Hello and welcome back to my blog!
I am trying to complete some rare achievements in Hollow Knight. Only 4.3% of the players on Steam have done the Steel Soul achievement, and just 3.6% have done the Steel Heart. My focus is to do both of them in the above order.
I talked about the plan in my last post where I shared some of the changes that happen when you play this game mode and why this is very rare. What makes it rare is the difficulty; if you die while attempting this run, your save game will be deleted, and the run will be over. That makes it interesting, and I can see why many won't even attempt it.
I do have a lot of experience in Hollow Knight now and can easily defeat most of the bosses in the game (maybe not easily lol).
One of the strategies is to get as powerful as you can before you fight the tougher bosses. This made me go looking for Pale Ore hunting.
These pale ores allow your nail to be upgraded, but some of them are locked behind boss fights. So, you have to get better at the game and learn the moves of these bosses, otherwise it will be over quickly. The Nosk fight in the Deepnest would have been a tough one if not for one little trick of hiding the corner.
I wouldn't have attempted it this early in the run if not for this handy trick that lets you heal in peace against it.
While I was in the Deepnest, I decided to get Herrah, the Beast, but she is sleeping in the Beast nest and I hate that place. After a close incident with one of the big enemy that deals two damage, I was able to get to her and beat the heck out of her in her dream lol. There is no boss fight associated with this dreamer, it is hard enough to reach here so I guess the developers decided to not make it a nightmare.
With one dreamer done and two pale ores in my possession, I went straight to the Nailsmith for the nail upgrade. This bugger is charging me 2000 Geo for it.
I wonder why he wants this much Geo when he will be requesting us to kill it once we upgrade it one more time lol. Maybe he doesn't trust our ability to find 3 more Pale ores for the final nail upgrade.
After a quick trip to the Seer in the Resting Ground. It was time to go for the second dreamer. You fight Uumuu here, a jellyfish-like being and this boss fight is not hard. You get enough time to heal during the phases, and overall a fun fight.
I was sure that it was safe and that I could handle it; otherwise, I would not have gone here yet.
As I expected, it wasn't a tough fight. The upgraded nail is dealing a lot of damage, and with the fragile strength equipped all the time, it increased my nail damage even more.
When you are fighting them in their dream state, it feels a bit sad. Like you are fighting someone who doesn't want to harm you anymore. But to open the seal of the Temple of the Black Egg, we had to defeat all three dreamers. You cannot win the game by skipping this part.
For the rarest achievement, I have to do it 100%, so I cannot skip many things. With the DLC content, it gets easier to achieve that as there is 12% extra DLC content that you can choose to do which will count towards the 100% game completion as well. So, there are some things I can afford to skipp but definitely a lot of them.
Now that I have decent attack output with all the movement abilities (except one item), fighting some dream warriors was a good idea just to get the dream nail.
Elder Hu is probably the easiest of them.
I still had one important missing spell, the Howling Wraiths. It is very useful against some bosses, especially those which likes to float above you, like most of the Dream Warrior bosses, especially Galien and Marmu.
One important ally that I didn't want to miss is Cloth. If you save her from the Ancient Basin and talk to her in the Queen's Garden. She will later join you in a tough boss fight against the Traitor Lord. I don't feel confident in that fight as it does double damage on every hit, and I can take every help I can get. I had to make sure to find her before going to fight for the Traitor Lord.
Thankfully, the Flower quest doesn't seem to count towards the completion percentage. I did the flower quest on my second try, but it was very stressful, and I don't want to do it again.
I took care of Marmu as well, another fight that can be cheesed. You can get a long nail or mark of pride, and just stand in the corner and strike upwards. Quick Slash helps a lot, too.
I still have to get the third dreamer and then fight the Hollow Knight, but before that, I want to get the rest of the Pale Ores and fully upgrade my nail. I am going to take no risk. If I die, this 10-hour run will be over. Luckily, it's going better than I expected.
Until next time...
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All the content is mine unless otherwise stated.
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Screenshots are from the game Hollow Knight.
