I played for ages not being able to defeat the Hand of the King, and then watched my friend defeat him on his third playthrough.
Turns out watching someone else play made me see how the game works, and then I proceeded to kill the hand up to 2 boss cells! Yay!
But then I only made it to the hand on 3BC because I had the invisibility necklace lol. I can’t reliably reach the throne room on 2BC still! What an insane game XD