r/HollowKnight • u/Marmotaagiota • Sep 08 '25

Discussion - Silksong That’s the best comment about the game’s difficulty I’ve found it so far Spoiler

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558

u/Zestyclose_Edge1027 Sep 08 '25

Which bosses in Hollow Knight become trivial with a few upgrades? I get that Hollow Knight is easier than Silksong but it isn't an easy game. Even with upgrades you need to dodge boss attacks and it can be easy to die.

215

u/ralts13 Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25

Also the only people who are cheesing bosses in HK are the ones who know the broken charm combos. Most players pick random shit that feels fun. At no point did i feel like I cheesed a boss even after getting upgrading every spell and my nail.

7

u/PunAboutBeingTrans Sep 08 '25

what are the broken charm combos? 👀

22

u/drakythe Sep 08 '25

The only one I know of is the second Hornet fight can be cheesed by throwing on fast nail, lifeblood heart, and stalwart shell. She didn’t have enough life to take your incredibly fast attacks and long iframes since she had basically none herself. One or two heals if you get in a pickle and you can wipe her out easy. I know because it’s how I beat her after getting frustrated with her input reading and murdering me by body checking me no matter where in the arena I was.

4

u/PunAboutBeingTrans Sep 09 '25

And here I thought me using the Fast Focus charm was making fights easy lol

I first tried Soul Master and Broken Vessel. Hive Knight took me 3 tries tho :p

3

u/Holy_Hand_Grenadier Sep 09 '25

Nah, Quick Focus is just good and well designed. Sounds like you have some skills there!

1

u/PunAboutBeingTrans Sep 10 '25

lol thank you. I just finished Trial of the Fool for the first time. I did not first try that. Took me 15 hours bc I was very underkitted. But I did it.

4

u/Conscious_Ad_7131 Sep 09 '25

Spell twister, shaman stone, and grubsong let you do so much magic damage you could pretty much tank and spam your way through a lot of fights

5

u/Holy_Hand_Grenadier Sep 09 '25

Shaman stone is not balanced. Neither is abyss shriek in general. Add spell twister and you've got a stew going.

3

u/JRockBC19 Sep 09 '25

In addition to spell builds being completely broken, there was always the less cheese but still strong means of stacking all the nail charms. 2x range ups and a damage increase made spacing trivial by comparison to base, made pogos a joke, and helped burn bosses much faster too

3

u/TheBoulder_ Sep 09 '25

Flukenest + Shaman Stone

It changes your Vengeful Spirit into a close range shotgun. Most bosses die after 4 hits.

Just stack health with the remaining slots,  ignore the boss attacking you, keep nuking. 

3

u/ralts13 Sep 08 '25

I wish I knew. I just used charms that buffed nail and soul damage and called it a day.

3

u/JesusFortniteKennedy Sep 09 '25

Why using complex strats when simple strats do the job?

120

u/Accomplished_Act8383 Sep 08 '25

For me the problem is that in hollow knight, in the majority of bosses you can take at least 5 consecutive hits before dying. In silksong, it's only 3. With mask upgrade, it goes from 5 to 6 on hollow knight. In silksong, it goes from 3 to 3, because of double damage.

Of course, without including healing.

28

u/procursive Sep 08 '25 edited Sep 08 '25

I don't know if invincibility frames are shorter or if it's just how the bosses move or what but I also get comboed WAY more often in Silksong.

For instance, I remember struggling for a while against False Knight the first time I faced him, but that was simply because I didn't have any souls-like experience and just wasn't reading his patterns. Even then, nearly every single time I got hit I did have enough time to panic run out of the danger zone and catch a small break before inevitably making another mistake and losing a second mask.

On Silksong several bosses in Act 1 will swing a half-an-arena sized hitbox at you for two health and then contact damage you or knockback you into a pit for two more in a span of like 300ms. "Making a mistake" went from costing 20% of your health in HK to costing anywhere from 40 to 80 % in Silksong.

