In Frozen Flame, there are several areas that are blocked off by spiney vines. It’s pretty obvious that you can clear these out, because a lot of these vines have treasure chests behind them, but it’s not immediately obvious how you’d go about this.
Thankfully, there’s a really simple solution — use a Wooden Torch. If you equip a torch, you can swing it at the vines (using the attack button), and the vines will crumble away.
So where do you get a Wooden Torch? You can actually craft these, but you’re going to have to buy the recipe first. Hornhead is selling the recipe, but you have to complete his first quest (to retrieve his backpack) before he opens shop. Hornhead, for the record, is the first NPC that you meet when you enter the world. He’s standing just off the main road in a little camp — you can’t miss him.
Once you’ve completed his fist quest, he will offer you a pretty meagre amount of crafting recipes that you still have to pay for (what a jerk).
The torch costs 120 Coins, which you can loot from various chests and clay pots throughout the world. Keep in mind that clay pots will respawn in the world after a certain amount of time, so you can farm them over and over again, but the process is pretty slow.
When you eventually have the money, return to Hornhead and buy the Wooden Torch recipe. The Wooden Torch can be crafted from:
- Log x1
- Fabric x2
Now, you simply have to equip the torch and swing it at the vines to destroy them.
There is an easier option, of course. You can craft a Wooden Staff using these materials:
- Branches
- Magic Seed
The Wooden Staff casts fireballs, that will eventually eat through vines if you attack them multiple times. I find the torch to be a much faster way to chew through vines, but it also requires that you buy some blueprints. The Wooden Staff doesn’t have this requirement.
And there you go. That’s how you get through the spikey vines in Frozen Flame. Never again shall they prevent you from going the places you want to go!