YMMV / Salt and Sanctuary

• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • For all the terrible things he's done and his implied might, the Untouched Inqusitor isn't too much of a challenge — his attacks can be easily dodged or avoided by simply going out of range, and while they knock you back, the damage done isn't too high. In fact, most of the challenge comes from the fact that he's an airborne enemy, which, for melee characters, makes him a bit of an annoying "Get Back Here!" Boss.
  • While they're stuck in the unfortunate position of being fought right after The Witch of the Lake but before Kraekan Dragon Skourzh and The Forgotten Three, The Unskinned and The Architect don't come off as powerful as the lore implies they are. Though they're a dual boss, both have below average health, their attack patterns often result in you being able to hit both of them at the same time, and killing one leaves the other gimped for the rest of the fight. You'd think that The Architect, who, besides The Nameless God and Skourzh, is the most powerful entity on the island and her 'best' creation would put up a better fight.
  • Carsejaw the Cruel might dress up like Nito, but he has the durability of Pinwheel, making for a rather disappointing Optional Boss you have to go pretty far out of your way to get to. At least you get to make the best non-Jaws-Of-Death greatsword in the game out of his ashes for your trouble.
• Awesome Art: The game's 2D environments, effects, and sprites are interesting sight to behold, given that this game aesthetically looks similar to The Dishwasher.
• Best Boss Ever: But of course! What is a Souls-like game without some good bosses?
  • The Sodden Knight, the first boss you are required to defeat to progress. While fairly simplistic compared to later bosses, his memorable design, ability to rapidly close the gap between you and him with a lightning attack, some devastating combos and fucking LIGHTNING POWERS make him a worthy introduction to the game.
  • The Kraekan Wyrm. A perfectly atmospheric Battle in the Rain against a pretty large dragon who is the first boss that makes it clear that the game does not fuck around. It hits hard, moves surprisingly quick at points, and hits you with devastating fire attacks that, without the 100% fire resisting shield found in the area, will absolutely shred you and, should you somehow survive, leave you with noticeably less max health for the rest of the fight. It’s one hell of a Wake-Up Call Boss and leaves a lasting impression.
  • Another Kraekan boss is Murdiella Mal. While she is a bonus boss that doesn’t reward you with anything beyond a pittance of gold and a boss weapon crafting material, she’s worth fighting just for how awesome she is. With a variety of high-damaging holy attacks (yes, a Kraekan of all things using holy attacks; wrap your brain around that), lore that depicts her as being otherworldly to a point where she walks on a line between the celestial and physical planes, and a design reminiscent of the Moonlight Butterfly, Murdiella Mal is a deadly opponent.
  • After the Breather Boss that is the Untouched Inquisitor, going up to the top of the area you fight him in will reveal the Third Lamb, a humongous griffin-like beast that has clearly seen better days. She is vicious and deadly, can spit lightning and does so with impunity, and is absolutely relentless, making her a much more satisfying battle than the one preceding her. Her tragic lore helps too, and you can have some pride in the fact you freed a once magnificent beast from a painful existence.
  • The Forgotten Three. A humongous reveal, especially if you’re a follower of the Three, this triple threat of decrepit, maddened gods are fought at such a stage that you will be fully capable of running circles around them while you take them apart. Their actual patterns are simplistic, but it’s an absolute blast to kite them around and seamlessly dodge their attacks and is an amazing example of just how badass you can be.
  • Kraekan Dragon Skourzh, a scaleless dragon octopus... thing with a surprisingly varied moveset and one of the most impressive designs in the game. While certainly on the easy side, he's nonetheless pretty fun to fight, especially if fought shieldless with a decent grasp of dodge timing.
  • The Final Boss, The Nameless God. Simply put, it's a boss with no gimmicks or weaknesses; the fight against him is entirely a test of raw skill and combat prowess, and he's all the better for it. It helps he takes a couple pages out of the Gwyn handbook with a powerful kick attack and a grab that will take a ton of health off if it lands.
