My mostly deathless fresh file run
Greetings fellow Carcosans. I have been doing a few different challenge runs since platinuming the game as I just can't seem to put it down. I've tried maxing out the Carcosan modifiers and playing through the game without using the armour matrix. Both of those challenges feel a bit unbalanced though with the enemies at some stage just becoming incredibly tanky and the game becoming more of a slog to play, so in the end I had to make some tweaks to the damage dealt modifier to get through all the biomes.
I decided to try a fresh file run with the aim of completing every biome, every Nightmare Strand and killing the King without dying. My only rules were not repeating any biomes for farming or powering up, no Carcosan modifiers, and only returning to the Passage when forced to. This does mean that I could continue from Shattered Descent into Marsh and from Acolyte's Haven into Cathedral while keeping my current run buffs, which did probably make those two biomes slightly easier.
On my first attempt I died with the King at about 30% health on the final phase, but I did learn something useful about the fight at least. This was my second attempt and I managed it without recording a death. My total deployed time was just a little under 5 hours. It is perhaps not a 'true' deathless run, because I did use 2 second chances - both in Desecrated Fortress - one in the Nightmare Strand and one later. Closest I came to dying was on Architect too.
I think I'm happy enough with this for now, but I could redo it and try to not use a second chance, or I could push on and try to get the true ending on the same file. I think this was more fun as a challenge than using the most extreme modifiers, so if anyone is looking for a challenge which is balanced and maybe more in-line with what they experienced with Returnal then I'd recommend giving this a go.