Hollow Knight is a metroidvania video game made by Team Cherry. It takes place in Hallownest, a dead kingdom overrun by an Infection and it's your goal as the player to stop it. I first discovered Hollow Knight when I saw my older sister playing it on our living room TV. I thought it looked cool so I bought it, started playing, got to False Knight, died, and gave up for a very long time. I don't remember when exactly I picked it back up, but since then it's become one of my favorite pieces of art ever. Everything about it is beautiful, from the story to the music to the game design, the entire thing is a delight from start to finish.
Sharp Shadow, Shaman Stone, Unbreakable Strength, Quick Slash.
My favorite charm combo! The cool thing about Sharp Shadow is that it makes it a lot less embarrassing to dash directly into an enemy. But in all seriousness, I get a lot of use out of it. It deals the same amount of damage as my nail so I use it to get in extra hits when I'm in a tight spot, which I end up in a lot.
I always get Shaman Stone as early as possible and I'm so used to it that the regular spell sizes look wrong. When I first started playing the game I had a hard time remembering to use my spells but since then I use them as often as I can.
Unbreakable Strength isn't necessarily needed for me, but it does feel good to one shot enemies with high health. Obviously it's also helpful to deal extra damage during boss fights.
I try to be pretty aggressive when fighting bosses so Quick Slash allowing me to get in even more hits while I'm right next to a boss is really useful. I get the most use out of it during Watcher Knights.
Leg Eater is not at all an important character. He's a bug obsessed with Geo living in the Fungal Wastes, selling the three fragile charms. After having the charms upgraded by Divine (and paying her an obscene amount of money) he will venture to Dirtmouth where she eats him, leaving only his claws behind. I have soft spot for greedy little cave dwelling freaks and I found his charms pretty useful in my main save file. If you're wearing the Defender's Crest, a charm that creates a cloud of foul smelling gas that enemies take damage from, some NPCs will comment on the smell such as Relic Seeker Lemm who will refuse to buy relics from you. Leg Eater, on the other hand, finds the smell so pleasant that he'll give you a discount.
(Art by me)
It's been 4 years since my last playthrough update... To be honest, this page is a complete and utter mess coding wise so I didn't like looking at it. But now I'm remaking the whole thing and not abusing the postition CSS property this time, so it's going to be a lot less of a nightmare to add things. Anyway, I recently got the 10 and 5 hour speedrun achievements! My 10 hour run was only just shy of 5 hours so I didn't have to change much for the 5 hour run. My next goal is either doing a Steelsoul run or finally finishing the 4th pantheon. I think Steelsoul is possible but I need to get much better at the Watcher Knights and Hollow Knight fights. I usually die at least once to them.
I was up late last night in Godhome and I finally got through the Pantheon of the Master! And in that same night I beat Pantheon of the Artist on my first try. Pantheon of the Sage has not been treating me as well; the Uumuu fight is a little annoying. Getting the Oomas to go where I want is hard.
Today I practiced God Tamer's fight in the Hall of Gods a few times and I finally got around to finishing the Hunter's Journal and getting the Hunter's Mark.
update: SLY WON'T LEAVE ME ALONE his fight is so difficult to me because I like being close and hitting as many times as possible but that's not really a usable strategy for Sly. I've been told I should use spells for his fight but I don't generally use them and I'll have to use different charms than normal which will take some getting used to.
I've made some progress on my secondary save file. In that one I did Dung Defender and Hornet Sentinel today. Most of my time was spent collecting geo and getting Grimmchild Flames. I plan on going through Deepnest and maybe beating Nosk tomorrow.
In my main save file I just did Hall of Gods stuff. I did attuned Nightmare King Grimm and radient Mantis Lords.
I beat Nightmare King Grimm!!! I'm proud of myself! I also beat Failed Champion which I'm happy about for the sole reason that I hate that fight. Glad to be over with it. Grimm on the other hand is always fun to fight and I'm excited to see him in Godhome.
Hi!! This page exists now! I'm not done with it at time of writing but yeah. The only reason i made it is because ive been playing hollow knight a lot lately so now its all ive been thinking about but also i want to work on this site a lot, so this is the compromise.
I think im going to fill this page with updates on my playthrough, because i love telling people about it, and the characters i like! this might be one of the post self indulgent pages on this site and im excited but a little embarrassed!
Now here's the actual playthrough update: I've been attempting the Trial of the Master in Godhome but Mato and Oro keep messing me up. I am getting better at fighting them though! I actually have a lot of other things I want to do as well; I haven't gotten the Dream No More ending yet because the Radience fight kind of scares me, I still need to finish the Trial of the Fool, and I need to beat Nightmare King Grimm. So many things to do, so little patience.
The City of Tears is one of my favorite areas in Hallownest. Once known as the heart of Hallownest, it seems to have been where Hallownest's wealthiest bugs resided. Though the gates of the city were shut, the Infection still made its way inside. Above the city sits the Blue Lake, whose water is leaking through the ceiling, putting the city in a perpetual state of rain and giving it the name City of Tears. It's split in half; the first half being accessable early in the game and host to the Soul Sanctum, the Nailsmith, and Relic Seeker Lemm.
