Silksong Journal, Entry 4

After liberating Bellhart, I was mainly absorbed in side quests, back-tracking through the lower spheres of Pharloom, fulfilling some wishes, and fighting some optional bosses, including one that has given me a hard time previously. I also took a brief look at the Sinner's Road...

As part of the last milestone came the Needolin, which this game's equivalent to the Dream Nail. Sort of. You won't be entering someone's mind with it, but you can get to them to tune in for a song, which may reveal some additional lore in the form of cryptic verses. It's just not as snappy as hitting someone with the Dream Nail and getting one line of thought.

It can also open gates made by Weavers. I had marked a number of suspicious gates on my map, where I wanted to see if I could now access them and the first one was right back at the beginning, in the Moss Grotto. So, this was my next goal, but then something curious happened on my way there...

A second Skull Tyrant appeared and completely wrecked the whole town of Bone Bottom. The sheer terror of it all made me feel sorry for those bugs, but at the same time it was also hilarious in this typical grim Hollow Knight humor. And you can't say that Hornet didn't warn them... repeatedly. 

Anyway, I already had some practice fighting this boss, so I could help out immediately. But it also made me worry that me killing the other Skull Tyrant somehow triggered this outrage, but afterwards your receive a wish (the side quests) from Bone Bottom to go find and kill that one, delivering its Crown Fragment to the town. Which I already had in my inventory. So, I suppose, this whole sequence gets triggered once you have the Needolin (and reason to go back there), independent from the other Skull Tyrant battle.

It was also hilarious how afterwards they dropped their dead into the hole that Hornet caused at the beginning of the game. Certainly pragmatic.

But I wanted to get back down there anyway and investigate, which brought me to the first "Weavedent", a shrine of the Weavers. You have to love how both Hornet and the Knight represent what's by far the darkest parts of their worlds and how it's hard to top the eeriness of their "homes". But I do love the teleportation effect of the "elevator" inside the shrine, that was really cool.

The "Weavedent Atla", how it's called, lets you enhance your Hunter crest, where I suppose that there are multiple Weavedents and they will upgrade your other crests. In case of the Hunter, it now will deal more damage on consecutive blows, which is pretty good. It can already make a difference between two and three strikes with some smaller enemies.

Though, it wasn't all that convincing with the secret boss fight that you can access from there, but that's more of the fault of the boss itself. If you have made any jokes about how pathetically easy the Moss Mother was, now the game will make you eat those words... by adding another Moss Mother! I was afraid that this will happen, because the Hunter's Journal asks you to defeat three of them in total. And this is like the double Vengefly King in Godhome. Alone it's an easy boss, but make it two and you're in for a mess, especially since both of them are able to summon smaller enemies on top. At the same time.

This was a frustrating battle and it took me a couple of attempts, but it was worth it, because you obtain the Weavelight tool, which makes you gain silk faster. So, it's like the Soul Catcher charm. (And yes, I will keep making these comparisons, because there is a lot that returned from Hollow Knight, just in a different form.)

Since I was in the neighborhood, I then went back into the Wormways. With the wall jump ability you can now find a scientist there, the Alchemist Zylotol, who is studying Lifeblood. Except that he is not calling it Lifeblood, but "Plasmium".

I like how the dialogue reflects on what you have already discovered. In my case I had stumbled upon his dead assistant, before discovering the lab. It was a bit confusing at first, because there was nothing else to find there, but once you talk to Zylotol, Hornet is quick to tell him about his fallen comrade.

He requests you to collect some samples in his stead, all over the Wormways, for which you receive a syringe tool, temporarily. I wondered if this could be used elsewhere for some special interactions, but I wasn't motivated enough to go trying and waste my time on it.

Though, the game does ask you to waste time with its whole new quest system overall, the "wishes". It's really hit and miss. Some of it is cool, like the whole Lifeblood sampling. And there are some tracking quests, which reminds me of the wolf sense in Twilight Princess, where you can follow a trail to your target. These type of quests are straight-forward with a clear goal, but others just want you to grind until you have a certain number of things.

The worst offender so far were probably the silver bells at Bellhart. If they had eight fixed locations inside those claustrophobic tunnels, this would have been a cool quest. They could have even added a ton of secret rooms for this. But they just pop up randomly and all you can do is keep moving up and down through the same tunnels again and again, until you find enough of them.

At least when you grind materials from enemies you're a bit more in control of how fast it gets done. For example, Halfway Home wants you to farm some feather pelts (or whatever) from Craws. And if you defeat the larger ones, they will drop more of them. And finishing that quests results in a cool environment change:

So, as I said, it's hit and miss. What's literally hit and miss is the first mini-game in Hollow Knight history, Loddie's target shooting. I liked that one, it's simple fun and the perfect demonstration of how responsive and accurate the controls in this game are. It might also be a good way of obtaining more Rosaries whenever you're short on money.

