Ender Lilies: Beginner's Guide & Best Tips

I Have 500 Hours And I Still Die Like An Idiot

Look, I'm gonna be straight with you. I bought Ender Lilies on a whim, thought it'd be a chill little Metroidvania to wind down after work. Three hours later I was throwing my controller at the couch because some grubby little rat-man killed me for the fifteenth time. This game is gorgeous — the watercolor backgrounds, the haunted piano soundtrack, the way your little White Priestess floats around like a sad ghost. But don't let the pretty face fool you. This is a soulslike Metroidvania that will punish you for playing it like a hack-and-slash.

I've beaten every ending, collected every relic, and I still have moments where I walk into a room, get slapped by a random spike trap, and just sit there staring at the screen. That's the Ender Lilies experience. But here's the thing — once you understand how the game actually wants you to play, it becomes one of the most satisfying action games I've ever touched. Not because it's easy, but because every victory feels earned. You'll learn boss patterns like a dance. You'll chain abilities together and feel like a conductor leading an orchestra of violence.

This guide isn't gonna hold your hand. It's gonna point you at the right mechanics, tell you which upgrades are traps, and share the specific stupid mistakes I made so you can laugh at me while not repeating them. Let's get into it.

Why The First 10 Hours Make You Wanna Uninstall

I want to validate something for you real quick. If you're reading this because you're stuck, frustrated, or wondering if you're "bad at games" — you're not. Ender Lilies is hostile to new players in ways that aren't obvious. Here's exactly what's kicking your ass:

• The dodge roll sucks until you upgrade it. Base dodge has no i-frames. None. Zero. You can't roll through attacks. I spent my first three runs trying to dodge like it's Dark Souls and got destroyed by the second boss EVERY TIME. You have to wait until you find the Frozen Knight's armor or the Gerrod's Soul upgrade to get actual invincibility frames. Until then, positioning is everything.
• Spirit attacks have cooldowns that feel like forever. Each spirit you equip is basically a weapon with a timer. You can't spam your best attack. You'll use your main melee guy, then switch to your ranged guy while cooldowns tick down. If you're just mashing one button, you're playing wrong.
• The map tells you nothing useful. "Oh hey, here's a giant area with no markers, good luck remembering which wall had a breakable section." The map is functional but not helpful. You'll get lost. A lot. I spent two hours circling the Witch's Thicket because I missed one ledge.
• Bosses have input-reading nonsense. Some bosses react to you healing. If you try to chug a potion during Ulv, the Mad Knight, he will literally cancel his current attack to jump on your face. It's not cheap, it's mean. But once you know it, you can bait it.
• The "safe" route isn't the easy route. There's a suggested path through the game, but it dumps you into Ruined Castle way too early, where enemies hit like trucks and you have no tools. The game wants you to explore, but the default direction is a death trap.

This isn't a "git gud" situation. This is a "the game doesn't explain itself" situation. Once you know the rules, it clicks. Let me give you the cheat sheet I wish I had on day one.

What I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Wasted 8 Hours

Alright, fresh start. You just woke up as the White Priestess. You have no memory, a dead kingdom around you, and a little floating friend who looks like a sad balloon. Here's your actual day-one priority list:

1. Your first spirit pick matters more than you think. The game gives you Gerrod's Soul (the big slow hammer guy) and Fretia's Soul (the ranged girl with the rapier). Do not ignore the hammer. I know it's slow. I know it feels clunky. But Gerrod's charged attack breaks shields and staggers enemies in one hit. The rapier girl does chip damage and won't save you when some shield-bearer blocks your path. Start with Gerrod, learn his timing, and you'll breeze through early areas.

2. Spend your first upgrade points on stamina and health. You get Pries' Grace (healing items) and Blights (stat upgrades) from killing mini-bosses and exploring. DO NOT dump all your points into attack first. I did that. I was hitting hard but dying in two hits. The early game is about surviving, not DPS. Max health to at least 5 before you even look at attack upgrades. Stamina to 4 so you can actually dodge twice in a row without gasping.

3. The order you tackle areas matters. The "correct" early game path is: Abandoned Mine → Ruined Castle Lower Levels → Witch's Thicket. Do NOT go to the catacombs or the underground water area first. Those are mid-game zones with enemies that have twice your health pool. The Mine is the tutorial zone — it teaches you the core loop of "find spirit, fight mini-boss, get upgrade." Respect the order, or you'll hit a wall named "enemy that kills you in two hits."

