Board 8 > Hollow Knight: Silksong - Special Announcement

(+) Yeah! (+)

tazzyboyishere posted...

Don't do the ant section before getting movement upgrades

doing the ant section is how I got to dash lol

also about hornet's air dive. I didnt have a problem with it, but if you're complaining now you do not know true pain. Good and bad news: there are ways to alter the moveset including the pogo. However some are MUCH worse

I have no problem with the Savage Beastfly doing two damage when it charges me, but it doing two damage from contact when its moving extremely slowly feels like bullshit. Also this guy has so much fucking health its ridiculous. Spent almost an hour on this guy

kevwaffles posted...

Yeah, while I beat him without it, the latter blatantly wants you to think "go get a dash first", and what do you know if you go the other way you totally do.

As for goop guy, I don't think that's technically a boss. You can just walk through the room using cover. Probably killable but you don't have to and it doesn't seem meant to be practical without some upgrade to make it so.

Yeah, I did manage to kill the goop guy but for a second I was wondering if it was even possible cause it took so long

As for the latter, I did think of that but I was too stubborn to give up lol

MZero posted...

As for the latter, I did think of that but I was too stubborn to give up lol

Same

That said if you learn the tell on his swing you can just assume everything else is the jump and have enough time to adjust if you're wrong.

You dont need the dash for that anyway though it would help. Just stay above him as much as possible

WazzupGenius00 posted...

You dont need the dash for that anyway though it would help. Just stay above him as much as possible

That got me killed when he jumped, personally.

But also there is often a difference between what the game wants you to have and what it needs you to have. Sort of the thing with this genre after all.

MZero posted...

and the guy guarding Hunter's March

I super cheesed him by staying in the narrow hallway before the fight arena. That avoids his jump attack, so you just need to avoid his regular attack and poke, then repeat.

In general there seems to be a simple strategy like that for every boss. It's fun to figure out but not nearly as deep or exciting as figuring out a Dark Souls boss. It also makes the guantlets way harder than bosses, which is weird.

Challenging but fun so far!

Also detecting a sourpuss attitude in here that I'm not used to from Board 8. What's with you guys? Or maybe I just never encountered the HK fanbase being annoying.

Think people are just venting about a higher learning curve than expected.

You are going to have to be more specific because I genuinely have no idea if you're referring to the recent posts about disliking Hunter's March or to the bickering from page 1.

to be fair my comment about this being great dlc was kind of intended to be a shot at the game, but I stand by it

it really does feel like really good dlc >_>

I'm the type who always tries to do everything I can do ASAP (partly out of stubbornness, partly because it amuses me to become OP before the game intends) but even I noped out of trying to kill that thing right away because it seems like it'd take forever and I was bored.

Aecioo posted...

to be fair my comment about this being great dlc was kind of intended to be a shot at the game, but I stand by it

it really does feel like really good dlc >_>

this is a weird take to me

it feels like it's trying too hard not to be Hollow Knight at times imo

I feel like they're going to add some benches down the road. At least I hope they do that instead of outright nerfing stuff.

https://x.com/h_wallacepires/status/1963958435487088678

If it feels like DLC I think it's because it applies a lot of lessons on enemy and boss design that only show up in HK's dlcs. The only thing that feels like it's trying too hard to be different is the equipment system which is very odd. But honestly it probably needed a rebalancing because most of the charms in HK were useless compared to the best ones.

Not sure how I feel about the sub-weapons vs spells yet. Have a bunch of sub-weapons but only the one spell. The spiketrap from her HK boss fight seems REALLY good though and the hastepotion is interesting. Many of the others have felt bad.

To put it another way, they made Hollow Knight like it might be someone's first video game. With Silksong they did not.

I think that's true but it's a little funny because the devs have said they wanted similar onboarding to Hollow Knight so new players could start with this game if they want. If so I think it's a missed target because this is considerably harder and more punishing than HK's intro imo.

edit: I guess the quote I was seeing was from an old interview so very possible that changed!

