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Top 10 Hardest Bosses in Hollow Knight
We're taking a look at the 10 hardest bosses in Hollow Knight, giving you the lowdown on what makes each one tick and offering some tips on how to beat them. From the Watcher Knights to the Absolute Radiance, we'll break down why each boss is so tough and how you can overcome them.
1. ⚔️ Watcher Knights: Relentless Rolling Attacks
- ✅ Taking on bugs wielding giant swords is a tall order.
- ⚠️ It's even harder when there are multiple at once.
- ✅ You'll need to fight six guard bugs to take down one of the dreamers.
- ✅ You can break a husk before the fight to give yourself an advantage.
- ⚠️ The Watcher Knights' relentless rolling attacks are especially tricky when dealing with multiple at once.
00:33 - 01:03
1. ⚔️ Watcher Knights: Relentless Rolling Attacks
- ✅ Taking on bugs wielding giant swords is a tall order.
- ⚠️ It's even harder when there are multiple at once.
- ✅ You'll need to fight six guard bugs to take down one of the dreamers.
- ✅ You can break a husk before the fight to give yourself an advantage.
- ⚠️ The Watcher Knights' relentless rolling attacks are especially tricky when dealing with multiple at once.
01:07 - 01:52
2. 🪡 Hornet: Fast and Deadly Attacks
- ✅ The second most iconic character in Hollow Knight.
- ✅ You'll get to fight the protagonist of Silksong twice.
- ✅ The first fight is relatively easy, but the second is much harder.
- ✅ Hornet is very fast and can cover a lot of ground.
- ✅ Her blade can be used for melee attacks and ranged projectiles.
- ⚠️ The biggest threat is the spiked balls, which block off parts of the arena and limit your dodging space.
01:55 - 02:36
3. 🛡️ White Defender: Enhanced Dung-Throwing Attacks
- ✅ The dream boss is one of the hardest fights in Hollow Knight.
- ✅ The White Defender is an amped-up version of a previous foe.
- ✅ He used to be a joke boss who threw dung, but now he's a shining symbol of duty and strength.
- ⚠️ He throws twice as much dung, twice as fast.
- ⚠️ He bounces around the arena and summons spikes quickly.
- ✅ It's a battle that gives you a glimpse into the guardian's prime.
02:39 - 03:20
4. 💥 Failed Champion: Relentless Attacks
- ✅ One of the three dream bosses you can find in the base game.
- ✅ He's a hunk of steel, and he's terrifying.
- ✅ You were sitting pretty in the tutorial section as the False Knight, but you'll need to prepare for your shell to be broken as the Failed Champion.
- ⚠️ This warrior is relentless.
- ⚠️ His swings are faster, and the shockwaves are much bigger.
- ⚠️ Every attack takes off way more health.
- ⚠️ He can rain down burning projectiles from above.
- ⚠️ It's very hard to find a moment to strike back against this behemoth.
03:24 - 04:14
5. 🤡 Grey Prince Zote: Ridiculous but Powerful Attacks
- ✅ The last of the dream bosses on our list.
- ✅ For a long time, Zote was the laughing stock of joke characters.
- ✅ An old, useless warrior who often needed rescuing.
- ✅ Through the excessive imagination of fangirls, we get to see Zote's true potential.
- ✅ He's still ridiculous, but now he's beefed up and can deal some serious damage.
- ⚠️ His crazy sword swings are hard to dodge, and he'll summon miniature versions of himself to use as bombs.
- ⚠️ The humiliation of being defeated by Zote's imagined version makes him one of the most infamous obstacles in Hollow Knight.
04:19 - 05:01
6. ⚔️ Brothers Oro and Mato: Cooperative Attacks
- ✅ The Godmaster DLC gave us a lot of boss fights.
- ✅ Some were new, some were old, and some we thought were just regular NPCs, but now they're eager to throw hands, or in this case, nails.
- ✅ These two brothers, who were originally just mentors who taught the knight additional sword techniques, team up to deliver one last lesson.
- ✅ Taking on Oro was fine, but it gets twice as hard when his brother jumps into the fight.
- ✅ Their techniques are similar, but between the two of them, they can fill the entire screen with slashes.
05:02 - 05:51
7. 👨🏫 Great Nailsage Sly: Small but Mighty Boss
- ✅ The little shopkeeper is a boss.
- ✅ Sly is the OG when it comes to dishing out pain.
- ✅ Despite his small stature, Sly has no problem wielding and using a massive blade.
- ✅ He can swing it around and fire it off at frightening speeds.
- ✅ No matter how fast you dash, Sly is ready to spin around like a helicopter and attack.
- ✅ After you get him down to his second win, Sly will dart around rapidly and unleash a flurry of attacks.
- ⚠️ Reading this little man is a real challenge, especially when he can stop his combos and throw you off your game.
05:54 - 06:40
8. 👤 Pure Vessel: Diverse Skills and High Speed
- ✅ As far as final bosses go, the Hollow Knight from the base game put up a pretty tough fight.
- ✅ But as lore hounds know, it was also suffering from the Radiance's infection and wasn't at its prime.
- ✅ The Pure Vessel is an imagining of what the original knight would have been like if it hadn't been corrupted.
- ✅ The amount of skill the Pure Vessel has under its cloak is uncanny.
- ⚠️ Teleports, vines, explosions, projectiles, pillars, dashes, it uses them all at phenomenal speeds.
- ✅ It's a battle that decides who the true protagonist of this story is.
- ✅ Unfortunately, the original protagonist is taller.
06:43 - 07:24
9. 🔥 Nightmare King Grimm: Bullet Hell Attacks
- ✅ As the highly theatrical leader of the Grimm Troupe, this nocturnal firework was already a tricky opponent.
- ✅ But that's nothing on his ascended form.
- ✅ For a long time, it served as the true apex of Hollow Knight's difficulty curve.
- ⚠️ Between the flaming bats turning his cloak into a series of blades or unleashing his own bullet hell, there's no safe place when Grimm is on the rampage.
- ⚠️ He only allows the smallest windows to attack.
- ✅ He's the DLC nemesis we love to hate.
- ✅ Because the aura farming will never stop.
07:28 - 08:23
10. ☀️ Absolute Radiance: The Ultimate Challenge
- ✅ The true final boss of the base game.
- ✅ The Radiance was the godlike being that plunged us into endless misery.
- ✅ With an absurdly high health pool, a variety of projectiles, and a constant insistence on reducing our footing, we didn't think it could get any worse.
- ✅ At least not until we reached the end of the Pantheon of Hallownest.
- ✅ An upgraded version was waiting for us.
- ✅ Ignoring the fact that it serves as the conclusion to a boss rush with over 40 previous fights, the Absolute Radiance is a wall that few can overcome.
- ⚠️ The attack patterns seem the same, but they come in at a much faster rate.
- ⚠️ It also continues to unleash endless series of orbs in the final phase while there's basically nowhere to stand.
- ⚠️ It's madness.