Silksong Journal, Entry 8

This week I was visiting a Zelda community gathering, so my progress is rather limited, but here and there I'm using a quiet hour to play some more Silksong. The screenshots in this post will have a different format than usual because of this.

Another ramification is that I mainly focused on side quests, so the only new area that I have explored is the Memorium. The main goal was finally upgrading my needle a second (and third) time, however. For this I had to complete the "Great Taste of Pharloom" quest, where to delicacies were still missing.

But after my pointless victory over the Last Judge, I kept exploring the Sands of Karak a little more. The top of that area still seems unreachable to me, where maybe Hornet will later have her Wirebug move, but at least I was able to find the Crustnut after digging through lots of coral. So, only one ingredient was left, the Pickled Muckmaggot.

There were also some new nookies around the Citadel to explore, so I did some of that before I continued my search. And here I kept running into some friendly faces, like the Green Prince and Garmond. I'm speculating that they might assist you in the battles ahead, but this also meant that there had to be a third helper somewhere...

As for the Green Prince, I also met him later near the Citadel's center, mourning over the remains of the Cogwork Dancers, which were designed after his image. I had defeated them before freeing him from his cell, so I'm wondering whether he will get involved into the battle if you free him earlier. It sounded like I did him a favor, however.

Thanks to the double jump, I was able to enter another sub-area, the "Memorium". It's like a collection of the different normal enemies around Pharloom, based on the different areas. There was even some sort of stag beetle enemy that I have yet to encounter normally, the Rhinogrund. As well as some bigger coral monsters, but I haven't explored all of Karak yet, as already mentioned.

A small side quest requires you to track Songclave's merchant through here. As a result you can buy even more stuff, which includes a tool that amplifies your Needolin. It appears that this may even be required to complete the current main quest, where this seems a bit random.

I also took another shot at the Unravelled, which became easier thanks to the double jump, because you don't have to time your jumps so perfectly whenever it charges at you. After winning the battle it seemed like I got nothing out of it, except for a fancy Weaver sequence, which was weird. But apparently I got another Silk Heart here, the first since the Bell Beast. They regenerate some silk and are quite useful for when you're using the Clawline a lot in some platforming section.

You can also access the Underworks from here, which lets you peak behind the scenes of the break and confession rooms. Since I didn't immediately understand that I had obtained a Silk Heart, this left me a bit confused, because there was nothing to find here, besides another artifact.

But since I was back to the Underworks, I also returned to the Architect and now allowed to purchase its key, after collecting two pieces of a mechanical heart. You get another crest as a reward here, which let's you use three tools at once, but no silk skills. The drill effect is quite nice, but so far I'm finding this about as useful as the Beast... Which I'm never using. In fact, I usually rely on the Wanderer most of the time and use the Reaper for some bosses. The Hunter is fine as well, but I prefer the downwards pogo. 

On the matter of Weaver stuff, another Weavenest (Karn) at the Blasted Steps gave me a new silk skill for drilling myself through enemies, which is really cool. It's like a straight Screw Attack.

And when you return to Eva at Weavenest Atla, she will give you the "Vesticrest", which lets you equip tools independent from your current crest. So, far this lets me use one yellow and one blue slot in addition, which is super nice. I keep the Weighted Belt and Warding Bell on them, because those are the tools I almost always want to have.

But I had to look up what triggers the Vesticrest upgrades, because she only talks about looking into my nature, where I was guessing it has to be either collecting crests or the Silk Hearts. It's related to the crests, though, specifically how many slots for tools you have unlocked. Luckily, I have found lots of Memory Lockets, which allowed me to unlock all slots of all five of my crests so far (Hunter, Reaper, Wanderer, Beast and Architect).

The Flee Caravan has also moved to the Citadel entrance now, where the Last Judge used to be. It would be funny if you could drive away that boss via the fleas as well, but they didn't give me this option any earlier. (I also learned from a friend that the Moorwing will appear elsewhere in Greymoor when the fleas have scared it off, which wouldn't make much sense for the Last Judge.)

In the Memorium you can also encounter a flea, which has been trapped for a long time and grew very large. It will turn into a mini-boss, but it's very easy and the monstrous flea will get back to its sense, where afterwards you can find it sleeping in the background at the caravan. That's cute. I hope collecting all fleas won't make me feel as confused as what happened with the Grubs in the first game...

Anyway, back to the Pickled Muckmaggot. I first thought that you may be able to obtain it from the weird dent at Greymoor, where the resident asks for something vile. But the chef at the Citadel points you toward someone called "Lugoli". My original idea was that you should be able to find an item with "muck" in its name at the Sinner's Road and this turned out to be true, but you need the double jump for it.

Here we're dealing with the idea of "cannibalism" in the world of Hollow Knight again, where other bugs get chopped for food. This was one of the dark secrets that you could find in the City of Tears, but here they've really dove deep into the idea.

And this was one annoying boss fight, standing in the way of enhancing my needle. The maggot slime balls gave me quite some trouble at first, because getting hit by them prevents you from healing normally. The boss also has quite a huge hurtbox, where she does the Princess Peach body slam and double damage. Sometimes she does this body slam even twice in a row... Using the Reaper made the fight easier for me because of this, because it lets you keep your distance, but it wasn't a guarantee.

