Combat (Silksong)

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Hollow Knight
Silksong
Combat
Enemies Bosses Enemy Gauntlets
Damage Values [Missing information] Skills and Abilities
Needle Crests Tools

The kingdom of Pharloom and its Citadel have an array of bizarre creatures to hunt, with most being Haunted and the rest just as determined to kill any intruders. The Hunter's Journal is a compendium of all these creatures, and defeating a specified number of a certain enemy reveals additional information about them.

Bosses are unique enemies in Hollow Knight: Silksong that typically have larger health pools and often deal more damage than the standard enemies in the same area. A boss may need to be defeated to access a new area, acquire an item, complete a Wish, or simply further the main story of the game.

Usually, when a boss is encountered, their name appears on-screen, and the music changes into a battle theme.

In addition to bosses, Silksong features a variety of unique combat encounters in the form of Enemy Gauntlets (the arena gets locked and enemies spawn) and Special Enemies (such as Shardillards and the Craggler). [Missing information]

Silk is the resource used by Hornet (Silksong) in place of SOUL that is used in Hollow Knight, and is primarily obtained from striking enemies. Hornet can also passively regenerate Silk after obtaining Silk Hearts. Silk is represented on the HUD by notches on a spool. When there are at least nine Silk on the spool, that portion of the spool lights up along with the Crest circle, indicating that Hornet can Bind, which is the ability that allows Hornet to heal. Silk can also be used during combat to perform Silk Skills and certain Ancestral Arts.

Health and Silk

Hornet's health is represented as masks in the upper-left corner of the screen. She starts with five masks, and can obtain up to ten by collecting Mask Shards. Masks are lost by taking damage, usually from either enemies or environmental hazards. Masks are regained by resting at either a Bench or Hot Spring, or by Binding.

Silk is represented as a spool of thread under the masks. Silk is used to cast Silk Skills and Bind. Striking enemies with the Needle is the main way of gaining Silk, though other tools and objects like Silk Hearts also grant Silk. Binding costs nine Silk, which is also the default limit. Each time Hornet collects two Spool Fragments, this limit increases by one.

Plasmium masks are temporary masks that cannot be healed by Binding, unless Hornet is plasmified. They can be obtained using Plasmium Phial or by killing Winged Lifeseeds. Obtaining nine masks induces Plasmification. These masks disappear when sitting at a bench.

When Hornet's masks deplete to zero, her body unravels and leaves a Cocoon behind, storing all Rosaries she held upon her death. Until the cocoon is destroyed, Hornet's Spool upgrades are disabled, and dying again will cause the original Cocoon and all of its stored Rosaries to be lost. The cocoon can be destroyed with the Needle and Silk Skills.[Missing information]

Destroying the cocoon or using a Silkeater will retrieve all stored rosaries, re-enable all unlocked Spool upgrades, and restore nine Silk.

Challenge

Challenge is an innate ability that Hornet begins with. When Hornet uses Challenge, she swings her Needle behind and swirls a thread of Silk around herself, which consumes 1 strand of Silk. The swing of Hornet's Needle deals 2 damage, which increases by 2 for each Needle upgrade. Challenge will gain silk on hit, and Hornet's next strike with the Needle will deal 50% more damage until the effect wears off. Challenge is affected by the Beast Crest's Fury bind, the Wanderer Crest crit chance, the Hunter Crest's Focus and Barbed Bracelet. However, it is not affected by Flintslate.

If used while Hornet has no Silk, she will still swing her Needle, but not swirl thread around; the damage boost to her Needle will not be applied.

Challenge also has the following effects:

  • Draws in nearby enemies towards Hornet and causes them to become aggressive if they have not already
    • This works repeatedly and through walls, allowing Hornet to draw enemies closer to allow for unintended platforming opportunities.
  • Can be used in place of the "Challenge" prompt for bosses such as Grand Mother Silk and Skarrsinger Karmelita
  • Skips some bosses' intros (and intro dialogue) and immediately triggers the fight for bosses such as Widow and Shrine Guardian Seth
  • Summons the Bell Beast to a Bellway
  • Causes some reaction in all nearby NPCs

When Beast Crest is equipped, Hornet uses an alternate animation and deeper pitched voice line when using Challenge. This changes the Challenge hitbox to hit behind Hornet.

While Throwing Rings are equipped and at least 2 charges remain, Challenge has slightly different effects: It no longer consumes Silk, and the damage of the next Throwing Ring is increased by 50%. The voiceline is also changed to imitate Shakra's "Poshanka". Shakra will respond to this in kind if nearby, and it can also be used near any of her calling rings in place of striking them with the needle.

Projectile Deflection

Certain enemy projectiles can be hit with Hornet's Needle, causing them to be deflected. Deflected projectiles will no longer deal damage, even if they pass directly through Hornet. Deflecting a projectile with the Needle also resets Hornet's attack cooldown, allowing her to attack again immediately. This does not happen with enemy projectiles that can be destroyed or hit back.

Enemy projectiles deflected by Hornet can damage the enemies that they hit.

Some enemies are able to deflect Hornet's projectiles from her Tools with their own attacks.

Parrying

While some bosses have a parry move, it is also possible for Hornet to parry certain attacks of enemies and bosses.

Most attacks that have a white line trailing them can be parried. These attacks can be parried with regular Needle swings, but not with Tools or any other form of damage. Parrying an attack grants 0.25 seconds of invulnerability.

Hornet can also parry enemies' and bosses' multi-hit attacks, in which she will automatically strike multiple times in turn to parry every hit as long as she continues attacking after parrying the first hit.

This mechanic is not to be confused with Cross Stitch which is a separate Silk Skill that can parry all forms of damage.

Boss Staggers

Staggering is the event of stunning a boss and causing them to be incapacitated for a couple seconds, giving Hornet time to either Bind or use a stronger attack such as a Silk Skill or Needle Strike.

Staggering in Hollow Knight: Silksong is slightly different compared to its iteration in Hollow Knight. Hitting bosses while they are staggered does not cancel the stagger. Rather, bosses have a limit of 75 damage they can take while staggered before it immediately ends. Stagger Combos and Combo Time no longer exist, and different Tools (appear to) contribute different amounts to a boss's stagger counter.

There are four cases of staggering that do not follow the rules stated above and are based on damage, but are still considered "staggering" due to the resulting animation and sound effect. These are Fourth Chorus, The Unravelled, Cogwork Dancers, and Clover Dancers. Related effects are listed on their pages.

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