This gauntlet you face in Mark of the Ninja: Remastered’s “Above a Bottomless Chasm” is short but intense, and requires you to navigate more environmental hazards than any area has featured before it. You should bring upgraded spike traps with you, which don’t make noise when you deploy them. You can make use of them at a few points along your journey.
Seals
Kill 3 Gas Mask Guards While They Are Walking in Poison Gas
Not far into the stage, you will move aside a tomb and reveal a passageway flooded with poison gas. You must work your way through that passage, jumping occasionally to grapple points and handholds where you can cling while you take a breath of fresh air. Continue through that area and advance a short way further into the stage to arrive at the Smugglers’ Tunnels area.
At the Smugglers’ Tunnels, you will find yourself standing near a lever. If you pull that lever, a crate will descend from the ceiling and follow a path toward the right. You can cling to the crate to ride over the poison gas, but you want to kill the guards to claim your seal. Toss a spike trap to kill one of them. The other guard should freak out and you can drop down to kill him stealthily, then immediately grapple back up to the crate as it continues toward the right.
You still have one more guard to kill while he wanders in poison gas, but there’s a break while you make your way through the next few chambers. Then you finally arrive at a new one with another lever that produces a crate you can once again ride over a bed of poison gas. This time, there are lasers firing from panels on the ceiling. You need to ride along the underside of the crate to avoid those, then drop down to kill the guard when he is within easy range of a stealth kill. Finally, run to the right and get out of the gas, though do note that a guard is patrolling that ledge and may spot you if you’re not careful.
Hide 3 Bodies in the Final Room
As this seal objective makes clear, you can’t secure it until the very final portion of the stage, which the game introduces as Beneath the Old Gate. Ora will instruct you to descend to the bottom of the area and pull a lever, which she warns will produce guards.
Follow the instructions Ora provided and make note of hiding places on your way down through the area. When you reach the lowest level, you can dim the lights and pull a lever. As promised, that action prompts guards to check to see what caused the unexpected disturbance.
Start by jumping to the low ceiling and heading right. Wait for a guard to pass underneath you, then stealth kill him and stash him behind the nearby doorway. Head left next and repeat that process on a guard who approaches from the left. There is a second available doorway you can use up the short flight of stairs to the left.
Ascend the steps as gas starts to rise through the chamber’s lower levels, and watch for a guard to approach from the upper left. Kill him and drop him into a nearby vent to complete the seal. You may very well be able to do all of that without raising the alarm. If you do raise the alarm while hiding the third body (timing is a bit tight), you can just resume from the previous checkpoint and play through the segment again if you like. The seal will remain cleared and you can focus on eliminating and hiding from guards until the timer expires and you can exit the chamber along its top side.
Ride the Crate to the Top of the Shaft Without Getting Off
Around a third of the way through the stage, just after the second wide area covered in gas where you can kill the masked soldiers, you’ll arrive at the cargo passage where you must ride a crate upward. Your optional objective is to ride it the entire way up the shaft without jumping to one of the ledges to either side.
The reason this optional objective might pose a challenge is that there are guards positioned along the platforms you pass. To sneak past them, you have to crawl around the left or right sides of the crate as it ascends. The first guard is on your left and you can avoid detection by keeping to the crate’s right side.
Just after you pass that first guard, shimmy around to the left side of the crate as it rises past a guard to your right. Then crawl around to the right side as the crate ascends past a third guard who is to the left. Now you will reach the top of the shaft and you can hop off to the ledge to the right to acquire your seal.
Voice of the Hisomu
Above a Bottomless Chasm Scroll #1
A short distance into the stage, you will run and grapple along walkways and ledges positioned over a bed of spikes. As you run, those footholds slowly crumble behind you. At the far side of the bed of spikes, climb the wall and head right to a checkpoint. Continue right and you will see a large tomb that you can push to reveal an opening filled with poison gas. You will need to head that way eventually, but first you should explore a room to the right that contains a second such tomb. Pull that second tomb to the right and drop through the opening you reveal to find a small chamber containing the scroll.
Above a Bottomless Chasm Scroll #2
Once you finish riding the crate to the top of the cargo passage as outlined above, you will clear a checkpoint. Before you proceed through the stage, backtrack to the left, near the top of the cargo passage. Eliminate that guard and roll through a vent to the left of his position (and be wary of a guard further down the shaft who may notice your activities) to reach a challenge room.
To clear the challenge room, complete the following steps:
- Pull the lever to cause a crate to descend from the ceiling.
- Leap onto the crate and cling to the bottom side as it carries you beneath a first vertical laser.
- Quickly ascend to the top side to pass a second vertical laser, which is firing from the floor rather than the ceiling.
- As the crate continues past that second laser, cling to its right side as the crate starts descending along a vertical shaft.
- Once the crate passes that first laser, wait for it to descend toward a second one.
- As the descending crate nears that second laser, leap to the wall to the right and crawl downward while using that crate to block you from a laser firing from the left wall.
- Descend quickly and then throw darts at the two fuse boxes to the left side of the barrier, which will disable the top two out of the set of three lasers to your lower left.
- Hop onto the crate and ride along its left side as it descends past the last of those three lasers, which you couldn’t deactivate by throwing darts.
- As the crate proceeds toward the right, cling to its underside to avoid the first of two vertical lasers.
- Climb up to the left side of the crate next, as it continues right and then begins descending.
- As soon as you can safely do so as it continues to descend, wrap around to the lower side.
- As the crate continues right, it will start up the following shaft. You want to be on its right side now.
- The crate will near the end of its track, blocking a laser firing from the left. When you can, leap to the ledge to the right.
- Head across that ledge and drop down to the lower level before the crate moves out of the way of the laser.
- Grab the scroll.
Above a Bottomless Chasm Scroll #3
After following the stage’s second high vertical shaft upward with a crate as protection from various laser formations, you’ll finally arrive at a room that represents the area’s highest vertical point. Here, there are three switches positioned along the upper left, lower left, and lower right sides of the room. There also are two crates, which you can cause to move by flipping the switches.
Pull the lower right lever and let the crate that starts moving shelter you as you move past two vertically-oriented lasers fired from the bottom and top of the shaft. Now head to the upper left and pass through the narrow opening to arrive at a long chamber with a bottomless pit. Grapple along the chamber and then jump to a wall. Descend the wall and let yourself drop, but quickly grapple to another point to the left and keep moving in that direction to reach a far ledge where a soldier is positioned. Eliminate the soldier (distract him with a smoke bomb so you can get close enough), then grab the scroll from the pedestal.