Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Guide | Chapter 4 Settled Valley Completion

When the fourth chapter of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book is revealed to the living encyclopedia, it can be a very intimidating scene for those who have become very comfortable so far with the relatively relaxed and sandbox-like approach to exploring the coast and forest regions.

The game really goes off the light fingered as you physically flip through Mr. E and uncover the Settled Valley.

The calm beaches and gentle, swaying meadows of the preceding chapters come to an abrupt stop to be replaced by a intensely challenging and perilous environment that makes the most of your accuracy platforming, complex puzzle solving logic and your overall skill at delicately transporting small animals in high pressure situations.

The Settled Valley is an intentionally quite different game approach from the rest of the game. In terms of for-giveness, this adventure is fairly forgiving, as Yoshi doesn't have a traditional health bar, and doesn't fall to a "game over" screen at the end of the level. The one thing that changes is the mechanical difficulty; as in this chapter, it is very steep and sudden. 

Much of the hand-drawn pages here are considerably busier, with abundant hostile, aggressive wildlife and intricate environmental dangers, which must be navigated with precision in order to avoid serious injury. You no longer need to just jump forward and eat everything in your way in a jolly way, and find out the secrets.

This particular part of the chapter has a very specific progression that can be broken if you fail to successfully carry a native creature on your back or fail to time an evasive maneuver perfectly; the hostile threats will relentlessly hunt you down if you fall short.

If a major creature gets a whack in the head while you're carrying it, you'll probably drop it. And if you do, you'll have to go back a lot and carefully arrange your attacks—don't just barrel into the enemy and hope for the best.

How to manage aggressive new wildlife.

The Settled Valley's rich ecosystem is packed with unusual and incredibly disruptive creatures, requiring very particular tactics to safely avoid or make use of in order to succeed. Carefully handling these enemies as well is as important as the basics of Yshi's movements.

The Little Mouser is probably the first problem that will frustrate you. This purple, very agile, rat-like thief is especially designed to slow your progress by leaping out of the brush and physically taking items off of Yoshi's back. They will even try to steal your very important animals from you at times when you are trying to protect them.

Their patrol routes are specific and you must keep an eye on them and listen closely for their special sound of scuttling feet. You can thwart their attempts to steal your valuable "cargo" by using their new tail flick attack to knock them away quickly before they can get to your cargo, and disable them long enough to cross their territory.

The huge purple, fly-like insects that are abundant in the middle of the valley are also a threat. They are very aggressive and have big lips for shooting hard seeds at you at tremendous speeds, making some platforming sections feel a bit like a bullet-hell shoot.

They grow big, oversized watermelons that serve as thick organic armor to protect their delicate bodies. To defeat these armored flies or safely pass them by, you have to completely break their defense shell first. This will be done either by throwing a freshly laid egg with absolute precision, or by craftily getting them to fly directly into the environmental dangers.

The lower stretch of the valley is also full of magma-dwelling Blarggs who suddenly leap out of the ground and up to you, and mysterious, hooded individuals who rigidly patrol the upper scaffolding. Here, you are sure to need a lot of patience. It's important to be patient and watch them while they are looping, and wait for the right time and place to make a clean flutter jump right over their head.

Not all of this is set to destroy you in the valley, however. The tall-necked, bright pink bird creature in the middle of the map is spinning a DIY hula hoop, and it's definitely worth taking a moment to take in and interact with.

Through attentive observation of the hoop's rhythmic swaying motion, and by synchronizing your bodily interactions with it, you will discover a delightfully concealed interaction, from which you can acquire a promising discovery star for your own pages to add to Mr. E's ever expanding pages.

The Main Objective and Rescuing the Shy Guys

With a wonderful, very interesting take on the standard operating procedure for the series, the iconic, masked Shy Guys are not just cannon fodder or just a simple block in the way in this chapter. Rather, they become your mission's core activities, your core areas of focus.

The primary story goal for the Settled Valley is finding all the all but lost and panicked Shy Guys on the treacherous land and bringing them safely home to their main camp in the middle of the valley.

This particular escort goal is quite precise and requires you to heavily use the tail flick to softly reel in a roaming Shy Guy and firmly load them onto your back. That very moment, the game takes a sudden twist and becomes an extremely tense delivery assignment.

You need to expertly traverse through the extremely difficult platforms, which are laced with lethal hazards, without sustaining any damage. The Shy Guy will immediately panic and scatter off you, running back to where he was starting from, if he bears into you or if you calculate a landing incorrectly and you land on a hazard, thus forcing you to restart the escort process from the beginning.

