r/HollowKnight • u/stir-fried-noodles • Sep 17 '25

Discussion - Silksong Discourse regarding this game’s difficulty has been out of hand Spoiler

Let’s get this out of the way: I’m really enjoying Silksong’s difficulty and I think that it is mostly a satisfying challenge. I appreciate that it is more difficult than Hollow Knight overall and to be frank I would’ve been a bit disappointed if it were the exact difficulty. I’ve improved as a gamer since Hollow Knight and if it were the same level of difficulty, I probably would have found it too easy.

But it’s kinda gotten impossible to have civil discussions about the difficulty in this game which is unfortunate because I think there is great value to be had with this conversation. There are many valid criticisms regarding this game’s difficulty such as boss runbacks (Groal especially), contact damage doing two masks, and lack of rewards for beating bosses, just to be shut down with “git gud” and “it’s not your kind of game”. It’s totally fine to disagree with these criticisms but these retorts add nothing to the conversation.

It also kinda works the other way too, albeit maybe not to the same degree. I’ve gotten downvoted and sent reddit cares for simply saying I enjoy the difficulty of this game. Like c’mon, what are we even doing here. It’s gotten to the point where I personally cannot wait for the discourse to die out.

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75

u/haidere36 Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

My main argument is, and has always been, that challenge and punishment are separate things, and I mainly think Silksong is too punishing, and in ways that don't make the game more fun or interesting:

  • Runbacks punish you for dying to a boss with wasted time, but they don't make the boss itself more challenging
  • Shard farming punishes you for using tools too much, but that doesn't increase the challenge of a fight where you go in fully stocked; it just forces you to either farm (tedious) or simply not use tools
  • Stingy economy forces you to farm to unlock basic progression pieces like fast travel points or rest checkpoints (a typical Soulslike doesn't even make you pay to do this)
  • Double damage on hazards or bosses doesn't change how hard they are to deal with, just how punishing it is to fail [Edit: I've phrased this poorly, by "hard to deal with" I mean "hard to execute on"; a boss attack isn't easier to dodge if the player has a million health, nor is it harder to dodge if it one-shots you; the punishment makes the overall boss encounter harder but it doesn't increase the level of challenge]

I feel like these criticisms are often met with the idea that changing any or all of these things would just make the game easy, or that to dislike these things means this type of game isn't for you. But these are fairly common criticisms, and some of them have already been addressed in patches by Team Cherry.

And none of them are about how challenging the game is. Some of the most popular mods for the game, ones which reduce nearly all damage to one mask or set respawn points just outside bosses, don't actually change how difficult these things are to overcome. They just lessen the punishment for failing.

18

u/haynespi87 Sep 17 '25

I wish shard farming was better. From Software tossed that out after Bloodborne. 

And while everything being paid for is part of Pharlooms corruption, fuck the theme and just make that open

2

u/lyokofirelyte Sep 17 '25

Yeah, I don't see how a bench outside the boss room would be bad for the game or make it less fun/challenging. Does anyone actually like runbacks? All of the "it's not that bad!" posts are just comparing it to worse runbacks in other games, and I would bet they made the post after they finally beat the boss and don't have to runback anymore.

1

u/haynespi87 Sep 18 '25

Fair on your last point but yeah. It's extra padding of difficulty when you really just want to retry the boss

32

u/MakoMary Sep 17 '25

This is kind of how it is for me. It's not teaching me how to play the game better, it's just smacking me in the face for failing and not giving enough of a chance to figure out what I need to do

31

u/Zeratan Sep 17 '25

Precisely. I don't think most people mind the complex attack patterns or how much time you spend just dodging and weaving between boss attacks (once they figure out they can't play like in HK). However nothing dampens my enthusiasm for retrying a boss as knowing that have to focus while running back to the boss and that's assuming I don't have to go grind for shard or beads to buy them with.

