This Famous "Hitless Player" Actually Just Used Invincibility

Now

this

is a shitty situation, it seems that no matter how good people are at the games they play, some

just

can't resist the temptation to cheat, whether it's splicing their videos, looking through their blindfolds on eyes or simply using

invincibility

in his

hitless

runs. communities can say they haven't had to deal with a cheater, fortunately the Hollow Knight community hasn't had to deal with many, in fact in my many years as a Hollow Knight speedrunner I can't recall a single case of someone cheated intentionally, but

this

case was something else, not only was the person involved one of the most popular Hollow Knight content creators, but he was respected as one of the best no-hitter runners, his trick to beat the

hitless

bosses using

invincibility

.

I've delved into all the drama and I'm grateful that members of my community, specifically whiskey and homie, were able to translate a 33 page document that contains it all, but before we dive into the drama some background needs to be provided. The Hollernest pantheon, known colloquially as pantheon 5 or p5, is the most difficult unmodified. The Hollow Knight content is the final challenge in the game's final DLC. It's a boss race containing 45 bosses in total, and while it was a challenge at launch, Pantheon 5 has since become a playground for challenge racers, with

player

s looking to get the fastest times. the most restrictions or finishing with the least amount of damage taken the highest and most prestigious achievement of all is completing pantheon 5 in its entirety without taking a single hit of damage finally, finally, pantheon challenge runs are for that Chinese hollow knight communities show more respect.

The Chinese community lacked easy access to speedrunning resources such as programs, mods, and guides, and as a result, never developed as much interest in full-game speedrunning as the Western community did. The first hitless run of Pantheon 5 was completed in

just

over a year. After the release of the Godmaster DLC, a feat known in the Chinese community as R5 or Radiant Pantheon 5. was completed by a

player

you may not have heard of, Black Moon, who

actually

completed the challenge an astonishing three times in addition to maintaining Speedrun. world records for pantheon 5 no strings attached and with all strings impressively, 11 people have completed the pantheon 5 results list today and 8 of them are from the chinese hollow knight community, but if you were a member of their community this might confuse you a bit.

Isn't there anyone on the roster who misses this player? Xu Mian Yeh Snow Cotton Leaf or as he is known to Westerners, Cotton was one of the most respected players in China. Cotton is known for being the first and to this day the only player to defeat any shimmer. A modified boss. which was literally designed to be impossible, but his most recognized feat is being the second player after Black Moon to finish Pantheon 5 without a hit, so why isn't he on the leaderboard? Well, it's because he cheated on January 5th of this year. contacted by a respected member of the methyl palladium community, also known as templar in the Chinese scene, who at the time was the fourth player to complete p5 without a hit, it was a post from a player who, interestingly, was known primarily from the celeste speedrunning community this player Plush showed a series of clips from Cotton's pantheon 5 run that looked very suspicious.

Let's start by taking a look at this clip against Umu Cotton swings at an Uma whose explosion detonates immediately because he's inside a platform, although it looks as if Cotton is touching the hitbox of the explosion, he doesn't hit it in this clip against the lost relatives . They jump on Cotton and the missing relatives fall on him before he takes cover in this clip against a white defender. A dung ball clearly overlaps Cotton's. The character again, Cotton activates the shadow cloak's invincibility frames, but only after the moment in which he should have been hit for the last time and possibly the strangest is Cotton's fight against Fluke Marm.

This is strange for a couple of reasons, first, there's a clear cut in the footage where a Fluke was apparently shot straight at him, plus, this strategy to kill Fluke Marm, one of the least risky bosses in all of Pantheon 5 , it's awful. All experienced players know to avoid being near the Flukemarm diagonals as it is about to spawn Flukes and there are very clear indicators of when this is going to happen, instead the cotton casually falls directly into the path where one of the staves spawns and as the stave seemingly flies towards him, there is a convenient cut in the footage. methylpalace on behalf of the Chinese hollow knight community asked my opinion on these clips at the time, I was pretty sure Cotton

used

invincibility in his career, but I was a fan of his and wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so Before passing judgment I posted this on my Discord server, as it includes several Pantheon 5 hitless runners and almost all of the best speedrunners in the game, players unanimously agreed that something was very questionable about these clips , but they didn't stop there.

