They’re also a great way to hurt a boss during a stagger. Nail arts are great when your fighting an enemy that forces you to measure their pace, like a mantis petra or a primal aspid.
Nail focused is the way to go in SS, because it ensures that you’re fueling your healing ability with every attack.īeyond this – nail arts. You’ll have noticed that the advice I’m giving more-or-less forces you to adopt a nail focused playstyle, and yes that’s precisely correct. In that case, you should only save up 2 masks.
Once you have a Soul Vessel or two, you can spend soul more freely – once you have three, you should save a full half of your soul at any given time for healing purposes, unless healing is completely pointless – generally, that means during a bossfight, where safe-windows last long enough to restore 2 masks, where staggers take mnore than six hits. And, even when your masks are full, give yourself a 2-mask margin for healing. Do not, under any circumstances other than an absolute last-ditch effort to salvage the run, spend soul for spells when you could spend it to heal. Now, returning to the top of this section? Health is god, and soul is its messiah. Any more than that, and you should run to a different room. Especially Primal Aspids – the trick for dodging can fail, when you’re dealing with more than one, and typically does fail once you’re dealing with between three and four. As far as I can tell, thoseenemies are aware of you from anywhere on the map, just like a boss.įor Long distance aggro bugs, try, if at all possible, to attract one at a time if they’re anything you have problems with. Only three long-distance mobs don’t do this – the two things that hide in dead husks in Deepnest, and grub mimics. Most of them have a short initial aggro range – you need to get close to them before they’ll begin trying to ruin you day. For these enemies, getting them offscreen means they’ll follow you, get back onscreen, and keep on ruining your day. These guys are predominantly flyers, but a lot of the mobs in Deepnest also qualify. Engaging these guys usually isn’t a problem, because you can usually bug out and heal if the going gets tough. Short range aggro are enemies that will react to your presence in a moribund way – you basic husks, guards, rich bugs, ground-mantises, etc. Mobile hazards are enemies that crawl on a set path and which don’t really react to your presence. Short range aggro, long-distance aggro, and mobile hazards. Yes, even when fighting Primal Aspids – the things don’t actually shoot at where you are, but where you will be, so dodge only a few pixels, and the attack will always miss unless you screwed up the timing, and god into its face.īut, okay, more seriously, there are 3 types of enemy in the game. The first thing that you have to keep in mind is that spells are a lie. Nothing I say below will help you more than that advice, because that advice is enough to turn SS into a normal playthrough in terms of completion difficulty. If you’re using save-quit, then just quit at two masks for 1-mask bosses, or 3/4 masks for 2-mask bosses, and your success at Steel Soul is all but guaranteed just from that. If you won’t, then you really don’t need this guide. If you’re reading this guide, I hope that you’ll forswear the save-quit method. Not if you keep you head, play things safe, and … atually, there is no third part. The world in Hollow Knight isn’t really lethal. The “trick” here, was that not needing to walk back to the bossroom over and over again from a bench made even my totally non-optimized playthough fast enough for that to be easy.Īh, and, for whatever reason, Steel Heart, which is the achievement you get for having a Steel Soul run at 100% or higher is a rare achievement. I casually played through my SS run, and finished at 89% with a comfortable 4 hour margin to get those last 11% of completion to get SC. Beyond that, the benchquit style makes getting an ancillary achievement – Speed Completion – a pain in the♥♥♥♥♥- it shouldn’t be.