THE SILKSONG IS REAL

[autumn kettle]

and voltwire

[brave flower]

where are the pouch numbers

[autumn kettle]

well

[vagrant spruce]

volt filament actually is super consistent when i tested it a sec ago

well. the damage is, it's +5

[autumn kettle]

holy filament is flat

it's just varied because it's flat per hit

[vagrant spruce]

the timing is weird, but it's +5 on an internal cooldown that seems to be ~0.5s? idk

[autumn kettle]

and so super fucky in practice

[vagrant spruce]

pollip is 3x instances of 4 totalling 12, idk what it is on any other upgrade level but it's consistent across 2 different tools for that for me

[autumn kettle]

oh right the icd

[brave flower]

does it in fact tick once instantly

[vagrant spruce]

flintslate notably ||becomes +5 damage + the poison, so i'ts ~+7 damage more than base flintslate but on a delay. i'm assuming it becomes 25% base damage instead of 50%||

yeah

huh. witch down is a multihit for ||10 then 12 - or maybe 12 then 10, idfk lol||

witch DASH is ||21 -> 10 -> 10??? neat, big bonus||

[autumn kettle]

fascinating

[vagrant spruce]

the followups are a little weird to land, presumably, but again grand reed hitboxes

[autumn kettle]

i wonder how that dips with the multipliers

[brave flower]

these numbers are so much more varied than i expected

[vagrant spruce]

we're about to find out, once i test focus

[autumn kettle]

same

[vagrant spruce]

wow, focus is solid - ||3 hits for full 21 each||

[brave flower]

wow okay

[autumn kettle]

oh, sick

[brave flower]

what if u add trobbio mirror

[vagrant spruce]

i'll test htat separately later once i test what flint thinks about witch lighter hits

[autumn kettle]

o7

[brave flower]

riker ur a hero

[autumn kettle]

i wonder if multibinder changes the final code to be 4x 21

or does something else

[vagrant spruce]

dude now i gotta line up multibinder on a grand reed

:/

[autumn kettle]

LOL

[vagrant spruce]

i'll put injector on too and we'll see

[autumn kettle]

NO DON'T THAT WAS JUST IDLE SPECULATION

don't subject yourself to that

gonna take like

five tries

[vagrant spruce]

huh. what the fuck? flint dash attack is ||32, 21, 10||???

[brave flower]

uevgbwopdq

[autumn kettle]

bwuh

[brave flower]

WHAT

[autumn kettle]

that's gotta be bugged

[brave flower]

number jumpscare

[vagrant spruce]

yeah, i'm not sure

testing again

[autumn kettle]

probably worth filing a ticket, even

[brave flower]

SIXTY THREE DAMAGE DASH ATTACK

[vagrant spruce]

LOL

what if you wanted to test damage numbers

but this fuckass guy said "halping"

[brave flower]

friend :D

[autumn kettle]

this dog deals 11,640 damage per second

[vagrant spruce]

everytime that happens i need to reset the room by leaving, benching, re-entering and walking all the way to the grnad reed spawn point, and then leaving and benching again

dude i played ER on release do NOT speak to me about those fucking dogs

[brave flower]

it sounds like its the same type of bug

[vagrant spruce]

yeah, consistent

(flint dash)

nope, ER dog was "this has an active hitbox for the entire attack animation and therefore deals damage + bleed every single frame" lol

[hollow elm]

Just barely unable to reach into (Act 2) ||Sands of Karak upper tunnels|| consistently with sheer Reaper pogo force.

[brave flower]

ah

[vagrant spruce]

o7 if you manage it maybe they'll name a speedrun skip after you

[vagrant spruce]

it took 4 tries, thank you - and yeah lmao thats all it does

[brave flower]

could be worse

33% is a big damage increase

[vagrant spruce]

huh. no flintslate buff there

[autumn kettle]

so did i LOL

[brave flower]

i bet with trobbio mirror it oneshots grand reeds

[autumn kettle]

fucking nightmare creatures

[vagrant spruce]

nope

[brave flower]

from what ive heard trobbio mirror does One Silkspear Of Damage

[hoary tulip]

isn't that mod for damage numbers vibecoded

[vagrant spruce]

i'm testing it - possibly, but i think it's just AI TL'd

since the entire mod is in chinese

lol

[autumn kettle]

ah ic

that's worse than traditional mtl, but not by much

it's just

[vagrant spruce]

i'd be mildly surprised if it was vibecoded considering the context of bepinex, which is notoriously weird to work with at the best of times, when it comes to some shit like this

[autumn kettle]

bizarrely inferior

[vagrant spruce]

(bepinex being the mod framework thing)

dunno. i'm not the modder, i just turned it on man

[brave flower]

oh are you using One Mirror or Two Mirrors

[autumn kettle]

no yeah i just mean like

[vagrant spruce]

anyway - trobbio mirror is meh. does NOT oneshot grand reed, L - it's ||21 x2, so presumably 21 and then x2 with the double mirror||

[autumn kettle]

in general, it's weird that AI tl is worse than mtl

[vagrant spruce]

leaves it on 4/130 lol

[autumn kettle]

because theoretically they should be pretty similarly functional at spitting out the same bullshit every time

[vagrant spruce]

oh shit, wait?

[autumn kettle]

but they're uh, not

[vagrant spruce]

the explosion after does 30 - and that finishes it

[autumn kettle]

ooh

nice

[brave flower]

LETS GO

[vagrant spruce]

neat. there you go

i unpaused my game and the guy exploded LOL

[brave flower]

witch: the only crest capable of oneshotting a grand reed...?

[autumn kettle]

so multibinder witch hits for 21x4=84, + 21x2 + 30?

from three mirror hits?

[brave flower]

thats a lot of fuckin damage

[vagrant spruce]

yeah, 84 is the multibidner damage

21x2 + 30 is the trobbio damage - 21x2 immediately, 30 on a slight delay (visible sfx for it)

[autumn kettle]

sick, thanks

[brave flower]

wow trobbio is not fucking around huh

[vagrant spruce]

nope - shaman does it handily with thread storm

[brave flower]

damn

[vagrant spruce]

no need to spam the input, just the unchanneled thread storm

[autumn kettle]

jeez

[elfin ravine]

Is Multibinder Witch still faster than regular multi?

[vagrant spruce]

shaman is CRAZY good with it dude - 130 BASE, unchanneled, which happens to be the exact number we need lol

[vagrant spruce]

uhh. idk, i can eyeball that tho - i'm testing with injector band so i can line it up lol

yeah, WAY faster - possibly just 2x as fast

i'm not gonna try to check that one though, i'd have to pull out obs and measure it probably

[brave flower]

wow ok

so multibinder is There For Witch

[vagrant spruce]

it's also just really good in early/mid game for exploring

[autumn kettle]

it's just good in general ngl

yeah

[vagrant spruce]

but yeah witch can use it super wel, i think

[brave flower]

witch asks the bold question of "hey what if threadstorm also healed you"

beast asks the bold question of "sorry that does how much damage?"

[vagrant spruce]

shaman bonus is weird. it's definitely ||flat +11 on pale nails (each hit) and silk spear, but it's +10 per hit on thread storm. thread storm is 16->26, pale nails is 21 -> 32 each, but silk spear is 63 -> 74? i'm really not sure what's up||

[autumn kettle]

seems to be specifically curated ngl

[vagrant spruce]

oh my god, wait, i think i know why

[autumn kettle]

oh?

[vagrant spruce]

||i don't see an easy conversion for that one, so what i'm assumign is that it's a +50% needle damage bonus per hit, and thread storm's internal damage reduction per-hit interacts in an odd way, rounding wise. like - maybe it's actually dealing 31.5 and rounding up to 32, but the 75% damage thread storm number is doing 21 -> 15.75, add 10.5 for 26.25 which rounds to 26||

[hoary tulip]

it's 0.7x per hit

[vagrant spruce]

0.75x, actually

[hoary tulip]

according to some data I read

[autumn kettle]

oh, that makes sense!

really odd

[vagrant spruce]

which is why it's +11 everywhere else - because the .5 remainder always rounds up

[tall night]

Is the boss run for TLJ really this annoying is there a shortcut I havent noticed

[vagrant spruce]

and most other bonuses round down just because 25% of 21 is 5.25, sooo

[hoary tulip]

it is that annoying roughly

[brave flower]

its awesome

[elfin ravine]

No shortcut beyond the bit to the left

[vagrant spruce]

i think it makes sense if you assume they're just all floats until damage is applied

[elfin ravine]

Does Rune Rage actually have any tracking btw?