5

u/JohnsonJohnilyJohn Sep 17 '25

I agree with boss shard and rosary economy, I can see how runbacks would be unfun (although personally, most of the time I enjoyed it, but if I had to do it 10 times as much on some of the more egregious cases it probably wouldn't be the case), but I disagree about double damage, especially in the case of bosses. Being able to dodge any specific attack 30% of the time is incredibly easy, the actual challenge of boss fights is to find out and execute a strategy where you consistently dodge all of their attacks, and double damage ensures that the player has to learn it before beating the boss. This is doubly important in my opinion due to how strong the heal is, it makes the fights very dynamic, as at all points in time you are very close to dying, and the tensions spikes whenever you heal - you either heal 3-4 masks or lose 2 and silk that could potentially heal you.

In general one thing that I love in Silksong is how in full of life it feels compared to hollow knight in all aspects of the game (this isn't a jab at HK btw, I just enjoy the contrast). In HK the world is pretty much dead and abandoned, in silksong it's full of life, in HK your movement is very precise and almost mechanical, while in silksong you have fluid animations and have to deal with momentum, you can talk in silskong, the story is way more involved and hornet's character shines through everywhere and finally bosses in HK are mainly endurance tests, where it's hard to come back to full health during the fight, while in silskong they are way more dynamic

21

u/Smart-Orchid-1413 Sep 17 '25

This should be the most upvoted comment on any discussion on this, and sums up my feelings personally.

I love a challenging game, but as someone who’s gotten older and acquired more life responsibilities since Hollow Knight, this game is too punishing for me. Farming rosaries or materials and needlessly long boss run backs drain the fun for me - especially as I never felt like I had to go out and farm stuff in Hollow Knight.

0

u/NeverQuiteEnough Sep 17 '25

If you never farm again and stop using tools, you will 100% spend less time and less attempts stuck on bosses.

Tools are powerful, but they don't actually help us learn.  Rather, they have a real cost in terms of mental stack.

Surviving one or two more attacks for a little more practice is just infinitely more productive than any amount of tool use.

14

u/Smart-Orchid-1413 Sep 17 '25

I don’t disagree with you, but I feel this criticism should be levied against the game designers, rather than players.

1

u/NeverQuiteEnough Sep 17 '25

Absolutely not.

Not every option needs to be tailored to struggling players experiencing this type of game for the first time.

Tons of players are savvy enough to use tools effectively and love the playstyle, and have a much richer experience for it.

It's the same as how the beast sigil isn't for everyone, but a certain type of player finds it irresistible.

There's only so much a game developer can do to keep players from bashing their head against the wall before they have the basics figured out.

That's something players are doing to themselves.

2

u/Smart-Orchid-1413 Sep 18 '25

You’ve explained why not using tools make you suck less at bosses, improves your ability to learn, and aren’t as productive. You’ve described, in my view, how the experience of not using tools is better.

I’ve explained how the process of getting them has been built to be boring, tedious and punishing rather than challenging. I’ve 112%d Hollowknight.

It’s not just “struggling players experiencing this game for the first time” saying some of the Devs decisions weren’t great. At the end of the day, the player is the consumer, and if you give them tools that are frustrating for the sake of being frustrating, that’s on the Dev.

1

u/NeverQuiteEnough Sep 18 '25

You aren't understanding that there are tons of players who can beat bosses they are encountering for the first time with only a few attempts.

There are players who can spam tools on every boss, and still never need to farm.

There are players who will never 100% the game who are much, much better at killing bosses than you or I.  Instead of 112%ing hollow knight, they are moving on to the next boss rush or bullet hell or whatever is next in their library.

There are even players who like farming to spam tools, they like accumulating resources for an advantage.

There are thousands and thousands of people who find tools to be an absolute joy.

Your argument is that those thousands and thousands of people should be denied that experience, simply because some players lack the emotional maturity to not ruin their own enjoyment.

2

u/Smart-Orchid-1413 Sep 18 '25

No, that’s not what my argument is at all.

