So... I had a third try at this game. Due to deleting everything earlier, including saves, I had to start over. Has gone better this time. Maybe knowing how it all ends helped (at least so far), as I don't have the same drive to see what happens with the story, or get to new areas.

Beaten some bosses without dying, and others with few attempts. Did struggle a lot with the mantis lords, but managed when I got the second nail upgrade. Went unhurt in the first fight, and almost the second too (when I succeeded), but lost three skulls towards the end. Felt good to get the better of them after struggling for probably 10-12 fights.

Got the first soul warrior on the first try, and the soul master on the third try. Later managed to take the soul warrior with all the spawns on the second try, which really surprised me. Broken Vessel is another clusterfuck, but got through on the third try, basically brute forcing it as I simply can't avoid all those balloon things.

So now I'm roughly where I was the first time round, although also found some areas and enemies that I missed earlier, like the Junkyard and those giant-ass slugs in the Royal Waterways. Haven't found the Hive, but I've heard it's somewhere.

However, I just can't get past the second crystal guardian. Have tried 6-7 times, but probably not getting close. Too much happening. Beams everywhere and I sometimes can't even jump out of the way when he targets me. Instant 2 skulls gone. Double-damage is brutal. Tried with Joni's Blessing and the other that gave blue skulls, so I ended up with 12, which means I can take 5 hits. That's gone pretty darn quickly though, with beams everywhere, and that bloke jumping around like a crazy person. Any tricks to this fight? I'd like to get past this geezer :(

Hadn't discovered the Crystallised Mound the first time through, must have missed that path somehow. I'm getting pretty far over there, but can't get past the last hurdle (I think), with those flip-plates vertically close to ice-spiked walls. I can hear the cute worm. Died several times over there, and went all the way back to rescue the shade and try again, but no luck. Any tips for this as well? I'm clinging to the wall and trying to double-jump up to the next platform, but keep missing the jump or going into one of the million spikes.

Not tried to take on the electrocuting bugger in the Archive yet, nor Hornet 2 or Elder Hu -- some of the fights I struggled badly with. Seems to have missed the upwards soul scream thing as well, but it must be around here somewhere.

Found a little time to have a peak at this forum, so hi again. Lets see what we have:
Crystal guardian: Just stand relatively close to the boss. When he does his laser attack, jump twice in the air, and hit him again (don't dash). It will help to equip the "Steady Body" charm to stabilize your stand.

For the grub to reach, its a bit tricky but I think I did it by jumpin on the first platform, then at the right wall, then on the third platform, form there to the fourth, then jumped a small amount and slided to the right side, where the grub waits.
Make sure you have "Grubsong" equiped.

By the way you had the problem not getting your soul back. You can get it back at mistmouth at the right side in the cave for a rancid egg if you opend the door with a simple key.

For more locations I would suggest using one of the maps out there at the web. Per example:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=876122772
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/246240-hollow-knight/map/15391-complete-map

Thank you for the feedback. In the meantime I did manage some of this, but partly due to downloading a cheater mod. Karma struck maybe, and the game kept crashing when using those mods, but I did managed to get past (and save) after beating the Collector and Hornet 2. Don't see how I could have done the former legitimately, though perhaps Hornet would have been possible with a ton of tries. Removed the mod again to prevent the game crashing again, and noticed that now it was possible to proceed a bit, not least from the extra info from the Collector. Still missing one grub in the top left corner of Queen's Garden, and that too is a very difficult jump. I just can't do. Think I got onto the flip-down platform once, but then there was a very narrow gap with thorns everywhere further north, which promptly killed me. Gave up when I was down to one heart.

Later I went back to the region because there was an unexplored area, and... (HUGE SPOILERS)..... some guy with backup guys wiped the floor with my arse. Holy shit. How is that even possible? Any tips for the Traitor Lord fight? What charms would you recommend?

Actually did manage to kill the Enraged Guardian in the end, but it was pretty lucky. Loaded up on blue skulls and got him, but when he exploded into geo, I died on one of the many beams. Thankfully the win was still recorded, but all the geo was gone when I came back up there. Struggled a lot with the Conqueror trial as well. Then watched a video and discovered that in the best attempt I died on the very last enemy. GAH! I had got one of the huge flying bees, but the other got me. But that got me motivated for another go, and yesterday I got the bastards. The giant hopper and the triple-spitting bees are HORRIBLE. The latter is pure cancer tbh. Got Uumuu too after many attempts.