4. Learn the stagger system NOW. Every enemy in this game has a stagger bar. Hit them enough times without taking damage yourself, and they'll enter a staggered state where they're completely helpless for about 3 seconds. During stagger, your damage is doubled. The entire combat loop is built around this: poke, poke, poke, stagger, burst. Don't just mash. Watch the enemy's posture. When they flinch, GO HAM. This is how you kill bosses 40% faster.

5. Relics are not optional. You'll find these passive upgrade items hidden in chests and off the beaten path. Some are game-changing. The Blasted Mint (increases your attack by 10% for every empty spirit slot) is a trap for new players. What you actually want is Fairy's Regret (auto-heals you after clearing a room), Iron Ring (reduces damage taken by 15%), and Great Sage's Seal (increases stagger damage by 25%). That last one is absolutely broken. You get it from a hidden room in the Witch's Thicket behind a breakable wall that looks like a normal wall. I walked past it six times before I found it.

The Stuff That Makes You Feel Like A God

Once you've got the basics down, you can start abusing the systems that Ender Lilies doesn't tell you about. These are the tricks I use that turn "this boss is impossible" into "that boss is a joke."

• The Charge Cancel. Every spirit has a charged attack that takes 1-2 seconds to wind up. The game doesn't tell you this: if you hold the attack button, start charging, and then press dodge during the charge animation, the charge stays active. You can literally run around while holding a charged attack, then release it at the perfect moment. This is how you destroy the Ulv boss — charge your hammer as he's jumping, dodge sideways through his landing animation, then smash him in the back. He can't touch you.
• Spirit switching resets combos. If you're using Gerrod and you do his three-hit combo, there's a window where you can switch spirits and continue the combo with the new spirit's attack. The enemy's stagger damage accumulates across both spirits. So you can do two hits with the hammer, swap to the rapier girl mid-combo, and get three more hits in. This melts stagger bars. The timing is tight but learn it and you'll stagger bosses in one cycle.
• Vertical combat is broken with the right spirit. The Elevated Sage's Soul (the bell guy) has a charged attack that creates a shockwave upward. If you jump and use it at the apex of your jump, the shockwave hits enemies above you AND pushes you higher into the air. This lets you reach ledges that normally require a double-jump ability from a late-game area. You can sequence-break entire zones with this trick. I got the Flame Hat relic (fire resistance) two hours before I was supposed to, which made the Cathedral section trivial.
• Do not sleep on the poison floor spirits. There's a spirit called Blighted Fretia's Soul that leaves a poison puddle on the ground. It looks weak — it does like 12 damage per tick. But here's the secret: poison stacks. If you place two puddles on top of each other, the damage doubles. Place three puddles? Triple. And the puddles last for 8 seconds each. Against a stationary boss or a narrow hallway of enemies, you can put down three puddles, walk away, and everything dies in 30 seconds. I used this to cheese the Frostbane Witch's Mirror boss fight — dropped puddles on her spawn point, dodged around, collected my reward. Least proud I've ever been of a victory, but it worked.
• The "panic jump" is your worst enemy. This is a mental tip. When you get hit in Ender Lilies, there's knockback. And your instinct is to immediately jump away. Stop it. Wait until the knockback animation finishes before you input anything. If you jump during knockback, you'll air-dodge into a wall or an enemy attack. I've died more times to panic-rolling off a cliff than to any single boss. Count to one Mississippi after getting hit. Then act.

If you want to see how these techniques stack up in a faster-paced combat system, the flow of spirit-switching is similar to what you'll find in the Dead Cells guide I wrote — that game punishes you for standing still just as hard, but the payoff for chaining weapons is the same kind of dopamine hit.

Dumb Shit I Did So You Don't Have To

I'm going to confess some embarrassing things. Maybe it'll make you feel better. Maybe it'll save you hours. Either way, here's the mistakes that cost me runs and sanity.