[vagrant spruce]

||still makes thread storm a DEMON with shaman if you can land it, and pale nails is crazy even without as many hits (but it's uh, a rough comparison, at least to pale nails - thread storm (unchanneled) goes from 80 -> 130, pale nails goes from 63 -> 96||

[vagrant spruce]

i think its scamming you, sorry

[elfin ravine]

It seemed a bit impractical, but never really tried it much

[vagrant spruce]

doesnt' seem to for me

[elfin ravine]

Also curious what the numbers on the parry are

[vagrant spruce]

shaman attacks seem to be 1-1 with base hunter otherwise - 21 per hit (including down), charged is 42 (though in one burst), etc

cross stitch is indeed ||0.6x4, so 13x4 -> 52 for hunter, 23x4 (due to rounding fun, since it's actually 12.6 + 10.5 = 13.1) -> 92 for shaman||

||basically - if you want damage, it's worse than pale nails in every regard. the only reason to use this would be as a last second dodge or as an intentional dodge for specific attacks, considering it's generally just much easier to cast pale nails with their very brief cast time, and let them track to the enemy||

[elfin ravine]

Huh, not bad

[vagrant spruce]

||in act 2 thouhg, it's VERY solid for something that doesnt' have the windup of thread storm, and has iframes||

||it is worse than silk spear though, for both damage & aoe potential, so ymmv||

[elfin ravine]

But probably still mostly useful for the actual parry part yeah

[vagrant spruce]

wow. wispfire lantern sucks

||10 damage on the projectile if it passes through their hitbox prior to becoming a star, 10 damage if it lands the star form. worse than a single nail hit, assuming it scales with nail damage||

[elfin ravine]

Oof

That's pretty bad

[vagrant spruce]

comically so

considering the first tick is basically just pure RNG and the second has awful tracking

[elfin ravine]

And it already seemed pretty bad

[tall night]

Ok I take it back it's not that bad of a Bossrun

[elfin ravine]

As long as you're good at the pogo, you can mostly just run through it

[vagrant spruce]

huh. the stupid sawtooth circlet is a whopping ||13/1/1, and it can parry? weird. not good, but funny||

memory crystal is ||20||

[tall night]

I have consistently 2nd phased it each time and then near immediately eat shit

[elfin ravine]

Weird

[vagrant spruce]

||all 3 hits can parry, to be clear, on some quick testing - it also TRIGGERS parries, lol||

[elfin ravine]

For your consideration, the magma bell can reduce damage on its flame attacks

[tall night]

Ooooh

[vagrant spruce]

and the last damaging non-red tool - ||snitch pick is +5 damage applied after the normal 10x2 damage instances from the clawline, 10 for tagging -> 10 when you do the little auto-pogo on them -> 5 if you remain close enough (kinda hard to explain but try using it and you'll see what i mean). so 20 -> 25 damage, and the rosaries it drops are just the ones youd' get from killing them, and it won't drop extra (you just get less on a kill). this is not good||

huh. and then sharpdart is ||42 + 3x5. shaman crest does not buff the 5s, only 42->52 (rounding? huh.) so it's pretty bad for damage with or without shaman. parry is probably better in most situations, or silk spear. bizarre||

[green bone]

||Lace rematch jumspacre||

[elfin ravine]

Wait Snitchpick doesn't even generate more loot?

Ehhhh

[vagrant spruce]

correct

it steals from what they would haev dropped

[autumn kettle]

oh that's wacky

[vagrant spruce]

ive heard it also doesnt even work with ||the thief pick or w/e, the more rosaries one, since that only applies on kill. so you just get less overall if you use both, aka don't do that.||

too lazy to test that, already closed the game

[autumn kettle]

wow that's kinda fucked

[hoary tulip]

ahh huh

so that's reusing the mechanic that the snitchbugs use to steal Rosaries and then drop them later eh

how strange

[elfin ravine]

That makes the Snitchpick being so expensive even weirder

[autumn kettle]

very oddly-valued

[elfin ravine]

Thief's Mark does at least get you extra rosaries, as long as you don't get hit

[hoary tulip]

just don't get hit, 4head

[green bone]

😭

[hidden flame]

HOLD S P A C E

[elfin ravine]

If you break the statue or the heart, you're evil

[hidden flame]

I love that TC gave you the option

[autumn kettle]

i appreciate that you get a tiny little hornet statue that you can also smash

[green bone]

Oh thanks god I thought this was gonna be a bossfight

[rose granite]

God that would've been mean

[hollow elm]

I'm going to guess ||Pimpillo|| hit like mini-nukes, since I can only carry 6 at max capacity.

[hoary tulip]

yeah pretty much

||literally exploding someone with a bomb|| tends to be very immediately lethal

[green bone]

how did it take only 7 years to make this game

also still have found 0 keys besides the ones in shops

[rose granite]

||There are in total only 4 simple keys in the game I believe, of which two are in shops, so that's not too bad||

[granite hedge]

it could've gone on longer!

[green bone]

No I mean it's an absurdly short development time for the amount of content here

[hidden flame]

Especially given, you know, 3 dudes

[hollow elm]

I've heard a lot of outside help too

[rose granite]

Y'know, something small I like is that a lot of character storylines don't end with death. It makes sense for thematic reasons, but it also means that the death doesn't become predictable in a way that robs it off any weight.

And I like that

[severe swift]

TBH it feels like 3 people spent 7 years developing this game. Like it doesnt surprise me.

7 years is a LONG time, and a lot of what they're doing is iteration

[green bone]

You could teel me a hundred people labored at this for a decade I'd still be surprised

[torn sky]

Got to the Last Judge. Can pretty reliably get them to phase 2 but havn't quite beaten yet

[hollow elm]

I've been semi-annoyed by how much work the needle upgrades take, but also get it's probably to push more Skill/Tool use too.

[inner fog]

Magma bell helps quite a bit for phase 2. Best advice I can give is to play on the more patient side/hone your reaction time as to not get caught out by the spin, and remember to use your tools

[hollow elm]

Remember the dodge/sprint button too, to move in/out of spin range too.

[torn sky]

I mostly keep getting somehow caught out by the full screen 'the floor is lava' despite knowing how to dodge it.

[rose granite]

If you can dodge the charge without being put in a bad position, the rest should be manageable

[inner fog]

Yup, sounds like you’re doin good

Also, saw someone point out that the Judges lengthier runback makes more sense when you consider Her being the last test of skill before the Citadel

[fathom willow]

I'm at 99% completion, and I have no idea what I might be missing

[green bone]

im deeply annoyed by ||2nd Lace fights|| tendency to guard after every attack and waste my punish window

[inner fog]

eventually you start getting the path down to a tee, honing your skills with the movement in the process

[torn sky]

Honestly the judge kinda just tends to eat shit from my many thumbtacks because they won't stop running over them. XD

I just tend to eat more shit and they've got more HP than me

[inner fog]

Tacks my beloved

[rose granite]

The struggle of being a ground-bound big boss in this game

[rose granite]

Oh I had fun with that one! It's an elegant fight where you do feel that your new tools are more than they can handle (with my biggest issue being difficulties differentiating between two of the sound cues).

[inner fog]

I found that the ||Delver’s Drill|| is an effective punish to the riposte, particularly since jumping avoids both versions

[severe swift]

Just beat ||Phantom|| awesome boss fight and the lead up to it was equally awesome

[rose granite]

I wanted to beat it with nail only, but played with another person watching and asked them if they wanted me to play dirty. The answer was yes, so I used tools and won it in like two or three tries lol. Could've been one probably, but t'was playing casually with another person after all.

[inner fog]

especially handy if your crest has an angled pogo which would otherwise be difficult to land after a riposte

also helps that the ||drill|| is one of the highest damaging tools I believe

[severe swift]

The duality of this game is extremely fun fights and areas like ||Phantom and Cogwork Dancers|| are too easy and boring bosses like || Groal and Savage Beastfly|| are too hard

||Weaver has been one of the only bosses that was both hard and fun||

[rose granite]

||One of the funnier parts of that fight is that the riposte is itself easy enough to punish, meaning I ended up willingly triggering it to have a predictable move to go against.||

Really enjoyed that fight, and will probably do it nail only next time I play through the game

Though whether I'll ever enjoy the diagonal down-air of Hunter is a different question. It is very useful I'm sure, and they really want you to use Hunter, but I like my meteor smashes

[inner fog]

Personally, it was tempting to stick with the familiarity of Reaper/Wanderer, but I made a conscious effort to really stick with Hunter and it was so worth it

Diagonal pogo my beloved

[burnt axle]

My fighting strat, that works mainly for big bosses that stand high, is Pogo with the Wanderer and the tool that attcks when you double jump. You can spam the two buttons, and it melted some bosses really easily (like || Grand Mother Silk || ). It is risky, since you tend to be close upon the enemies, but since yo'ur stay midair, you can easily nope out in case of trouble, and the spam of attacks generates good amounts of silk, so the healing is doable quite often

[inner fog]

Oh shit I always forgot about the bladed cloak thing

[severe swift]

“Tool that attacks when you double jump”

Tell me more

[rose granite]

I do like it on Archie, just not my thing on Hunter specifically

[burnt axle]

Technically it's anytime your cloak gets up, so it activates when you parachute, too. You can get it in ACT 2 SPOILER || The Boilerwworks, after for like 200-300 rosaries and a metal chunk ||

[severe swift]

Amazing, thank you

[burnt axle]

My fight set is wanderer plus this Bladed Cloak, plus the Range Extender (because wanderer tends to have a negative reach in the middle of attacks), and the binding-time reduction (the number of breaks i have avoided thanks to this tool makes it one of my most useful)

[green bone]

Very much this

i had some trouble until I managed to reprogramm my instincts from trying to dash away

also I feel like I should ask this

||is it clearly signposted where the point of no-return is?||

[elfin ravine]

it's fairly obvious

but there also isn't really one, not exactly anyway

[green bone]

(Late Act 2 spoilers ||If Granny Silk aint a fakeout boss Im crashing out||)

[elfin ravine]

though if you have any leftover exploration and such, I recommend doing it in Act 2
things can get harder if you do them later

[rose granite]

My main issue was that my volume was too low for the sake of hearing the other person, so just had to turn it up.

[rose granite]

Yeah, the gourmand quest is a good example of this.

[wanton bone]

I hate how slow and laggy Reaper feels, and Wanderer just doesn’t do it for me, for some reason.

So I’m running Hunter as the default for now.

[rose granite]

Took me three tries to do the delivery part for it, largely because I forgot the route in the last room and accidentally ran into a wall lol.

[rose granite]

You might like ||witch, though the gimmick of its heal felt a bit unnecessary to me||

[wanton bone]

I think one of the big things with learning Hunter is positioning so that the down air will put you in a safe spot if you whiff.

[severe swift]

Can I get the fourth ||needle upgrade|| before act 3?

[elfin ravine]

no

[torn sky]

Man, it's annoying to be stuck at a boss and to realize this issue isn't 'understanding' or 'having the right tools' it's just 'you're not playing well enough'. XD

[burnt axle]

Do any of you have any tips for ACT 3 / Fleas || Festival trials for the last oil || ?

[torn sky]

I can get to the second phase of the Last Judge every single time but I just make Enough Mistakes that it doesn't quite work out.

Also I'm running out of shards and need to go farming for more of them at some point.

