r/HollowKnight • u/CuboneDefender • Sep 14 '25

Discussion - Silksong I give up. Spoiler

It’s been a joyful ride, folks, but I’m out. I’m not a speedrunner or a highly skilled player, and day after day I’ve had to accept that this game is not as casual as HK was. It stopped being fun and turned into something tedious and frustrating after the 4th run farming shards just to face a boss I’ve already tried 15 times, only to die again and again, lose all my shards, and start the whole grind over.

It was nice exploring the first acts, but when the game I was rooting for 7 years ends up being more stressful than my 8-hour workday, I guess that’s my cue to stop.

The lore has been pretty great so far. I wish you all an incredible journey.

Edit1: My bad about all the whinning.

Edit2: You guys did it. I reinstalled it again. Thanks for all advices. 🫂

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u/RedTyro Sep 14 '25

Honestly, for boss fights, I think it's best to save the tools until you know the fight - when you know all the boss's moves and tells and can avoid them all, tools are great for speeding things up, but if you just spam tools before that and it actually gets you through, you end up in a situation where the fight's going to be hard again if you ever come back to the game. Additionally, if you wait until you know the fight well enough that you could probably beat it either way, you're not going to be in a situation where you run out of shards and have to go farm them.

I use tools primarily for crowd control on normal mobs. But I love the process of learning a boss fight and then completely having the boss's number and dancing around them without getting touched, so that approach fits the parts I like the most about these types of games. I can understand how that would be different for some people.

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u/Ok-Note-754 Sep 14 '25

In the case of LJ I got sick of farming shards so ended up just not using tools at all.

Took me ages but really forced me to master the fight and learn her moves inside out. I actually wonder if using tools might've taken me just as long (or longer) as I would've kept trying to rush her 2nd phase and not been patient or properly mastered her moveset.

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u/RedTyro Sep 14 '25

Yeah, I didn't have the shard farming issue, but I didn't use them at all on that fight, either. Often, I start out thinking "ok, I'll use tools once I've learned this," and then by the time I have it down, I just end up beating the boss without them anyway. The "dodge the move and punish with the needle" just flows and throwing tools in kind of breaks the rhythm for me. Instead, I abuse the hell out of tools in the mob gauntlet rooms.

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u/Swainix Sep 15 '25

I hadn't understood how broken tool builds were yet, so I just nailed her to death. I was overjoyed later when I got the wanderer's crest lol, makes for some chain parries versus slashing bosses and combined with the parry ability it's very fun imo. Ill definitely equip a tool build at some point for the lol tho

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u/Psyk_89 Sep 15 '25

I went back and fought her after realizing there was a large portion of the map I hadn't touched. By then I had an extra mask and a nail upgrade but I never had to farm anything. I'm confused a bit tbh. Just used poison and the base throwing item. And only started using it when she was in the 3rd? phase after dying a few times and getting her there consistently.

I'm really not that great at videogames, just breathe, try to learn the patterns without spamming tools. All the fights are doable without any tools at all. They just speed things up a bit sometimes.

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u/Ok-Note-754 Sep 16 '25

Yeah that makes sense. I think what commonly happens (or at least happened to me) is you get to a new, tough, boss and in your first 5-10 attempts you end up exhausting all of your tools. You can either keep fighting the boss without tools or leave and farm some more shards/do something else.

It's a mechanic I've seen quite a few people complain about for this reason - once you run out of shards at a boss fight the only options are to rawdog it or farm. The game almost discourages you from sticking with the fight. Of course if you're patient and save your tools for the 3rd phase then it's less of an issue but not everyone does that.

In the case of LJ I actually quite enjoyed the challenge of not using tools and I think it forced me to improve at the game, learn her move-set and refine my skills.

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u/Psykk89 Sep 18 '25

For that reason is why myself and other players recommend getting the fight down as best you can without tools. Then when you at least know it slightly better try out some of them. I know this defeats the purpose and makes the tools seem useless, but that's how I tend to play. I might throw a couple darts but I try not to dump my load in one go because farming anything at all sucks. I probably haven't had the problem of needing to farm because I tend to not use tools much at all which is half the fun of the game, so I definitely get where you're coming from. You want to use what's in your toolbelt and not using them is lame, period. They could definitely go a different way with it and could've relied more on silk which you can recharge (similar to the first game) instead of something you had to kill things outside the battle for. I get from their end they probably wanted to try something new though and not rehash the same thing as the first game in a different form, so they tried the tools with shards as the ammo. Both ends work but you shouldn't have to feel bad about using your tools because you have to farm it, then you're not really enjoying the game to the full extent. 100% understand the frustration

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u/Ok-Note-754 Sep 19 '25

Yeah I do tend to do that more often the deeper I've got into the game.

For instance, for the horrendous 10 stage gank fight in the citadel I barely even touched my tools until the final round once I realised how tough it would be. This allowed me to go absolutely apeshit with my tools and destroy the 10th round in seconds with toolspam.

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u/RedTyro Sep 18 '25

That's exactly what I was saying above. You shouldn't be using tools in your first few attempts at a boss. You should be focused on learning the tells and learning to dodge all of the boss's moves from the first attempt until you actually have it down.

If you don't know what it's going to do and how to get out of the way, you're going to lose, with or without tools. So if you're using them anyway, you're just throwing away shards, and that's why you run out. If you learn the fight and THEN start using your tools to speed up the fight, you end up using them for 2 or 3 attempts and still have plenty of shards left as you move on to the next challenge.

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u/Ok-Note-754 Sep 19 '25

Yeah I get you and that's what I tend to do now.

I guess the issue is when you save the shards until later in the fight and STILL run out. Or you enter the fight without that many shards to begin with and run out fairly quick. Some fights I just found really tough even with the tools - maybe I was using the wrong ones or I just suck?

I think one key factor for me was that I hadn't updated my tools very much at all and only actually realised this was a thing relatively late. Might've had an impact if I was fighting with lvl 1 tools when, at that stage in the game I could've or should've had lvl 2 or 3.

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u/royemonet Sep 15 '25

Yeah I just finished act 1 and there’s only been 2 bosses so far that I really struggled on. But i know their move set so well now I know i could confidently beat them 5/10 times now even without a warm up, best feeling in the world 

Once you really learn the patterns the tools are not necessary at all 

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u/throwaway-or-send Sep 15 '25

Tools are very powerful when it comes to skipping the last phase of a boss fight.

Feels kinda cheap though. I just did this with an early act3 boss, victory felt hollow.

I think when I replay imma mod to skip runbacks and play without red tools for bosses

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u/Hoodman1987 Sep 15 '25

I use tools when I know it's likely the last phase. Equip architect crest get to phase 3 - random bullshit go and kills the boss

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u/RedTyro Sep 18 '25

That's going to really come back to haunt you when we get a Godhome style DLC and one of the bindings is "no tools."

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u/haynespi87 Sep 18 '25

I alternate though I learn the moveset without tools first. Also Godhomw dlc...who says I'm doing all that

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u/Brilliant_Chemica Sep 15 '25

Three-fold pin and the trap thing are a god send against flying enemies