Essential Tips and Tricks

As the follow up to Hollow Knight, Silksong is filled with challenging bosses, intense combat rooms, tricky platforming, and limited guidance. Fortunately though, there are some tips we can offer to smooth over that learning curve. Here are several beginner tips to help you get through the opening hours of Hollow Knight Silksong.

Right from the very first screen, Silksong wants you to start paying attention to hidden walls. You’ll immediately find your first secret room to the right by jumping into the wall. You’ll find some currency in here, but you can even jump behind the rightmost wall again, where there is another hidden room where you can fight a tough enemy for a Beast Shard. Hidden rooms like this pop up often, usually in rooms that may initially seem like they have no purpose, so make a habit of smacking suspicious walls, or jumping into dead ends, and just generally keeping an eye out for subtle visual cues.

Healing works differently in Silksong. Instead of healing one mask at a time, you now fill up your Silk meter and use Bind to restore multiple health units at once. Early on, this lets you heal three masks in a single go – but keep in mind it always consumes your entire Silk bar, even if you only needed to heal one. You can even heal in the air right from the get go! Which is a nice improvement over Hollow Knight’s heal that kept you grounded and stationary.

Hornet’s weapon doubles as a traversal tool. While you can’t pogo straight down like in the original Hollow Knight (at least at first), you can strike at a downward angle to bounce off enemies or spikes. This lets you stay airborne and reach otherwise inaccessible areas. For example, you can vault off an enemy to grab Mossberries that are just out of reach.

Your weapon isn’t just for direct strikes, either, as it can swing through objects and cover, still hitting enemies as long as they’re within range. Use this to your advantage by hiding behind world objects for protection while still dealing damage through them.

Not only does Hornet jump higher than the knight from the first game, but she can also mantle up on ledges she gets close to. The mantle animation takes a brief moment, but you can press the jump button during this animation to launch off of ledges quickly without a penalty to your jump height, so use this to move vertically faster.

Silksong mixes Soulslike and Metroidvania mechanics. Some enemies stay dead after you kill them, others respawn when you rest at a bench, and a few will even return if you simply leave and re-enter a screen.

When you die, you can reclaim your Rosary Beads, Silksong’s main currency, by getting back to your spool, which spawns where you fell. Die again before retrieving it, though, and those beads are gone for good. The good news? Your shell shards aren’t lost upon death, unless you used some of your tools before you tied, since the shards are used to restore your tools whenever you rest at a bench. Fortunately, in a nice change from Hollow Knight, you don’t have to fight anything to reclaim your currency this time around.

Rosary Strings can be bought at the Shop for 80 beads. Each string converts your beads into a bundle of 60 that stays in your inventory until the string breaks. This keeps them safe, so you won’t lose everything if you die before reaching your spool.

Wishes are a brand-new feature in Silksong. These side missions come from NPCs and reward you with useful items. For example, one early Wish has you collecting three Mossberries for the Moss Druid, who then rewards you with the Druid’s Eye.

If you spot a locked door, don’t always assume that you’ll need a key to get through it. Many locked gates are only locked from the front, and there’s a nearby way to get behind them. Other literal locks can be broken open with normal attacks. Like this one, deep into the Marrow that has an NPC named Grindle trapped behind it.

Charms from the first game have been replaced by Tools, which work differently this time around. Instead of drawing from one big pool, they’re split into categories, and you’ll equip tools from each sub-group. Different Crests allow you to equip different colored tools, and you can swap between crests whenever you rest at a bench. You can unlock more slots on your crests by finding or purchasing an item called Memory Lockets, so always keep an eye out for them.

Parrying in Silksong shouldn’t be your go to defensive option, but it is situationally very useful, and you should know that it is an option. Basically rather than a parry, it’s more like a deflect. You want to try and swing your weapon as the enemy begins their forward attack animation – not just before impact like in Sekiro. That’s because Hornet’s weapon has a bit of wind-up before the swing connects. You can also parry projectiles and deflect them back at enemies, which can be very useful in certain fights.

Just like in Hollow Knight, it’s smart to count how many hits it takes to kill each enemy type. Knowing this prevents you from mashing or overcommitting to bounces on enemies that are already about to die. One wasted swing can be the difference between dodging cleanly and eating an extra hit.

Pay attention to how enemies behave when they spot you and how much damage their attacks deal. Some enemies hit for two masks of damage in one blow, so always heal up enough to survive at least one strike before engaging. Many enemies also have simple patterns with exploitable weaknesses – like snail-like creatures in Mosshome that fire a projectile at a predictable arc you can just walk under.

Not all enemies drop currency, and sometimes fighting them only puts you at unnecessary risk. If there’s no reward, it’s often smarter to skip combat and move on.

Every time you land a hit, Hornet experiences a bit of pushback. This can throw you off, especially against flying enemies over platforms. Always secure your footing on the platform first before swinging; otherwise, recoil might send you tumbling off.

Use the right stick to look down before dropping into unknown areas. It’ll save you from landing on off screen enemies – or worse, spikes and lava.

Silksong shares its Silk resource between healing and offensive skills, just like Hollow Knight. But don’t fall into the trap of saving all your Silk for emergency heals. In many battles, you won’t get safe windows to heal anyway, so spend that Silk on attacks like Silkspear to shorten fights. Later, you’ll also unlock tools like the Straight Pin, which don’t require Silk at all – use them to pepper enemies with damage outside melee range.

A couple of hours into the game, you’ll get the ability to sprint by holding down the right trigger. This causes Hornet to run super fast, and it can be tempting to just sprint everywhere, but you need to be cautious because it does have some significant drawbacks. For one, you can’t immediately change direction while sprinting, so if you all of a sudden run into something, it can be hard to stop yourself and get out of the way. What you can do though is hold back in the opposing direction, and do a short jump to halt your momentum. If you try to jump while sprinting forward, you will be locked into a super jump and be unable to alter your trajectory while in the air. To avoid this, make sure that you let go of the sprint button before you jump, or just lightly tap the jump button to do a super hop instead.

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