[hot mango]

Finished the ||Coral Area. That has got to be the saddest way Team Cherry could’ve said “yeah we cut the old plans for the Coral Area.” Sad as in emotionally devastating and tragic, not poorly conveyed||

[fathom willow]

For the ||flea juggle||, a big one is to try staying on the ground unless you really have to jump. This helps prevent a situation where 2 things are falling at once, and you can't reach both. For the ||pogo and dodging ones||, the game lets you use ||Clawline||, so abuse that to full effect. tbh though for those ones, a big part was just trying several times until I got a run with a distinct lack of cursed patterns

[hot mango]

||Also according to the Elder Conchfly Hunter’s Journal Hornet fucks??????||

[elfin ravine]

Yeah

[burnt axle]

I'll try that, thanks.

[rose granite]

It does make sense tbh. ||Makes me want to delve into Hollow Knight lore again for fun, in part because of how one could see a familial love be reflected in the titular Hollow Knight themselves of that game, but also the struggle with one's base instincts that a few greater beings now have talked about. It frames Hornet's relationship with love in an interesting light I think, since it's a wording one could compare to when she talks with the Caretaker about the primal urge (can't remember the exact phrasing, though I have it somewhere prolly) to take Silk's throne. There's a few other facets to the wording that are fun to contrast.||

[elfin ravine]

||It's presumably part of her Wyrm heritage to have an urge to rule and conquer ||

[hot mango]

Dunno who that NPC is but I think Silksong thus far hasn’t shone much new light on Hollow Knight’s lore. ||There is the concerning presence and behavior of Lifeblood, yes, but Silksong’s narrative is so self-focused that Hallownest and its conflicts really fall into the background. Only the Weavers are the connecting line between the two seemingly, and even then the Weavers didn’t have a strong presence in Hallownest like they did in Pharloom||

Also I think I unlocked every Simple Key door on the map

[elfin ravine]

There are four of them

[hot mango]

Was struggling to find the last two but then suddenly got them back to back during last night’s play session

[hot mango]

Then I did

The rewards behind the Simple Key doors in Silksong are way bigger than they were in Hollow Knight

[elfin ravine]

Definitely yeah

Two of them at least

[rose granite]

||That or Weaver, though either way it seems to stem from that facet of Higher Beings in the game which is juxtaposed with a more base desire.||

[hot mango]

Like yeah, in Hollow Knight you could unlock Royal Waterways or Godhome, but you could also unlock Iji

[rose granite]

Late-game spoiler||Silk also comes to mind there, where I'm at within the game at least, as she tries to sacrifice herself to save her child.||

[elfin ravine]

||Green Prince doesn't really pay off much for a while, and Rosary Cannon is kinda whatever
But the one to Wormways and the lower parts of Docks definitely are ||

[hot mango]

Here the simple key doors ||all unlock pretty big sub areas with multiple rewards- in a randomizer they’d be check havens. The smallest one was the bank and even that had a lot of money and a new tool||

||With the one exception being an NPC for a sidequest||

||Which is still pretty major||

[rose granite]

||Fun fact, Eva gets really pissed at you if you go to her with too much lifeblood in you.||

[elfin ravine]

||Huh, interesting ||

[hot mango]

||still don’t know what to do with him but I found him twice in the citadel so I hope to see him again- he’s mourning his husband and I wanna help||

[rose granite]

||Yup, it and the lil baby are the two things she doesn't like.||

[dreamy scarab]

I'm still waiting for (late act 1) ||Green Prince|| to pay off from one of my few simple keys, but I'm only a little ways into the Citadel and didn't do much of ||Bilewater||

[elfin ravine]

||It's an Act 3 thing, much later ||

[rose granite]

||lil baby being the cursed bud for reference, which yeah ;p.||

[hot mango]

||Oh I beelined to get rid of the baby so fast I didn’t even talk to Eva about it. Then again no one likes the Baby + Parasite||

[elfin ravine]

||He can also help you out with Dancers I believe ||

[rose granite]

||I liked the baby, less so the parasite.||

[hot mango]

||Killing the Dancers was unfortunately the first major thing I did in Act 2 so didn’t get the chance||

[elfin ravine]

Same for me

[hot mango]

||It constantly shrieking when you were in the menu was pissing me off||

[rose granite]

||There are so many NPC assists in this game that I feel you don't get to see. Not the end of the world, but it is a bit of a shame.||

[hot mango]

||And since I finished the first Greyroot quest by then I knew where to go to drop it off||

[rose granite]

||It was cute.||

[hot mango]

The beauty of video games is missing things other people got and seeing how your experiences differed while feeling like your experience is your own

[rose granite]

Still wouldn't have minded encountering a few more of them ;p.

[hot mango]

Personally ||I think I would’ve preferred the Clockwork Dancer fight solo. Dunno how it would work with an ally||

[rose granite]

Think I missed a particular one ||because I helped repair the settlement at the first shrine too quickly.||

[elfin ravine]

The only real assist I encountered myself is ||Shakra helping out in certain combat arenas. I encountered her in Hunter's March and Forum ||

[hot mango]

Yeah I completely missed the ||Hunter’s March Shakra Assist||

||But I think I’ve gotten all of Garbazo and Zaza’s encounters||

[rose granite]

Yeah, missed both of those I'm afraid

[hot mango]

||Shakra helps out in the Forum? Huh? I thought she never even entered the Citadel||

[rose granite]

Only gotten one, ||Since Garbazo in the forum doesn't seem to work out if you assist the settlement too quickly.||

[elfin ravine]

||I believe its if you finished her quest after finding her everywhere and buying out her inventory ||

[hot mango]

||Yeah I just unlocked her Quest- haven’t started it yet tho but that’s for my next play session||

||I wanted to gun for the bad ending first to see what it is and see if it unlocked any world sense to see my completion percentage||

[rose granite]

Yup, which makes it a relatively easy one to miss.

[hot mango]

||also to spoiler proof myself against that specifically||

[rose granite]

I am curious though if there are any assists in ||Act 3||

[elfin ravine]

Unsure

[hot mango]

Btw what are y’all’s thoughts on ||Phantom?||

I’ll admit, I was kinda disappointed after accidentally hearing people hype it up so much

[elfin ravine]

If there are, I didn't find any

[hot mango]

Kinda wish I could do it over again with a proper build instead of Wanderer’s crest + Droneflies

And ya know. Not on the tail end of act 2

||Are there any collectibles or Lore in The Mist?||

[elfin ravine]

Pretty sure no

[hot mango]

I’m both relieved and a little disappointed

Cause I don’t wanna revisit that but I am just fascinated by what’s up with it

||Also after fighting Side by Side with Second Sentinel, I’m now sad that eventually I’ll probably have to kill it- I spoiled myself that there is a fight with it but have no idea about the circumstances surrounding that fight||

[elfin ravine]

The only thing in the game that you can really miss is one of the endings

But it's the secret bad one sorta

[rose granite]

||Classic duelist fight, strong for what it is. I encountered it without any knowledge of it, and can see why it would be someone's favourite whilst finding it to be an enjoyable fight overall.||

[hot mango]

||I do think the fact I was playing casually rather than being “in the zone” kinda affected things (room was noisy, family was around, just kinda playing ambiently)||

[rose granite]

||Technically you can miss the duel with G and Zaza I believe, but that's not needed for completion.||

[hot mango]

||The Duel was fun||

[elfin ravine]

||You can duel them? ||

[rose granite]

||Mm, tbh I'd put it on par with Lace which makes sense narratively I suppose lol.||

||Kinda fucked that based on what I know so far, Phantom is the actual cursed child doomed to be forgotten who went out with a bang.||

[elfin ravine]

||She is yeah
Seems to be the attempt before Lace, but not as stable as her ||

[rose granite]

||Yeah, which I do feel for Lace as well, but it does make for a bit of a funny contrast between the two.||

[hot mango]

||The fact that I had already beaten Lace 2 probably also didn’t help. Not narratively but gameplay wise- Phantom was easy in comparison||

[rose granite]

||Cursed child and the even more cursed child.||

[elfin ravine]

||Their relationship seems to be Phantom as a sort of older sister figure to Lace, that she feels guilty for not being able to help ||

[hot mango]

Also, I’m 90% sure I found all the things I need for ||final Needle Upgrade. I just need to deliver the meat and beat Ass Jim||

[rose granite]

||She being Lace?||

||Think Phantom was described as they by Hornet, but Hornet isn't the most consistent with that.||

I do agree with your read, but this was also the mental image that came to mind.

[hot mango]

Also does anybody know if you can find the ||Bonebottom Shopkeeper again after she leaves?||

[rose granite]

Or more accurately

[rose granite]

Haven't yet myself at least

Going to check out one location she may be at later, but suspect she won't be

[hot mango]

||she’s probably a haunted pilgrim by now :/||

||Speaking of NPC death, I am relieved Sherma didn’t die in Whiteward nor become immediately Haunted after leaving||

[hot mango]

||I don’t have high hopes for her in act 3 but we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it||

[rose granite]

||Lace cutscene that I apparently missed and I have no idea why? https://youtu.be/g6BV8rYjiH8?si=6i9uGcehGOzvmatu||

Oh wait I figured out why

||It's if you don't fight her at the deep docks||

||Which makes sense, though wouldn't have minded it triggering even if you did fight her, with some alternate text if you didn't. Neat detail though.||

[elfin ravine]

||Yeah
I didn't really read Phantom as resentful towards Lace, and more sympathetic
But I think Lace feels terrible for knowing Phantom is consigned to a slow death without being able to do anything about it ||

[severe swift]

||Its okay, Hornet did something about it for her :)||

[haughty zodiac]

I have acquired the ||double jump.||

[rose granite]

||There is a core theme in the game I feel of children who feel a sense of ire for the burden their parents and forefathers have placed on them, yet still not finding themselves able to hate those who brought them into this world, coupled with conversely said parents treating their children cruelly yet still holding a deep love for them however small and fragile it may seem.||

||Makes sense then that the fragile flower plays such a central role.||

[inland wave]

Found ||Father of the Flame||

Firmly "??????????"