• Breather Boss:
  • That Stench Most Foul; despite its interesting appearance, it's INCREDIBLY weak to holy and fire, has little HP (only 400 higher than the first boss), is very slow, has a HUGE hitbox, and is almost always within range of melee characters. On top of that, most of the time it doesn't attack directly but summons easily-dispatched Airborne Mooks that don't deal much damage anyways and its only other attack seems to spit poison at you that can be taken care of with an antidote. It's not uncommon for players to beat it on their first try in under a minute without even seeing the other attack. Considering it's fought after the Disemboweled Husk, it's definitely a breather.
  • The Bloodless Prince: Humongous and hard-hitting, it's also incredibly slow, weak to all elemental damage and most of his attacks are easily avoided by rolling through his body. The hardest part of the challenge comes from actually reaching the bottom of the area without dying from the fall or the dangerous threats along the way. He does become incredibly nasty if you start triggering That One Attack, but so long as you stay right in his face it's not too troublesome.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: A Strength-oriented build would mostly rely on two weapon types for the majority of their first playthrough - Greatswords for Slash Damage, which can either be a Kureimoa or Shrouded-Bulwark, and Greathammers for Strike Damage, which make use of the Obsidian Pillar. By late game or on New Game Plus playthroughs, Strength builds mostly rely on a combination of the Scharfrichter and Trinity Scepter since not only do they cover the Slash and Strike damage types respectively, but they're also fast, making them a Game-Breaker combo.
• Complete Monster: The Untouched Inquisitor, seeing sin within the Dome of Light, sacrificed the people within. These victims became the Whispermen, losing their bodies and their will, trapped with their former home, now known as the Dome of the Forgotten. The Inquisitor also removed the princess, her fate never known, and turned her beloved pet Kinoa into the Third Lamb, a hideous chimera like monster, taking away her pride, the praise of her master and even her name. His motivation is a fanatical desire to purge the Dome of "sin" so his "untouched" can flourish. A terrifying holy man rightfully described as "soulless", the Untouched Inquisitor makes his mark upon the game's Crapsack World.
• Cult Classic: While Salt and Sanctuary enjoyed a dedicated fanbase ever since its release on 2016, it has been overshadowed by the popularity of other 2D-platformer Souls-like RPG games after it, to the point where if the phrase "2D Dark Souls" is mentioned, games like Hollow Knight and Blasphemous get brought up easily even though this game came out first and had that nickname before the aforementioned games.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Spindlebeasts in Pitchwoods. You wouldn't think a narwhal-unicorn would be this powerful, but they one-hit kill just about any player who gets too close to them. Their health isn't too high, so either you one-shot them first or you die first. They are in a completely optional area and serve more as punishment for failing a platforming section. They drop useful materials such as Amber Idols, so killing them isn't a complete waste of time at least.
  • The Saltless, which show up mostly in the Alkylmancery but can be found as early as the Village of Smiles. They have a powerful grabbing suck-the-salt-out-of-you attack, but what really puts them into this category is that, as soon as they sight you, they will constantly pelt you with explosive, near-undodgeable flasks of arcane-damaging liquid at a rapid rate. Just one Saltless pelting flasks will be a big nuisance, but they tend to show in groups; four of these guys bombarding you with flasks will end you in a matter of seconds, especially if you rush them to make the bombing stop, get sloppy and they catch you with their grab. Oh, and if you're part of the Order of the Betrayer you might recognize those flasks as Flasks of Defilement. And yes, they do shred your resistances down to negatives, meaning anything else that joins the fight will tear through your health bar twice as fast.
  • Saltfin creatures. Huge healthpool, not easily staggered and cannot be parried. On top of that their melee attacks are rather fast and either deal huge damage or take a decent chunk out of your stamina bar if you're blocking. Their rolling attack is even worse as it's tricky to roll through and can hit you even if you're blocking if it comes from above. The only saving grace is that there is only two in the penultimate area of the game.
