THE SILKSONG IS REAL

[hardy galleon]

Loved it

[autumn kettle]

it's peak

[rotund magnet]

Act final stretch ||really interested in the other areas that exist in the world mentioned on the various runecages||

[rose granite]

Indeed

[hot mango]

I’m not gonna apologize to the Pale King he killed thousands of children

And to be fair to Pharloom, if you put aside the systemic racism it does have much better infrastructure and resource allocation than Hallownest

[autumn kettle]

that's only because it's mid-collapse

[hot mango]

Overall it’s probably worse but it’s not like Hallownest didn’t have its class divide issues

[autumn kettle]

not post-collapse

[hot mango]

Fair

[autumn kettle]

hallownest didn't have paid benches lmao

and considering Everything about silksong's economy

[hot mango]

It had bench tolls

[autumn kettle]

that difference is probably supposed to be diegetic

[autumn kettle]

only in like two places

it had stagway tolls, but very few benches

[hot mango]

I can name more than two places with bench tolls easy

[autumn kettle]

really?

[hot mango]

Ancient Basin, City of Tears near soul sanctum, Queen’s Gardens, and Greenpath minimum

And I’m pretty sure there are more too

[autumn kettle]

which greenpath bench has a toll?

oh my fucking god autocorrect

in going to kill you

[hot mango]

The one in the long vertical shaft with the gates blocking off the bench

Paying the toll there also unlocks the shortcut to cross through the shaft

[autumn kettle]

i do not remember a toll on that one

just a lever

[hot mango]

It absolutely had a toll on one side I’m pretty sure

[autumn kettle]

hm

[hot mango]

Perhaps not both but definitely one side

[wanton bone]

Yeah, it’s a toll bench. Still. A lot less aggressive than the Citadel.

[hot mango]

The aggressive benches is mainly just the Underworks

Apart from that all the citadel benches are free- the rich don’t pay to sit down

[autumn kettle]

every bellway bench i can think of also has a toll

citadel though, yeah

[hot mango]

That’s probably the majority, tho I feel like there are a few exceptions

[autumn kettle]

except the bellway again iirc?

[hot mango]

The economy in Pharloom being bad is definitely due to aggressive class division as opposed to poor infrastructure. It’s a more dystopian setting than an apocalyptic one

[rotund magnet]

Pharloom has really bad class separation yeah

Look at the moorwing entry

[hot mango]

||Bellhart is like. The one decent town in Pharloom. And look what happened to it on first visit||

[sinful stirrup]

https://youtu.be/P5bu_wHAQ7k?si=Bcg3MLrq0Y_rajyy 39 minutes in

[brazen steppe]

TIL that's just a taunt

not expecting taunt to use silk

[hoary tulip]

it has a function

[hot mango]

I wonder if speedrunners will be able to predict where Hornet’s cocoons spawn on death, because they seem to have the same pogo properties one would desire for shade skips but with far less versatility and forgiveness

[hoary tulip]

Taunt lets you peel enemies off by increasing your aggro radius

[elfin ravine]

https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-games/hollow-knight-silksong/tragic-obvious-wall-jump-spot-long-forgotten-before-wall-jump-unlocked/

[dreamy scarab]

ah, sorry, not his first appearance, early act 2

[hoary tulip]

this is what pins are for!!!

[hot mango]

wait did I never check The Marrow again?

[elfin ravine]

Now, I played the first Hollow Knight two presidencies and one transition ago; I know a wall jump spot when I see one.

[green bone]

The cocoon locations are pre-placed

[hot mango]

They always seem to be approximately where Hornet dies but not always quite there

So that’s a lot of pre-placed locations

[dreamy scarab]

I noticed during the boss fight against ||Last Judge|| the cocoon was always where I died unless I died past the fight trigger. Then it'd always be just in front of the trigger, so that you could avoid triggering the fight

[sinful stirrup]

Oh whoops, sorry, so waking up

[dreamy scarab]

no worries

[rose granite]

If you put aside doing some heavy lifting there.

[inland wave]

I have to point at the ||Moorwing flavor text. Bred to hunt escaped workers. Pharloom is an engine to keep god asleep. It's not a city or a citadel, it's a profit-based faith where the profit is 'hopefully this keeps her asleep'||

[rotund magnet]

||where does keeping silk asleep get mentioned||

[inland wave]

||Weaver lore scrolls, Needolin lyrics, some of those Harp Poems..||

[hot mango]

The only reason it was being put aside was because Hallownest wasn’t much better in that regard

[hot mango]

Wait… ||is the argument between Hallownest vs Pharloom 1000 aborted babies vs late stage capitalism????||

[inland wave]

wow i wish i could appreciate ||the escape from the abyss|| /act 3

[tall night]

i see hornet gijinkas that are good but to me shes a princess wearing one of those double horned hennins

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/853014977698856990/1417649460284231751/horned-hennin-with-wimple.webp?ex=68cb4071&is=68c9eef1&hm=f92f75c5d8204e6242db208b7dbab3909af5896182c45902e226cafb454eebb9&=&format=webp&width=720&height=940

not as drapey but the walpurgisnacht duo princess cone

[wanton bone]

Oh that's fun. Good princess knight content.

[tall night]

now that i think her mother just does wear one

[hot mango]

Question about the ||Silkshot- what are the differences between repairing it at Forge Daughter vs at Seventh Architect?||

[elfin ravine]

||they work completely differently||

||Forge Daughter shoots a projectile forward, Architect shoots three quick shots at close range ||

||but there is also a third option for repairing it, up at Mt Fay ||

[vagrant spruce]

#1408102788616945684 message relinking so i don't have to post big spoiler blocks again, but there was a discussion about it a day or so ago - there's a video + damage numbers linked there

tldr ||there's 3 versions - weaver is a piercing railgun style shot, high damage but a little slower than the others to fire. forge is a single big bullet, solid damage and decently fast to use (not fast fire rate per se, but it doesnt' lock you in place for as long). 12th is a burst first bullet, worst damage by a long shot and in general is just Worse than forge unfortunately.||

[primal cedar]

Does Challenge actually do anything? Or is it just a pure emote

[autumn kettle]

it does several things, actually

[brave flower]

it summons the puppy, aggros enemies, i think makes them come closer to you? and allegedly has a couple iframes

[hot mango]

||I kinda just wanna do the cool Weaver one. Sounds more unique||

[autumn kettle]

one: for bosses that have a challenge prompt or a dialogue prompt, you can in fact challenge them

to skip their dialogue

or any other challenge prompts

[hoary tulip]

!!!

[hot mango]

||Forge Daughter may be strongest but this sounds coolest||

[autumn kettle]

this includes Widow, for an easy example

it's faster in a speedrun to challenge her, because you skip all of her and hornet's conversation

to just throw hands

two: it draws the attention of enemies

which is used for a couple pogo skips

to pull enemies that otherwise wouldn't get near hornet closer to her

[vagrant spruce]

three: it wakes up bell beast :) if she's napping

[hot mango]

Also just beat ||First Sinner. I loved fighting Widow, and I loved fighting First Sinner. Tense, had me on the ropes a few times on the second attempt, but still fun as hell even when I won||

[autumn kettle]

it attracts them from a longer distance than anything else, and causes ranged enemies to get closer than they otherwise would

[hot mango]

||Also lore||

[autumn kettle]

and three: it summons and wakes ouppy, yeah

[autumn kettle]

i'm so glad that like

[vagrant spruce]

yeah i think it's the most interesting option at least

[autumn kettle]

literally everyone so far has agreed with me

that ||the first sinner|| is a "peak no notes 11/10" boss

[vagrant spruce]

yeah

[primal cedar]

Puppy is obviously the most important utility

[hollow elm]

I'll def keep that in mind for luring flying enemies, especially for pogo.

[primal cedar]

I love how everyone just unconditionally loves Bell Beast and Sherma

[autumn kettle]

the biggest place where this is noteworthy is in the any% speedrun

where you can use it to aggro a goober in shellwood

[brave flower]

i have decided that GARAMA literally translates to "have at thee"

[autumn kettle]

and skip sister splinter

[autumn kettle]

probably something very similar, since she uses it with her jousting attack in HK as well iirc

[brave flower]

and the reason it summons ouppy is that ouppy just Hears Hornet's Voice

[hot mango]

||Hope Rune Rage is at least competitive with Silk Storm. At the very least the lore was alarming, and the animation has implications when connected to pure vessel||

[brave flower]

i think sly also used it

[primal cedar]

I have discovered that the puppy also sings along with the needolin. I would die for her

[vagrant spruce]

if you care about the actual damage numbers - ||thread storm is around 375% damage overall w/o spamming the button to extend it, rune rage is ~200% damage on a single circle hit, 100% damage on any subsequent explosions, so it's better on larger bosses but worse if the guy is small and easy to miss. larger aoe makes it slightly better for arenas if you don't want to time it super aggressively. numbers are based on your base nail damage||

[brave flower]

its crazy how ouppy they managed to make the bell beast

[hidden flame]

You probably did

[thorny bear]

||rune rage|| is so so disappointing imo

just, extremely conditional but not even very good in those conditions

[brave flower]

just you wait

dlc blue tool that gives all your silk skills hominh

if they alr have it it gets improved

[hoary tulip]

big disagree - this shit can scrub annoying encounters off of the screen

sometimes you look at a 4+ enemy group and go "I don't feel like it"

[hot mango]

Fun fact: ||Ascendant’s Grip is really good in the Broodmother fight||

[hoary tulip]

and then they're gone

[hoary tulip]

Fun fact: that tool is really good all the time

anyways my recommendation for using ||Rune Rage|| is the same as my recommendation for healing if you can't find an opening: just go get squatting rights to an upper corner

[thorny bear]

is it really that much of a pain to sometimes press the dash button when you want to stay on a wall

[hollow elm]

I've used it sometimes in intense climbing sections, less pressure to mess up with.

