Ori and the Blind Forest hard mode playthrough log part 3

I'm glad I started grinding the blue ability tree path, cuz it looks like I'm really gonna need that infinite air for the swimming sections in hard mode.

I re-explored everything again with my new powers, and then I ended up getting to the Warmth element area before figuring out how to get to the wind place. The top-left of Hollow Grove has some really crazy enemies, including one that shoots an instant-death laser all around it... and you really need to get good with the Bash move to get through this place... I got a teleporter and a few more energy/life cells out of it, but this isn't the way to progress right now. Also yeah I got the infinite swimming by the time I finished all of this.

Now I'm at 43% total completion by the time I even start heading towards the Wind area. By the time I get to Valley of the Wind, I'm so good at using the Bash ability, and I have so many life cells and energy cells that I'm actually finding the game a bit easy now.

Then, instead of going into Misty Woods which is where my destination is, I explored further to the south of Valley of the Wind... it seems the path keeps going this way. There's a lot of weird green glowy liquid down here... and then further down it turns into this frozen over area that looks really amazing...

I don't know if I'm supposed to be down here yet or not... but I guess I'll just keep going until I get to a road block.
ooh, so it turns out this is where you need to go after you explore the Misty Woods... at least I got the map for this area... Valley of the Wind is now 80% completed already lol

Wow... I did not see that insane difficulty spike at Misty Woods coming at all. This place is incredibly hard on hard mode. Not only is it hard to figure out where you're going since there's no map, but I also get disoriented often since I don't remember which way I was going after I die... there's a lot of stuff here that makes use of both the Bash ability and the new gliding ability. Also I got enough ability points to unlock the triple jump during this part... it doesn't really change the game that much.

This place keeps changing too... it's like, I think I went back and forth a few times but it was different each time, so it felt like I may or may not have been going the right way. By the time I got the lantern thing to make the map appear again and turned the forest back to normal, I managed to get 94% completion in this area... Now that I see the map it looks very linear, but I'm pretty sure there were more parts of it that aren't shown on this map. I don't know where to go to get the last 6% of this area done.

I then easily made my way back down to the icey area, and saved and stopped there for now.

Screenshots: