Silksong Journal, Entry 9

Back to a big screen, I've completed the Threefold Melody quest and reached the top of the Citadel. This means I've explored the rest of the Whispering Vaults and the Cogwork Core, as well as the High Halls and finally the Cradle, with a detour into the Wisp Thicket in between. And technically I have now beaten the game, but as with the first Hollow Knight it's rather questionable and there is still more to discover.

First of all, to play this game in a wide screen format truly makes a difference. There are even bosses who might prepare an attack outside of your view, which makes it harder to react to them, e.g. the Savage Beastfly. This was already a problem in the first game, so it's not necessarily that you have to play Silksong in a wide screen format, because it was designed for it, but it certainly helps. And it makes bosses like Trobbio all the better, because the whole stage fits on your screen:

This was the absolute highlight among the bosses so far. Trobbio brings those positive Dung Defender vibes with him, where it's just a joy to play against, but combines this with the spectacle of a fireworks show. When I first had defeated him on the small screen, I immediately hit Alt + F4, because I wanted to do it another time on a big screen. That's what this fights deserves.

The theatrics when you defeat Trobbio are also hilarious. I love how he just pretends to be dead, so you can still hear him outside the room and interact with him a little. Wouldn't mind to meet him another time elsewhere. Anyway, it seems like you have to defeat him in order to obtain the Vaultkeeper's Melody, but maybe there is a way around, because you open up some tunnels towards the Underworks from here. I also love how Vaultkeeper Cardinius absolutely despises you, but still jams with you anyway.

Next goal was the upper Cogwork Core, which is a lengthier platforming section. Because I had hundreds of Rosaries on me and was afraid to lose them, I decided to go spend them beforehand, completing my new luxury bellhome with a fresh paint and a spa:

It's getting cozier! Hopefully, you can also obtain a music player somewhere, so you can play the cylinders here as well. Can't wait to enjoy a nice hot bath while listening to the Last Surgery.

However, I had now spent all my money and you need some change, in case you find another Ventrica or bench. So, I decided to head into the nearby Greymoor to defeat some enemies there for a change. I'm also still intrigued by the hut where you have to bring something vile, so I kept exploring and eventually found a whole new sub-area, cleverly hidden at the top of Greymoor, the Wisp Thicket. It's easy to miss during a small platforming challenge towards a flea.

This is always something that had amazed me about Hollow Knight, where Silksong surely lives up to it. You expect to find a small, hidden secret, but instead get greeted by a whole new area. To be fair, it's not an independent area for some reason, but visually and atmospherically it certainly is.

You can find a bench right away, which causes both relief and worry at the same time. The gimmick of this area are "Wisps", which are like the fire bats that Ganon shoots in A Link to the Past. So, they fly around for a little, before they home in on you. The platforming section to the right is quite frustrating with this, but only as long as you don't understand that you can break those Wisp Lanterns, which spawns them.

And of course they had to make a whole boss out of this mechanic, the "Father Flame". This was the first time that I made use of the Druid's Eyes, because you don't obtain any silk from attacking this monstrosity. Combined with the constant homing attacks this was a rather annoying battle... But I expected it to have a third phase, where there is something hidden behind the legs as well, so it could have been worse. And I love the "wood boss" music, which was also played during the Sister Splinter battle.

Curiously, the whole battle took place at the top of Bellhart, judging by the map. You can even reach the outside of this giant bell from the Underworks, where I previously thought that maybe you could create a connection between the two areas, but that doesn't seem to be the case after all. But you do get a tool for summoning wisps yourself as a reward, the Wispfire Lantern.

You can also find another new tool in this area, which lets you throw flaming bombs, called Pimpillos, as well as Craftmetal required for it. I also found another Craftmetal in the deeper Deep Docks, which I had overlooked before, so I could now get the circular blade tool from the Architect, which is also really cool and effective.

Learning the Architect's Melody afterwards was actually much easier than expected. The platforming section at the upper Cogwork Core is nothing a White Palace veteran would sweat about, so I was worried that another boss could be waiting at the top and that you had to do the whole climb every single time. But the Cogwork Dancers already have served as the boss of this area, so it was just a puzzle.

