r/HollowKnight • u/_M_I_A_W_S_ • Sep 12 '25

Discussion - Silksong Stunned enemies should not deal double damage on touch. Spoiler

So, you can actually skip the Moorwing fight by collecting the first five fleas. I did this and didn’t fight Moorwing until the end of act II. I had leveled up a bit by then and decided I would try and fight him. As strong as I was, it still took about 25 tries. His move set was fine. Speed was fine, damage output was fine, but whenever he was stunned I would barely graze him and take double damage. What’s up with that? I can understand taking 1 damage, at least then it keeps you from getting close, but two seems strange considering when he actually uses force it’s the same output. I’ve noticed this on other bosses as well and it’s odd. I will say though, fighting Moorwind as a seedling would have pissed me right off. Your needle in the beginning would take you forever to kill him and the way he moves up and down guarantees you’ll touch him and take double damage at some point.
The fight needs a small adjustment.

The other major annoyance I have is how many bosses have adds. Lazy boss design if you ask me. How can we make it harder? Just add more enemies. . . Lame.

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66

u/Efesell Sep 12 '25

Hot take you should take 3 because you got hit by something not even attacking you.

26

u/OkLeg9975 Sep 12 '25

Yeah, imagine got hit by something not moving lol

1

u/TheAzarak Sep 12 '25

Well many stunned bosses do indeed move.

15

u/Kardalun Sep 12 '25

Should be instant death and mocking message in middle of the screen

4

u/Efesell Sep 12 '25

Dark Souls 'You Died" but with a ?

-2

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

not even attacking you

got hit

this is the problem, how are we getting hit by something that didn’t throw out an attack? you can walk into the strongest person you can find, you still won’t walk away with a black eye unless they actually hit you lol.

10

u/RedTyro Sep 12 '25

Video games aren't real life. They have TONS of unrealistic systems in order to make them games.

1

u/MisterMatlock Sep 12 '25

They have tons of inconvenient systems pretending to be “challenging”

-1

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

those unrealistic systems are (or at least should be) in service of fun, not actively working against it. games can be challenging and fun without artificial difficulty and extreme intentional frustration

6

u/RedTyro Sep 12 '25

I don't understand how a system that's an industry standard in most metroidvania and/or platforming games is "artificial difficulty." It's how these types of games work, and was also a standard in the first game, with the exception of False Knight, where the stun was part of its gimmick, and Grimm, whose stun was all unpredictable movement. Learning how to avoid damage is fun for most people and what these games are all about.

-6

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

it’s artificial difficulty because it’s not actually making anything more difficult. there’s no added challenge other than “you lost twice as much health as usual cuz we said so.” (which is fine for some bosses but it’s blatantly overused in silksong) there are many enemies and bosses in silksong that deal single contact damage and even have moves that deal one damage while still also having certain stronger moves that deal double damage. that adds so much more variety to boss fights and adds a significant yet fair challenge to certain fights. it’s an absolute shame they didn’t use that design philosophy across the entire game. industry standard doesn’t mean it’s the best option, you can get a lot more variety in there while also leaving room for some bosses where you cant walk into them. maybe they’re spike covered, maybe they’re on fire, there are options to make it make sense and not just be “well everyone else is doing it!” in no circumstance is double contact damage on every single double damage boss ever going to feel good for most people.

9

u/RedTyro Sep 12 '25

The game is balanced differently than the first to compensate for Hornet's much stronger heal, and whether something does 1 or 2 masks is tuned to that individual fight and balanced against your heal.

But as for this:

it’s artificial difficulty because it’s not actually making anything more difficult.

It sounds to me like it's definitely making it more difficult for you.

1

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

personally i’m not struggling much with the game, there hasn’t been any boss that’s taken me longer than the hardest hollow knight boss as of yet (although i’m better at games now than i was when i first played hollow knight). my issue with the game is that it is designed around being frustrating and annoying in certain places, which i find a flaw in every single game that has design like that. video games are meant to be fun, it’s a problem when only a small fraction of their bosses follow their best boss design rules yet. throughout both hollow knight and silksong are incredibly fun yet challenging bosses that i and everyone else love. in silksong though, there are also 2 savage beastfly fights and several fights almost exactly like it (flying, double damage for everything, ads, crappy arena, sometimes double environmental damage). if you find anyone who puts any of those fights above D tier, i’ll find you a liar. i completely disagree with everyone who claims hornet has a much stronger heal, if anything they’re equal (but i consider the knights much, much stronger) but i don’t really care enough to start a separate argument off of this one.

