The Indestructible variant
Checkpoints are objects found in most of the stages of the Valley. Passing a Checkpoint will allow Shovel Knight, Plague Knight, Specter Knight, or King Knight to respawn at that point upon death.
Checkpoints can also be seen to contain different denominations of treasure inside their glass orbs. The playable characters can destroy the Checkpoint to claim that treasure, but doing so will negate its use, forcing the respawn point to an earlier Checkpoint, or the very beginning of the stage if there are no more. Each Checkpoint can take 5 hits (3 in case of Specter Knight) before breaking. Checkpoints are reset upon exiting a stage.
Also, if Specter Knight wears the Raiment of Risk Cloak instead of the treasure, a yellow crystal will appear inside the Checkpoints. Only by breaking one of them is possible to collect the crystal and take advantage of its powers, but this does not withhold the treasure normally contained inside the glass ball, as it's released alongside the crystal.
If the Checkpoint is adorned by gold wings around the top, it does not have treasure inside and cannot be broken. This type of Checkpoint is seen in stages like Plains, the Tower of Fate: ???? or the memory stages, Memory of Adventure and Memory of Conflict.
In Shovel of Hope, breaking all the checkpoints in a single stage will be rewarded with the Get the Point Feat, while in all campaigns (excluding King of Cards), breaking all possible checkpoints in the game will reward you with the Checkpointless Feat.
In New Game Plus, there are fewer Checkpoints. Specifically, each stage will only contain not more than two Checkpoints, one in the midway and one right before the boss. In Specter of Torment passing for the first time by a Checkpoint will completely refill Specter Knight's fused "Darkness+Will" gauge.
There is a special type of Checkpoints in Challenge Mode, modeled after the indestructible checkpoints, which serves as the goal of challenge; the Co-op based Challenges in particular have this special Checkpoint further modified by having its glass bubble split in two and having two footboards beneath it, with both knights needing to being stepping on them in order to activate it.
Trivia[]
- In Lost City, all checkpoints are breakable by default. However if one enables the "Iron Man Challenge" cheat code, the first checkpoint serves as the start line and becomes unbreakable.