Silksong Journal, Entry 3

Well, I didn't get as far as over the weekend as I had hoped... The weather was too nice and the bosses were too hard. My goal was to reach the Citadel, and I came close by taking a look at the Blasted Steps, but I'm not there yet. Since my previous entry, I was busy with clearing the rest of Greymoor, exploring the Shellwoods and the Hunter's March, before finally freeing Bellhart for some much needed progress. Spoilers ahead for all these areas!

One topic I haven't talked about yet are traps, so let's first talk about traps, because this feels like a new thing. Well, Hollow Knight did have some here and there, like the plants in Greenpath, but Silksong has stuff like tripwires that let bladetraps shoot out of the ground, or switches that let some bone scythes swing at you. There was also this one chain of explosive rocks somewhere that nearly killed me. And there are also bear traps... Though, I suppose you would call them "bug traps", unless there are actual bear bugs in Pharloom. After the giant rat-like mites I wouldn't be surprised.

Last time I was struggling with Greymoor and this didn't really get better. You have scissor-wielding enemies that also do double damage and can even cut through the ground. And then there is the boss of the area...

The Moorwing. I don't know, for some reason this gave me Soul Master vibes... Of course, this is an entirely different area and a very different enemy, but you fight them both in the open in the rain. You also have the exact same eerie melody when you get close to the fight, foreboding the danger. It takes a while to go back to this boss, because there is no bench close by. And like the Soul Sanctum, this feels like a very dreary area and one of the more difficult places in the earlier game.

Well, the major difference is that you can get company in this fight – from Garmond and his trusty steed, Zaza. You can ask them to assist you or choose not to. And the Hollow Knight veteran in oneself might hesitate after what can happen to Cloth... But he seemed really happy to do it and it was hilarious to witness, so I just had to. However, like in Hollow Knight, there are probably a number of these choices, which can heavily influence the path of certain characters. And it will be interesting to see what happens if you say "no" in a second playthrough.

But even though I had some help, I hit my first brick wall here, because this boss was very difficult for me to beat. The first phase is easy enough, but in the second phase things get really chaotic and these things all deal double damage. Well, technically some of his attacks do multi-hit damage, which will result in getting hit twice over, but that's about the same. And it made me second-guess my choice of asking for Garmond's aid... Maybe his presence made the fight harder than it would be normally?

If you think about, in Hollow Knight it was actually rare that bosses dealt two masks of damage. It was mainly the optional stuff, like dream bosses (e.g. the Soul Tyrant), the ascended variants in the Hall of Gods, and so on. But foes like the Traitor Lord were the exception, while in Silksong they quickly became the rule... 

So, I spent some time wandering around, maybe finding something that helps, where I purchased everything from the forge and whatever I could find, like the Mask Shard at the shop. Not that completing the sixth mask would have made a difference in this case... It's still three mistakes and you're dead.

There is also the Warding Bell as a defensive tool, which protects you while you're healing. This sounds nice in theory, but it only prevents you from taking a hit (while doing some damage of its own). It will still interrupt the binding, so you lose all the silk and don't get anything out of it. And in this fight, especially in the second phase, I struggled with finding good spots and moments for using Bind, because whenever I healed I often ended up getting run over right after.

You can also obtain the Reaper crest before this battle, which increases your range and knockback at the cost of attack speed, but it felt right for this fight, so I stuck to it after some experimentation. And eventually I beat the boss with it and sheer will, after I thought I had exhausted my options. But maybe I hadn't...

Remember when I mentioned the Wormways as a potential sequence break? Now could have been the time, because after opening the path at Greymoor I eventually ended up right at the ledge that I tried to reach before. Maybe there was some door that can only be opened from one side, which I'm forgetting but I think this is a potential way to bypass the fight.

Whatever path you may choose, you will eventually arrive at the Haunted Bellhart, where you get the game's second cutscene. Lots of bugs are tied up here with silk strings, confirming the involvement of the Weavers in something shady. Freeing the town is your second major objective, though you might be able to ignore it entirely. While I'm not there yet, it looked to me like you can reach the Citadel without freeing Bellhart first. The question is if you really want to...

I also absolutely love the idea that there are so many bells in this game world that you can find entire caverns made out of them, where you can explore those for the first time below and above Bellhart. There is something verily creepy of walking through claustrophobic tunnels made out of metal scraps. And at this point I'm convinced that the final boss has to be Isabelle from Animal Crossing. Imagine the terror.

Next to Bellhart lies the Shellwoods, where the game tests your pogo skills. And once you got the hang of it, you're rewarded with running right into the next boss, Sister Splinter.

And dead! I'm kidding, of course, this also took me a while, though not as long as the Moorwing. Again, this boss does double damage with its giant claws, but the pattern is easy enough to learn and master. It would have been an easy boss if she didn't summon some Splinterbarks to her aid. And this is where things can get tricky. I can deal with a boss, learn its attack patterns and eventually do the dance, but once there is another enemy in the room, all with their own quirks and attack patterns, it gets distracting. It divides the attention and this can lead to making mistakes.

It may also subvert your choice of crest. In this case I went with the Wanderer, because it let me destroy the spiked vines the quickest. But in return it made dealing with the Splinterbarks a pain, because I got easily caught up in their attacks. So, I had to switch to the Hunter. What really did the trick was the Thread Storm, however, where I usually could take out the henchmen in one strike. The Sting Shard tool was also very effective, because you're guaranteed to land a hit by placing them near the top.