[hoary tulip]

yes
also it's really really good for dodging projectiles imo

reduces your overall profile by not having you slip up and down the wall

[vagrant spruce]

ascendants grip is mostly nice bc like. it's basically no downside to use

[hollow elm]

Yellow slot really makes it easy to swap in

[vagrant spruce]

it's only annoying in the specific situation where you want to line up a same-wall climb jump to jump over spikes at the end of the wall (notably in some sections of cog, and the (act 3) ||above cradle climb section||

[thorny bear]

there's one specific post game climbing section with a bunch of tiny walls where grip is useful

[vagrant spruce]

yea

[hoary tulip]

just use wallscramble

[vagrant spruce]

i would love to see somebody do that act 3 section with wall scramble, somehow

lol

[thorny bear]

but for the most part dice/compass/belt is pretty universal

[hollow elm]

Blilewater's big climb is a notable spot for easier climbing

[hoary tulip]

not the brace the uh

the dash into wall thing

if you climb to the top of a wall by dashing into it while wallclinging, you automatically vault and hop over any spikes at the top of the ledge

made certain jumps in that section MUCH more consistent ime

[vagrant spruce]

basically the only yellow slot tools that have like, non-quality of life effects, are barbed bracelet/dice/scuttlebrace/anklets

[hoary tulip]

scuttle has i-frames but for the life of me I have no idea how to exploit them

[brave flower]

weighted belt i think is a dps increase on architect

[vagrant spruce]

its not, i did test it

[hollow elm]

dodging under stuff I guess

[hoary tulip]

is it actually not iframes

[vagrant spruce]

no re weighted belt

idk scuttlebrace

[hoary tulip]

ah

[vagrant spruce]

and out of those, its really just barbed that has actually major effects, dice are just good for ||wanderer crits|| really. brace/anklets are funny but they're not exactly the most impactful things even if you do try to weaponize them

[hoary tulip]

scuttlebrace is one of the tools of all time

[hollow elm]

Does Architect's multihit sounds actually change the damage output?

[vagrant spruce]

yes, minorly on normal hits & majorly on the charged slash

[hoary tulip]

Architect Needle Strike is brutal

[brave flower]

oh right theres a

[wanton bone]

Scuttlebrace feels like shape of Unn. Weirdly situational but sometimes gives easy dodges on certain attacks.

[brave flower]

||steel soul exclusive yellow tool||

replaces dead mans purse

[elfin ravine]

Dice are fine IMO

[hoary tulip]

also dice are imo way better than you're giving them credit for especially if you dice+pendant

[vagrant spruce]

||architect hits for around 10% more base damage, from 21 base damage to 19/2/2 in 3 hits (yes, the follow up hits are really weak). its sligthly more lenient for parries than normal strike as a result, but not as good as something like wanderer. charged strike has super super weird hitboxes but it hits for ~1.5x as much as any other attack's charged strike||

[brave flower]

||increases tool crafting capacity||

[elfin ravine]

IME they cancel out one or two hits per fight, and that's a lot already

[vagrant spruce]

yeah they're solid, but my point is more like - you're looking at at best maybe 4 of the yellow tools having gameplay effects besides QOL/farm lol

[wanton bone]

1-2 shitty lifeblood hearts is not… nothing.

[elfin ravine]

sure it's not reliable, but it's not like you have much else to put in those yellow slots

[vagrant spruce]

since the original context is really just "why use ascendant's grip" and the answer is "it's this or some other various QOL things, really", lol

[elfin ravine]

well on a boss that does two damage, if you do cancel two hits
that's four damage you didn't take

[hoary tulip]

I think ascendant's grip goes insane tbh.

[vagrant spruce]

i really like how they split up the tools as a result

[elfin ravine]

I'm kinda ehh on it

[vagrant spruce]

the only significant choice for your yellow slot is if you're a barbed bracelet baller or not

(I am not)

lol

[hollow elm]

I mostly like the tool split, but blue slot is highly competitive

[hoary tulip]

the only thing that I'm dissatisfied by is that there aren't as many yellow tools and so there's less selection pressure for those slots

[elfin ravine]

mostly just feels like your blues are the ones that matter, and yellow is just kinda there

[vagrant spruce]

yeah ^, i think that's kinda the point

[hollow elm]

Yea, with Wanderer's 3x yellow slots it's more "yea sure"

[torn sky]

it feels like yellow is 'exploration' tools and blue is 'combat' tools.

[vagrant spruce]

yellow lets you put compass/some farm ones/etc. for "nice upgrades you can get" without forcing you to make the choice hollow knight did - aka, do you want compass + gathering swarm or do you want longnail

[hollow elm]

||Witch Crest having no yellow slots is big pain though||

[hoary tulip]

just give us some like

[elfin ravine]

to me it just kinda feels like the game always makes the choice for you

[hoary tulip]

idk how to explain this other than ||Wreath of Purity should be a yellow slot tool||

[wanton bone]

For me it was always Grubsong.

[elfin ravine]

do agree there I think

[vagrant spruce]

meh, i think this conversation having enough differing opinions on "which yellow tool do you want to run" (grip, anklets, brace, etc.) is proof that's not really true

[hoary tulip]

and there should be more shit like that in the yellow slot pool to compete for those spots

[vagrant spruce]

no disagreement there lmao

[hoary tulip]

I would also argue

and this is a little controversial

that Reserve Bind should be a yellow tool

[elfin ravine]

shrug
I basically had compass and magnetite in my yellows all game because I never felt like I actually needed any of the others and didn't feel like swapping

[brave flower]

wisp lantern should be a yellow tool

[vagrant spruce]

i ran compass + grip, and then later compass + dice + grip personally

[hoary tulip]

I like-a da sticky shoes

[dreamy scarab]

If I only have ||silkstep, cloak, drifter's cloak, and wall cling|| for movement abilities, is it possible for me to get either the ||Crustnut or Pickled Muckmaggot||?

[hoary tulip]

wisp lantern shouldn't be in the game

[vagrant spruce]

i think i like silksong's tool system overall, though it definitely shows why charms in HK used a point buy system

lol

[vagrant spruce]

no

[hollow elm]

I usually leave out Compass because Silksong's map is more memorabe/varied enough to work out where after a while.

[vagrant spruce]

o7, those are act 3 locked, sorry

er not act 3, just the next ability

[elfin ravine]

I just never really bought Grip all game long

but also didn't really feel like I needed it

[dreamy scarab]

act 3 (of movement abilities)

[hoary tulip]

kinda real tho

[autumn kettle]

i 100% disagree, people constantly talk about how it's annoying that magnet isn't free and i just never gave a shit about it

[vagrant spruce]

yeah that lol i guess

[autumn kettle]

and taking compass off is completely fine

i had it on for half the game, sure

[hoary tulip]

I feel like I needed my compass and map were a lot less necessary Literally All The Time for figuring out where the fuck I was

[elfin ravine]

I mean, yes there are some choices about your yellows

[brave flower]

i wouldve crashed out during mount fay if i didnt have grip

[hollow elm]

I've really only been hurting for magnet when trying to roam with a compact crest

[elfin ravine]

but I don't really care about any of them

[vagrant spruce]

honestly my roman empire would probably be what if i could jam out without spending silk

[elfin ravine]

I use Magnetite and Compass out of convenience, because I can't be bothered to reference map or run after rosaries

[hoary tulip]

my spicy take is that a yellow tool that lets you rock tf out without discharging silk would be fine and also people would use it

[autumn kettle]

but i had it on for a chunk of the game as [a meaningless choice] because i didn't have anything else, then [a meaningful choice] for another chunk of the game because i was sacrificing it, and then the second half of the game it was [a meaningless choice] again because i didn't need it

[vagrant spruce]

i know its a miniscule amount of silk, but i kinda wish it just didn't cost any, especially since its irrelevant in non-combat situations due to silk regen (unless you're trying to walk around with a heal in the bank, which is where its annoying)

i assume its there because of the ||stun enemy thing? which is mildly inconsistent but doesnt' last indefinitely anyway, so i'm not sure it's a huge deal||

[hollow elm]

The song booster tool should probably do that.

[elfin ravine]

my point is more that through the divison, the game forces you to devote slots to tools you probably don't super care about

[brave flower]

dreamnail gives you soul for landing it

[elfin ravine]

you don't get to choose to make a 100% combat focused loadout like you could in HK

[vagrant spruce]

meh. the alternative is what HK had, which is where many charms languished in "nobody will ever use this", because its never worth giving up something else (unless you're in the early game w/ no other options)

[hollow elm]

I mostly treat the yellow slot as nice extras

[hoary tulip]

I'd rather there be low-priority slots for low-priority tools than the game constantly forcing you to not use tools you'd like to

[autumn kettle]

yeah, but considering the raw power of some of the options - and the fact that crests themselves take up one of those slots, that's not "less overall power"

it's much more, in fact

you just have More Stuff

[elfin ravine]

I didn't necessarily say less power

I say it feels like the game is forcing me to choose stuff I don't care about

[autumn kettle]

ah

i can kind of see that

but it's like

[vagrant spruce]

in HK, i'm thinking about like - thorns (a bit of a meme pick, only used if you have no other better 1 notch option), heavy blow (overcosted imo), fury (only used by speedrunners/challenge runners and for 1 notch left), spore shroom (meme), etc.

