liveblog: Silksong bosses, Act 3

[requiems]

Song silked. There are no more bugs.

Unless the speedrun trophies successfully tempt me...

Bell Eater
• God I HATED this lmao
• Act 3 has hands: the fight
• The walls damage you. The bell dodging when the boss goes back and forth is fine. Attacking the head or the butt has a tiny hitbox, sides do nothing. The head spits acid, the butt spits projectiles
• Hitting projectiles in this game is a big No from me, it doesn't work, I have managed it like twice, it's relevant for a handful of fights only, it SUCKED
• This fight can go for long periods where you can't really damage the boss at all which is just Annoying. Unless you bring the volt cylinder and slap it down when the boss is in the same place on the floor and ceiling
• Eira comes to save you in the last third and beats them up and then you get to see the bell beastlings and they're adorable and I love them so it's worth it for them.

Lost Garmond
• I am so over void mechanics they are simply unfun. And they take your silk resource meter so it's just annoying
• Love contact damage doing two hearts!!!
• Can you tell I'm really not enjoying everything being voided. It really does just feel like an insult and wastes your time, it's the end of the world and big stakes I get it, but it shouldn't be burning me out just walking through areas. I feel like I'm being punished, it's weird
• Garmond though... see I would take the void nonsense if it was JUST on a few bosses rather than every enemy in every corridor. Especially as from duel you know he doesn't have a lot of moves. This fight is just moreso upsetting than anything. He wasn't strong enough to stay incorruptible...

Pinstress
• Hey so I can throw knives like twelve times and then I'm out of knives. Why can she throw hers indefinitely. What gives
• Hitting her was a fucking trial she was always just out of reach. Pinstress are you secretly a crow.
• I love Pinstress as a character tho so I forgive her
• I did like her animations though, her float was goofy and fun like yours is

Skarrsinger Karmelita
• This fight had the potential to be my favourite but the third phase soured it
• First and second is good: disregarding the gauntlet, the fight against her is pretty easy to get. It's a dance, it has a rhythm - she takes a turn, you take a turn. You run up and do your one hit and run away, dodge her attack, rinse and repeat. You climb the wall and pogo off her if she comes close. You climb the walls and heal at the top of the ceiling. It's very tight, and it's fun, I had fun with it.
• In phase 3... she stops doing that. There are no longer any openings. And it's not like say, realising Widow strings her attacks in sets and you hit her at the start of her set, that there is an opening you're missing. She strings her attacks together. Forever. Nonstop. And at that point it stops being fun.
• In phase 2 she gets slightly faster - again it's a dance! - and has a brief maybe, ten second window of linking all her attacks continuously? But it's not FOREVER
• I realised pretty quickly the way to do it was with fast heal, Druid's eyes for getting silk on hit (because interestingly every point of spin contact counts as "damage", although it all adds up to two. But it's like six hits and you get so much off it), and was consistently making it to phase 3. And then it would just all fall apart as I could never hit her
• The solution was... stop dancing and just face tank it. Add the additional mask heal when you heal, and just keep mashing for auto blocks and if you do get hit you get so much silk for Druid's eyes just hop up top and heal. Maybe use some tools but mostly just keep attacking nonstop. Which is a terrible way to have to resolve it honestly, which is a shame because it was the first fight in Act 3 I really was enjoying...
• For example you can't facetank lost garmond at all you will simply die to void goop and contact damage, same for a lot of mobs out in the world under void masses, so for this to be the solution... man. Big dissonance. Tonally it's bad? It's bad.

Gurr the Outcast
• He keeps bodies as trophies > plays needolin to hear thoughts > oh god fuck the empty spot is for ME
• Deceptively harder than he looks, the only thing he does is jump straight up and throw traps. Just stand next to where he'll come down and hit him a few times. Sometimes diagonal but he self restricts himself on this as when the screen is full of traps he can't do that anymore lol
• He also runs across very rarely and you're better off just tanking the hit and hitting him as he goes past
• Did it in two, which in act 3 is incredibly novel

Voltvyrm
• That's it??
• Ok for context I psyched myself up over this one because it's lightning flickering and doing it multiple times would quickly give me a migraine and/or make my eyes hurt. It has two attacks: electricity in circles across the arena (but not a full screen flash, sort of just a very slight flickering), and then columns of lightning (with very clear telegraphs of here next so you don't have to look) that move from centre out or from out centre. That's it. It lasts about thirty seconds. lmao

Coral Tower gauntlet and Crust King Khan
• The gauntlet is the hard part because it lasts a significant amount of time, but there is a shortcut and although it's reminiscent of coliseum in HK... also not as bad because Hornet has so much more mobility than Ghost ever did
• This area was beautiful though
• I died on the second gauntlet first time because the two big armour knights caught me out when I should have just trusted my gut, and my gut is, pogo until you get knocked and then facetank until one dies and you can heal at that point
• Khan I did first try: very simple. He throws his arms to signify where coral is going to appear, which has been happening the whole way up the tower. He has maybe three patterns, it's very safe to heal through and to spam needle hits on him. He gets gradually faster like Karmelita, but once he hits his last phase you can facetank him down within a few seconds (unlike Karmelita) so it never becomes too much of an issue

Court of Craws & Crawfather
• It's payback time, birds.
• I'm sure there was a deeper strategy beyond equip wanderer's crest and go to town on the mini gauntlet and then crawfather since he just kind of sits on the floor, but I don't care to know what it is. This is my catharsis
• Also you can't pogo them because they have helmets so upsmashing the needle it is.
• Love the aesthetic for this one tho
• Honestly it is still really strange to me that anything that isn't black threaded can just be facetanked?? World traversal is more deadly than the bosses at this point, which is just WEIRD

