- Found the Hardware Bugs (Cogwork Dancers), decided to not fight them.
- Visually, they remind me of mantis queens in HK, whom I can do hitless with no sword upgrades. With my luck, these will be completely different and a major pain.
Ok they were ridiculously easy, I shouldn't have worried. They still sliced me up a bunch right in the beginning of the second phase when I couldn't adjust to the change of tempo. Phase 3 was easier. Plenty of time for healing and the pattern attack is easy to avoid. Cool fight. I wish they were even faster.
What I didn't like was running to them, going from the right there are two aggressive fuckers who hit for 2 masks and are too tall to jump over. I wait for the first bug to take to the air (which it might not before it pushes me out of the room), then run to the second bug and wait before it awakens and takes to the air. Meanwhile the first bug is chasing me. I got hit thrice and nearly lost my beads there (I had a mask trinket on and quit to bench on time). If the boss was as hard as I wanted it to be, this would be a major pain.
---
Anyway, fuck this game, why'd you put the path of pain into the regular fucking game. What a shitshow. Also --
-- this cockwhore looks invincible. I hit the two in the arena with slicy wheels (from Five Eyes) but there's one on the path to the oil (?) and it'd eat through my shard stash.
IMPORTANT EDIT: this nigger ^ is dumb and doesn't get aggroed on attack, therefore on the way to the clockwork arena you can shoot him in the back with basic knives when he walks away (takes 4 knives). A waste of time but not too hard on the wallet.
Please tell me if I'm supposed to do these jumps at this time. I have needle jump and wall cling but no double jump yet. There are new areas (High Halls, Sands of Karak, Sinner's Path) and Wormways and they all look like ass.
edit: it is, and there's an arena battle afterward.
Got the mask shard from Atla (easy with needle jump, plus I got gud), now I need 750 beads to buy the last one for the seventh mask.
edit: got the mask and rescued the other courier from Sinner's Path. Now I see how to do the deliveries. The bad news is cooking ingredients appear to follow a progression: starting area, center, and now Sinner's Path, other stuff may be further in the game, and the achievement comes after unlocking all bellways and pneumotubes on Steam's global board.
final update for today:
- beat the clockwork arena fight (shot up the final bug with boomerangs -- could've used pimp pillows if I knew what'd be up),
- got the oil,
- beat the pneumotube arena fight near the baths (finally! really hated going through the citadel, not that I will be going much from now on, almost everything else is cleared),
- made two deliveries (to Pilgrim's Rest and Bone Bottom).
- Courier's Rasher doesn't look doable, with the scales room in the way. I should try preclearing the path (eventually) but there's more stuff to do for now, I have Whispering Vault and Sinner's Path and could try Wormways.
- rescued Sherma (led the first fatty all the way to the left, killed him and spammed slicey wheels; the sword upgrade helped to mop up the other two fatties)
- for a moment I hoped the pale thing Sherma found was another oil. It was a whole spool, which isn't bad, I have 6 extra now and the effect is noticeable.