I had an idea for a new category. Basically just no stags, no bench warps, no dream gates, and some special logic around dying. I wrote up a tentative document of proposed rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jCAIytIoXnwPbNPAFeODwt2BJotTmWc8l6B2Mjxu4l4/edit?usp=sharing

I did a run to demo the rules and a possible route. I didn't notice that audio wasn't getting captured until the end, so it's technically not a valid run sadly.

In my opinion, just respawning at a hard save should be allowed. It is consistent with "before making any progress" after all. Since you could just die to the devout in Beast's Den, for example, and collect your shade "before making any progress" and that would amount to the same.