Overview
This guide will provide all one hundred locations of Red Skulls within Specter of Torment, allowing you to get the Skull Seeker Achievement.I recomend using this guide after your first playthrough so you just end up cleaning up any last few skulls that flew under your nose during your playthrough of the game.
Introduction
Again, I recomended going through your first playthrough of Specter of Torment blind, collecting skulls as you happen to encounter them normally, as it makes the experience more enjoyable, and come back to this guide to round up any last skulls after you’ve beaten Specter of Torment.
Red Skulls are the main currency for obtaining curios from Red, a skeleton who has lost the skull of his lover, Scarlet.
There are One Hundred Red Skulls in total, and this guide will provide the locations of all of them for the Skull Seeker Achievement, As well as a ~Neat Prize~ for collecting all of them.
But we’ll save that for the end.
Helpful tips before the search begins.
Almost every area in the game has 10 Skulls, with the Tower of Fate being the only exception since its skulls are spilt up by its 3 areas: The Tower’s Hub (The NPC Zone), The Tower of Fate: Entrance, and The Tower of Fate: ????.
You can always check on how many skulls you’ve collected in an area when talking to the
Dark Acolyte Or Reize. They’ll always be at the level select portal.
Here’s an example showing me hovering over the plains option.
The RED shows where to look to find out how many skulls I have for the area I’ve selected.
I have obtained all the skulls possible (10/10), so I know i won’t need to go looking in the plains anymore.
The GREEN is to make it really obvious who to go to for this info, Dark Acolyte/Reize.
You will always end up talking to them when you want to continue your adventure.
The BLUE is not really skull seeker related, but a nice little detail rather. When you select an area, the knight you’re trying to recruit appears within the portal.
The moment you pick up a Red Skull, you will have one in your inventory that will display the total amount you have out of the 100, as well as how many you have collected so far in a level. (Press E and then J to visit the inventory screen)
So, lets do a recap.
9 Areas excluding the Tower of fate have 10 skulls in each of them : 90 Red Skulls.
The 3 Tower of Fate areas have the last 10 skulls split up.
- The NPC Hub (Where Red, Horace, Missy, etc, stay at) has 3 Red Skulls.
- The Tower of Fate: Entrance (First of the two final levels) has 5 Red Skulls.
- The Tower of Fate: ??? (Second of the two final levels) has 2 Red Skulls.
This is a total of 100 Red Skulls for us to find.
There is no real armor that is necessarily required to aquire all the Red Skulls. I mostly used the Rail Mail throughout the game for the extra speed And Sick Tricks.
However, having curios like the Hover Plume can make getting into certain secret areas easier, although they are not required by any means.
Theres a long road ahead of us, so lets get started!
The Plains
Red Skull #1
The first Red Skull is when you drop down and there is a breakable wall to your left.
Break it and proceed to wall climb and jump to get the Red Skull.
Red Skull #2
Simple enough, air dash 2 times in a row using the lanterns and you’ll be able to snatch that Red Skull right from the air.
Red Skull #3
You will enter a room witha skeleton, defeat him and then proceed to wall jump from the wall to the dirt blocks to get the skull. There is also a breakable wall to the left that will lead directly to the next Red Skull.
Red Skull #4
Time the jump and airdash when the lantern is directly over the pit to reach the other side and add another Red Skull to your collection.
Red Skull #5
Dash onto the platform and break the wall to the right. Go through and dash upwards using the bubbles to reach the Red Skull on the other side.
Red Skull #6
Dash through the green dragon right into the Red Skull.
Red Skull #7
The Red Skull will be high up, so you have to time a dash attack toward the green dragons that will fly above you in order to get it. It may take a couple tries, but you’ll get it eventually.
Red Skull #8
For this one, you’ll have to use the dragon’s bubbles to dash over to the Red Skull. Wait for them to rise up and then go for it.
Red Skull #9
Dash through the lantern upwards from the left platform and then dash when below it again from the right to get the next Red Skull.
Red Skull #10
The goal here is to use the green dragon to get to the plat form on the right and then dash through him once more to get onto the playform on the left. afterwards you will have to dash through several bubbles to get a chest along with the final Red Skull for this area.
Stranded Ship
(Some of the red skulls from here on will appear greyed out since I had already collected them on one profile)
Red Skull #1
Right after the first checkpoint, use the ice slime to reach the unclimbable ice platform to the right, and then jump over to where the beetle and our first Red Skull for this area will be.
Red Skull #2
right after the first skull, get onto the L shaped platform. You must once again dash using an ice slime to reach the red skull.
Red Skull #3
At the second checkpoint will be the third Red Skull. Despitelooking quite easy to obtain, there are bombs within the frail blocks that will cause more bombs to appear so make haste and get to that Red Skull!
Red Skull #4
Right next to the viking, climb down the ladder and jump to get this red skull.
Red Skull #5
There will be a rail sliding area where the red skill will be in the bottom left over a pit, jump when at the end of the rail to get the red skull.
Red Skull #6
This room will have a red belly dragon at the 6th checkpoint. dash through the red belly dragon and break open the wall to the left.
A little scary at first but, make sure to get snow on the platform and then WALL CLIMB WHERE THE RED GEMS ARE. while wall climbing, jump over the snow and make the spikes safe to step on.
Red Skull #7
Right of the snow wizard is a breakable wall, defeat him and then go through.
The red skull will be on a snowblock in the middle, so put snow on the spikes to make them safe to walk on and get it.
Red Skull #8
Afterwards, there will be a room with 2 archers-
-with a breakable wall that has a chest and another red skull behind it.
Red Skull #9
pretty hard to miss, just a red skull on the railway to the Polar Knight fight.
Red Skull #10
Once you reach the final checkpoint before the boss fight, jump LEFT and you get a Red Skull from under the blue rail.
Pridemoor Keep-oops!!
Truth is that I originally planned on completing and uploading the full guide along time ago when I had found all the red skulls in spectre of torment and a guide for all the red skulls hadn’t been made yet! However, I ended up losing motivation and getting caught up in new events with this guide dropping lower and lower on my list of priorities. Surely enough others did guides on obtaining 100% of the skulls so at least those are around to cover all the locations I never got around to finishing so be sure to check those out for your 100% completion!
Spectre of Torment was my favorite experience while playing Shovel Knight and looking back at this unfinished guide gave me good feelings of nostalgia. So rather than just having it remain hidden and seen only by me, I’ll just have it be open to all who want to look at it. A big thank you to everyone whose read this much, it means alot to me! Have fun in Spectre of Torment, I hope you have just as much fun as I did!