Gallery Combat Knife Only - Professional/No Damage

The goat head room is an unending source of frustration for knife only. I've been playing it over and over for the past few days trying to come up with anything resembling consistency. Ultimately, I did find a strategy. However, there are so many potential variables that make executing it a massive pain. How the enemies behave, if the Red Zealot mutates the right ones and how well Ashley cooperates are all the deciding factors here. In truth, I've had several successful attempts. I just wasn't satisfied with them because of how haphazard they looked. The amount of luck in play here seems unavoidable for the most part, but my strategy is at least solid enough to have allowed for these multiple successful attempts.

My goal for the first phase is to have four plagas, a shield enemy and the Red Zealot in play. In this scenario, no further enemies will spawn until either one of those listed enemies dies or you enter the second phase. The key thing about this specific set of enemies is that they are all incapable of grabbing Ashley. Even if she gets incapacitated, you can just exit the room after raising the bridge and she will recover on her own to safely return to you. I have a method for creating this set of enemies semi-consistently, but you'll find yourself getting screwed over in unfair ways every now and then.

I begin the fight by quickly getting behind the nearest enemy and using the knife prompt on him. After that I head over to the nearest enemy with the morning star and quickly dispatch him. I let the other nearby enemy carry Ashley since in most cases he will almost immediately mutate and drop her. There should also be a second enemy that will mutate. At this point you will have two plagas in play and another set of enemies. You should have time to kill one more enemy going after Ashley before the Red Zealot starts chanting again. As soon as he does, I run over to the stairs near the ladder where two enemies remain idle until approached. They will not get mutated unless they are active in combat. Doing this should get both of them to mutate, or one of them and the other non-mutated enemy you left in play. Once this happens, you should have the four plagas needed to move onto the next step.

There are two enemies near the top of the ladder that need to be lured down, one of which is the shield enemy. Before trying this, it's a good idea to lure all of the plagas to the other side of the room to give you enough space to work with. I start by climbing the ladder and immediately dropping down. This will get the attention of the enemy without the shield. Once he is killed, the shield enemy should be lured down next with the same process. It's important to keep him alive to prevent more enemies from spawning. I lure them all to the far side of the room and finally make my way to the lever. Doing all of this cleared the path with only the Red Zealot standing in the way. His attack can't be parried as far as I can tell, but it's quite easy to dodge. It's an OG RE4-esque dodge where you bait the swing, back up and run past. You'll have to perform this twice in the process of hitting the lever. The shield enemy will have caught up to you, but you can simply run past him without incident. Getting down the ladder is a huge pain though as most of the plagas will be gathered down there, with one or two them having made it up the ladder. The issue is how inconsistent it is to make Leon jump off it and roll on the ground. That is the fastest and safest way to get past this part, but I have not been able to figure out how to get him to jump every time. Dropping down still tends to work most of the time, but it's another moment where you can get screwed. After that, you should be able to get out of the room with Ashley pretty easily.

Before starting phase 2, I run back to the merchant and repair the knife. I don't actually need more knife durability. I just do this to waste enough time for all of the enemies to leash back to their starting positions. It's vital that you go undetected for as long as possible when making the run for the goat head. This will give you more time to deal with the bridge enemies. It's not a lot of time, but it makes a difference. These bridge enemies though, what happens here is the biggest variable of them all. Sometimes they will behave in a way that lets you effortlessly swing by them, other times they will absolutely brick wall you. Keeping some distance seems to encourage the scythe enemy go after Ashley, which makes killing him easy. In the best-case scenario, the other enemies near you will be forced to mutate. This should let you and hopefully Ashley run past them without trouble. Otherwise, you will have to contend with the shield enemy and try your best to get Ashley out of there. There isn't enough time to fight all of these enemies before you get swarmed by everybody else. This specific part is up in the air, but it has a decent enough chance of playing out favorably.