Ori and the Will of the Wisps: The Ultimate Guide to Hidden Secrets

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a masterpiece of hidden depth, packed with secrets that most players will never find. From essential tools and developer rooms to nostalgic callbacks and advanced speedrun tech, this guide uncovers everything the game doesn't tell you. Whether you're a completionist or just curious, here's how to see the world of Nibel in a whole new light.

Essential Tools: The Secret Spirit Shard and How to Get It

Finding the Eerie Gem in Windswept Wastes

First things first: you can't grab this gem without the Burrow ability, which you get from the ability tree in Windswept Wastes. Once you've got that sorted, make your way to the eastern dunes and look for a thirsty Gorlek who keeps asking for water - he's hard to miss. Directly below him, in a small sand pit near the entrance, you'll spot a shovel sticking out of the ground; that's your marker.

Stand right on top of that shovel and tap your Burrow button, and Ori will dive beneath the surface, popping back up with the Eerie Gem. This also kicks off the 'A Diamond in the Rough' side quest automatically, so there's no guesswork involved.

Completing 'A Diamond in the Rough' with Twillen

Now comes the easy part. Take the Eerie Gem back to Twillen, the Shard merchant hanging out on the west side of Wellspring Glades. If you haven't met him yet, don't worry - he moves there permanently after your first encounter, so he's not hard to find.

Hand over the gem and Twillen will carve it into the Secret Spirit Shard for you. This passive equip reveals hidden walls and secret passages within a small radius, which makes it a lifesaver for completionists trying to track down those last few hidden Life Cells or Energy Cells. Just slot it in and watch the walls glow.

Developer Rooms: Moon Studios' Hidden Tributes

If you're the type who doesn't skip credits, you might've noticed the sprawling canyon that appears during Ori's finale. That's Credits Canyon - or at least, that's what fans call it. Don't bother scouring Kwolok's Hollow for a secret passage though, because this isn't a place you can actually visit.

Credits Canyon: The Main Developer Room

The canyon itself is just a non-interactive backdrop rendered during the ending sequence, and it borrows visual DNA from the Windswept Wastes region. There's no Spirit Well or warp point labeled 'Credits Canyon' hidden anywhere in the game files, which means the only way to 'revisit' it is to beat the final boss and sit through the credits again. It's a one-time visual reward, not an explorable space, so temper those expectations before you go hunting for carved developer names on cliff faces.

Gareth's Room: The Easter Egg That Isn't Real

You might've heard whispers about a secondary room called 'Gareth's Room' - supposedly an office Easter egg you can reach from Credits Canyon. Here's the thing: it doesn't exist. No documented footage, no screenshots, no verifiable source has ever confirmed it. The rumor likely started because Gareth Coker is the game's composer (and his name appears in the actual credits), but that's where the connection ends. Moon Studios didn't hide a secret developer office behind the canyon walls, so don't waste hours trying to clip through geometry that isn't there.

Debug Balcony in Luma Pools: The Real Deal

While Gareth's Room is vaporware, the debug balcony in Luma Pools is 100% real - and it's a fascinating peek behind the curtain. Head to the lower-west alcove of the zone and you'll find leftover development signs that read 'DO NOT LOCALISE', which is studio-speak for 'don't translate this, it's not for players.'

The real prize is the pink, untextured monkey enemy lurking in the same area. This placeholder beast is invincible, drops zero loot, and clearly wasn't meant to ship with the final game. Reaching it usually requires some sequence-breaking, so you'll need late-game movement abilities to access this particular slice of developer leftovers.

Mechanical Secrets: Hidden Rewards and Upgrades

If you're hunting for 100% map completion, you're going to need every Gorlek Ore and Life Cell fragment tucked away in the corners. Some collectibles are borderline unfair - you won't even see them without specific Spirit Shards or abilities you probably didn't have on your first pass. Here's what you'll want to circle back for.

Hidden Gorlek Ore Locations

You'll need a pile of Gorlek Ore to rebuild the village, but several veins are completely off the radar unless you've got the Secret Shard equipped. Even then, you'll need a full moveset to actually reach them.

