Consuming the Crystal Heart and defeating the Crystal Guardian | Hollow Knight Gameplay

Hello, gamers. Welcome back to my blog.

I have been having a blast with Hollow Knight and as you unlock more of the vast world of Hallownest you will start to recognise the beauty of this game. Kudos to Team Cherry for making such an interconnected world. I will continue my journey from where I last finished, which was on a bench near a stag station called the 'King's Station'.

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I explored more of the King's Station and saw a hole where the light was coming in from. It looked like an important room so I went in there without wasting much time.

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I had to clear the rooms from those Elite bugs. They are very easy to kill and give you the most amount of Geos. Exploring the King's station was very rewarding as it was the place where all the royal bugs used to live.

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They do not pose much challenge. One of the paths took me to an elevator that connected with the Resting Grounds.

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This interconnected world is what I love the most, there is often more than one way to get to a zone and each has its secrets and items. If you don't want to go up to the Resting ground, you can choose to go left and there will be a huge blue lake waiting for you.

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I wondered what I found on the other side of the lake. But it was just a friendly bug, Tiso who was surprised to find a calm place like this after what he had seen.

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And guess what? This lake connects you back to the Forgotten Crossroads. But it looks like a one-way route only. The ledge is a little out of reach from the ground. You can see the shop of Charm Lover, Salubra from here. I dropped down to see if she had restocked her charms or not.

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No, she had not, all she had was one charm and a charm notch that I can't buy currently as I need to find more charms first. I had some Geos so I bought the 'Crystal Focus' charm although, I was not planning to use it because of its high cost of 3 charm slots.

Since I was here, I wanted to go to a less explored place, the Crystal Peaks. I have been there once but I fell in a hole to accidentally reach the 'Resting Grounds' and since then I wanted to go back there but got distracted every time by one thing or the other. There are a lot of things to do in this game and there are no linear paths.

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Crystal Peaks is an interesting area with unique aesthetics. The whole place seems to be powered up by strange crystal forces and you will find bugs growing crystal shards on their backs and harnessing the power of crystals to get unique abilities.

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Many bugs are mining the crystals like robots, this place also has a lot of machinery, including conveyor belts to transport crystals.

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Some of the sections are very challenging. I didn't even have the map of this section. So, I was thrilled to find Cornifer, the cartographer. And purchased the map from him.

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Some of the sections looked like impossible to cross, it was too much gap for my little bug to cross them.

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Some bugs had crystal shells which couldn't be destroyed and they emitted powerful lasers which made it slightly tricky. But I loved those challenging platforming sections. Finding some Wonderer journal is always great!

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The section that gave me the most pain was the area where some big walls opened and closed and you had just a small area to stand and even a little window of time to cross them before they crushed you!

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I died a couple of times there and lost around 2K precious Geos. It hurt a little...xD

Not only crushing walls and deadly bugs but Crystal Peaks is filled with spiky and pointy things. One must carefully cross it. Getting stuck in the middle with low health is not a nice feeling.

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Team Cherry decided it was not hard enough and added some LASERS too. Now I am starting to get why people say it is a tough game and I am afraid, this is going to get much more difficult from here.

Consuming the Crystal Heart

After crossing a challenging platforming section I got to a place where a strange mechanical bug was lying, something was emitting a strong light from it and when I inspected it, I got the Crystal Heart ability.

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Now I can cross large gaps with my super dash ability. I love the animation on this one. It takes like a second to recharge and boom, you are a missile after that. So this is the source of energy that all those bugs were mining!?

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I can also use it when clinging to a wall and it helps me reach so many new places. This is going to unlock a lot of secret locations I believe. I was able to rescue a poor grub from my newfound ability.

Defeating the Crystal Guardian

I was expecting a mini-boss from this part of the map too but couldn't find any yet. As there were so many unexplored paths and rooms to take. Ironically, I found one in a room with a bench, which is usually the safest room in Hollow Knight.

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This was called the "Crystal Guardian" and shoots a beam of laser towards you. This beam takes some time to recharge and if we jump just in time we can easily avoid it. Also, many laser beams come into the arena from the sky in random locations. So, you have to keep them in mind too.

It wasn't too difficult for me, I was familiar with the laser timing by now and it helped me dodge many attacks. Also, its health seems to be low too. It didn't take many hits from my nail. In hindsight, I think my upgraded nail helped me a lot during this battle. If I were to fight with the rusty nail it would be a much longer and tougher battle for me.

My next target would be to go to the edge of the Greenpath where I saw a huge lake and now I think I can cross that lake easily with my new ability. There were more places like this, there was an acid pool too that I saw somewhere which might just be crossable now. This new ability just gave me a lot of reasons to go back to the places that I already have travelled.

Thanks for reading...

Until next time...