And with this I'm thinking that I had waited too long with freeing the Green Prince, because right now it doesn't seem like this had an impact. Overall, my three comrades at the Citadel have yet to support me in any significant battle, so I was wrong about gathering them for the different parts of the Threefold Melody. At least I did get support from someone else in the next area...

Enter the High Halls. I had only peeked once into this place so far, so this was completely new territory to me. Early on I found the last Spool Fragment in the game (according to the Steam Achievements), where now I can heal two times in a row by default. I'm missing at least one Mask Shard, though.

A friend had told me that there is an excessive challenge room somewhere in the High Halls, so I proceeded with caution. But already reaching the part before said challenge is rewarded quite significantly.

There is a hidden room, in which the annoying Clawmaidens keep spawning like crazy. You can destroy a large cobweb at the end, which gives you a Hunter's Journal update of the Clawmaiden, even though I already had that. 

So, I'm guessing that this may stop them from spawning indefinitely and you're getting the journal entry in case you hadn't defeated enough of them yet. At least I haven't encountered another of those silk suckers since them... Would be nice, because the random spawns were super annoying.

Otherwise, I could also find another bench and the last Ventrica, as well as a treasury. The latter requires a fourth Simple Key, but I already that. You can find some money in there, of course, but also a gun that shoots Rosaries in case you're getting too rich in this game.

And I think this treasury was placed here quite purposefully, because getting all that money might make you shy away from the battle awaiting ahead, at the "Forum". Well, you can string up your Rosaries inside the treasury, but you might also be inclined to instead return to Bellhart and spend it there (or go for the large Rosary Strings). And that's when you can find a new wish, one from Shakra. She wants you to follow her into Bilewater, where she is searching for her old master.

At first I thought that Shakra might assist you in the Groal battle at Bilehaven, which I would have very much welcomed, but her trail takes a turn before that and leads you into a beautiful waterfall cave, which is so refreshing after the maggoty rottenness before.

You obtain the Throwing Ring from her, which could have the potential to become my favorite new weapon. In addition, she now appears at the High Halls, right before the Forum battle, where you can request her aid, so Hornet and Shakra can finally battle together.

I'm not exactly sure what triggers the wish in the first place, but it wasn't there when I last had visited Bellhart, before completing the Cogwork Core just earlier. So, maybe you have to reach the end of the High Halls first. Or maybe you have to unlock all Ventricas. One of the two, but supposedly the former. 

Well, my friend was right, this mob battle was rather excessive, but thanks to Shakra it was easy enough in the end, because she really does a lot of the work, if you let her. Afterwards you get an audience with the Conductor, who for some reason looks exactly like the Unravelled. Can't wait for mossbag's lore videos to understand it all, but first I want to complete this game myself.

And I have taken the next important step to do so. I have played the Threefold Melody at the Citadel's core and opened the elevator that will bring you to the very top. (I didn't have to use the Spider Strings for this, by the way. I previously speculated that you might need this tool here, but that's not the case. It mainly seems to be useful for enemies that will react to it.)

I personally expected that playing the Threefold Melody would lead into the game's third act, but this wasn't the case. At the end of the elevator ride you're greeted by Lace, who lasciviously has been waiting amidst a field of white flowers for you. This is a fight that was already shown by the trailers, so this encounter wasn't a surprise by any means.

She is a bit tougher than the first time, but she is only one elevator ride away from trying again. I experimented a lot in this battle with different crests, because the Wanderer's reach was too short and the Reaper felt too slow. In such a case the Hunter looks to be the perfect middle ground and it was also what I had used to first defeat her, but I still wasn't entirely happy. Eventually, I gave the Architect a try and managed to defeat her with it. (Well, technically it was one of Shakra's Throwing Rings that has finished her. I like this new weapon!)

It is revealed that she is a being of pure silk, created by the powers above. I originally thought that Lace might turn into a supporting role, like Hornet did in the first game, but it turns out that she was acting purely on jealousy, because Hornet is what her mother truly wants.