  • Alkymancery Knights. Their armor gives them huge resistance to slashing damage, and even if you're packing a strike weapon, it's still not that high on them. Their attacks can be parried but that's easier said than done because they have a powerful kick move that they just love to use when you have your guard up, waiting for their attack. On top of that, their combos have long reach and high damage. All in all, think of a boosted, smarter and unpleasantly common version of the usual Animated Armor knights that serve as an occasional Boss in Mook's Clothing and you get the idea.
• Difficulty Spike: The Castle of Storms onwards, while the areas beforehand are no real cakewalk, you will find that unless you have levelled up, and worked out the kinks in your build, before setting foot in the Castle, just the mobs inside will eat you alive.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Still Palace, with the common complaint being about its lack of a Sanctuary. Which means, if you want to prepare and do some equipment upgrades, or Level Grinding in other dungeons before you fight the Final Boss, you'll have to manually walk from the Crypt of the Dead Gods (which is the nearest Sanctuary) back to the Still Palace, not to mention that it also involves some platforming, which can lead to accidental deaths. The only time where it is advised to rest on the temporary Shrine is when you have obtained all that you've needed for that playthrough, or when you have no Salt to risk from being lost to repeated deaths.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Sodden Knight gets a lot of love in fanart, likely because he's the very first boss and a strong demonstration of what the rest of the game has in store for you.
• Fan Nickname: "2D Dark Souls" for the game, as Salt and Sanctuary is one of, if not the first game to incorporate a Dark Souls experience in the 2D Metroidvania genre.
• Fanon: There is a fairly common theory that the Candlelit Lady is actually Devara, making her somehow the only survivor of the Nameless God's usurpation of the other gods' prayers.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Naturally to FromSoftware's games, especially to the Dark Souls franchise thanks to this game obviously taking inspirations from it.
  • To an extent between those who've played Salt and Sanctuary and Hollow Knight since these are two of the popular indie, "2D Souls-like" Metroidvania games of the late 2010's.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Greatswords are slightly slower than other weapons, but not by much, and have great damage, reach, and scaling, as well as a pretty simple upgrade path in the skill tree. They're just slightly better than any other weapon in the game. Specific examples include the Jaws of Death with its highly-damaging snipping attack that can be spammed with ease, and the Scharfrichter, Carsejaw the Cruel's sword, which not only has excellent scaling but also swings faster than any other Greatsword. Both of these will quickly shred through anything without significant Slash resistance.
  • For enemies that are highly resistant to Slash damage, the Greathammers are the tool of choice, sharing many of the traits that make Greatswords so good. Even better, since most Greatswords and Greathammers scale with Strength, following either upgrade path benefits both weapon types! Specific gamebreakers are the Obsidian Pillars that the Armor Guardians carry, which has the highest base damage in the game and is therefore the best weapon to apply elemental buffs to since the damage added by the buff is equal to the weapon's base damage, and the Trinity Scepter, which not only has great Strength scaling but swings fast, letting you pummel even the final bosses to death in a matter of seconds.
  • A fully-upgraded gun and a high Dex score is basically easy mode, thanks to the fact these "flintlocks" act more like semi-automatic shotguns; the damage per shot is pretty decent, and covers both physical damage types, and is extremely spammable.
  • Flasks of Defilement essentially let you completely ignore elemental resistances and just spam whatever hurts most on your end, turning enemies and even bosses that once happily endured your blows into wimps. Especially for Greatsword users, as it removes the only problem they once had (which is that bladed damage is heavily resisted at several points in the game).
  • Magic in this game is extremely powerful, allowing players to deal huge amounts of damage from a long range. At the start of the game, it isn't very strong due to the lack of melee options that scale with magic and the fact that you don't have much focus, but those drawbacks are quickly mitigated and a properly-equipped mage can shred bosses in seconds.