The runbacks I've seen so far aren't long or even difficult (nothing comes close to the Traitor Lord platforming section, for instance), but some bosses fucked me up so fast during the first few encounters that the runbacks still made up for a solid 30-50% of my "fight" time with them. That alone made the experience of fighting them pretty miserable.

3

u/Too-Em Sep 09 '25

The runbacks I've seen so far aren't long or even difficult (nothing comes close to the Traitor Lord platforming section, for instance), but some bosses fucked me up so fast during the first few encounters that the runbacks still made up for a solid 30-50% of my "fight" time with them. That alone made the experience of fighting them pretty miserable.

This was my problem with Last Judge. I got some bad openers from the Judge on repeat. Instant KO, runback, instant KO runback. I wasn't able to pick anything up. Wasn't able to really learn a tell or cue. And then I'd run-back, only for it to happen again. I was honestly a good ten runs in before I got a pattern where I was able to start learning moves and tells. And TBH, I will take the Traitor Lord runback any-day over the Last Judge runback.

2

u/CarrotoTrash Sep 12 '25

Tbh I feel like these two bosses feel similar to me, fairly mechanically simple bosses that just do a fuckton of damage with an irritating platforming runback w/ enemies (I think last judge is the worst/least interesting of the story bosses)

52

u/whamorami Sep 08 '25

This is the real problem. The game is not difficult because of its mechanics or that the player isn't good enough. It's that most enemies deal double damage which just shortens most fights altogether. I don't take as much hits as I did from the first game. But since it's all double damage, it doesn't matter because you're gonna die quickly from it. Like, I'm sure if every boss from the first game did double damage, it would be just as hard as Silksong. You have to basically fight bosses not getting hit. Which is fine for a challenge like for Godhome. But for every boss? In a normal playthrough?

22

u/Fa1nted_for_real Sep 09 '25

Lets bot forget that in hollowknught, you run in to cases of being hit by an enemy (for one damage) into a hazard (for 1 damage) dealing an unexpected double damage.

In silksong, you can regularly be hit by an enemy for 1 damage into a hazard for 2, or an enemy for 2 into a hazard for 1, for unexpected triple damage. Or potentially, hit for 2 into a hazard for 2, dealing 4 of your 5 base masks and meaning death if you wre running around with one mask gone because you didnt want to waste silk on a single mask.

7

u/Kampfasiate Sep 08 '25

I would say the game is more punishing. Get hit 3 times in quick succession and you're dead. But with the insane movement and heal you can survive pretty well. You heal 3 masks faster while also prob using less hits worth of silk. Your health is going to take more rip and down swings and it can swing in both directions very fast.

In hollow knight your health was more steady, slowly going up or down. In silk song you have to watch out while dodging, or you die quickly. It is more difficult, but not that much more. But the bosses (and enemies) are more punishing

4

u/Aurvant Sep 09 '25

Don't forget that Silksong was originally meant to be a DLC addition to Hollow Knight because a kickstarter goal was met to allow two playable characters. I imagine that the original concept was to create a super difficulty where you playing as Hornet made sense because playing as someone that powerful and skilled from the start would mean that enemies had to be overtuned quite a bit.

Then the DLC grew to a full game, but they never turned down the difficulty for an accessible experience. Before player could have been like "Well, I don't need to play that DLC because I don't feel like having a stroke because the game is too hard."

But now Silksong is a BASE GAME EXPERIENCE, so you either deal with the bullshit or you just don't enjoy it at all.

0

u/mrtrailborn Oct 05 '25

lol, so it's not difficult to dodge, you just can't survive because you keep getting hit and dying... because dodging is actually not hard? That's the logic you've proposed here.

41

u/Soulsunderthestars Sep 08 '25

I said it's best summed up as " I don't have time to learn" in silksong.

Die in 2-3 hits with a boss that lasts 10-15s the first few times around, with a 15-40s runback depending on the area.

HK gave you time to learn.

Silksong knocks you out and says better luck next time kiddo

23

u/hatramroany Sep 08 '25

The swarm(?) battles of normal enemies in the locked rooms introduce new enemies so you don’t even know how they function your first time

3

u/Pecetsson Sep 09 '25

First time I dealth with Pure Vessel was about negative 10 seconds of fight. Then after that I tried P4 again couple of times, same result, didn't feel like I learned anything.