[elfin ravine]

your yellow slot just very quickly doesn't really matter

[hollow elm]

The thing is, the combat crests in hollow knight eat much more space

[elfin ravine]

but you are still stuck with 1-3 of them on most crests

[vagrant spruce]

really just spore shroom/defenders crest/thorns/steady body being the kind of "even if you like them, you're directly losing out in combat ability for goofing off, which sucks"

[hollow elm]

the yellow slot system is more like extra charm space (only) for non-combat utility

[autumn kettle]

it feels like team cherry heard the complaints about "why do i have to devote charms to [minor convenience stuff that you don't actually need and are reasonable to pay very minor costs for]" and added an entirely new category for things like that

and then because you now have More Slots For Those Things

[vagrant spruce]

yeah. idk, maybe the takeaway is that the yellow tools silksong has are mid, rather than the concept of separating them being mid lol

[autumn kettle]

people want to devote the extra free stuff to more power that they're not for...and TC also predicted that

because there is a More Power In Your Free Non-Combat Slots tool

it's the barbed bracelet

[elfin ravine]

that I can agree with

[brave flower]

but topple that kills me

[hollow elm]

Shard boost Tool falls off a cliff after moving into Act 2

[elfin ravine]

I mean yeah, but it's also basically the equivalent of overcharming

in that I'm pretty sure the majority of people will not use it, and it's probably not worth the tradeoff

[vagrant spruce]

barbed bracelet is 25% damage boost for 50% more damage taken - it's not a bad trade if you're willing to get really good really quick (or go nowhere for ages because you skill issue)

[hollow elm]

*x2, you eat x4 from 2-mask damage

[vagrant spruce]

it notably is +1 damage taken, not 2x, hits for 2 only hit for 3 now

[autumn kettle]

oh did they patch that?

interesting

[vagrant spruce]

well, sorta - it's inconsistent. depends on the source

a hit for 2 -> it does +1 more

[autumn kettle]

that was a change then, i was absolutely taking 4 from 2-point sources

[vagrant spruce]

one of those weird combo hits from things like sandcarvers (ik they were removed, but things that hit for 2 slightly delayed instancse) -> it's +1 to each, so 4 total

[autumn kettle]

i know this because i had it on for the entire second half of my 100% playthrough

i was taking 4 from 2-mask contact damage

and from other big hits

and 4 from double-hits

[vagrant spruce]

hm, definitely fact check me then - i swear i measured and it was 3

[autumn kettle]

they might've stealth changed it

[vagrant spruce]

no clue! i might have also just failed at basic counting skills

[autumn kettle]

i haven't played in a couple days because the speedrun achievement has hands

[vagrant spruce]

either way, i'ts a pretty significant damage buff, so hey

[autumn kettle]

yeah i have it on because it's exactly what alaen was talking about

[vagrant spruce]

kinda a meme? yeah. reasonable to gate a big damage buff behind a big cost? probably

[autumn kettle]

i have this new non-combat slot

that i want combat things for

so i put the combat thing in the non-combat slot

[hollow elm]

Barbed Bracelet is a pretty chunky damage boost, and isn't as hard as maintaining Hunter focus meter.

[elfin ravine]

I'm gonna be real
double damage is far too large a downside for most people IMO
it certainly is for me

[vagrant spruce]

lmao, i'd consider it around the same considering it's still kinda "please no hit the fight" as an incentive

[vagrant spruce]

yeah, which is fine - it's exactly like overcharming, like you mentioned

[hollow elm]

I've really only used it seriously in Savage Beastfly 2 because I can no-hit the main boss.

[vagrant spruce]

its definitely not for everybody to use but it's a cool thing to have as an option

[autumn kettle]

yeah, it's the "okay, if you're sure, boss" option

and i was constantly overcharming in HK as well, so i am sure

[hollow elm]

Multibinder offsets the extra damage to a degree.

[vagrant spruce]

actually no i see what you're saying tho - i'ts like hunter focus but the opposite order kinda

[autumn kettle]

it's just that now with SS you can overcharm for free as long as the charms you're over-ing are pure utility

[vagrant spruce]

you get the damage up front but are punished for fucking up, instead of needing to play well to be rewarded, i see u

[hollow elm]

I'm good at reading attacks, but not cautious enough to maintain focus well

[vagrant spruce]

lowkey i do miss the weird incentive to order your charms in a specific way to have 1 extra notch left to oc with

i liked that minimal minigame

[autumn kettle]

it's a really fun system, yeah

it's extremely low-stakes and low-complexity

but it was funny

[vagrant spruce]

is it definitionally extra tedium? yeah, but it's funny

exactly

[elfin ravine]

I however have a skill issue I guess
so bracelet doesn't really exist for me

[autumn kettle]

and i appreciate that it was just like

the little ghost is just going

"why no fit"

"have charm space"

[hollow elm]

tbh, bracelet is absurd to use outside of select situations

[autumn kettle]

"SLAM. SLAM. SLAM. SLAM."

dink :)

fixed it :)

[vagrant spruce]

i kinda wish barbed bracelet worked on skills :(

[hollow elm]

I think I'd throw bracelet onto a Reaper build to offset the slow swings, already have range to stay safe

[autumn kettle]

samesies

[brave flower]

shoutout to team cherry for realizing that the people who would be desperate for a combat tool in the noncombat slot would be the people who would be willing to take double damage in exchange for dealing as much damage as humanly possible

[vagrant spruce]

hm, now i want to try a pseudo-glass-soul steel soul run with ||archi barbed braclet||, since ||the multihits do get buffed by it iirc (double checked my notes - the basic multihits scale it, so it goes to 23/3/3 (better than non-archi by +1 damage, lol) but the charged attacks go from 11 to 16 per mini hit (big big upgrade))||

[elfin ravine]

oh it's only on needle damage too?

[vagrant spruce]

needle including the charged attack, but yes

to be clear - it's for the best it doesn't, probably, balance wise. considering the endgame build damage on thread storm is already insane enough, i cannot imagine a world where 25% more damage on that is a good idea

but it would be funny

[hollow elm]

||Shaman Crest:||

[wanton bone]

There’s going to be some sort of horrifying Hunter Crest Barbed Bracelet Pantheon TAS eventually, isn’t there.

[hollow elm]

Thread Storm is definitely a blender though if you mash

[hoary tulip]

volt filament shaman crest threadstorm goes nuts

[vagrant spruce]

yeah, ||shaman + flealia + weavelight + volt filament + channeling thread storm via mashing -> around 250 damage, for context a single nail hit is 21 and a great slash is 42. flealia+weavelight means you can dump that 6 times with a full silk bar||

[autumn kettle]

that shit's the torment nexus fr fr

[vagrant spruce]

oh huh just checked the patch notes from earlier

Fixed Plasmium Phial and Flea Brew sometimes not restoring as intended at benches.
i was wondering what was up with that

you just had to stand up -> sit back down again, but that makes me less confused. i figured i just missed something lol

[vagrant spruce]

glaive master hodir type beat

[brave flower]

its crazy that the more relentless bosses are in this game the less infuriating they are

bc they spend less time repositioning

[thorny bear]

there's a new any% world record, the first 1:03. It's also the first world record run to get ||hit by the 3-damage Silk attack||.

we're definitely getting sub-hour within a month of release

[hoary tulip]

||Which attack does 3||

[elfin ravine]

||that one line attack Grand Mother Silk does IIRC? ||

[vagrant spruce]

||getting caught in the silk tripwires||

[hoary tulip]

Ahh that one

[autumn kettle]

||yeah it's the big triple-slash where she just beats the shit out of you||

(act 3) ||fun fact, lost lace also has a three-mask attack||

[vagrant spruce]

||huh, which one? balls?||

[autumn kettle]

||her vergil-ass combo attack in phase 2||

[vagrant spruce]

ahh

[rose granite]

Yeah, tis part of why there's the debate in games regarding active vs passive hurtboxes. Largely fine in the game I find, but the consequence of the choice is that everything is an attack.

[hot mango]

Does anyone know how to make the ||Bilehaven run back/fight less painful? Or at least ways to put it off until act 3? I’m stranded in act 2 and have run out of things to do apart from Find Fleas, Farm Deliveries/Rosaries for shop items and finding fleas, and wonder where on earth the rest of the craftmetal is||

[hoary tulip]

You have no choice but to make that shit happen I fear, my suggestion is to take the runback nice and slow

[hot mango]

||I also have the Materium but lord knows where to use that||

[hoary tulip]

Focus on showing up with all your resources

[hot mango]

There is literally nothing else I can do?

Anything niche I could’ve missed?

[autumn kettle]

house

[elfin ravine]

||do you have the hidden bench?||

[autumn kettle]

it's lore only

[rose granite]

Do you have the ||anti maggot|| charm yet? It makes things easier I found.

[hot mango]

||which one?||

[elfin ravine]

||and do you have the wreath that protects you from maggots?||

[hot mango]

||the huh?||

[hoary tulip]

Go North

[elfin ravine]

||the one halfway up the zone, instead of all the way at the bellway||

[rose granite]

It won't solve everything, but makes the run back as well as fight more palatable.

Need to start cleaning up the map myself, since I'm quite late in the game now and finally past the point I wanted to show another person.

[hot mango]

I tried Halfway Home and it’s not working, can’t think of anywhere else that would apply

But do you legit have to complete ||Bilehaven to get enough completion % to get to act 3?||

[elfin ravine]

it is required

do you have all three damage upgrades?
do you have your tools upgraded?

[hot mango]

||Then I distantly wish TC would make it not||

[hot mango]

Yes and yes ||apart from the one given by.. Sniffit or the whatever the theif’s name is||

[vagrant spruce]

||not to trigger the start of the act 3 stuff, but you need the boss there for a quest item immediately, so you might as well do it now - you can't put it off for very long||

[elfin ravine]

||if you've done enough wishes, talk to the guy in Bellhart||

||they give you a house there||

[autumn kettle]

yes, and more importantly, as i've said before, the boss guards a mandatory item

[autumn kettle]

||i think you also need to do specifically the beads wish||

[hot mango]

||I have most of the Bilewater map explored, all that’s missing now is Bilehaven. No clue where that charm could be||

||Do you mean halfway up from the bellway or halfway up where the bellway is?||

||And I established Fleatopia so Putrefied Ducts is also filled out||

[autumn kettle]

||it's farther north than bilewater||

[elfin ravine]

||the Wreath is in Ducts||

[elfin ravine]

||if you have any other bench in Bilewater other than the bellway, that's the one ||

||it is behind a series of breakable walls||

[hot mango]

||ah, then I don’t have it. Just the bellway and exhaust organ||

[hot mango]

||oh my god i just found the wreath I never fully explored the room it’s in||

[hot mango]

||I guess I’ll look up where that is then :/||

[elfin ravine]

I can give you a screenshot if you want

at the x is where the passage leading to it starts

[hot mango]

Found it, god it’s so much easier to go from here

[dreamy scarab]

Act 2: I have found the second ||Savage Beastfly||. I am once again blundering to my death from contact damage.

[hot mango]

And they say Witch’s crest is useless ||that means I used it to beat Groal man is it good in enemy gauntlets||

[brave flower]

nobody says that

it asks the exceptionally bold question of "what if thread storm also healed you"

[hot mango]

Fair enough, better say “difficult” rather than “useless”

[brave flower]

actually sorry some people do in fact say that

theyre just wrong

ALSO

[brave flower]

||witch dash attack is bugged rn, try using dash attack with flintslate active||

[torn sky]

...I just encountered a place called 'the mist' that's full of asshole ghosts.

[vagrant spruce]

yeah. it sucks

[rotund magnet]

Wait withch’s crest? I’ve missed one?

