hey this isnt mine, this is edited from someone on youtube, ahhh
- Go through King's Pass, get charm
- Go down into Crossroads, fight the aspid arena, then continue to  False Knight. You need his 200 geo, charm, and the City Crest.
- Continue to Ancestral Mound and get Vengeful Spirit. The Baldur dies to 4 hits.
- Continue to Greenpath, pogo off mosquito over acid lake to get to platform. Collect geo nodes in next room.
- Continue upward and to the right to Moss Knight arena. These die to one nail hit and 3 fireballs. Do the first nail hit as it spawns before it can attack, and finish it with the fireballs.
- Collect geo from Vengefly King, the Moss Knights in the next room, and their geo nodes.
- Go down one room for Wanderer's Journal and stag station.
- Fight Hornet. Try to use spells as often as possible. She staggers in 6 hits. Save and quit after collecting Mothwing Cloak, before the dreamer cutscene happens.
- Stag back to Dirtmouth and head down into Fungal. Bench at Leg Eater.
- Go left at the bottom and fight mushrooms for charm notch, then head down the right path. Get the geo next to the two mushrooms on the way down.
- Continue past Mantis Village to bench and get dashmaster. Head back up to grab Mantis Claw and Wanderer's Journal in the room above.
- Head up and to the right towards City of Tears, bench with Quirrel, then grab a nail upgrade and Seal in the next room.
- Go right, open door in room below, then head up into Soul Sanctum. Buy bench to the left and rescue grub on your way up.
- Fight the first Twister. They die to two fireballs and one nail hit.
- Get Spell Twister in the hidden room above, then defeat Soul Master. Get the geo chest and Seal on your way out.
- Leave Soul Sanctum from the left, getting the key and Journal. Buy the stag DO NOT bench. If you are low on soul/health, kill the small enemies near the Journal and heal on the elevator. You can only get 2 masks healed before the transition. Don't waste soul~
- Leave left up the lift, and exit right toward Gruz Mom.
- Fight Gruz Mom, she dies to one nail hit, one dive, one nail hit, one dive, one nail hit. Very easy fight. Finish clean up with spells.
- Go to Salubra and buy Shaman Stone. Rescure Sly and save and quit back to your bench in City of Tears.
- Go down to Lemm and sell the relics you already have. Save and quit back to the bench again.
- Stag to Dirtmouth and buy the Lantern from Sly.
- Travel through the top of Crossroads from Dirtmouth to reach the dive entrance to Crystal Peaks.
- Traverse through as quickly as you can. I demonstrate a skip to reach a King's Idol. If you are not comfortable with this, just get the one from Dung Defender later. Either is fine.
- Get Sly's key. I show and easy way to make up soul and health if you end up in a bind. All of the large crawlers respawn on transition, so you can farm them safely.
- Go around the Peaks and get Crystal Dash.
- Continue down through the crushers. Exit right through the dark room. This is why I suggest getting lantern this early. Crystal Dash across and get Descending Dark from the Mound.
- Dive down and get Dream Nail.
- Dive through the grave to enter the right side of City of Tears. If you are not comfortable with the pogo to the Seal above the King's Station stag, get the Seal from here instead.
- Go down to King's Station. Get the Seal if this is the one you chose to get. Bench and equip Shaman Stone here.
- Kill Gorgeous Husk for a free 420 geo.
- Open the sewers with the key, and sell the rest of your relics to Lemm. If you are getting the Dung Defender King's Idol instead, don't sell to Lemm yet. Just go down into the Sewer.
- Make your way to Dung Defender and kill him. I show where the King's Idol is located. If you are selling relics here instead, go up the right exit, and up and around back to Lemm. Dive is a POWERFUL spell at this point. with Shaman Stone assuming all 3 hitboxes connect, it does 88 damage, 11x what your nail will do. Dive as often as possible!! You need to be centered in order for all of the hitboxes to connect. Try to be as close to center as possible above the enemy.