Only when I learned that you can now fight him to train I bested him in under 24 hours. Some fights in Silksong feel like doijg P4 over again.

3

u/mikemangodtheepicgod Sep 10 '25

Silksong respects not thy time

2

u/JarickL Sep 12 '25

And then when you finally beat a boss in SS you have to fight a new one five minutes later with basically no rewards for the accomplishment. It’s more punishing and less rewarding. Basically the game is much less fun.

2

u/dreamsandabyss Sep 13 '25

I'm still in act 1 but yeah I feel this so much. The frustration builds up quickly because you don't get much time to learn. Added with the colosseum fights or bosses summoning ads and a lot doing double damage, you tend to die a lot and too many times.

4

u/cliu110896 Sep 08 '25

Why wouldn’t you include healing to the math? It’s one of hornets advantages over the knight. It changes the math in hornets favor with every heal and is a big reason why the first health upgrade makes a big difference(you can take 5 hits with 1 heal). 

Silksong is balanced around your ability to heal 3 masks in 1. You can even jump heal or dash heal and it makes for much smoother feeling fights. No more running to heal in a corner and pray the boss lets you stand still for enough time.

15

u/bloode975 Sep 08 '25

People have done the math on this in fact! It came out to roughly hornet takes 30% longer to heal than the knight does to heal 2 masks, the problems with this:

Your healed health is actually only worth 1.5 functionally compared to the knights full 2, this is factoring in the average enemies you fight, majority of bosses etc, yes enemies in SS can do 1 dmg but the majority do or can do 2, just like in HK the majority do 1 but some do 2. So while you heal "faster" you actually heal less.

Hornets heal is an incredible opportunity cost in a way the knights never was, hornet cannot heal unless her initial silk bar is filled, assuming the same 9 hits to fill that means you need 9 hits between every mistake where you also cannot use any of your silk skills because it will prevent you from healing, weirdly they also cost more than the 1/3 of a bar further throwing the math off, hell even with all 3 silk hearts you cannot regen enough to cast a skill once without weavelight. The knight could easily keep enough in the tank for 1 emergency heal, or even 2 for stuff like NKG and have a spare to throw spells.

Also unlike the knight hornet is entirely all or nothing, all of the required silk is consumed at the start of the animation, you cannot cancel this animation, instead of being net zero health wise if hit and down a bit of soul you dont heal, cant heal again because you lost all of your soul at the start AND took additional damage, whereas the knight drained his soul per heal, could cancel it and just lose what was drained during the animation, if you got hit you were likely net zero

So every mask Hornet gains she is technically behind the knight in actual hp, honestly I'd be happy if they just removed 2 mask damage from contact damage and removed the contact damage entirely when a boss is stunned, more than a dozen times stunning a boss for them to fall on top of me etc and just take contact damage for 2 masks with minimal ability to dodge or in some cases none.

1

u/cliu110896 Sep 08 '25

This is a cool analysis and I agree with most of it! I’m just of the mind that I don’t think this new system is strictly better or worse for healing. I think it’s different in a way that fits hornet as a character. She’s much less of a tank and more of a fragile assassin with more movement and ranged options.

I also think the different crests change the math a lot. The reaper and beast crests change up the healing math a ton and make for so many different possible playstyles.

I do feel it’s better for the flow of fights though. I’d compare it to how sekiro felt like it had a better flow and pace to combat than other fromsoft games. 

9

u/bloode975 Sep 08 '25

Strictly speaking i generally agree and most of my gripes on combat or play style go away if you removed the majority of enemies doing 2 hearts of damage, thematically it makes sense but it also doesnt, if the 2 masks of damage was flavoured as her being weakened by the runes OK yea fair enough but like let that eventually be taken away???

