In High on Knife, the stunning expansion to High on Life, you’ll encounter Duffalo Ranch, full of… interesting views. When talking to the rancher, he will accuse you of poaching due to the fact that you smell of violence. If you want to gain his trust, as Nayfee suggests, you need to defeat the poachers and kill the Poacher King. Here’s how to climb up to their base and take down their leader in High on Knife mode.
How to clear a poacher outpost in High on Knife?
Conveniently, the poachers’ outpost is located right behind the ranch, so you can follow your objective marker directly past their base. Before moving on, you will need to destroy all the poachers on the first floor. Personally, I found Gus to be the easiest to use here. The warp base will arrive, and when it appears, destroy all the poachers that come with it. It won’t take you much time.
There is a hot wall on the side of the stone spire that supports the base. You can use Gus’s ability to create a platform to jump onto. You may have to do two to get over the wall. Once you climb up the wall, a purple spire will appear in front of your face. Use the Knife to grab onto the purple platform and climb over it. The game will prompt you to use the BALL to close the geyser holes and create pressure like you did before. You need to plug four of them, and the geysers will fly up.
Once they do, jump on them and you’ll be blown up, where you can use Knife’s grappling hook to climb up the rocks.
Approach him with the jetpack and use the Knife’s hook to grab onto the wall, after which you can begin to climb over the wall. You will need to jump to another wall once you get far enough. Just be careful with the wind! Jump the wall again and you’ll come across a beehive. Your costume will instruct you to launch “one of the Creature’s little children” into the hive to push out the hook beetle. Jump and use your jetpack to approach the hook beetle so that it will be thrown to the giant spire. You will have to use the Knife again to get up to the ledge if you run out of fuel before the ledge.
As shown in the picture above, look around at the poachers’ base. You’ll see another hot wall that Gus can use. Use the grappling hook and fly over to Gus’s platform to ascend to the next stage. You will again kill all the poachers on these rocks, where another base is warped. Get them all out. Once they’re taken care of, you can use the highest hook to grab onto the vent, where you can use Harper’s Glob Shot to unblock the vent.
Let the vent take you to another spire. There will be enemies on this spire and a small puzzle to solve. There is another fan that will take you back to base, but to activate it you will need to use the BALL pinball to block three pipes. The pipes are easy to find by following the three cables coming from the vent. If you want to kill the creatures that spawn, you can do so, but it is not necessary.
Using the fan to blow you back down, you will need to let the two hook bugs become your path back to the poachers’ base. Climb the stairs and enter the main base complex. Your meeting with the king of poachers is approaching. You’ll have to take out a lot of enemies, so using Gus or Sweezy was my personal path to victory. You’ll come across a fan where you can use Sweezy’s Time Bubble ability to slow him down and pass through him.
After going through the fan, you will face the last wave of enemies. There are some tough enemies in this stage, so make good use of your weapon’s abilities. I found that using Gus’ ability to launch a disc and using the Knife to hit him back and forth was an awesome way to take them out. Alternatively, you can make fantastic use of BALL abilities. By placing the bumpers in the middle of the complex, you can hit almost all poachers with one shot. This is incredible.
Finally, you will be able to climb to the top of the poachers’ base and meet the Poacher King.
We return to the ranch
So yes, he is human. If you want, you can immediately grab the poppers and go back to the ranch, or you can talk to him some more. However, this is High on Knife, so I would recommend you exhaust all possible dialogue options.
Once you finish talking to the man who became the poacher king, you can leave his office. You can either walk all the way back to the ranch using your feet, or press the red button right outside the Poacher King’s office. He will launch a zipline straight to another spire. Along the way, Touhou will notice you and either cheerfully greet you or cheerfully scold you, depending on how long you stared at his butt.
At the next spire you will find another button that will launch another zipline straight to the rancher.
With the help of the poppers you found from the Poacher King, you can get a ride from Elizabeth, a Duffalo who is now in good health. Talk to the rancher to continue your search.
