Demon Tides Part 1 Walkthrough: The Flag Trick and Golden Gears I Wish I Knew

Why Part 1 Matters (And What This Guide Covers)

After spending a couple of evenings replaying Demon Tides’ opening, I realized most of my wasted time came from two things: not using checkpoint flags intelligently and not planning my early Golden Gears. Part 1 quietly teaches you almost every core system you’ll rely on for the rest of the game, so getting comfortable here pays off for the next 10-20 hours.

This walkthrough covers everything from waking up after the shipwreck to meeting Runa in her village:

• Completing the shipwreck tutorial and rescuing your scattered crew
• Using checkpoint flags in ways that actually save time instead of wasting it
• Repairing the ship by finding all four parts around the makeshift camp
• Clearing the early Radio Towers level, including the ring challenge and both chests
• Reaching Runa’s village and understanding Golden Gear requirements for new oceans

If you follow this route, Part 1 should take you roughly 45-70 minutes on a first run, depending on how much you poke around. On a second file, I comfortably reached Runa in just under an hour while grabbing every obvious collectible along the way.

Step 1 – Surviving the Shipwreck Tutorial and Rescuing the Crew

You start on a floating mess of wreckage after the ship smashes into the red reef. This area is your movement sandbox, but it’s also your first checkpoint-flag training ground. The route is always the same:

• Go straight along the wooden path from your starting point.
• Turn right and jump across the line of wooden platforms ahead.
• On the other side, you’ll meet DK for the first time.

DK explains that once you find crew members, he’ll “phase” them back to safety. Practically, this just means you don’t have to escort anyone; touch them once, watch the quick dialogue, and move on.

Keep following the platforms and basic jumps until you run into Luci. She’s standing beside a flag, and this is where Demon Tides quietly gives you its most important tool: the manual checkpoint flag.

Mastering the Checkpoint Flag Right Away

The game doesn’t force you to respect this mechanic, but you absolutely should. The checkpoint flag lets you drop a respawn point almost anywhere there’s safe, solid ground. When you die or manually warp, you come back to that flag instead of some distant auto-checkpoint.

The breakthrough for me came when I stopped thinking of it as a “save point” and started treating it like a personal rewind button. On my first run I barely used it, and every missed jump meant redoing 30–40 seconds of platforming. On my second run I started planting flags before any sketchy-looking sequence and cut my retry time to seconds.

• Plant a flag before a series of small, risky platforms.
• Plant a flag right after a long climb you don’t want to repeat.
• Remember: the most recent flag becomes your active respawn point.

From Luci, continue forward. After a few more jumps you’ll find Midgi, currently transformed into a barrel. Let the short scene play out; he’ll return to normal. Nearby there’s a cracked-looking door or barrier you can break through using your boost move (the game will prompt the correct button for your setup).

Once you smash through and complete the basic movement lessons, you’ll emerge at a more stable area: the makeshift camp. This is your tiny first hub and where Part 1 really opens up.

Step 2 – The Makeshift Camp: Your First Safe Hub

At the camp, talk to Midgi. He’ll ask you to scavenge any parts that look useful to repair the ship. The game gives you a super-helpful tool here that I completely ignored on my first run:

Hold the B button on a controller or the 2 key on keyboard to ping the direction of the next part. Beebz will literally point you toward your objective. I wasted several minutes wandering in circles before I started using this regularly.

From the camp, four paths lead out into short platforming routes. Each one holds a ship part at the end. You can tackle them in any order.

Efficiently Collecting the 4 Ship Parts

The exact layout of each path is simple early-game platforming: a mix of basic jumps, a few slightly longer gaps where you’ll use your boost, and some gentle vertical climbs. The real trick is not the difficulty, but minimizing repeat runs when you mess up.

• Drop a flag just outside the camp before you commit to each path. If you fall into the drink halfway through, you’ll restart close to that path’s start instead of back in the camp center.
• Use the part ping often. If you take a wrong turn, holding B / 2 quickly re-orients you instead of making you guess.
• Grab obvious side collectables (like easy-to-reach tokens or gears) if you see them, but don’t obsess over 100% yet-you’ll revisit areas later with better familiarity and Talismans.

Once you’ve collected all four parts and returned to Midgi, a short sequence plays where he repairs the ship and gives you your first world map. He also circles a rough area on that map-where he thinks Runa might be hiding-and hints she’s your ticket to Ragnar’s Castle.

Before Beebz sails off toward that circle, though, she insists on detouring to a nearby spot filled with radio towers. That’s your first “real” level: Radio Towers.

Step 3 – Radio Towers: First Golden Gear and First Talisman

From the repaired ship, choose Radio Towers on the map. This area teaches exploration structure, side objectives, and reward chests in one go, so it’s worth doing carefully instead of speed-running straight through.

When you arrive, you’ll see a small dock area with a “leaderboard” boat and a chest nearby. A little further in stands a Lokian NPC. Talk to him: he explains that the radio station needs power, and he’s effectively guarding some rewards until you fix that.

Near him is another chest. If you try to open it, instead of just giving you loot it will show you a glowing ring high up on one of the towers. That’s your hint: this chest is tied to a platforming challenge, and that ring is the starting point.

Here’s where the game lets you make an easy mistake:

• If you rush straight for the ring and ignore the actual radio equipment, you’ll climb all the way up, do the challenge…and realize the tower wasn’t powered, so the chest still won’t open.

Don’t do what I did. Instead, follow this order:

• Work your way through the level toward the tower with the highlighted ring.
• Plant a checkpoint flag at the base of the tower or halfway up—anywhere that cuts out the longest climbing chunk if you fall.
• Reach the top of the tower and interact with the bank of radios first. You’ll see or hear confirmation that the radio tower is now “live.”
• Only then interact with the ring to start the challenge.

