Things You Might Not Know

Circle of the Moon has plenty you can finish the game without ever noticing. This article collects a few of them, each followed by the site owner’s demonstration video.

Enemies you might never meet

These enemies only appear after you defeat a certain boss, and most of them sit in hidden rooms or out-of-the-way corners, so they’re easy to miss.

Enemy	Appears	Location	Rare drop
Nightmare	After defeating Dragon Zombie	The hidden room under the floor of the Outer Wall	Needle Armor
Lilim	After defeating Death	Hidden room in the Machine Tower; the only one in the castle	Dark Armor
Lilith	After defeating Camilla	Hidden room in the Underground Warehouse	Sage Robe
Franken	After defeating Death	Eternal Corridor	Ninja Garb, Soldier Fatigues
Skeleton Medalist	From the start	Hidden room in the Catacomb	Bear Ring (see below)

Each Lilith is worth 20,000 EXP.
The three candle enemies also appear only after bosses; see the next section.

A few enemies you might never meet in a normal playthrough

Candle enemies

The three candle enemies disguise themselves as ordinary candlestands and flee quickly once disturbed. You can tell them apart by color: ordinary candlestands are orange with red flames; the Scary Candle has green flames, the Trick Candle blue flames, and the Mimic Candle a green stand.

Candle	HP	Appears	Location	Rare drop
Scary Candle	150	After defeating Dragon Zombie	Machine Tower boss room (Room 20), two of them	Uranus
Trick Candle	200	After defeating Camilla	Catacomb boss room (Room 106)	Pluto
Mimic Candle	990	After defeating Death	The long corridor right of the map’s center, in the Audience Room (Room 220)	Gambler Armband (LCK +100)

Farm the Scary Candle first (lowest HP) for the Uranus card, then the Trick Candle for the Pluto card. With both cards, the Mimic Candle gets much easier.
There are two Scary Candles, but farming just one side is faster. A candle in Room 28 to the right holds the Clock if you need it.
Fight in gear that raises attack, then switch to luck gear just before the final hit. Drops use your LCK at the moment of the kill; see Drop rate.

The site owner tested several methods on the Mimic Candle, which has the most HP. Damage is given in equivalent normal attacks; results vary slightly because each candle sits at a different height.

Method	Damage	Notes
No DSS, just attack	About 3 hits
Lightning Ball	About 6.5 hits
Clock	About 6 hits	Attack while it’s stopped
Clock + Bomb	About 14 hits	You can throw 7 bombs while it’s stopped, but it takes precise play
Summon Thunderbird	About 7 hits	Needs the Uranus card. Hits up to 4 times, depending on where you cast it
Item Crush + Clock		Needs the Pluto card. Freezes it completely, but cast it just before it lands or you won’t hit it. If one isn’t enough, cast it again, though it eats a lot of hearts

Skeleton Medalist and the Bear Ring

The Skeleton Medalist waits in a hidden room in the Catacomb. It runs extremely fast and is hard to hit. The site owner put together six ways to beat it:

Item Crush with the Clock: stops it; if you’re quick you can do it twice. Costs hearts.
Item Crush with Holy Water: hits the whole screen; if you’re quick you can also do it twice. Costs hearts.
Petal Plume: if you use the high jump, you must stand against the left wall for it to work. Cheap on resources and easy to execute.
Hawk Familiar: attack with the hawk.
Speed Boost: speed up and chase it down.
No spells, pure skill: less margin for error, but it frees your DSS for LCK Boost to raise your drop chances.

Methods 4–6 use wall kicks and the double jump.

The Skeleton Medalist drops the useless Toy Ring, and with luck the Bear Ring. Wearing the Bear Ring while you activate Skeleton Transformation turns you into a bear instead of a skeleton:

Attacks come in high, middle and low versions.
You can double jump and move faster, but the high jump and other moves are disabled.
Attack power is the same as your normal whip, and one touch kills you. It’s purely for fun, though it works for a no-damage challenge.

Six ways to beat the Skeleton Medalist, and the Bear Ring

Hidden sub-weapon tricks

Unarmed Item Crush

Item Crush unleashes a powered-up version of your current sub-weapon. You can still use it before you have a sub-weapon (if you’ve never picked one up): you get a very strong unarmed version that costs 100 hearts.

Shooter mode’s homing knife

In Shooter mode, picking up another Knife while holding one turns it into a homing knife that chases enemies. Other modes don’t have this.

Reverse Battle Arena

After clearing the Battle Arena, leave the last room (where you get the Shinning Armor) to the left, but first slide from some distance away from the wall and turn back. The closed door reopens and you can fight your way back from the last room. You can turn around at any point; there’s no need to go all the way back to the first room.

The two cards you can only get in the arena, the Black Dog from Devil Armor and the Unicorn from White Armor, are both in the last three rooms. Going through all 17 rooms from the start every time takes ages; this way you can farm back and forth in the last three rooms.