What seems to be left now is very, very hard. Traitor Lord. Watcher Knights. And Markoth (that I haven't tried yet). And the dream bosses, Failed Champion and the like.

Oh, and about the Crystallised Mound: Actually got up there to that grub, but have no idea how it happened. Pure luck. Thankfully freed the grub before looking around, and then promptly died to a spike somewhere. Tried a long time to get back up there, but it couldn't be done. Did find the down-spell upgrade, however, so hopefully that was all the worthy stuff over in the region.

So then... got advice for these hurdles?

Due to seeing a video of how the story ends (when I gave up earlier), I know about the nightmare in the palace, and given my problems with platform challenges in Crystal peak and Queen's Garden, that area is probably impossible for me. Will try if I get that far, but even with the Hive health charm, it looks utterly impossible.

(Sorry for the long post)

Yay! Got the Watcher Knights finally :)

Used Grubsong, Unbreakable Strength, Quick Slash and Mark of Pride. Was even time to heal a bit between the chaos if they were both on the opposite side of the room.

*Laughing* You seriousely beaten Watcher Knights but did not manage to beat Hornet 2? Well strange things can happen once a while. I tried them nearly endles. Only Traitor Lord, Grimm King and grey Prince 4th time seems to me more challenging. But hey, your battle strategy will determine whether you win or lose.
Since I managed to get all mask shards some weaker bosses can get overpowerd by hitting them without caring for my own life. They will die before you do. Depends a bit of your charm combination.

About Markoth (did not had many problems with him):
- Avoid the flying nails by jumping above them.
- Use your dreamshield, that saved me more then once.

About Traitor Lord (one of my most hated bosses and region except white palace).
- Use your shaddow cloak with sharp shaddow to dash trough him on and on.
- Aware his shock wave, its huge so you can't avoid it by jumping over it. Dash through it or use desolated drive.
- Don't get to far away from the boss or he will use his spinning nails witch are hard to avoid.
- Each time you fail, you must manage to go through the "thorny park" between the bank and the boss. With Sharp Shadow is a bit problematic, because at one point in the park you have to dash from one platform to the next. But the platforms are too close to each other, so you will dash too far. To manage this part, dash to the left and without landing jump to the right wall.
- Try this boss only if you are in good, patient mood.

About Hiveblood: If you can manage to get 46 grubs use Grubsong and Grubberfly's Elegy insteed of Hiveblood to get enough soul to heal. But to get it, you might have to go through Queens Garden as well.

For beating these "backup guys" : Try to hit them as fast as possible, no matter if you get damage. May be hit them with Vengeful Spirit/Shade Soul, Howling Wraiths/Abyss Shriek.

Not tried the Traitor Lord more yet, but I have died about 2000 times to the Grimm twat. Impossible. Way too fast to react to anything. By the time I dodge the first attack, I get hit by his third attack. It's shit like that which makes me want to give up on life itself. Totally meaningless crap. I could have had 50 skulls and still lost handily. And this is only the normal Grimm.

The game would have been much better without so many retarded hard bosses.

Beat Markoth yesterday, which wasn't that bad tbh. The path there from the benches two miles away is worse tbh. Either a horde of giant stampers, or a horde of aspid cunts. Several times I ended up in a corner with 3 of those devils on the other side of a small wall. FML. But Markoth itself was okay, as long as we can dodge the swords that keep flying in. Time to heal (far away) when he did that shield thing.

Save Troupemaster Grimm and Nightmare King for the last, may be even after you have finished the game with radiance.
I managed to beat the Nightmare King, well, about two hours ago from now (well that felt good ^^) and it took me some days to get familiar with the patern until I could react without thinking what to do. But I am sure you can do this as well.
Troupemaster Grimm is the slower version of these two bosses. This one can get overpower with Abyss Shriek, but if you do so, you will not learn the patern for the next faster boss.
My recommendation for these bosses is: Don't even think of attacking them because you are in mood hitting them. They have patterns with windows when to attack and when to dodge. The most time you have to dodge.
My way to beat them was to stay away from them as far as possible. Jumping, running, dashing away until the bosses start casting the firebeam under the knight. At this point your enemy stands still so you can set two hits, then take your distance and dodge again. There are two possibilitys to heal. One while the spikes go upwards, the second after you jumpt over the first flying bat.

