Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment

MISSABLE

This can be a little bit challenging as you are stuck with only 4 Will (Health) and 2 Darkness (Magic) until you beat the final boss. However, there are some things you can do to even the odds.

1: Buy the Will Skull curio for 3 Red Skulls from Red as soon as you get to the Tower (after completing the Plains stage). This is by far the most useful curio when you are just starting out, or in this case, have a limited supply of Will. Using it costs just under 1 bar of Darkness and it restores 2 Will.

2: You will probably need to complete another stage to have enough money for it, but you should upgrade the Will Skull by talking to Legion in the Tower (see Spec'd Out). It will take 3000 gold to get Legion to "wake up" and then an additional 4000 gold for each curio you want to upgrade. Upgrading the Will Skull allows it to restore an additional Will on use, making for a total of 3 Will.

2.5: Alternatively (or you can even do both, it depends on your play style), you can purchase the Raiment of Risk cloak by talking to Manny in the Tower (see Spec'd Out). It will take 2400 gold to get Manny to "wake up" and then the Raiment of Risk costs an additional 5000 gold. While the Raiment of Risk is equipped, if you destroy a checkpoint a special gem will appear in it's place. If you collect this gem, your attacks are boosted and you slowly regenerate Darkness at the cost of having your max Will reduced until you fall in battle (die or complete the stage). However, the effect does not reduce your max Will below 4 so you will be largely unaffected by the downside during this run. With this effect active, your standing attacks hit for 2 damage instead of 1 and fire out a short range energy wave that hits for 1 damage. Unfortunately, your dash slashes are not boosted. If you are taking a lot of damage, the don't be afraid to wait for your Darkness to regenerate so you can have use of your Will Skull again before pressing on. Just be aware that destroying a checkpoint means that you cannot respawn at it if you die. You will be sent back to the most recent checkpoint you activated that is not broken. If none exist, then you restart at the beginning of the stage. You can always reset the checkpoints by pressing the "options" button and choosing to return to the Tower. You will lose all your progress in the level and anything you collected, but you will regain any gold you lost from deaths as well.

3: This is one of my personal favourites but it is a bit risky (like tip 2.5). It involves using a combination of the Raiment of Risk and the Chronos Coin curio. The Chronos Coin allows you to slow time for a while and even longer when Legion upgrades it. Red sells it after you complete the Lost City stage for 10 Red Skulls, and Legion will take the usual fee of 4000 gold to upgrade it. The trick is to become familiar with the bosses' movement patterns and decide when is the right time to use the Chronos Coin, as you will likely only get one shot at it because it will consume 2 full bars of Darkness to use. On top of that, you won't have any Darkness left for your Will Skull, however, you can get some Darkness back by inflicting damage to the boss. Now if your timing is good and you inflict heavy damage to the boss but you don't manage to finish them off, you hopefully will have regained enough Darkness to use your Will Skull if need be. I find this tactic can work really well against certain bosses and not well against others. I can usually crush Plague Knight, King Knight and Polar Knight very quickly and easily with this combo. However, I have had mixed results with bosses like Phantom Striker, Treasure Knight and Tinker Knight, often with the battle ending poorly so use at your own peril.