Clearing the Ring Challenge (Without Losing Your Mind)

Once you touch the ring, a route of rings appears leading you around and off the tower. The goal is simple: follow them in order without messing up. If you miss one or biff a jump, you’ll have to restart the sequence.

This is where checkpoint flags shine again. Before triggering the starting ring, drop a flag right beside it. Then, if you fail partway through, you can quickly warp back to the start instead of reclimbing the tower or redoing half the level.

• Don’t rush the first few rings. Get a feel for how far Beebz carries over gaps with a boosted jump.
• Commit to a rhythm. Pausing too much mid-route can throw off your sense of distance and timing.
• If there’s a ring that felt barely reachable, consider planting a flag just before that section on your next attempt so you’re not repeating the easy earlier bits.

Finish the ring route, and then head back down to the Lokian and the chests. Between them you’ll get two important rewards:

• 1 Golden Gear from the ring-linked chest.
• 1 Talisman from the other chest once the tower is powered and the Lokian lets you claim it.

This is usually your first Golden Gear and first Talisman. You’ll collect many more, but grabbing both here sets up your early progression nicely.

Step 4 – Finding Runa’s Village and Unlocking the Next Ocean

With Radio Towers done, return to the ship. Now it’s time to actually chase the mark Midgi drew on your map.

You’re currently in the starting region, Lokitana. On your map, you’ll see a circle that Midgi scribbled earlier—Runa is somewhere inside that zone. Her village is on the eastern side of that circle.

Use the map to sail toward the east edge of the marked area. When you spot a small settlement with docks and cliffs behind it, land there—that’s Runa’s village.

Once you’re off the boat, take the path that climbs up the cliff to your right. Stick to the upward route and you’ll find Runa overlooking the area. Talk to her to finally learn how Golden Gears tie into progression.

Runa explains that she can send you to other oceans (and eventually toward Ragnar’s Castle), but she needs Golden Gears to power things up. The key thresholds you should memorize:

• 10 Golden Gears – Unlock the next ocean, Shiverbeaks.
• 20 Golden Gears – Later on, unlock another region, Thuintir.
• 35 Golden Gears – Roughly what you’ll need to see the main story through to the end.
• 45 Golden Gears total exist – The remainder are for a hidden final area and full completion.

For now, Runa marks the location of Jester—one of Ragnar’s three generals—on your map. To move on from Lokitana you’ll ultimately need to both defeat Jester and collect at least 10 Golden Gears so Runa will open the path to Shiverbeaks.

Reaching this conversation with Runa is effectively the end of Part 1. From here the game opens up and you get to choose which levels to tackle on your road to 10+ Gears.

Step 5 – Early Golden Gear Strategy (So You Don’t Hit a Wall Later)

On my first file, I wandered Lokitana grabbing whatever looked shiny and only realized much later that I was one or two Gears short of a gate. On my second run, I planned my Gear collection from the start, and progression felt much smoother.

• Radio Towers’ ring chest is an easy, guaranteed early Golden Gear—don’t skip it.
• While exploring paths from the makeshift camp and other early levels, always check side ledges and obvious offshoots; Lokitana hides plenty of “low-hanging fruit” Gears.
• You don’t need all 45 Gears, but aiming for a few extras above the required thresholds gives you flexibility later when a specific Gear seems too annoying to chase.
• If a Gear looks like it requires pixel-perfect platforming or a future Talisman synergy, mentally mark it and move on. There are more accessible ones early than you strictly need.

As a rough benchmark, by the time I’d cleared Radio Towers, a couple more early stages, and revisited obvious detours, I was already halfway to the first 10-Gear gate without grinding.

Checkpoint Flag Habits That Make Demon Tides Way Easier

Because flags are introduced so casually, it’s easy to treat them as a novelty. In practice, they’re the backbone of how Demon Tides stays challenging without being frustrating. Here are the habits I settled into after a few hours:

• Always plant before a new hazard type. First time you see moving platforms, spinning blades, strong currents—drop a flag.
• Lock in big wins. Just completed a long climb, collected a Golden Gear, or finished a tricky detour? Plant a flag right after so you never have to redo it.
• Use flags to practice shortcuts. If you spot a risky shortcut line, plant a flag at the start, experiment, and warp back instantly when you fail instead of walking.
• Keep your active flag reasonable. Don’t move it forward until you’re sure the new spot is safer than the old one. Your current flag is your lifeline.
• Use manual warp proactively. If you realize you’ve gone the wrong way or missed a collectible behind you, warping to your flag is often faster than backtracking.

Once I started playing this way, even the tougher later levels felt fair. Instead of dreading long corpse runs, I was setting my own checkpoints exactly where I wanted them, which let me focus on learning each challenge rather than hiking back to it.

What Comes After Part 1

By the time you’ve finished everything in this guide, you should have:

• Completed the shipwreck tutorial and rescued DK, Luci, and Midgi
• Learned how to use checkpoint flags effectively
• Collected all four ship parts and repaired the ship
• Cleared Radio Towers, powered the first radio station, and earned a Golden Gear and Talisman
• Reached Runa’s village, learned about Golden Gear gates, and had Jester’s location marked on your map

From here your goals are clear: explore Lokitana’s other stages, push your Golden Gear count to at least 10, and build up the skills you’ll need to take down Jester. Once you do, Runa will send you onward to Shiverbeaks and the game really starts to open up.

If I can offer one last bit of advice: don’t stress about playing perfectly in Part 1. Use this section to experiment with movement, get comfortable dropping flags, and learn how Demon Tides hides its collectibles. Do that, and the rest of the adventure becomes a lot more fun—and a lot less frustrating.