Location	How to Find	Requirements
Inkwater Marsh (Moki Chest)	Complete 'A Little Braver' side quest, east of Howl's Den exit	Defeat Howl first
Inkwater Marsh (Elderly Moki)	Complete the 'Secret Shard' side quest itself	Finish the questline
Spike-wheel basement	Below central Moki village, hidden beneath the wheel	Feather and Burrow
Thorn tunnel near Kwolok	Bash off an empty lantern, hidden left wall in tunnel	Bash ability
Above water wheel	Breakable ceiling above the water wheel	Grapple

The 'Secret Shard' quest itself is your ticket to seeing these in the first place, so grab it from the elderly Moki as soon as you can.

Life Cell and Energy Fragment Secrets

Silent Woods is a nightmare for health upgrades because most of them are above you, hidden behind breakable wood you'd never think to hit. You'll want to grab these before finishing the area.

The first Life Cell fragment sits above the initial keystone cavern, and you can reach it by bashing a bug into the cracked wooden ceiling or just double-jumping with Flap to break through. Another fragment hides in a poison-water back-cave, which means you'll need to swim through toxic water, climb the moss on the left wall, then smash a breakable wooden disk in the roof. The final piece is tucked inside a Moki-tree hollow near the Windswept Wastes exit, but you'll need to spot the subtle breakable seam in the ceiling.

Invisible Spirit-Light Caches

The Secret Shard does more than highlight ore - it reveals entire caches of Spirit Light that are otherwise invisible. In Windswept Wastes, there's a false wall to the right of the first Spirit Well. Bash through it and you'll find an alcove with 200 Spirit Light waiting on Normal difficulty. If you poke around the same hidden spot, you'll also trigger the 'A Diamond in the Rough' side quest, which hands you the Turmoil Spirit Shard for a nice damage boost when you're low on health.

Hidden Achievements and Missable Trophies

Here's the deal: a bunch of Ori's achievements stay hidden until you trip over them, and some are painfully missable if you're not paying attention. Let's break down the ones that'll catch you off guard.

Combat and Boss Fight Secrets

Let's talk about the bosses and how they can trip you up. The Close Call achievement (5 GS) pops the moment Howl's health hits around 50% and he bolts - you can't finish him off here, so don't waste your energy trying. Then there's Kwolok, who's got two achievements tied to him. First, Timely Demise (20 GS) demands you take him down in under two minutes, and the timer starts right after the pre-fight cutscene ends, so you'll want to skip watching that if you're going for speed. While you're in his arena, you'll also want to grab Take the Bug by the Horn (10 GS) by landing the killing blow on the Horn Beetle in Kwolok's Hollow.

Progression and Exploration Achievements

Once you get past Howl, you'll naturally earn Home Sweet Home (15 GS) just by stepping into Wellspring Glades for the first time. The next one, Let the Waters Flow (15 GS), has you drain the flooded Watermill inside the Wellspring proper, which is pretty straightforward. Later, things get spookier in Mouldwood Depths, where Dark Triumph (20 GS) awaits at the end - that's for surviving Mora the spider's chase sequence, and yeah, it's as intense as it sounds.

Completionist Secrets

For the completionists, Scout (15 GS) is your entry-level secret - just find any Spirit Light container hidden in an off-map room. The easiest spot is in Inkwater Marsh, behind a breakable wooden floor left of the first Spirit Well, so grab that early. The real grind is Shard Hunter (30 GS) for collecting all 31 Spirit Shards, but luckily the Shard Detector shard reveals uncollected ones on your map, which is a lifesaver. Finally, Moonlighting (20 GS) is your reward for helping out Tokk the Struggling Entrepreneur - just deliver three Gorlek Ores to him in Wellspring Glades to complete his sidequest.

Movie and TV References

Baur's Reach avalanche escape is already white-knuckle panic, but listen for the Wilhelm scream when a Mogwai-looking enemy wipes out off-screen - it's a classic movie sound effect Moon Studios hid in the chaos.

Grom's advice to 'trust the light within the steel' sparked its own fan meme, 'Use the forest, Ori,' which is an obvious wink at Star Wars' 'Use the Force.' That one's intentional, unlike the Opher-Shrek connection, which is pure community fiction - so don't go hunting for onion layers that aren't there.