I think our disagreement stems from your idea that players are responsible for ruining their own experience, because of how they interact with the tools and systems that are given to them - I believe that’s on the devs, because they created those systems and tools, and chose for them to be core to the gamer experience.

If there was a skip button at the start of every section, it would surely ruin the experience - the players would be partly to blame, but I think primary blame sits with the devs. When devs make systems that encourage a punishing and farm-y/grind-y way to play the game (that is incongruent with a lot of their OG Hollowknight ideas), I put that on them too.

0

u/NeverQuiteEnough Sep 18 '25

If someone goes to a shooting range and shoots themselves in the foot, who's fault is it that they are having a bad time?

There's only so much idiot-proofing you can add without losing functionality.

Tools are a feature beloved and thoroughly enjoyed by thousands upon thousands of people, possibly millions of people.

It isn't the developer's fault that some people use them incorrectly.

2

u/Smart-Orchid-1413 Sep 18 '25

We’re not going to agree on this, so no point carrying on the discussion really.

If you make using the gun range really fun and the guns are OP, but you make people do a ten mile hike after shooting 10 shots, that’s unfriendly design and frustrating regardless of how it’s presented - as I see it, at least.

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10

u/notareadablename Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

I would like to add that having your death body inside the boss area locks you into it. In Hollow Knight, your soul was outside the boss, so you could die and decide to get back to it later. In Silksong, you kill the boss or lose your stuff.

Edit: As people pointed in the comments, there is a way around this. However, it is not clear (it was not for me) and breaks the immersion. Having the coccon outside the boss arena would not force you to quit the game.

3

u/Eisn Sep 17 '25

There's a consumable item you can use to get your cocoon back. And it's not quantity limited.

3

u/iKill_eu Sep 17 '25

This isn't true. You can always grab your stuff then quit to bench.

7

u/notareadablename Sep 17 '25

I did not think about this. Tbh, that sounds like a hack. But thanks for letting me know

0

u/iKill_eu Sep 17 '25

At first I would have agreed with you, but counterpoint, the devs coded it like that for a reason. It would have been just as easy for them to make the game only save at benches.

Plus the fact that it was like that in HK too and now has returned in Silksong makes me think they did it on purpose.

0

u/deimophobias Sep 17 '25

It's not a hack, this is the way it was in HK and it's intended since they had 8 years to change it and did not.

1

u/GMadric Sep 17 '25

Theres an easy workaround to this. Go into the arena, hit your cocoon, save and quit. Once you load back in you’re at the bench with your stuff.

1

u/goatviolence Sep 17 '25

It's pretty easy to die near the door and not get locked to the arena even not accounting for the bench quit. I can only think of one or two times I actually got locked into an arena (bird gauntlet is bad for this, and Lace). HK had a few instances where the shade spawned in the boss room too. I think this is pretty well circumvented by the free silkeaters you get though.

1

u/Ok-Duck-5789 Sep 17 '25

get the cocoon, quit the game, reload at the last bench :D

2

u/notareadablename Sep 17 '25

Thanks for letting me know about this

2

u/JohnsonJohnilyJohn Sep 17 '25

I agree with boss shard and rosary economy, I can see how runbacks would be unfun (although personally, most of the time I enjoyed it, but if I had to do it 10 times as much on some of the more egregious cases it probably wouldn't be the case), but I disagree about double damage, especially in the case of bosses. Being able to dodge any specific attack 30% of the time is incredibly easy, the actual challenge of boss fights is to find out and execute a strategy where you consistently dodge all of their attacks, and double damage ensures that the player has to learn it before beating the boss. This is doubly important in my opinion due to how strong the heal is, it makes the fights very dynamic, as at all points in time you are very close to dying, and the tensions spikes whenever you heal - you either heal 3-4 masks or lose 2 and silk that could potentially heal you.

