By Hollow Knight: Silksong patch 2 is now available, with developer Team Cherry focusing on rare bugs and obstructions rather than balance concerns this time around. Most of the changes are corner cases, and one of them would have saved me quite a lot of frustration during my playthrough.
The pertinent line from the patch notes is this: “Fixed some NPCs not correctly playing cursed hint dialogues in certain instances.” I’m going to spoil a Silksong questline to explain this, so if you’d rather avoid that, find a bucket of depressed grasshoppers and put it over your head or something.
Team Cherry is alluding to the questline that unlocks the Witch Crest, which sees Hornet become infected with a parasite that leaves her in a “cursed” state until it’s removed. Ordinarily, several NPCs will offer a hint about how you can remove the cursed state – namely, by going to see the old surgeon in Graymoor. The curse event spits you out close to Bellhart, and the folks there will tell you all about it.
But before this recent patch, several players (including me) found that, at least in Act 3, those NPCs would have absolutely nothing to say. It appears that their gloomy Act 3 dialogue would override whatever curse hints were intended, leaving the player to, I don’t know, desperately stumble around for an hour and contemplate rolling back their save file so that they can get back to playing the damn video game.
Let me explain. While cursed, you can’t use any of Hornet’s silk abilities, meaning you can’t heal or use special attacks. You’re also stuck with an unfamiliar moveset and, I seem to recall, no equipable tools. It’s deliberately disempowering, and there’s even a special ending if you manage to beat the Act 2 final boss while cursed.
You are very much meant to get rid of the curse as soon as possible, but when you’re already waist-deep in Act 3 and the world is more dangerous, that can be difficult to do, and it can feel nearly impossible when none of the intended hint dialogue plays correctly.
I tried everything I could think of, and after my theory led me to a locked room encounter with empowered Act 3 enemies which turned me to mush due to my busted crest, I threw in the towel and looked up what to do.
I suspected something was wrong after the Bellhart shop owner told me to talk to another bug but then that bug said absolutely nothing of use or relevance, and it turns out I was right. Those Bellhart NPCs were, in fact, supposed to tell me what to do next.
I seriously considered rolling back my save file at the peak of my desperation, but after checking and realizing I’d lose three hours of late-game unlocks and difficult boss clears in the process, I thought better of it. Seriously, Team Cherry, what’s the point of an auto-save catalog that only works every few hours?
As a bit of a trivia, the official Silksong help page shows that this quest previously had an even worse bug attached to it. Originally, you could be permanently cursed because the item necessary to complete the quest and cure the curse would become unavailable “during the late game.” And I thought I had it bad.