Guessing it’s the opposite of architect
Ugh im missing so much

[brave flower]

it isnt

||thats a whole nother crest that you only find much much later||

[elfin ravine]

there are seven crests

one of them can only be gotten in Act 3 though

[tall night]

what the hell im watchngi an early game playthrough in hunters march a few hours in ||and shakra showed up in a cagefight and started beating ass, i have never seen her fight anything how did i miss this?||

[elfin ravine]

||she can sometimes show up in certain arena fights||

[tall night]

is there a trigger, i just got to the citadel i didnt see it a single time

[hot mango]

||wait really? I never noticed||

[elfin ravine]

I have no idea

[brave flower]

yeah riker discovered it yesterday

[elfin ravine]

it only happened twice to me

[hot mango]

Anyway ||anyone know how to find the Snaring Device for the act 3 trigger quest? I’m in Weavenest Alta, and Eva recommended I check out the mossy area to the side, but haven’t found anything. Do I need to check a different Weavenest?||

[brave flower]

it does like 60 damage

[elfin ravine]

||check the top middle room, a hidden passage in the ceiling||

||the Snare Setter should be in there||

[tall night]

cool lore line though alongside the ig rare interaction ||hornet talkinig about a woman who trained her it could be herrah but it could be cool if it was someone else too||

[rotund magnet]

I've got five, so I've missed one

[brave flower]

yeah, witch

[hollow elm]

It's pretty hidden away unless you're really exploring a lot.

[autumn kettle]

what's this from?

because, well

you might see some more

[tall night]

its from the conversation ||" act 1 shakra joins a room cage in hunters march fight talk" || i didnt see it in mine so it could be not rare at alll and i was just unlucky lol

[autumn kettle]

nice

[hollow elm]

I've heard it might be a progression thing

[tall night]

true they had stuff like that in hollow knight like hornet not showinig up at her mothers deathbed if you get herrah before beating hornet 2

[modern fossil]

||this bilewater combat room boss thing makes me want to rip my hair out omg||

[rotund magnet]

||I think that's vesper
she was born to Herrah
Raised by White Queen
Trained by vesper (been queen)
hence the daughter of three queens. Her name comes from Vesper and she kept it since she felt it was something she earned rather than was given||

[tall night]

ok i hadnt seen that but its my fault for looking i suppose 😭

[hot mango]

Got into act 3, and I can squarely say

What the fuck

||VOID IS THE MAIN ANTAGONIST? FROM DOWNTOWN!?||

||AND SOUL MASTERS CAME BACK, EVEN IF IT WAS REALLY BRIEFLY???||

||I expected TC to take like 3 minor bits of HK narrative and throw away the rest, but no Hornet has a sword forged by The Hive and is fighting a God Consumed by Void||

[autumn kettle]

:)

[hot mango]

||And I was really expecting TC showing us the Abandoned Coral Tower to be like “yeah we know we showed that trailer stuff but we had to cut it- here the Needolin text even asks you to remember them. It’s a sad little nod.” BUT NO WE GOIN THERE AND KICKING HIS ASS!!!||

[autumn kettle]

||hopefully we get full areas eventually||

[hot mango]

||Also question- the Tree Ending is if you have the parasite and Bind with Silk at the end of act 2 right? I’ve heard about a Tree Ending||

[brave flower]

that is in fact the ||tree ending||

[hot mango]

||Shush I haven’t gotten to them yet||

||I hope my buddy Second Sentinel is doing okay in act 3||

||I am glad my pal Sherma is doing okay however||

||Also, I thought the hints that the Shrine Folks were snails was just a small nod, I didn’t realize act 3 would be THIS big a map overhaul||

||It’s like Infected Crossroads mixed with X-Parasite in Metroid Dread and infested the whole map||

||And the Abyss is Back? And the Purple Goo Monsters are now Abyss Organisms?||

||And they’re all scary dangerous sans the crawlers?||

[autumn kettle]

yeah

||if you have the parasite and haven't cured it, you get Tree :)||

[hot mango]

||I kinda just wanted the parasite out so I didn’t get the tree ending lol||

[autumn kettle]

||i'm probably gonna do tree ending on my 5h speedrun profile||

||just do that, then swing back and grab tree||

[hot mango]

||Sounds like a big challenge tho, beating Silk without being able to use Silk Skills or Bind. Something to try on a second playthrough||

[autumn kettle]

||also no tools||

||since you don't have the actual crest||

||it's definitely an interesting and sketchy no-hit challenge||

[hot mango]

||I seriously wonder what the requirements to unlock the Silk and Soul Wish are- I had done nearly everything there was to do that didn’t involve paying people and yet it didn’t unlock til I beat Bilehaven||

[hot mango]

||A no hit challenge has the potential to be easier since you can use your tools, like the double damage one, so you can speed through the fight and reduce the opportunities to get hit. With the parasite your damage output is cut down heavy so the fight is longer and leaves more room for error||

[autumn kettle]

||afaik all wishes are completion%, including the paying people ones, and you need a lot to unlock it||

[hot mango]

||I kinda hope TC reduces the completion% requirement by like. 3 or 5% to unlock that Wish. I know they want you to do as much stuff as possible before act 3 makes it harder to do stuff but it still feels like overkill||

[thorny bear]

well. i wouldn't say that. ||Void is, once again, the only force powerful enough to destroy destroy the evil deity instead of just binding it. When you make the decision to introduce void to pharloom, it goes wrong. Silk is the one actively causing it to go haywire throughout the kingdom, which is why it stops when she's gone.||

[hot mango]

||This also makes me wonder how DLC would work- such a significant change to the map state means DLC like Grimm Troupe has potential to be kinda weird depending on when you trigger it||

[hoary tulip]

new playthrough fucko

[thorny bear]

...actually, hold on a minute. In true ending, ||Hornet still absorbs Silk's silk. So are things going to turn out the same way they do in normal ending?||

[hoary tulip]

Act 3 Finale spoilers: ||No, you're absorbing the last dregs of a dead creature, not the entirety of her||

[thorny bear]

fair enough

[thorny bear]

also, in truest ending, ||the TO BE CONTINUED strongly implies to me that DLC would take place after the story. But I'm not sure how that would work, with most of the enemies not being animated by anything anymore.||

[autumn kettle]

||probably whatever needs dlc happening is gonna be responsible for the new enemies||

||maybe a new zone entirely? :cope:||

[hoary tulip]

||that TO BE CONTINUED showed in the true ending of Hollow Knight too||

[thorny bear]

ah, fair

[hot mango]

Hold your horses on that I only just ||left the Abyss… there are a weird number of collectibles in the abyss too- should I have gotten all the possible Hunter’s Journal entries before leaving?||

[elfin ravine]

You can come back later

Did you get the ||Farsight|| down there btw?

[hot mango]

Ye, and ||the egg||

[elfin ravine]

I missed it on my first time, so just checking lmao

[hot mango]

||The Abyss was just such culture shock- TC went as loyal to their Hollow Knight artstyle as possible for it so it felt just so out of place and like a sudden jolt back to Hollow Knight||

[autumn kettle]

it's peak

[hot mango]

||And here I was wondering what the hell the Diving Bell was for||

||Ya know with the completion percentage requirement being so high I doubt it’d be easy, but I wonder if any of the bosses experience void changes if you fight them in act 3 instead of the first two acts||

[elfin ravine]

||They can, yes ||

||Adds and even bosses themselves can become void infused ||

[vagrant spruce]

nope, the only wishes that are % are the ones with unique and relevant rewards

[autumn kettle]

huh, interesting

[vagrant spruce]

aka it gives a tool/mask/etc., or story upgrade

[autumn kettle]

yeah makes sense

[vagrant spruce]

it makes a ton of sense when you consider 57 tools in the game each are 1% lol

[elfin ravine]

Oh damn

I guess tool collection is gonna be a majority of getting Silk and Song then

[hot mango]

||speaking of which, I Wonder where I’m gonna find the rest of the craft metal||

[elfin ravine]

Its kinda all over the place

Do you know how many you're missing?

[hot mango]

I think to get what I’m missing I need like 2 more

No spoilers tho I’m just musing

[south marten]

iirc there's a total of ||eight||? A few are in some super obscure locations, though

Like, "start hitting every wall and ceiling to see if there's a secret passage" obscure

[hot mango]

So far I’ve encountered ||2 workbenches that require craftmetal, Forge Daughter had 2 craftmetal products, and then Seventh Architect had 3, with the Silkshot as a bonus wildcard. So that does sum up to 8- all the craftmetal stuff left to make is at Seventh Architect||

[elfin ravine]

That's all of it, yeah

[hot mango]

||It is kinda disappointing/upsetting tho to know in advance that yeah, the Ants and the Coral Knights are past their prime enough to basically be near extinct. They’re really cool factions.||

||Ah well, time to fight their ghosts||

||No idea where the third one could be tho- I found the coral tower and have a good idea where the ant queen is but the third guy is just in fuck off nowhere||

[south marten]

||The Hive from HK was slowly dying out and is fully dead by the time Silksong happens, the Seer was the last of the living moths before her ascension, and the Mantis Tribe was probably the only group that was actually still thriving by the time of Hollow Knight.||

Oh yeah and I guess the mushrooms exist too

[hot mango]

You know what fair enough

idk, I guess I just expected the Ants to be like “Mantises but a little to the left”

But no, they’re haunted like everyone else

Not a bad thing I just have an ant bias

[south marten]

Hollow Knight and Silksong paint a picture of a world of decay. They're kingdoms that were once great and grand, but then the Cosmic Horror story elements hit them and now everything is dead or dying.

[hoary tulip]

the Ants were much worse off than the Mantises even before the shit hit the fan

[hot mango]

Well whichever way that is I don’t know yet

[hoary tulip]

||They're heavily implied to be military vassals, essentially war-slaves, of the Citadel by the name of the area they live in||

[hot mango]

Oh and one last act 3 thing: ||BELL BABIES!!!!!||

||And Bell Eater was literally a Metroid Zero Mission boss||

[hoary tulip]

even more ouppy

[south marten]

I still haven't gotten to Act 3 yet

Hells, I'm stuck in ||Lace 2|| right now

Considering ||overdosing on lifeblood|| for my next fight once I get back on

As I said in another server, "I don't care that it's a ||dramatic rooftop swordfight|| in the second-most-beautiful arena in the game, I'm gonna do performance-enhancing drugs until she dies"

[hot mango]

For the fight itself, saving ||Lace 2|| for the end of act 2 sounds the most fun due to the fact that acquiring certain niche abilities ||(aka the Parry)|| and employing them during the fight sounds really fun.