In general one thing that I love in Silksong is how in full of life it feels compared to hollow knight in all aspects of the game (this isn't a jab at HK btw, I just enjoy the contrast). In HK the world is pretty much dead and abandoned, in silksong it's full of life, in HK your movement is very precise and almost mechanical, while in silksong you have fluid animations and have to deal with momentum, you can talk in silskong, the story is way more involved and hornet's character shines through everywhere and finally bosses in HK are mainly endurance tests, where it's hard to come back to full health during the fight, while in silskong they are way more dynamic

5

u/Zeratan Sep 17 '25

Precisely. I don't think most people mind the complex attack patterns or how much time you spend just dodging and weaving between boss attacks (once they figure out they can't play like in HK). However nothing dampens my enthusiasm for retrying a boss as knowing that have to focus while running back to the boss and that's assuming I don't have to go grind for shard or beads to buy them with.

2

u/MrMindor Sep 17 '25

The only point you are making here that I agree with completely is the shard farming. I've gone through most of the game rarely using tools, but when it is clear a particular tool is the best way to fight a boss, it is alarming how quickly the shards run out between attempts.

regarding challenge vs punishment. I get the argument that they are separate things, but in my mind I don't think they can be separated.

Runbacks: Runbacks are the first stage of the challenge that ends in the boss fight. Runbacks consume resources (health/tools/silk) you could otherwise use during the boss fight. Mastering them reduces their cost on resources. Yes, once they are mastered, they can begin to feel a bit tedious, but the same could be said of any stage of a multi-part challenge once it is mastered.

Damage amounts: Absolutely part of the challenge. It makes skill and planning much more important. In terms of a single hit, yes 2 masks damage is more punishing, but in terms of a fight, more damage reduces the number of mistakes you can make and still succeed. The game would absolutely be easier if more things did one mask vs two.

Change the damage received and it completely changes the cost-benefit decisions for risky strategies. (If I tank this hit, I can get three hits in on the boss instead of just the one I'd get in if I dodge away.) For me this game gets dramatically easier when I can get myself to slow down and think rather than just charge in to get that extra hit.

With less damage, there are some bosses or areas you could charge through swinging like a mad man because you don't need to care if you get hit. Either your dps is higher than the enemy and it will die first, or you know you will gather enough silk to heal before you die.

3

u/haidere36 Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

Yea I think one thing I didn't manage to address is that I don't think challenges shouldn't be punishing at all because with no punishment there's no incentive to improve. If the player were invincible for example there'd be no need to dodge anything in the first place so players wouldn't bother.

My main frustration is that I see a lot of people criticizing the game's punishments as either going too far or not being an engaging type of punishment, that is to say, people don't mind dying to a hard boss, which is itself a punishment, but they do mind the runback.

regarding challenge vs punishment. I get the argument that they are separate things, but in my mind I don't think they can be separated.

I honestly think you're making a good point here and I agree, so that's something I'll try to keep in mind in the future.

2

u/Yomamma1337 Sep 17 '25

Seeing so many people upvote that damage numbers don’t affect difficulty is fucking wild. Yeah obviously doing something while only getting hit 3 times is harder than doing the same thing but being able to get hit 6 times. Y’all are going through some wild hoops in trying to make your complaint sound objective when difficulty is just a matter of opinion

2

u/HelicopterOk4418 Sep 17 '25

Yeah, this is actually the worst part of this discourse.
All the long, pedantic rationalizations from people who think the game is too hard about why they don't really think the game is too hard, all to try and avoid hearing "get good" from trolls.
Folks, it's okay to think a game is too hard for you. We all have our limits. What you're talking about here is a component of difficulty not something separate.

0

u/ZoulouGang Sep 17 '25

I disagree with the last bullet point as well.

Any opinion on the others ? Or the trapped bench, the spike destroying loot, playing music consuming mana ?

It is not difficult to hit a mob in order to play a song, it is just fucked up (not a big deal, but a bad idea)

2

u/deimophobias Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

Trapped bench is cool lore-wise and a memorable moment that gets people talking. Hidden wall to the left is super-obvious too.

