THE SILKSONG IS REAL

[rotund magnet]

I wish ||karmeleta didnt have her add phase to reach her||

[hot mango]

Can’t you open a shortcut directly into the boss room?

[dreamy scarab]

you can drop the elevator, but you still have to dodge some steam...unless I just missed a second shortcut

[thick urchin]

Unless there's some way to ||reach the outside door (where you save the flea)|| from a bench...

Same hazards, less initial walljumping, but probaby would involve different platforming.

[brave flower]

the adds phase is part of the boss fight

[rotund magnet]

I mean kinda

I just don't think it adds anything meningful

[hot mango]

I partially disagree- certain builds perform better in bosses vs regular enemies, and so builds optimized for the boss will need to “prove themselves” so to speak against the first wave of adds. A build check of sorts.

Moreover, it ensures that the tension ramp up to the boss is more steady, which is good for pacing- especially for the attempt that actually succeeds. I will say of the two bosses that felt like difficult but gratifying dances, the one with the adds at the start let the adrenaline mount at a good enough pace to where the surprise of success didn’t cause me to just crash.

[formal zenith]

i swear to god savage beastfly just arbitrarily chooses a random height to charge at
fucking impossible to punish consistently

this boss fight is so fucking stupid

[rotund magnet]

it's just that its such a brutal fight and doing it so many times just gets increasingly frustrating

[noble ocean]

Ive not watched you fight it so i know this advice means possibly nothing but ive learned the height is (obviously) decided by your vertical height

but a specific thing i caught is since it tends to do two charges, it can do something REALLY weird, where if you do a short hop in prep to evade it will do its "high" charge (which in reality doesnt have much height because its matching your height) into its "low" charge

Is it stupid because its nigh impossible to really notice that without a way too needed level of observation? absolutely!

mind you aswell this is more just personal experience/observations

but it does always seem to have a high/low or low/high depending on height
its just that it chooses that ordering SUPER LATE, like literally right before it charges, and again even a very short hop makes it go high/low

Spoilers for a wish

|| It makes the second fight extra annoying because its ads are ranged, making for a very 'have to come to them' issue||

But yeah, its a boss that, while it can have a very consistent flow, is either fine tuned enough, or unintentionally given such small windows, that its inconsistent and Annoying

sometimes you can pogo the low and high charge, sometimes that low charge is actually a high and will just BARELY hit you and set you up for the low to also hit because you'll usually be knocked out of your flow

sometimes the fuckin' dive bomb attacks have it go high enough to comfortably adjust (or even bait ads into) other times it barely gets any height before dropping

apologies im rambling at this point- i can be very hyperfixated/uh.. excited? no, just like, super focused and wanting to ramble about stuff like boss fights

[formal zenith]

yeah i definitely noticed that it sometimes charges much higher than your previous position
||and yeah i'm doing the second fight||

it just feels like this boss fight was specifically designed to piss you off :/

[noble ocean]

I dont think that was the intent but it absolutly does do that

[formal zenith]

which is really frustrating given that there are fun bosses in this game that reward you for pushing the limit on last-second dodges

[noble ocean]

like, beastfly is probably the only boss i genuinely hate

just cause it does stuff i tend to just Not Like in regards to boss fights, like if you get really unlucky it can just flood you with ads and
woo boy dont like that

I will say if you do find it going up and over you, or can tell its going for a high charge, you can safely stay under it and up-slash

[formal zenith]

||the ranged adds are infuriating||
||i don't understand why they thought it was ok for their projectiles to be the same color as the background||

[noble ocean]

usually.

like i wanna preface any advice i give is with the knowledge that no matter what you do this boss is just
inoconsistent

[formal zenith]

idk i guess i just need to try again when i'm at peak focus

[noble ocean]

Yeah, nothing wrong with taking a breather

[south marten]

||Beastfly 2|| is cringe
||Lace 3|| is based
I don't make the rules, that's just how it is.

[noble ocean]

i mean objectively correct
||i was actually about to go on a ramble about how it felt unfair to compare a side boss to a main||

|| but i realized beastfly 2 is TECHNICALLY a main because its one of the wishes you have to complete for act 3, i think?||

[south marten]

Technically it's optional

[granite hedge]

||GOOD GRIEF THEIR ASS IS HUGE||

[south marten]

||They don't call him Ass Jim for nothing||

[granite hedge]

||Suprisingly, Lugoli is refered to as they/them, by both the hunter's journal and Hornet herself||

||THEREFORE||

[south marten]

Ah neat

[granite hedge]

||On one end, you got slim bishonen type aurafarmer. On the other, Ass Jim||

[south marten]

Didn't read that, just had them in my mind as "||That's Mama Luigi to you||"

[granite hedge]

|||WHEEZE||

[autumn kettle]

and also by the butler bug too!

[granite hedge]

oh right!!

[rose granite]

Yeah, it's one of the more fun ones in the game.

[rose granite]

In general measuring things by physical length is going to be a flawed measurement by virtue of not taking into consideration whether the moment to moment gameplay is engaging.

||If you've created a decent platforming section where players can improve their flow, and where as they improve their flow do it more and more by reflex, I would argue it's generally going to be more enjoyable. These tends to be sections with highly predictable layouts and fixed obstacles, such as with Widow's runback. Conversely if you have disruptive obstacles that require active thought, such as with the Driznit at the start of the Blasted Steps runback, people will now have to stop and engage more brainpower to getting around it. It's likely frustrating in the same way being asked to solve a math puzzle on your way home from work is.||

||There are however also other factors that can affect repeat gameplay, such as monotonous but obligatory button presses. This is why for example one could argue Nyleth's runback is poor, because whilst very easy you also have to always play that little song beforehand. Note that none of this is set in stone since variance is good, with Nyleth being rather inoffensive at the end of the day.||

It's fun stuff to think about, though yeah wouldn't boil it down to just screen transitions even if that can be a factor.

[green bone]

crazy that team cherry made a cutscene that lasted 3 hours

[dreamy scarab]

Related: I think ||Groal||'s runback wouldn't be as bad if the enemy positions weren't randomized. You can't get into a flow state of running past them like with ||Judge|| because you have to consciously react to each configuration.

By comparison, imagine if ||judge|| had twice as many ||cone flies|| and they could randomly spawn over pogoing sections

[rose granite]

That's pretty much my own opinion as well yeah.

[rose granite]

I was actually going to suggest that if you wanted to make any number of runbacks absolutely loathed, you could achieve it by placing a dritzfly in there with a random offset (or just awkward spawn) that obscures the player's path without allowing for an easy instant kill.

Two quick examples of a hypothetical hell.

||The recess is largely assuming that the player has the harpoon already, without it you can just spawn them wherever is inopportune.||

[fervent sand]

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh heck

||the ant dancer lady is a rough fight||

[autumn kettle]

she's so fucking cool, right?

[fervent sand]

oh yeah I LOVE her

I love the area

but OW

anyone have any tips?

[autumn kettle]

do you want to cheese her and end the fight instantly?

[fervent sand]

I mean knowing the cheese isn't too bad

[autumn kettle]

it's just using architect

buzzsaws, cogflies, and tacks shred her health bar

dead in 20-30s

otherwise, my suggestion for an "honest" fight is reaper

||its pogo is relatively safe on her grounded moves and lets you position to mostly not get hit by her jump attacks||

||and its range helps you keep a safe distance from her windup for the grounded slide and combo patterns||

||broadly speaking, you're pretty safe against most of her attacks if you're staying in the air, and all you have to do is worry about her center-stage aerials||

||which reaper's range helps you, so you can watch out for it more comfortably||

[fervent sand]

to be fair I'm already going for tacks and buzzsaws, just gotta be better with them

[autumn kettle]

in that case, it's just ||this|| bullshit

saws are less powerful than they were in this video, but

not by very much

[fervent sand]

i just get hit a lot <_>

[autumn kettle]

||in that case, i suggest trying to stay at her head height most of the time||

||at or slightly above||

||most of her attacks either miss or are easily dodged from that resting position||

[hot mango]

The “honest” fight is a transcendent experience

[autumn kettle]

i adore it, yeah

i hope godhome gives like

icons for clearing a boss with a given crest

so you see what you've used to beat something

i want to fuckin all crests all bosses radiant

[rose granite]

Eh, a 37,5% ammo reduction is very significant (down from 16 to 10), since total damage does matter there still.

Either way it's still good, and a good deal of the fight comes down to learning to deal with the individual moves in classic "flow" ways.

[hot mango]

I will note 2 things about the act 3 bosses:

• If you panic jump a lot, they punish you hard for it, so learning to stop doing that will give you a much stronger sense of control + awareness for dodging
• Learning to use Clawline is how you’re gonna practically multiply your damage over time due to how many more windows you can use to attack

[autumn kettle]

not as much as the burst damage would, since you can still bind for it

it matters for sure

[hot mango]

||That’s why Reaper Crest is so useful for Carmelita imo- the Dash Attack bundles an attack and jump together allowing you to chain movements and be in a more appropriate position to attack afterwards||

[autumn kettle]

but it's a nerf that can be dealt with more easily

i never use reaper DA lol

i dislike how slow it is

would rather get two hits in

[hot mango]

Yeah Reaper is good for that boss for other reasons too, but I found it useful since I think it has the biggest Horizontal Hitbox

[autumn kettle]

totally fair

[hot mango]

Sans the Down Slash maybe

[autumn kettle]

it's just not my playstyle

[rose granite]

I mean it's still far fewer you can throw out before you need to bind, which does affect burst damage due to the speed they can be thrown with (not to mention binding for tools is going to be more difficult if one is already struggling). It's still a strong tool, but it was a very big nerf to it.

[rose granite]

This video does a decent job I think of showing the basics of avoiding hits ||https://youtu.be/Rw4pHkHqaVc?si=R5NJRrjh2FUK_IAK||

Parrying her normal attacks may be difficult, but parrying her projectiles is definitely worth learning.

