Red Candle Games’ Taopunk metroidvania Nine Sols strips away traditional dodge-roll invulnerability in favor of aggressive, rhythm-based deflections heavily reminiscent of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Playing as the vengeful cat-like warrior Yi, survival hinges on absorbing incoming blade swings, building internal Qi charges, and executing high-risk Unbounded Counters against crimson attacks.
What this covers: Deflection frame windows, Qi blast talisman detonations, Unbounded Counter timing, and internal damage recovery loops. Why it matters: Unlike standard metroidvanias, boss encounters in Nine Sols cannot be bypassed through passive leveling or stat grinding; mastery of parry rhythms is mandatory. Who should pick this: Players hitting brick walls against Sol warlords like Jiequan, Lady Ethereal, and Eigong.
The Parry Engine: Deflection vs Internal Damage
When Yi raises his blade to parry, incoming strikes resolve into three possible defensive states depending on your frame timing:
| Defense Result | Execution Timing | Damage Taken | Qi Resource Gained | Combat Consequence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Perfect Deflection | Exact hit impact as the strike connects | 0 Damage | +1 Full Qi Charge | Attack fully neutralized |
| Imperfect Block | Pressed early / held defensively | Minor Internal Damage | 0 Qi Charge | Yi briefly immobilized |
| Mistimed / Whiff | Pressed late or during cooldown | 100% Raw Damage | 0 Qi Charge | Yi staggers; combo interrupted |
Internal damage is represented as a faded crimson bar over Yi’s health pool. If you immediately follow an imperfect block with successful perfect deflections or strike an enemy with a Foo Talisman Qi explosion, this internal damage is completely healed. Hesitate or suffer another direct hit, and the entire internal damage pool converts into permanent HP loss.
The Unbounded Counter: Handling Crimson Attacks
Throughout mid-to-late boss encounters, bosses unleash flashing red strikes the game calls crimson attacks. Standard parries fail against these unblockable swings, and jumping over them is frequently prevented by aerial tracking or wide arena hitboxes.
To survive, you must master the Unbounded Counter:
- Charge Input: Hold the deflection button down when the crimson warning rune flashes above the boss. Yi lowers his stance and channels pure defensive focus.
- Directional Release: Release the parry button the instant the glowing strike connects.
- Execution Reward: Yi steps through the attack unharmed, deflects the crimson strike with a resounding metallic gong, deals 80 Internal Damage that staggers the boss briefly, and banks a full Qi charge — two with the Unbounded Drain skill unlocked.
Talisman Detonations and Jade Setups
Deflecting attacks is merely the defensive half of the combat loop; your offensive output relies on sticking Foo Talismans onto the enemy.
- Full Blast vs Quick Burst: Sticking a talisman onto a boss pauses combat momentarily while you channel Qi charges. Releasing immediately deals baseline burst, while holding drains your accumulated Qi charges into the detonation, triggering screen-shaking internal explosions that rip through boss health bars.
- Essential Jade Loadout: Equip the Iron Skin Jade to convert 40% of every hit you take into recoverable Internal Damage, paired with the Breather Jade to turn Internal Damage back into health whenever your slash attacks connect. For boss fights, slot the Hedgehog Jade to inflict passive puncture damage on every single successful parry.
The Parry Window, Measured
The regular parry is much tighter than the Unbounded Counter that follows it. Pressing parry within 0.133 seconds of an attack landing produces a precise parry; the wiki counts “when an attack hits” as the first frame where Yi’s animation reacts to the strike, which can trail the attack’s visual overlap by a few frames, so read the impact, not the swing. Pressing between 0.133s and 0.5s early gives an imprecise parry, and Yi stays locked in the parry animation — unable to run, jump, or dash while grounded — until the 0.5 seconds finish or a hit arrives. Press too late and nothing happens at all.
There is also a spam punish. Mash parry with no attack incoming and the precise window collapses from 0.133s to 0.1s on the second press and vanishes entirely on consecutive presses, leaving only imprecise parries. Once the Unbounded Counter is unlocked, holding the button past ~0.33s ends the parry and begins charging the counter, so a quick tap-and-release is the only way to get any parry between 0.33s and 0.5s.
The two grades pay differently. A precise parry blocks the full attack, resets the delay on the enemy’s internal-damage regeneration, and can stagger certain enemies or strip specific shields. An imprecise parry leaves Yi with Internal Damage equal to 50% of the attack’s damage and stuck in place for 0.6 seconds. Both grades award 1 Qi charge. Ground parries only cover the direction Yi faces; air parries cover every direction.
Internal Damage: The Other Health Bar
Internal Damage sits over HP as a dark-red overlay and can stack up to 1 less than the entity’s current HP. Yi regenerates his own at 4 HP per second after a 5-second delay, a rate the Recovery Jade improves. The rule that kills runs is simple: taking Direct Damage converts the entire remaining Internal Damage pool into additional Direct Damage, so a small chip hit while you are carrying a fat crimson bar can erase health you were counting on recovering. Enemy Internal Damage regenerates on its own timer too, and that regeneration stops whenever the enemy is parried or takes more Internal Damage from a talisman attach, the Hedgehog Jade, a Tai-Chi Kick, or an Unbounded Counter. Talisman detonations then convert all of it into Direct Damage.
Immortal Dash: The Answer to Crimson
Immortal Dash is the second defensive pillar and the reason crimson attacks are survivable at all. The dash animation lasts about 0.27 seconds, after which Yi keeps some momentum and can jump, turn, parry, or act. The invulnerable window is variable: roughly 0.4 seconds if Yi emerges inside an attack hitbox and observed as high as 0.5s, cut to about 0.33s by dashing into a wall and as low as 0.13s into a spiked wall. Cooldown is 1 second, counted from the start of each dash, and it refreshes early on landing — a short hop or a dash off a ledge is enough. It cannot carry Yi through solid terrain, but it does dodge through hazards and crimson attacks, which is exactly the pairing the game’s own loading tip gives: crimson attacks cannot be parried normally, but Immortal Dash can dodge them.
