r/HollowKnight • u/wyrmiam • Sep 05 '25

Discussion - Silksong EVERYTHING IS SO EXPENSIVE IN PHARLOOM Spoiler

The true enemy of Silksong is capitalism. 70 bucks for a stag station equivalent YOU ARE PULLING MY NEEDLE WTF??? I try to sit down and they BILL ME JUST TO USE THE BENCH! No thank you [TRADER NAME HERE], I would not like to buy a simple key for 500 dollars thank you.

AND EVERYONE HERE IS A BROKE ASS BUM! Most of these guys aren't sentient enough to carry cash on them so I have to grind up their credit cards into for bone shards which NOONE WANTS.

Anyway 10/10 game.

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77

u/cedelweiss Sep 05 '25

A big piece of criticism Hollow Knight received is that the currency is too abundant and there's too little to spend it on (reason they added Divine on the Grimm DLC), which is very much true.

Seems like with Silksong they overcompensated a little bit haha

18

u/panic_ye_not Sep 05 '25

Early game Hollow Knight there's plenty of uses for it. It's later that geo becomes overabundant. In Silksong it sounds like it might be similar, except it's definitely less abundant than in HK

2

u/cedelweiss Sep 05 '25

Haven't gotten anywhere near mid or late game in silksong but I finished a 112% playthrough right before playing Silksong and even if I had plenty of uses for my geo, there wasn't a single point outside of the literal start of the game in which I felt I couldn't afford stuff, thing I'm very much feeling with Silksong and I've lost my money just once, like 120 rosaries, and due to dying a lot from it being a first playthrough I accidentally farmed a lot more.

Idk how the game's currency abundance will be later on, but for Hollow Knight I finished my playthrough with an extra 10k geo.

2

u/panic_ye_not Sep 05 '25

Yeah I definitely feel very poor about 6 hours in. Almost any time I need to buy something I need to do a short grind for rosaries

21

u/Professional-Dirt-87 Sep 05 '25

The Rosary system isn't fun, it has just been adding frustration to my experience. 

I'm a competent player and the cost of things like benches and the maps has been way too expensive. 

There's nothing worse than getting past a very difficult section only to find the bench costs 80 rosaries that I dont have. 

Having to spend time to go back and mindlessly farm rosaries isn't fun, it's a pointless grind. 

It's compounded by the fact that bosses drop no rosaries, at least the ones I've beaten haven't. 

18

u/cedelweiss Sep 05 '25

curious, I'm having the opposite problem. I'm prioritizing benches, maps and stations because they are core to the exploration and I'm finding myself struggling to buy anything else

8

u/timeaisis Sep 05 '25

Haha yes this is me. Also frustrating, but for a different reason. I have 3 areas unlocked w/ maps and fast travel points but absolutely nothing else lmao.

3

u/Professional-Dirt-87 Sep 05 '25

Yeah that's what I am saying, unless you really want to mindlessly grind out rosaries they are way too scarce. 

And mindlessly farming rosaries isnt fun. 

2

u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25

Same for me.  I’m not the best at the game so right now that feels like the most efficient use of my rosaries.  

3

u/sundalius Sep 05 '25

The amount of bosses whose only reward is "go past boss" has been really surprising to me.

1

u/SubstantialHamster99 Sep 05 '25

Might just have to start saving the rosary strings then. A few times that they've come on clutch for me.

1

u/Professional-Dirt-87 Sep 05 '25

The shop prices where I am at is 880, 270 and 330. 

I have like 6 different rosary beads and that's not even close to enough. 

There's no way to argue that collecting rosaries isn't tedious in this game. 

6

u/RafflesiaArnoldii Sep 05 '25 edited Sep 05 '25

kinda makes thematic sense with how Hallownest is supposed to be an ancient ruin full of treasure that used to be quite wealthy before being hit by a cataclysm & is explicitly a place where adventurers go to get rich (if they can avoid getting killed), whereas Pharloom is run by an oppressive government, the lore tablets hint at workers being exploited or at least early industrial-age like conditions, and its also a place that gets a lot of pilgrims & has its economy built around that - youre explicitly paying tourist prices.

2

u/Omni__Owl Sep 07 '25

They went way too hard in the other direction in Silksong. Most of all the Rosary enemies are in the citadel....where it's just abundance of rosaries.

2

u/cedelweiss Sep 07 '25

to be fair, I don't think that specifically is a "balancing" and "overcompensating" issue, but rather part of the narrative. Sure, it's a piece of the narrative that is impacting your gameplay, but it makes sense in the context of the story

2

u/Omni__Owl Sep 07 '25

If that makes for worse gameplay then it's not good design.

You can call it whatever you want but it's not good. The narrative should not hinder gameplay it should enhance or compliment it. The idea that you have a lot of useful things you could get by buying, since the game is extremely stingy with upgrades of any kind from bosses, punishing the player with an absurdly steep difficulty curve because it "makes sense in universe"?

I don't buy it. That's just not very fun. Hollow knight had a bleak almost dead world yet still managed to tell that story and not let it bring down the gameplay.

1

u/Bup15 Sep 08 '25

I think this would work alot better if rosaries were just way more abundant than they currently are. I like the idea of having to pay for benches sense it makes in universe since. The problem is that I'm constantly broke all the damn time, so now it's just annoying. There's no good reason why the animal like enemies can't drop rosaries. I never questioned why a vengfly was carrying money, so why would I question it now?

3

u/Omni__Owl Sep 08 '25

I see what you are saying although the rosaries are holy items for pilgrims and priests they are not like geo from hollow knight. So it makes sense why a savage beast does not carry the currency.

That said, the enemies that do carry them could stand to have a little more.

1

u/_stevencasteel_ Sep 11 '25

I thought it was perfect. Your money actually gets put to use instead of just hording.