For everything else, ||GOD DOES THAT FIGHT REWARD GO A LONG WAY||

[south marten]

I mean, I've basically spent the entirety of Act 2 since I beat Dancers avoiding fighting ||Trobbio||, so at this point there's only, like, two other things I can do

I can fight ||Lace 2||, I can fight ||big angry cone head fucker rematch||, or I can fight ||Forebrothers||

Cleaned out all the shops

Done all but one of the wishes

I think I found all the mask shards and spool fragments available

[hollow elm]

||Tacks really tear up her surprisingly small HP pool.||

[thorny bear]

a lot of late game bosses have the template "very hard to hit but not that much HP", which does get exploited hard by the tools that do automatic damage

[south marten]

I will do performance-enhancing drugs, but I draw the line at not having a fair homoerotic duel with my rival

[green bone]

Man the lack of vertical space the ||Reaper|| bounce gives you gets more and more devastating the more you progress

[thorny bear]

do they not all bounce the same height?

[green bone]

Hunter makes you jump way higher from what I saw

[thorny bear]

well that's because hunter makes you move down onto something when you bounce off it, while reaper lets you be a bit above something you bounce off of. every platforming section in the game is calibrated around your bounce taking you a certain distance above the hitbox.

[green bone]

yeah for platforming Reaper is great it suffers on boss hitboxes tho

[hollow elm]

Reaper makes up for it with a really big swing hitbox, though is a problem if trying to gain height

[hoary tulip]

||Reaper|| doesn't lose verticality, a point-blank ||Reaper|| pogo sends you the same distance as a Hunter pogo; however, ||Reaper|| can hit WAY further above the target and get a shallow bounce as a result

[green bone]

Yeah I think that might be the cause

A lot of times where I downwarda attack then still take dmg from collision

[torn sky]

I found a boss in the Mist. Ima beat them up because I'm sick of fighting the Last Judge.

[thorny bear]

boy have I got news for you

[torn sky]

...what?

[thorny bear]

if you want to know that boss's place in the game structure, ||Phantom is the alternative to Last Judge. If you fight one you don't need to fight the other. aiui Phantom is generally considered a bit more difficult.||

[torn sky]

Oh

I thought I'd just wandered off into an optional area.

[autumn kettle]

i've seen the opposite, actually

[thorny bear]

yeah, it's very off the beaten path

[autumn kettle]

||phantom's considered a lot easier than judge, at least from what i've seen on other servers and in twitch streams||

[thorny bear]

oh, I could be mistaken

[autumn kettle]

it mostly matches up with my experience, they're a bit of a wet blanket imo

[torn sky]

Okay, got them to their second phase on the second try. That's not too bad.

Ooof, third phase got me. Didn't expect the ||Fucking five orbital lasers in a row||

Okay, yeah. This isn't easy but I think I can do it.

[hollow elm]

One of the fights I actively picked Hunter for

[rose granite]

Yes, ||I don't know Hunter's March, but later on in The Forum you can get her to help you if you find all her map locations firs and subsequently complete her quest. Subsequently after completing her quest, you can go to outside Bellhome where you fought Moorwing, and there'll be a pole with a ring on it; hit it and you can summon her for a duel.||

[green bone]

ah hell nah

||that sure was the bad ending huh||

[hidden flame]

||Which ending?||

[green bone]

||the one where Granny Silk explodes and the last image is a black figure of Hornet covered in Silk||

[hidden flame]

Ah yup

||Do you want the name??||

[green bone]

yeah sure

[hidden flame]

||Weaver Queen||

||There is technically a worse one||

[green bone]

Oh yeah I got the achievement

[hidden flame]

Random gigalategame spoiler, only read if you have all achievements

||Is it possible to trigger Act 3 with the parasite on board?||

[torn sky]

||Phantom|| Beaten!

[granite hedge]

||I don't think so, as the parasite is part of a quest, and to get to act 3, you have to beat every quest||

||So I assume the soul snare quest doesn't trigger unless you complete it||

[green bone]

||God Groal is killing my ass|| Act 2 spoilers

also geniunely worst runback ever

[vernal stone]

You can cheese it reasonably hard by ||embracing the worms and jumping into either bottom corner where virtually none of his attacks reach||

[green bone]

Just nuked them

[green bone]

||That sure is a zone that loops on itself huh|| Act 2 spoilers

[fervent sand]

Oh ||the mist||?

[green bone]

yeh

[fervent sand]

There is a method of getting through that loopy area

[torn sky]

If you want a hint, I figured out how to get through there.

[hot mango]

||Tacks? Actually speaking of act 2, is there any significant stuff that gets locked out when going to act 3? I’m in act 3 rn so like.,. May as well know||

[rose granite]

This video covers most of it https://youtu.be/f39xCFUjCs8?si=hrg-6414AV8LF3E2

||The Garmond fight I think you can lock yourself out of earlier than the transition to Act 3, but I am still a little miffed to have missed the Shakra one.||

[hot mango]

||THERE’S A SHAKRA FIGHT!? FUCK!||

[rose granite]

Yup, video shows where it's at and how to get access to it.

[hot mango]

Maybe I shoulda duped my save file then -_-

[rose granite]

Feel ya. I'm just chalking it up to something I'll experience in a second playthrough potentially.

[hot mango]

I did go to act 3 because I was just kinda like “if I miss anything then that’s part of the blind experience :D” but yeah this specifically makes me kinda miffed

[vernal stone]

Apparently when you beat the game (act 3 version?) has a built in save game restore/copy system to backup points it has automatically kept around various milestones

I haven't got there myself but two of my friends mentioned it

[hot mango]

Oh really? That sounds lovely, and also like a pain in the ass to make as a QoL thing.

Props to TC about that :D

[vernal stone]

I'd guess it just marks and holds onto the autosaves it makes when you do specific things but savegames are a pain in the ass generally speaking

[hot mango]

||Also, I will say I did not expect TC to give “Super Dash but Vertical” for the act 3 mobility move||

|| Nor for the reveal trailer music to pop up. But like- hype squad!||

||I really just didn’t expect act 3 to be this- a more overt story, a new threat of the Abyss, a massive mobility upgrade, a full map overhaul! It’s just so much more than I ever could’ve expected.||

|| also crazy strong void enemies they are really dangerous jeez||

[hot mango]

Why do they keep doing that

[dreamy scarab]

it's enrichment in hornet's enclosure

[hot mango]

||There’s no shell shard magnet either so you can’t really counter that in any way||

[green bone]

Also late Act 2 spoilers || Why do they make you get the Apostasy Key, unlock 5 meters of the Slab and then ask you for the Heresy one||

[hot mango]

||I really thought that “well we can’t have any more map open up because I found all the bellways, the achievement said so” and then boom- abyss, secret ant area, probably the lightning zone, all undiscovered||

[hot mango]

||Oh wait I think I can guess- if you somehow never got captured into the slab you could’ve gotten it in Putrefied Ducts, then walked into the Slab and immediately go to that Apostasy Key door||

|| Since that door isn’t gated behind any other keys if you go from the entrance I think||

||So they want you to explore the prison first||

[green bone]

|| Yeah I never got captured||

[hot mango]

Oh and one more act 3 thing, ||it’s really tragic that Bonebottom is just. Completely destroyed. Like it gets a little better in act 1, but then it just keeps getting worse as more Pilgrims leave or die and the place gets wrecked||

[hot mango]

||Ah, so you did need a key to get to that Apostate door I guess. Then I suppose I misrecalled||

||Either that or I misunderstood you. Anyhow if I’m correct then the intention is that most people will get captured, get most of the keys while breaking out, and then leave to get the Apostate Key later||

[hot mango]

Hey if that’s the case ||does entering The Citadel using Phantom’s entrance prompt a unique Act 2 trigger cutscene||

[burnt axle]

I think you can do that earlier. On the save slot selection, you have a little circling arrow, that does exactly this

[elfin ravine]

||There's a secret passage in the area you can access with the Apostate's key that leads you further into the prison where you can find the other two keys ||

It's a bit of a weird area if you need to get in through the front

[hot mango]

||Breaking into Prison should be about as hard as breaking out of Prison||

[brave flower]

btw was the music that played during the arena right after hornet gets her cloak and needle back in the slab the original hornet boss theme from hollow knight?

[hoary tulip]

no

[brave flower]

oh

[hoary tulip]

but it uses the motif

[south marten]

I got ||Slabbed|| before I ever even found the ||Ducts||, but my girlfriend told me that the ||Apostate Key works on the Heretic locks too||

[brave flower]

that moment was incredible btw

undercut a little by the fact that that arena killed me more times than sister splinter, but still fantastic

[green bone]

It doesnt

Also havent found the ||Ducts|| yet

[south marten]

There's at least two other alternatives to get around the ||Last Judge||, actually! ||Getting Slabbed will get you into the Citadel through the Choral Chambers, and going throught this Wisp Woods or whatever it's called will get you to the Underworks||

[south marten]

Wait then how did you get the key?

[green bone]

|| From above Bilewater||

[south marten]

Yeah that's the ||Ducts||

[hot mango]

||Wait how? Isn’t the way into the Choral Chambers locked from the other side?||

||Also do the alt paths into Choral Chambers trigger unique act 2 start cutscenes?||

[south marten]

I don't think so? Admittedly, I beat ||Last Judge|| and went in that way, so I'm not sure

[hot mango]

Something to look up at the end I suppose

||Also, big fan of the Second Sentinel Reserve Bind tool. Has been very useful when running Witch and I assume it will also be useful for Beast||

[south marten]

Hmmm

[green bone]

Oh I guess its a really small sectioned off zone then

[south marten]

Actually you might not be able to do the ||Wisps|| without ||double jump||, so maybe that doesn't work either

[hot mango]

The what?

