Mina The Hollower Beginner Tips and Tricks

Mina The Hollower is a retro inspired action adventure tinged with Bloodborne mechanics, which should tell you all that you need to know about what kind of adventure you’re in for. Mina The Hollower doesn’t hold your hand and it doesn’t explicitly tell you what you need to know, so here’s a dozen beginner tips and tricks that might just make your adventure a little bit easier.

Burrowing

What Mina doesn’t tell you begins with her main mechanic of burrowing, which is done by holding the A button. If you burrow to an edge that has an obstacle above it, then it will automatically pop out into a jump

Burrowing Jump

You can only jump one grid space, but if you burrow into a jump, you'll be able to jump two grid spaces.

Burrowing in Water

Mina is full of shallow and deep water. As you suspect, you can walk right across shallow water, but as soon as you touch deep water, you fall right in. What you need to do is burrow as soon as you hit the water and then when you run out of burrow energy or in this case air, Mina will pop out into a jump. This will allow you traverse long distances covered in deep water

Always Try Burrowing

The game is called Mina The Hollower and her main mechanic is burrowing, so if you’re ever stuck, always try to burrow first. More often than not, this will be the answer.

Weapon of choice

At the start of the game, Mina will be offered three weapons. Quick blades for up close and speedy combat, but have lower damage. A hammer that deals a lot of damage, but is slow. As well as the Goldilocks of the bunch the whip chain, which has decent damage and attack speed, but also has good range, which is good for reaching enemies farther away and also hitting switches without needing to get super close to them. However, try them out, pick which one you think is best and don’t worry because you’ll have plenty of chances to switch through finding or shopping as well as finding completely new ones.

Instruction Booklet

Back in the day, games used to come with instruction booklets that were extremely cool to look at, but also had very useful information. The same can be said about the manual in Mina the Hollower. Go to the settings menu and then scroll down to manual. Read this and get familiar with it. You’re guaranteed to learn something valuable. It’s also neat to see the extra care and attention Yacht Club put into the game.

Newspapers and NPC’s

In Mina The Hollower, you can head to almost any of the biomes in any order, although there is an unwritten order, but if you’re trying to figure out which way to go, read the newspaper. The headline article will always feature a story about the biome you should head to next. If you’re having trouble figure out where that specific biome is you can check the fountain in the city square to look at the orbs, which have a color coded base, which corresponds to the direction that biome is located in the real world. If you keep heading in that direction long enough, you’ll get where you need to be.

The island of Tenebrous feels alive because there are so many characters in it and they all have something to say. Struggling to get past a bouncer? Try asking a bunch of people that are near because they will usually have something of value to offer. They won’t always provide the exact answer, but they will likely give you a good hint.

Corpse Runs and backtracking

Killing enemies gives you bones, which is the upgrade currency, so it’s worth it to fight them, at least the first. However if you’re doing a corpse run or backtracking looking for the next biome, you can always just run or burrow past many enemies as they don’t follow you to the next screen. Be careful as sometimes there are big areas that are stitched together and you can become overwhelmed quickly.

Sparks

Bones are your currency and just like fromsoftware games, when you die, you will drop them. However, if you have a spark, then you can attempt to do a corpse run, recover your spark and recover your bones. The good news is that you can also find more sparks through exploration or even purchasing at shops, including the one in the center of town. For every spark, you will be given another chance to do a corpse run, before losing all your bones permanently. As a bonus, the more sparks you have the more access Mina will have to restricted areas like the tailor in town that requires at least two sparks to power open the door.

Projectiles

Mina is full of many of the worst types of enemies: Flying ones and ones that shoot projectiles. While you can’t do much about the fliers, you can often use your attack at the right time to return projectiles back to sender. It’s always worth a try.

Cutting the Grass

Mina the Hollower is a love letter to the earliest Zelda adventures, which means that you need to cut the grass. Under the grass, you’ll often find bones, which you’ll need to buy stuff or upgrade, joules which are used to power your sidearms like mana, under flowers will often be plasma which can be used to heal you and even times you’ll find hidden passages.

Investigate

Finally, Mina The Hollower is overflowing with hidden content and things to find off the beaten path. If something looks fishy or out of place, there’s a good chance that it’s probably something worth investigating, so give it a whack and see what happens.