Talisman, Qi and the Three Spell Styles
The talisman is Yi’s riposte and the only way to cash in an enemy’s Internal Damage. The dash attaches a talisman to the first enemy it touches for 32 Internal Damage; the detonation then converts all of that enemy’s Internal Damage — the 32 included — into Direct Damage, and carries the Finishing Blow property.
Three Spell Styles change only the detonation, never the dash:
- Qi Blast is the default, spending as many Qi charges as are available up to 3; the Enhanced Qi Blast skill makes a 3-charge blast also release 1 Azure Sand, without raising damage.
- Water Flow detonates automatically, so you never hold the button, but it costs 2 Qi charges even when it whiffs; Enhanced Water Flow drops that to 1.
- Full Control lets you set the charge by hold time, up to 5 Qi charges; Enhanced Full Control makes a 5-charge detonation deal extra damage and stagger enemies, bosses included.
A detonation that fails still burns at least 1 Qi charge, so a whiffed hold is a real cost.
The Unbounded Counter in Detail
The counter that answers crimson attacks has its own frame rules. It charges by holding parry for at least about 0.50 seconds, and the charge can only begin while Yi is grounded and finished with every other animation; if he was idle, the first ~0.33s of that hold is an ordinary parry. While charging or holding, Yi is vulnerable and any incoming damage cancels the counter. Releasing it blocks nearly anything arriving in the next ~0.36 seconds, including crimson attacks and attacks from behind — but not grab attacks, environmental lasers and hazards, or the expanding crimson circles some enemies generate. Hold longer than roughly 1.17 seconds after the counter is fully charged and the charge dissipates.
The counter’s payoffs scale with the incoming attack. A crimson melee attack takes 80 Internal Damage, or 180 with the Leverage skill; a white normal melee attack takes 60, or 135 with Leverage, and both kinds can stagger. Projectiles are reflected back without Internal Damage, even without Bullet Deflect. It also blocks several melee and ranged attacks at once if they land inside the window. After a successful block, Yi turns to face the attacker and holds a low stance for about 0.67 seconds; after the first ~0.33s of that he can parry, jump, talisman, dash, or run away from the attacker, or hold parry early to start a second counter — provided the Divine Hand Jade is not equipped.
Jade Loadout: Computing Power Is the Constraint
Jades slot into the Jade System, which only becomes usable once Abacus Ruyi repairs it at the Four Seasons Pavilion. Computing power is the budget: it starts at 2 and reaches a maximum of 10 through Computing Units, and each Jade consumes between 1 and 3. That makes the loadout a genuine trade, not a checklist.
| Jade | Effect | Role in the parry loop |
|---|---|---|
| Iron Skin Jade | Converts 40% of damage taken into Internal Damage | Trades burst risk for a recoverable pool you can heal back |
| Breather Jade | Slash attacks recover some Internal Damage into health | Turns basic offense into sustain between detonations |
| Recovery Jade | Raises the regeneration rate of Internal Damage | Shortens the delay before healing starts to matter |
| Hedgehog Jade | Precise parries inflict Internal Damage on the enemy | Adds pressure on every successful deflection, not just talismans |
| Reciprocation Jade | Transfers part of your Internal Damage to the enemy after a successful Unbounded Counter | Punishes crimson attacks twice over |
| Divine Hand Jade | Press parry right after a successful Unbounded Counter to chain counters | High-skill defense at real execution risk |
| Qi Swipe Jade | +1 Qi capacity; a precise parry then grants 2 Qi charges but deals Internal Damage to Yi | Fuels bigger Full Control detonations |
| Swift Descent Jade | Adds Swift Descent and reduces Immortal Dash’s cooldown | A second escape tool when crimson fills the arena |
| Stasis Jade | Attaching a talisman briefly immobilizes that enemy | Buys the hold time a Full Control detonation needs |
| Steely Jade | Enemy hits cannot interrupt a talisman detonation (damage still applies) | Guarantees the explosion lands, at a health cost |
Skills That Rewire the Loop
A handful of skill-tree unlocks change the numbers above more than any Jade does:
- Unbounded Drain — a successful Unbounded Counter grants 2 Qi charges instead of 1.
- Leverage — raises counter damage: crimson melee from 80 to 180 Internal Damage, white melee from 60 to 135.
- Incisive Drain — the Tai-Chi Kick grants 2 Qi charges instead of 1.
- Backlash — the Tai-Chi Kick’s Internal Damage rises from 60 to 160.
- Bullet Deflect — precise parries reflect projectiles instead of only blocking them; the Ricochet Jade extends this to imprecise parries for increased damage, but only with the skill equipped.
- Qi Boost skills and the Qi Swipe Jade — raise Qi capacity, which caps how hard a single detonation can hit.
Reading Crimson Attacks and Green Auras
Crimson attacks are identifiable by a red and black flashing effect or red and black fire, and the wiki notes they often carry a charge-up period that makes them easier to read and react to. Some enemies glow green while performing one; that green is the tell for a Tai-Chi Kick, an air-parry counter that interrupts the attack and refunds Qi. The mirror-image trap is the red-and-white flash, which some enemies use on ordinary moves and which new players misread as crimson — real crimson attacks always carry both red and black. Fire left on the ground is its own category: it deals direct damage over time that neither parrying nor the Unbounded Counter can block, though countering the attack that would have spawned it can cancel the fire outright.