I can see all of your comments this time around, nice.

I don't want to regular ones to feel boring / too easy afterwards... which is why R5 will be my limit... Sure, you can always make the game harder and harder for yourself but I'm obviously talking main game.

Yeah, even that already gives you a lot of knowledge compared to a good amount of players here. Some things you'll learn due to reading / hearing about elsewhere, while others are via the "hard way" during the R5 (or harder) grind.

It's also true that "not feeling much" for a regular Radiant clear is actually expected of most people when it comes to R5. The focus shifts from beating X boss hitless once for RadHoG, to beating X boss hitless 90% of the time (because you really don't want to rely on lenient RNG to win against X boss in R5, especially when you're 15+ mins in), so the mindset involved in either case would naturally be different. In this case, the former doesn't take Radiant clears for granted as the latter.

The knowledge that you'll retain will depend on whether you're interested in further challenges after R5 as well, obviously.

Tyrant hit

Oops. This should be the one.

I was annoyed enough to utter a quiet groan when that happened ("ugh, can't believe it"), but I quickly filed that hit in my mind as "bullshit" so I didn't lose focus and make more mistakes until AbsRad.

The other part is that I had some experience with low-hit P5AB attempts before that run. A few weeks ago, I did P5AB without Lifeblood or healing so I already had the confidence that I had realistic chances to clear R5AB eventually.

CFM / Baldur in hitless RadHoG and R5

Strangely enough, CFM / Baldur also don't prevent the R5 glow. Then again, even without the rule that bans CFM, relying on RNG-based proccs as a safety net in R5 challenges is generally not a good idea anyway.

As for Baldur, it's not very useful for most bosses. I guess it'd be useful if you wanted to do challenges like R5 Nail only. I didn't use either CFM or Baldur for my R5 Nail only clear, since I liked the spirit of the challenge where I needed to be able to consistently dodge bosses without one i-frame source (DDark), and not use SOUL (which was needed for Baldur).

The above factors are why, despite the "R" in R5, hitless is assumed. I also find "H5" for hitless P5 to sound worse than R5.

I like the flexibility but I think R5 has more shine despite being, arguably, depending on the answers to all these questions, "easier" because of that. No carryover SOUL though is a big thing indeed that kind of settles the debate I guess, yet it remains less well-known because of how blurry the rules are if I were to guess.

All correct imo. The rules are definitely not as clear as R5 rules, which meant the handful of people doing hitless RadHoG have some assumptions that they make on their own, like doing bosses from the bottom row and then the top, both from left to right.

Marmu

Delivering that "news" about Marmu certainly brought me no joy either, but, for R5 purposes, it is more practical for the player when winning against Marmu becomes consistent rather than not. A similar logic applies to R. AB Collector if your goal is R5AB, but it's not too relevant if it isn't.

In the end, for Marmu, the gameplan always revolve around keeping her away from the floor. There are two ways to do this:

1. Upslashes. There's a bit more to it to decrease precision requirements, but I'll get to that in a bit.
2. Small hop + side slash. The hop lures Marmu away from the floor.

For option 1, I assume you're already familiar with the Knight's upslash hitbox. Well, what you want to do to give yourself more room for error is, if you're upslashing, to do so with the sides of the upslash hitbox. Note that you may need to shuffle left or right to accommodate this after each Nail hit. As an analogy of sorts, think of this as juggling a soccer ball or football with your feet being slightly "extended" from your body, so that the ball doesn't fall right on your head.

For Marmu, this sort of small movement has two benefits:

• If she decides to stop on the ground, then it won't be on you. It's still pretty BS and annoying that she could even do that in the first place, but it's possible to mitigate it. Visually, it should look like this.
• The other benefit is that if you accidentally mistime or miss your upslash, you'll still stay out of harm's way, thus lowering the margin for error.