The Soul Sactum is an area that I remember being very afraid of in my earliest runs of the game, primarily because the Soul Twisters were difficult to dodge and I always overestimated their HP. It's grown on me since then. The Soul Master boss fight is nowhere near my favorite in the game but it's still one I've looked forward to in my latest runs and Desolate Dive (and its upgrade Decending Dark) is always my most used spell. I also love how the actions of the scholars of the Soul Sanctum reflect the Pale King's own attempts to stop the Infection. The corpses piled up below the Sanctum are a direct parallel to the bodies of the Vessels deep in the Abyss and the words of the Soul Sanctum's scholars aren't too different from those written on the Hollow Knight's fountain in the city, "Spare thought for those consumed. Through their grace we are evolved." (Record Cenda), "Through its sacrifice Hallownest lasts eternal." (MEMORIAL TO THE HOLLOW KNIGHT).
The right side of the City of Tears appears wealthier than the left, decorated in maroon and burgundy and containing bugs that drop far more Geo when killed. This side is roughly the same size as the other but contains more sub areas, such as the Pleasure House, the Tower of Love, and the Watcher's Spire.
Throughout Hallownest you will find Grubs; cute little green bugs stuck inside glass jars crying out to be released. After freeing them, you might go back to Grubfather and recieve rewards for your efforts. But who put these poor bugs into jars? Within the Tower of Love is where you'll find your answer.
The Collecter appears to be one of the Pale King's Kingsmoulds but is lacking their white armor and curved weapon. The Collector doesn't seem to be a malicious force, despite its actions. Its Dreamnail dialogue implies that its goal is to protect and my personal theory is that this comes from its origins as a Kingsmould. The Kingsmoulds were guards, constructed from Void for the sole purpose of protecting the White Palace. The Collector has this same protective purpose, it's just being expressed in a different way. One of the most interesting things about the Collector, to me, is that its clearly a living feeling creature. The Pale King created his Void constructs with the expectation that they not feel, yet the Collector is always laughing and it wants to protect, very deeply if its Dreamnail dialogue is to be believed.
The other thing that that captivates me about the Collector is the corpse the Love Key can be found on in the Queen's Gardens. This corpse is covered in black vines akin to the fallen Kingsmould in the ruins of the White Palace. Their Dreamnail dialogue says "Too long... Spent together. We become as one..." implying that their time spent with the Collector is what caused their death. Who was this bug to the Collector? Does it miss them? Why were they in the Queen's Gardens so far from their tower? We'll never know the answer to these questions but it compells me. I want to know more about this bug that loved a thing like the Collector.
The Mantis Lords are one of my favorite boss fights in the game. It's relatively easy, at least now that I've done it so many times, but it never stops being fun, especially during the second phase when I have to keep up with two of the Lords. I've yet to unlock the Sisters of Battle fight but it's one of the Godhome fights that I most look forward to.
In general, the Mantis Tribe is very compelling to me. Throughout the rest of Hallownest, there are small pockets of saftey, individual healthy bugs, but the Mantis Tribe stands out as a community deep within Hallownest completely untouched by the Infection. At first, they seem like every other enemy in the game until you notice that they don't have the orange particles that Infected bugs do and then after defeating the Mantis Lords the rest of the Mantises stop attacking you and the Warriors even bow.
The fact that the Mantis Tribe has survived so long is so interesting! Other communities tried to avoid the Infection, through cutting themselves off like the City of Tears or searching for another power that will save them like the Pale King or the Soul Sanctum, yet the Mantis Tribe is the only one that survived. I think at least part of the reason they're still around is because of the Mantis Lords. The Mantises feel like they present a very united front because of the Lords' leadership. The moment you win the boss fight, the rest accept you (within reason; they fight back if you hit them first). The other communities probably had more rocky relationships with their leaders; after the Infection returned the Pale King abandoned his kingdom in favor of hiding away in his White Palace and Deepnest, Fog Canyon, and the City of Tears lost their own authority figures to the Pale King's plan. Unn seems to have gone mostly dormant in Greenpath as well, and the Hive's Queen Vespa grew so large she could no longer leave.
But when the Mantis Lords' brother became enamored with the Infection, they forced him and his own followers out. They didn't let their leadership falter even in the face of casting out their own family.
The Royal Waterways are among most fan's least favorite areas. Located beneath the City of Tears, the Royal Waterways are a sewer system that would have once carried the city's waste, but now with the city taken over by the Infection the rain water seems to have washed most of that away. The Waterways are populated by the Flukes, a group of leech-like bugs that make disgusting sucking noises that echo throughout the Waterways. This is the main reason people don't like the Royal Waterways. This is also the reason I love it. Sound design is one of my favorite aspects of video games and there's something about the horrible echoing sucking noises that scratch an itch for me. The Flukemons also split into two individual bugs after dying; a flying version and a crawling version that can even climb walls. There's also a delay between when the Flukemon dies, when it's flying half reanimates and when its crawling half reanimates, so it's sure to take a new player by surprise.
