Kiki's Inner Catalogue

Charm build: Strength, Longnail, Spell Twister, Grubsong, Weaversong, Grubberfly's Elegy. (Cursed, I know.)

The key to my strategy was that the projectiles from Grubberfly's Elegy are not blocked by Markoth's shield, which meant I barely ever had to get close to him in the fight. This was good, as most of my deaths were from his shield and not his nails.

Because the nails get so much harder to dodge in the second phase, I stored up as much soul as I could and used Shade Soul to blast him down to fairly low health (Spell Twister helped with this). The last little bit I had no strategy for, but somehow survived, so, whatever.

The trouble with using both these plans at once is that Grubberfly's Elegy does not give you soul. This is where the other harebrained plan came in: Weaversong with Grubsong, which does a pretty negligible amount of passive damage (I cannot tell you how much those spiders loved jumping into that pit) but accumulates soul at a very slow rate. I originally was turning this soul into damage with Glowing Womb (yes, I know) but discovered that Spell Twister and Shade Soul were marginally more efficient and had a potential for double hits. To make Weaversong actually work, try to spend at least some time standing on a platform above Markoth and drop spiders on his head.

This was, as I have said before, extremely stupid, but I honestly could not come up with another charm build that let me stay this far away from that awful shield.

Charm binding sucks. It's not fun. I'm so desperately slow. (My normal build is strength + quick slash + mark of pride + sharp shadow.) I know it's going to continue to be the worst challenge. But I can fight Collector competently and I made it past Markoth on my first try (died to GPZ) so I call that promising.

I'm not good at absrad. So we'll see how that goes.

Only a few challenges remain. (Kind of taking inventory for myself here too.) Need to do the Trial of the Fool on my steel heart file just because I want that nice number. Charm and Soul (easy) binding p5. Five final radiant bossfights. Godseeker Flower Quest. Final ending. Surely I've forgotten something?

The things Hollow Knight players will do to avoid opening a game which has been available to them for months and which is apparently good when they're not finished with Hollow Knight yet

Then I went to go do p5 again with the flower ending. That (regular p5) took me three tries. It’s kind of nice to know that these challenges will always be hard. I’ve just gotten better at dealing with that difficulty.

So yeah, I think I can say I’m good at Hollow Knight now.

Also: I'm going to do it again.

There is an aforementioned (in tags somewhere) issue where my Hunter's Journal on this file will never actually be full, because I never killed any Grimmkin Nightmares. Might be my life's regret. Also, I have been wanting to play through Hollow Knight again looking for the barest crumbs of lore, so it seems like this is my chance.

I'll be streaming another playthrough where I find all the lore I possibly can, get an actually, genuinely full Hunter's Journal, and maybe do some other things, I don't know.

For now, I'm going to play a randomizer as a treat.

My Hollow Knight playtime is now dangerously close to beating out my Celeste playtime. I keep saying I'll get to those last three golden berries someday. Now I kind of believe it.

This was a two-and-a-half year quest, and I finished it.

Charm build: Strength, Longnail, Spell Twister, Grubsong, Weaversong, Grubberfly's Elegy. (Cursed, I know.)

The key to my strategy was that the projectiles from Grubberfly's Elegy are not blocked by Markoth's shield, which meant I barely ever had to get close to him in the fight. This was good, as most of my deaths were from his shield and not his nails.

Because the nails get so much harder to dodge in the second phase, I stored up as much soul as I could and used Shade Soul to blast him down to fairly low health (Spell Twister helped with this). The last little bit I had no strategy for, but somehow survived, so, whatever.

The trouble with using both these plans at once is that Grubberfly's Elegy does not give you soul. This is where the other harebrained plan came in: Weaversong with Grubsong, which does a pretty negligible amount of passive damage (I cannot tell you how much those spiders loved jumping into that pit) but accumulates soul at a very slow rate. I originally was turning this soul into damage with Glowing Womb (yes, I know) but discovered that Spell Twister and Shade Soul were marginally more efficient and had a potential for double hits. To make Weaversong actually work, try to spend at least some time standing on a platform above Markoth and drop spiders on his head.

This was, as I have said before, extremely stupid, but I honestly could not come up with another charm build that let me stay this far away from that awful shield.

Charm binding sucks. It's not fun. I'm so desperately slow. (My normal build is strength + quick slash + mark of pride + sharp shadow.) I know it's going to continue to be the worst challenge. But I can fight Collector competently and I made it past Markoth on my first try (died to GPZ) so I call that promising.

I'm not good at absrad. So we'll see how that goes.

Only a few challenges remain. (Kind of taking inventory for myself here too.) Need to do the Trial of the Fool on my steel heart file just because I want that nice number. Charm and Soul (easy) binding p5. Five final radiant bossfights. Godseeker Flower Quest. Final ending. Surely I've forgotten something?

The things Hollow Knight players will do to avoid opening a game which has been available to them for months and which is apparently good when they're not finished with Hollow Knight yet

Charm build: Strength, Longnail, Spell Twister, Grubsong, Weaversong, Grubberfly's Elegy. (Cursed, I know.)

The key to my strategy was that the projectiles from Grubberfly's Elegy are not blocked by Markoth's shield, which meant I barely ever had to get close to him in the fight. This was good, as most of my deaths were from his shield and not his nails.

Because the nails get so much harder to dodge in the second phase, I stored up as much soul as I could and used Shade Soul to blast him down to fairly low health (Spell Twister helped with this). The last little bit I had no strategy for, but somehow survived, so, whatever.

The trouble with using both these plans at once is that Grubberfly's Elegy does not give you soul. This is where the other harebrained plan came in: Weaversong with Grubsong, which does a pretty negligible amount of passive damage (I cannot tell you how much those spiders loved jumping into that pit) but accumulates soul at a very slow rate. I originally was turning this soul into damage with Glowing Womb (yes, I know) but discovered that Spell Twister and Shade Soul were marginally more efficient and had a potential for double hits. To make Weaversong actually work, try to spend at least some time standing on a platform above Markoth and drop spiders on his head.

This was, as I have said before, extremely stupid, but I honestly could not come up with another charm build that let me stay this far away from that awful shield.

Charm binding sucks. It's not fun. I'm so desperately slow. (My normal build is strength + quick slash + mark of pride + sharp shadow.) I know it's going to continue to be the worst challenge. But I can fight Collector competently and I made it past Markoth on my first try (died to GPZ) so I call that promising.

I'm not good at absrad. So we'll see how that goes.

Only a few challenges remain. (Kind of taking inventory for myself here too.) Need to do the Trial of the Fool on my steel heart file just because I want that nice number. Charm and Soul (easy) binding p5. Five final radiant bossfights. Godseeker Flower Quest. Final ending. Surely I've forgotten something?

The things Hollow Knight players will do to avoid opening a game which has been available to them for months and which is apparently good when they're not finished with Hollow Knight yet