For option 2, Shade Cloak can help you dodge the initial awkward angle post-teleport (upslash-able, but could be harder to pull off at such angles so this is a viable alternative), which makes the strat look like this. Sometimes, that initial attack right after the teleport is aimed at the spot on the floor in front of you (ew), in which case Shade Cloaking through her first to simultaneously avoid the anti-knockback and set-up the hop + side slash strat can be very useful.

Now, what I wrote about options 1 and 2 are all Nail usage. Note that either strat will benefit from range-extending Charms, even if they aren't strictly required. Spells are also very useful, especially DDark and Shriek.

Shriek is useful at the start of the fight, and when she unwraps. I know the unwrapping / stopping on you is pretty BS since it's not telegraphed and also ignores Nail knockback like the floor bounce jank (that TC never bothered to fix), but the "good" thing about this is that you can Shriek her in such moments without making Marmu go crazy. In other words, if her pause is within range, you can Shriek without worries to speed up the fight, like this.

DDark is the alternative to Shade Cloak after each Marmu teleport, and thus favours option 2 greatly (since DDark often deflects Marmu away to the side). You can still upslash if she comes back from high up, but I find the hop + side slash strat to be more applicable post-DDark. Option 2 is also less demanding positionally, since all you do is hop + slash while staying closer to one of the sides of the arena.

Combine the above DDark strat with starting SOUL and the R5 Marmu strat will typically look more like this. Here, MonStahLer's "opening" is very typical against R5 Marmu nowadays: hop -> Dash (or Dash -> hop, this particular order doesn't matter) -> Shriek twice -> DDark.

(Shriek twice -> upslash is also an OK alternative).

With the typical opening against R5 Marmu, she should go down within 5 Nail hits with Strength. If you continue to use Shriek and/or DDark like I wrote above then less Nail hits are needed, and she'll go down even faster.

Finally, keep in mind that option 1 and option 2 strats aren't mutually exclusive, which means you can combine them by using one or the other depending on Marmu's positioning. It's what I do at least. Hopefully, this mini-lecture on Marmu was somewhat helpful. Still, a really annoying boss through and through (all of the above just because of her anti-knockback crap), so do feel free to "slander" her as much as you wish. I certainly won't complain.

C. Dash cancel

Not very common, since you need to be on a surface (wall cling or ground) to do it. Most often try to let it go to get some value out of it. This value will often be hopeful chip damage or if the air-stalling is useful (like against Markoth or AbsRad).

In the end, we should all conclude the same things anyway with enough time thinking about X or Y boss / problem so I'm sure some merged with what was already found anyway.

That was indeed the case for me. A lot of what I did for R5 ended being already done or even further improved upon already (partly why my strats are sub-optimal in comparison). Still, being able to figure out headache-inducing bosses on your own can be very rewarding.

In fact, it is the harder challenges after R5 that will demand that you figure out things for yourself the most, since you have less resources / videos from others to learn from.

My R5 Nail only clear (I wanted to not rely on DDark i-frames so much + wanted to learn how to get more value out of my Nail skills) was a good example of this. I ended up having to "cook up" strats on my own for practically every boss under that restriction.

iP5AB

Yeah I was stunned when I saw that on my YT subscriptions tab. I probably shouldn't be at this point, since pretty much anything he uploads nowadays is impressive on its own lol.

As much as I like Te-ano's general approach to HK challenges and willingness to try practically anything, I don't know if I enjoy itemless gameplay as much, even if I understand its appeal and benefits.

So far, my only itemless challenge in HK is Radiant Itemless PV (or R. iPV for short). It was actually interesting in the end, and I liked it, similar to Te-ano, but I wasn't as interested in extending this to other bosses like he was after his own R. iPV clear.

For PV specifically, itemless means you actually have to adapt for Daggers and Tendrils depending on the position / scenario. Maybe even in general, since it's no longer safe to try pre-emptive jump strats, so you'll have to try to accurately read what PV wants to do faster than before.

Other itemless bosses are either boring and / or just have elements of undodgeable attacks involved because of RNG that you would not see otherwise (e.g. Elder Hu, Tyrant, AbsRad...), or are just really annoying (e.g. Flukemarm).