• I upgraded the wrong spirit first. The first blacksmith upgrade you find lets you level one spirit to +1. I upgraded the Mini-Boss Knight's Soul because it looked cool. That spirit is slow, has terrible range, and its special ability (a ground slam) is almost useless against flying enemies. I wasted the upgrade and had to grind for materials to fix it later. Upgrade Gerrod first. Always. His +1 version does 55 base damage instead of 40, and the charge time drops from 1.8 seconds to 1.2 seconds. It's not even close.
• I ignored the "purple" chests. You'll see chests with a purple glow. They require a Fallen Priest's Key to open. I found one early in the Abandoned Mine and thought "I'll come back later." I forgot about it for 20 hours. Those chests contain unique relics that don't drop anywhere else. The one in the mine has Archpriest's Ring which gives you +1 spirit slot when you're at low health. That relic can save your ass in boss fights when you've used all your healing. On my second playthrough, I opened it first thing and it made early bosses way less punishing.
• I tried to use the slow-fall spirit in combat. The Eleine's Soul (the witch's floating orb) has a slow-fall ability. It's great for platforming. It's terrible for fighting. Its direct damage is 15 per hit, and the slow-fall puts you in a predictable arc where enemies can hit you for free. Don't equip it for boss fights. It's a utility tool, not a weapon. I kept it in my loadout for three hours because I thought "more options = better." Wrong. Equip it when you need to cross a gap, then swap it out for a real damage dealer immediately.
• I sold my early-game materials. The blacksmith and the relic seller both use Blights and Scrap Metal for upgrades. You can sell them to the merchant for gold. DON'T. Gold is plentiful from mid-game onward. Upgrade materials are finite and the ones you get in the first area are needed for the best early-game spirit upgrades. I sold 12 Scrap Metal for 300 gold and then needed 40 to upgrade my hammer. I had to farm respawning enemies for an hour. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
• I thought the "no damage" achievement was impossible. There's a relic called Fairy's Protection that makes you immune to the next hit after you land a stagger. I didn't find it until hour 40. If you're going for the no-hit boss runs, this relic is mandatory. It's in a hidden area in Ruined Castle behind a wall you break with the hammer's charged attack. The game doesn't mark it. Just smash every wall that looks slightly different. I missed it because I didn't think to test a wall that had a crack in the corner.

Questions You're Too Proud To Google

I've seen the same questions in the subreddit, the Discord, and the Steam forums. Here's the answers without the elitist tone.

Q: How do I get more healing items?
A: You can only carry a limited number of Pries' Grace — max is 5. You increase this by finding Grace Vessels hidden around the world. There are 6 total. The first one is in the Abandoned Mine behind a waterfall near the second save point. You'll see it if you drop down instead of going right. Don't worry about running out. You can also increase the healing amount by upgrading your Priest's Vessel at the blacksmith with Sacred Water — there's a +1 upgrade that makes each heal restore 40% instead of 30%. That's worth more than any single damage upgrade in the early game.

Q: What's the best spirit loadout?
A: Depends on your playstyle, but the general consensus is: Gerrod's Soul (main melee), Fretia's Soul (ranged poke), and Siegrid's Soul (healing). Siegrid is a flower girl who drops a healing pool on the ground. She's found in the Witch's Thicket on a ledge you can only reach after getting the double jump ability from the Frozen Knight boss. If you want a "kill everything fast" build, swap Siegrid for Blighted Fretia (poison puddle) and use the Great Sage's Seal relic. That build does 300+ damage per stagger cycle to bosses. But you have no healing, so it's high risk, high reward.

Q: Is there a "best" area to farm XP/materials?
A: Yeah. The Cathedral's first room (the one with the giant bells and the respawning knight enemies). Each knight drops Scrap Metal (~40% chance) and Blights (~20% chance). Clear the room, save at the nearby bench, reload the area, repeat. You can get 20 materials in about 15 minutes. If you want Spirit Shards (for unlocking spirit special abilities), farm the Waterfall Cave area — the flying creatures there drop shards at a 60% rate. I did this twice to max out Gerrod's special (the shockwave attack) and it made the endgame much smoother.

Q: Why can't I open this door?
A: If it's a door with a symbol on it, you need a specific ability from a boss. The spiral symbol is the Frozen Knight's dash. The crescent moon symbol is the Witch's slow-fall. The cross symbol is the Ulv's double jump. If you find a door you can't open, mark it on your map with the note system (press R1 on the map screen to place a marker) and come back later. Don't obsess. The game loops back around constantly.

Q: How do I beat Ulv the Mad Knight?
A: This is where most people quit. Ulv is fast, aggressive, and has a rage phase at 30% health where he gets a 35% speed boost. The secret is: Ulv always attacks in three-hit combos. Count them. After the third hit, he's vulnerable for exactly 1.2 seconds. That's your window. Use Gerrod's charged attack (the one you charge-canceled earlier) and hit him during that window. Do NOT try to heal during his rage phase — he input-reads your healing and punishes you. Instead, wait until he does his jump attack (the one where he goes off-screen and comes down like a meteor), dodge sideways, and heal while he's recovering from landing. You'll get two seconds of safety. This boss is about patience, not speed. I killed him on my 14th attempt with this method and didn't take a single hit.

This combat philosophy — wait, punish, repeat — is something I learned from the Hollow Knight guide on this site. The pacing is almost identical, just with a different moveset. If you can beat Ulv, you can beat anything the game throws at you.