Video Game Homages

Keep your eyes peeled in Midnight Burrows and Willow's End for a pitch-black silhouette with two white eyes, because it's a dead ringer for Hollow Knight's Shade enemy - it's only a brief flicker, but you'll spot it if you know what you're looking for.

The Hand to Hand quest line is a seven-trade marathon that pays out with the Stone-Cutter, a Minecraft pickaxe that makes that satisfying voxel-break noise when you swing it. Meanwhile, the so-called 'Halo skull' in Baur's Reach isn't real - players just nicknamed the avalanche's exploding icicle confetti after the Grunt Birthday Party effect, but there's no actual skull to find.

Internal Developer Nods

Peek at the game's Windows 10 product ID and you'll still see Patagonia listed as the program name - that was Moon Studios' internal codename that never got replaced.

The Wellspring archive has a more personal touch: background textures named lib_alex, lib_jenny, and lib_david after developers' kids who contributed a lullaby to the soundtrack. It's a tiny detail you'd only catch by digging through the files, but it shows how much of themselves the team poured in.

Nostalgic Callbacks to Ori and the Blind Forest

Character and Story References

Some of the best callbacks hit you right in the feels. The most haunting is Sein's essence in Mouldwood Depths - deep in the spider-infested darkness, you'll spot a faint, pulsing orb of pale blue-white light that whispers '...I remain...' before vanishing. That moment isn't just for nostalgia; it actually nets you 1% area completion and a hidden achievement.

Then you've got Naru's carved orange back at her house, where two oversized light-orange berries can be jumped on repeatedly (around 15 times) to make them explode with controller vibration. It's the exact same physics object from the first game's opening, and it's still weirdly satisfying.

Finally, there's Gumo's wrench in the Wellspring Mill. After you open the sluice gate, there's a cutscene in the lowest chamber where Gumo slaps that wrench into a jammed cog, restarting the gears and lifting the central elevator that grants access to the rest of the area.

Location and Item Callbacks

The environmental storytelling goes even deeper. That carved 'A♥S' message from Thornfelt Swamp? It shows up again on a wooden plank in the Windswept Wastes - a dev-team love note to programmer Arie's girlfriend Sasha that most players sprint right past.

Then there's the Kuro feather motif in Silent Woods. You get the feather automatically after the first Spirit Well, but its black-with-teal-edge palette, asymmetrical shape, and glide-ability icon get reused everywhere - stone reliefs, graffiti, even negative-space branch patterns. The whole region becomes a quiet memorial to the owl's legacy.

And don't sleep on the fishing rod in Luma Pools. After you help the fisher Moki, that abandoned rod stays behind. Hold SHIFT on PC or the dash button on controller to make Ori sit and dangle those glowing legs in the water. It's a serene idle animation that rewards curiosity with pure vibes.

Advanced Secrets and Community Discoveries

The 'Rainbow Ori' Phenomenon

Let's clear up the 'Rainbow Ori' thing you've probably seen floating around. Unfortunately, there's no official cheat code for rainbow or pastel-pink colors in Will of the Wisps, so don't waste your time hunting for button combos. The only legitimate color shift happens when you equip the Triple-Jump spirit shard, which gives Ori a temporary pink-purple aura - that's all you get in the vanilla game.

If you're on PC, though, you're in luck. The community has created actual color-modding tools through Nexus Mods. The 'Ori the Collection – Cheat Table' adds a live Hue/Saturation slider, or you can grab the standalone 'Ori Color Changer' GUI that comes with presets like Rainbow Dash, Neon, Ghost, and even Invisible. Console players are completely out of luck here - these mods require the PC Game Pass or Steam version since they replace DLL files, which means Xbox and Switch versions can't run them.

For reference, the original Blind Forest did have a debug color code (↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A), but Moon Studios never ported anything like that to Will of the Wisps. So if you remember that working in the first game, that's where the confusion comes from.

Speedrun and Sequence Break Secrets

Ever watched a sub-30-minute speedrun and wondered how they skip half the game? It's all about sequence-breaking with specific movement tech and only buying four keystones: Spirit Edge, Burrow, Water Breath, and Launch. That's the entire kit for the current Any% No-Out-of-Bounds route.