There is the third method of ||equipping beast plus flea brew and just tanking through it with raw power ;p||

[hot mango]

Mist spoilers (yeah that’s vague enough I think) ||This is a really long mix, BUT for those of you who enjoy putting things like this on in the background it really shows how this part of the OST builds onto and progresses into itself well https://youtu.be/rAsBBHPfv0M||

[autumn kettle]

yooo, ongbal

[brave flower]

very bold decision by gellot to include the groal runback in their "all silksong bosses, no damage" video

[solar elbow]

(Full game spoilers I guess)
I’ve been listening to the OST, ||and I find it interesting that I haven’t heard a single woodwind or brass instrument yet. Mostly strings, plus the occasional vocals and the rare percussion. I don’t know what this means but it’s probably something||

||my guess is a 50/50 between Larkin’s general style or just the focus on connecting silk to the music||

[autumn kettle]

based???

didn't realize it was out

gotta watch

[brave flower]

they do it hitless AND MAGGOTLESS too

[autumn kettle]

i mean yeah that makes sense

which is why big based

[inland wave]

So like.. ||Silk|| freed Hornet at the start, yeah? Did she think she would work to wake her?

Which I guess is technically true

[fervent sand]

still getting my ass kicked ;-;

[green bone]

https://youtube.com/shorts/4iNL_tkHrTs?si=taSWiGi9E4FxJZUb

[modern fossil]

https://bsky.app/profile/panken.bsky.social/post/3m25u4n5gis2h

panken (@panken.bsky.social)

whatever. does this to you

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Bluesky · Oct 1, 2025, 8:14 PM

[modern fossil]

Lore wise shellwood is both a place and a material that's native to hollownest too. The wooden bars you see all over are also shellwood

[hot mango]

Can I be honest?

I really enjoy the Silksong enemy gauntlets. all of them

[modern fossil]

That's not a strange thing to say

[dense grove]

They're cool I just suck

XD

[hot mango]

The crux of Silksong’s difficulty seems to very much follow the Mario Philosophy of building on concepts. Introduce the concept in a controlled environment, require the players to build on it, and then add a twist to it.

The enemy Gauntlets epitomize that, and in general Silksong is very good at making that twist be layering concepts onto an existing challenge.

I’m saying it because the general consensus is that many of these “layers” make Silksong go down a whole tier in the internet’s general ratings of Silksong

Which feels like a huge shame, but I also can’t necessarily fault them- Silksong does it well often but not always, and it’s a type of difficulty that kinda requires more of an acquired taste, and even if they in my eyes are thoughtfully designed they certainly look lazy to the average player

Take Bilewater

||If you don’t enter via sinner’s road, Bilewater is very annoying and hazardous, but until you near Bilehaven the only actively hostile enemies you encounter are the squits and the elder muck roaches, and the latter is more like a stage hazard while the former is pretty easy to deal with. Bilewater tests your environmental awareness and navigational skills in a controlled environment to get accustomed to the hazards of the environment. Then, by throwing in the Stilkin and their traps, it adds a twist that adds a unique kind of pressure to your navigation. The Groal Gauntlet and its runback epitomizes that test. It’s honestly designed with a good amount of thought, especially since Bilewater is basically Pharloom’s Deepnest.||

Instead, the internet hates Bilewater and everything in it unabashedly

And I get it- Bilewater is designed to suck. But the dislike keeps getting confused for legit criticism, and I personally think the design is genuinely quite intelligent while also trying to actually communicate with the player rather than bash them in with surprises all the time. It sucks, but it tries to ease the player into it.

[hoary tulip]

no no Silksong is actually incredibly well-designed

it's just that almost zero video game players are critics who can explain why games make them feel the way they do coherently

but they CAN get on the internet and be mad, that shit's like $free.99

[hollow elm]

I've personally been snagging more on hard bosses than enemy arenas, since you can practice the seperate components outside of the arenas.

[hot mango]

This whole tirade was kicked off by Zero Punctuations latest video about why he loves and hates Silksong, where he mentioned the ||High Halls Gauntlet|| wore down his patience enough to quit the game one boss fight later. This was off the back talking about how much he loved Cogwork Dancers btw

Those types of complaints are dime a dozen, but I’m pretty sure Yatzhee isn’t dumb or bad at games or uncritical- he just puts on that persona for his videos. I’ve seen other folks who usually aren’t so negative have these issues with Silksong. It feels like an anomaly, and that feels bad

[hoary tulip]

it's because the discourse has turned towards the idea that Silksong is too hard

this subconsciously primes people to get mad playing the game

like it did with Dark Souls back in ye olden days

[hollow elm]

High Halls is essentially built to roadblock players trying to rush through things without stopping to explore/search for upgrades before trying again.

[hoary tulip]

it is yes

that fight is meant to be a barricade that turns you back to go get stronger and more prepared for it

[hot mango]

I suppose, but that argument feels harder and harder to back by the day because even for folks who did explore beforehand it roadblocks them

[dreamy scarab]

I think there's also a feedback loop, where even the worst runbacks aren't that long (barring missing stuff like Bilewater's ||secret bench||)...as long as you keep your cool and don't get stuck in a failure/frustration loop. because if you start to tilt when you miss a jump, and that means you beef it to a random scrub enemy, and that costs you your rosaries, then that's just going to compound

[hollow elm]

Yea, I did prep a lot myself and still had to stop and search around even more of Act 2 before trying for clears.

[hot mango]

It’s more so that the folks trying to intelligently criticize Silksong are stating that it’s not hard, it’s hard in a boring way. Which I both do and do not see

[thick urchin]

Do people keep rosaries un-itemized? Personally, I dont count rosaries as "mine" until they've been turned into necklaces or bracelets.

[hollow elm]

The potential to snowball is big with the dropping all loose rosaries on death too (unless you have them stringed/||use Dead Bug's Purse to keep 50%||).

[hollow elm]

It's embarrasingly easy to go "It can wait, upcoming area isn't too dangerous", and drop a lot. Especially early on without as many fast travel spots/mobility tools.

[dreamy scarab]

there are a lot of areas in Silksong that weren't spoiled for me, but I definitely heard the name and a lot of swearing before I ever got there myself. and it's like...taking them slow, exploring side paths, usually meant I found e.g. hidden benches or shortcuts or whatever. and it almost never felt that bad.

[thick urchin]

Well, that's on them. Havnt they heard Silksong is a hard game?

(I say this having just reached act 2, without even an act 2 map yet)

[rose granite]

I tink you can both recognise what it does, why it does it, and why that does or doesn't click for folk.

There are about three inflection points I'd recognised during my time playing the game (funnily enough all three quite close to one another, as is the hypothetical fourth one,with ||Bilewater|| not counting because I didn't go there until way later in the game). Of these High Halls ended up being one of them. It's an area where I got frustrated encountering it, knew what would trivialise it, trivialised it, and haven't really at any point felt there to be good reason to change that stance on it. I do think it's easy to recognise why some consider it compelling and others not, but I don't think intention is in and of itself a great argument.

[hot mango]

Presentation also matters

||Coral Tower is far less hated than High Halls despite fundamentally doing what it does but exacerbating the pain points people would feel about it||

[rose granite]

Eh, with that one what alleviates it isn't purely presentation, but even moreso that people have their damage at that point.

||Mob fights are an old design parable at this point, and as I've said before they tend to in most games come down to high damage or crowd control, with people otherwise being quickly overwhelmed. Turns out that in my experience at least, that's held up in Silksong too.||

||In that regard those fights are pretty typical of this kind of design space.||

||I did have a prior critique of Mount Fay that was incorrect, since they do have harpoon circles at the start of the area that I'd forgotten lol. Still, surprised there wasn't a wish somewhere meant to get players to the start of Mount Fay, as was done with Putrid, but that's a minor note and more something I think about for my own games.||

[autumn kettle]

||i think going PLS GO TO MOUNT FAY FOR PROGRESSION with a wish would partially ruin what's good about it||

||signposting in metroidvanias is a delicate art||

||and i think wish-based signposting was used just enough in silksong||

||to where it felt appreciated but not condescending or overly obtrusive||

[rose granite]

||Eh not really, it's basically what the kidnapping sequence is meant for anyway. I'd just forgotten the circles.||

[autumn kettle]

||yeah, but the kidnapping sequence/entry from chambers feels organic||

||and that organic-feeling framing is super important||

[rose granite]

||And putrid waterways weren't particularly ruined by the presence of the shopkeeper in the area beforehand. You could do something similar by placing an NPC on the bridge in front of the slab and that'd be that.||

[formal zenith]

i find the hate for the high halls gauntlet so interesting because i actually rather enjoyed it
it's probably the one commonly hated thing in the game so far that i haven't felt negative about
i think the citadel enemies have very fair telegraphs and clear windows for punishment (well maybe except for bellthrower haha)
and even though i had to try the gauntlet many times before i beat the last wave, i preferred it to having to retry a boss bc i felt more engaged re-fighting all the waves
like it didn't feel like a problem i'd already solved and was just a timewaster, as opposed to a boss phase 1 that has more rigid patterns
it felt like i could really put all my movement tools to use creatively

[elfin ravine]

I liked Bilewater as an area, I still despise the Bilehaven gauntlet

It being annoying on purpose changes nothing about that

[rose granite]

||I'll just say that I do think you are highly overestimating how disruptive it'd be contra what would direct people's eyes, but we've had that talk before. It's basically just "meet an NPC in a location at the edge of this area" again, which they do a few times.||

[dreamy scarab]

the high halls gauntlet was a little frustrating to me because I felt like most of the damage I was taking was because of dumb mistakes. but with NPC help and judicious tool use it wasn't that hard, and it's also not like you don't have a bench and ventrica station right there if you want to do something else for a while.

[hot mango]

||Mount Fay is signposted by a gap you can’t cross, so it prompts a mental note. Putrescent Ducts is behind a hidden wall which is behind a hidden hole in a ceiling in a side area unrelated to progress, so the Wish Signposting in the latter makes more sense||

||I don’t personally think Mount Fay needed more signposting, but I think it wouldn’t have been a bad choice. Regardless there’s a difference between Ducts and Fay in terms of signposting||

[rose granite]

There are I think three major inflection points which I suspect puts people off, and most of them have a caveat.

||Last Judge, with the caveat of finding the alternate route. If you do it's fine.||
||The Forum, with the caveat of bringing damage or somehow finding the two companions who can help you out there.||
||Moorwing, with the caveat that you can get help for it or circumvent it until much later. ||
||Bilewater, with the caveat of doing it first when you need the shaman's souls and find the hidden bench.||

Usually the experience is thus dependent on these caveats, and how easily they're fulfilled changes a lot.

