1. There will never be two or more mobs of skulls at once. After spawning from the tentacle spires, all skulls will converge on your position. Missing you, the skulls will group together, forming a singular, larger mob.

2. On the subject of regular skulls, I can't exactly put my finger on it, but there is a window when a skull mob would turn to face you, and all the skulls of the mob would file together very closely, making the mob a perfect target for shot-dagger. Try making the skull mob turn 90 degrees towards you.

3. Regular centipedes may seem to just float around passively without attacking you, but that is not the case. If you stand still (which a lot of players seem to do to get proper bearing on the belly crystals, myself sometimes) the centipede will come towards your stationary position. Try to attack the centipede's crystals while moving.

4. Skulls, the regular and horned varieties, cannot perform sharp turns. If you charge forward and narrowly dodge them, you can put a lot of distance while the skulls recover. This is applicable to mobs too. Create an opening by a shot-dagger, and charge through it. You might be surpised by how much of a reprieve this might give you.

1. Shotgun jump is useful only for putting distance when the floor is swarming with minis-spiders spawned from the gem-collecting skullspiders. Unless you're from the Quake generation who can maintain the jump on a consistent basis and reliably, don't. I certainly can't.

2. Unlike modern shooters where weapons are hitscan, your daggers have travel time. Try to lead shots. This is how I see it: do not think of your Daggers as projectile, but a whip with infinite distance.

3. A confirmation from another player might be needed for this: shot-dagger projectiles are faster than rapid dagger projectiles.

4. Strafe-jump by jumping while pressing W+A or W+D, but don't spam. Time each jump carefully by jumping again after hearing the landing thud. Done successfully, you'll hear the jump audio sound differently and a slight change in FOV will occur. I found this slight FOV increase to be tremendously helpful in assessing the platform. Also works with S+A and S+D, but watch your back so you don't jump off the platform/run into a mob of skulls.

5. Beginners should know that you repel gems while attacking. However, there is a deeper nuance behind this mechanic. You don't attract gems (as in, the gems stay static) while using rapid daggers, and repel with each shot of the shot-dagger. The gems repel farther if you shoot AT them. While this may seem like a negative aspect of your daggers, it does not have to be. Despite the gems not attracting to you while rapid-daggering, you can STILL collect them normally by running over the gems. And, the repelling effect of the shot-dagger is useful when the skullspiders are collecting your gems.

1. Learn to fire-and-forget. This means, learn the exact number of hits each enemy would take, fire the approximate amount of daggers enough to kill the enemy, and turn your back on it to immediately deal with another threat. Use the game's incredible audio cues to determine whether the threat was successfully dealt with.

2. 10 gems gets you the first power-up, while 70 gets you another. Beginners should to how to effectively kill all skulls and spires in the first 20-30 seconds to receive the power up, and to kill the centipede for the second power up. What intermediate players should know is how to deal with the situation should you take too long to kill the first skullspider, or when the centipede manages to hide itself while you were attacking its crystals. The key phrase here is "threat assessment". If you're taking too long to deal with a threat, abandon it and deal with another immediate one.

3. That being said, you really should want to get the power-ups as soon as you can. The number of enemies scale with your power-ups, meaning you really don't want to deal with the 180-odd second mobs with just the first power-up.

4. Try to play relaxingly. Conserve your energy for the initial 120-seconds. The way the game is designed, both the mechanics and the hellish art style, are (at least, in my opinion) intended to drain the player of stamina.

5. On the subject of exhausting the player, the most tension comes from securing enough gems for power-ups, so most players tend to follow a very strict regime of "must kill this enemy then that enemy", so when they mess up they panic and the whole run is ruined. Try to be flexible in securing gems.

6. Also on the subject of player exhaustion and power-ups, once you get the third power-up, you can probably forget about collecting gems for a while and focus on clearing the platform. Homing daggers is cool to use, but useless if you mess up your priorities and die.