Watcher at the Edge
• Team Cherry I'm getting the feeling you put a lot of scrapped full bosses into Act 3 as secrets because between this one, Voltvyrm and Plasmafied Zango I am seeing a trend
• Facetank with Druid's eyes and fast healing/double heal mindlessly easy
• I'm not joking doing Bell Eater, Lost Garmond, and Pinstress first left me with the impression there was a horrendous difficulty curve between acts. There's not. It's just those three bosses are kind of flawed, half of them are very easy secret bosses because they just fall over to face tanking wanderer's crest spam with a fully upgraded needle. Like god. I am being deliberately careless so much of the time and it's working??? I don't have to have a go of learning the fight I can just learn and survive and heal through facetanking and win

Trobbio the Tormented
• TRO-BEE-OH (tro! be! oh!)
• The purple and pink hues are nice. The flashing lights and their frequency are not nice, as once he hits his second phase, as expected I could no longer look at the mechanics and kept getting hit by the overlap
Interestingly I couldn't see the glimmer fireworks at all! I could on the first fight! I just had to memorise their spawn patterns, did it in three

Shrine Guardian Seth
• One word: facetank. One strategy: heal between facetanks.
• He was a much slower Shakra, actually, almost identical moveset but you could actually hit him

Nyleth
• We hope you learned how to pogo: the fight
• First try. Nyleth is interesting cross disappointing as a fight because there is clearly an idea and a concept but it's restricted by gameplay mechanics (and also making every ability required in order to do it, bar wall cling, which is the only one you *have* to get, iirc)
• The thing is if you do have everything it becomes overtuned? The challenge just goes. I have the grip which means Hornet doesn't move, she just stays put, it makes platforming a hundred times easier so I'm just waiting for openings to pogo. It's more a hand endurance of having to hold the wall for long periods
• Despite appearances you don't have to hit the glowing orb to do damage. Petals count. Hitbox deceptive once again as a result though
• The fight starts with ground, she does a swipe across, she throws three projectiles nowhere near the wall up into the arena, she does a pollen attack which covers 3/4 of the screen except the opposing wall, and spits pollen at you which is the slowest bullet hell I've ever seen and I only got caught once after having to climb back on the wall after jumping into vines (which happened a lot). That's it. Even when the floor goes, that's pretty much it. You pogo on her head after she swipes and it will take you to victory. The coliseum in HK's wallless sections were harder because you lack the same mobility options there. Fwiw I liked it, it was a good pogo acumen test (other than when she drops her head and the pogo just misses...) it just didn't have the oomph I would expect from one of the final bosses in the game

Clover Dancers
• Faster version of Cogwork Dancers and you can only damage one of them, and instead of doing a paired mid arena aoe their aoe becomes a tornado that goes anti or clockwise and you can use your myriad movement abilities to easily avoid it
• I did have to do it twice because the rhythm being faster threw me off and I didn't realise I could only attack one, woops

Lost Lace
• I got to the second phase of the fight first try and went "oh maybe this isn't as hard as I thought it would be"
• Five tries, most of the time I fucked up with the wave, which is in itself not difficult to dodge, you just have to time it to jump the second it appears on screen and sometimes I went too early/late, or I expected a gap before it came back and was in the wrong spot, etc
• Truly, facetanking with wanderer's and extra heals is the mvp. I was extremely concerned because all void entities eat away at your silk, right. Not so during this fight! It even gives you more if you're hit by the dark because of the everbloom! This goes to prove the overworld is the worst Act 3 boss of all
• Wall and ceiling is also op when she's animation locking herself into combos on the floor she cannot interrupt your healing/wont target you until you're done if you have fast heals
• I ended up using the transition part with the wave to slap on some additional masks since I was mostly just spamming attacks when I got to lace, which carried me through
• She is very strange to read tho. most of it is a combination of her prior fights and I could dodge those fine. She sometimes comes out of a plume of darkness (the last to disappear), and the same with her sparkle aoe she's had from the start (except she was visible in those, she is not until the last one goes off). HOWEVER. She can randomly teleport across the screen and appear out of the ground with no advance telegraph warning other than her doing it. So I would walk into her a lot. Or she can spawn where you are in your safe gap spot. Or she can just spawn in next to you.
• I love her stagger visuals tho she gets less corrupted by the void as the fight goes on and more silk it's great :) last time we brought back the dark this time we're bringing back the light!
• I almost feel like there should be a third phase, the pause after the second suggests there will be another but in the end it's just you saving her from the void
• And I love this moment. I've always loved this moment before I knew the HK and full Hornet lore. Grand Mother Silk would always accept her fate to drown in the dark - but it cannot have Lace. And when Hornet asks for assistance to leap out of the void with her daughter, the mother grants it. Because it's all she's ever wanted. Why she hung on all this time, even after Lace became lost.
• Also Ghost helps you the remainder of the way when the flower is destroyed. And all its siblings, and Hornet's. Because whilst the last few hours is a game about mothers and daughters this is also a game about love, the love Hornet has to not see the void take from her again, to not see another Kingdom crumble until it is a shell of its former self, she will not play the role of vigil to a dying kingdom ever again, she has seen enough sacrifice, she will set this right and succeed, and her siblings love her. You braved the void and the dark they had to return to. And they will see their sister home. And just like Red Memory I CRY
• What a spectacular end. What a good game. I love Hornet.