[hot mango]

||I think Bilewater and Mount Fay would be a more apt comparison in that regard, as Bilewater does have more entrances but is also comparably squirreled away when put side by side with Mount Fay||

[rose granite]

||Like I said earlier it's signposted by the whole kidnapping sequence yes, and you see with the Ducts how far away you can be from the entrance to still have it pique people's interest. That's why my example had it be a quest ended at the bridge in front of the slab, not at the mountain itself.||

[elfin ravine]

It's pretty easy to just not get kidnapped too tbh

And/or miss the Slab area and thus the mountain until much later

[rose granite]

||As for the gap, yeah I noted that at the start with my first comment. I did say I'd forgotten the harpoon rings for the area specifically, and that that had been my one wish myself so that part I'm happy with and was on me.||

[rose granite]

Mm, if you do a wish it'd pretty much just be for that, but it's not necessary as much as an observation I made and am bringing with me for other designs.

[elfin ravine]

A common thing I also see is people getting to the mountain, snd then leaving because they assume you need a way to deal with the cold

[modern fossil]

Yeah I had a similar experience

[rose granite]

Okay yeah that I can't blame folk for lol.

||It was a bit funny to realise that the anti-cold was the reward for the area, even if it was a fun challenge.||

[modern fossil]

||to be fair though the flame sword tool does help with the cold I think?||

[elfin ravine]

It does

[rose granite]

Yup

[wanton bone]

It does, but it’s also extremely tucked away itself.

And is not necessary.

[modern fossil]

So there's something that can help but not like an iesma's tear

[hot mango]

||You do need to clawline past the entrance to learn that there are heat sources to deal with the cold. If there was a lamp near the entrance before the gap rather than where Shakra is, that would’ve done wonders for giving players an indication it’s safe to proceed||

[wanton bone]

I think that’s what the slab cold sections are supposed to teach.

[hot mango]

Also fair

[rose granite]

One thing I'll note is that after the inflection points I'd mentioned, and frankly after the third needle upgrade, I didn't really have a point in the game I felt would cause someone to quit in the same way. Difficult parts definitely, but not inflection points

[rose granite]

The more I think about it the more that area does assume you get kidnapped huh.

[wanton bone]

What’s the route if you don’t get kidnapped?

[elfin ravine]

Overall I still think personally Silksong has too many time wasters before difficult fight

[elfin ravine]

You have to enter with the Apostate key much much later

For the Slab proper

[rose granite]

Oh that's how you get in?

[elfin ravine]

Yes

[rose granite]

Is the key really necessary? Fuck that's mean

[elfin ravine]

Yes

[rose granite]

I just assumed you'd get there by crossing the bridge to the west, connecting it and the citadel.

[elfin ravine]

It's a secret passage in one of the rooms you get in with the key

You do

But you still need the key to enter the rest of the Slab

You can get to the mountain without it though

[rose granite]

Okay that's the important part

You had me thinking you needed the key to get there.

[elfin ravine]

Ah yeah probably should have been clearer there

[hollow elm]

(Act 3 boss) ||Skarrsinger Karmelita has bothered me the most of the bosses because of the dream re-entry animation, having to take the long way into the arena, and the waves before getting to fight Karmelita directly. (Clover Dancers in 2nd place because of the long runback)
I've gotten fast at blowing away the guards, but it adds a lot of tedium to an already hard to learn fight.||

[rose granite]

Yeah in that case the way you discover the Mountain is that you at some point decide to go west for a while.

[elfin ravine]

Without the key you can basically only access the connecting bit to Mt Fay

[rose granite]

And that's kinda it.

[elfin ravine]

Yeah that's part of what I mean

A lot of the hard fights get more frustrating because it adds a bunch of time before you can even try again

Shards I think also exacerbate that

[rose granite]

||Lol, y'know it's funny to make predictions about what makes an engaging runback or not, and yeah much as I personally liked the arena I did make a prediction about always needing to play that song beforehand; that and it being kinda weird that you need to take the long way.||

[hollow elm]

Shards def add to frustration if you're playing tool heavy in big fights.

[elfin ravine]

Seeing your shard supplies go down with each try also adds more stress and frustration

The dream bosses at least don't have that

[rose granite]

I know I've mentioned it in the past, but installing mods both for a magnet and 2x drop rate for the shards did have that feel so much smoother that I kinda forgot about the frustrations which exist around them.

I do get why they had the talismans for shards and rosaries do different things, but I'm still surprised there never was a shard magnet in the game.

[dreamy scarab]

yeah, whenever I run the rosary magnet it feels weird to see shards just drop into spikes or acid or w/e

[rose granite]

Mm, conversely I genuinely forget that I even installed any mods.

It's a quality of life that honestly just feels nice, since what was removed was ultimately busywork. Feel for folk though.

[dreamy scarab]

mhm. and in large part I haven't really felt friction from not running either the magnet or bonus shards tools.

if I used tools more heavily I'm sure it'd have come up more, but there've only been a couple of fights that really drained me of shards

[rose granite]

The yellow tools aren't as competitive as the blue ones

[dreamy scarab]

for sure, but at a certain point I had ones that I liked more than those two

[hollow elm]

I've really only used the bonus shards one in Act 1 to quickly build up shards while exploring, rosary gains outpace the work of manually collecting in Act 2.

[dreamy scarab]

||plus I've been running Witch since I found it, so my yellow tools are really restricted||

[rose granite]

||Witch has such a good moveset, even if the gimmick isn't wholly for me.||

[dreamy scarab]

100%. I'm not really good enough at the game to rely on it all the time, but it feels good in boss fights

[rose granite]

If I could run it with a normal heal, it'd definitely replace reaper for me. As is it's solid if demanding for exploration, which makes it take a little more to get used to.

[hot mango]

I mean with the ||Memory Bosses Shards are a practically nonexistent issue||, but I agree generally

[thick urchin]

...you dont need the Apstate key to get INTO the prison. I'm in that part of the choral chambers right now- there's a bridge, and then a regular lever.

[thick urchin]

I'm reminded of Nintendo Wii games constantly telling you to stop playing. "why not take a break!" go farm up more shards, maybe explore a bit! Come back with more upgrades!

[elfin ravine]

because farming shards sucks and is a waste of time?

[elfin ravine]

you do to get into the rest of the Slab

[thick urchin]

But not to reach Mt Fay without being arrested

Relevant portion of the map- from the bridge, you can ||go straight down to the bellway and the Mt Fay entrance.||

[elfin ravine]

yes, that's also not what I meant

and I did clarify that already

[thick urchin]

I must have missed that. I was responding to discussion about how missable My Fay was.

[hot mango]

You don’t really get a break from the game if you go do that tho :/

[thick urchin]

But running out of shards IS the game telling you "Please, just, come back later!"

[hot mango]

It did do that to me exactly once true

Honestly toolspam just never worked for me, it always cluttered my mental processes so much it made me get hit a bunch and die

[thick urchin]

The most I ever used tools when I was just getting started with Beast Crest, and also trying to get to the Sinner's Road map. I was opening with using the Longpin to reduce the number of hits the Roaches needed, before I had a better handle on their combat AI. Before that, the Boomerang was amazing, but was more of a "use to end a fight with a tough mob before it starts" rather than a boss fight tool.

[tall night]

tbh yeah as much as i like them,often times the try on which i win for a boss was when i ran out of tools and was too lazy to go farm for more

[thick urchin]

Tools dont farm silk. If they did, they'd be much better as a harassment tool.

[fervent sand]

Soooooo ||because I got the twin hearts from the dancer dude it's gone "right you have all the hearts, go ahead and do the thing" but I kinda wanted to fight the final boss. I killed Crust King and the ant dancer lady, but I'm not sure who's the last cause they've gone from the map||

[tacit wadi]

You only need to kill 3

Out of the 4

[fervent sand]

Yes but boss fight!

[tacit wadi]

Uhhh

Can't help there

[formal zenith]

wait what if there was a blue tool that made ur red tools gain silk 🤔

[hot mango]

I can tell you where to go because it’s super unintuitive

[modern fossil]

The last one you can find ||in the elevator to the underworks. About half way down the shaft there's a wall you can break||

[hot mango]

||Specifically the one connecting High Halls and the Underworks, the one that collapses at the start of act 2||

[modern fossil]

Like Asquared said it's kinda a weird spot

[fervent sand]

wunderbar

[formal zenith]

ok uhhh how the heck do you punish ||shakra||

[modern fossil]

You don't

[vernal stone]

she didnt do anything wrong

[fervent sand]

When they land with a big boom you can usually get a hit in

[fervent sand]

HA! SUCK IT FLOWER

[hollow elm]

||Can pogo her horizontal dash, Shakra's counter-throw is locked to directly behind. I think you can punish her dive after the explosion?||

[tall night]

im on her too, gonna try clawlining in the air too

[hot mango]

You know what’s a shitpost mod I want?

Mist spoilers: ||At random intervals, Phantom’s slam attack will target Hornet anywhere in the world, spawn in Phantom after it resolves, and then just play their theme over the current music til she dies or is despawned via room transition ||

[thick urchin]

https://bsky.app/profile/panken.bsky.social/post/3m25u4n5gis2h

panken (@panken.bsky.social)

whatever. does this to you

Reposts

2451

Likes

8034

Bluesky · Oct 1, 2025, 8:14 PM

[proud cobalt]

Heh.

[south marten]

My legal counsel has advised me not to answer this

[fluid star]

It's legal if you have consent.

[fervent sand]

I'm sure one or two ideas with silk come to mind

What HAPPENS to ||the green prince if you don't take their heart with your song? Cause I got all three of the other hearts and it sure does feel like I was homophobic for no reason now.||

[fluid star]

I believe ||he just remains in Lost Verdania permanently||.

[rose granite]

||Yeah, Silksong is a game about how homophobia kills.||

[fervent sand]

darnit

well now I have ||their hearts on my wall|| so...

[granite hedge]

||can't believe you're home is phobic leika /j ||

[vernal stone]

Collecting (act 3) ||a fourth heart you don't need for no reason after the shamans lament the plundering of the kingdom's history feels a bit mean, that one especially :p||

[granite hedge]

well shit. Butchered that badly

[fervent sand]

I didn't mean to! They were the first people I discovered and I was like "Oh that's cool I can go into the past or their memories or something??" and then I won the fight and ||motherfucker was dead on the floor|| and I was like ??????????