So, this wasn't going so well at first, where I had the idea that there might be a tool in the game that protects you from the maggot effect, like how Isma's Tears protects you from acid in Hollow Knight. But more like the Magma Bell, I suppose. This could have helped me quite a bit, but I probably went looking in the last place where I should have been looking for such an item... Bilewater.

The double jump let's you climb further up in this area, but this resulted in a journey of misery in the search of another bench. There is one at the station, but I had to return from there whenever I died. And I died quite a bit. The climb requires you to dodge huge, floating monsters that spit acid, but at least you can pogo on them to obtain more silk. And there these flying mushroom creatures that I used to heal up... a lot. 

A bench sign will give you hope, but of course this lures you into another trap, where in this case it crumbles down into a pit of maggots once you sit on it... Nice. And everywhere from here is just more death, where I died a couple of times going through the tunnel with the maggot fish that jump out of the water to drag you down. Why do these biting attacks always have to do double damage? One of the most annoying attacks for me in the game, next to the Flintflame bombs.

Eventually, you can find a bench to rest among many corpses, but it's hidden. And not finding it before proceeding might be soul-crushing. You can travel further into "Bilehaven", the village of the hostile bush creatures here, for a mob battle. And I was so happy to beat this fight after a couple of attempts, only for it to continue with a boss battle... Yeah, I'm not doing this now.

And everywhere in this area you still have to deal with the maggot problem, where taking on Lugoli felt easier than any of this. Sure enough, I was able to learn her patterns and how to dodge (most) of the maggot balls to finally claim the Pickled Muckmaggot. So, it was time for a feast...

The whole interaction was hilarious. I love how Hornet stays totally cool during what could as well have been another boss confrontation. And there it is, after all these efforts, my needle got another polish, doing minimally more damage than before...

 

However, as much as I was in the mood for celebrating, something felt off in all of this. For a second needle upgrade this was rather excessive. You had to do five side quests in total, including a lengthy, timed delivery and a whole boss fight... The latter even required you to get the double jump first.

Also, Pinmaster Plinney tells you that you can bring him just more Pale Oil to sharpen your needle even further, which meant that there is more than just one. The oil at the kitchen was the first one I discovered and I was so focused on it that I must have missed something very obvious somewhere else. Like the exact same pin shop sign inside the Citadel...

It turned out that there is another Pale Oil up for grabs, much easier to obtain than the one at the Citadel kitchen. You can access this from the Whispering Vaults, which means that you need to defeat the Cogwork Dancers first, but once you get there all it needs is a block moving puzzle. I had only breezed through the area before, so I simply missed this, and I then kept ignoring this area for a while, because I wanted to wait with the Threefold Melody quest. So, I now got two needle upgrades quickly after another, but at least I can feel the difference.

The Whispering Vaults also held the last piece of the Cogwork Heart, where there are three in total. For each one you need to solve a little bell puzzle, replaying the exact notes, and you can give this to a mechanical creature that will aid you from now on.

So, that's my third musketeer! Garmond, Green Prince, and... thing. Engage! This is so cool, to have a number of companions who can appear anywhere in the Citadel. The "Second Sentinel", which is how it's actually called, even trashes the Grand Reeds in the long upper halls, the giant guards that fight with a violin bow. Not that I needed the help at this point... They were a pain earlier in the game, but with three needle upgrades I can take them out quickly with a rush of the Wanderer. Or I can just avoid them entirely via the double jump.

It's a bit confusing, however, because the sentinel looks a lot like the Reeds and other stronger enemies inside the Citadel. So, whenever it appears out of nowhere it even scares me a little. But in any case, I should have now done everything relevant before assembling my grand performance.

In other news, Hornet can have her own Bellhouse in Bellhart, which is cute. You can find items that you can place there, like the Materium from the Memorium, which lets you look at all the different materials you've found in the game. You can even purchase additional furniture, for when you have too many Rosaries on you, including a whole spa for 1100.

On the topic of spending money, I also have discovered Grindle's shop at the Blasted Steps for some thievery tools and other stuff. I like the tool that improves your Clawline, but it's nothing extraordinary.

The one pilgrim nearby, who tricked you in a game of dice, is now found dead. Can't say that I'm all too sorry, but it's a bit sad how he died there alone. This gives you some sort of lucky charm, where there is a chance that you don't get hit, like with the Carefree Melody.

And I was able to take out the second Savage Beastfly by now. The funny thing was that I still died right after defeating the beast, because one of its fiery comrades got me right after the finishing blow. I was worried that I had to repeat the whole battle, but the game was nice enough to leave the proof lying around.

There was some more new stuff in old places. For example, you can keep collecting more Mossberries, where I found another at the Memorium. This let's you eventually upgrade the Druid's Eye to the Druid's Eyes... Though, I never really used this charm.

Curiously, when I returned to the cave at the very end of the Hunter's March, I was able to find a new tool there, a boomerang weapon. I don't find it particularly useful, either, however. So far, the triple pins and the tacks are my favorites.

However, my actual goal was to locate a Rhinogrund in the wild. The Hunter's Journal doesn't classify it as a unique creature inside the Memorium, so there has to be at least one down below. Maybe it's what's ramming against the gate at the Pilgrim's Rest, where I have yet to solve that mystery...

But the real highlight during the community gathering was the next boss in sight, Trobbio, who brought a lot of entertainment. But more on that in entry number 9.