[south marten]

There's an alternative path into ||The Citadel via the Underworks|| that doesn't go through any bosses

[hot mango]

||That sounds like a fourth possible entrance jeez||

[south marten]

Mhm

[south marten]

That's the one I mentioned here

[hot mango]

||From what I’ve experienced I think most of the pathways between act 1 and act 2 areas need to be opened up from the Act 2 side, but Phantom is the only one that sounds plausible to do without Needle Grapple or Double Jump||

||Also Wisp Woods? That’s different from the Mists?||

[south marten]

I'm not entirely sure if it needs ||wings||

I'll check once I get on the game

[south marten]

Yeh

[hot mango]

||Oh god is that the area with the third memory for act 3? Did I go through all of act 2 without knowing that exists? God dammit no wonder getting the necessary completion % to trigger the act 3 wish was so hard||

[south marten]

||Mists goes to Exhaust Organ goes to Grand Bellway, Wisp Woods goes directly to Underworks||

[south marten]

No idea! Still stuck on the endgame of Act 2!

[hot mango]

||Well I was gonna gun for the left side of the map when I logged back in because that has the most points of interest, but screw that I wanna find those Wisp Woods||

[hot mango]

Well you found it in act 2 so clearly I missed it

[south marten]

It's between ||Greymoor and the Underworks||

[hot mango]

I really thought I found all the areas that I could find in act 2 goddamn this game is dense

[hot mango]

|| Couldn’t find an Underworks entrance in so perhaps I’ll have an easier time checking Greymoor for an entrance||

[south marten]

It's one-way from below

Or, well, you can only open it from below

[elfin ravine]

you have to come in from below, yeah

[hot mango]

Ah well, the act 3 thing will at least make it easier to find

[thorny bear]

You definitely do not need to ||beat every quest. However, having Twisted Bud when you defeat Silk automatically causes that ending; you have no opportunity to play needolin and send her to the abyss.||

[rose granite]

One of the funnier design facets of the game is that it felt like they kept on having sources of shards next to things that will destroy said shards .

[elfin ravine]

Real

[south marten]

I have terrible news

I was, in fact, spreading misinformation about the ||Wisp Thicket||

Just went and checked, you do need the ||Faydown Cloak|| to get in

[dreamy scarab]

I was doing an act 2 wish to collect enemy drops (||Fine Pins||), but most of the particular enemy were in areas with spikes. Very annoying to try and kill a thing somewhere safe, only for the game's physics to hurl the item uncontrollably to the side, off a platform, onto spikes.

[south marten]

I have beaten ||The Forebrothers||

This is bad news, actually

Because now I am down to two things I can do instead of three

I also found something that's, like

Clearly not something I can use yet

But will be able to use

[hot mango]

Man I am no closer to figuring out what that thing does

[rotund magnet]

Did you find the secret bench?

[green bone]

Yes

[hot mango]

Anyway as a nonsequiter I feel like you could make a whole academic essay about the Theological and Philosophical implications of the [secret act 2 lore spoilers] ||First Sinner’s Heresy||

[rotund magnet]

I got spoilered for that one and thank goodness I did

[hot mango]

There are 3 types of Hornet Hunter’s Journal Entries:

• “I wish I could have this as a pet”
• “I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU!”
• “I miss Hallownest, Lace, I miss it a lot, I’ll be back-“

[rotund magnet]

It’s fun how she clearly likes fluffy bugs

[green bone]

Daaawww

[rotund magnet]

Team cherry makes great npcs

[inland wave]

Another boon of Hornet bein able to talk

[hot mango]

Like think about it like this- ||for us, it seems kinda underwhelming because we know what evolution is, this isn’t that surprising. But to them, you have to understand- those Mini Weavers, they’re still around, still a thriving species that Pharloom subtly accommodates for. Did the Citadel know of the Heresy? Did they accommodate for the Vermin for that purpose?||

||Moreover, what really made the Weavers special compared to their unevolved kin? Were they upset they were not really purely divine? Or that they were just borrowing Silk’s power? Did Pharloom really need to recollect more Weavers if Silk could just make more? Did the Weavers really have a right to let Pharloom become what it was?||

||Hell- what even is a Weaver in that case? Do they actually have special powers or are they just knowledgeable? Why is them being evolved from lesser bugs a Heresy? Is that an uncommon belief? Did the Weavers think themselves as deserving of superiority? Is this a Manifest Destiny situation? Was First Sinner an abolitionist?||

[elfin ravine]

||I believe the Weavers were positioned as innately superior or divine, as daughters of Mother Silk||
||but they are just bugs Silk chose to uplift with her powers, they aren't special other than that||

[hot mango]

||That also begs the question- why were they ascended? And could Silk not have natural children? Is that why she had the haunting- why she made Lace?||

[south marten]

I love that Hornet loves fluffy things.

I feel like, if she didn't want to figure out what's going on in Pharloom, she'd be content to stay with the fleas

[inland wave]

Fluffy things and slapping rude people, she has my whole heart

[green bone]

Late Act 2 spoilers- Feeling stuck because i have the gut instinct I still dont have the stuff needed not to get the ||Weaver Queen|| ending but I have looked everywhere I thought of

[hot mango]

||oh yeah you do not have all the items required. Just know that the alt ending stuff will be obvious when you get it, there will be no ambiguity||

||Have you revisited the towns?||

[green bone]

I have constantly, and also just none

did all the wishes available too

Is there anything in ||The Mist|| that's required?

[hot mango]

There’s what’s past ||The Mist,|| but I don’t think the area itself has anything

||The Wish won’t be on a Wish Wall if it helps||

Wait how many tools do you have? Those contribute to completion %

[hot mango]

Welp. That’s more than I have. I don’t even have ||the tacks||

I mean you still have a Simple Key left so you’re missing that

So you gotta open up a Simple Lock somewhere- depending on where that is that might be what you need

[brave flower]

oh ur missing ||the 12th architect's tools||

[hot mango]

Where do you even find the ||Tacks?||

[brave flower]

||sinners road||

[hot mango]

That place keeps having exactly what I’m missing no matter how many times I visit and it pisses me off

[green bone]

I dont remember anywhere to use it

[elfin ravine]

the four Key door locations are
||up left from Bone Bottom, to the Wormways||
||the deeper parts of Deep Docks||
||freeing the Green Prince in Sinner's Road||
||and the room with the Rosary Cannon in High Halls||

[hot mango]

You definitely have at least 2 of those

[green bone]

||been to Wormways, freed Green Prince, got the Cannon||

[hot mango]

That’ll do it then

I think ||the last one is a required trigger||

[green bone]

|| Bypassed the need for the key in DDocks with the Far Field secret entrance ||

[elfin ravine]

oh huh

didn't think you could get in from that side

[hot mango]

That doesn’t unlock the whole area tho, right?

[hot mango]

Yeah I thought it was a one way

Well you can’t use the key for anything else so may as well try it

[green bone]

my map

[elfin ravine]

huh, I guess you can then

fascinating

[hot mango]

There’s still a little bit that isn’t filled out but it’d be stupid if that was required

Idk maybe the game just arbitrarily checks if the door is open or not, I’d just go down and unlock it to be on the safe side

[elfin ravine]

also in case you do have the conditions already, talk with the Caretaker in the Songclave regularly

[hollow elm]

(Act 2 start) ||I know Phantom's route cuts out the door opening part, and you have to go deeper inside to trigger it.||

[green bone]

Ok I found the issue

|| I need to go Flea collecting ||

[elfin ravine]

ah, yeah

[green bone]

|| I wish they atleast had a counter of how many you found besides the initial 6 ||

[rose granite]

||There's eventually a way to unlock a tracker for the ones you don't have, but ironically it too is hidden away and quite late game IIRC.||

[south marten]

It's behind getting the ||caravan to its final destination||

Which means ||getting enough fleas for the caravan to move on from the Steps|| and ||finding the Pale Lake||

[burnt axle]

would you have any tips for Act 3 || The Red ant dancer boss || ?

[brave flower]

you can kill her in like 30 seconds via toolspam iirc

[modern fossil]

Alright ending 1 get! ||Weaver Queen ending is neat now I just need to find the rest lol||

[autumn kettle]

my solution was reaper crest and just learning the moveset well, but

silk parry works very well

or you could cheese the fight entirely with architect, like gravel said

[hot mango]

No it isn’t

[brave flower]

architect pollip pouch buzzsaw cogfly tacks

[hot mango]

It’s finding a ||really hidden Flea in the Putrefied Ducts, through a Barnacle platforming challenge. From there you find the Warrior Flea, and she can give you advice on where to find the rest of the fleas||

||From there you pay her to give you flea locations. I was able to do that when the Caravan was camped out at Last Judge’s arena||

[south marten]

Yeah and ||she doesn't sell you her shit until she joins the caravan in Fleatopia||

Really??

[hot mango]

Yeah

[south marten]

Huh

[hot mango]

||You probably just found her around when you discovered the lake, and as such she wouldn’t sell you anything until you triggered the move||

Which makes sense they’re very close together

[south marten]

Nah, I didn't even go looking until ||Mooshka sent me looking||

[autumn kettle]

||wait, mooshka can give you hints that she exists?||

||wack, i just found her naturally||

[south marten]

Girlfriend lies to me about game mechanics once again

[autumn kettle]

assumed that you never got any hints

[south marten]

Yeah if you talk to him in ||Fleatopia|| he says something like ||"I heard of a warrior flea somewhere above us"||

I'm gonna be so upset if something bad happens to them in Act 3

I keep hearing vague things about shit being fucky in Act 3

[rose granite]

Yeah, turns out that this was a gacha game all along.

I've already spent $2000 to try to unlock Hollow Knight.

[burnt axle]

I mean, it's a 5-Vessels Unit, after all. I only got 20 Zotes, on my side /jk

[south marten]

Currently fighting ||god|| with barbed bracelet on

[light star]

i didn't get shit all i got was 200 fucking squirmms

[south marten]

This is definitely the proper way to do this

[light star]

i keep rolling and all i keep getting are squirmms

i hate gacha games silksong worst game

[fervent sand]

Found a thing, it might be for act 3? ||A diving bell down in deep dives after exploring deeper||

[hot mango]

One thing I will praise about Silksong- even the easy boss fights are still tense, and that’s great

In Hollow Knight fighting 2 Gruz Mothers is trivial, and you don’t really feel tense or worried.

