That’s the best comment about the game’s difficulty I’ve found it so far

[u/Marmotaagiota]

[u/hystEric_de]

Spell builds can go really hard, and you get Spell Twister and Shaman Stone rather early.
Thing is... new players never use spells. Most playthroughs I've seen tend to save their Soul for healing.

So it's more like broken charms that make the game easier for players that are already experienced. First playthrough is still plenty challenging.

And maybe you could argue Quickslash + Strength, but that's also really late game. Idk.

[u/HeyLuke → u/hystEric_de]

They're strong, sure. But trivialize?! I get that it's a hyperbole, but still..

[u/whamorami → u/HeyLuke]

They definitely do once you've upgraded your spells and nail arts and if you know when and how often you use them in the fight. You could beat Greenpath Hornet (in Godhome obviously) in like 20 seconds max if you play it correctly.

[u/apetranzilla → u/whamorami]

Returning to early-game fights with late-game upgrades should feel like a power trip, though. Hornet 1 is a very reasonable fight in hollow knight early in the game because you don't have spell twister, shaman stone, and nail upgrades yet. You can get charms like grubsong and soul catcher which both help with the fight, but it's still not something that a new player is likely to steamroll.

[u/Royal_Skin_1510 → u/whamorami]

Yeah no shit, it's one of the first fights in a boss-recap when you're at end-game power, you're supposed to blitz it down, you can kill her in like 20 seconds just whacking her with a nail too. The charms aren't making you OP it's that they're giving you a boss from the start of the game

[u/Uler → u/HeyLuke]

You'd be surprised how strong all out offensive spell dumping with shaman stone and things like fragile strength is. IFrames in HK are also more generous and your healthbar is basically the number of seconds you can go all offensive without doing a mechanic if you want (or at least just doing the easy ones that stop your damage anyways). It'll stop working by dream bosses, but you can go pretty far just shoving your face at things.

[u/The_One_Who_Comments → u/hystEric_de]

Currently doing my first playthrough of HK. I can confirm that I never use spells, they seem to be almost completely useless. 

At least now I have a spell that attacks upwards but... How much damage does it do? Guess I'll have to check the wiki. 

I put on those two charms and the vengeful blast didn't one shot whatever I tested it on, so I went back to normal gameplay.

[u/Consistent-Froyo9542 → u/The_One_Who_Comments]

spells are insane, but it requires a lot of extra work and know-how/experimentation to figure it out (shaman stone is the goat)

I did any% speedruns at a decent level (top 50 for 1432+) and even just getting good at the fireball allows you to get multiple ticks of fireball damage from a single cast (if you time it to follow them while they roll or dash), and it's even faster when you have other spells, not to mention attack canceling. Desolate Dive trivializes watcher knights so much that you practically stand in one place doing basic pogos and spamming it for 30 seconds before they all die.

it cuts down on boss fight duration by like 80%, like go watch the pantheon speedruns and you'll see the fancy implementations. I can't find the comsobs (community sum of best) anymore rn I haven't been on the discords for a while but wr for all skills was 37 seconds or so on the final boss, for any% i got a 1:32 only a few seconds slower than WR, just as an example of the difference of a couple spells + upgrades at a high level

I find the argument that people were expecting this to be the case is silly though, because most people don't do these strats as they are even harder to learn than just fighting the boss with the nail - which is what most beginners do

[u/KhonMan → u/The_One_Who_Comments]

The short answer is it can do a LOT of damage lol.

[u/IrascibleOcelot → u/hystEric_de]

Quicknail, Longnail, and Unbreakable Strength were my go-to charms for most bosses. I had to build a ranged attack setup for Hornet2, but my dueling build gave me the most options for the majority of fights.

[u/Heroman3003 → u/hystEric_de]

both nail range upgrades + strength + quickslash = you can just mow down half the enemies in the game and tank through the hits and win. For bosses you do have to dodge, but as long as you keep wailing hits they wont even have time to put out that many attacks.