Hollow Knight Silksong is an absolute beast of a side-scrolling platformer, but it doesn’t take long before you have to work out how to cut the spider strings. They’re tangled up around what looks like a spider at this stage and while looks can be deceiving, you know what’s coming once you do make it through.
You’ve probably worked out that you can’t just keep slashing your needle at the spider strings and hope you randomly get the timing right. No amount of jumping and attacking will help you get through to the creature trapped in the silk.
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How to break the spider strings
To cut the spider strings, you’ll need a new ability, and the good news is that it isn’t that far away from the room with the spider web strings to cut. Head back out to the left, which is the only way out at this stage, and then jump over the gap and keep moving to the left.
Once you get a couple of screens over, you’ll find a large cavern with a few bugs to fight. They each have different attack patterns to master, but they aren’t that difficult. For the most part it’s just a case of attacking and retreating to defeat them, but the vomit enemy is a little different.
For this guy, you can either rush him or parry the vomit with the needle and walk him down. Once you clear them, you can climb to the platforms above where you’ll find another vomit-spitting enemy, but with the gap to jump he’s a bit more difficult. Either parry the vomit back at him or wait for a space to jump the gap to beat him with.
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With that guy gone you can keep moving on to the left from the platform and climb up to the room above from there. Keep heading right, defeat the enemies along the way and you’ll find a sign to inspect, which is a good indicator that you’re on the right path.
Keep moving to the right in a similar way, and you’ll find some more silk (or spider strings, which is what they look like at this stage.). It’s another good clue that you’re on to something, and from here you can climb up to the level above. If you’re not too sure about the directions to take, you can also follow along with the video below to see where to go at each stage.
There are more enemies on the climb, and when you get to the top, you need to head to the left again. After a couple of platform jumps, you’ll find something to inspect and this is the first ability gate in Hollow Knight Silksong, and it’s this that will help you cut the spider strings.
The ability that it gives you is called Silkspear and it’ll allow you to fire out a powerful projectile blast, which will cut the webs easily. It does consume silk, so you’ll need to buold this up before you can use it, but hits on the spider strings will you more silk, so it’s not a problem for the job you need to do.
There are a few areas of silk to break in close proximity to the ability gate, but once you’re finished exploring you can head back to the large creature trapped in the spider strings. Use the Silkspear on the webs and you’ll free the beast.
As you might expect, this then results in a boss fight with it, so if you’re having trouble with that, you can also see how to beat the Bell Beast with the video below. The extra incentive is that you’ll then be able to use the creature for some fast travel once you cut the spider web, and take it down.
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