Loving the ladybug aesthetics as well. And I love how Hornet talks to people in general. Not going to lie, I'm not a fan of how this increases the number of text boxes you have to read through. I want to play a fast-paced Action Adventure, not Fire Emblem. But Hornet makes up for it, with how her serious and upfront personality contrasts to the pilgrim madness all around her. The highlight is always Sherma, who keeps singing this catchy tune, despite Hornet warning her that this might attract predators. Apparently, she is already an internet meme with that tune. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

Fari dula sima net
Doni puana vori net
Fina somi mani set
Dana fon sulou bon

Shakra is also fantastic. Though, she can be lethal. I once managed to lure an enemy close to her, I believe it was at the Shellwoods, and she started using her throwing blades at it, but hit me by accident. Makes me feel like she might become a hidden boss later down the road.

Speaking of roads, as mentioned in the beginning, I stumbled upon the "Sinner's Road" while exploring more of Greymoor. It appears to be an alternative route into the Citadel, but everything in that area just screamed, "nope! Nope, nope, nope... Nope!"

It starts with those hound-like enemies at the entrance, which chase you down and bite you for two masks of damage. They do sleep initially and you can to sneak past them, but it doesn't get exactly nicer. There are these waters filled with maggots, where this won't damage you, but make you sickly, even adding the maggots on your HUD as an effect. They will eat away your silk and I think it also prevents you from using silk skills. You can rid of them by using Bind, but it won't heal you in that case... Nasty stuff.

A bench will also help, given that you find one. That was my major pain point of this area... Finding your first bench takes a while (and it takes a while to return to where you were, should you die), but the bell bench mechanism is broken, so it doesn't come out... What a troll move! I lost motivation to explore this place any further under these circumstances. Maybe I was missing something obvious here, but I decided that I'd rather go back to the Hunter's Marches and try again those nasty battles that have bested me before, now that both my nail and my tools did more damage.

And behold... I've defeat the guarded Skarrguard on my "first try". I was able to quickly defeat his flying ally and then just do the fight normally. Suddenly, it was simple enough, but the reward were "only" lots of Rosaries. I could put them to good use, though, because I also discovered that there is another shop, at the Pilgrim's Rest, which I had missed before. It costs you 30 Rosaries to enter it and I probably was out of money during my first visit, where the constant costs for benches and Bellways can be frustrating early on.

And this shop offered the Weighted Belt, which is the equivalent to the Steady Body Charm. Now, this is a divisive one. For some it's a total waste of a Charm Notch, but for me this always was the single best Charm in the game and one that I never unequipped once I had it. It was a real game changer for me, because it lets you add much more pressure on your enemies and connect your swings more easily. The knockback doesn't feel as bad in Silksong, but I think it still helps to have it negated. The Wanderer turns into a menace with this and I can now easily push through enemies that used to push through me.

The best part is that this is a yellow tool, so it won't take away from anything else that you might employ in combat. In general, I'm a fan of the new crest system with its categories. In Hollow Knight you were equipping useful features, like the Compass or the Gathering Swarm, at the cost of more offensive options. So, you could see where you're on the map, but your nail might not be as long as a result... That's not the case in Silksong, though without the Wanderer I now have to decide between the compass and the magnet, because I'm keeping that belt on for sure.

It even let me finally defeat the Savage Beastfly, where it's much easier to deal with the smaller foes now. Though, there was some good luck involved as well. I had one run where each time it summoned one of its friends, it immediately did its downward smash attack and took them out. And if the fight goes like that, then it certainly won't be a problem.

The reward was worth the trouble, because you get another crest from this, the "Beast". That's an interesting one. It has less slots than the others, two red by default and two more yellow to unlock, so no blue ones, but it does a fierce claw attack for increased damage. Instead of your usual pogo you do some spinning attack, like Sonic the Hedgehog or Dillon the Armadillo, which looks fun in battle, but is probably a nightmare to use for platforming. The most interesting part, however, is that Bind doesn't heal you. Instead you enter some temporary vampire mode, where you can get health from attacking enemies. I think this crest will be primarily useful with bosses.

And whenever you slay some beast, you may find Nuu studying their remains afterwards... What an odd, little fellow. Giving me the creeps.

By the way, Team Cherry has announced today the first update for the game, where they will nerf the Moorwing and Sister Splinter boss battles. That will come too late for me, but I can appreciate the change nevertheless.