Mario & Luigi: Brothership Guide - How to get the Stickem Oil at Allsand Island

Your voyage across the seas of Concordia has been smooth sailing, until you arrive at Allsand Island. You've come in search of the Stickem Oil, a material necessary for Technikki to fit together the various parts of the missile that will take you to the next Great Lighthouse Island, through its wall. The island isn't too complicated in itself, but right off the bat it introduces you to the game's most fearsome enemy, the Sharkbones, and it also has a bit of a tricky part that can get you stuck.

Firstly, as recommended by a character who has bitten the sand, it's best not to take on this sort of desert sand shark. You'll need the Bros. Ball power to roll through their domain, hoping they won't pounce on you. In the overworld it's easy to dodge them because they always charge in a straight line, but at some point you will come face to face with them. If you do get into combat, the best thing to do is... run away, because one touch or graze will take all your life.

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How to defeat the Sharkbones

If you ignored our previous piece advice, it is possible to get out of a fight with the Sharkbones. We did it, so we can brag about it and tell you how to survive.

1. First of all, look at the two most common attacks when the fight starts: the one where you see the fin swimming towards the brothers is easy to dodge, and when it's about to jump it makes a feint.


2. If you attack first or get past its first attack, take a Boo Cookie to gain temporary invincibility. You can then learn the sharks' other attack patterns.


3. Your attacks won't do much. They won't inflict big damage, regardless of your level (the recommended minimum is level 16), not even the Bros. Attacks. Save your BP and stick to basic attacks.


4. The only weak point of Sharkbones is that they end up crumbling or leaving. By holding and counter-attacking with the hammer, you'll see that, as the turns go by, one or the other happens, thus surviving the fight.

You won't get experience points, if that's what you came for, but you will have survived the most fearsome enemies in Mario & Luigi: Brothership.

How to get to the cavern to get the Stickem Oil

It's a different matter if you can't reach the source of the oil, which is protected by a group of hungry Sharkbones. If we've just told you how to survive a fight, is that what you have to do? Not really.

If you try to approach the oil fountain by circling the sharks, they will come at you as a group as soon as you enter their detection radius. Don't try to jump from box to box either, because they will do the same as soon as you land on one of the nearby boxes, breaking it. And don't even try to do the UFO spin between the crates and the shore. To add to the frustration, if you enter the combat and end up beating it, it will restart as soon as you exit into the world unless you get away quickly.

We have to confess that we thought the game was broken. That there was some way to defeat the Sharkbones that we didn't know about, or that it was stuck between two lands because we first connected Allsand Island and then went back for the oil.

What was going on was much simpler, but the game isn't particularly good at guiding you on several occasions - remember Snoutlet suggesting that we should look for a distraction for the sharks? While we thought that was crazy, it turns out that you can go west from the oil fountain (to the left) and, crossing between all the sharks, you'll come to a character hanging from a palm tree: "Get me out of here!" If you rescue them, you'll learn their signature move, which is a somersault jump from the palm branch. From there, of course, Luigi gets the idea to imitate them, and then you can go back to the fountain to let Mario hop from box to box while his little brother hangs from the palm tree.