The last one I got was ||the plant one that barely seems sentient past guardian Seth||

If you have all four then you keep the 'spare' one as a momento

[rose granite]

||It does end up feeling a bit odd yeah. Come to think of it, it's also odd that the broodmother for the flies gets an heir you can talk to, but the ants have Gilly be the one who appears afterwards. Would've expected a mottled ant instead.||

[rose granite]

Can't let Pharloom think you're weak

[fervent sand]

Instead they think my bell home is phobic

[rose granite]

Why's your bell so high up? Is it to avoid all the gays in the village? Very problematic

[fervent sand]

It is surprisingly far away from Shakra

[vernal stone]

To be fair he gave you very clear instructions ||to leave him alone to mourn and instead you made it all about you by playing a mandolin for a while, falling unconscious in front of him, and then reading his mind||

[fervent sand]

I thought I was helping with mourning!

[vernal stone]

It's one shakra jump away from shakra

[fervent sand]

the last judge is a shakra jump away from shakra

shakra got them legs

[autumn kettle]

I'M SO FUCKING STUPID

OF COURSE CRAFTING KITS INCREASE BLUE TOOL DAMAGE

IT JUST SAYS TOOLS

BUT NO

I DIDN'T THINK IT WOULD WORK ON ANYTHING EXCEPT REDS

also 👀

[rose granite]

It's because it's closer to Phantom, the better ship.

[thick urchin]

Did the Memoria Early skip- A tricky ||enemy pogo to reach the bench, then beast charge to reach lower memoria proper||. Cant reach|| upper memoria without the airjump for real||, but I did pick up the last Mossberry and a second cogwork core (before Dancers)

[hot mango]

WISPFIRE LANTERN SWEEP!!!!

Also I think this video touches on some reasons I would defend the Rosary system as is while also highlighting why people would dislike the Rosary system very well- a lot of points I didn’t consider https://youtu.be/d_jUe6h79Yg

[green bone]

it might finally be over

[wanton bone]

I’m very happy that there’s a way to spend rosaries indefinitely in shard bundles, that could sometimes get silly in HK.

[rose granite]

Good luck on the way down!

[rose granite]

Admittedly they have a cap, but it's a decent dump.

[fluid star]

||You know there's a shortcut to the bench, right?||

[wanton bone]

Yeah but also you’re presumably spending them down. In HK there’s not a geo dump once you’ve finished off the unbreakable charms and the fountain.

[hot mango]

The gap is ridiculously high from what I’ve seen

[rose granite]

Don't take the fun out of it

[rose granite]

20 isn't that high?

[rose granite]

But also yeah, it's certainly better than nothing.

[green bone]

Wait let me get a screenshot

[autumn kettle]

20 per type

which means you can get both the 50 and the...80? bundles

from the vendors that sell each

[rose granite]

Right, but I wouldn't call that ridiculously high still? It's high enough, but not some extreme amount.

[dreamy scarab]

shard bundles are 80, beast shards are 140. I haven't found any merchants who sell beast shards, but I'm not done with act 3

[rose granite]

Don't think there's any, only for the smaller two.

[autumn kettle]

i would definitely call 2500 at a time a lot

or ig 3200 bc it's the 26 + the 800 you can just hold?

[rose granite]

I did misspeak earlier in that I thought there was a size between Shard bundle and beast shard, which there isn't to my knowledge. So you can store 20 shard bundles only from merchants.

In terms of rosaries, you can pick up 20 strings and 20 necklaces, which is nice.

Neither of these are some extreme amount is the larger point, since a shard bundle can depending on the build be about 1,5 refills of tools. Still, they're solid dumps.

[autumn kettle]

is there not also a 50?

[rose granite]

Not to my knowledge nope

There is only the shard bundle as a purchasable source of shards.

With a cap of 20, and a price of 50 rosaries.

Not sure why Beast Shards don't become purchasable at some point, though I think the point remains that shard bundles are still neat as a dump for rosaries beyond the strings and necklaces.

[autumn kettle]

huh

yeah

[hot mango]

Oh I thought it was like. 99 or something not 20

If Silksong gets DLC, do you think there’ll be a Hidden Dreams style DLC that gives rematches for specific bosses?

Or will it purely be more Godhome/Grimm Troupe style of either QoL stuff or new stuff?

[proud cobalt]

Yep, just a whatever it’s called in your ||home||.

[autumn kettle]

https://youtu.be/nWF2xNfGjYg

waow

[south marten]

I wonder what the minimum number of bosses for 100% is

Like

||Lace 1|| is definitely 100% optional

[autumn kettle]

i want to say 15-ish

you can't do fourth chorus skip

because beastfly 2 guards a mask shard

you need buppy

[south marten]

You definitely need ||Forebrothers and the three heart bosses|| for Act 3

[autumn kettle]

forge bros

[south marten]

I just said that

[autumn kettle]

||seth and nyleth, stag and dancers, and khann + both conchfly bosses||

[south marten]

||Lace 2|| is required, ||GMS|| is required but doesn't give percent

[autumn kettle]

||because karmelita doesn't guard % but conchflies do||

||or wait no clovers and stag aren't req bc no %||

[south marten]

I'd do ||Karmelita|| instead of ||Lost Verdania||, because neither are percent

But the second is two bosses

[autumn kettle]

||so it's karm over them||

[south marten]

Yeh

Hmm

[autumn kettle]

gurr is %

[south marten]

Do you actually need ||Coral Tower|| for percent?

Like, you need ||Conchfly 1|| for a few things

[autumn kettle]

I'm pretty sure there's a tool inside the tower

[safe yew]

||it has conchcutter and tools are percent yeah||

[south marten]

Ah, forgot about that one

[safe yew]

seems to me like ||khann, karmelita, and dealer's choice between seth -> nyleth or palestag -> clover dancers||

[south marten]

||Widow, Phantom, and First Sinner|| are all percentage

[autumn kettle]

tokyo ghoul as well

[brave flower]

||bell eater||, right?

[autumn kettle]

no

[brave flower]

||bc its part of a wish||

[south marten]

||Cog dancers|| aren't percent, but are required

[autumn kettle]

oh, yeah

[brave flower]

im so smart

[south marten]

Wishes aren't percent

[brave flower]

huh--

[south marten]

Yeah no like

[autumn kettle]

double mossypets

[south marten]

90% of the game isn't completion percentage

[autumn kettle]

for weavelight

[elfin ravine]

the way completion works in Silksong is pretty weird

[autumn kettle]

actually lemme just start compiling the list

[elfin ravine]

especially since tools are over half of it

[brave flower]

does the ||act 3 questline progress w/o bell eater tho||

[south marten]

It's tools, pouch upgrades, needle upgrades, 6 silk skills, 6 misc abilities, ||Everbloom||, and...

A couple other things

Oh!

[brave flower]

i see

[south marten]

Silk hearts

[brave flower]

are ||crests|| part of it

[south marten]

Yeah that's one I was forgetting

[brave flower]

gotcha

[south marten]

So ||Beastfly 1 and 2, which means 4th Chorus too||

Oh right!

Masks and spools

That's 13 more percent there

[brave flower]

also ||memory lockets to do eva questline (for hunter evolution and the upgrade you get from finishing it|| i assume

[south marten]

Lockets are not, but ||binding Eva|| is

[brave flower]

dont you need lockets to do that

[south marten]

Yeah but they aren't percent

[brave flower]

ah

god its so weird that wishes arent part of it

have people figured out what actually ||triggers the act 3 questline|| yet

[south marten]

Yeah, making each tool 1% really squeezed them for making other things not count

[south marten]

No they have

[brave flower]

is it completion% or wishes completed?

[south marten]

You need:

• ||Faydown Cloak||
• ||Lace 2||
• All town donation wishes
• 17 other wishes (deliveries count as 1/2)
  And I think that's it?

[autumn kettle]

REQ FOR 100% - 27

||Moss Mother x2 (req, weavelight)
Bell Beast (silk heart)
Fourth Chorus (arena clear)
Beastfly x2 (beast crest, mask shard)
Widow (needolin)
Conchflies x2 (many things)
Phantom (stitch)
Trobbio (mirror)
Cog Dancers (req)
Lugoli (food)
Mario Bros (req)
Lace x2 (req)
Flamefather (lantern)
Sentinel (reserve bind)
Unraveled (silk heart)
Sinner (rune rage)
Karmelita (req)
Khann (req)
Stag & Dancers OR Seth & Nyleth (req)
Gurr (mask shard)
Voltvyrm (volt thread)
Pinstress (pin badge)||

REQ BUT SKIPPABLE - 2

||Splinter (cling)
Groal (req)||

[south marten]

Oh you also need your make the scarecraw

And finish ||Shakra's wish||

And rescue all fleas

[brave flower]

why did they make ||tools|| like that 😭

[autumn kettle]

somebody i know triggered TE ||by clearing the unraveled and getting its silk heart||

[south marten]

It

might

Be a check for "3 silk hearts" as opposed to "||Lace 2||"

[autumn kettle]

nah bc i triggered it before i got that heart

[hot mango]

Note on the act 3 reqs, and also a question: ||When I played through Verdania, I think I got enough glows to fully restore the memory and gain the ability to challenge Clover Dancers without needing to kill Palestag (when I died I went back and did it first iirc), so I don't think Stag is required, but Stag could very well be faster than the other methods of restoring the memory. Is there any reason Conjoined Heart can only substitute Pollen Heart, or can it substitute any heart? If it's the latter then it may be faster to skip Carmelita over Seth & Nyleth||

[south marten]

Idk then

[south marten]

The idea was "least number of bosses"

[autumn kettle]

||i thought palestag was mandatory, and karmelita doesn't have a second boss req like nyleth and the dancers do||

[hot mango]

||Karmelita is one boss but she does have a required Void Enemy gauntlet- not the exact question but worth pointing out for general pathing||

[autumn kettle]

||if the stag isn't necessary for the prince, then he goes over nyleth absolutely||

[south marten]

Also I had to do ||Palestag||, personally, even with everything else done in there

[elfin ravine]

it can substitute for any of the three AFAIK

[hot mango]

||Only if Palestag is slower than going around and getting the other memory shards, which it may not be considering the shear amount it gives.||

[south marten]

Again, this isn't a speed route, it's a "least bosses but still 100% completion" route

[hot mango]

Ah okay okay

For general 100% pathing ||I'm not sure if skipping Khan is worth it or not- it's a long way up to him but also you gotta go there anyway for Conch Cutter||

[south marten]

Because low% NMG is pretty much solved at this point barring sonething truly gamebreaking

[hot mango]

||If you didn't have to go there for Conch Cutter then I'd say for speed he's the one to skip- you can speedkill all the other bosses but the gauntlet takes a lot of time||

[south marten]

So routing around least number of bosses is interesting at least

[hot mango]

||But it's already such a big detour for Conch Cutter so it's probably faster to just take out Khan||

||If Conch Cutter wasn't literally right in front of Khan you could skip Enraged Conchfly for the 100% w/ least bosses and it'd also be a huge timesave||

||Voltvyrm is also there but you need to beat regular Elder Conchflies for Charge Attack anyhow so you're fighting them one way or another||

You know what's a sad but funny thing about those act 3 bosses?

||All of them require going out to kill a Widow.||

||Kill Green Prince, kill Enraged Conchfly, and if you stretch the definition of Widow to include "losing the partner in a strong relationship to death" then technically Seth losing Nyleth and Karmelita losing her people counts lol||

[south marten]

And you also have to kill ||Widow||!

