Hollow Knight: Silksong may be the sequel to Hollow Knight, but players are quickly finding out that it doesn’t exactly play the same way Hollow Knight did. With a new protagonist and new moves, the controls and abilities available might have some players fumbling or struggling, especially when it comes to Silksong’s trickier platforming sections. Fortunately, there’s a way to switch back to the Hollow Knight moveset available pretty early on, if you really must.
Warning: This article will contain spoilers for Silksong’s early game, including the first two major unlockable abilities and one of the earliest bosses. If you haven’t thoroughly explored the Deep Docks area just yet, you may want to wait and come back to this later.
Hornet’s default moveset is very, very different from that of the Knight in Hollow Knight. She has more range than the Knight, but her Needle swings are just a touch slower. She also is unable to “pogo” off of enemies the same way the Knight was – while he could slash downward to bounce off a foe, Hornet can bounce only by shooting downward at a diagonal 45 degree angle. This makes some of the game’s jumping puzzles significantly more tricky until you get used to the new abilities.
While it’s my personal recommendation to just practice and get used to Hornet’s moveset as the game clearly intends, it’s possible that having the Knight’s abilities might be a benefit in certain circumstances, or maybe you just want to play that way. For that, you need to get the Wanderer’s Crest, which is a different crest with different slots for tools than your default Hunter’s Crest.
The Wanderer’s Crest has a few requirements to unlock: you need to have beaten the Bell Beast and unlocked Hornet’s sprint ability found in Deep Docks. You’ll also need to have a Simple Key with you, which can be acquired easily from the merchant in Bone Bottom. If you’ve already bought and used that key, you’ll have to find one elsewhere.
With key in hand, head up into Mosshome, and head west as far as possible. Once you get to the elevator room (the one that takes you back down to Bone Bottom), use your dash to cross the big gap, and keep heading west into the Wormways. Progress through the Wormways westward and down to a hut where the crest is waiting for you. Our video above has a far more detailed explanation of how to get this item.
The Wanderer’s Crest does make it a bit harder to fight enemies, especially at range, but can make exploration easier, so just be warned. You can swap it out any time at a bench, and experiment with both crests and figure out which one works for you. We’re just getting started with Silksong, so who knows, maybe there will be even more crests out there with cool new abilities waiting for us to find them!
Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now, and we’re hard at work on our Wiki guides of everything you might possibly want to know as you start your adventures in Pharloom. We’ve also got a review-in-progress covering our thoughts so far that we’ll update with a score as soon as we’ve finished the game.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