The real magic comes from techniques that abuse momentum and collision:

• Grenade-Bash: Bash your own grenade for insane horizontal speed
• Hammer-Bounce: Jump off your hammer mid-swing to reach impossible heights
• Corner-Clip: Squeeze through tiny gaps in terrain geometry
• Water-Air: Swim through air pockets underwater to bypass barriers
• Ledge-Store: Grab ledges that shouldn't be grabbable to clip through floors

With Burrow, runners tunnel straight under Mouldwood to skip the fog entirely, then use Water-Air ceiling swims to enter Luma Pools before even seeing the Grapple ability. You can also burrow under the sand-fall in Windswept Wastes, which skips the brutal Sand-Sweep gauntlet and gets you to the Shriek fight at 22-24 minutes instead of the usual 35-plus.

Audio Secrets and Backwards Messages

The Shriek fight hides a creepy audio Easter egg that's easy to miss. If you rip the cinematic audio from the final confrontation and reverse it, a two-second whisper resolves into the sentence 'You are just a little bird.' This isn't fan theory - Moon Studios deliberately layered it into the master track.

What makes this even better is that art director Jeremy Gritton confirmed they 'reverse-engineered the story from the final boss fight.' So that hidden line isn't just spooky audio; it's pure narrative irony. Shriek spends the entire game tormenting Ori for being small, but the reversed audio reveals she's 'just a little bird' herself. It's a subtle touch most players will never catch, but it completely recontextualizes her character once you know it's there.

Complete Checklist and Hunting Strategy

Early Game Secrets (Inkwater Marsh to Wellspring)

Your first steps into Inkwater Marsh set the tone for the whole adventure, and this zone is absolutely packed with stuff you'll kick yourself for missing.

For health upgrades, you can grab three Life Cell Fragments here, but the one most folks walk past is tucked behind a breakable floor just left of that first Keystone door. Keep an eye out for cracked terrain. Energy upgrades are just as important - you've got two Energy Cell Fragments on the menu. One's hiding underwater beneath the first Grapple point you'll come across, while the other comes from knocking out the 'A Little Braver' side-quest, which you should definitely do since it also hands over some Gorlek Ore and Spirit Light.

There's also a spirit shard you don't want to sleep on. Before you ride that elevator up to Wellspring, check the crawl-space above the giant Ginso-tree-looking trunk - that's where Resilience is hiding. And here's a pro tip: activate the Map Stone before you leave Inkwater Marsh. If you don't, Lupo's shop won't even spawn in Wellspring Glades, and you'll be stuck without his crucial map upgrades.

Mid-Game Exploration (With Secret Shard)

Mid-game exploration completely flips once you snag the 'Secret' shard. You won't get it until after you grab the Grapple ability, since Twillen in Wellspring Glade wants you to fetch the Eerie Gem from Windswept Wastes first.

Once you've got Secret equipped, hidden walls and floors start glowing purple, and you'll realize you've been walking past loot caches for hours. The Wellspring aqueducts and Luma Pools are absolutely stuffed with these, so you'll want to systematically sweep back through every zone you've already cleared.

While you're at it, there are a couple other shards that become easier to spot. In Midnight Burrows, ring the six bells in order (1-2-3-4-5-6) to score Last Stand - it's a monster for survivability. And in Silent Woods, that upper-left shaft you probably ignored? With Burrow, you can finally reach it and grab the Splinter shard hiding inside.

End Game Cleanup and Developer Rooms

After you've collected every main-story Wisp and gained the Launch ability, the map finally opens up completely. The deeper sections of Silent Woods that were taunting you the whole game? Now you can actually explore them.

This is also when you can stumble onto some weird meta stuff. The game's internal codename 'Patagonia' is still visible if you dig through the Windows 10 product ID and program namespace - it's a weird little easter egg that somehow made it into the final build.

And if you want to end your playthrough on an emotional gut-punch, finish the 'Family Reunion' quest, then immediately trek back to that hut in Silent Woods. The scene that triggers is... well, let's just say you'll want some tissues handy.

Mastering Ori's secrets transforms a beautiful journey into a rich, layered experience. By equipping the right shards, revisiting areas with new abilities, and knowing where to look, you can uncover every hidden achievement, collectible, and heartfelt tribute. Now, with this knowledge, you're ready to explore every corner and discover the true depth of Moon Studios' creation.