  • Goldenwine, an item exclusive to the outwardly unimposing House of Splendor creed, grants an absolutely massive buff to both offense and defense. Unlike almost everything else in the entire game, this buff stacks with other defense or offense buffs. To top it off, it also gives you a gold find bonus that doubles the gold that enemies drop.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Any flying enemy especially so for melee-focused characters. Fittingly, many of them literally are bats, such as the Saltbat that appears whenever you die to an environmental hazard.
  • Angsty Bones. They look like ordinary skeletal mooks, but they have one caveat: they can teleport at will. Worse, there will always be huge stretches where they do nothing but randomly Teleport Spam all over the place, which makes fighting them take far longer than it should. And their teleportation spells mean they can chase you over long distances, so ignoring them isn't an option either. And if you are unlucky, you may see them teleport out but not teleport back in any soon.
  • Bola Eyes in the Salt Alkymancery will quickly become these if you don't have anything sharp to take them out with, as they resist everything else, including elemental damage. They tank blows that would one-shot any other minion in the level, they toss out quick poison attacks that, despite their pitiful damage, stagger you significantly, and they have a leaping attack they can spam and can hit you at point blank range, that also poisons you and yet still doesn't hit that hard. Battles with these become annoying wars of attrition where missing a single combo means you take twice as long to kill the things.
• Goddamned Boss: The Disemboweled Husk isn't necessarily hard, but has some frankly annoying tendencies. He loves spamming that pistol sometimes, occasionally simply camping and firing shots at you until your shield falls, and even if you stick to the usually-successful strategy of hyper-aggression and staying close enough to kiss his doll will get thwarted often by his skyward pistol shot, since the rain of fire usually stays close to him and hurts like hell. But the pattern is still random enough that the occasional speck of fire will hit you even if you were on the other side of the arena and set you on fire like you were oil-soaked straw. Perhaps worst of all, his arena is separated from the nearest sanctuary by a veritable gauntlet of horrible enemies (including the Angsty Bones mentioned above), meaning you will rarely if ever face him at 100%. He would qualify for That One Boss if it weren't for frailty, ease of staggering and the fact his sword-swings aren't that big of a deal, plus staying close will spare you the brunt of the pistol spam.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Any offensive elemental sprites summoned before entering a boss fight will allow you to freely chip off the boss's health while their name is displayed on-screen.
  • If a Retchfeeder pounces at you near the edge of a platform, there is a high chance that you will be dragged downwards without taking damage. This is due to the positioning that happens after you escape from a Retchfeeder's pounce — your character will always move horizontally afterwards, while employing an invincibility frame. That being said, if there is another platform underneath, you can be thankful for the easy escape. But if this bug happens near a Bottomless Pit? Say goodbye to your Salt.
  • The PC Port gives two that allow for massive Sequence Breaking:
    • Long jump — Pressing jump and dodge together allows for a better jumping ability than otherwise.
    • Ladder clipping — Hold up, then press roll+jump while on a ladder. With good enough timing, the character will detach from the ladder and have an infinite jumping ability. Doing this exploit in the first ladder of the first area allows you to fight the Unspeakable Deep over and over again in the same playthrough.
  • Bosses can die to fire or poison while your body is being carried to the nearest sanctuary after you fell to said boss or to an environmental hazard near them, resulting in the player receiving the drops and only the usual Saltbat at worst.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Reading the Lepris' Ear's item description, the Lepris were swamp dwellers affected by the Grayrot disease. Seing as how it became pervasive and permanent, the Lepris tried creating a religion to appease it. Now, having to create a religion around a disease may sound ridiculous as it is, this actually happens in Outlast II with the Scalled.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Those who have tried the Dark Souls games conclude that Salt and Sanctuary is easier than the franchise it's taking inspirations from. Weapons like the Kureimoa and the Shrouded Bulwark have such a high Strength scaling that they can deal a tremendous amount of damage against bosses, and sometimes one-hit killing lesser mooks, thus the combat actually feels like a breeze when you have these weapons. Others note that while combat is easy, what makes this game difficult is it's platforming mechanics, typical for a Metroidvania game. You'll die more often from environmental traps, wooden platforms, and mistimed jumps than from enemies and bosses, yet even this Fake Difficulty or Scrappy Mechanic can be easily bypassed once accustomed to.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The sound of a Sanctuary being claimed, which signifies your safety after going through difficult dungeons, enemies, environmental puzzles, traps, and bosses.