What's really funny is that she's not a required boss for low%, but is for low% TE

Because ||Needolin|| is "required" to beat Act 2, but actually required to beat Act 3

[hot mango]

||Hornet loves reuniting people with their loved ones :)||

[safe yew]

||is there a way to skip the needolin entirely and complete act 2?||

[autumn kettle]

||apparently you don't need the needolin to needolin at last judge||

[safe yew]

||i would think it's needed for the threefold melody||

[autumn kettle]

||which is deranged||

[rose granite]

Yeah, been an odd realisation

100% is a lot more manageable than I'd at first expected.

[modern fossil]

||100% not being all non missable bosses really surprised me. 100% not being the completed hunters journal surprised me a little less||

[rose granite]

||Yeah, I did assume it was going to include all the bosses.||

[modern fossil]

||I'm completely fine with it though I 100% the game and never got the craw summons||

[rose granite]

||That's because you got a pardon.||

[modern fossil]

||for what? is that a joke?||

[rose granite]

Yes

I just have some very dry humour..

[vagrant spruce]

act 3 spoilers ||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj1wRZJl-Pg||

jesus christ

[modern fossil]

I don't think we're going to ses the end of these records until the in game counter overflows

[south marten]

Yep! Everything that it's required for other than ||triggering the Last Judge fight|| is a "cutscene", and ||Hornet will pull out the Needolin and the button prompt to play it comes up|| even if you never pick it up

Now, you do still need it to ||get into the heart boss fights with Song of the Deep or whatever it's called||

Which is why it's "required" for Act 2 but required for Act 3

[thick urchin]

TLDR- If it's just music, Hornet can do it in a cut scene without the needilin ability. If it's a magical interaction, like doors, it needs the magical ability.

[dreamy scarab]

hm. not really enjoying the (act 3, wish) ||Pinstress|| fight. doesn't feel like there's a lot of punish windows, and I keep taking embarassing contact damage when she falls down on me after an up air

[vagrant spruce]

also ||the mist||, which still makes it 'required' for act 2, just worth clarifying for anybody else reading this later. ||if you don't have needolin, you simply can't do the mist puzzle even by purely guessing - it'll always loop you||

[dreamy scarab]

did it, still didn't really enjoy it. swapping crests helped (||I just couldn't land Witch attacks on her at all, Reaper's bigger strikes worked a lot better when she was flying at the top of the screen. Plus, y'know, binds.||)

[south marten]

It's technically possible to do ||Wisp Thicket|| route without it, which means that it's """"required""""

[fervent sand]

I liked her fight! Got it second try, but yeah she has some things similar to ||Shakra|| where you need to wait out a couple of swings then take advantage of the break there. I actually find her a bit easier as she goes on because of her ||charge attacks|| clearly signalling that she's about to pause, then I throw a shakra at her head.

[south marten]

I don't like it because ||she can fall off the side of the arena when you stagger her, which means you don't get to smack for silk and damage, but if you fall off the side of the arena, you get to choose between "fall into spikes and take damage to warp back to the fight" or "start the fight over entirely"||

[fervent sand]

I believe in your violent revenge for being shunted off

[south marten]

Eyy, in unrelated news, Skurry just posted a video today about getting a 5% completion ending

[thick urchin]

link?

[dreamy scarab]

mmm. I guess. ||Shakra|| you at least know you can't hit, and lands regularly. but ||Pinstress|| likes to spend a long ass time floating tantalizingly outside of double jump range, which is frustrating.

[south marten]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywg9XB4BZ7o

[umbral canyon]

i'm listening to the soundtrack again and i think i just noticed - are there no wind instruments in the OST? just percussion, string instruments, and vocals?

[safe yew]

(act 1, alternate path) ||organ features rather prominently in "the mist" and "phantom"||

[umbral canyon]

actually no, there's organ music in ||the mist||

[inland wave]

I want to say ||High Halls?||

or my brain is just projecting it because aesthetic

Ahh, s'harps

[umbral canyon]

yeah inside the citadel is all harps and vocals iirc

[safe yew]

no there's definitely some kind of horn in that one (unless i'm mishearing), checking for myself

[inland wave]

ahh yeah, yeah

[umbral canyon]

oh yeah, there's some kind of clarinet or something in there

[inland wave]

I was going to say they have enough gramophones around for horns to be involved, they got the idea

[safe yew]

oh yeah you're right, flutes too

[inland wave]

Love how the music is so calm in the 'here, have truly villainous platforming' sections

[umbral canyon]

the gauntlet in the same area has trumpets too, listening to it again

[safe yew]

fairly sure i hear horns in (end of act 1 boss) ||last judge||

[umbral canyon]

also in ||tormented trobbio||, it's interesting how much you don't pay attention do these things in the moment

cause after i finished the game my impressions were all harps, cellos, vocals

[inland wave]

I can never get ||Lace|| outta my head, it's like the most swordfight a song has ever been

[modern fossil]

Lace was released as a teaser track, what like 5 years ago? It's amazing

I remember hearing an interview with Christopher Larken where he talked about how crazy it was that he got to compose for a live orchestra

[autumn kettle]

almost six fucking years...

[autumn kettle]

hey what the fuck

HK update?

i assume it's just some esoteric bugs being patched, but

no notes

[vagrant spruce]

big unity bug, a lot of unity games are patching it quickly (it's a relatively simple fix)

[autumn kettle]

ahh

[vagrant spruce]

https://unity.com/security/sept-2025-01

[warm wraith]

chat if I were to install 1 QoL mod what should I get

[autumn kettle]

i mean, what qol are you looking for

"quality of life" is a pretty subjective term when it comes to video game stuff

and basically every silksong mod is targeted at a single thing

the only thing i'd consider installing would be the damage numbers and health bars mod, so i could be more informed on my build choices

since you get free tool slots for the "qol" tools

but plenty of people want even more free tool slots and add compass or magnet or both

and some folks consider doubling their hp/halving all damage qol

[warm wraith]

mm fair
might end up getting the half damage mod yeah

[autumn kettle]

i consider that a cheat mod, not a qol mod

which is why asking in the generic is difficult

[warm wraith]

m right yeah

[autumn kettle]

since everyone thinks of different things for qol

[brave flower]

so the thing about everything dealing 2 damage in silksong

[warm wraith]

mhmhm,
Just got harpoon, and the climb out of the room itself means Im taking damage when I fall into the lava and Then there's a gauntlet at the end, its frustrating in how precise it feels I have to be on the ascent which is like fine the punishment is just rough
maybe im just tired lmao
skong is fun but also a bit exhausting

oh mhm?

[brave flower]

is you gotta understand that hornet can heal 3x faster than the knight can

so if everything dealt 1 damage itd be absurdly easy to just

be immortal

and outheal everything

[warm wraith]

yeaah

[autumn kettle]

you can pick up parry pretty easily, if you want

and haven't yet

[warm wraith]

parry?

[autumn kettle]

cross stitch

find ||the mist|| in ||bilewater or sinner's road||

[warm wraith]

oh yeah ok, ik where that is, havent explored yet

I'm very wary of|| bilewater||, heard lots of. things about it

[south marten]

||Bilewater|| isn't actually as bad as a lot of people complaining make it out to be, but I do still personally stand by the idea that someone told Team Cherry that Hollow Knight wasn't a real Soulslike because it didn't have a poison swamp, so they took it personally when designing the second-largest individual biome in the map

[vagrant spruce]

"While making this game I rediscovered my love for making poison swamps. I know how people feel about them but I suddenly realize I'm in the middle of making one and I can't help myself. It just happens." --- hidetaka miyazaki ari gibson

[autumn kettle]

it's peam

miyazaki is so fucking real for that

[vagrant spruce]

the roach dog things are also one of the worst enemies in silksong. coincidence? i think not

[autumn kettle]

HOLY SHIT YOU'RE RIGHT

[brave flower]

this roach does 11,640 barks per second

[vagrant spruce]

i have genuinely wondered before - certain game enemies are iconic, but others are just genre staples just tracing back to an original game (like slimes and dragon quest, kinda). how many games have fucked up dog ganks, just because miyazaki has a weird personal grudge against dogs?

[south marten]

I would argue that slimes aren't from Dragon Quest, it's just that the Dragon Quest slime is the quintessential slime. Like, oozes and shit as enemies existed before it, but they weren't The First Enemy™ until then

[umbral canyon]

the entire right half of the map is basically blighttown, ari gibson really activated his inner sicko lol

[vagrant spruce]

yeah, but dragon quest is the game that codified slimes as The First Enemy, and especially in that round colorful form (vs. like toxic goop piles with acid). does the trope of alien mind control parasites exist because marc laidlow (lead HL1 story writer) really fucked with Alien (1979)? lmao

[green bone]

Act 3 spoilers

[rose granite]

It was meant to have another area, Pharloom bay, but it got cut.

It is kinda funny to consider that ||of the areas that did ultimately get explicitly or implicity cut or reconfigured, what endured was the two blight town areas as well as fleatopia. There's technically also Verdania, but that's more of a dream sequence nowadays.||

[green bone]

rip to the goat ACT 3 MAJOR SPOILERS

[dreamy scarab]

act 3 boss ||Tormented Trobbio|| is visually overwhelming 😵‍💫

there's just so much stuff happening all the time

[proud cobalt]

Correct.

[inland wave]

GAME PLS.. Let us ||adopt Zaza||, he's too sad out here

[south marten]

if you're gonna post a spoiler image, maybe spoilering the image is a good idea

[green bone]

it is spoilered

[south marten]

I found ||base Trobbio|| way more overwhelming

[south marten]

Outstanding, I love Discord Mobile

Straight-up isn't spoilered for me

[hoary tulip]

Discord is just broken rn

and randomly doesn't render spoilers

[fathom shadow]

Thats the point.
||Its all smoke, explosions, and misdirection.||
And a LOT of damage too.

