My Attempt at Any% Hollow Knight SpeedRun
Hello and welcome back to my blog!
I am enjoying Hollow Knight a lot and in the past couple of weeks, I have replayed it again to get to the Dream No More ending which I shared in my previous post. This was the first time I got to that ending in Hollow Knight. Later, I made some more progress in the Pantheons, but they are kinda hard for me, especially the last two. So, I am stuck, and that can become frustrating.
That was the exact reason why I started a fresh run, this time with the challenge of making it to the Hollow Knight ending within 5 hours. There are many achievements in the game, and one of the achievements is called Speedrun1, where you have to get any ending under 10 hours. This one is not that tough because in the last run I managed to get around 14 hours any per cent ending with a lot of optional content. So, getting just 10 hours wouldn't be a big challenge.
But making it under 5 hours is kinda challenging and this achievement is called Speedrun2. A rare one but very much possible depending on how choose your route and just do the bare minimum of what is required to get an ending.
There are many skips and things speedrunners implements, some of them are pretty hard to do. So, my focus on this run was mostly on planning the route, using the benches in clever way to teleport out and only going for necessary items.
Here was my detailed route and plan:
In the Crossroads
- Fight the Gruz mother
- Wake up, Sly
- Fight False Knight
- Get the Vengeful Spirit
Move on to Greenpath
- Fight Hornet, get Dash (after performing an easy skip using a mosquito)
(Collecting any source of Geo I can)
Teleport back to Crossroads
Go into the Fungal Waste
- Get Fragile Strength
- Take the Mantis Claw
- Fight Mantis Lords
Go to Deepnest (sitting only on the first bench)
- Get the Tram Pass and get out
Using the Tramp Pass, get to the Ancient Basin
- Take the Pale Ore to upgrade the nail
Go to the Kingdom's edge and then the City of Tears
- Unlock the stag station
- Perform a jump skip (to reach the soul master)
- Fight the Soul Master to get the Desolate Dive
- Upgrade my Nail twice
- Grind a lot of Geos here and sell my items for Geo
Go back to Sly to buy Lumafly Lantern
Go to the Crystal Peaks to get Crystal Dash
Go to the Ancient Basin
- Fight the Broken Vessel
- Get the Mothwing Cloak (for double jump)
Go to the Deepnest
- Get the dreamer in Weaver's nest
Go to the Royal Waterways
- Fight the Dung Defender
- Get Isma's Tear
Go to the City
- Fight Watcher Knights
- Get the Dreameer
Go to the Teacher's Archive from the Crossroads
- Fight Umuu and get the last dreamer
Fight The Hollow Knight in Temple of the Black Egg
It Didn't go as Planned
Some of them gave me a very tough time, especially the Watcher Knights. I spent almost an hour on this fight alone, would you believe that? I have always hated these watchers, and without enough charm notches and charms, it was proving to be quite tough.
I had just one extra mask as well, which was a big problem too. And with no quick slash, it was so bad. So, I had to take a detour to go and get quickslash charm from all the way to the Kingdom's edge, which might have taken me another 10-15 minutes.
I was afraid that I am not gonna make it under 5 hours, just because of this stupid boss that killed me over and over again. I almost gave up but then tried a few more times to see how close I end up to that 5 hour mark, even if I go over it.
I hate Deepnest
Another area that I hate the most is the Deepnest. Right after defeating the Mantis Lords, I went into Deepnest looking for that Tram Pass. I died in the deepest three times in a row.
I died once in the Broken Vessel fight as well. Such an unpredictable boss fight. I don't like it too much, but after some decent nail upgrades, it becomes easy.
Not Missing a Single Geo
When you are speedrunning the game, you have to get every possible geo that you can get your hands on, especially at the start, where you need to buy a few items. Even an expensive item like the Lumafly Lantern that costs 1800 geo. That's the reason I had the 'Gathering Swarm' equipped most of the time.