• Paranoia Fuel: The first time you get eaten by a Mimku, thinking that it's just another ordinary chest, you're most likely going to "check" (i.e. attack) every single chest you come across afterwards on the off-chance that there's another Mimku waiting for you.
• Once Original, Now Common: Occasionally, the game gets dismissed as "just another 2D Dark Souls clone" with people forgetting that it was THE 2D Dark Souls clone that paved the way for other better-known beloved games.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Much like its original inspiration franchise, most would play this game for being a 2D Dark Souls. Added by the idea that most of the story is present in Flavor Text, and the lore-related dialogues of the prominent NPCs (the Knight, the Jester, the Sorcerer, the Thief, and the Scarecrow) can be entirely skipped, it's easy for one to think that the game has a minimal or non-existent story at all.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The platforming segments. It is difficult for first-timers who haven't familiarized themselves to the dungeon's layout yet. As the game even lacks a map, one could easily get lost. Then there are wooden platforms that collapse when you merely step on them, sending lots of players falling to their deaths. Newcomers may not even be aware of the ability to quickly slide down ladders and the other mechanic of manually grabbing ledges by pressing the up button. Speaking of wooden platforms, simply grabbing on its ledge will break it, which guarantees the player's death unless they fall to another platform below on a safe height.
• Scrappy Weapon: Bows and crossbows are outmatched in almost every aspect by every other weapon in the game because their damage is awful. Even bows that supposedly fire near-supersonic arrows are handily outmatched by a tiny dagger in terms of damage per attack. That is without mentioning the awkward aiming controls which require you holding down a button, pushing the stick in the right direction, then letting it go. This would be nice if it wasn't for this game averting No "Arc" in "Archery" hard and the arrows never really fly in the direction you're pointing them at and drop off pretty fast, which means the range advantage they offer isn't much of an advantage at all.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: You can set gameplay restrictions when you create a new character, and this carries over New Game Plus cycles. For example, the "Iron Pot only" challenge requires you to use the Iron Pot, and equipping any other weapon makes them practically useless (they would act as if you haven't learned the necessary Skill to equip them properly).
• Spiritual Successor: Salt and Sanctuary has earned a reputation and a Fan Nickname of being a "2D Dark Souls". Despite being shamelessly derivative of that FromSoftware game series, ^note down to the minimalist storytelling, lack of music except during boss fights, and even a Final Battle with sad piano music most critics agree that this game's imitation isn't a bad thing. It helps that there is a lot of influence from Ska's previous game if you look closely, and simply being a 2D sidescroller does change the gameplay significantly.
• That One Achievement: Defeating The Unspeakable Deep, which awards you its titular trophy / Steam Achievement. While it is doable at your first level for every character (provided that you have a proper understanding of the boss' attacks patterns), it is very difficult to achieve. However, a Sequence Breaking glitch allows you to fight The Unspeakable Deep over and over again, and if you try to fight it with a high-leveled character wearing end-game equipment in your first playthrough, you can easily kill this boss with one or two hits.
• That One Attack: Staying up and close to a giant golem might be a flagrant Violation of Common Sense, but staying close to the Bloodless Prince is in your best interests, because otherwise he will close the distance with a massive bellyflop that is close to impossible to dodge, thanks to the fact it hits nearly the entire arena at once.
• That One Boss:
  • The Tree of Men. Many treacherous elements, including collapsing platforms, environmental traps, a slew of attacks with knockback, and an extremely small proper boss arena make this fight difficult enough, but halfway through, not only does the boss's entire behavior change, but so does its weaknesses. Builds dedicated to slash damage inevitably find great difficulty at this point, doubly so for dagger users as they need to somehow close the gap and hit the head on the second phase. Actually staying on the arena spells certain doom as the knockback can easily send you into instant-death pits. And just to rub it in, since a lot of the things that can kill you in this fight come from the environment and not the boss itself, you might find yourself forced to contend with a Saltbat on top of all this.