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

edit: I guess the quote I was seeing was from an old interview so very possible that changed!

Yeah, I think they changed their minds a lot about what they were doing with Silksong.

What is so tough about the game's learning curve? The game feels overly easy and traditional so far if anything

foolm0r0n posted...

What is so tough about the game's learning curve?

most people who play it are dying a lot more than they did in the first Hollow Knight

MacArrowny posted...

most people who play it are dying a lot more than they did in the first Hollow Knight

Like, to things *other* than that one section we've been discussing? Because outside of that it has felt quite straightforward (most enemies just slowly crawl/walk at you and don't have fancy patterns). But I'm not very far, I went one or two areas past that part for now. I'm not at the mid-game that's been described as brutal.

Dels posted...

bickering from page 1.

This. Board 8 is usually so chill that I was surprised to see it

Dels posted...

Like, to things *other* than that one section we've been discussing? Because outside of that it has felt quite straightforward (most enemies just slowly crawl/walk at you and don't have fancy patterns). But I'm not very far, I went one or two areas past that part for now. I'm not at the mid-game that's been described as brutal.

Because, again, HK just isn't that hard outside of a few bosses, but some people have memory-holed the whole game as fighting NKG.

And don't get me started on Path of Pain.

Yeah I've died a good amount of times but I'm being careless and the runbacks are easy. But you're supposed to die, it's a soulslike. It doesn't feel any harder than Dark Souls 1, let alone Elden Ring where every boss was like "how is this even possible". From what I remember of HK1, it was the same.

kevwaffles posted...

Because, again, HK just isn't that hard outside of a few bosses, but some people have memory-holed the whole game as fighting NKG.

And don't get me started on Path of Pain.

HK is definitely much harder than the average game of its genre, even outside the bonus content. Whether that makes it actually hard or not in any objective sense, who knows.

Dels posted...

Like, to things *other* than that one section we've been discussing? Because outside of that it has felt quite straightforward (most enemies just slowly crawl/walk at you and don't have fancy patterns). But I'm not very far, I went one or two areas past that part for now. I'm not at the mid-game that's been described as brutal.

I'm at, I think, the tipping point from early to midgame and the bosses that gatekeep that are absolutely rougher than HK's. And unlike Mantis Lords (who I consider pretty easy, undoubtedly easier than these bosses), you dont even have the option to upgrade your needle to help? I mean just the fact alone that bosses deal 2 damage mean they 3-shot you and even getting one mask upgrade doesnt help. The burst healing is good but needing your whole meter for it is a completely different flow that I, as a spell spam enjoyer, personally find harder to adjust to.

Currency is also at a huge premium early game with few places to get money easily, so losing it.

That said, I also agree with foolmo in that it feels like an appropriate difficulty for a soulslite or whatever, it's just also pretty obviously harder than HK which I guess was already pushing it for some.

Kenri posted...

HK is definitely much harder than the average game of its genre, even outside the bonus content. Whether that makes it actually hard or not in any objective sense, who knows.

Oh I don't think this is necessarily wrong either, although mostly for bosses.

Is there any reason to use Thread Storm?

Hollow Knight is not an "easy game." It has a reputation for being a "hard game," and it's also not that. It's a game with difficulty all over the place. But mostly it feels fair, regardless of how hard each section is.

My general vibe is that Silksong, even outside the massive difficulty spike mentioned earlier, is elevated in difficulty compared to equivalent parts of the original. Whether or not it's fair is something I'm still trying to decide, because while my survival is still mostly in my control, there are times where I feel like the game is being unreasonable.

I rage-quit last night in the stupid ant section. HK never made me rage-quit, not even my first time through Deepnest.

It wasnt that the enemies were too hard, it was the stupid diagonal dash bounces that chipped away at my health, and I couldn't heal because healing is all or nothing now and there are no benches anywhere... it just wasn't fun. It felt unfair. HK, even at its hardest, still felt fair.