Meanwhile in Silksong Moss Mother isn’t really dangerous, but she still feels like a tense boss you have to pay attention to and can’t be overly aggressive with- and even if you do go brainless mode to make it easy you’ll probably end the fight with only 1 or 2 masks left

[rotund magnet]

I think thats all I can do for act 2

wonder what act 3 has in store

[hot mango]

There’s genuinely so much more that I left behind in act 2 than I realized

||The Allsight’s Completion Percentager is putting so much empty space in my inventory and Wisp Thicket, while a mini area, has like 3 major items in it||

||It is also… so much harder to explore the map now. It’s kinda unpleasant tbh, the Voidquakes feel like “hurry up” buttons, the Void enemies are genuinely pretty difficult to deal with, the lower lighting makes everywhere feel much more claustrophobic and gloomy, and the ruins + void silk everywhere just makes everything feel somber rather than wondrous||

||I hope acquiring the Everbloom isn’t a fast track to the end and instead makes dealing with Void enemies easier||

||I do think TC’s way of making the void enemies was pretty clever- being more tanky and slightly faster would’ve been enough, but they added the void drain to silk and made it so they had enemy androgynous attacks that they can randomly come equipped with. Just wish they didn’t deal double damage, the everything else feels like more than enough of a difficulty spike||

[south marten]

I made it to Act 3

Everything is

So much worse than I expected

@light star can confirm, I saw ||the trap|| and immediately went "oh. oh no. that's not good."

[light star]

i heard her realize the foolishness of bug in real time

[south marten]

||WELCOME TO SILKSONG, EVERYTHING DEALS 2 MASKS OF DAMAGE SHITHEAD||

-Team Cherry, probably

They're Australians, that's how they talk I'm sure

[inland wave]

||I don't know why they're so precious with Silk, it's truly just For Better Players in act 3, I was already stingy with using silk skills before act 3. Doesn't help that Everything Uses It. Would be like if Knight couldn't Void Dash without burning soul||

[brave flower]

the reason is that thread storm does approximately 11640 damage per second

[inland wave]

That sounds like an easier thing to balance

[south marten]

Team Cherry stole my son

[light star]

||odysseus on her way to see her son and wife (bell beast and lace||

[fathom shadow]

||Rosary Cannon|| is so damn fun to use. But I am too broke to use it constantly

[dreamy scarab]

Act 1/act 2 area: is there a strategy to wandering through ||The Mists|| or do I just keep changing screens until I get somewhere? ||I'm not imagining that the layout is randomized, am I?||

[torn sky]

Do you want a clue or a complete answer?

[hollow elm]

(Act 2) I thought ||Mount Fay|| would be taller, and I guess ||Liquid Laquer delivery|| covers that.

[torn sky]

Hint: || You were given a tool to communicate with things about you and there's a bug species that the game makes a big deal about being mystical. Maybe you can use it with some locals.||
Answer: || Play the Needlin for the Moths floating about. They'll show you the way to the next area each time. ||

[dreamy scarab]

Hint is perfect! I had realized something was up there (if it's what I think it is), but wouldn't have put that together

[rotund magnet]

I figured out the first half of the mist puzzle then was puzzling out load and my brother got the second, which was somewhat embarassing

[rose granite]

Got two silk spools and memory lockets left to find, so time to figure out which ones I didn't manage to get that I haven't marked down.

Will prolly take less time than one may think.

Think I know where at least one spool fragment is, which does mean that the other is yet to be discovered.

[rotund magnet]

I think the lockets I have left are the ones you need to buy, which I haven't really been bothering with since I mostly use reaper

[hot mango]

Question - for the purposes of maximizing duration, what order of operations should I take when activating these abilities?

• Beast Crest Bind
• Flea Brew
• Flintslate Whetstone

If Pollip Heart changes the calculations then factor that in too

[hot mango]

||I feel like the Void Enemies would be perfectly balanced if they didn’t deal 2 masks of damage. Because like now nothing deals 1 mask so shit just kinda sucks now||

[south marten]

Nah I'm fine with it

Like, I beat ||Grand Mother Silk|| with Barbed Bracelet on, I'm having fun being silly

[hot mango]

||I still feel like the double mask damage is excessive for regular exploration||

[south marten]

Just remember that a lot of hazards used to deal double damage on release and got changed down to 1 in patch 1

:)

[hot mango]

||yeah I hope they do that||

||I’m fine with a difficulty spike but this is more like a QoL nerf than a difficulty spike||

[autumn kettle]

they should make some hazards deal 3 masks

[vagrant spruce]

there's like, 2 that used to do it and it was likely changed bc they were weird and inconsistent not because they were actually that crazy OP

[south marten]

"I really want a mod for Silksong to make everything not deal 2 masks of damage"
"The monkey's paw curls, everything now does 3 masks of damage"

[autumn kettle]

i'm thinking very specifically ||the void tendrils||

[vagrant spruce]

(since like, lava and traps are unchanged - it's just the 'things that look like spike pits' now universally deal 1)

[rose granite]

That was indeed one of the first mods made for the game

[autumn kettle]

both versions, even

[rose granite]

Not the best mod, because that's the double savage beastflies

[hot mango]

That makes sense and I’d be fine with that.

[vagrant spruce]

end act 3 spoilers ||I literally did not fall into those until after getting the everblossom. like i never did on the way down or up the normal route, and only finally did when i just.. jumped into the lost lace arena without hitting the dive button, and just sat there chilling in the water void. idk why but i did not expect it to actually prevent void damage, i expected it to only let me void sea dive for the boss fight||

[brave flower]

this exists

[hot mango]

But like. If everything does 2 masks of damage, then that’s not an interesting difficulty increase, it’s just moving the goalpost. It stops being a meaningful difficulty tool.

[south marten]

Amazing

[autumn kettle]

||yeah, it's a genuine and serious suggestion mostly because they're so nonthreatening from a platforming standpoint||

||because all it does is make the void look scarier, without affecting anything much||

[vagrant spruce]

act 3 spoilers - yeah, ||I thought the voided enemies were interesting in concept but i wasn't really a fan of the full 2 damage thing - i don't think it added anything interesting, and it didn't feel like it made things harder in a fun way. i liked the new attacks they get 10x more. i think it wasn't like a bad thing for them to add, but i do wish they'd just focused more on the void attacks and made those hit for 2, not the random normals. especially when the void stronger guys don't even deal more damage now, i think (like voided grand reeds)||

[hoary tulip]

||Voided enemies have maybe the strangest and most weirdly pliant mechanic in the game in that you can kinda just say "well I don't like this" and kill Void Masses until they're largely gone||

||Like yeah, you'll occasionally still get voided enemies here and there, but destroying the Void Masses throughout the game just kinda banishes the otherwise deeply upsetting incidences of "well there's like eight damn dudes in this room and they all spawned Voided so this is going to be absolutely terrible"||

[vagrant spruce]

i tested it - measuring from time of input to time the effect ends, rather than actual duration of the effects themselves. beast crest lasts the shortest by far, like ~5s or something. flintslate lasts like ~8, flea brew lasts like ~10. so the order is probably flea, flint, beast - but in practice, i wouldn't recommend trying to use all 3, i would use one of them + beast bind likely

[autumn kettle]

beast crest is 6s iirc

[vagrant spruce]

ok, that's what my testing gave, i just wasn't sure about the number lol

(so i rounded down)

[autumn kettle]

gotcha

[safe yew]

novel tactic for a boss accessible in act 2 (known for nasty runback): ||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F46VZOS7tcU if you employ wanderer's crest and let groal the great eat you, you can often land enough hits from inside that you can bind thereafter and experience a net mask gain; furthermore, comments suggest this removes maggot infestation too||

[autumn kettle]

oh, you can damage him while zucced?

i've never been vored by him

so i didn't realize

[vagrant spruce]

beast seems to be a 30-50% attack speed buff, but we'll treat that as an ~80% attack speed buff considering you hit 2x per hit, and it's around a 25% damage increase otherwise. flintslate is a 50% damage increase, additive. flea brew has an attack speed buff, but it does not seem to stack with beast bind attack speed buff

i'm testing and i'm not noticing a difference, at least, from when both are active -> when ripper mode runs out. or even with flea -> after activating ripper

[autumn kettle]

huh, interesting

so it'd be purely for movement with no other benefit

and as such, effectively no benefit

that's good to know

[vagrant spruce]

yes, and you wouldn't be moving here

yea

[hoary tulip]

this guy never fails to have the scummiest, most annoying stagger in the game

[autumn kettle]

oh my god the music cuts out while you're being vored?

that's so fucking funny

[vagrant spruce]

act 3 area spoilers, sorry, i'm too lazy to move from where my guy is parked

but timing comparison for beast bind/fleabrew (flint is irrelevant for speed, so not involved here)

keeping beat in my head, it sure seems the same

[umbral canyon]

act 3: whoo, that's ||carmellita finally done. does lost verdania actually have a map or is it one of those pseudo-areas like the fog?||

[autumn kettle]

it has a map

[vagrant spruce]

also pollip has no bearing at all, speed or timing wise, on this but it's also worse damage than normal flintslate in these situations

[hot mango]

Whoever said the only collectible in ||Fay Mountain|| was the Mask Shard, how dare you lie to me

[vagrant spruce]

flint+pollip is honestly just a downgrade generally i think

[hot mango]

That’s unfortunate, Pollip shouldn’t ever be a downgrade

Just logically speaking

[umbral canyon]

btw, how many ugrades do you actually need for ||eva's final evolution? I have every crest save one and only one memory slot locked across all of them||

[vagrant spruce]

||you need 15, according to google, but i couldn't get it on mine until i had 3 slots left - i upgraded every crest but witch and i needed to get + upgrade witch before she would talk to me||

[umbral canyon]

oh, i must be like one off then, ty

[vagrant spruce]

||so you may also need to spend an upgrade on every crest, but i'm not sure. witch has 3 locked slots by default i think, so it didn't make sense otherwise||

[vagrant spruce]

pollip doesn't simply add poison to tools, it also changes the behavior and effects for some

like purple drank becoming effectively useless as temp hp unless you're trying to 'parry' with it, or something

[hot mango]

Purple Drank? ||The Flea Brew or the Plasmium Injector?||

[vagrant spruce]

latter

[umbral canyon]

actually, what does it do for ||flea brew|| anyway

[autumn kettle]

stinky

[vagrant spruce]

poison defenders crest

also huh, i thougth it was more damage than it actually is - i thought it was 3x4 but it's actually 3x3, 9 not 12

still very solid, but i'ts very much a "use this on light tools that you'll use to keep poison active", and/or a generic minor damage buff if you're using normal tools, but it's not useful for flintslate (intentional balance thing, probably), plasmium, or flea brew (no downside for flea brew, just useless, downsides for other 2)

[hollow elm]

Mmm, I'll feel less (bad) about leaving it out of burst damage configs then.