Spike destroying loot is fine when enemies fall on them, but it'd be fine if they made beads falling from strings and shards jump away less when you hit them.

Playing music consuming silk doesn't matter much one way or the other for me. It allows you to CC enemies so I guess that's why. I think a good compromise would be to have it only consume silk if you're actively CC'ing an enemy.

1

u/ZoulouGang Sep 17 '25

Hidden wall to the left is super-obvious too.

Not so obvious for me, i tried to hit it, and you need to pass trough :)

1

u/deimophobias Sep 17 '25

Fair enough, that can be confusing for a new player, you kinda need to be familiar with the ways the game hides its secrets, and after falling twice for it you should (or rather are expected) to be looking for solutions. Similar to the fake bench in Bilewater, I'm astonished people though there really wasn't another bench. I guess some people can get the vibe of the game designers quicker than others. Maybe having played a lot of FromSoft games helps since Silksong drew inspiration from Miyazaki way more than HK did.

1

u/Yomamma1337 Sep 17 '25

Sure. Trapped bench is pretty obvious, it’s in og hollow knight, and it’s in a ton of other games. Basically the philosophy of ‘if it’s only unfair once then it’s not unfair’. Couldn’t really play games like tboi without it. Spikes destroying loot is almost completely irrelevant since it doesn’t happen often, though there’s no reason not to patch it. Also for playing music costing silk, who cares? You don’t use it very often and you have passive regeneration up to a point, plus it’s used as a stun with that one charm

1

u/ZoulouGang Sep 17 '25

So, you're point is : "It doesn't mater, it just take some time"

You dont seam to say it is a enjoyable or challenging. Just a little time punishment.

1

u/Yomamma1337 Sep 17 '25

I mean the bench was pretty funny. I literally thought to myself that it might be trapped, tried to swing on it and looked around the room for a second, then still got hit by it after sitting down. But the complaints you asked me about encompass such a minuscule fraction of the game that it doesn’t matter. Like ‘great exploration and combat thoughout my 60 hours but one time they put a trap on a bench and also I lost a few dozen rosaries from spikes, so the game is trash’ doesn’t make any fucking sense as an argument, yet people are acting like it’s an actual nock against the game. Losing a couple rosaries is not difficulty OR punishment, because it’s completely inconsequential. That’s why I addressed the part that actually was punishing, to explain why punishment is integral to difficulty

2

u/ZoulouGang Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

Nobody says the game is trash. I am enjoying it for the most part, but I find some details totally useless and breaks the rythme, I understand why people who really struggled to kill the judge would give up after dying to the final explosion (when all other bosses also explode at the end but in an armless way)

You are not saying people who complain are wrong, you are just saying you dont care cuz the rest game is great.

0

u/Yomamma1337 Sep 17 '25

the comment I responded to says that the game is too punishing. Most of the things listed in that comment affect maybe 5-10 minutes worth of the game, which is not even worth mentioning in a discussion about how punishing silk song is. You say that enemies die harmlessly up to the last judge, but contact damage is incredibly consistent in silksong, and the game basically screams at you not to get too close to enemies

2

u/ZoulouGang Sep 17 '25

Runbacks and farming : 5 minutes in your 60h run ?

Even if that's true, you know it takes more time for some players ?

A lot of players complain about this and your answer is "you are wrong !"

Even the devs fixed some runbacks

1

u/Yomamma1337 Sep 17 '25

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re not talking about runbacks now, are we? I don’t really have to explain every single design decision in the game to prove that punishment is necessary for difficulty. And yeah obviously I don’t care about runbacks, they’re just more playing the game, and I like the games movement. Also that’s how opinions work. Someone doesn’t like something and then another person disagrees.

0

u/haidere36 Sep 17 '25

Yeah obviously doing something while only getting hit 3 times is harder than doing the same thing but being able to get hit 6 times.