  • The Witch of the Lake, though that fight's difficulty depends on your build. Nevertheless, the boss uses almost exclusively ranged attacks that stunlock you, which essentially turns the game into a Bullet Hell. On top of that, it's a flying enemy so unless you're packing a ranged weapon (and even that doesn't make the fight easy), most of the time, you'll be able to get one or two hits in before having to dodge. Most of the Witch's attacks deal enough damage that - combined with the stunlock - if you get hit once, it might as well be a One-Hit Kill. She also has the ability to leave the boss arena, and not as a part of an attack like the Kraekan Wyrm either. She just floats off the screen and stays there, pelting you with spells, only coming back if she feels like it.
  • The Mad Alchemist. He's not too bad at first, especially if you're good about getting rid of his slimes and keeping the lower level clear. But once he Turns Red and starts spamming potions rapid-fire, it's very easy to get chewed apart in seconds with no real chance to regain your footing.
  • The Third Lamb is another that becomes quite an awful menace one she Turns Red. In her case, she goes utterly berserk and starts chaining erratic combos and spewing lightning after practically every attack, leaving very few openings to truly attack without risking heavy damage and knockback. Not to mention the key to dodging her lightning breath is to stay close, while everything else needs you to stay the hell away, meaning you are constantly in danger.
  • If you have a Slash build, Devara help you when you reach the Dried King. His fire attacks are already evocative of Bullet Hell, but if your main weapon up to this point has been a Slash oriented weapon, the Dried King will Damage Sponge right through it due to a whopping 250 Slash resistance.
  • The Disemboweled Husk — while it's theoretically not a hard boss in itself with only one combo and two other moves to his name, he can shred you in seconds of entering the arena. This is mostly due to his flintlock that not only deals huge damage and has good range, meaning dodging it or staying close is pretty much a must. The problem arises when he tries to use his second move which is firing it into the air, which rains down fire damage around the arena. This will not only shred your life bar and cut down your maximum health if your fire resistance isn't enough, but the fire comes down with a delay which means he can attack while it happens. Add in the fact that those moves come out very fast with little delay, he loves to spam them and the boss occupies one of the most annoying levels in the game (which also involves running through a gauntlet of enemies that can follow you into his room), and you've got a boss that can break unprepared players in half.
  • The Sodden Knight, the very first boss, can be this for new players. At first, he opens up with a series of easily-avoided attacks with long wind-ups, but once he gets reduced to half health, the gloves come off and he starts unleashing punishing combos that will flatten anyone who hasn't gotten accustomed to timing their jumps and dodges and blocks. Worse still, his combos intentionally punish players who just got used to dodging those specific attacks, i.e. he throws the ground lightning, the player jumps over it, and then the Knight launches into the air with a massive cleaving swing to hit the player mid-jump.
• That One Level:
  • The Pitchwoods. One entrance involves going through a long and tedious series of tricky jumps, and the other one has a trio of Spindlebeasts acting as a Beef Gate. Then there's the sheer Platform Hell you have to endure to reach the zone's most secret areas, hopping on beams of Hard Light that periodically appear and disappear without giving you the slightest hint as to when and where the next one will appear, forcing you to go through some frustrating Trial-and-Error Gameplay.
  • Hager's Cavern is this to a lesser extent than the Pitchwoods: Not only is it a huge maze-like cave that involves a lot of platforming and getting lost due to everything looking the same, it's also host to some of the most annoying enemies in the game — teleporting skeletons, flying witches that shoot lighting, flying corpses that can one-hit-kill you, flying skulls that can shred your lifebar and Armored Mites with incredibly high damage resistance. And to make it through, you need to open up a few doors which involves a rather confusing segment of upside-down Vertigo Brand exploration while getting pelted by ranged enemies.

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