Achievement Guide
Zen is not just a no-hit goal. It is also a no-direct-damage goal.
Current community notes describe Zen as completing a run without dealing damage and without taking damage. Treat this as an extreme route-control challenge: the run must progress through indirect pressure, environmental kills, or ally-style outcomes while your own positioning stays clean.
Quick Facts
Fast read before the full guide
Achievement
Zen
Goal Type
Pacifist plus damageless completion.
Best Route Idea
Avoid direct damage, avoid taking hits, and let external pressure solve encounters.
Confidence
Community-documented condition; exact route details still need verification.
Short Answer
For Zen, plan the run as if every direct fight is a failure state. Your priorities are movement, spacing, safe exits, and non-direct ways for threats to die or become irrelevant. If a choice increases your personal damage but makes you more likely to touch enemies, it is probably the wrong choice for this achievement.
What The Route Is Testing
- Can you survive without turning the run into a normal combat build?
- Can you avoid chip damage while still allowing the game state to progress?
- Can you use environmental pressure or allies without accidentally taking ownership of the kill?
- Can you leave risky fights instead of trying to fix them with mechanics that break the rule?
Safer Planning Notes
Start by reading Zen as a stricter version of both Dove and Can’t Touch This. Dove cares about not dealing direct damage. Can’t Touch This cares about taking zero damage. Zen asks for both at once, so any build plan that only solves one half is incomplete.
The safest conceptual route is movement-first. If your run cannot disengage cleanly, it will eventually force a bad contact or panic interaction. Dodge, speed, spacing tools, and route choices are more important than damage scaling.
Common Failure Points
- Building too much offensive power and accidentally turning the attempt into a normal damage run.
- Depending on tight dodges instead of avoiding dangerous situations earlier.
- Entering boss or enemy states without a clean escape plan.
- Forgetting that indirect route plans still need strong survival discipline.
What We Still Cannot Confirm
Exact validation rules matter a lot for Zen. The site should not yet claim which indirect damage sources are always safe unless they are verified in-game. For now, treat every source of player-owned damage as suspicious and use the most conservative interpretation.