This shifts the game's perspective in an entirely different way. Simply getting rid of all the armored flies (very methodical) and then getting rid of any small mice that may be in the vicinity (and strictly!), can also help you ensure that you'll have a completely clear, safe, and unobstructed path ahead of you when you finally get to pick up a Shy Guy. 

Solve and complete the Bird-Frog Chili Puzzles.

One of the most complicated and physically challenging puzzle scenes in the entire Settled Valley is the interaction with massive singing creatures in a bizarre mix of bird and frog bodies.

These massive creatures have a beak that is far too big to use as an ordinary beak, so much so that it is completely flat and becomes a very important, natural platform which can allow Yoshi to reach much higher into the air and find hiding spots on the steepest cliffs. But these beasts are very resilient and are adamant about any change in their form.

A key to finding rare, harvestable chilies and solving this huge environmental puzzle is to search the surrounding area well. If a spicy chilli is placed directly into one of these bird frog hybrids, their heat causes them to jump off the ground like a ton of bricks, and they instantly jump from one location to another (helping you get to places you can't go to before).

This is a very basic idea and may seem straightforward in theory, but if you're not being careful and paying close attention to what's around you, you can easily bust the sequence of the puzzle. The game is very open-ended and uses persistent physics, meaning objects that are dropped stay in the environment where they fall.

If you accidentally drop chili into a tall tree and a small random chili eats it first, or if your poorly planned chili drop causes the big bird-frog to jump blindly straight into a deep, unclimbable ravine, then you may find yourself suddenly unable forward progress.

If the goal falls out of your head completely - or if a crucial creature is stuck forever in the geometry - you'll need to assume that you need to start the chapter over for that portion. The key to making chili drops is always to carefully plan these and check that the bird-frog's target is actually the landing spot you mathematically predicted it should be at, before the bird-frog triggers the chili reaction.

Prepare for a boss fight with Kamek and Bowser Jr.!

As you spend time in chapter, the tension builds and builds until you finally face a big boss for the big stakes. After all the chaotic meddling of Bowser Jr. and Kamek in Mr. E's magical pages, something comes to a dramatic conclusion at this point in the unfolding tale! Close to the bottom end of the valley, the evil pair of wielders unleashes their attacks from the well-defended wooden flying ship.

Yoshi's body cannot go as high in the flying ship as you would like to go with a normal flutter jump, so you must make friends with the local wildlife to have any chance of being up there. This climactic fight occurs on the back of a large friendly flying beast, which has a drill-like snout by itself. In the first major part of this dogfight, there is no other way to win but to deflect and dodge.

Bowser Jr. will be dropping heavy explosive hazards from the bottom of the ship and Kamek will be shooting high tracking magic projectiles. Your flying mount must constantly be moving around in large, sweeping circles to move gracefully past the incoming crossfire, and you have to concentrate on doing that throughout your mission.

The ship will lower its overall altitude for a short while, after their aggressive attack pattern ends, unveiling their vulnerable underbelly. This is your only time in which you know you are going to have a big attack to go on the offensive.

You need to quickly spin your drill-snout mount forward and lash out with tremendous force, smashing the hardened front into the wood of the flying ship and inflicting major structural damage. As soon as you strike a successful shot, the bosses will come back and the attack will increase greatly and wildly.

It is essential to keep a steady, calm pace and never rush about with untimely attacks, but always think first of how to get away. Be patient and wait until the ship has fired all of its guns before making another heavy ramming strike.

Archiving the Settled Valley

The Settled Valley is an absolute mayhem, and the victory against Bowser Jr. and Kamek's flying ship is very satisfying and an end to the chaos in the valley.

This chapter is bound to test your patience and patience alone with the unrelenting attacks from the enemy types and its demanding yet tricky puzzle solving gameplay, but once you complete this chapter you'll know that you've finally mastered the full range of Yoshi's expanded move set with traversal and have made an incredibly rewarding breakthrough.

Prior to permanent relocation, take a quiet moment, and read through Mr. E's checklists carefully to ensure that you haven't stumbled across any highly concealed discoveries, secret creature interactions, or collectible items in the dangerous trails.

When all the pages in each valley are filled with pages of color and notes, you can be sure that you are ready to confidently flip over the thick parchment page and eagerly face the whole new, miniature-sized challenge that awaits you in the fifth chapter of the living book. 

Also, check our Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Review and other guides:

• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book| Everything You Need to Know Before Buying
• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Guide | Chapter 1 Wildwoods Completion
• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Guide | Chapter 2 Coastal Caves Completion
• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Guide | Chapter 3 Seaside Completion
• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Guide | Chapter 5 Bug Country Completion
• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book Guide | Chapter 6 Remote Isle Completion