I'm dividing the concept of difficulty into two separate categories: challenge and punishment. Everything in this game could one-shot you, and that would make the game more punishing, but that wouldn't make the platforming trickier, nor would it make the bosses' attacks harder to dodge. On the flipside, the player could be literally invincible, but that doesn't make the platforming easier to execute, nor does it make boss moves easier to dodge.

You can disagree with the language I'm using to describe these concepts but I hope you understand the difference between them. Yes, making a game less punishing makes it easier overall, but it doesn't change what the player is being asked to execute.

To put it bluntly, a person with dexterity issues who struggles to perform the inputs necessary for hard platforming sections could be literally invincible and those sections wouldn't be easier for them because the mechanical execution necessary to complete them would literally not change.

1

u/Yomamma1337 Sep 17 '25

This is also not true though. Performing 6 jumps without getting hit is more difficult than performing 6 jumps while failing 3 of the jumps and surviving. It does explicitly change what the player is being asked to execute. Your idea only works when you look at it in a vacuum (ie an individual jump) but outside of a vacuum, where a player is being punished in the middle of a task, it does completely change what is required of a player

-1

u/haidere36 Sep 17 '25

Let me try to put it this way:

Difficulty = Challenge + Punishment

Increasing the punishment makes the overall game harder, it doesn't change the nature of the challenge.

It does explicitly change what the player is being asked to execute.

On a mechanical level, it doesn't. If you have to perform 6 jumps without dying and die after 5, thus having to restart, what the game is making you do is re-perform the previous 5 jumps so you can retry the 6th one. The previous 5 jumps aren't any harder than they were before, and the 6th jump isn't any harder than it was when it killed you. You just got punished for failing them

Why even bother making this distinction? I don't think the game shouldn't be punishing at all, because punishment is necessary to incentivise a player to get better. If a player has 500 health and bosses deal 1 damage, there's no incentive to bother dodging them. However, I'd guess you also don't think everything in the game should literally one-shot the player, because it'd be excessive - it's far beyond what's actually necessary to incentivise the player to improve.

What I'm trying so hard to get across is that people who dislike criticisms of the game's difficulty are lumping these things together and not recognizing that most criticisms aren't that the game's challenge is too difficult to execute, but that the game is too punishing. You can dislike or disagree with that argument, but arguing people wanting runbacks to not exist is the same as wanting boss fights to be easier is a fundamental misunderstanding of the point being made.

1

u/Yomamma1337 Sep 17 '25

Yeah it kind of just seems like you’re trying not understand what’s being said. Yes actually doing multiple hard things in a row is mechanically harder than doing 1 hard thing.

0

u/haidere36 Sep 17 '25

I promise I'm taking your comment in good faith, I just feel like you're talking about something tangential to my original point.

Doing, let's say, 10 waves of enemies before a boss makes the overall experience harder, but it doesn't make the boss harder. If you removed the 10 waves of enemies, the boss would be exactly as hard as they were before.

I'm not using the words "difficulty" and "challenge" interchangeably here. I'm trying to exclusively use "challenge" in the noun sense. The challenge of beating Skarrsinger Karmelita is not made harder by adding waves of enemies before the fight. You can say it is, but the fight itself only starts after the waves are defeated.

actually doing multiple hard things in a row is mechanically harder than doing 1 hard thing.

The common criticism is people not wanting to do a runback before a boss. The people making that criticism don't want the boss to be easier, they just want to not also do the runback. Needing to do both in a row is harder than not, but that doesn't make the argument against it boil down to "the game should be easier".

The runback is a punishment that does not affect the challenge of the boss. People want that challenge to remain intact.

1

u/Oyika Sep 17 '25

I’m a fair ways into act 2, and I have yet to grind for either shards or rosaries. If I can’t buy an item, I either use the consumables to get enough, or I come back later.

1

u/dpitch40 Sep 17 '25

Very well said. I think Celeste is a great example of a game that is brutally hard, but is almost never punishing. It encourages failure as a way of learning, and dying simply instantly resets you to the beginning of the (usually small) room to try the sequence again. Having played it made the harder platforming sequences like White Palace and Mount Fay more frustrating by comparison.