[hot mango]

I’m gonna be honest, ||The most impressive part of the 3 Blighttown areas is not only that they have very distinct vibes, but do not have a single enemy that appears in more than one of those areas. Sinners Road has some enemy’s appear in other places after story progress, and the Mites are there, but apart from that literally each enemy in those areas are unique to that area.||

||They also have very different vibes. Vertical shafts and long rooms in Sinner’s Road feel completely different to the long room’s in Putrefied Ducts and the tall shafts of Bilewater||

||The only thing they really have in common is the maggot water||

||Like the three areas are genuinely really cool to me despite how much I despise traversing them||

||Folks think Bilewater is the worst but tbh Sinner’s Road is worse purely because the enemies are more dangerous and unpredictable, and Putrefied Ducts is more annoying thanks to the Barnacles||

[safe yew]

||the barnaks are fine by me, really, but i just cannot get the hang of dealing with spit squits||

[hot mango]

Objective ranking of Silksong bosses. This is objective and cannot be refuted:
||1. First Sinner
2. Second Sentinel
3. ?????
4. Fourth Chorus
5. Last Judge||
The rest don’t matter

[brave flower]

wrong

||last judge|| is 13th

after ||12th architect|| who isnt a boss

[modern fossil]

|| https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/878740659652141136/1424116173355614259/RDT_20251004_1221311745037754899002299.jpg?ex=68e2c70a&is=68e1758a&hm=d2db2632340ad514ffe0ab70c43686da2e89706dfdfcdae38fd6538547caf5f1& || Late game boss spoilers

[green bone]

ACT 3 I can consisntely get to ||20 fleas juggled, I can almost taste the pale oil now...||

[safe yew]

(ACT 3 FINAL BOSS) ||can't seem to get the hang of lost lace, the void attacks interfere with my flow||

[safe yew]

update: taking a break to do other things

[fervent sand]

You got this hydrate

I will admit I uh... I just did it and the secret was our little buddy the cogfly

I just fought until the end sequence and launched a couple while concentrating on dodging

[rose granite]

||They followed us into the void, and out of it.||

[rose granite]

Tis for the best. ||The fight itself largely does what her previous fights have, of starting out with an upgraded pattern and adding extra moves as you progress, and slightly modifying some existing ones, but the core of it remains unchanged. As such if you're comfortable with the first phase, you'll eventually be able to defeat her.||

[fervent sand]

That's the interesting thing about the architect crest, you can use it to get through the first part and see the second, but then you need to save items for the second, so you start doing the first half without items to save resources, then you're just... getting more and more comfortable, and when it feels too much, like lots of dodging needs to happen, you can toss out tacks or a cogfly and not worry about it for a second

[rose granite]

Honestly I just bounced on their head until they died.

Remarkably effective.

[rose granite]

On a different note, this is probably my favourite needolin interaction in the game ||https://youtu.be/9q8SPDrjqTA?si=9FHUSPI52m6INTnU||

||Missed it my first time through the game since I didn't play the needolin for her I don't think, but it's not only some of the nicer but also more intricate singing throughout the game.||

||And yes, yes, splashing in the bath gets to share the first place ;p||

[fervent sand]

||I am... severely worried that Sherma survived the plot of Silksong. What if something terrible happens to him in the DLC? Also part of me wonders if there's any way to effectively kill Sherma by accident. Like not opening the door?||

[safe yew]

||if there was a way to kill sherma, then i imagine someone would have made a killsherma% category by now. can't account for dlc, though||

[fervent sand]

||I wasn't sure if you started the quest where Sherma's in whiteward then go into act 3 would be possible or even work. I know you're meant to finish most quests first... Still, like you said people would probably already be doing it||

[safe yew]

||apparently completing the Sherma Goes To Bloodborne quest is a prerequisite for act 3||

[fervent sand]

||Huh, wonder if you can stop him from going up there entirely by not going through the gate or meeting him... He probably just shows up. Or maybe you always need him to save Pharloom||

[wanton bone]

I think if you do the weird routes you can beat act 2 without moving him around, but nothing explicitly happens.

Sherma feels like loveable Zote though, in narrative terms.

(As in a little naive, shows up a lot, has pc aided plot armor)

[south marten]

Incorrect
2 - ||Second Sentinel||
4 - ||Fourth Chorus||
12 - ||Twelfth Architect||
44 - ||Last Judge||

Motherfucker do the numbers right

I hate Discord sometimes

[hot mango]

You forgot ||First Sinner||

[south marten]

Oh fuck you're so right

Updated list
1 - ||First Sinner||
2 - ||Second Sentinel||
4 - ||Fourth Chorus||
12 - ||Twelfth Architect||
9999 - ||Last Judge|| (I don't remember how many bosses there are so I just made it 9999)

[fathom shadow]

You get ||pale oilfrom the fleas||?

[autumn kettle]

yes

||collect all fleas then hit act 3||

[autumn kettle]

alright, having just gotten to ||the unraveled|| in my steel soul run, without needle 4 and a pile of busted shit

really not a fan of the boss

it just doesn't play to what i enjoy about hollow knight and silksong

[formal zenith]

yeah I thought that one kinda encourages a really boring strategy

[inland wave]

It felt.. averagely boss like? But I'm not on Steel I guess

Also keep seeing folks saying they want a real "Hollow Knight" game and like it would be nothing, a training arc of attempted emotional detachment and then The Pain Egg

[dreamy scarab]

It's a reverse raising sim. If you raise any of the Knight's emotional stats you lose.

[autumn kettle]

it's just so slow

what i enjoy about HK is the like, telegraphed your-turn windows and then the ability to completely ignore those by either being risky or being better

and this boss just hides underground 90% of the time

and one of its two whole phase 1 attacks isn't punishable in melee, because hornet's too tall to have a safe place to stand during it

and the other phase 1 attack just has a really weird hitbox because of the doohickey on its head

and because of the bounce-back after it hits a wall

[dreamy scarab]

Yeah, that one bugs me because of the randomized component. It's punishable sometimes, if the high attack comes out at the right time, but it's a gamble every time

[autumn kettle]

yeah

i don't think it's a terrible boss, but it's the only one in silksong that i actively thought "this isn't good"

[dreamy scarab]

💯 plus it being pogo immune is super rude (although pogoing at least might save you from the doohickey)

[inland wave]

I'm too entertained by Stupid Bell Hats for the pogo immunity to get me

[dreamy scarab]

I think I landed mostly neutral on it. Finally winning did feel good at least. One thing it made me realize is that it can be hard to tell when a boss is actually vulnerable: I was tossing bombs at it and I couldn't tell if they were bouncing off its hat or doing damage

[inland wave]

It's always a good noise that freak down there included

[dreamy scarab]

Yeah, same with getting my ass handed to me by a flea. It's good physical comedy.

[inland wave]

I do wonder if the Weavers were still around for ||Whiteward|| or if this was more of a Deep In The Cult type decision

'Cause like. Damn.

[rose granite]

Mm, I think the second phase improves upon it, but the core of the battle isn't too interesting.

[thick urchin]

I think the premise is that we dont see the Hollow Knight's broken Mask in Canon ending, the way we do Ghost's broken mask, so it could still be alive like it is in Godhome ending. Therefore it could be a protagonist in a post-egg game.

[inland wave]

Every game a taller and taller protagonist

[thick urchin]

Skuttlebrace as a morph ball upgrade/charm... :p

[dreamy scarab]

late Act 3: am I missing something, or do I have to do the full runback to ||Pale Stag|| every time?

[south marten]

You are not missing anything, unfortunately

[fluid star]

It's a relatively quick runback, given most of the enemies are basically passive, iirc.

Still an annoying number of room transitions though.

[dreamy scarab]

yeah, it's just one of those ones where I do something dumb and whiff an easy platforming section, then need to farm silk to heal

it'll be fine once I get a feel for it.

[dreamy scarab]

You need a special license. There's a whole remote learning thing

[south marten]

||GMS|| strikes again (no not that one, the other one)

[dreamy scarab]

*nods* ||Gotta Make Strings||

[thick urchin]

Guild of mappers and surveyors?

Or is that a Global mappers syndicate?

[hot mango]

Has anyone rerun the damage numbers on the blue tools after the patch that lets them scale with Crafting Kits?

[hot mango]

I feel weird because I honestly really like the boss. Feels very ||Nosk|| like- probably not the best boss in the game but it sets the scene very well

[autumn kettle]

it's a great atmospheric boss, yeah

[hot mango]

Tho I do enjoy the actual fight itself which is the main point - should’ve opened with that

[autumn kettle]

but I ruined the atmosphere for myself with my juiced up first go around

and i find the boss slow and tedious

[hot mango]

It was a hard boss for me when I first fought it, hence why the attempts felt very tense

[autumn kettle]

the enforced turn-based combat and kind of jank hitboxes bore me

[hollow elm]

Has cool effects, but the ||runs into you charge||, sure is an attack.

[hot mango]

I don’t really mind when bosses make you wait if they they’re easy to hit when they are available to hit, builds tension while you wait to try and predict what they’re gonna do next

Although it is kinda just ||Bell Beast|| 2 in some regards

[elfin ravine]

I find that one much easier to dodge and hit the boss on than the other attack

[hot mango]

||The corpse spit|| is a rough one to dodge which is why I’m glad it only does one damage

My strat to avoid getting murdered was to rush to above wherever it was spawning in to guaranteed damage avoided, which meant I was being very mobile the whole fight

[hollow elm]

That attack was "unload thread storm/DPS with melee" for me.
(||corpse spit||, I generally avoided ||"rush across the room", with tacks on the floor||)

[hot mango]

I could never get it to work like that for some reason, especially because it’s ||invincible against attacks from above||

[autumn kettle]

gamers I'm malding a bit

i just got muted in the hollow knight discord for trying to correct people that called WW2 Germany and Italy communist states

and called pharloom communist

instead of, you know, a fascist theocracy

[thick urchin]

"Everything bad is communist"

[autumn kettle]

i think i hate this moderator, but i definitely hate the shitposting clowns that kept insisting on the batshit insane take

[elfin ravine]

what the hell is communist about Pharloom?
you need to pay for everything

[autumn kettle]

if you want to go check the discussion go for it but I'm quietly seething about the argument made lmao

i gotta go take a walk or a nap

[dreamy scarab]

Damn. Report that mod tbh

[autumn kettle]

i don't know who to report them to

and i don't know whether anybody would give a shit

[dreamy scarab]

Server owner or admin, maybe. They might not care, but if they value. Like. Not even just basic decency and historicity, but just actual good moderation, they should fire that mod.