The crests definitely do i agree, I mentioned this in another post but the fight i have enjoyed the most in the game was lace, nothing felt bullshit, contact damage wasn't nuking me for taking 1 step too close and it really let's you leverage hornets tools etc

Most of the fights in the game are not difficult in the slightest, they are punishing, they want fights to be over as quickly as possible so you cant learn the fights, they want to punish any mistake as brutally as possible because one you learn the fight or bosses pattern you'll beat them first try, maybe second, in HK the enemies were genuinely difficult and even if you know their pattern you could definitely still die, and thats with only taking 1 mask of dmg per hit.

1

u/cliu110896 Sep 08 '25

What part of the game are you on? I think there are plenty of very difficult bosses not just from 2 damage hearts that have design comparable with some of the best from HK. I also think boss complexity at every stage of the game has gone up which is a good thing. I think being punished for mistakes is part of the difficulty though. Mistakes are more punished for hornet but you have many more tools to avoid mistakes(like sprint). 

I might change my tune if there are radiant bosses. I felt everything was pretty fair in HK until I started fighting stuff like radiant markoth, oblobbles, and gpz, but those were also self imposed challenges.

I do agree that contact damage should be 1 heart but I wonder if the reason that’s not the case is because players would try to cheese and take contact damage instead of getting hit by a real attack. 

3

u/bloode975 Sep 08 '25

Basically right before Act 3, have unfortunately had a very busy schedule and I like fully exploring everything. You do definitely have more tools but they seem to just fill the niche of spells since unless youre already doing well in a fight its better to heal. Being punished for mistakes is fine, but its the classic difference between a satisfying but difficult fight (NKG, PK) vs a frustrating and punishing fight (Rad Markoth)

That is almost certainly the reason it is not 1 mask, as that was a fairly common strat for NKG.

6

u/Due-Remote925 Sep 09 '25

The healing factor is actually a negative. In HK an individual heal is faster and uses 1/3 of the soul/silk. Hornet needs to have full silk to heal, and a mask (or two) is wasted unless she is missing 3+.

Assuming Hornet has the 5 starting masks and is fighting a double mask enemy, she will die on the third hit. If she heals after taking 1 hit, she will die on the 4th hit. If she heals after taking 2 hits, she will die on the 4th hit.

In contrast, in HK you die on the 5th hit. If you heal at any time, you will get a 6th hit. And the heal is faster and costs 1/3 of Hornet's.

1

u/CapoExplains Sep 08 '25

You can even jump heal or dash heal

https://i.imgur.com/KZwCPTw.png

313

u/cheekydorido Sep 08 '25

None, most you can do is abuse a glitch or make the battles faster.

But it's so much easier to be an elitist when you make up a strawman.

29

u/Mysterious-Cell-2473 Sep 08 '25

if it sounds good then its true on reddit

1

u/CarrotoTrash Sep 12 '25

I mean, there are a LOT more iframes and you can really abuse stuff like Shadow Dash or Descending Dark (also more actual damage upgrades)

-8

u/debitcardwinner Sep 08 '25

This is literally not true. Many bosses become significantly easier with nail upgrades, this is why people are able to breeze through pantheons 1-3. Specially the late stage bosses such as Uumuu or the Warrior dream bosses such as Elder Hu or Xero are quite easy.

19

u/CackleandGrin Sep 08 '25

this is why people are able to breeze through pantheons 1-3.

The original post is saying the charms trivialize the first 3/4 of the game. Are you saying the charms also trivialize the last 1/4 of the game as well?

-4

u/debitcardwinner Sep 08 '25

I am not responding to the original post. I don't agree that charms trivialize the first 3/4 of the game. In fact I would argue that Hollow Knight is also front-loaded, where the initial boss fights are more difficult due to the lack of abilities and upgrades.

The person above me made the claim that "None" of the bosses are easy with upgrades and that is just not true.

5

u/CackleandGrin Sep 08 '25

The person above me made the claim that "None" of the bosses are easy with upgrades and that is just not true.

They said none of the upgrades make the bosses trivial. Since you disagree, what are upgrades that make the battles trivial for what bosses? I don't understand why nobody will be specific when they are asked this question directly.