[fervent sand]

How are you able to do the salute back at her? the USHANKA moment

[elfin ravine]

Taunt when you have the rings equipped

[fervent sand]

oh yeah the taunt button I keep forgetting that

[hot mango]

Also I started the late??? act 2 ||meat collection|| quest

Above being weird it looks like it’s gonna be tedious man I wish I started this earlier

[fervent sand]

eh, it could be worse

you don't need particular creatures, so just use certain tools for a while

[hot mango]

I mean it’s not that bad but it’s one of those things that would’ve been easier if I picked it up earlier in the game, that way I could do it more passively

Rather than actively needing to farm

Also my only ||fire tool is the Whetstone so without the Pimpillo that I know exists getting Seared Meat is gonna be annoying||

[fervent sand]

lucky for me I had a horrible adventure still to go on

[hot mango]

||No idea where I’d find the Pimpillo||

[fervent sand]

All I know is that I have it and I don't remember why...

It can be crafted in ||Greymoor, above yarnaby's home||

[elfin ravine]

The shredded ones drop multiple at a time, so it's not as much as it seems

You can also it with any enemy

So just do easy ones and it's fairly quick

[hot mango]

||Above Yarnaby’s home? I coulda swore I checked there||

|| Guess I gotta go back there||

[elfin ravine]

It's behind a breakable wall

[vagrant spruce]

it takes like 5 minutes to farm, honestly. use ||the two little mouse flies right outside the greymoor stag||

they respawn every time you reload the screen, no need to bench, and die super quick so you spend minimal resources killing them

[vagrant spruce]

yeahh my reaction to that fight too

||it did help me get a lot better at pogoing, though, and using my jump effectively. the patch to remove the float input override helps though. it was a cool fight? just really confusing||

[rose granite]

Tbh it's just about having ||tools|| for it, the rest is easy.

[hoary tulip]

the area in general is kinda ??? too

like

why are we here? I dunno

what does this have to do with the greater narrative? I dunno

big fawkin' boss to kill and weird enemies I guess

[vagrant spruce]

yep

[autumn kettle]

which area?

[hoary tulip]

||Wisp Woods||

[autumn kettle]

ah gotcha

[green bone]

||#NUKEBILEWATER||

[brave flower]

i think that alr happened

i think thats how it got so bad

[hot mango]

||How do you get to Shellwood while skipping the Deep Docks fight I wonder. I also wonder if this just axes the Lace 1 fight altogether||

[rose granite]

Sometimes you must flee from your responsibilities

[elfin ravine]

||buy the key and go through Wormways ||

[rose granite]

||or the fleas, hence my joke||

[elfin ravine]

||yeah that would also work I guess yeah ||

||Though I'm not sure if you can even find five fleas before that ||

[rose granite]

||Believe you can, since it's how the person in the video did it according to their description.||

[elfin ravine]

||ah, fair enough ||

[severe swift]

Its not that bad, just farm it out

[wanton bone]

Alright, it’s wall whacking and fetch quests time! (Beat ||splinter and widow last night, so now it’s checking out what opens up.||

[fervent sand]

I found ||a gigantic fucking flea in a roof area that I had to whack until it went home||

[elfin ravine]

It do be like that sometimes

[fervent sand]

I need to find that last ||chef dude|| because I found the other ingredients, including the nut, but I'm not sure where the last bit is

[rose granite]

Which one is it?

[fervent sand]

the ||stewed maggots or whatever they're called|| the hint just kinda says "below". Also I love finding weird places and strange environments.

[fervent sand]

oh no not that bench

[rose granite]

If you want a hint ||it's a sinful delicacy||

If you just want to know where it's at ||Sinner's road in the main tower room on the right, past some spike-circles you can pogo off of. You'll need the double jump for it.||

[fervent sand]

I'll have to looksee for it

I've been doing my exploration around and been making many friends :3

[rose granite]

Hooray!

[fervent sand]

||sometimes literally. I made them.||

[inland wave]

Did I misunderstand what she said about ||The Snare Setter||, is it not in ||Weavernest Alta|| but up in ||Mosshome somewheres|| /act 3 stuff

[elfin ravine]

||It is in Atla, in a hidden room in the room in the middle left ||

[inland wave]

dangert, i thought i scoured that

[autumn kettle]

YOOOOOOO

[brave flower]

its a party

[inland wave]

I can't help but think about how Herrah looks real different compared to what we've seen of other Weavers

Wonder if it's 'designs finalized in the sequel' type of thing or she was a tarantula vs. these orbweavers or w/e

[elfin ravine]

the Weavers were also in Hollow Knight already, at least kind of

[autumn kettle]

one was

[wanton bone]

This also just raised more questions about what the hell the Devout and Midwife are.

My best guess is that they’re deepnest natives in some sort of alliance with the Weavers, but who the hell knows.

[autumn kettle]

non-weaver spiders

presumably

[elfin ravine]

||we also know from Silksong now that Weavers are actually just bugs artificially uplifted by Grand Mother Silk into their current Weaver forms||

[hot mango]

Question about Vague Ability Descriptions: ||what specifically do the first and second upgrades Eva does to the Hunter’s crest do? The Hunter’s crest doesn’t update its description with the upgrades so I can’t check, and even then what I remember was pretty vague||

[autumn kettle]

||add and improve a mechanic where you deal extra damage after you've hit enough times without taking damage||

[hot mango]

||After the second upgrade I finally noticed a meter beside the Hunter’s crest UI- is it a big damage boost? And does the extra damage persist til you get hit or just your next hit after building it up?||

[elfin ravine]

||until you get hit||

[severe swift]

How much extra damage is it?

[brave flower]

a lot

[elfin ravine]

||first upgrade requires you to hit six times to get the boost, the second upgrade adds another stage after that||

[brave flower]

not beast bind damage but still exceptionally hig

h

[elfin ravine]

I was kinda expecting other crests to evolve at the time when I first got it

but it only applying to Hunter does also make sense, since it doesn't have a gimmick at first

[hot mango]

That, and the game can’t guarantee you have any crest other than Hunter when you get to that point

[autumn kettle]

it can actually

you need to spend memory lockets

can't exactly spend them if you only have hunter

[brave flower]

i mean she upgrades hunter immediately

[hot mango]

Fair, but it can’t guarantee you have the crests that have upgrades. Eg, if a ||Witch|| upgrade is up next but you never got it and maxed out literally every other crest then it can’t give it to you, and there’s no good way to tell the player “you met the threshold but don’t have the right crest” in a way that makes sense

[autumn kettle]

i assumed they meant "expected other crests to evolve (eventually)"

[elfin ravine]

yeah

[autumn kettle]

i just assumed you would have a choice

of what to upgrade

[brave flower]

maybe a dlc adds more crest evolutions

thatd be sick

[dreamy scarab]

or give each crest its own condition.

[hot mango]

Wanderer is pretty gimmickless but it’s also Wanderer

[brave flower]

WRONG

[autumn kettle]

its gimmick is crits

[brave flower]

CRITICAL HITS AT HIGH SILK

[elfin ravine]

yeah

[hot mango]

Okay well the description doesn’t say that so I had no idea

[elfin ravine]

yeah it's not hinted at anywhere

[hot mango]

It just happens randomly

[dreamy scarab]

another unmentioned mechanic (Blasted Steps tool) ||the magnetite dice give crit chance if you're using wanderer||

[autumn kettle]

oh!

FUCK

that makes so much sense

they make you luckier

of fucking course

[brave flower]

THATS SO SICK

[elfin ravine]

also the HK wiki sorta says what I assumed was the trigger
||it keys off the total number of tool slots you have unlocked on crests other than Hunter||

[hot mango]

But yeah evolving the other crests would probably be a shop of some kind where you have a resource, you go up to a character, you give them a resource, and they upgrade the crest you have equipped if it can be upgraded

It’d have to be a lot more overt

[brave flower]

nah thats boring

i hope each crest evo has its own evolution sidequest

[elfin ravine]

||so just getting more crests already contributes some too, which is what I suspected because I got some of Eva's unlocks without spending lockets||

[brave flower]

i should go grab more crests

[autumn kettle]

yes

[brave flower]

unfortunately the ones i dont have are:

• one i dont have the item for
• one in act 3
• beastfly

[autumn kettle]

just go do beastfly???

[brave flower]

yeah but

[autumn kettle]

it's a trivial boss if you're in act 2

genuinely trivial

[brave flower]

i have barely explored hunters march

that area just pisses me off

[autumn kettle]

it's not even hard in act 1, it just punishes impatience and has a jank starting animation on its dash

[brave flower]

ill do it itll just be aggravating

[autumn kettle]

it's more of a Pisses You Off boss than a really difficult one

[brave flower]

iirc the rough part is that one fuckass add

[autumn kettle]

yeah but you have the damage to squash em

[elfin ravine]

also it's ~20% bonus per stage, so 40% if you can maintain second stage
though it apparently also increases damage on the charged hit more

with the bonus weighted more towards the first focus stage too

[brave flower]

ooh i bet beastfly is drillable

[hot mango]

Actually yeah that is the correct answer- I wanna know more about ||Greyroot||

[autumn kettle]

same

[elfin ravine]

||I assume she is something similar to the White Lady||

but hard to say obviously

[hot mango]

||The White Lady didn’t repeatedly snap my neck after implanting me with a parasite and then calcifying||

[severe swift]

Oh that's good, not that crazy tho

[rose granite]

Yeah, was genuinely surprised when they didn't l.

Thought it'd be ||that you went to various nests around the map and did something to upgrade each crest that way, not knowing how many crests there were yet in the game.||

[elfin ravine]

yeah, that's kinda what I thought too

[rose granite]

More specifically ||when Eva talked about evolving/ascending/whatevering, I'd assumed you'd do so by progressing the story and/or visiting other nests and collecting an item there, which would allow you to upgrade the various crests.||

Do understand why it didn't come to be, but a bit of a shame.

