Momodora: Moonlit Farewell: Hardcore Mode Tips

Hardcore mode is unbearably intimidating at first, knowing that if you die at any point in the run, your save is deleted. Don’t let this stop you from trying though, because shortly after starting you’ll realize that with the right items, it’s not too difficult. In this guide I’ll cover general information that’s important to know, and also suggest some sigils that can make your run much easier.

If you think you’re about to die, you can open the menu and quit to the title screen. After that, reopen your save and you’ll be at the last bell you rang. If you are someone who wants to cheese your way to get the achievement, this is something you should know.

Beware of traps. You may have noticed in other playthroughs that there are some sneaky traps on the ground in some locations. If you aren’t careful, these can kill you very quickly, especially because they are often surrounded by other enemies. When you enter an area with traps, take it slow and be cautious.

Familiarize yourself with the locations of all berries and heavenly lilies, or you could also use a guide to help you collect them all. This is hardcore mode, so unfortunately trying to speedrun the game isn’t a great idea, unless you’re a pro. Take your time and get all the upgrades.

I also recommend saving enough of the fairies to the point that you can get the glistening hair strands from Hazelia. There’s an area in the Demon Frontier that significantly limits your visibility, it would be smart to take some time to get the light upgrade.

Make sure to use the bell to make offerings! I think this may be a slightly overlooked part of the game due to it not being that difficult (in my opinion). I found this to be extremely useful during bosses that I found to be particularly worrying.

IMPORTANT
In the final boss fight, your health is immediately reduced down to being a one-shot. The moment you start the final boss fight, PREPARE TO HEAL. It isn’t obvious that you take damage, so you may not realize that you can die and one hit, meaning your run might end after you’ve made it that far.

IMPORTANT
In my opinion, the most difficult part was near the end of the Fairy Springs, when you’re getting close to the boss. There are waves of enemies and they are quite strong. At this point, I wasn’t using the sigils that I recommend in the other section, so using those may greatly impact your experience. I am saying this because I recommend taking it slow in this area.

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There are two sigils that will make hardcore mode significantly easier, both of which can be acquired early into the run.

Glazed Aegis: creates a protective barrier after an use of Healing Bell.
This is the most important sigil for the run. After using your healing bell, it creates a shield that blocks one instance of damage. It doesn’t matter what sort of damage it is, or how much it deals. As long as the shield is active, you cannot take damage. The shield has an unlimited duration as well, meaning you can run around with this active basically all of the time. When wandering around the map, this sigil will prove to be extremely useful when running past stronger enemies or large crowds. You get it early in the Fairy Springs.

Companionship Pact: companions act more often.
This sigil is really only extremely good due to its synergy with the Glazed Aegis. You get it in the Lun Tree Roots.

In order to use this sigil effectively, you want to equip a Healer Companion. This type of companion generates magic crystals that let you heal more. Because you need to use the Healing Bell in order to activate the Glazed Aegis sigil, having more uses of it is crucial for survival. Luckily, you can acquire a Healer Companion (Grimalkin Spirit) right after completing the tutorial. It’s located in one of the houses in Koho Village.

Other Sigils:

The Glazed Aegis and the Companionship Pact sigils are the most important for this setup, but there are still other useful sigils that could help. The most notable one is the Last Wish, which prevents you from dying when reduced to 0 HP a single time only after ringing the save bell. This makes it so if you do mess up and die, well, you don’t die. I used this sigil in my run just in case, but with the Glazed Aegis and Companionship Pact combo, I never had to use the effect. This one is obtained from Cereza early, but it’s pretty expensive.

I also recommend getting some sigils to assist in damage. Companions do not spawn in boss battles, meaning you have to take care of them fast enough before you run out of healing bell uses. I used the Welkin Leaf and Trinary sigils to help. I especially recommend the Trinary one, because your bow will be very important for a boss fight towards the end of the game. Unfortunately though, both of these sigils cannot be obtained early.

Those were the sigils that I used, but ideally you should use whatever you feel comfortable with. Except for the first two sigils and the Healer Companion, those are the whole point of this guide.

At first, I wasn’t looking forward to doing hardcore mode. I thought I would end up dying somewhere in the run and I would lose hours of progress, but I only died once, which was 20 minutes into my run. Once I got far enough to get the Glazed Aegis and Companionship Pact, everything else was extremely easy.

To anyone reading this, I hope this guide was helpful. I will continue to update it if I learn anything else about the game that I think is useful for hardcore mode.