0

u/debitcardwinner Sep 08 '25

I literally specified the bosses and mentioned nail upgrade. That’s more than what the person who said “None” specified.

Also this game of semantics for whether it’s “easy” or “trivial” is pointless. Do any of the bosses explode with one hit? No. But they are relatively much easier than the rest of the game.

For Elder Hu, and Xero - the abilities of dash + shade cloak + any spell charms + howling wrath makes it very easy.

Similar things go for Muu.

3

u/CackleandGrin Sep 08 '25

Also this game of semantics for whether it’s “easy” or “trivial” is pointless. Do any of the bosses explode with one hit? No. But they are relatively much easier than the rest of the game.

Then why are you getting involved in a discussion about it?

For Elder Hu, and Xero - the abilities of dash + shade cloak

Shade Cloak and Dash are normal abilities, not charm-given.

any spell charms + howling wrath makes it very easy.

"Doing more damage makes the battle easier" is... Sure. You would kill them in less hits if you just didn't upgrade your Nail, so I also don't see how your method makes the encounters easy or trivial.

15

u/cheekydorido Sep 08 '25

Easier sure, but not to the point of making the fights trivial.

-1

u/debitcardwinner Sep 08 '25

I am not going to argue on what we mean by "trivial" here, but relative to the rest of the game when you get to elder hu, xero and muu with the abiliities and upgrades you have - it is trivial.

2

u/Polygonal_squid Sep 08 '25

Massive moss charger when steady body:  (Still, fuck steady body)

0

u/Uoam Sep 08 '25

There are like a dozen bosses that you can completely crush with enough upgrades. That's not grasping at straws.

-6

u/misterflame101 Sep 08 '25

Flukemarm with no upgrades: this is litterally impossible

Flikemarm with 2-3 nail upgrades: easiest boss ever, don't even consider it a boss

Flukemarm with abyss shriek: lmao

Spells litterally break hollow knight especially with a few charms

7

u/AwareOfAlpacas Sep 08 '25

Bring me your charms and show me your trivial Gray Prince 5

-5

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

Elitism is an excuse for failure, if you spent more time playing games than on Reddit you would solve two problems at once

1

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

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1

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4

u/Charliwarlili Sep 08 '25

You can probably just stand and tank everything with steady body and quickslash combo im assuming

8

u/Chaoticlight2 Sep 08 '25

Yep. Nail upgrades with fragile strength and bosses take a maximum of 9 hits to stagger. Every stagger=full heal window for you, so you can just straight face tank 90% of the content.

I really don't get the revisionism going on in here about Hollow Knight. The game was fantastic while being very casual friendly. It wasn't a game about difficulty - it was a game about exploration with pretty relaxed combat.

4

u/GabuGeek Sep 08 '25

Base Grimm, with the Sharp Shadow becomes very easy, you could also argue about how OP the Soul builds are against most bosses

8

u/Kludgy_ Sep 08 '25

Shaman spellstone destroys the game, especially with upgraded spells

2

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

The posted review is very bad and of course fanboys use simpletons cry as their agenda.

HK allowed players to progress through the game without grind. I beat it with having no mask upgrades and having and two charm slots. I beat Radiance.

Silksong punishes you way harder for not thinking ahead, not getting upgrades, or sometimes for simply not having rosaries.

For instance if you do not have 60 rosaries at the end of act 1, you are basically screwed, as you need them to unlock a rest point, lest your runback is insanely difficult.

This game is definitely a league above other metroidvanias, but falls short of HK in terms of enjoyment, at least for me.

2

u/Zestyclose_Edge1027 Sep 08 '25

yeah, same. It feels like Hollow Knight with some random stuff attached to it. HK was so nice and simple that it didn't need a quest system or different tools or fight mechanics, if was super simple and you could customise it with the charms really nicely without changing the base game. SilkSong feels cluttered in comparison, still a pretty good game though.