After the battle you can enter the Cradle, which is were the Weavers got captured and enslaved until their demise. There are lots of those cages, which were used to bring you to Pharloom, scattered all around, giving you a good idea for how long this has been going.

You can open a wall into Terminus from here, which is central node of all the Ventricas. For me this was quite the poetic moment. Since I had entered the Citadel from the Phantom's lair, Terminus was one of the first places I saw. So, it's now back to the very beginning of Act 2 for me. And seeing those cages brings you back to the start of the whole game.

I was ready for Act 3 to start at any moment now, but instead I reached what's supposedly the final boss and saw the credits role... Naturally, we're getting into big spoiler territory here, because unlike the Lace battles this isn't something that Team Cherry had shown in their trailers.

You have to do a little bit of platforming, but afterwards you can set foot on a bridge and see that gigantic spool of silk in the background, which has the shape of a globe. This thing has been present as a religious symbol all over Pharloom and is even used for the game's saving icon.

Here you can challenge the "Grand Mother Silk", in a similar fashion to the Radiance in Hollow Knight. The battle itself also feels quite similar, where her primary attacks are blades that sweep over the screen from different angles. Very much Radiance. Very much intended.

However, the battle was much easier. Almost too easy. I was able to reach the final phase on my second attempt and defeated this boss on my fourth. And I'm not that good at this game, where it usually takes me quite a while to learn new bosses and be able to defeat them, especially at this late stage. So, something was already off here, though it didn't feel as intentional as with the Hollow Knight, where the boss was even hurting itself.

It's really cool how your crest changes into this crazy thing when binding the Grand Mother, where your masks turn into Weavers with the six eyes and your spool keeps growing longer. Maybe there is some Weaver form that you can take here, similar to how Samus transforms at the end of Metroid Dread, but whatever it is, I am unable to trigger it and Hornet gets simply absorbed by all the silk, along with the entire Citadel.

The ending sequence shows how she grows additional legs in her cocooned state. It's quite disturbing and now only confirms that something is indeed wrong here. Hollow Knight had originally three different endings (before the DLC) and two of those were clearly bad, also leaving you somewhat unsatisfied after the credits have rolled.

Well, when I first played Hollow Knight, I already knew that the game had different endings. And I had an idea of what to do to reach the better ending. This isn't the case here. I have no clue what I even could be missing. I also have no clue how much of the game I have completed so far, because I wasn't given a completion rate.

But I do know that there is still more to explore. There is still that awful Bilewater boss battle waiting. There is still the oceanic area above Bilewater. I have yet to get truly into the Slab. And I still have to get to the top of the Sands of Karak.

Also, I have watched both the reveal and the launch trailer again, which both contained a number of things that I have yet to witness myself in the game. Well, some stuff from the reveal trailer likely got changed or cut (for example, you could originally find the lantern-wielding enemies from the Wisp Thicket at Greymoor), but there were also whole bosses in there that I'm still missing, including the ant queen and the Second Sentinel. And the launch trailer features one silk skill and two tools that I don't have yet. So, I'm far from done.

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.

Hero of Law

Usually, I'm not much into ROM hacks and randomizer stuff, because I hardly can keep up with the official releases, but this week I'm on a Zelda community gathering. And here I could witness this absolutely marvelous crossover between The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Ace Attorney.

It was made by Newer Team and you can find everything you need to know on the game's website. I can only advise to give it a try, where it's a short game and you will be in a for a fun evening.

Talon got killed and Princess Zelda found him on a visit of the Lon Lon Ranch, where it looks like Malon did it with a Poacher's Saw. Link in his finest Zora Suit becomes her defense, while Ganondorf Dragmire poses as the prosecution, which is absolutely hilarious.

Any fan of Ocarina of Time will immediately know who actually did it, but of course it's about delivering proof by using evidence and all given statements. Like in your regular Ace Attorney game. It's a bit weird to have Link talk as much, but he also often just delivers his thoughts, where a lot of it is funny.

Overall, this ROM hack is absolutely impressive. The soundtrack is also a banger. If nothing else, go download it for a treat, also on the Hero of Law website.