The reward is the Cling Grip, letting you do wall jumps. And that's finally something huge, a lot more to my liking than the Princess Peach cloak, where it also invited me to go backtrack and see what I now could find... Which was a big mistake.

Well, not outright. I got the first collection of flees, where I found the last one at the Shellwoods. They then take you to the place where fought the Moorwing, which is curious. What will happen if you haven't defeated the boss yet? Will they still wait? Will they move elsewhere? Is it even possible to obtain enough flees before the boss? But I suppose it is, since you might be able to sequence break and Team Cherry certainly has accounted for this thing. And it looks like I could have gotten another flee in the Hunter's Marches already.

(Update: a friend of mine, who also got stuck at the Moorwing, told me that he had completed the flee quest first and this makes the Moorwing go away. That's hilarious and it looks like there might be two ways of avoiding this boss.)

The Hunter's March was my next destination and this was a curious case of confusion. I could have sworn that I was not able to use the red flowers there in any form before, so I assumed that I needed another upgrade. But in the end they act the same as the balloons in the Far Fields or the flowers in the Shellwoods... Maybe there is a trigger that makes them bloom at some point, but it's more likely that I somehow misunderstand them the first time.

It's not like I would have done myself a favor of going there early anyway... The area itself is okay, often giving you a second route to avoid stronger foes, but at the end awaited two fights that I just couldn't do:

The first is the Savage Beastfly in the Chapel of the Beast. The other is a second Skarrgard, but this one has the company of a flying Skarr. And both fights come with the same problem that made me struggle during the Sister Splinter battle. They divide my attention thanks to the second enemies. And of course they all do double damage, so you best not make any mistakes.

The Savage Beastfly is another boss where it is relatively easy to learn its patterns. The Reaper crest worked really well for me here, but eventually it drops its smaller friends on you and often more than just one. Sometimes it takes them out for you with its body slam attack, but you can't rely on that and having the enemies in the room can put you quickly in a corner (as pictured). It's even dependent on luck, because it randomly chooses between Kiliks, Beastflies and the "Vicious Caranid", where the latter is already pain to deal with on its own.

But you also shouldn't underestimate the others. The Beastflies caused me to question my crest choice again, because they are able to push through me before I can strike a second time. And the Kiliks are effectively walking traps.

As for the Skarrgard, that one is a lot simpler on paper. Deal with the flying ant first and then fight the Skarrgard as before. But that's easier said than done when the big guy can jump at you from across the room. My strategy before was to stay close to it, but then I can't deal with the other guy...

With both fights it felt like I could do it if I just kept trying, but I was constantly making use of tools in those battles, so I ran out of shards eventually. And I'm not sure whether I like this system or not. I like how they are limited and get refilled at benches. That makes a lot of sense, but having to farm the shards on top feels like an unnecessary limitation. At least it made me reconsider and go elsewhere. These fights clearly are meant to be optional anyway, where getting a better needle may already make a big difference and I probably shouldn't have wasted so much time on them. To be honest, trying these fights now nearly broke my spirit.

Well, I took it out on the next best boss nearby, the Skull Tyrant. Finally a success! But this also didn't really score me anything of value... yet. You get a Crown Fragment, but I don't know what it's good for....

What has been useful is finding Memory Lockets, however, which is what can unlock additional slots on your crests:

So, each crest can have seven slots. The one in the middle is for your primary silk skill. And then there are two of each color / type, where the crests start out with three of them. I made it so that each of my crests has two of a different type. The Hunter has two attack slots (red), and the Reaper two defense slots (blue). The Wanderer starts out with two utility slots (yellow) by default, so I've added the missing blue slot.

It also feels right for the situations I usually use them. I don't fight with the Reaper outside of boss battles, but there it's good to have more defensive options. And I always go with the Wanderer when I... wander around, where it's nice to have both the Rosary magnet and the compass at the same time.

(Update: the Wanderer is actually more unique, because it doesn't have a second red slot, but three yellow slots instead. Maybe there will even be a crest that allows for two white slots in the end, but at the cost of something else?)

Finally, I went back to the Shellwoods and arrived at the bridge where the beginning of the game took place – the one Hornet broke and fell through. From there you get into the Blasted Steps, which is Pharloom's counterpart to the Howling Cliffs, taking place in the same wasteland. Only that it's a lot more lethal. This is where you can reach the Citadel from what I could tell, you even encounter your first Judges here, enemies looking a bit like the Godseeker for some reason. The sands are also filled with worms, which will hit you twice when you fall into them... And since I had hundreds of Rosaries at this point, I didn't want to risk losing them all.

You can actually string them at shops and certain stations, so you don't lose them, but this will cost you 20%. It's still a good option in such a scenario, but instead I decided to go for my previous assignment: unhaunt the Haunted Bellhart, since maybe there will be something to spend my money on.

And this was right on the money. There is yet another boss fight waiting for you here, a weird Weaver called the Widow, but at no point during the fight I felt like I was too weak. The Wanderer was super effective, because she is standing still quite a lot when pulling in the bells, and despite the chaotic second phase this boss fight was very manageable, despite still doing double damage here and there.

Now, the best part is that this gave me two major rewards. First you receive the Needolin, which lets you play your needle like a violin or harp, how cute. But my map has a number of markers for weird gates on it, where this might help. And what's even better, one of the vendors there let me sharpen my needle! Maybe now I can get my revenge in the Hunter's March...?