[vagrant spruce]

for flintslate - normally it's +50% damage up front, but pollip makes it +30% damage and then gives you the 3 ticks for 9 total. this isn't awful, but it's actually only 4 more damage (20% of base - goes from 150% to 175%, roughly) over a normal flintslate

and if you hit before the poison ticks 3x (which should be trivially doable considering, uh, you have a base swing speed of 0.5s per swing (aka 2 per second)), you just lost damage from re-applying the poison for no additional gain

[hot mango]

||also it affects multiple platforming enemies like the needle targets and I assume by consequence the Flying Muckroaches, which is just a strange decision||

[vagrant spruce]

actual damage numbers - base is 21. flintslate is 32, poison flintslate is 27/3/3/3

(I believe it's 30%, since 1.3*21 is 27.3 and I know damage numbers are rounded, but i'm testing at max tool upgrades - so it could be something different scaling on tool upgrade. no clue, i don't have a debug mod only a damage numbers mod)

[hot mango]

So if you’re doing fewer hits it’s better, but also why would you do that with Flintslate specifically?

I think for like. A one hit blade enchant type of tool that’d be reasonable

[vagrant spruce]

never - so it's just bad, poison flintslate is basically always worse than non-poison flintslate

[hollow elm]

I guess Reaper would get the most from that, but that also means using less of Flintslate's duration.

[hot mango]

It’s just Glowing Womb + Defender’s Crest again dangit

[vagrant spruce]

its useful and in fact very good on things like straight pins or triple pins, because they have a base damage of ~10-20 (depending on where you are and all that), and the poison is a significant amount of their damage

plus you won't be resetting the timer

[hot mango]

I wonder how they interact with Pimpillo

[vagrant spruce]

adds poison (on both direct hit & just caught in the explosion without a direct hit, i believe), does not nerf base explosion damage

so just ~+17% damage there, i guess, since you're not resetting that poison cd probably

[hot mango]

So essentially don’t use Pollip Heart on buffs, gotcha

[hollow elm]

A bit overkill unless you're hitting something really tanky.

[hot mango]

Like a boss?

||or a void enemy >:(||

[vagrant spruce]

dunno. pimpillo is 51 damage at tool 4, a grand reed has 130 hp

so overkill on like small things but that's around 250% nail 4 damage - aka if it takes more than 3 swings to kill, a grenade will not kill it

[hot mango]

Using Pimpillo on just singular small enemies isn’t something you do anyhow

[hollow elm]

Seems to fit wierdly in damage/capacity ratio

[vagrant spruce]

the tactical use is more relevant than the damage - it honestly won't be overkill vs. anything you can practically land it on

[hot mango]

As you only get like 6 uses per refill tops (I think it’s 6)

[vagrant spruce]

(you're not throwing grenades at a single craw, for example)

[hollow elm]

6 max yea

[hot mango]

I do like how even though there are tools with objectively the highest single target damage, all of them have strengths that make them worth considering- there really aren’t any useless tools afaik

[vagrant spruce]

so its solid as a small aoe or to lob from a decent range, and that's what its there for. the only tool that really puts up insane numbers is the delver drill on stunned/slow recovering enemies

(and even then - it's not that much more than a charged needle slash, honestly)

[hot mango]

Charged Slash is really hard to land in my exp

[fathom willow]

My only consideration for Pimpillo was how annoying the enemy is to otherwise hit

[hollow elm]

Pimpillo is easy to land compared to it's damage output, though I still prefer wrangling Voltvessel spear for max output.

[hot mango]

Regardless of crest

[autumn kettle]

objectively useless tool: all of them according to half the playerbase

[vagrant spruce]

actually, voltvessels are also cracked out damage and they're a lot easier to land. still around 350% max needle damage, charged slash is 200%

[vagrant spruce]

i have not had any issues landing it on any of the crests, tbh - and i'ts VERY good and worth learning how to use as well

it's minimum 200% nail damage in a larger range, and some crests give it even more range (shaman, witch), really good knockback (reaper), or just more damage (archi)

[south marten]

Jumping in the goop and throwing bombs and drone strikes at him also works

[hollow elm]

Witch Crest charged gets funky due to knockback, Wanderer's multihit has a lot of knockback/recoil.

[vagrant spruce]

(idk wanderer, i don't use it personally and i didn't like methodically test this)

[hollow elm]

I think Wanderer has the least usable one becaues you can cram 2 swings in aprox the same time, though I'd consider it on downed/large enemies.

[vagrant spruce]

true, hadn't thought about that for wanderer

[hot mango]

Yeah, it’s just got a learning curve since, on controller, holding down the attack button to charge makes moving become awkward

[vagrant spruce]

ahhh i bet

[hot mango]

It’s gotten me hit more than a few times

[vagrant spruce]

beast is probalby the weirdest charged attack, imo - since it leaps forward like the beast dash/pogos

but it's also slightly better (+25%) damage than an normal charged slash, so hey

[hoary tulip]

does it jump on hit or nah

[hot mango]

I don’t recall so

[vagrant spruce]

beast charged and dash both have a little jump before the hit, yeah

[hoary tulip]

no like, after the hit

do you jump back

[autumn kettle]

wait fr?

i wasn't aware of that one!

[vagrant spruce]

yeah - 52 vs 42 topple

[autumn kettle]

beastchads winning yet again

[hot mango]

Yeah iirc I don’t think so

[hoary tulip]

I kinda dismissed Beast during my playthrough because of weird ass pogo and weird ass bind

[vagrant spruce]

(aka, +25% on the base damage, and then doubled by the normal great slash thing)

[autumn kettle]

i keep saying beast is good!!

[hot mango]

I could see the potential but only for speedrunners

[autumn kettle]

and now the math backs me up

[fathom willow]

Beast takes some time to get used to, but I found it hard to switch to anything else after getting used to it

[hot mango]

Beast probably has the highest skill ceiling of all the crests despite it’s skill floor not being that much different to the other crests

[vagrant spruce]

it actually has insane damage output and it's not even close to any other crest, including architect charged attack and shaman pale nails. the only thing that beats it is thread storm channeled shaman crest and that's super hard to land

[fathom willow]

The huge range on the pogo is so good in a lot of situations

[hollow elm]

Beast has a high ceiling, but ough it's asking a lot

[vagrant spruce]

the bind has cool vfx and all but it's also just straight up a 250% damage increase - you go from 21 per nail hit to 52 (!) lmao

[fathom willow]

Lord

I didn't know it was that big lol

[vagrant spruce]

just tested to confirm, nope, no jump back. you just end realy close to them LOL

[hoary tulip]

dam

[vagrant spruce]

yeah, same - i had no clue until i tested

[hot mango]

If you go full berserker and just Bind liberally (like missing one or no masks of HP liberally), you can tank a lot of damage, gain silk fast, and just deal a bunch more damage too

Harder to do on double damage bosses but for more basic ones it’s a valid strat

[vagrant spruce]

dash attack DOES pogo you straight up, though, which is interesting

[hoary tulip]

that doesn't surprise me since every crest needs to fulfill the same base requirement for vertical pogo jumps

[vagrant spruce]

well - i did not know the DASH pogos you straight up

bc that's not helpful at all in the pogo parkours lol

[hoary tulip]

oh wait, fucking

can't read

[vagrant spruce]

the dash actually sends you higher than the down pogo does

[hoary tulip]

although

[autumn kettle]

WAIT FUCK

[hoary tulip]

I think most dash attacks have some kind of vertical movement

[vagrant spruce]

like you gain more vertical height than you'd think, it's about as high as you can actually jump

[autumn kettle]

I JUST GROKKED

WHAT BEAST CREST REMINDS ME OF

[vagrant spruce]

LOL

[autumn kettle]

THIS ENTIRE GODDAMN TIME

IT'S BEEN NIGGLING AT ME

KIRBY

THE FUCKASS

[vagrant spruce]

what the fuck are you talking about

[autumn kettle]

BEAST POWER

[vagrant spruce]

i was gonna say "the big fat guys in beasts den"

[autumn kettle]

FROM THE NDS KIRBY GAMES

[hoary tulip]

no one played the games with Beast Kirby

[vagrant spruce]

please give me a google image of what you mean

[autumn kettle]

I DID

[vagrant spruce]

i have not kirby'd in my life in any game at all

[hollow elm]

The down attack def felt familar for some reason

[hot mango]

OHHHH

[autumn kettle]

FUCK

HOLY SHIT

[vagrant spruce]

huh. this creature means nothing to me, but cool i guess

[autumn kettle]

IT FINALLY CLICKED

okay so like

the big thing

[hoary tulip]

NO ONE played the games with Animal Kirby in them

[autumn kettle]

is that this kirby has a dash attack very similar to beast crest's charge attack

[hoary tulip]

because it's just Squeak Squad

[hot mango]

Millions of people love squeak squad

[brave flower]

my younger sibling got a plushie of this specific kirby for their birthday like 10 years ago

[autumn kettle]

except you latch on to the enemy you hit after doing your lunge

it's a command grab where you slash them and jump back

which is why i was expecting the beast needle art to give you a backjump so much

[vagrant spruce]

just checked - not even close, actually. 3/7 and that's if you count shaman as "vertical movement" (it is, but you airstall immediately as part of the animation, soo)

[hot mango]

I do kinda wish Beast’s Pogo and Dash attack had immediate hitboxes rather than sending Hornet forward a bit and then activating the hitbox, but I suppose that might lower the skill floor too much

[hoary tulip]

Hunter has a jump on hit, Reaper launches you into the air, Shaman has a weak ass airstall

Beast jumps on hit

[vagrant spruce]

hunter dash doesnt jump?

[hot mango]

Think he meant Wanderer?

[vagrant spruce]

wanderer also doesnt jump

[hoary tulip]

if you hit, Hunter's dash attack causes you to vault upwards

[hot mango]

Isn’t that all the crests?

[vagrant spruce]

nope

[hot mango]

It has a follow up attack

[hot mango]

It is for all the ones I have at the very least

[vagrant spruce]

ah lemme try it again

[autumn kettle]

isn't that wanderer?