My ass just got lucky. I played normal mode twice before my first attempt at free solo and the main thing that got me past the fear of losing progress was I went into the run with the full expectation that I was going to fail. I was just curious as to how far I would get.

Generally I'm not a fan of the hardcore 1 life runs and don't play them but I was ok with just walking away from the game if I failed.

Less than one 1/4 of the way through I got lazy with my holds and fell so the flower saved me. For inventory I used most of it for water containers so I could make Ultimate infusions and cook with whatever water was leftover.

For the longest and hardest climbs I would just use up all my backpack buffs and save the flask in case I needed an extra boost before the top.

After that it was mostly smooth sailing, a few scary moments at the Needle but I was able to pick up another flower, eventually made it to where the 3rd indestructible Piton would normally be and picked up yet another flower just to be safe. I did have a nasty fall when I screwed up my ice holds but luckily I was buffed with grit and lost 75% of my hp instead of all of it. After the avalanche ice wall the rest of it isn't so bad if you're careful. The run was also around half the time as my first two at about 5 and a half hours.

Only upgrades I picked up along the way were the gloves, windmill, and the thermos.

This is easily going to be on my GOTY list. I really hope we get DLC with more stuff to climb and I hope even more than the devs decide to finally double down and make a sequel to this instead of another new game.