Can you beat Hollow Knight without the nail?

Please subscribe :) This video covers the insane Hollow Knight challenge of beating the game in the minimum amount of nail slashes. This is because the game is not possible to beat without slashing. I haven’t seen other content creators tackle this yet, so it’s cool to tackle something totally on my own! That isn’t to say I didn’t have help though, other people supported me, and have tackled it themselves, but not recorded it and edited it and presented it to the people digestibly. follow on twitch if you want   / henryst   Shoutouts to: Eloki    / @elokiyep   Tigrin29    / @tigrin29   Asits61    / @asits61   Additional footage from: BlossomTheCellist    / @blomsom   Daan Olav    / @daanolav   ALTERNATE ROUTE: There is a small chance the route going to fog canyon early is optimal for TAS-only runs, but it hasn’t been proven possible yet. Let me explain the difference between the route I took and the other route. We both use 19 swings in King’s Pass. I used 1 for fury of the fallen and 10 for gruz mother, making 30 my early game. The alternative would be to buy the crossroads stag and then do the fog canyon/forgotten crossroads acid skip (the baldur is more swings) using 2 swings (not proven possible yet but is could be possible), 3 swings to break the archives breakable wall, then 2 swings to shade skip into overgrown mound (not proven possible yet, maybe possible). Then, because there are spikes at the bottom of the squit arena, it MAY be possible to lure squits to their death. It hasn’t been proven to be possible without having invincibility and being inside the spikes, but if the squit arena is possible in 0 swings, then that would get howling wraiths with a running total of at least 26 slashes (this leaves 3 swings of wiggle room, in case they’re helpful for the acid skip or the shade skip or the arena. After obtaining Howling Wraiths you would save and quit to Queen's Station, stag to Crossroads (Dirtmouth is locked by a lever) and kill Gruz Mother with it by getting full soul at the hot spring and then using it all to cast 3 spells on her, killing Gruz Mother in 0 nail swings. Then after Gruz Mother you just follow the same steps as my route, saving sly, grinding geo, buying the Lumafly Lantern and going into Crystal Peak and down to Resting Grounds. But since now we have Wraiths and Dream Nail, we could kill the False Knight and get Vengeful Spirit early, not having to do nail-less Dream Shield only baldur. #henryst #hollowknight