It’s hard to know what to do with the Cuphead Broken Relic. It doesn’t give you any info in the description, and the only clue you get is from that weird detective ghost, who hints that it’s linked with the climbing competition near the mountain and the graveyard. If you manage to solve the mystery, you’ll unlock a secret boss and an extra-challenging game mode.
So how exactly do you solve the graveyard puzzle? In this Broken Relic guide, I’ll walk you through where to find it, and what you’re going to need to do with it in order to fight that secret boss, and get yourself the Cursed Relic charm. If you haven’t played yet, but you’re considering picking it up, our Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course review (opens in new tab) might help you out.
Cuphead Broken Relic: How to get it
After you exit the bakery at the start of Delicious Last Course, you’ll want to head over the bridge by the paper boy. Make sure you talk to him to get a few coins. Over the bridge you’ll find Porkrind’s shop where you can purchase the Broken Relic for one coin. Now simply equip it in your charm slot so you can solve the puzzle.
How to solve the Graveyard puzzle
Now this puzzle takes place in the graveyard to the south of the first island. You can either get there by doing Bootlegger Boogie and High-Noon Hoopla to the south, or via the secret passage. You can enter this in-between the shop where you bought the Broken Relic and the victory podiums near Gnome Way Out.
For this puzzle itself, you’re going to have to activate three of nine graves in a certain order depending on who’s placed where on the victory podium for the climbing competition. The only hiccup is that the order is different for every playthrough. However, you can work out the position of each grave through direction-based clues in what each winner says to you. In my playthrough, for example, they said:
- 1st: There’s no way the others could’ve caught me! I left ’em in the dust.
- 2nd: I left downtown in a hurry, and forgot my gear. I’ll settle for second.
- 3rd: It’s downright criminal they let these other jokers compete.
The order of activation is always 1st place to 3rd place, so in this case, it would be the left centre grave, then the bottom left grave, then the bottom right grave. The key to working out each grave’s position is whether they say up or down and left or right. If they don’t say up and down, they mean the central row.
Once you activate all these, a brand new boss will open up at the central grave. It’s pretty challenging, but if you complete it you can get the Cursed Relic charm. Sadly, the Cursed Relic actually makes Cuphead even harder, giving you 1 HP and randomly changing your weapons during a fight. But if you’re the kind of person who finds Cuphead bosses relaxing, maybe this is for you.