you even find this charm, but it will prevent you from becoming heated and thus able to move past as much magma as you'd like safely. Deep within the mountainous labyrinth in the northern reaches of the Tundra, you will find a red door. If you've managed to find the key for this door, you can enter the Manga Chamber, a very hot space which actually guards the item that would help you explore it much safer.

The Wind Ring will form wind paths over certain areas of water, allowing you to pass previously inaccessible barriers and granting access to entirely new locations. The ring has been locked away in the castle's dungeons, hidden inside the foundation of the building with a couple of hidden walls and a blue key, as well as many gold and silver doors. The ring is absolutely worth the effort to find access to, however, given how much mobility it adds to your exploration.

The Skeleton Key allows you to access nearly every door in the game. The key is held by a friend seeking their lost treasures, who is themselves hard to locate. The friend rests hidden inside the central chamber of the Sanctuary, our portal nexus, which is only even revealed if you can reach the central chamber of the Otherworld and activate it's portal, inside the green portals scattered throughout the game.

The Spectacles help increase your range of vision in any situation that makes it harder to see, like forests. The Spectacles are held by the same friend who holds the above key.

The Eye is very useful for finding *most* everything. The icon on the HUD will point towards uncollected items, much the same as the compass towards save crystals. The Eye will also put a blue sparkle over the fog of war hiding the nearest item to your current location. Sometimes reaching the sparkle requires a longer walk around to find the path to where you are trying to reach, however. The Eye is hidden in the Smugglers Ruin, a dilapidated path that connects several of the item shops across the land, though even the entrances are harder to find these days.

Do know, there are many items left. Without giving too much away, NPCs will give you hints that might help you figure out what and maybe even where some of the more hidden items are. There are blue and even red versions that you can upgrade to, there's a green key hidden behind many layers of the rabbit hole deepening, and several others that to even hint at will take too much from the journey to find. As I mentioned in the intro, feel free to pop into the discord for more gentle guidance, or even outright direct help when it's needed!