Embrace the Void. 7 achievements which had me cheating

And here I am standing, standing, standing – and nothing, nothing, nothing.

Getting the "Embrace the Void" achievement in Hollow Knight was particularly embarrassing for me. Partly because it is one of my favorite games, and partly because I know that – despite the high degree of difficulty – it was within my reach. I just didn't have the patience.

This achievement was introduced the metroidvania from Team Cherry along with the Gods & Glory DLC. This expansion is based on battles with the bosses known from the core game and previous DLCs – some of them received new forms, but most of them are already familiar. The difficulty is that they have been grouped into four pantheons; each of them is a series of ten skirmishes during which we cannot be defeated even once. In case of a slip-up you have to start over (this is the so-called boss-rush mode).

While the first two pantheons were easy, in the third you had to sweat a bit (Goddamn you, Goldie, Gray Prince – and I might have let you die in Greenpath). In the fourth one, the last boss in particular – the Pure Vessel – turned out to be problematic. Fortunately, after reaching him for the first time, it was possible to practice the fight in the Hall of Gods without having to repeat the nine previous battles each time. In the end I made it – I had the desired 112% completion of the game... But at the same time, I gained access to the last, fifth pantheon.

It was he who challenged my patience. The task was to defeat all forty bosses in one go. And yes, each failure meant a return to the beginning of this marathon. What's more, the series of forty battles was expanded with two additional duels – the first one was Nightmare King Grimm (shown in the above screenshot), and the second was an improved version of the real final boss of the game. I was very determined. I tried and tried. But when I fell for the third time in the last fight – and I don't count the number of times I died on the way to that battle – I said to myself, “Enough is enough. I don't have time for that."

However, I didn't want the hours I had already devoted to be wasted. All that and no reward? No way! So that's why I searched the web... And found an invincibility glitch. As the name suggests, it protected against any damage. Its activation turned out to be trivial – you had to press the left trigger (default map display), then pull the left trigger (super dash), and then LB again. If we did everything correctly, the character turned pink, but we could control it normally. All you had to do then was squeeze that left trigger! Using the dream naila (Y) and push the left analog upwards so that the hero starts to teleport. The moment it flashes white, all buttons should be released. This is how I gained my temporary immortality.

Needless to say, then the fifth pantheon was a cake walk. In the end, however, I wasn't proud of myself – even though I eventually defeated the final boss in the Hall of Gods. This was, unfortunately, one of those times when the end did not justify the means. If you still want to follow in my footsteps, I have good (or bad?) news for you – the invincibility glitch still works, though not in the current version of Hollow Knight; you have to go back to 1.4.3.2. Well, have fun.