This guide assumes some prior knowledge of Hellpoint, including but not limited to movement, combat, navigation, and stats. Perfect familiarity of areas is not expected, but any gaps in descriptions can be compensated for by wikis elsewhere. This isn't telling you how to beat the game, just how to get to the point where you can bathe everything you find in cleansing fire.

From the start of the game, take things as you normally do until you reach the large room with the elevator. If the elevator is on your right, the closed cell should be straight ahead - it's the one with the Catalyst Conductor and the victim who reaches it before you can. To the left of that is a secret door; open it, climb the lift, and open the secret door at the top to get the Port Issoudun Credentials. Then kill the victim in the closed cell, die, and head back to the now-open door for the Catalyst Conductor.

The Embassy does have a Catalyst in it - the White Prophet Hand - but it's behind a Black Hole Door in the vacuum of space, and while it is a Catalyst, we can do better.

Once you have the Credentials you're free to bop the Archon Slaver, talk to the Author, and head into the Observatory.

Pick the Observatory clean and add the Strength Melee Conductor to your Pipe. Level up until you have 4 Strength and at least 3 Foresight, then unlock the Port Issoudun door and head in.

This is where things start to get complicated.

The first thing you're going to want from here is the Thespian Hook, which is found (more easily at this point) as a drop from Thespians - they're humanoids who attacking with fencing thrusts and swings. The Strength Melee Conductor grants a weapon effect which increases the stagger of your attacks while it's active; dodge attacks with this can knock them down consistently, and from there you can stun lock them with basic swings. One-on-one they're not dangerous; I mean, this is a Soulslike, enemies deliberately have simple AI.

The reason we want the Thespian Hook is because it has stat scaling for Foresight, comes early, has low stat requirements to equip, uses the quick and effective sword attack animations, and its sole ability is a passive which increases its damage.

Grab the Freight Credentials from the room outside, then enter the interior of the Port and take the first lift down into the zone proper. Head down the long ramp to the tech room with the low ceiling, then turn into the room with the narrow bottomless pits in the floor. Do a little jumping across the gaps, climb the lift, make another jump and get the Silo Key. Double back and head up the ramp, go down into the shallow pit with the hands, and climb up until you reach a Breach and the silo door.

Inside the Silo is the Tram Activation Key, obtained by dropping down into confined areas with a lot of very strong enemies. There is an exit at the bottom of the Silo, and the Silo contains other loot as well, but the only thing you really need from it is the Tram Activation Key, and if you die you keep it.

Once you do have it, head outside and activate the Tram to travel to the Sohn District.

But wait! What if you could get some Foresight armor while you were here as well?

From the vault door/pentagram room, when you're facing the vault door, to your left is a passageway. Enter the passageway and on the right is an elevator. Take the elevator down into a dark room with a broken bridge. On the right, after the break in the bridge, is a staircase up to a walkway, which leads to a room with Tech, Occult, and Utility Stations.

Now, exiting the room, look to the right and you should see a series of platforms. Jump across them and follow the path up, down, and all the way through to an area with the Theurgist Scribe outfit.
Space wizards, it is known, are big fans of the German cyber-goth 𝒶𝑒𝓈𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓉𝒾𝒸.

The Port Issoudun tram drops you off at what could be considered the end of Sohn District, behind the boss. This is fine. Just head down the staircase and keep going down until you end up in the Arcology.

Once in the Arcology, activate the elevator, go to the second floor, and follow the path until you find a square room with a bone-and-skin altar and several victims around it. Enter the door on the bottom floor, turn left, then at the end of the room turn right and climb the stairs to find the Channeler of Hell.

The Channeler of Hell, in no uncertain terms, lets you shoot large fireballs which bounce around, and the final ability creates a line of flame columns along the ground for heavy damage, though that still feels like it's understating it - it's fifteen columns that all deal damage over time, they overlap a little bit and enemies don't really "get" how to avoid them. Against large bosses - which is to say, most of them - they're taking multiple instances of damage from multiple sources.

Once you have it, backtrack to the elevator and continue past it to find yourself at the Arcology bridge, this time on the opposite side from where you'd normally be if you got here from the Observatory. There's a Breach there, so take the opportunity to raise your Foresight to 10 in order to use the Channeler properly, then use it on the Celestial Beast to get the Arcology Limited Access Passport. Open up Sohn District and head inside.

Ultimately there's two things that you really need in Sohn District, and both are in - or by - noticeable landmarks.

In the first area, eventually you will find a small room with a switch that opens a large set of shutters right next to the room. Within this alley is a Horde event; wait until the Hell Hours for the red fog doors to appear, then complete it to get the Induction Melee Conductor.

So, wacky thing about Foresight and Cognition on melee weapons: You need to add an elemental inductor to it in order to get any benefit from those stats. But, it converts part of the physical damage to elemental, increases the scaling, and also gives you the ability to imbue your weapon with that element. The initial outlay of energy is costly, but it lasts a very long time and adds a surprising amount of damage.

Also in the first area, explore until you find a lift that takes you up to a path that leads to the top of one of the buildings. Jump onto the scaffold spanning the alley, then cross it to a second roof - if there's a Key to Dargass Tower there, you're in the right place. You should see a piece of machinery with a thick wire looped around the top; climb on top of it, line yourself up, and then take a running jump onto the other, higher roof. Descend the lift, enter the doorway with the blue-green lighting around it, cross the short bridge, and you should end up in a room with a staircase on the opposite wall. To the right of the staircase is a secret door; open it and obtain the Conjuring Optimizer.

The Conjuring Optimizer cuts all energy costs for Catalysts in half, and I don't need to tell you why that's good.

The idea behind this build is to both employ a powerful Catalyst as well as reduce reliance on multiple stats to a bare minimum: Ideally, all you need to do to increase your damage is to boost Foresight, since both your melee weapon and Catalysts scale off of it. With the Induction Melee Conductor any weapon could benefit from it, of course, but having a weapon with native Foresight scaling would benefit more from it.

If you wanted a non-Hand Catalyst even earlier, you could open the vault in Port Issoudun, then enter the Underworld though a monolith behind a nearby secret door and talk to Ozyormy Goija. His quest requires you to obtain 10 Fragments of an Archon, and an Archon which drops it infinitely respawns in a room reachable via secret lift in the narrow floor gap room. The doors close on you and more enemies appear once you cross the midway point, so you need to move in until the Archon wakes up, then back out and kill it. Once you do, exit the Underworld and re-enter. Repeat until you have ten Fragments, go talk to Ozy again, and receive the Hedron of Entropy.

The main issue with this, however, is what while it may be earlier in the sense that it requires you to visit less areas, it is not earlier in the sense that it takes less time to do.

Congratulations, Harry. You're now a space wizard.

If anybody has a mind to try and convert this into a Youtube video for easier consumption, then hell, go for it.