Started a Steel Soul Run in Hollow Knight

Lately, I have been on a path to get all the uncommon and rare achievements. I have recently done the SpeedRun1 and SpeedRun2 achievements, which require you to finish the game within 10 hours and 5 hours, respectively. The 5-hour one was a bit of a challenge and involved some planning of the path. I shared it in this post.

There are even harder achievements. Here is the list of achievements on the Steam page. I consider all the achievements which are completed by only 5% of the players as rare.

---

Out of these, I did the Speedrun 2 and can do the Speed Completion with the same save file. The hardest, I think, is the Embrace the Void achievement, where you have to complete the last pantheons defeating like 40 bosses in a row.

I am going to focus on the last two achievements, especially the Steel Soul.

In the Steel Soul mode, death is permanent, and this game been infamous for some hard bosses, especially in the end game the last achievement is quite tough. Steel Soul and Stell Heart both can be done on the same save file.

A good strategy in this run is to have the Fragile charms equipped, especially the Fragile Heart which gives an extra 2 mask shard health. I feel very vulnerable with just 5 mask shards.

---

And since these fragile charms break when you die and you have to repair them every time. They weren't that useful in the normal game. But for this mode, they are perfect. You cannot die in this one, or the entire run is over.

My route is largely the same as I took in the Speedrun file, but with extra freedom to explore and collect charms, mask shards and other items. There is no time constraint, so I will be delaying some harder boss battles until I am powerful enough to defeat them on the first try.

---

I enjoy the Mantis Lords fight a lot. For some this would be risky, especially with the basic broken nail but I can easily deal with them. Love this fight and I had to do it to get to the Tram Pass early in the game.

Deepnest was creepy as always, but I am getting much better at navigating those dark and creepy rooms now.

---

Since I was planning to have at least two nail upgrades before I fought any other boss, I needed to have a lot of Geos for the upgrades. Having no time constraint is relaxing, and I can get to all the big geo deposits and even farm enemies in the City of Tears for some time. Also, the Gorgeous Husk gives a lot of money. I wish there were more of these guys lol.

---

I upgraded my nail before going to fight the Soul Master. I could do it without the nail upgrades, but why risk it? Desolate Dive is going to make my life easier. Now that I had it with enough geo to get the Lumafly Lantern, it was time for the Crystal Peaks and upgrade it.

---

I love how the Shaman Snail is trapped in the Crystal here. I also got the Crystal Dash ability from here. And now I just needed the Wings for the double jump, and most of the Hallownest would be open to me.

---

But the issue with that is the Broken Vessel. I don't like this boss fight mostly because of the unpredictable moves it has. At any point of time, it randomly decides to jump up or go forward without many signs. This unpredictable nature can lead to some bad runs. In the last speedrun run I died to it so this time I was more careful.

---

There is an item called Rancid egg in the game which you can give to an NPC called Jiji and she will summon your lost shade (it appears when you die) and that's a good way to collect you shade with the money it holds without going back to the same dangerous place and die before getting that shade effectively losing all the Geos with it.

But in the Steel Soul run, death is permanent, so Jiji would have no use case. So, the game cleverly replaces the same hut with another new NPC to exchange your Rancid eggs with Geos. I love these little things about this game. The attention to detail in this game is something that still mesmerises me. There are these small things that I am finding new, even after playing the game for like 200 hours.

---

And the bug who used to sell us Rancid eggs in the normal run is now dead. This was so sad to see. He was a cool guy trying to scavenge the trash under the City of Tears.

---

I will explore the world more and see if something else has changed in this steel soul run. But before that, I need to get my nail stronger, upgrade my spells, collect more charms and charm notches, etc. This is going to take much longer than I expected, but I want to be safe rather than sorry. I don't want to die to a boss and start all over again.

Until next time...