[autumn kettle]

okay!

||mister mushroom readjusts!||

[rotund magnet]

On the act 2 boss

||considering we’re already killing spider radiance I wonder where the story goes from here. Not sure why we can kill this one where sealing and killing radiance was such an ordeal||

[rotund magnet]

Wait that’s what those were? I only ever got them on down attacks ans thought they were somehow tied to those

I’m enjoying skong but it definitely feels too mean and punishing at times

The ||three trick benches and all the primal aspic esq enemies im particular||

[thorny bear]

||One of the main difficulties with Radiance was reaching it, which isn't as much of an issue when Silk is just hanging out in the physical world. And Hornet intrinsically has the ability to take power from other Weavers, so permanently killing her can be accomplished that way. It's possible the reason Herrah wanted to have a kid with Pale King so much is that a half-wyrm half-weaver is the only one who could do that.||

[south marten]

I can only think of two? One in ||Bilewater||, one in ||the fucking anthill, can't remember the name||

Unless you're counting the one in ||Sinner's Road|| too?

[thorny bear]

that one absolutely counts

[south marten]

It works though

Just has a tiny platforming section

[rose granite]

Video with various missables for the curious ||https://youtu.be/f39xCFUjCs8?si=shRRPvi9WItjz6fc||

I'll admit, I'm a little annoyed that the ||Shakra fight|| is something you can miss.

Not the end of the world, but still ;p.

[hollow elm]

(Act 1) ||The anthill one fortunately has a hidden off switch.||

[south marten]

Oh shit fr?

[inland wave]

Ogh how did I forget to try the ||Mask Maker Gimmick||

What are these damn folks

[brave flower]

sorry the what

||that npc does something||???

[inland wave]

For some reason unlike almost every other NPC

You can smack 'em

this leads to: stuff

[south marten]

I mean

Unsurprised, considering the similar NPC in Hollow Knight

[inland wave]

it's still uncommon in hollow knight!

i just forgot to try until i came back

usually they just sort of wiggle and yell, not have interaction

[hollow elm]

(Act 2) ||Rasher run done with aprox 3 hits||, I can see how this is awful if you don't clear the way first.

[south marten]

I mean, I just powered through, tbh

Knowing where the enemies are really helps, however

As does ||having wings||

[rose granite]

I found that there were three parts on my route that were annoying, but overall it was quite pleasant. Said specific parts being a rat close to a ledge, as well as two tight jumps with enemies/spikes nearby that could get ya.

Ironic mayhaps that Sinner's ended up feeling like an easy path overall.

[south marten]

Oh I did Steps

It was pretty easy, actually

[hollow elm]

I took the sinner's route since I'm more familar with it from exploring tons

[rotund magnet]

Why did ||silk go from ruling her theocratic kingdom to destroying it slowly by possessing everyone||

[spark ether]

anyone have thoughts on which ||silkshot|| I should pick?

[brave flower]

||mount fay||

[elfin ravine]

||Mt Fay (the Weaver version), or Forgedaughter is also okay ||

[spark ether]

||I think I'm leaning towards 12th architect's but I'm not set||

mhm I see

[brave flower]

regrettably thats by far the worst one

[rose granite]

||Mount Fay if you want ad clear, Forge Daughter if you want a sidegrade to any other forward shooting projectile weapon, and then probably not architect since it's difficult to keep up on damage with.||

[autumn kettle]

||that one's apparently just mathematically worse than the others||

||hopefully they fix that||

[brave flower]

less damage and less ammo than ||forge daughter||

[spark ether]

I cry

[elfin ravine]

yeah it's very unfortunate

[rose granite]

I went with that one for thematic reasons, but it's sadly the worst to our knowledge yeah

[brave flower]

i think ||mount fay also has the highest total damage||

by a lot

[elfin ravine]

||because the Architect version being a repeating shotgun is sick as hell||

[vagrant spruce]

video comparison ||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY90R6D7FC0||

[elfin ravine]

||it's too bad it just doesn't quite keep up numerically||

[rose granite]

||Still surprised that it somehow deals the same amount of damage as the rest, or lower, only if you hit all three shots.||

[autumn kettle]

it's a bit unfortunate

[vagrant spruce]

skip to end for previews. damage numbers are

[elfin ravine]

||it has the highest per shot and total damage and also piercing, Forgedaughter mainly hs the benefit of shooting much faster||

[brave flower]

wait wtf no

||forge daughter|| has higher total damage

||weaver|| is higher per shot tho

[rose granite]

By the math above it'd have the second highest total damage, but both are still good.

[spark ether]

hmm? - yeah according to the numbers riker posted ||weaver|| is higher total

[rose granite]

Main reason I wouldn't go ||forge Daughter|| is just because there are a ton of tools like it.

[elfin ravine]

that's fair yeah

||the railgun shot of the Weaver form is definitely more unique ||

[brave flower]

||28 x 14 is 392, 17*26 is 442||

[rose granite]

For comparison ||The straight pin at max upgrades deals 17 damage with 24 ammo.||

[spark ether]

oh wait I just plugged that into my calculator wrong lol

yeah you right

[rose granite]

||And the difference is exactly 50!||

[hoary tulip]

How far are you into the game

[hot mango]

Technically so does the ||Hunter’s March|| one too

[rotund magnet]

Finishing act 2

On final fight

[hoary tulip]

okay

[vagrant spruce]

yeah, i consider ||weaver|| the best personally because ||it pierces - and the others don't. makes it a mini-silk spear, hitting for ~1/2 damage but being a lot more 'spammable' if that makes sense. if you want single target damage, even in a burst fire, there's other tools for that||

[hoary tulip]

Plot spoilers up to around end of Act 2: ||Grand Mother Silk never ruled that kingdom. The Weavers created it as a means of keeping her asleep indefinitely, uplifting other bugs to act as their proxies to keep the song going forever.||

[rose granite]

It's still funny to me that tacks are so good that they can genuinely beat some boss's first phase before they finish the roar.

Silly, silly tools in this ame given the right circumstances

[rotund magnet]

Tacks are absurd

[rotund magnet]

I missed some lore then

[elfin ravine]

it's a lot of fragmentary stuff you need to put together

[rose granite]

Though no brownie points for whoever guesses the tool with the highest total damage.

[hoary tulip]

Conchcutter!

[elfin ravine]

well I know the answer, so I won't say 😛

[vagrant spruce]

honestly i think the main "bug"/"imbalance" with this game is the weird interactions surrounding multi-hit things & enemies with larger hitboxes. there's some weird inconsistent damage numbers involved there, with things that don't behave in very intuitive ways

[elfin ravine]

because some stuff can multi hit more on larger hit boxes, right?

[rose granite]

||If one can do multiple hits then potentially, with cogwork wheel being similarly high, but in this case not the tool I was thinking of I'm afraid.||

[vagrant spruce]

a lot of games just have a cap on how many times the same enemy can be hit by an active hurtbox, which possibly would simplify a lot of those, though i'm not sure if it's necessary for balance or anything. it's mostly just a weird interaction

[hoary tulip]

Conchcutter is the ultimate master of multihitting

[vagrant spruce]

yeah, and i think in general there's a lot of overlapping simultaneous hurtboxes instead of "one thing that stays active for X amount of time"

(archi charged attack)

[hoary tulip]

if you shoot one really good and get it to bounce through the same enemy a few times you can get a LOT of hits

[rose granite]

It's the usual suspect in quite a few games for good reason, though arguably not what makes tack good since I think that's just high damage per tack.

[brave flower]

i remember what it is, ||drill|| right? (dont click the spoiler if ur trying to guess!)

[elfin ravine]

though then of course a lot of the tougher fights in the game are really small hitboxes 😛

[rose granite]

Assume Lace for the sake of simplicity, as to not have to delve into which multi-hit tool can get the highest amount of hits in in a specific scenario, since I'm not testing all of them.

[rose granite]

Yup

Funnily enough ||Curveclaw|| hits absurdly hard at 50.

Not the most busted tool in the game, but it's definitely not one I expected to hit for that much.

[vagrant spruce]

that's not really true - it's 10 per hit, so its more like 20-30 on most enemies

||curveSICKLE is 16 per hit though, so its closer to 50 on 3 hits, i tested it the other night||

[fervent sand]

I have been already thinking
So there's an achievement for speed running the game in five hours. What would be the most interesting oath to take for that

Grabbing the key early and taking the wyrmways up to the blasted steps?

Going in through sinners?

What do you need

This feels like a game that requires charts and figures

[wanton bone]

Current any% routing puts it at under 1:10 and routes through Sinners

[fervent sand]

Greatly concerning thank you

[rose granite]

Makes sense tbh.

Since you shouldn't need to double back much from there.

[wanton bone]

It also skips ||sister splinter||, and there was some experimentation with skipping float, though I think Team Cherry patched that and made it required for other movement tools.

(To which the reaction of speederuners seems to be “oh thank goodness” since certain sections of the game very much assume float, even if it’s not technically allowed.)

[brave flower]

o7

[rose granite]

I was curious about that part.

Honestly I should replay Hollow Knight again, ||because it feels like you got the wall climb much later in that game which I'm not sure whether you did.||

[autumn kettle]

no it's very early

[thorny bear]

you get it pretty shortly after dash in hollow knight

[elfin ravine]

not really

it's fairly early yeah

[brave flower]

iirc it feels longer in hollow knight mostly bc the mantis area is one of the first big difficulty spikes

[rose granite]

Think I mainly remembered my experience with City of Tears being before Mantis, which was the main difference.

[wanton bone]

Basically nothing speed run relevant is open without wall climb. Dream Nail requires a very tricky skip (done in True Ending to get essence from Father Hu on the way down.)

[autumn kettle]

bwuh

how

[rose granite]

Which doesn't mean my memory was right, just that it's how I remembered it.

[wanton bone]

City of Tears without mantis is miserable to impossible, speaking from randomizer experience.