[autumn kettle]

i'm just not keen on putting in the time and emotional investment to try and contact an admin that very well might just go "yeah lmao no politics while talking about the politics of the extremely political hollow knight game"

or "what do you mean? they were totally right, communism and fascism are identical, shut the fuck up"

[dreamy scarab]

It looks like the person insisting communism was "when money is acquired by force" is also muted. It's a sucky situation and they could've handled it better, but I don't think they were trying to endorse the person making a dumb argument

[autumn kettle]

that's a small balm, at least

unrelated to that

i just picked up the mt fay map in my steel soul run

and got unique shakra dialogue for "you've got a lot of maps"

"you should buy my quill"

"please"

i'm holding out

for the act 3 ||purple trobbio|| quill

[green bone]

https://www.reddit.com/r/HollowKnight/comments/1nys53z/beta_update_several_silk_skills_rebalanced_oddly/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[elfin ravine]

sawtooth going up to 27 at four kits is pretty huge

[autumn kettle]

||https://youtu.be/Lq-zLbKISDQ||

huh

yarnaby stuff

[hoary tulip]

hornet opens her wallet and a solitary Lumafly buzzes out

[hot mango]

Okay some of these changes are real interesting, but what caught my eye is Warding Bell does damage???

[dreamy scarab]

Yeah. When it triggers it does a pretty wide AOE

It's most noticeable if you've got small fries in the area. the damage isn't great, but it's obvious when a random gnat explodes

[proud cobalt]

Yep.

[elfin ravine]

it does an AoE when it gets triggered yeah

[dreamy scarab]

naturally it only took one more runback. If I have a complaint about this boss, it's that it's weirdly immune to being attack through the floor with an up-air. some of these act 3 bosses have some weird hitboxes.

[tall night]

hollow knight fans will literally tell you they spent the equivalent length of an average movie dying repeatedly to something called the fat shitfly, and also the fly is gay in secret lore, i love this game so much

[tall night]

https://tenor.com/view/kabru-kaburū-dungeon-meshi-delicious-in-dungeon-dead-inside-gif-18377319197122827396 rr nerf, why

[south marten]

Ass Jim is enby smh

[hollow elm]

Hopefully the RR nerf is something wonky about how it scales, because it's already rough to use pre-patch.

[vagrant spruce]

super glad the thread storm nerfed happened personally

outside of downpatching for speedruns and whatnot,it's nice that there's no longer an objectively best silk skill option for 99% of builds

[autumn kettle]

i think the rune rage nerf was pre-emptive

and improperly gauged its white room damage versus its practical damage

i think it needs a(nother?) tracking improvement and a shift in its damage toward the first two hits

so it gets less out of triple-dips and onward

[vagrant spruce]

it's just impossible to compete meaningfully when TS does 2x as much damage as CS in a massive aoe with projectile deletion

[autumn kettle]

but still has actual damage

[vagrant spruce]

yeahhh I'm not sure if its the kinda of skill that should be great for bosses here

it feels like it should be "room wide damage to everybody at once" and lean into that

[autumn kettle]

mm

i think the "room-wide damage to everybody" is thread storm

like, that's what its hitbox directly lends it toward

[vagrant spruce]

it shouldn't be useless, but it doesn't really have a purpose vs thread storm for single target otherwise?

[tall night]

does it still reflect projectiles/

[vagrant spruce]

TS yeah i believe so

[dreamy scarab]

I feel like rune rage's only really reliable mode is versus slow basic enemies (marginal gains over thread storm because it hits the whole screen) or stunned bosses (large hitbox = more multihits). anything that's actively trying to kill you has a decent shot of blundering out of the AOE

and that + the cast time means you can't sneak it into regular damage windows like other silk skills

[thick urchin]

Found the grapple, trying to head up Mt Fay. ||The 2nd room after the bench is a bit tight, but I can believe that it's there to explain the cold mechnics, since you can get through without damage if you're perfect. Then there's a ledge, just above the door transition- is there a way up there without going around? There's the fall, and the icewater room, and that's as far as I've gotten,||

[umbral canyon]

||https://youtu.be/EsgSvnL9saM?si=RYLRCZrpJTqzOkNw|| modded mid-late game boss

[proud cobalt]

So can you get like ||all 3 silkshots|| or just 1? Pretty sure it's the former, I just don't know how.

[hoary tulip]

Only one

Cave Story rules apply

[proud cobalt]

Got it.

[elfin ravine]

You only get the one, yeah

[hidden flame]

||Architect crest with all 3 Silkshots||

[dreamy scarab]

Screenshot? I'm not positive which ledge you're looking at

[vagrant spruce]

nope. there is not. you gotta go around and up

[dreamy scarab]

What Riker said

[elfin ravine]

You gotta go left

All the way around

[dreamy scarab]

https://www.tumblr.com/slitherpunk/795764768865681408?source=share

augh

goes on fangamer and looks at hornet plush reviews and many reviewer's images make her wear shoes...

Tumblr · Sep 26, 2025, 3:27 PM

[thick urchin]

That first bench is AWFUL. Once you reach the 2nd and 3rd, it's not that bad.

[fervent sand]

I do love mnt fay

It's such a nasty area, encourages rushing, but the isolation and danger make it so cool

[thick urchin]

Some of it was tricky to navigate with beast crest, when you're intended to use "normal" pogos and the spacing is wrong for the beast dash pogo.

[green bone]

I once managed to stagger a boss with it yeah

[green bone]

Act 3- its finally over

god this was amazing

[autumn kettle]

hmmm

building up songclave isn't appearing

which is annoying

i wonder if you need to finish build up bellhart first

and/or bellhart's glory

or if i need to clear fine pins...?

[autumn kettle]

ugh, yeah

it was fine pins and cloaks of the choir

fffffuck me, i still have two spool fragments left

and i have no idea which ones i'm missing...

okay, one was grindle's

thank god

but the other motherfucker...

[autumn kettle]

oh thank god, i just forgot to get this one

[rose granite]

||I'm surprised it only spawns one fly instead of two. One fly means that you can rather easily kill them instantly with a single skill, making the fight overall easier looking than the second beastfly fight ironically enough. ||

[autumn kettle]

damn, 17h and i'm getting close to TE on my steel soul run

neglecting some non-% stuff, like the unique quest, and i'll probably have to go back for that afterward once i've got the achievement

but i've just got the act 3 stuff (pin badge, the bosses, needle 5, the last mask, ||pale nails, shaman crest, sylphsong||) and sharpdart left

and i'll be swinging back around for that with act 3 anyway

[fervent sand]

God damn

Powerful topple

I'm not sure I can ever manage steel soul. One life is so rough

[autumn kettle]

i wasn't trying to do the 100% speedrun, i just noticed that i was at like

14-15h with most of act 2 done

and so fuck it, why not

[autumn kettle]

groal was, admittedly, extremely frustrating in steel soul

and i am not ashamed to admit that i quit-cheesed with fractured mask on him

[fervent sand]

I mean fair

[autumn kettle]

WAIT F UCK

SHAKRA FIGHT

[fervent sand]

I'm not gonna begrudge you that

[autumn kettle]

THAT'S NOT % BUT I WANT IT

[fervent sand]

At least that one doesn't count as a death right? You just get bonked

[autumn kettle]

no idea

[fathom shadow]

Since you get knocked out and wake up at her bell without having a cocoon appear, I don’t believe it counts as a death.

[fervent sand]

Booped

[fluid star]

I have now completed Path of Pain. Technically not Silksong related, but my playthrough inspired me to go back in Hollow Knight and test how much better I've gotten at the game.

The last section was brutal. Took me 6 of the 8 total hours I spent on Path of Pain.

[autumn kettle]

path of pain is so fucking fun

i malded on it for hours my first run through

and then it taught me How To Be Better at hollow knight

and now it's just so fluid and enjoyable

[hot mango]

Y’all imagine if all the Silksong DLC has the exact same names as the Hollow Knight DLCs lmao

[autumn kettle]

gods and nightmares would be a very funny thing to copy for SS

[thick urchin]

It's not even called lifeblood in this game, what would the lifeblood exapnsion include?

[autumn kettle]

well, the people that call it plasmium are uh

not doing so hot

so she'd probably just introduce hallownest's name for it

[fluid star]

Some parts of it are a lot more fun than others. I will never like the last bit of the last sections, where you have to time pogoing off retractable spikes and a moving saw, to dash through a narrow opening and pogo off another saw that was above you and then wait for the moving saw to come back so you can pogo off it again. Yes, that's exactly the bit that took me 6 hours to complete. Considering each attempt takes, like 20-30 seconds, you can do the math.

I may still be fuming about it, even if I feel accomplished at finally succeeding it.

[autumn kettle]

that was my first time experience too

don't worry, on your second go-around you'll have it done in like five minutes flat

[fluid star]

Once is enough, thank you very much.

[inland wave]

How did you feel of the cute cutscene of Hallownests terrible doom

[fluid star]

I mean, I'd already seen it 6 years ago when I said "Fuck no!" at the prospect of doing PoP and looked it up online.

It was cuter in person, I guess.

[autumn kettle]

on your second run you'll be excited for it

[hot mango]

It’s actually referring to something different but related

(The hypothetical DLC)

[autumn kettle]

okay i was gonna say

[hot mango]

(Not the actual substance name)

||“Oh, red maiden! We found this pale substance stored on the persons of some of those citizens from the ducts that have washed up- they call it lifeblood because it is the pure essence of life!”
Hornet: “I’m so fucking mad right now.”||

[autumn kettle]

lol

yippee 💜

[thick urchin]

What does it do?