Grubs certainly help too, but on my route, there weren't many. I could only free 10 Grubs in the entire run just to get the Grubsong charm at the end. Optional content like the Colosseum of Fools was not worth the time spent there. They do give a good amount of Geo, but I didn't have much time left for them in this run. If not for those Watcher Knights, I could have done the first trial at least.
Just before fighting the Hollow Knight I made sure to gather more mask shards and vessel fragments. Brooding Mawlek is one of those bosses that is not challenging but have given me some tough time in the past. Luckily it was easy this time around.
I checked my timing before the final Hollow Knight boss fight, and I was at the 4-hour 30 minutes mark. Still had 30 minutes to beat him. But I was not confident in my abilities. After those Watcher Knights, I was thinking I was too underpowered, just had 6 mask shards with no extra soul vessel. The last time I killed it seemed easy but I was much more powerful there, with a lot of extra charm notches and some good charms. Not this time around.
Beating the Radiance, a few days ago, gave me enough practice of the moves of Hollow Knight, and to my surprise, I was doing really well. Also, the fact that there is plenty of time in this fight to heal. Those self-harm phases of the Hollow Knight made it pretty easy to fight, and I defeated it in my first try.
I defeated the Hollow Knight which was used to contain the infection, now I have become the Hollow Knight, I guess.
Here is my completion time for this run. I achieved that sub 5 hour run that I set out to achieve. And if not for those 15 retries at the Watcher Knights, this would have been much better. If I get better at those boss fights, I can do it under 4 hours or maybe in 3 and a half hour easily.
It was only 44% completion, which doesn't matter for this specific achievement. I can make the routing a bit more efficient this time, avoiding things that were not necessary; there were some. And the fact that I had some time remembering a couple of places, especially the path in Deepnest, where I died a few times.
I didn't even bother to get the maps, except for a few. This meant I had to remember almost the entire map of the Hallownest. The next time, I won't even need these maps.
I was able to get the speedrun achievements. I feel relieved, and next I will be attempting a steel soul run.
- All the content is mine unless otherwise stated.
- Screenshots are from the game Hollow Knight.
I'm familiar with the game, but I've never played it. It seems like a very entertaining 2D scroller. I hope you can beat your record next time and do it in just 3 hours ;)
3 hours would be a major challenge, I might have to learn some more skips
Oh i see!! but yeah is a big challenge!
🎉🎉🥳 Congratulations 🥳🎊🎊
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I have taken the trouble to read you carefully and I must tell you that I admire your patience and perseverance when it comes to propose something, you had many difficulties but you never threw in the towel and kept going.
All that planning for your speedrun was well designed and you practically followed it to the letter. I know Hollow Knight is a complicated game, at least for me it is, but I never played it again because of how tedious it became for me. But to read here that it took you less than 5 hours to finish it, that's to be applauded, I guess you deserve a good rest after having achieved that feat.
Success in the next missions bro! 😁
I did that in one sitting, I almost took a break when I was stuck on one particular boss but kept going. I will have some more runs in the future.
Played this quite some time back. And I have to admit, it's pretty amazing and adictive for a 2d game.
The dark theme increased the thrill of it.
Ooh so this is what you were talking about! Man that sounds pretty intense but seems pretty addictive too.
Very addictive and it has nice music depending on the area you are in. They put a lot of thought and effort into it.
Does this game have a glitch that allows you to advance and avoid certain parts of the game, like Super Mario 64 or Dark Souls?
There are many glitches, especially on the early launched versions of the game. Many of them have been patched. So, the speedruns are divided into two categories, Glitched and Non-Glitched.
There are many parts which can be skipped, like in Dark Souls, where, without having items (which are usually required, like a double jump), you can make that jump using enemies and bouncing on them. Things like that.
Cool, I used to like the speedrun where they used glitches, but now I like more the glitchless speedrun, I think, without detracting from the ones that use glitches, because some of them are difficult to do. A speedrun without them seems to me more entertaining to watch.
Yeah, some of those glitches are very inconsistent, and you need to be pixel perfect to execute them. And it is not as fun watching glitched runs for sure.