[rose granite]

Younger me from 5-7y or so ago having a miserable time out of stubbornness would check out lol, but probably some individual parts being mixed up in my memory

Tis why I'd want to replay, because memories are faulty things.

[wanton bone]

It’s also impossible to access without a tricky shade skip over the blue lake access.

(Or randomizer.)

[hollow elm]

Increasingly sure I can use Barbed Bracelet on Wanderer with good returns, frame advantage is hard to beat.

[inland wave]

But then you have to use Wanderer v-v

[hidden flame]

For the GIGACRITS

[rose granite]

You can do it

I believe in you

[inland wave]

||Longnail|| feels almost negligible on ||Witch|| which is sort of a bummer

Also wouldn't mind if that heal went a touch farther

[hollow elm]

I think Witch already has longer reach than the animation suggests.

[fervent sand]

what's the taunt button on xbox controller?

[dreamy scarab]

||Moorwing|| finally spawned for me now that I hit act 2, so I get to see what the fuss was about 😂

[hollow elm]

press right stick.

[autumn kettle]

look in your controls menu

[fervent sand]

it does not show up on the controls menu

[fervent sand]

thank you

[autumn kettle]

the button is challenge

[rose granite]

Can confirm it didn't show up for me either, which is why I didn't know it was a thing for the longest time.

[rose granite]

Suspect it only shows up as something you can rebind on keyboard, or at least other controllers.

[autumn kettle]

weird

[hot mango]

Oh shoot I haven’t read the description of that one yet

Wait- no I did I just thought it was a separate thing for a sec

[hot mango]

So if I had to make a few guesses-
||Wormways requires the least number of checks- however you cannot enter the capital via normal means without hitting all the bells. Moreover, Dash and Wall Climb are such quintessential speed tools that they likely cannot be skipped. Glide can maybe be skipped but unless there’s a glitch discovered for instant bursts of Vertical Momentum some ascension shafts are outright blocked off.||

||Bell Beast is also a big timesink, so it might be skipped, but maybe it pays off long term. Most likely skipped if just going for any% tho. If I had to guess, I’d say Claw would be skipped while Dash and Float would be prioritized, the route would be learned on basic Hunter’s Crest, and some sort of skips into and through Bilewater/Purified Ducts would be learned to use Sinner’s Path to get to the Citadel. Missing the Wall Jump will severely hamper the run, but avoiding the main entrance which requires at least 6 different checks is likely worth the hassle- plus Blasted Steps isn’t as accessible to pogo through vs other areas.||

[autumn kettle]

bell beast is mandatory

at least for now

[hot mango]

How on earth…?

[safe yew]

(late act 1 area pictured) how do i get into the room above this one? i have (act 2 progression) ||everything up to and including faydown cloak, which i think is all the mobility upgrades i can get||

[autumn kettle]

there's an act 3 item you can get...or you can just skill solution it with double jump

[rotund magnet]

It possible just a really annoying and precise jump

[autumn kettle]

which is what i did

[hot mango]

How on earth…?

[elfin ravine]

you're intended to go there in Act 3

[safe yew]

got it

[hot mango]

How do I not recognize that area?

[rotund magnet]

||take a running start from the elevated bit on the right and you can barely make it||

You can get there act 2 with some dedication

[tall night]

I think some of the places you get some of the powers are a little less memorable in silksong so far , like in hk it was like. The end of a town of warriors. The body of a dead one of your kind the heart of a mech but while I like the weaver, monuments idk they are less memorable imo

[hot mango]

Yeah I don’t think there’s any denying that

[autumn kettle]

i wish more of them were like the crests, yeah

rather than the monuments

drawing power from the dead, as opposed to weaver monuments

[hot mango]

There are a few moments that are very memorable ||(Faedown Cloak, Parry, Needolin)|| but yeah most of them are unremarkable

[rotund magnet]

A few of the areas felt lacking in strong identity

[hot mango]

The Monuments are also just kinda… there

Not really integrated into the world all that interestingly

[dreamy scarab]

As far as I can tell, since I ||found all the fleas in the lowlands|| that stops it from spawning during act 1. I assume I didn't just miss a trigger area or something since otherwise it wouldn't be walling people.

[hot mango]

||The Fleas really eff with the standard progression||

[dreamy scarab]

Apparently! I didn't even ||have to travel with them||

[rose granite]

Yup, once ||the caravan leaves, I believe Moorwing returns if at a different location.||

[hot mango]

You know what’s one thing I’ve observed about ||Witch’s Crest? Trobbio’s Mirror kinda makes its ability to heal worse, since it’s a separate instance of damage and therefore can kill enemies before you get the full effect of a heal from them||

[rose granite]

||they are the standard progression arguably, since there are multiple routes. If you manage to get them all for the first caravan ride before meeting Lace for example, or take the worm path instead, you even get a special cutscene with Lace later at the bridge towards blasted steps.||

Oof

Admittedly||Witch's crest already felt a bit jank to me, but I want to like it.||

[hot mango]

I still think that counts as ||effing with the standard progression. Nonstandard progression is equally as valid.||

[hot mango]

It feels REALLY good to use in ||enemy gauntlets, like the High Halls one. But it suffers most everywhere else.||

||Bosses tend to be too mobile/aggressive/take Knockback weird, and in exploration enemies are much more scattered and likely to die to just one or two hits from the bind, and you can’t heal in the midst of platforming challenges either.||

[inland wave]

Petition to give ||Witch a second, slower than anything heal so it can function even a little as platformer||

[hot mango]

I was personally a fan of the idea to have ||it’s bind give it “lifeblood masks” instead of healing, and losing those masks prompts a Thorns of Agony-style effect||

[hollow elm]

From my own experimentation, ||the explosion happens after the Witch Crest hits. It does means Multibinder is limited to one explosion, though.||

[dreamy scarab]

||Moorwing|| down, as usual the pro strat is to give up, eat dinner, and first try it with the power of chili

[brave flower]

THATS WHAT IM SAYING

[dreamy scarab]

the ||drill|| tool from underworks is really good for punishing staggers

[elfin ravine]

I cheesed it when it showed up

It got stuck on a platform and I just hit it through that

[fervent sand]

I kinda love this bench. It's just a really atmospheric bench.

[safe yew]

(act 2 tool) ||i've been using cogflies and i quite like 'em. go my clockwork scarab||

[thorny bear]

they're pretty unanimously considered the best tool

crossing my fingers that they don't get nerfed

[brave flower]

by who

i dont think anything that does that little damage can be definitively The Best Tool

[thorny bear]

i guess tacks are probably #1

but those two are mostly the only ones i've seen people discuss how good they are

[brave flower]

tacks dont work against flying bosses though...

i think it might unironically be sting shards

actually

so

[thorny bear]

being able to focus on dodging and attacking while your tools work in the background is a lot preferable to splitting your mental processing power between dodging, attacking, and tool usage

and most of the tricky bosses are succeptible to tacks

[primal cedar]

Savage Beastfly somehow kicking my ass. How the heck does a boss with like two attacks pull that off

[thorny bear]

i struggled with savage beastfly

but i'm very surprised by how far and away it's the one i've heard the most complaints about

[brave flower]

yeah i think the top 3 are like
cogflies tacks flintslate

flintslate is kind of a massive damage buff

[hidden flame]

It's entirely too simple for how hard it is

[thorny bear]

flintslate is great against bosses that you can attack a lot in a row

[brave flower]

its got a really good duration iirc

[primal cedar]

My man is far too w i d e

[hoary tulip]

I was malding fighting that boss

and my commentary was

"this boss feels like it's the most fucking fat stupid chungus boss ever and I feel like an absolute dunce for losing to it. it just runs at you and summons adds. I'm getting my ass beat by the most stupid animal coded boss in the game and I hate it"

[primal cedar]

Also on another note, is there a nail upgrade at any point in act 1? I feel like I'm getting pretty close to moving on to act 2 soon, and no upgrade

[brave flower]

yes!

[hoary tulip]

there are several needle upgrades in act 1-2

[brave flower]

very close to the end tho

its like

[hoary tulip]

but uh

[brave flower]

after the second to last required boss

[hoary tulip]

I think only needle 2 and 3 can be obtained in act 1

hold up no

needle 3 and 4 are firmly act 2 pickups

you can only get to needle 2 for act 1

[thorny bear]

once you free the town you meet midway through act 1, someone upgrades your needle there

[hoary tulip]

anyways, savage beastfly is kinda like getting folded in Bloodborne by a giant pig

it's not that shameful, hard fights are hard

[primal cedar]

Also I would like to point out how impressively long this game has been. I feel like I've been through an entire hallownest and I'm still on act fucking one

[hoary tulip]

but it FEELS like you are an absolute DUNCE and you are losing to a thoughtless moron

[primal cedar]

If act 2 and 3 are nearly this impressive, team cherry has fully just gone insane

[brave flower]

i can assure you that team cherry has fully just gone insane

[safe yew]

(act 2 boss but this one was in promo material) ||recently fought trobbio. very fun boss, i like that he mainly shouts his own name||

[brave flower]

||thats the nightmare king right there||

[rotund magnet]

loved that one, my brother hates that fight for whatever reason though

[hollow elm]

They're cool for effort/return, but I've bounced off them entirely after geting used to heavy-duty Tools.

[brave flower]

yeah like

cogflies are the best tools for people who dont want to use tools

[hidden flame]

The best "I really should put something in this red slot, huh?" thingo

[raw agate]

every time I peek in here I feel so unbelievably behind due to how busy I am and how much I get to play. anyway. I'm kinda getting dejected from killing bosses and not getting any thing from them? idk maybe it's just an act one thing.

[torn sky]

Does a second red slot let you carry twice as many tools?

[raw agate]

ye

[brave flower]

it lets you carry two different kinds of tool

[raw agate]

that's how I read that but I realize now I'm mistaken

[torn sky]

That might help me with the last judge. I can do pretty well but not quite clinch it out

[safe yew]

what've you been running so far?