- From this point you should have sold your relics. Make sure you hit the switch, and continue down to Isma's Tear. This section is pretty straight forward. Save and quit afterward.
- Stag back to Dirtmouth and buy the Elegant Key from Sly. Save and quit again.
We are now at a point that we can relatively easily collect the dreamers and complete the game.
- Do the spire pogo.
- Bench at the nearby bench and do the fights as I explain in the video.
- Go around and open all of the doors, and head back up to Soul Sanctum to get Shade Soul. Save and quit afterwards.
- Go up to the Watcher Knight fight. Make sure to break the chandelier. This fight is the sole reason I included Desolate Dive and Descending Dark at all. Watcher Knight is a huge wall for new players, and people trying to get these achievements. They die to 3 Descending Darks and a couple of nail hits, assuming you have Shaman Stone. Try to focus on sneaking in careful nail hits to gain soul, and DDark as often as you can, ESPECIALLY if they are bunched together! You can kill two at once easily with this spell. Their AI is also very controllable. If you are directly over them, they are likely to do the bounce. Stay close so they don't roll. If you stay near they will also be more likely to swing, which is very easy to jump, pogo, and dive on to.
- Congrats on your first dreamer. The dreamers are hard saves, so you will need to walk all the way back to the King Station stag.
- Stag back to Dirtmouth, and head to Fog Canyon.
- If you are getting the extra notches to use Spell Twister, get the notch on the way. I show in the video a safe way to go about it. Kinda messed up at the end leaving up its alright lol. Just don't copy that part.
- Go into the Archives, and fight Uumuu. This fight is the main reason I chose to include Shade Soul. If you can manage to get double hits, which are based on distance (and much harder without Shaman Stone as it increases the hitbox size) you can do 80 damage per hit instead of 40. I demonstrate an easy setup in the video.
- Congrats on Monomon. Time to go into Queen's Garden.
- Enter through the entrance near Monomon. This is why we get Isma's Tear. You could chose to do an acid skip and skip the enter sewer section like in the any% speedrun route, but that is much much harder.
- Continue through Queen's Garden normally. Try to have soul going into the mantis arena. They will die to one nail hit, and one Shade Soul.
- You can bench in Queen's Garden if needed at the pay bench.
- Continue into Deepnest. I much prefer this route to the Mantis Lords Deepnest route, because that route requires fighting more unnecessary bosses and complex Deepnest memorization.
- From the entrance, go left to the Beast's Den. Sit on the trap bench. If you do have wings you can do the skip into the ceiling to skip all of Beast's Den. See any All Skills or 1xx% speedrun if you have never seen this. The stalking devouts die to either 3 Shade Souls, or 2 DDarks. Use DDark. You can safely keep your distance and still clear them with less soul investment.
- Congrats on Herrah. Now you can leave and buy the stag. Go back to Dirtmouth, and you can get into the Black Egg Temple.
- The Hollow Knight has been improved in the current patch of the game. He is both faster, and his pillar attack does 2 masks instead of 1. Just be careful, and try to use DDark as often as you can. He should die relatively quickly. Remember that he only takes 1 damage from anything while he is stabbing himself. Use this time to gather soul and heal. Don't waste spells on this phase. Pogoing is also your best friend. He doesn't have any aerial focused attacks. Good Luck~
- If you are not comfortable with having 5 masks: With the geo I have in this route you can buy 3 from sly. There is one in Crossroads which I collect. You can collect 5 grubs. We pass 3 in Greenpath (1 if you do the skip), 1 in Beast's Den, 2 in Crystal Peaks, 1 in Resting Grounds, and there are several more nearby. You can choose which ones you want. If you want a whole other mask for 7, you'll need to look at the ones available to see what you have time to get and are capable of getting quickly.
The hardest thing about trying to do this is figuring out what you want to do, and in which order. I'm hoping this guide is helpful in that regard~