I'll give Silksong another chance tonight and hope this ant area is just an anomaly of astonishingly bad game design.

Without spoilers there's a few ways to deal with the bounce flower things much easier eventually but yeah those were really stupid.

I was saying yesterday that I was getting bummed out already, seeing the downplaying of HK's difficulty while replaying it and anticipating the same for Silksong.

Widow beated. Fun fight, but it seemed absurdly hard. Probably took like 4 or 5 hours of attempts. Nothing in HK took me that long, although I didn't do NKG or the harder Pantheons In the end I ended up spamming poison traps and darts. Felt kinda cheesy. The constant rain of bells near the end was BS

WAIT YOU CAN SPRINT IN THIS GAME??? When were they gonna tell me that?

DeepsPraw posted...

Widow beated. Fun fight, but it seemed absurdly hard. Probably took like 4 or 5 hours of attempts. Nothing in HK took me that long, although I didn't do NKG or the harder Pantheons In the end I ended up spamming poison traps and darts. Felt kinda cheesy. The constant rain of bells near the end was BS

I just beat the same boss and had similar thoughts. Fun fight, but I don't think everyone will be capable of winning it without cheese. Mind you I'm probably missing a lot of trinkets & mask fragments etc.

azuarc posted...

WAIT YOU CAN SPRINT IN THIS GAME??? When were they gonna tell me that?

When you unlock it, like every other ability?

ugh, i haven't been able to afford the last two stag stations i've found. i feel i was getting a pretty good stream of rosaries until now and was able to afford every bench and station easily, so i spent at a shop (the one you have to pay 30 to enter every time you visit it????? so when i realized that i bought it out) and now suddenly exploring through multiple areas there's just no rosaries! can't afford the maps of the past two areas either of course

oh i see. the enemies in these areas aren't *dropping* any because they're not pilgrims and only pilgrims drop them.

WazzupGenius00 posted...

When you unlock it, like every other ability?

And when would that have been?

azuarc posted...

And when would that have been?

The dash is also a sprint, and it tells you that.

wasn't there, like, literally a screen that said YOU UNLOCKED SWIFTSPEED or something like that?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/079902f6.jpg

court rules in favor of the defendant, team cherry. gamer was provided adequate notice of gaining a sprint.

All I saw was "you got a dash. You can now reach new places."

you might still be playing hollow knight

Probably an oddball opinion, but I'm finding this easier than HK so far. I managed to defeat Lacy in our first encounter in one try, and I honestly can't recall if I beat a single non-joke HK boss on the first attempt. The big bone-swinging dude guarding Hunter's March took several attempts since I was determined to beat him early, but even that had a bench nearby, so repetition was no big deal. I remember much of my time with Hollow Knight was kinda stressful with brutal bosses and punishing runbacks (runbacks are the more demoralizing of the two imo). And while I know I'm very early into Silksong, it actually feels like I'm making much more consistent progress.

Protip: you can save and quit then load the game to return to the latest bench. This is extremely useful sometimes...

Annoyed that I beat the duo boss in Blasted Lands and it seems to lead to a currently impassable area...

YoBlazer posted...

I managed to defeat Lacy in our first encounter in one try

Yeah she's pretty easy. I did it in my first try too. There are much harder bosses.

Man, unlocking the sprint/dash makes the game feel SO much better lol. So used to dashing constantly in HK

I played a bit more, not sure what level of spoilers we worry about here but I just bought the fifth area map in Greymoor

The game really did become more manageable once I got the dash/run. Fuck that ant area though. I went through it over and over until FINALLY I beat the stupid enemy rush room with the map lady... but I died as soon as we won, so I dunno if I missed anything because of that. Map lady must think I'm a chump. I ran back, got my rosaries, then noped out of that area and took a different path. I like the dash/run power. And I like the power Hornet got later to ride the wind. The Fourth Chorus boss, I beat on my first try. See, Silksong, this is the level of difficulty I'm comfortable with! No more ant areas, please.