More hints:
- First strike: Dash through grimm an go away from him.
- When he casts bats jump over the first, the others then will go slightly upwards over your head so you can stand still and heal!
- When he dash in the 45° angle to you and than at your side, dash through him jump instantly and dash again away.

Good luck!

WOW! Congratulations :)

I'm only at the normal Grimm, and he's kicking my arse something unreal. Everything is WAY too fast for me to react to or handle. Bet I have racked up 50 deaths already, and not been close in any of them. A couple of times I've seen the pufferfish thing twice, which means he's at roughly 50% health from what I've read.

Have seen some YT videos, but it doesn't really help all that much. Half the time (at least?) I've no idea what is coming, because it's simply too fast, and all his stances kinda wobble into each other and look the same in the 1 ms you have to "read" it. Lost count how many times I jump when those spears pop up and skewer me (where many others are able to heal). If it was at half speed, I bet it would still be hard.

What charms did you use? Feels like I've tried everything.
* stocking up on health
* heavy nail build
* heavy magic build
* a mix of the two
* abyss shrieking him often
* being defensive
* being more aggressive, like facetanking with 17 blue skulls or however many I get
* minion build (which I've never tried anywhere else in the game)

Not been close yet, and this isn't even the nightmare version. Jesus. How can anybody beat that thing? :o

At one point I went to Godhome and tried the first pantheon, to get a break between all these deaths. Didn't succeed there either, but got to the final boss once (a nailmaster). Then gave up because it takes too much time to get there and simply die because I've no idea what the guy will do (and am at half health).

The reason I've banged my head against this wall for so long, is to get that last notch, which I assume would be useful against the final boss, and the dream bosses. Didn't expect it to be quite so impossible :-/

Then there is Trial of the Fool, which is needed to get the Hunter's Journal thingy. Being so close... gah, I want that too. The curse of being a completionist. But that trial is incredibly difficult. Have probably only got halfway, at best.

Winning this fight is like playing an instrument. You may have already played some pieces on it, but each song takes some practice to learn. Don't expect to manage the a fast piece in the beginning. While this is a duett, you can only play it if you get accomplished to the rythm and speed. It's more a matter of practice and patience then using special charm combinations.

In the end I managed to beat him with ununbreakable heart, ubreakable strengh, fast focus, grub song and sharp shaddow.

Btw.: This boss is very predictable, what you can expect from him:

Far away from him he will:
- cast fire bats so get ready to jump once and recover if needed
- cast spikes after these fishes so make a slight move and recover if needed

middle distance:
- cast fire beam under you, time to hit the boss twice
- cast 45° dash hit at you, dash/jump/dash, avoid the falling fire flares witch will follow

close distance:
- cast slash hit at you, dash through him
- Going close in direction to the boss will cause the boss to slide backwards followed by a forward strike. Just don't do that!

If you manage to do a certain amount of damage, he will cast his fireballs as a puffy fish. Go at the end of the room and make short and middle upward jumps. Make sure you hit the ground again as soon as possible and don't dash. If you have "shape of un" you could get under some fireballs, but I discarded this option because is more likely to avoid the fireballs using a well known jumping pattern then using a lot of diffrent things.

Thanks for the details. I also found this guide (unfortunately at the shteam forums). Then tried again and again and again, without any real progress.

Got the bright idea to try the cheater mod, so I could practice on his moves without dying and having to backtrack+fetch shadow. Kept at it for probably 10 minutes. Slight progress, perhaps, but I still struggled with making the right moves. Kept confusing some of his attacks, like the dash on the ground.

Slowly started attacking a little too, like on the bats attack, and then got a couple of the pufferfish phases. Long story short: eventually "beat" him. As with Hornet 2, I kinda regret it afterwards, because it's not possible to undo it due to the saving system here.

But I'm also kinda glad, because now it was possible to actually progress. Went to White Palace, and tried it out.

