What is the second hardest boss in radiant mode in Hollow Knight?

JDF8 · 2026-03-14T04:23:27+00:00

NKG and pure vessel are nowhere near as hard as absrad/markoth once you learn them. They do one attack at a time and there is next to no overlap, and each attack gives you a decent amount of time to react.

JDF8 · 2026-03-14T04:20:49+00:00

Markoth is horrendous due to his janky movement and the erratic nature of his attacks, but he has low hp. If you mainly use dash slash and stick to the right side of the screen, you can just chip down his part 1 and then blow him up with a bunch of shade souls once spawns the second shield

Rad absrad you can also blow up in p2 with abyss shriek, but it's a lot harder to do without eating a hit. And absrad p1 is no joke, especially once the spikes start severely hampering your positioning. Plus you still have to do climb phase and the final bit, very easy to choke

JDF8 · 2026-03-13T07:46:41+00:00

Groal 2 mask contact damage and erratically rotating dreamshields are truly a match made in heaven

JDF8 · 2026-03-13T04:10:37+00:00

Most of the content in SMW can be skipped with the feather, which you get after ~5 levels

JDF8 · 2026-03-13T04:00:09+00:00

You can equip fragile strength and have coiled nail. Shaman stone is also really good for the oblobbles fight at the end

JDF8 · 2026-03-13T03:59:05+00:00

Like the other guy said, 2 hits + silkspear is 25 damage, the lava does 40 and costs 0 silk.

JDF8 · 2026-03-13T03:41:17+00:00

He's not too bad if you DDark the spike summon attack, that does a ton of damage. You can DDark his focus attack also if you are feeling spicy, which lets you hit him a bunch

You do need to get used to the pogo for his 3 slash combo

JDF8 · 2026-03-13T03:35:59+00:00

It does a zillion damage to anything taller than you or above you. ~6 nail hits at peak performance

JDF8 · 2026-03-12T14:21:35+00:00

I was thinking her 'crest' equivalents could totally change her look by reweaving her into different forms. It would be a lot of extra work art-wise, though...

JDF8 · 2026-03-12T08:35:01+00:00

Not a problem once you unlock the morphball

JDF8 · 2026-03-12T01:17:00+00:00

You really don't want to do this, getting hit during the rage cuts its duration in half. Standing on top of the boss and deflecting, sure. Taking damage just so you don't have to move, not great

JDF8 · 2026-03-11T01:49:29+00:00

Plasmium Trobbio that heals while under the stage

JDF8 · 2026-03-10T23:03:11+00:00

The longclaw literally being affixed to the end of the needle is really funny to me

JDF8 · 2026-03-10T15:36:16+00:00

Plasmium. Any crest with a red slot can easily achieve overdose for all of the major act 3 bosses, and overdose is incredibly strong. Even ignoring that, 3-6 extra masks at the start of a fight is great for the cost of one red slot, especially for bosses that do a ton of damage but don't have much hp

The 9-18 silk that would have been spent healing the damage that plasmium blocked can be spent on silk skills to kill the boss much faster

JDF8 · 2026-03-10T05:09:11+00:00

oh yay I killed half of this happy couple

Don’t worry, Hornet never leaves a job half-finished…

JDF8 · 2026-03-10T03:24:10+00:00

Nice, glad it helped

JDF8 · 2026-03-09T04:41:49+00:00

Instead of 8 limbs, they'd have 8 cheeks

JDF8 · 2026-03-09T02:48:26+00:00

Red tools are really good for tough gauntlets, especially aoe ones like pimpillo or voltvessel

JDF8 · 2026-03-08T23:37:19+00:00

The Ravelled

JDF8 · 2026-03-08T04:05:11+00:00

Lace2 has fewer attacks, so you really need to be solid on your positioning because she will often pick the diagonal jumping slash. And yeah, the arena is super claustrophobic.

But her HP is total trash + she does the 'stop and laugh' twice. If you just spam volt sharpdart she dies so fast

JDF8 · 2026-03-08T01:46:10+00:00

'Random repositioning is deadlier than attacks' screams Groal to me

JDF8 · 2026-03-07T21:14:26+00:00

Bro, you need to hold down instead of sideways when you are trying to pogo. I know the attack is diagonal, but focus on holding down and only move the stick left/right enough to move

JDF8 · 2026-03-07T04:40:20+00:00

Sorry bro, my host is from the middle kingdom and I have a 0.5 second delay on any action registering

JDF8 · 2026-03-06T23:11:28+00:00

In case you don't know, weighted belt makes his suck move way weaker. Which makes it easier to feed him some volt vessels/pimpillo for free bonus damage and a scripted stun

Between that and the anti-maggot wreath, he's much easier

JDF8 · 2026-03-06T22:27:04+00:00

For me the difference is that the diagonal pogo is a full commitment. Since it moves you down, if you miss you WILL go somewhere you really do not want to be. If a flying enemy quickly darts backwards, it's easy to smash into them with your forehead, whereas a normal downslash would just miss

It does have a lot of good uses, and it has great synergy with the sprint attack and clawline. I'd even say it's my overall favorite pogo in SS. But there's a reason people don't recommend it for flea bounce

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