[wanton bone]

||Normal quill effects, but you need to go until act 3 before buying it.||

[autumn kettle]

||you don't buy it||

||you just pick up trobbio's quill, which is red in act 2 and purple in act 3||

[autumn kettle]

it's just purple, which is my favorite color lmao

[modern fossil]

So uhhh I 100% the game but I'm still confused about something ||what was the deal with the lumafly that broke the binding on Hornet's cage in the opening cutscene?||

[dreamy scarab]

still working my way through, but ||there's a couple of places where lumafly feel like they're set up as basically lost souls. The Mist, constructs (particularly second sentinel)...others, I think, but I'm forgetting them. So in a manner of speaking, maybe the spirit of Pharloom asking for help?|| that or ||the fly is just a fly and it's coincidental to hornet rallying to free herself||

[south marten]

Whatever it means, I'm sure mossbag is gonna have a field day now that he's not dead from the sacrifice anymore

[autumn kettle]

||lace is also seen controlling them multiple times||

||it's very likely that lace was responsible for saving hornet, much like she does during the act 3 intro||

[umbral canyon]

||there's a place in whiteward that confirms that, yeah, they are the souls of pharloom's bugs who grew too old to work or sing and were reprocessed||

[green bone]

ts was so peak Late Act 3

[autumn kettle]

closer...

just ||seth + nyleth, khann, and the everbloom||

and then the final boss

yippee

[autumn kettle]

||seth|| done, ||nyleth|| done, ||khann|| done, ||ickle babby hornet|| done

time to take that L

[south marten]

Congrats

You have completed the game 100%

[autumn kettle]

soonge

[south marten]

No, like

You are currently at 100% completion

Completion percentage is so weird in this game

[autumn kettle]

i know

but you said

completed the game

which i have not

i've acquired 100%

[south marten]

TC disagrees that you haven't completed the game /j

[autumn kettle]

but the work remains undone

[south marten]

What's the threshold for Speed Completion?

[autumn kettle]

time to not Fucking Die

5h for act 2 completion, 30h for 100% act 3 completion

[south marten]

Yeah so just don't take 10 hours to beat the final boss and you're fine

[autumn kettle]

i know lmao

it's not about the time

it's about not fucking up and dying

just gotta not choke

[south marten]

Oh wait is that steel soul?

[autumn kettle]

yes

[south marten]

Jfc good luck

[autumn kettle]

i'm doing steel soul 100% and 30h 100% at the same time

this was not the plan, but it worked out that way

god this boss has such a gorgeous introduction

it's peam

okay, that phase 1-2 was

basically instant

holy fuckles

ez every time

the jod jamer

really thought that was gonna be more sketchy than it was

skong skompleted

[south marten]

Skongpletion

[autumn kettle]

i forgor to screenshot the timer, so

did it again

this boss is peak

i should do it with hunter...

wanderer done, way sloppier but still cleared

i am currently being grisped by the fucking hyperfixation demon

okay i actually had to abort once on hunter, this shit was dicey

i am not good with this crest

[wanton bone]

I like Hunter, but I wish the special ability was less win-more, personally.

[thick urchin]

Good luck with a Beast crest run.

-resident beast crest user

[autumn kettle]

beast is fun!

i'm gonna do witch now

i was rambling about my favorite bosses and crests to someone else and couldn't shut the fuck up

but now i've aborted the infodump

and it's time to witch it up

screenshot a bit too slowly, but i finished them with a witch bind :D

unfortunately, this one was even more sloppy

but i did it

alright, beast time

i wish you could skip the fuckin credits

after you've seen em once in a profile

okay, beast done!

dreading architect lmao

[autumn kettle]

reaper complete, had to abort twice, this fucking crest is so slow

one more and i'll shut the fuck up

[brave flower]

simply charged attack

[autumn kettle]

and architect done

i'm missing two memory lockets for it...

[thick urchin]

I still need 2 lockets to get the blue vesticrest

[autumn kettle]

rip

i wonder which two I'm missing

[brave flower]

architect no red tools is hateful

[autumn kettle]

smacc

[brave flower]

like

even if you just want to smacc

theres flintslate

[autumn kettle]

yeah but

[thick urchin]

Plasmium archetect is a whole thing!

[autumn kettle]

archi doesn't need them

on reaper or witch, sure

i'll use flea drank for speed

and lifeblood for witch/beast

[thorny bear]

||tacks against lost lace|| is, like, the most useful scenario for a tool in the game

[autumn kettle]

but archi just has a Good Needle

spoil that one serval

but also, i wanted to clear the boss, not just remove its health bar

gotta know the moveset

i enjoy the nailplay a lot

[thorny bear]

this really is the dark souls of metroidvanias, huh

[autumn kettle]

look

if there is an option for me to just beat things to death with a stick

in a game full of things that supplement beating things to death with a stick

i will try to play stick purist

[thorny bear]

everyone should play how they want to, of course, it's just that it's not as if using the prominently encouraged ranged attack isn't really clearing the boss

[brave flower]

fair

[autumn kettle]

i prefer to engage with boss movesets as much as possible in these kinds of game

especially when it's a boss with a moveset i enjoy as much as this one

[wanton bone]

Could do ||gunslinger architect||?

[autumn kettle]

that could be fun

I'll wait for more content though, so i don't burn myself out entirely

I was exorcising the demons

after riding the high of "wait I'm actually good at this fight now?"

[proud cobalt]

Disappointed there is no motorized chainsaw tool, only saw chain and motorized circular saw.

[dreamy scarab]

Hornet would love chainsaws

Crest of the Lumberjack

[thick urchin]

Crest of the termite.

[rotund magnet]

I hate this challenge so much

[hot mango]

You know what’s great about Silksong? There is not a single crest that falls behind the rest, and there are like only a few useless tools probably (I don’t actually know afaik they’re all useful but statistically speaking), which is a huge step up from Hollow Knight’s charms despite being a far more daunting task

[elfin ravine]

I find myself after some consideration to slightly prefer Hollow Knight to Silksong overall

[south marten]

I like the crest system from a game design standpoint

I don't actually enjoy most of the crests

Mechanically, they're solid

But I still find myself playing only a couple of them

[thick urchin]

I finally found Chef Lugosi.

[south marten]

Ass Jim

[rotund magnet]

reaper and witch are my favorites

[south marten]

I'm based and hunterpilled personally /s

[rotund magnet]

that's my brother's favorite

[proud cobalt]

The technology exists for sure ||Underworks saw cubes||.

[hot mango]

Is it suboptimal for a general speedrun and gives less leniency when it comes to the achievements? Yes. Does Beast Crest also make some of the challenges of the game significantly faster to breeze through should you choose to actually dedicate the time to git gud with it? Yes enough for me to be willing to path it out and run the math

[tall night]

She can have chainsaws!

[hot mango]

I will say I do kinda want DLC to add more enemy gauntlets that are more colosseum of fools adjacent. Rewatching Colosseum Footage, it really pushed the limit when it came to enemy gauntlets and arena changes in a way that Silksong doesn’t even graze

Like I kinda want a fight where a ||Vaultreader, Maestro, Judge, and Cogwork Steam Guy are all put in the same room||

Like neither of the two most major enemy gauntlets in Silksong have Shield Enemies

[south marten]

||High Hall|| and what else?

[hot mango]

||Coral Tower||

[south marten]

Ah right

I blocked that out of my head a bit

[hot mango]

I hope people mod a colosseum of fools into Silksong… and like, design it’s difficulty to be on par with the HK one instead of whatever the hell that mod w/ floorless Pure Vessel as the last wave is

[fervent sand]

Say you got to name an area in the DLC that is inevitably coming and they'll design around the name, what name would you give to an area?

Inspired by this

[fathom willow]

||Bilewater 2||

[fervent sand]

Which sounds worse? New Bilewater or Old Bilewater?

[brave flower]

shoutout to ||bilevoid||

[safe yew]

suggestions (besides the obvious ones):

• The Monolith
• Rootnest
• Whalefall

[hoary tulip]

Spear's Tip

[elfin ravine]

City of Steel feels like it has to happen

We are yet to see Sharpe in the game

[safe yew]

city of steel seems like it goes without saying, yeah

[hoary tulip]

we ARE going to the City of Steel

especially considering the whole Steelseer Zi mini-plot exists (if only in Steel Soul)

[green bone]

City of Bronze

[fathom shadow]

Carvers Quarry

Enemies in the area have a unique mechanic to work together for combo attacks.

Enemies use hammers, chisels, and spikes.

[safe yew]

ooh, another one: The Bellforge (area where they make all those bells)

[rose granite]

Dampened city best city

[rose granite]

Watching a double bosses video (Act 1 only), and damn if a decent chunk of them aren't tempting me to try the mod. Here are a few highlights.
Video link https://youtu.be/Ath7hdPTmmM?si=CHP9AbeLg0_Y4Uki

[vernal stone]

They're holding hands I the third one :)

[autumn kettle]

quadruple conchflies does sound very funny

[rose granite]

Didn't even notice that, but ye :).

So far the good, bad, and the ugly fights have all been as expected, with large area denial consistently being tough but fun-looking if telegraphed well.

Something interesting, but not too surprising, I noticed is that something small about Savage Beastfly that makes their fight weird is the way in which flying enemies in this game will position themselves before making their attack, throughout which they'll be flying fast towards/around you. It's most noticeable with flying charge minions, late-game spoiler ||Scarrsinger's bodyguards being the clearest example during my playthrough||, where both their repositioning and the angle of the eventual attack can end up feeling a bit awkward.

It's interesting to contrast the Beastfly with the conches, since both deal a lot with horizontal and vertical charges but end up being very different in execution.

[rose granite]

It was definitely a highlight and one of the fights that makes me want to try this mod.

For as simple of a change as it is this does look like one hell of a fun mod with a fair few of the bosses.

[autumn kettle]

double final boss scares me

[thick urchin]

Even leaving aside the pogo, the dash attack has untapped potential for a player who REALLY knows how to use it. I was already considering looking for TAS tools when I finally finished my run.

[proud cobalt]

You saying she does already have one, or she should have one?

[rose granite]

More double boss fun

[autumn kettle]

god, yeah

that's certainly a way to make that boss not a pushover, huh

is the pink stuff a vfx mod?

[rose granite]

Sadly the mod doesn't work for all bosses, but it's been fun to see it elevate the ones where an increase in intensity is the main thing missing for me

[rose granite]

Yup

[autumn kettle]

sick

any solid manager mods out yet?

for hornet skins and such

[rose granite]

I haven't checked so don't know sadly.

[autumn kettle]

gotcha

[rose granite]

Especially since a decent chunk of modding is on GitHub.

More highlights from the same fight

[autumn kettle]

bro is locked in

lmao

the fucking sandevistan hornet

[rose granite]

I do love when a boss fight gets difficult enough that you can see the moves used based on the change in lighting on the guy's face

[autumn kettle]

lmfao

yeah

[rose granite]

The team rocket fight ||Double Troubblio|| is looking like you'd expect