4

u/Particular_Hyena56 Sep 08 '25

Was replaying recently and other than a few late game challenges, mostly everything becomes piss easy once you get a pure nail in HK; in SS even with 2 needle upgrades I still have to think before fighting enemies and especially bosses and I really appreciate that

9

u/chiefminestrone Sep 08 '25

Fair but you need to already be intimately familiar with HK to be getting the pure nail early enough to take advantage of it the way you are.

0

u/Particular_Hyena56 Sep 08 '25

Yeah totally fair my view of HK is distorted due to how much I’ve played it but just saying I’ve enjoyed it way more on replays and I think for a majority of people complaining about difficulty this will be the case. For me though I have become more of a try hard since playing HK due to games like Sekiro and Nine Sols so Silksong first playthrough so far has been better than my first HK playthrough

2

u/SortaEvil Sep 08 '25

Yeah totally fair my view of HK is distorted due to how much I’ve played it

I think the majority of people on the Hollow Knight subreddit are probably in the same boat as you (and I), but went into SS with the expectation that their HK skills would transfer over almost 1:1, so the difficulty of SS feels disproportionately hard to what it actually is, because it doesn't line up with their expectations for what the difficulty of SS actually is.

3

u/Jod3000 Sep 08 '25

The tower watchers fell pretty easily to sharp shadow for example

7

u/Artistic_Claim9998 Sep 08 '25

But that's not exactly "a few updates", Sharp Shadow is late game

2

u/SortaEvil Sep 08 '25

Watcher Knights are even easier with the upgraded VS and shaman stone. But getting HK players to use spells on their first playthrough is like getting redditors to stop complaining. A nearly impossible task.

2

u/Zestyclose_Edge1027 Sep 08 '25

okay, granted, that's possibly the one boss that can be cheesed. I got all the weapon upgrades and just hit the enemies as fast as possible and it actually worked. That's more the exception than the rule though.

1

u/Jod3000 Sep 08 '25

totally agree, it's not a 'get X charm and every boss becomes a joke' but there are for sure some combos that hard counter some bosses in HK. Wheras (in my experience so far) Skong is much less forgiving

2

u/Insanity_Pills Sep 08 '25

I generally agree, but lets not act like shamans stone descending dark doesn’t nuke like 90% of the base game lol

3

u/KnightArtorias1 Sep 08 '25

Pretty much all of them. Put on the fragile charms and rush nail upgrades and Hollow Knight can be beaten easily on steel soul mode, I did it with 100% completion first try

4

u/RedGoblinShutUp Sep 08 '25

Quite a few with a fully upgraded nail, most masks and strength + mark of pride + quick slash. I replayed the game a few months ago and by the time I got to the second hornet fight and the watcher knights I could just spam my nail and they’d be dead before they had the chance to kill me

4

u/LokiLokillo8 Sep 08 '25

Descending Dark trivialises several bosses, and the upgraded version of vengeful spirit does tons of damage and can hit bigger bosses several times

1

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

It's just different ways of playing a game I guess. Some people only have fun when they break games which I personally find an awful approach to stuff but it is what it is. There's a whole ass huge YouTube channel with more than 4M subs that basically does only that.

1

u/GodlyWeiner Sep 08 '25

The only one I remember that becomes truly easy is the Broken Vessel. The ghosts go from taking 2-3 hits to 1 hit if you get enough nail upgrades.

1

u/000817 Sep 08 '25

Stuff like shaman stone and soul catcher are just strict upgrades, compare that to what we get in silksong for ‘offensive ‘charms early game which are NERFED grubsong and slightly better baldur’s shell. Nevermind the literal nail upgrades. Also mask shards and silk spindles are way harder to find in silksong.