Some community members began exploring his other videos and found similar suspects. The instances where he looked like he should have been hit in some cases were so egregious that his character was almost not even visible as an enemy's attack almost completely covered his sprite. It seems like almost every no-hit boss challenge Cotton has ever done had at least one of these moments, I told methylpalatium that I thought Cotton cheated and the top players in the Western Hollow Knight community I showed this to a methyl unanimously agreed told me that the chinese community made in-depth reviews of the videos, including the creation of a new mod. to show the enemy hitboxes, they discovered that in the pantheon 5 video all four clips had at least one frame where the hitboxes clearly overlapped just a couple of days later, on January 7, methyl returned to my discord stating that the Chinese community I had had a talk with cotton. methyl submitted a report detailing all the evidence they had compiled.

This report was based on the analysis of many of China's top players, including Blackmoon Sawyer Stool and others. Cotton admitted to them that he had

used

invincibility, but claimed it was only because he was testing something. before the race and forgot to turn off the tricks afterwards When asked about the flukemarm cutout in the footage, Cotton insisted it was simply due to a video glitch or low fps. Black Moon began to interrogate Cotton noticing the inconsistencies in Cotton's statements. Cotton said he couldn't. He doesn't remember anything about the incident because he never felt like he was even close to being hit.

Blackmoon said that if he was that close to being hit by Flukemarm he would definitely remember it. Blackmoon also mentions Triple Nail Master's no-hit video, which is another Fight Cotton apparently used invincibility on Cotton

actually

responded angrily by claiming that Black Moon was framing him and that there was a problem with his judgment. Cotton began posting dozens of messages and images of a line of players who were about to be hit but were not actually hurt. and he asked Black Moon each time if these images seemed like a trap to her. Cotton claimed that after the Triple Nail Master video he opened the debug menu to show that invincibility was disabled, but Stool wisely pointed out that this proves nothing.

Cotton could have simply disabled invincibility. with a hotkey before opening the menu, Cotton had not only been caught lying, he was unapologetic about it. Cotton ended the conversation by saying a shitty game, shitty hitboxes, and a bunch of shitty people. Cotton then claimed that shitty people were a joke. a phrase apparently used by one of his favorite streamers due to the popularity of cotton in the Chinese Hollow Knight community. The best Chinese players were worried about the judgment of the masses. Another top Chinese player stated that he was worried about the emotional factor of the spectators blindly believing that.

Cotton had done nothing wrong even though they had not read the report his team had created. Imagine, for example, how people would respond if Scurry Monster or I were accused of cheating. Some people just weren't willing to believe that their boy Cotton was a cheater on January 11, however, Cotton quietly deleted his Pantheon 5 no-hit video from youtube and on January 14, Cotton deleted Billy Billy's video, as well as a Chinese video sharing site where it gained much more fame. Cotton's viewers, unaware of the cheating scandal, began asking questions. Cotton responded to these comments by saying that he had problems with the video and that he would eventually re-upload it.

A respected member of the Chinese community theorized that it might be possible that the Fluke Marm clip was legit after all, sometimes when the game lags, the haters will. continue your current movement while the game is frozen and teleport a certain distance after the game unfreezes. Brum entertained the idea that perhaps this was what happened and the chance hitbox did not collide with the cotton as a result of the enemy teleporting, however, through analysis of the video frame. Per frame, the Chinese community discovered that this footage had definitely been cut on purpose as there were no freeze frames before the cut.

At this point, Cotton admitted that flukemarm's cutting was intentional in his group chat. Cotton later became upset and claimed that Black Moon and methyl had a vendetta against him. Brum explained that what they didn't like was his cheating and that they didn't dislike him as a person. methyl also agreed saying that they were just stating facts and there was no malicious personal intent. Cotton immediately backtracked stating that he saying it was a vendetta was just a joke, then Cotton was removed from the group chat for making that statement, the author of the report on Cotton's cheating emphasizes his respect for Cotton's skill at the game and Cotton is without a doubt an excellent hollow knight.

