Barkhang Monastery - Shortcut

This shortcut will shave many minutes off your overall completion time. It can also help unlock "The End Doesn't Justify the Means" achievement/trophy with much less fuss. I first learned about this skip from Eycore, back in the day, but it still works in the remaster.

First, play through normally to the point where you use the key to enter the MAIN HALL and confront the enemies who follow you in. (See the main walkthrough.) If you are attempting "The End Doesn't Justify the Means", do not use the level-skip cheat, since this voids the achievement, and take care to keep all the monks alive up to that point. You should have one PRAYER WHEEL in your inventory, along with the SERAPH, collected at the end of THE DECK.

Jump over the railing in front of the huge statue (or go down the steps to the right of it). Then head for the doorway in the far left corner, behind the statue.

This small room has a number of prayer wheels already in place, and empty receptacles for the 5 PRAYER WHEELS you'd normally find while exploring. Use the one prayer wheel you actually have.

Now comes the glitch. Approach any of the other empty receptacles.

Open your inventory by pressing Esc (keyboard), View (Xbox), touchpad (PlayStation), – (minus on Switch).

Then press Up to access the upper menu ring. You should see a SERAPH artifact with no descriptive text below.

IMPORTANT: Do not just press Action when you see the hand icon, since this will select the "real" SERAPH. You don't want that. If you see the descriptive text, "The Seraph," as shown above, back out of the menu and try again.

When you see the "fake" SERAPH, with no descriptive text, press Action, and Lara will use it as though it were a PRAYER WHEEL.

Repeat this for the remaining empty receptacles to open the big doors.

Go through, head up the ramp, and use the "real" SERAPH...

...to open the exit. Go through.

The achievement/trophy should pop on the end-of-level statistics screen.

You can then reload an earlier save and continue without worrying too much about the monks' safety.

[Barkhang Monastery Walkthrough]