One of the biggest changes in the DLC is the removal of the ring of phasing. It has brought a lot of changes to high and low levels of play with it’s existence and removal, so now with the release of the DLC approaching rapidly I thought it was as good of a time as any to end my hiatus and talk a bit more about the legendary ring of phasing.

First of all let’s go over what the ring of phasing did. It was a ring obtained from the usual ring spots like chests, shrines and shops but it also had a shrine specifically dedicated to it called the shrine of phasing. Shrine of phasing removes all of your build except for bombs and the dagger of phasing. The ring itself removes the player’s ability to dig but replaces it with the ability to walk inside walls. While in walls, the player can’t attack enemies (With the only exception being the dagger of phasing because of it also being incorporeal) and the player’s vision heavily impaired.

The problem with the ring of phasing was it being unusable when in the hands of a player who hasn’t learned the many strats connected to the ring, often leading to many deaths with the reason being incompetence, but it being broken beyond belief in the hands of an experienced player. It also helped a lot with difficult characters like Monk and Coda because of it’s ability to lessen the enemies you have to deal with because of the ring’s third ability, enemies not moving when the player is in walls. For an example of the brokenness of the ring, look no further than Spootybiscuit’s AGDQ 2016 Crypt of the Necrodancer run, where he completes the most difficult character in the game Coda, considered impossible by the developers, in a marathon setting, which can heavily be attributed to the ring of phasing. (The run can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRbybbDo8Kw )

Now after the removal of the ring of phasing, Spooty’s Coda clear consistency has gone notably down. Spooty may be also considered one of the most adept players with using the ring of phasing to the point of creating the inside joke of him finding phasing in every race.

Getting to the racing abilities of the ring of phasing, if you put a player who is adept in using ring of phasing and a player inexperienced with the ring in a race together, most of the time it is worth for the player adept to go out of their way to get the ring in earlier levels and making the time back in just skipping the rest of the levels. Even though the other player may get a much better build and rocket ahead, the ring just allows the other player skip many levels and catch up, if not win the race.

One of the strats available to players who haven’t bothered learning to use the ring the whole game is transmuting Dorian’s dagger before Cadence’s necrodancer fight when you have only one bomb. Since the ring allows the player to nudge themselves between the white skeleton and a turnip and just bomb the lute and necrodancer out of the stage with only one bomb, with minimizing spawns as a bonus.

That was a quick look back and analysis of the ring of phasing. It was too good while it lasted and gave us many unforgettable moments. Hope I didn’t mess something up badly in this article and feel free to add your own comments down below or on reddit.

Thanks for reading