[torn sky]

Poison tacks + fire resistance chsrm on reaper

Adding a long pin or boomerang should give me the extra bit of hit and run i need

[safe yew]

indeed

[torn sky]

My plan is basically: Do phase 1 without tools (Can do reliability) + the floor is thumbtacks phase 2

Which NEARLY works. Just need a hair more.

[raw agate]

this game is so charming

[hidden flame]

Yeeeesssssssss

[torn sky]

Have you beaten up the ||Mineta Flea||?

[raw agate]

noo

like ||MHA mineta||?

[torn sky]

||Yep||

[raw agate]

oh lordy

[elfin ravine]

those cutscenes are very funny and cute

[raw agate]

no i'm woefully behind the vast majority of people I'm afraid

[hollow elm]

Bosses primarily block progression, from what I remember.

[raw agate]

seems to be

at least you get a cool dog from the bell beast fight

[hollow elm]

Take it at your own pace, there's a hell of a lot to find/explore/do.

[hidden flame]

Yeah, i find you comment funny, since I'm just a little ahead of you, and alllllll I want to do is gated behind bosses, lol

[vagrant spruce]

yeah, the majority of the bosses/minibosses/arenas are just quest objectives or blocking pathways, they mostly drop abilities, quest items, or nothing. this wasn't really too different in HK, they mostly just dropped a bunch of cash there

[raw agate]

I do like cash tho

the bug wife needs paid for her good maps

[vagrant spruce]

i think there's a couple bosses with hollow-knight-style cash chests but not a ton of them. the arenas are solid money though

[raw agate]

oooh true I should go back to hunters march

[dreamy scarab]

I just unlocked the ||courier system|| (and the one that kicks everyone's ass is kicking my ass). Are those endlessly repeatable, or are they a "repeat X times and eventually get a final reward" thing?

[wanton bone]

There’s one or two bosses that “give you nothing” but they tend to either be related to progression, or in at least one case ||fourth chorus|| basically are a boss guarding an unlock that shows up after you get the unlock.

Some of the smaller bosses and fetch quest bosses don’t feel great though, I’ll agree.

[thorny bear]

it's sort of Elden Ring syndrome

in that everything gives you a reward

but you can often spend a lot of effort on something that ends up being basically useless

[vagrant spruce]

they give you what they say they give you, basically (the listed reward)

[thorny bear]

the message board quests do give you what they say, though

[dreamy scarab]

okay, cool. The first two didn't disappear after I did them once so I wanted to make sure this was just an optional grinding minigame or if I was going to have to do them a bunch to unlock something

[vagrant spruce]

the only one with an unlisted bonus, i think, is ||the queen's egg|| - you may not have access to that one yet, but it'll give ||a minor boost to the number of silkeaters styx can give you iirc||

[vagrant spruce]

yep, afaik optional grinding. i think the patch buffed the amount of rosaries they give, as well? but they're mostly just for fun & some spare change

[dreamy scarab]

is that first spoiler just the name of the task?

[autumn kettle]

task and item

[vagrant spruce]

yeah / slash the parcel that you're delivering

it's not a normal package and it goes to a specific place

[dreamy scarab]

okay, cool. Yeah, I unlocked that one and did it fine.

it's just the ||rasher|| that's giving me trouble, but I think I'll get there

[hollow elm]

I advise ||clearing the route without benches before running without bench, getting hit is a bigger penalty than slowing down a little.|| There's also (Act 1 Tool) ||Silkspeed Anklets|| that can help ease pressure.

[vagrant spruce]

my advice is ||to bench at the destination (or close to it), and clear all of the enemies along the way. if you go through shellwood -> blasted steps -> grand gate -> choral chambers, the only things that respawn are (iirc) the water striders in shellwood right at the start. nothing else does, as long as you don't bench, so you can just treat it as a timer instead of an enemy gauntlet||

||i had no real issues once i got the platforming down otherwise - and made it with like 2 bars of time left to spare. i had dash, wall cling, clawline for my only mobility tools, didn't use silkspeed anklets||

[dreamy scarab]

It feels pretty doable, as long as I don't continually whiff pogos on one specific section (||for some reason I keep accidentally doing neutral airs in the last transition before Grand Gate||). I was resetting via quit to menu, but I think that's costing me IRL time in the long run (it resets your silk, so I was grinding that back).

[vagrant spruce]

||does quit to menu respawn guys? i think it does||

[dreamy scarab]

it does yeah. so between saving my from grinding silk every time and opening up your strategy I think I'd about break even on length per attempt.

...does ||taking the bellway respawn enemies||?

[hot mango]

I heard there are multiple places where you can ||get captured and sent to the slab. Have y’all encountered any of the ones outside Hunter’s March?||

[vagrant spruce]

dont' think so

[vagrant spruce]

||bilewater has one, i don't know where the others are personally||

[hot mango]

||Huh- I know you can find the Apostate Key in the Purification Ducts- wonder if it’s a case of “get captured in one location and get the key from the other”. Probably not tho||

[autumn kettle]

||putrefied*||

[vagrant spruce]

||nope, key is always there, sorry||

would be sick tho

[autumn kettle]

||far fields||

[hoary tulip]

food quest spoilers: ||Hornet you can't say that. "Ant problem" is like... racist or something.||

[hot mango]

Fun spoiler I found regarding Lifeblood in Silksong || https://youtu.be/_s_pumI-nrM||

[autumn kettle]

too much preamble, is this hornet ODing?

[hoary tulip]

yes

[autumn kettle]

nice

it's fent time

[sinful stirrup]

how much more do I need to do ||To unlock the act 3 quest?!||

[elfin ravine]

Finish any outstanding wishes you have

And just generally do stuff for completion

[vagrant spruce]

the main weird thing that you gotta do is ||collect most of the fleas, enough to move them to their final location (you'll know when they're there)||

||there's some other misc reqs, but that's one that isn't exactly intuitive||

[safe yew]

in act 2, are there any sources of lifeblood besides (act 1 hidden area) ||john lifeblood in the wormways||?

[brave flower]

wdym? thats not ||lifeblood, its plasmium!||

[vagrant spruce]

don't think so

[sinful stirrup]

I have done that bit!

[south marten]

ough

the beastfly

[pine niche]

But you can't overdose on lifeblood, eh?

[thorny bear]

well, hollow knight did have a corpse of someone clearly overdosed on lifeblood

the Knight being void is almost certainly the reason it has no ill effects from lifeblood

[hoary tulip]

Void can't overdose on anything, it's Void

[hot mango]

Sorry yeah, ||She is, but the specific effects of the OD are what’s interesting. See, it doesn’t kill her. Instead, it removes her ability to Bind or Gain More Lifeblood, and until she sits down at a bench again, she… basically has a healing factor. Like Hiveblood on steroids- she regains a mask every ~10 seconds that pass without taking damage. Period. You can straight up go from 1 mask to full with the effect. You can only trigger it with Architect Crest as that’s the only way to gain that many Syringe uses, but it looks really dang good.||

[autumn kettle]

yeah, we were talking about it yesterday or so

it's quite fun

[hot mango]

||When you finish the quest a free Lifeblood Cocoon appears where the nearest bud used to be||

[hot mango]

I really like how vocal Hornet is about how weird her biology is, because we see her experience stuff and say “it’s okay I resist it” and then we look at the Knight whose taking much weirder stuff and realizing “oh THAT’S what the Void is for”

[hidden flame]

Chances that Flukenest is a ||Witch Curse|| situation?

[hot mango]

Low I think

[hidden flame]

But The Knight just.... tanks it

[hot mango]

Could be

[hoary tulip]

someone I know used this to beat the final boss btw

[autumn kettle]

bussin

[hoary tulip]

she was struggling with the fight so I was like "uhh here's literally everything I know about tool interactions and tech"

and she said "ight imma cheese this"

[hoary tulip]

high to me tbh

the Little Ghost kinda just resists every attempt to assimilate or infest it and ends up devouring and repurposing several nasty pathogens

Glowing Womb, Flukenest, Joni's Blessing, Spore Shroom, and possibly Fury of the Fallen all strike me as pathogens, infestations, or outright curses that fail to meaningfully harm the little ghost because it's full of endless devouring liquid hunger

and as a result is difficult to like, physically or spiritually alter in a deleterious way

everything just get swallowed and, if you're unlucky, spat back out

meanwhile Hornet just has to tank stuff and hope her godly constitution can shrug it off

Grimmchild is probably also supposed to assimilate you into the Grimm Troupe, tbh, but again Little Ghost is simply built wrong

[safe yew]

any pointers on shell shard farming in general?

[hollow elm]

depending on progress, shard packs from vendors is better returns after a point

[umbral canyon]

Ime it was a lot faster to ||go right, through sinner's road and the exhaust organ, since that takes you directly to grand bellway||

[safe yew]

i'm like midway through act 2

[hollow elm]

Quite sure farming rosaries from enemies inside Citadel for Shard Packs goes faster then.

[vernal stone]

Just wandering around near grand bellway will rapidly get you enough rosaries to buy 240 shards

[hardy galleon]

act 2 grand hunt wish ||savage beastfly II is in the ground, rest in piss||

||that took many tries but by god i shredded that thing on that last run||

[severe swift]

Just beat ||savage beastfly 2||… not nearly as bad as the first one.

i think the short runback made it way more tolerable

[torn sky]

Oh, the Last Judge has a third phase...

[dreamy scarab]

So I hadn't found that route, is the thing. And as much as it galls me to have a secret I know about but haven't explored, I'd really rather do it with stuff I had found organically

[torn sky]

...I really don't get it. I've beaten most bosses pretty easily but something about the last judge's fire phase just makes my brain fail and I can't dodge, despite doing fine in the first phase and those phases being pretty damn similar

[dreamy scarab]

It's a toughie. Which attacks are tripping you up? (And are you looking for tips)

[severe swift]

Do you have the ||magma bell?||

[torn sky]

Yep!