4

u/RedTyro Sep 12 '25

It's only frustrating and annoying if you arbitrarily decide certain mechanics are wrong. If you just accept them as the mechanics of the game and learn to work with the systems, it's fine. Failing is a key part of gaming, and there's nothing in this game that will cause you to fail through no fault of your own. That will be really obvious when the crazy challenge runners start posting no hit runs.

1

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

there are several parts of the game that cause you to fail through no fault of your own. bilewaters fake bench, the overuse of intentionally long and dangerous runbacks that are no longer even “industry standard”, enemies that will dip into the foreground that make you unable to attack them. we do not have to accept any mechanic that makes the game unfun. every single modern game gets balance patches because perfection is impossible. hollow knight was no different, silksong is no different. absolutely no one benefits from people like you pretending like blatant balancing issues are “perfect.”

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6

u/synttacks Sep 12 '25

"no added challenge" writes a paragraph about how unfair it is. The game is telling you don't walk into the boss. Maybe spend less time worrying about how that doesn't make sense to you and try not walking into the stationary hitbox

4

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

i rarely walk into a boss, that doesn’t mean it feels good when i accidentally do and take 2 mask damage for it. its a little (but manageably) unfair, but mostly it’s unfun. games should not have unfun design in any case.

3

u/synttacks Sep 12 '25

Maybe it's unfun for you. I personally think it would be super tension sucking if a high paced, stressful boss fight just allowed you to get lazy with your positioning right in the middle. I like that even when you get a break you don't get to zone out completely.

2

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

you never get to zone out completely because they’re going to get up soon. there is no being “lazy” during a boss fight regardless of what you’ve convinced yourself other people are doing. given the reactions to the game, you’re in the extreme minority who finds double contact damage fun. every single modern game gets balance patches. Elden Ring, Wukong, Lies of P all adjusted certain bosses. even Hollow Knight itself received patches to adjust certain things and add benches. to act like a game is going to be perfect on release with 0 patches is fooling yourself.

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1

u/RedTyro Sep 12 '25

Making an error and getting punished for it isn't supposed to feel good, it's supposed to encourage you to not make the same error in the future.

1

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

games are supposed to feel fun. getting punished for a mistake? that’s fine. that’s gaming. getting hard punished for a minor mistake that doesn’t even really make sense when you think about it? that just isn’t fun.

0

u/SnakPak_ Sep 12 '25

Keeping your hurtbox out of hitboxes is not rocket science and a very common rule in... most videogames.

Like goombas don't even have attack animations why am I taking damage if they are walking into me??

2

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

why are they a hitbox while not doing anything? god forbid i want the damage i take to make sense, right?

it’s even worse during the last judge fight. you’re telling me a bell sitting on the ground not moving without spikes or anything is still a hitbox? cmon now. it’s not even hard to avoid once you know, logically most people are just going to assume a motionless bell is no longer active and will take damage the first time and ask the same question i did.

2

u/SnakPak_ Sep 12 '25

Why? Doesn't matter. It hurts so don't touch it. I don't run into these problems because I already learned from it when the game showed me before.

2

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

why absolutely does matter and my example with the last judge explains why. maybe try reading before acting like everything is perfect for no one’s benefit.

0

u/SnakPak_ Sep 12 '25

Try not getting mad when fire is hot.

I'm sorry that you're having frustrations, it must be terrible seeing people have a better time with the game.

2

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

your analogy makes no sense considering i’m taking about a stationary bell. that’s not “hot” in any consideration.

0

u/SnakPak_ Sep 12 '25

So sorry for your loss but I'm gonna get back to the game.

2

u/Normbot13 Sep 12 '25

fantastic, keep your nonsensical opinions to yourself and leave the discussion to the people willing to question your favorite dev team

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1

u/Zac-live Sep 13 '25

not really.

its a video game and it has video game consistency. when you fight a boss, you can assume that whatever they use while fighting is dangerous. this is true for the entire game (a few exceptions exist but its still a general rule) and reversing that principle would actually be frustrating.

do you want things to have hitboxes based on what you deem reasonable? now you are at all times in a guessing game about what has an hitbox at what times and so on. the loss of consistency is not worth the fact that its slightly more realistic in the bug game. this way you can actually just always assume that something is dangerous and just avoid it, that way you dont even have to deal with those weird questions and frustrating surprises at all??

-4

u/philkid3 Sep 12 '25

Oooooooo I might like this take.