My blind Hollow Knight first playthrough encountered a problem: Hollow Knight Lost Kin.
I spent half a stream throwing myself at Lost Kin, getting painfully close, and repeatedly watching every healing opportunity disappear because of those little orange infection balloons. Chat even asked whether I had a charm that could deal with them.
I did not.
At the time, my strategy mostly involved trying harder and hoping my hands would eventually become better at Hollow Knight. Surprisingly, this did not solve the problem.
Several streams later, I returned to the Royal Waterways and met Dung Defender, a man who fights by enthusiastically throwing poop around an underground sewer. After beating him, I received Defender’s Crest, a charm that surrounds the Knight with a cloud of heroic odour.
Naturally, I equipped it immediately.
At first, I assumed Defender’s Crest was mostly a joke. The stink cloud was funny, but I could not imagine choosing it over one of the charms that actually seemed useful.
Then we went back to Lost Kin.
Chat pointed out that the Defender’s Crest cloud could kill the orange balloons before they reached me. Suddenly, the entire Hollow Knight Lost Kin fight started making more sense.
Instead of constantly stopping to deal with extra enemies, I could focus on the boss. More importantly, the charm created safer opportunities to heal without an infected balloon immediately floating over and ruining everything.
The stupid poop charm was solving the exact problem that had stopped me from winning.
After several streams of unfinished business, Lost Kin finally went down.
The whole thing became one of my favourite examples of why I enjoy playing Hollow Knight blind with chat. I had already found the solution, laughed at it, and almost dismissed it completely. Then someone in chat connected the dots and turned Defender’s Crest into the missing piece of the fight.
You can watch the full Lost Kin highlight on YouTube, including the original attempts on the BeepBoopJim VOD archive, Dung Defender, the discovery of my heroic odour, and the eventual rematch.
Sometimes you do not need to get good.
Sometimes you need to get stinky.
Comments are closed