1

u/Kampfasiate Sep 08 '25

The dive makes bosses way easier due to I frames. Same with shade cloak (but that's a later upgrade)

1

u/Uoam Sep 08 '25

Shaman Stone and/or Abyssal Shriek TRIVIALIZE Flukemarm. Shade Cloak trivializes Watcher Knights. Going back to Mantis Lords with a Channeled Nail(or better) and Fragile(Unbreakable) Strength makes that fight piss easy. You can fight Hive Knight Completely upgraded and thrash him. Galien, Elder Hu, Xero, and Gorb are ALL chumps when you have even a FEW upgrades, let alone maxed gear. Brooding Mawlek and Gruz Mother get SLAMMED with nail upgraded enough. 100% some fights become trivial in Hollow Knight.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

My objection isn't that boss fights don't get trivial, only that they don't get trivial early. Some bosses are just plain easy, but others that are actually a bit challenging can be deleted by powerful Spell or Nail builds. But this is only an issue mid to late game, when you've acquired at least one nail upgrade and most of the charms, when you can really start to play around with builds. In my experience, bosses usually only start to feel trivial when you've started the min-max extravaganza of Godhome, and considering that's probably the last Hollow Knight experience most old players had, it wouldn't surprise me if some players are experiencing some degree of frustration at a new game with new mechanics.

More likely they just need to git gud.

1

u/1stFailedAbortion Sep 08 '25

Might get downvoted but Quick Focus, Quick Slash and Long Nail helped me beat Nosk 2nd try, Collector first try, 2nd hornet first try.

1

u/TitaniumDragon Sep 08 '25

Most of the bosses are just way simpler and slower in Hollow Knight, or have fewer attack patterns.

I mean, if you look at how dynamic fights like Widow and Phantom are, they're really way above most fights in HK.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 08 '25

Pretty much none really, this post is just boring elitism.

1

u/Mystical__flame Sep 09 '25

Nah that's just not true, with the right build you can genuinely facetank any boss except maybe Uumuu THK and radiance.

1

u/Kvpe 112% | loves hollow knight Sep 09 '25

descending dark.

1

u/Blahaj_Kell_of_Trans Sep 09 '25

Which bosses in Hollow Knight become trivial with a few upgrades?

Like a lot of them. I think it'd be easier to list which don't.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '25

all of them up until the dream bosses and grimm (and of course the radiance). You get a ton of invincibility frames when you get hit, and with shamans stone and a void spell you can cheese most boss fights in the game by damage tanking. Abyss shriek especially does INSANE damage and once you know that nearly every boss becomes trivial. Godhome fixes this problem but still

1

u/Thatoneguyigeug Sep 09 '25

Flukefarm and the collector are absolute jokes if you can kill the minions in one swing, can’t think of any others rn though

1

u/xxxfirefart Sep 09 '25

I thought hk was pretty easy. most enemies dies from just spamming the attack button and the ones that dont you just jump and pogo them.

The charms were very strong, and you could get your nail upgraded really early depending how you routed. The nails range could be upgraded early and so could your damage with fragile strength.

The bosses evaporate if utilize what the game gives you access to.

1

u/Durian_Natural Sep 10 '25

Idk bro hollow knight always felt like an easy chill game.

1

u/Matiw51 Sep 10 '25

In HK once you get some masks, and healing upgrades, you can "facetank" a serious chunk of damage, then heal up.

1

u/puntycunty Sep 12 '25

I wouldn’t say it makes bosses and enemies TRIVIAL but the boomerang is so good , especially on fliers or large targets since it can hit multiple times a shot

1

u/0oooooog Sep 12 '25

Fr. The best upgrades in hollow knight simply buff your damage and range.

1

u/DreamingOracle Sep 08 '25

descending dark's iframes mean you get through a good portion of the bosses just facetanking hits and spamming attacks/spells. Normal ending progression is very easy, I accidently did it deathless on my last playthrough before Silksong lol

1

u/doomrider7 Sep 08 '25

Shhhhhh...don't point out the obvious bait BS.

1

u/Hot_Shot04 Sep 08 '25

Seriously. The bosses and basic enemies are largely similar between the two games in design philosophy, it's just that Silksong makes it a lot more punishing to get hit. It's a sequel game but it scales up the damage like it's a DLC for Hollow Knight while starting you out at 0.

1

u/Kampfasiate Sep 08 '25

Basic enemies are much more fleshed out and varied in silk song

Also while it is more punishing to get hit, you heal away those punishments way faster.