Shovel Knight is a loving Homage to Nintendo Hard retro games, so it's only natural that there are tools within the game to effortlessly defeat it just like those old games often had.
Shovel of Hope
- The Phase Locket found in the Lich Yard. It's one of the first magic items you can acquire and grants two seconds of invincibility. Combine that with a low use cost and the fact that most enemies drop magic refills on death and you can cheese your way through otherwise difficult fights and puzzles. The cost was later increased to make it much less game breaking, especially if your magic hasn't been upgraded very far.
- The Custom Knight in the Wii U and 3DS versions of the game, unlocked with the Shovel Knight amiibo. Custom Knight quickly gains relics, health, and magic points just by leveling up (done by collecting gold), and also gets exclusive abilities like the Double Jump or Dash Boots or new relics like the Infinidagger or Lift Dagger. These new abilities and relics trivialize many of the game's platforming challenges since they greatly increase Shovel Knight's mobility. While it formerly had the drawback of disabling feats, this is no longer true as of the King of Cards update.
Plague of Shadows
- The Float Burst. It causes you to slowly float down after your burst. This not only makes platforming much easier, but it also can make some bosses much easier since you can float above them and keep throwing down bombs on them. Combined with the Vat, you can easily just fly over all the enemies in a room or kill them while they can't touch you at all.
- Plague Knight's Smoke Bomb is essentially an even better version of Shovel Knight's Phase Locket. When used, Plague Knight throws a bomb that explodes into a slow-moving smoke cloud that lasts five seconds, and as long as he's touching it, he's invincible (and even after he leaves the smoke, he still gets one more second of invincibility). Since Plague Knight regenerates his magic power, once you have the full 4-part magic meter, you can camp in a Smoke Bomb, attack with your favorite flavor of bombs, and throw another Smoke Bomb out after the first one ends, harassing anyone in your way while they can't even touch you.
- Plague Knight's sheer variety of weapons and abilities in Plague of Shadows means that you can build a strategy to shatter nearly any challenge in the game. Boss giving you trouble? Hide in a smoke bomb and spam cluster or cascade bombs! Running low on health? Get some distance and spam shot bursts or component bomb blasts while sipping Leech Liquid. With a little cleverness, you can break the game over your knee.
- The Component Powder. It allows you to create bigger explosions every time you throw a bomb onto the same spot, with its biggest explosion releasing projectiles in a "+" pattern. This can be used to get enemies that are out of reach and can deal additional damage to bosses, if not at least hitting them if you miss. The best thing about this is that it unlocks early in the game after you beat King Knight and Specter Knight, provided you collected each and every cipher coin up to that point, and only costs about 4000 gold.
- A large number of bosses and enemies that spend any extended amount of time on the ground can be easily trivialized in Plague of Shadows with a combination of Bounce Casing, Sparkle Powder and Impact Fuse and repeatedly throwing the bombs at the enemy while jumping: the spark hits the enemies once and the explosion after that deals a second hit, allowing you to quickly shred their life to 0 in record time. The only largely grounded enemies that don't take additional damage from these bombs are Shovel Knight and Black Knight since they possess Knock Back and extended Mercy Invincibility.
Specter of Torment
- The Will Skull, which allows you to recover three Will for a fairly low Darkness cost, making it a very frequently used Curio among players. Coupled with the Cloak of Clemency, which prevents you from dying to spikes or pits at the cost of some Will and Darkness, this makes Specter Knight nigh-unkillable. Given that the New Game Plus not only disables it, but renders it redundant (your Will and Darkness are merged, and steadily go down, forcing you to be more conservative and careful with Curios), somebody on the dev team probably caught on.
- The Judgement Orb, which causes Specter Knight to charge for a second and leap to the nearest enemy. Used for platforming, this ability allows you to completely bypass certain hard platforming segments as it zips you to the enemy through any walls, spikes, or other hazards, and leaves you at your destination instead of returning to your starting position, and this also make it possible to save yourself from bottomless pits. Used for combat, it's even stronger, as it does as much damage as a charged slash without leaving you wide open or needing the specific cloak for it, and its homing makes it very potent for slow enemies or enemies with a low rotation. Upgraded by Legion it charges much faster and also makes you invincible while charging it. The only real balancing factor is that it's something of a darkness hog, and to get it to show up at Red you have to complete The Flying Machine, which is easily the most brutal platforming in the expansion, especially if you rush to try to get it early without other curios.
- The Skeletal Sentry, which allows you to summon a Boneclang to shoot spread projectiles at your enemies, for not much Darkness. It's even more potent when upgraded, having more health, shooting more projectiles, and being able to shred grounded bosses to bits, even Polar Knight. It's balanced out by the fact that bosses will prioritize getting rid of it, but that just means they aren't focusing on you, giving you ample opportunity to whittle their health down even more.
King of Cards
Adventure Levels
- The Healing Hammer, which not only is one of the cheapest Heirlooms in terms of Vigor (or Riches) usage but also one of the most useful ones. It has a fairly long range in front of you and can be rapidly spammed, with each hit providing you with a Heart for recovery. In the right conditions, you can defeat bosses with nothing but Healing Hammer spam as you shred through them with quick attacks and reliable recovery. Even better, the Hammer is available as soon you board The Glidewing for only 6 Merit Medals.
- The Rat Bombardier. For a decent cost, you can send a mobile bomb capable of jumping over ledges and changing directions at will. Even better, the explosion lasts long enough to count as a double-hitting attack against slow or big-hitbox enemies, allowing you to reliably defeat tough foes like Goldarmors or Polar Knight from and safe distance and little effort as long as you're not low on Vigor. For added effect, the bomb can also be used for Shoulder Bashing, giving King Knight great mobility with it.
- Bubble Frog. It creates a bubble encasing for King Knight that will keep him afloat as long as he wants or no enemies strike it. Pretty simple, right? However, encasing King Knight midair will reset his Shoulder Bash, which can come in very handy if you're a Shoulder Bash short of reaching a platform or falling to your doom.
- The Scepter of Swiftness, while fairly costly, allows you to sweep through extensive portions of the level and destroy everything in your path with little risk apart from a badly placed Bottomless Pit or Spikes of Doom (and even then, those can be solved with the Bubble Frog and/or the Rodent Regalia). It's also the only attack capable of killing the Lunkeroth in the Iron Whale stages.
Joustus
- Mole Knight's unique card is capable of destroying the cards to the left and the right of it when it's placed due to its combination of abilities, meaning it can be used to obliterate your opponent's set up cards in the right circumstances and give you a massive advantage, potentially placing the tempo of the match into your hands.
