The purpose of this guide is simply to show what makes this challenge interesting and the implications of it. This is intended for players who have ALREADY beaten the game and will contain minor SPOILERS.
Why would you do this?
After completing my first casual playthrough I noticed a trend in this game. I very rarely used other spirits once I found a couple that I liked, leaving half or more spirits completely unused. This challenge breaks that habit by forcing you to switch your spirits to higher level ones as you progress throughout the game and also gives a slightly higher difficulty by not allowing you to get as high level spirits as you would otherwise have.
How Does This Affect Gameplay?
As I’m sure a lot of players have noticed, you’ll receive spirits at a higher base level as you progress throughout the game. I’m not sure if this effect is triggered by the amount of spirits you already have, bosses slain, character level, etc. However, this effect means you will need to replace low level spirits with higher level ones as you progress throughout the game. An example of my own spirit levels is given below:
(Note that this will likely differ in your own playthrough)
I also want to make it clear that you will be below the usual progression of the game. The screenshot below is taken after a 100% completion and you’ll notice I have enough blight to level all the spirits I’m using to max, but instead am forced to fight the final boss with level 4/5 spirits. This means most bosses will take slightly longer to complete, but nothing overwhelming.
Recommendations/Tips
This challenge is intended to give diversity in the spirits you use throughout the game, so the first obvious tip is that you should try to find them all as you play and see if they can be useful to you. It is worth noting though that if you leave a spirit and get it later in the game, it will be a higher level than it otherwise would be. For example, I forgot to get the Floral Sorceress in the early game and by the time I backtracked it was a level 4 spirit that I used well into the end game. Use this tip as you wish although I don’t recommend trying to cheese the challenge in this way.
It’s also worth noting that since this is a self-imposed challenge, you’re free to modify in any way. For example if anyone wanted to remove health upgrades, relics, etc.
As for any actual tips once inside the challenge, I think the best thing to do is just to take your highest level spirits and try to incorporate them into gameplay the best you can, keeping all spirits within two levels of each other with the exception of needing traversal/underwater compatible spirits. All spirits in this game have a use case they excel in and other they don’t, so keep that in mind as you normally would while deck building.
(Don’t you dare use a level 1 Siegrid on the final boss)
Closing Thoughts
The goal of this challenge is simply to increase player’s ability to use different spirits and slightly increase difficulty overall to give players a fresh perspective on the game and stop people like myself from using Siegrid all the way up to the final boss. I hope everyone trying this has fun with it and can get a better appreciation of the diversity of spirits present in the game, as I have. 🙂
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