Player, many high-profile cheaters, such as Billy Mitchell, dream and others do not cheat to perform feats of which they are incapable, but instead cheat because they feel they deserve the recognition despite not having completed the achievement. Cotton's problem was his mentality, he just didn't have it. Respect for the game Cotton became increasingly frustrated with his own mistakes and when he failed it was the game's fault and since his failures were the game's fault it was okay for him to cheat because he never deserved to fail in the first place but the reality It's either that we don't have the right to always succeed, that's not how the world works and that's not how games work, or failure is a necessary part of the improvement process; some fans of these players might insist on that because they are great players.

They couldn't have cheated, but this couldn't be further from the case. As Cotton spent more time becoming a great player, his frustration with the game grew and so did his entitlement, leading him to believe that he deserved achievements that he simply did not have. Several members of the Hollow Knight Chinese community spoke out about Cotton and his unwillingness to admit to his cheating. It wasn't until the morning of February 11, about a month later, that Cotton issued a public apology. In this apology, Cotton told the people he had deleted. the p5 radiant video due to the content of the report created by methyl and others cotton, however, he still said that he had not intended to cheat in the first place, further stating that it was no big deal because most people don't It cared.

Many members of Hollow Knight's Chinese community expressed disappointment with his attitude. Cotton responded an hour later in this response. Cotton looks downtrodden. Cotton notes that he had sent an apology to Plush shortly after learning of the allegations, but that this apology was never made public. Cotton says that he is committed to completing pantheon 5 without hits legitimately and re-releasing the video finally, on the evening of the same day, Cotton issued a longer and more complete apology. Cotton fully admitted that, regardless of his intent, the video was illegitimate. Cotton explained that what he did was wrong because he delegitimized all the other players who worked so hard to achieve his achievements and promised that in the future he would never cheat again.

Cotton also stated that he regretted having downplayed the incident until that point, that he regretted not confessing immediately, and that he deserved the judgment the community had given him Cotton also apologized individually to Black Moon methyl and others Cotton admitted that the apology came late and It was because I was running away.of the problem but is now taking it as an important lesson in general for the Chinese. The community was disappointed by Cotton's behavior. They were upset that Cotton continually played the victim in private and only came clean once it became a public issue. Notable community members such as Brum stated that Cotton had permanently broken his trust, even completing Pantheon 5 without a hit again could not. to fix it, flo enol, another community member stated that the flukemarm cut was an act of deception that went even beyond the use of invincibility.

Blackmoon reiterated that he and the Chinese Hollow Knight community have a zero-tolerance policy for cheating. Sorry, the use of invincibility was clearly intentional and his excuse that it was a mistake to leave invincibility after practice is not even remotely credible in my opinion. Why would anyone practice for a no-hitter using invincibility? It's pointless, invincibility takes away all the feedback you get from getting hit, so if you're practicing a strategy using invincibility you have no idea if it's actually going to work. Cotton also limited the narrative to discussing his p5 no-hit video, despite players like Black Moon and Taburete asking him about his Triple Nail Masters no-hit video.

I think numerous videos of his invincibility clearly used and demonstrate that there was an intent to cheat, although it seemed like Cotton felt sincerely bad about cheating, the fact that he didn't address all the issues demonstrates, from my perspective, an attempt to cheat. save the situation instead of being honest and sincere in the beginning. At the end of the day, let's not forget that harassment is unacceptable, so I implore everyone to not seek to threaten or harass Cotton over this incident. Don't forget there is a human being behind the username that I can relate to and I know you all can relate. to Cotton's feelings of frustration and not being able to achieve the achievements he hoped for, but cheating to achieve those achievements is no substitute for achieving them through hard work and perseverance, no matter how others perceive it, which matters. is that you know how much you tried. achieve his success no amount of external recognition can replace that it is important to emphasize that Cotton's actions as an individual do not represent the Chinese Hollow Knights community as a whole, this was just one individual in a community of thousands and while the community had asked for Western Hollow Knight Player Opinion.

The Chinese community eventually took care of this on their own. I also want to thank the Chinese Hollow Knight community for putting in so much effort to keep the scene free of cheaters. Frankly, many people don't. I don't know how impressive the top Chinese Hollow Knight players are. If you're interested in seeing more of their content, I'll include links to some of their channels in the video description. Consider checking them out if you liked this video and want to hear more of this kind of stuff in the future, let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear your opinions.

Thank you all very much and I hope you have a wonderful day.