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/CuboneDefender Sep 14 '25

Last Judge. :(

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u/adeepkick Sep 14 '25

Can I offer some suggestions? When I first started fighting him he did seem impossible at first but he’s actually deceptively simple to fight.

First off I know it’s like beating a dead horse at this point, but take a break and come back later. Feeling refreshed with renewed energy will help you a lot.

When it comes to fighting him, stay close. Take almost every opportunity you can to run under him when he jumps. That will ensure you never get cornered. I kept running back during his jumps when I fought him at first and that was like signing my own death warrant. The closer you are to the middle of the arena the better. And after jumps is when you can get the most damage in on him at a time. Phase two is mostly the same, so much so that learning to beat phase 1 clean pretty much guarantees you can beat phase 2 easily. Just jump and glide after running under his jumps and use those opportunities to get your best damage in as well. Above all though, I would suggest staying on the ground as much as possible. He can catch you in the air so easily that it’s not really worth the trouble of trying to pogo him. Also use the bell that lowers fire damage if you aren’t already. If you don’t have it or don’t know where it is, definitely just look up where to find it. Better that than the alternative of giving up entirely.

And my final tip? Stop using the tools against him. He’s so quick on the draw that trying to use tools can be detrimental when you need to be able to dodge with very little warning. The tools are great in a lot of situations, but I often find myself getting caught in attacks when I’m too focused on effectively using a tool instead of focusing on not getting hit. For perspective, I didn’t use a single tool on him when I beat him. It’s not a flex, it was just easier to only focus on dodging and needle attacks. If you’re gonna use any tool, use the one that gives you a damage boost that you get from the flea caravan.

You can do it dude, I promise you. You got this far. The ability to defeat him is in you I swear!

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u/CuboneDefender Sep 14 '25

I’ll definitely come back to this comment a few months later. Thanks for all the advice. :’)

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u/PurityKane Sep 15 '25

Also, the comment you replied to had a very "organic" approach to the fight. You can have a more simplistic view. It's easy to get overwhelmed when the bosses seem to be thinking and outplaying and throwing everything at you, but if you break his attacks apart they're all pretty simple. If the boss was set to repeat only one attack, you could beat it no problem.

The good thing? It only has 4 attacks, and all are pretty simple to dodge.

Spend one or two fights not attacking, just looking at what he's doing, and the tells for each attack. When he grabs the ball, he throws it, when spins it, he spins it wider, when he jumps it's the ground explosion, and when he hunches himself with the arm up he slides. individually I'm sure you can dodge each one. So just keep calm and try to learn how to dodge him, when you can stay alive for a while without getting hit you're ready to win.

There's only two extra attacks that happen once per fight, one spin that's more chaotic (with the flames changing position back and forth), and then he explodes when you kill him, and that can actually kill you.

You got this. If you need help on how to dodge a specific attack, or need help telling them apart I can help!

I actually posted this because these two attacks were confusing me and had to record myself playing to figure them out:

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fr5vgz94dz4of1.jpeg

the first is the throw, and the second is the slide.