Mole Knight quick kill. The trick is that you have to shove yourself to his left when he's shoving the dirt around. This allows to not be interrupted by the dirt, and it stops your self-knockback by hitting the wall.
So that platter that Projekt was talking about, I know I've seen a bomb in there, he's seen a chicken, and just now I saw a carrot, so I don't think that's very reliable, but I don't think it's really necessary anyway.
Either way you can still get through that area without too much damage to get the other platter in the stage that is usually an apple for me. I'll post a video soon. Might just come down to an RNG thing.
I'm pretty certain that at least some of the platters are random. I forget where, but I know I have seen mid-level platters that gave me a bomb when previously it gave me a chicken.
I usually get the platter right before the second griffin in that stage anyway, so if you do the stage perfectly that should be enough. The only problem I'm seeing is that one room with the chandelier that drops on to the two jousting unicorns, you can normally just tank through the unicorn and move on, but you basically have to do that room without taking damage. You also have to make sure you get bodied by the first griffin and not get hit by his fireballs, so that might matter.
Not sure how much help this'll be but here is the damage boost and the two platters after it. The capture didn't seem to capture the damage boost too well but yea.
Oh man, that skip is great. Also, Projekt, I noticed you didn't get the Flare Wand. I would like to point out that it is necessary for the Mole Knight quick kill, which would save about 5-10 seconds, and it speeds up the Specter Knight and King Knight fights significantly.
Alright, just makin' sure. But I just found out something, I'm sad I didn't get this on camera, 'cause it was really neat. Apparently you can die and kill a boss at the same time. Luckily, this game makes a check for that, unlike most games, and it does count as you winning and you retrieve the money bags you dropped, so you know.
There's no consistent way of fighting him, no quick kill, nothin'. He just jumps around and you have to deal with this. This fight is still garbage, and with practice you can probably complete the fight consistently, but holy crap this guy sucks.
Ah alright, I haven't tried it yet, but the way it's described in the shop makes it sound like it would Guess no armor really is worth the time getting into the airship.
Yo, I'd like to say real quick that there's a #shovelknight channel on the SRL IRC. The people in there are mostly routing ng+, but it's worth hanging out in.