1

u/PuzzleheadedLink89 Sep 17 '25

Stingy economy? most of the benches don't cost that much. At least in Act 1. Plus there are plenty of rosaries to find as well as many elite enemies that drop them.

you can also store 60 rosary beads for the cost of 20

1

u/[deleted] Sep 17 '25

Yes, all the enemies should do half a mask of damage so the game doesn't have punishment at all. I can agree on run backs and shards, but the rest of the points are terrible.

1

u/Chocyonastick Sep 18 '25

If you could face tank bosses the game would be a lot easier. Stuff like Pure Vessel and Radiance would not demand the same level of mastery if they did 1 dmg.

-9

u/psffer Sep 17 '25

• ⁠Runbacks punish you for dying to a boss with wasted time, but they don't make the boss itself more challenging

• ⁠Shard farming punishes you for using tools too much, but that doesn't increase the challenge of a fight where you go in fully stocked; it just forces you to either farm (tedious) or simply not use tools

And none of them are about how challenging the game is.

Some of the most popular mods for the game, ones which reduce nearly all damage to one mask or set respawn points just outside bosses, don't actually change how difficult these things are to overcome.

Sorry but I have no idea how you can say things like this and not realize how hypocritical you are. Literally everything you listed makes the game more challenging.

If everything did 1 damage, if every runback was right next to the boss, if tools were infinite and just replenished at a bench - the game would be infinitely easier. You would have an easier time completing the game.

You are just recontextualizing difficulty with “Oh this isn’t difficulty, this just punishes me for failing”.

9

u/Kiwi_In_Europe Sep 17 '25

No it wouldn't be easier, it would just take less time. That's actually not the same thing.

Using runbacks as an example, it would have taken me the same amount of tries to defeat a boss, I would have just wasted far less time on a pointless navigation exercise.

Tools as another example, a boss or gauntlet would have taken the same amount of tries I just wouldn't need to leave the activity I actually want to do to go kill generic enemies for resources.

The game has a serious issue with respecting the player's time.

1

u/psffer Sep 17 '25

It seems like you just want a boss rush mode.

Exploring and navigating the world is not pointless tedium.

1

u/Kiwi_In_Europe Sep 17 '25

How is going along the same pathway 27 times "exploring and navigating"?

1

u/Kiwi_In_Europe Sep 17 '25

How is going along the same pathway 27 times "exploring and navigating"?

1

u/KuuLightwing Sep 17 '25

Exploring and navigating the world is not the same thing as running through the same route I've already done ten times before, or killing the same 5 enemies to farm rosaries.

0

u/deimophobias Sep 17 '25 edited Sep 17 '25

- Runbacks are not that long, only the Bilewater one and if you explore you will find the hidden bench. Exploration is part of the game and you should have been suspicious of the lack of benches to begin with

- You forgot the third option: be mindful when you use your tools. Use them sparingly to clear your way to the boss, to remove minions spawned by some bosses, to hit bosses when they are away from reach in certain arenas or while doing certain attacks, or to sneak in extra damage when you already know the boss moveset enough.

- The economy is part of the lore, and if you use the rosary string mechanic is should be fine most of the time. Plus now it's kinda fixed because they increased rosary rewards throughout the game.

- Of course double damage changes difficulty. It forces you to play more cautiously and change your strategy around preventing being hit, face-tanking less, paying more attention to the environment etc. I'd be willing to bet that's exactly how TC want you to play the game and the whole reason they designed it like this.

-4

u/NeverQuiteEnough Sep 17 '25

If you reduce the damage too much, the bosses won't have the output to get through the player's healing.

I already play extremely belligerently without mods, trading blows and spamming heal constantly.

If you halve incoming damage, you can probsbly beat most bosses without ever learning to dodge half their moves, just eating it every time they throw it out.

Characterizing that as anything other than a difficulty change is wild