Eternal Ordeal

The Eternal Ordeal is a secret challenge which can be found in the Hall of Gods in Godhome. It requires the player to attempt to defeat as many Zotes as possible before dying.

The Eternal Ordeal will always start with a fight against Zote the Mighty as he is fought in the Trial of the Warrior, but can now deal damage to The Knight. After defeating him, a full-screen title card will appear displaying THE ETERNAL ORDEAL, and a counter with Zote's head will appear as a HUD in the lower-left to track enemy kills. Zote will begin to sing along with the music as waves of Zotes will begin to spawn. As the counter racks up kills, the difficulty will increase and more variants will appear, some exclusive to the Ordeal (the Zotes unique to the Ordeal do not have Journal entries).

Once the player has killed 57 Zotes, the counter will turn gold (as does the hidden Zote statue) and a new menu theme will be unlocked: The Eternal Ordeal. The title screen features a statue of Zote with Zote singing the main menu theme of the game.

Location
The Eternal Ordeal is located inside the Hall of Gods. Unlike Grey Prince Zote, this challenge is unlocked by default. To access it, the player must first navigate to the far right of the second level of Hall of Gods and break the ceiling above the third arch from the right. First, reach the hidden ledge above the arch via crystal-dashing off the right wall (Sharp Shadow will also do since it extends the range of  Shade Cloak) and then using double-jump to grab the wall. Howling Wraiths/Abyss Shriek is useful for finding and breaking the barrier, but Nail attacks can also be used to break it. Break the left wall after this, and a statue of Zote standing at the edge of a cliff will explode into the room, accompanied by Zote's voice. Challenge it to enter the ordeal.

Types of Zotes

 * Kills to Spawn is the minimum to spawn this Zoteling. New Zotelings only spawn when a previous one is killed, selecting randomly from among the available types. This means a new Zote type may not spawn immediately.
 * No more than 2 of the same type of Zoteling will spawn at the same time.
 * All Zotelings increase in speed with each kill. The speedup is subtle but becomes highly noticeable around 50 kills. At ~80, charging Zotes/Lanky Zotes can cross the screen in ~1s.
 * No Zotelings but the initial Zote can be hit with the Dream Nail.
 * The initial Zote's Dream Nail dialogue is the same as when he is fought in the Colosseum of Fools.

Simultaneous Zotelings
The maximum number of Zotelings alive at any time increases with the number of kills.

Trivia

 * The fifty-seven kills to unlock the Eternal Ordeal title screen is a reference to the fifty-seven precepts of Zote.
 * Zote's Curse resembles Salubra's Blessing, however, it drains SOUL instead of regenerating it.
 * The 57 precepts are represented by the lore tablets behind the Zote statue that is the entrance to the Eternal Ordeal.
 * The Eternal Ordeal statue has a cut description of:
 * "Intruder amongst the gods of Hallownest"


 * By shifting the statue sprite in game around, cut secrets can be found: what appears to be a mode selector for a "mode" (Attuned, Ascended, Radiant) and an open notch used to contain the switch that allows for switching bosses between dream variants.
 * Killing Zote at the beginning of the Eternal Ordeal unlocks his Journal entry. However, killing Winged, Hopping and Volatile Zotelings during this encounter will not unlock their entries.

Вечные муки