[torn sky]

That's the thing. It's not even that it's new attacks. I'll dodge 'spinning flail' fine and then eat 'spilling flail' (On fire) to the face. XD

And I can't work out why

Something about my brain just goes 'nope, not working this phase'

[dreamy scarab]

I definitely had a few runs where it hit phase two and I just stood there in front of attacks. My best theory is there's just a lot of VFX and grinding at it for long stretches wasn't doing me any favors.

[hidden flame]

Try a ||crest swap||?

[severe swift]

Yeah what crest are you using?

[torn sky]

Reaper.

[severe swift]

Hmm

[hidden flame]

Wanderer can be fun

Clip into the censer twirl, and just whale

[torn sky]

I think I might just try to calm down and focus. This is tilting me a little. XD

And some relaxing before returning might help.

[hidden flame]

Yeah, the head clear buff works wonders

[torn sky]

And hey, grinding myself another 600 shell shards should be nice and relaxing.

https://bsky.app/profile/ryoki-ph.bsky.social/post/3lysk6ovll22r

benni (@ryoki-ph.bsky.social)

oh i should probably put hornet tools here too #silksong

Likes

235

Bluesky · Sep 14, 2025, 2:52 PM

[hidden flame]

Ok, I love that

[inland wave]

I wish we could angle ||Shakra's Rings|| like she does, I love these lil things but they feel a bit less tough than others

[vernal stone]

You have to keep them equipped for the ||alternate taunt animation||

[inland wave]

Oh I know about that I mean throw direction

[fathom shadow]

Is there anything I should do before going into act 3?
Things that change or get locked out?

My goal is to try and complete all the quests I can before continuing the main questline.

[severe swift]

Everything changes a little bit. Nothing (I dont think)gets locked out but everything gets a little harder

[rotund magnet]

There’s a ||shakra|| fight you can only do in act 2 apparently

[inland wave]

Act 3 ||so this 'every bit of damage also eats silk now'|| isn't my favorite

this was not the difficulty spike the game needed lmao

love being more limited as the game progresses, love it

'You do a little bit more damage! Everything has double HP ;3'

[fervent sand]

Eyyyyy rest in piss that mother fucker good job

[fathom shadow]

Also on this note are there any areas or npc’s I should return to that aren’t obvious?

Don’t want to try and backtrack when there isn’t good reason for it.

[inland wave]

a'right, by this late in the game, there's no need for shit to still cost shards, give me some sort of fucking magic bag

just like the stupid Blood Vials in Bloodborne

this mechanic is always bad

always

[brave flower]

there is, its called "architect"

[inland wave]

that still uses shards?

and is coupled with the most boring moveset in the world

[brave flower]

yeah

ok what the fuck

thats not true

[inland wave]

the only thing it's got going is the charge-up and that's on two of 'em

[brave flower]

:|

[wanton bone]

Good needle strike, solid attacks with a way to boost damage, and the best option for the highest dps playstyle is not exactly boring.

[brave flower]

(spell builds are higher damage in act 3)

[inland wave]

It just doesn't grab me, and feels somewhat random compared to how all the actual ||Architect|| stuff looks/moves

[brave flower]

ok?

[inland wave]

Sorry, just frustrated and it's not like it's an answer to the problem regardless

[rose granite]

If you want to there are mods for removing shard cost https://www.nexusmods.com/hollowknightsilksong/mods/256

I understand frustrations, but there's a limit to how much venting to do in the channel since folk are still excited about the game.

[dreamy scarab]

late game, would it be easier to grind rosaries -> buy shard bundles?

[rose granite]

Pretty much

I'll admit when I got frustrated with shards, I did just install a mod which doubles the amount you get (but not rosaries), which pretty much resolved my own issue with it.

[cold lark]

you're gonna have to take a break from this channel if you show up here to gamer rage about game mechanics to be honest, i'm speaking as a mod

[inland wave]

Sorry again

[rose granite]

They're making the important mods for this game: https://www.nexusmods.com/hollowknightsilksong/mods/253

[fervent sand]

I do enjoy how dedicated the player base are for Silksong. I just finished the ||Gourmand|| quest. For a side quest that comes relatively late in the game and involves going all over the map to get stuff and talking to the right people, it's still like 16% of the player base achieved this. Which is a LOT for that sort of achievement.

[dreamy scarab]

does anyone have Sherma's dialogue in front of the citadel gate? I accidentally ran past him ||failing to deliver meat|| and he left by the time I circled back.

[hot mango]

Hate and war on planet earth

[hot mango]

You get a pretty big boon for it is the thing

[dreamy scarab]

yeah, people love to ||upgrade weapons||

[fervent sand]

troo

[autumn kettle]

• Fixed ||Shaman|| Binding into a bottom transition causing a softlock.

thank god

[safe yew]

act 3 spoiler (i haven't gotten to it, i'm just kinda going "fuck it" re. spoilers), but ||when talking to zylotol in the wormways, hornet implicitly compares the lifeblood/plasmium overgrowth to the radiance's infection, which strengthens the hypothesis that lifeblood is some sort of infection analogue created by a butterfly-like higher being. the visual language was already somewhat similar, but for an in-game character to comment on it feels to me like possible foreshadowing||

[fervent sand]

That's not act 3 though I found that guy in act 1 and in act 2 the ||butterfly plants|| are growing around

[autumn kettle]

unless I'm forgetting extra lines, she just compares it to itself

which is uh

interesting

for the implications of what lifeblood was doing off in hallownest

[safe yew]

speaking with zylotol in act 3 ||has hornet compare the lifeblood's spread to "other infections [she has] witnessed"||

[autumn kettle]

before it got purged

ah fair

[hot mango]

Can y’all give me some advice on how to best use the ||Plasmium Injector? Like the Flea Brew it’s a limited reserve so I’m a little anxious to use it, but also it seems really useful for Beast and Witch crest due to their increased heal difficulty||

[fervent sand]

||have you unlocked the artificer crest yet?||

[autumn kettle]

freely and regularly, whenever you think you would be threatened

[autumn kettle]

that's specifically not the crest they're asking about

[thorny bear]

tbh the best advice I can give in that regard is to not use beast and witch

[hot mango]

||yeah but that one doesn’t seem like it really needs the Plasmium Injector due to having a normal bind, unless you wanna have hornet OD||

[hot mango]

But I like those ones

[safe yew]

use it in the contexts you'd use lifeblood charms in hollow knight, refills are relatively cheap so top up when you're low

[autumn kettle]

basically: while it's a bit of a pain to refill, you can get there fast from the shellwood bellway

[hot mango]

But yeah general use advice is also appreciated I suppose

[autumn kettle]

and it only costs like 20 beads

[thorny bear]

the issue isn't the money as much as the obnoxious trek to refill

[autumn kettle]

so you can use it just...as soon as you get off of a bench

[safe yew]

it maxes out at 50 for me, which still isn't very many beads

[hot mango]

The refill cost increases depending on how much you have missing right?

[autumn kettle]

which is probably when I'd use it, mostly

just immediately slam the whole tank

[hot mango]

So it’s better to use in advance rather than in the midst of, say, a boss fight?

[autumn kettle]

and then once you're more comfortable with using those binds to heal, you can be more discerning

[safe yew]

i suppose the approach here would be grinning and bearing it

[autumn kettle]

yeah, you get no real benefit out of Not Using It - although boss fights are the one exception, since they're where it's easiest to heal with those two binds

[safe yew]

...that might come off meaner than i intend. point is, no real way around it so use it where it counts

[autumn kettle]

so for bosses you'll probably want to do it pre-fight so you can bind purely as a buff and ignore the heal part for phase 1, or during phase transitions

so you have leeway for your phase 2 healing

[fervent sand]

To be fair they did not ask about a crest, they asked about the tool, which is why I wanted to talk to them about the tool use, and it has a unique interaction with that crest so I wanted to talk about that to them.

[autumn kettle]

oh also: ||you don't have to refill in act 3||

so once you get there this becomes a nonfactor

[hot mango]

Yeah general advice is appreciated. Still, I’m starving for any and all ways to make ||Beast and Witch|| easier to use. Their movesets are really fun and the ||damage form their binds|| is also good so all that’s missing is how to circumnavigate the healing difficulty

[hot mango]

The implications of that scares me

[hoary tulip]

Plasmium injector’s biggest boon is the exact same as that of having Lifeblood in Hollow Knight, which is that it’s health you don’t have to pay in healing windows for if you lose it

Stack it up front going into a boss and you’re rewarded with more chances to be aggressive even if you take hits

[hot mango]

Hm tru

[hollow elm]

I sometimes use it mid-boss when I don't have time to bind safely, also extends uses when eating into bind-able health.

[hot mango]

Personally it sounds useful to do before Binding if you have ||Beast or Witch equipped, more so Beast since taking damage in the healing state for that doesn’t disable your heal||

[hot mango]

That’s also what I was thinking- if you’re down to 2 masks but don’t have enough Silk to bind it sounds like a good safeguard to buy more time, and if you don’t get hit before binding then you still have the lifeblood mask for extra durability

Reduces the risk of trading a heal for getting hit, which keeps happening to me

Speaking of ||stuff locked behind Simple Keys… y’all ever think about how the Citadel’s Central Bank was locked with a generic Simple Key?||

Also, Plasmium Injector sounds useful for any sort of White Palace style challenge, should Silksong ever have one of those

And I just realized a tragedy of the Plasmium Injector- ||if you wanna use the Architect strat of overdosing on Lifeblood, because it’s architect you can’t use the spare silk to use Silk Skills. Meaning the extra silk is only good for repairing tools. Which is tragic.||

[hoary tulip]

yeah that's like

probably intended balancewise

[hot mango]

||I was just thinking if you wanted to do a Silk Skill Spam Build you could use the Plasmium OD to assist, but TC thought of that||

Oh wait! I know just the boss to try the Plasmium Injector against- Ass Jim!

[delicate vapor]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/586931790208434203/986221984604123178/chef_dumpy.gif

[hardy galleon]

Act 2 zone Mt. Fay ||this zone was so fucking good goddamn ||

[fathom shadow]

Just finished it too.