Surprisingly, it wasn't as horrendous as it looked from the video I saw a few weeks back. Used Hive charm ofc, but I managed to get through. Did spend a good hour in there, but with some bad examples aside, it was actually kinda fun. Crazy game! Didn't find the entrance to Path of Pain, though, which is probably just as good.

Beat the boss again a few times, before figuring out how to progress to the ultimate final boss. She pawned me badly. Didn't help that I had my fingers on the wrong keys, but not like I would stand a chance there anyway. Think she did double damage, and holy crap that was a lot of nasty attacks. The bosses in this game are really extreme. I tried some dream bosses yesterday as well, and lost handily to all of them. Really not for the faint of heart, this game...

At least there's Godhome, where you can re-fight almost any boss as much as you'd like.

I consider the saving system to be the worst aspect of this game, personally. I would have found the game far more enjoyable if the game would just let you return to your old save and not save over it without your consent.

If you enjoyed the White Palace, you might want to check out other precision platformers, like Celeste (not on GOG, but DRM-free on itch.io) or the Sunblaze demo.

A whole game like that could be a bit much, but I did enjoy White Palace much more than I expected. It was difficult ofc, but I found it manageable. What was hardest were the few cases where I had to crystal dash and then jump to a wall, and climb there. Really hard to get the timing right (especially with thorns everywhere, and/or narrow gaps), and the game would sometimes "eat" my jump input. Other things I found hard was to time the location where you crystal dash OFF correctly. Doesn't look like there is a way to cancel it (before you launch ofc), which meant that when I saw I would hit one of the 11 sawblades, I just had to launch and retry later. Tried some things to see if it would get cancelled, but it didn't.

Hive charm makes it easier of course (although sometimes you 'die' twice and can't do anything about it, like hit a thorn and then drop offscreen), but generally there are a lot of ways to refill soul around, and usually I was topped up before hitting those passive enemies and so forth. I used Unbreakable Heart too, but it wasn't needed. Also, Shadow Dash would be a HORRIBLE charm here, because it prolongs your dashes, making it much more likely you miss the jump (like in Queen's Garden).

Anyway, I found this section much more manageable than the vast majority of bosses, who just frustrate me to no end. It's simply so annoying to die within seconds, and then spend several minutes to get back to the boss -- before dying within seconds again. In the White Palace you get to try again right away, and can therefore easier correct mistakes.

Edit: Didn't take a picture of the toughest location, but this one was rough too. Need to cancel the crystal dash, then jump up to that little ledge, without going into the thorns, nor those enemies or spikes. Not easy.

If you really want to have more savepoints you can do that by copying the savefile away.

Copy the following link to your windows search bar, make a copy from the "Hollow Knight" folder and rename it. So you have as many savepoints as you want.

%APPDATA%\..\LocalLow\Team Cherry

If you nead something more comfortable you could do this with a bachfile. Create a textfile with the following text:

REM -------------------------
@echo off
for /f "delims=" %%a in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime ^| find "."') do set dt=%%a
set YYYY=%dt:~0,4%
set MM=%dt:~4,2%
set DD=%dt:~6,2%
set HH=%dt:~8,2%
set Min=%dt:~10,2%
set Sec=%dt:~12,2%

set stamp=%YYYY%-%MM%-%DD%_%HH%-%Min%-%Sec%

xcopy "%userprofile%\appdata\LocalLow\Team Cherry\Hollow Knight\" "%userprofile%\appdata\LocalLow\Team Cherry\Hollow Knight %stamp%\" /E /I
REM -------------------------

Save it as a batch file at "HollowSave.bat" on your Desktop.

Each time you double-click on this file, it will copy the Hollow Knight save folder to a new Hollow Knight save folder with the actual date and time in the foldername.

Worth noting that these instructions make the assumption that the player is playing the Windows ersion, while I was actually playing the Linux version, so those instructions would need to be modified. (In particular, a shell script would be used rather than a batch file; in practice, they're the same thing, except with a different interpreter.)

Since I don't use Linux, my possibilities are very limited. Mainly because I neither know where the savefiles are located under Linux, nor could I test the script.

But generaly spoken, it is just a simple copy script that adds a timestamp to the folder. If you manage to locate the savefiles the shell script might be something like:

#!/bin/sh

cp path/to/source path/to/destination_$(date '+%Y_%m_%d')

ldconfig

echo "Done!"