Magical Diary: Wolf Hall Hidden Achievement Guide

in order to get the “from the jaws of victory” achievement, you need to fail the final exam while you already have at least -40 demerits. this will put you over the expulsion limit — however, because the year is already over, they cant simply send you home as normal. so a special ending will trigger.

its not as easy to end with exactly the right number of demerits as you might think, but with proper planning it should go smoothly. so, heres everything you need to know to do it.

an easy way to boost your merits is, of course, to do work around the school in exchange. there are 3 ways to do this – however, you can only do 2 in one playthrough.

• Gardening with Donald – william will tell you about this opportunity in exchange for your agreement to help him with ellen. you may need to have the “scheming” personality in order for him to do so, as i have yet to play a game without it. alternatively, telling potsdam youre interested when she asks may lead to the same result.
• Sorting Rocks – if you still have demerits when you speak to minnie in the library the saturday after the exam, when she offers you help, she can give you this task herself.
• Making Candles with Donald and Luke – later in the year; if you see donald in the library, ask him what hes doing and he will tell you about this task. just remember to say yes when he comes around later to invite you to some mysterious activity! if you miss him in the library, he may invite you anyway.

each of those tasks will give you 10 merits, for a total of +20 in one run. which means you then have to lose -60 on the exams, which is an easier task to manage — you can just fail 6. but that wont be quite enough; if you succeed on the remaining exam, youll gain +5 merits and be just shy of flunking out.

an alternative is to skip the merit tasks and just pass 2 exams, which will give you exactly the right number of demerits. this is the simplest way to do it.

just to overcomplicate things even more — it is possible to finish an exam without gaining or losing any merits. if you go about it this way, youd need to fail 4 exams and then complete 3 without merits.

the way you do this is by completing the dungeon without casting a single spell. you can do this for almost every exam, and itll also get you the “You’re Doing it Wrong” achievement. so, if you want to knock out two birds with one stone, you might as well give it a shot.

Dungeons you can beat without magic:

• exam 2: poison gas. all you need to do is have 41 or higher strength, and you can walk right through.
• exam 4: bladen beast. youll need a fair bit of luck for this one, and its a good idea to go in with high strength as youll be taking a few hits. all you need to do is lure the beast away from the exit and then book it to the stairs. however, youll need to pass the darkness tile, which may take a few tries. if the beast catches up, switch darkness tiles to throw him off until you get it right.
• exam 5: lava floor. youll need at least 61 strength to tank the damage and 30 smart to prevent the dog from attacking you, but if you go all in on strength you can still get through if youre not smart enough. just walk directly to your prize and back.
• exam 6: frog race. this is by far the easiest one. all you have to do is find the chalice before he does. if you get to the gate, wait for him to unlock it and just head on in. it does take a bit of luck to get through a random maze, however, so you might want to save first.

Dungeons you CANT beat without magic:

• the 1st exam. theres no way out without magic. HOWEVER: you can still fail this one without losing any merits. just select “detention” when grabiner asks you why you gave up. hell give you one, and no demerits.
• the 3rd exam*. youd need to either get over the pits with teleport/long jump, or find and activate the teleport circle with trigger/spirit echoes. then youll still need to find the exit using breeze/inspect/truesight. just fail this one.

*unless youre ellen

there is one special case:
the 7th exam, with the mothmen and the monkeys, can be beaten without magic provided you have high enough strength and get lucky enough for the mothmen to chase you instead of the monkey. however, even if you do this, you will still get merits for some reason. i guess walking through the mana zapper counts as “casting a spell”?

if youre going for the “fail 4 exams, cheese through the other 3” method, my recommendation is:
-1st exam: just fail and then take the detention
-2nd exam: no luck involved, all you need to do is get your strength to a reasonable level
-6th exam: definitely the easiest to get through this way

once youve made it to the final exam with at least -40 demerits, youre home free! all thats left to do is fail the final.

the fastest way to do this, if you have attack spells, is to just attack whichever one of your team has the lowest health. he wont even fight back. watch the hope crumble in his eyes as his dearest friend turns on him in his hour of need.

or you could go find one of the monsters to either beat you into submission or drain your mana until you can hit “give up”. draining your own or teammates mana with spells will work too.