Thank you all so, so much for 100 000 subs! i really appreciate it, and while it may be an arbitrary number barrier, it blows my mind that so many people enjoy these silly things that i've made. What's next for me? Well, i'm going to continue doing these things, and try to put more effort in, be a bit more ambitious, and also try to make and talk about things that matter in the grander scheme of things too, as i really want to create something meaningful that carries significance. :D yippee!
Might need to add thorns as well. You have too much control over the knight that way, meaning there’s more opportunity to mess up against such a difficult boss. The super consistent and meaningful damage it offers is also a vital part of why you want this on your gruz mother build. Good luck God Gamer!
go heavy blow rather than glowing womb imo-- since you can't heal, the downside of glowing womb eating your focus during a heal isn't there (yeah it's still bad but heavy blow is worse)
On my first playthrough I did flower quest going through fog canyon with dream shield, for some reason. I guess it made me feel safer in the different areas?? Somehow?? I'm not sure what I was thinking but it did work eventually
I think having charms that actively hurt you but cost negative charm slots would be a good way to increase options with charms, especially since it could heavily increase potential for charm synergies. It would also be funny to watch people go for min charm slot usage runs
I thought an interesting idea for a charm (or charms) is a charm where you get a choice- a weak version of the charm that costs 1 slot and a strong version that costs 3 or 4. I could see making a negative choice as well where the benefit is it gives you extra charm slots. To use a specific idea, instead of Mark of Pride and Longnail both being individual charms, make Mark the 3 slot choice, Longnail the 1 slot (and slightly weaker than in game), and the negative version makes your nail 25% shorter but you gain an extra charm slot.
@@inerkatakan8161 As someone who first started out the game being all about maximizing the length of your nail because of how much easier it made pogoing enemies and a couple of boss fights, I feel you. That said, after getting good at the game (beating it a few times, beating radiance, starting to learn some speed run strategies, etc) I moved away from the nail being a main damage source to something I use mainly to charge my soul for the next spell or to open up new ways of moving through an area, the idea of stacking the two became less important to me to the point where I kinda forgot a lot of people use that build. Okay, my solution then is a 4th level of the charm that uses 4 slots and combines the new weaker long nail and Mark of Pride.
@@jeremytewari3346 I remember after he annoyingly said that he "didn't need rescuing" I just unintentionally left him to die and it was like my 3rd or 4th achievement.
I actually used Glowing Womb on my first clear of the Radiance. At the time, I was still really uncomfortable using spells. So I ran it with a nail build, mostly focused on dodging, and just got some free "passive" damage. Radiance not staggering also eliminated one of the normal downsides. I have since learned to play the game properly and would never run it nowadays, but at the time it unironically felt pretty useful.
Hmm. For the sake of memes, then perhaps the best charm build for Glowing Womb is a Fury of the Fallen nail build? If you don't intend to get hit or use spells, then ya don't need Soul. Might as well get extra damage.
In the defence of Heavy Blow, I feel like looking at it from a speedrun/optimization angle is really bad for it. I think it's mostly intended as a _defensive_ charm for new players who want to get a little more breathing room from more aggressive, in-your-face enemies.
It's great when going against the infected vengeflies in crossroads, which is a great place for farming. Add swarm and greed, and you've got a decent farming build.
as an avid supporter of glowing womb, I'm hear to say that it's really an awful charm but who cares because cute little bug friends :3 (I also used it to beat radiance for the first time so I may be a bit biased)
For a new player who can't for the life of them understand spells AND find a place to heal during combat then womb is a good charm for them. But for anyone else it's either a nerf or an emotional support buddy like Grimmy.
I'm sorry but I'll defend Weaversong to my dying day. It always has a place in my build. I don't use nail arts so it takes the place that Sly's charm would (sorry can't remember the name off the top of my head) and I always pair it with Grubsong. I'm a disabled player with pretty poor hand response so I'm not the best at moving quickly and punishing bosses. So the way I play HK is to be a pretty good tank with an abundance of soul so I can use and abuse charms instead of hitting things repeatedly on the head like most top players recommend/do. Btw this is advice for disabled players who struggle with the game, I guess. I was a very bad player who struggled a lot for a long time. But tbh Weaver+Grub saved me. Now I get the soul that I would normally get if I was able to hit bosses as fast as others are, so I can cast spells and heal pretty reliably, meaning I can get through bosses semi-easily, it just takes me longer. It made me a bit better at dodging (not that much, re: poor hand response) but barely juuust good enough that paired with these two charms and essentials like Shaman and Strength I can now beat the game without wanting to tear my hair out in frustration. So all hail Weaversong, I won't stand for this slander anymore
Weaversong is actually pretty usable! Note that the slander went on the other two charms :p The weaversong + grubsong combo actually saves the charm and makes it surprisingly viable.
Weaversong + Grubsong combo is one of my favorites. I'm not very good at the game, so them damaging enemies and collecting soul for me just feels more secure, ya know? Plus they're adorable!
Joni's Blessing massive mask spam was what I used to beat the end of Pantheon 5 for the first time so it'll always have a soft spot for me, didn't have to feel like I'd focus on anything other than dodging and hitting when I could which helped a lot vs Absolute Radiance as I could fairly consistently beat first phase without getting hit and only really struggled on second phase snowballing too hard so all that extra health was actually really nice, and funny enough glowing womb was the final charm slot, no need to heal and free chip damage just felt satisfying haha.
woah when i was a beginner player i loved the minion charms, not having to attack and focusing only on dodging was super relieving especially for the stressful pantheons at first.
It's probably been said a bunch online in different places but it's just struck me what I feel makes so many charms 'bad' in Hollow Knight: the pacing. During my first playthrough I didn't use Shaman Stone or Spell Twister at all, but that was fine. Instead I just loaded up on Longnail/ Mark of Pride/ Fragile Strength, which you can get very early on. There was never a point where these were the 'best' charms I had access to. It's either you're playing through the game and use *some* of the best charms, or you're doing godhome and use the best charm builds. For me it sort of ruined what should have been the wonder of finding a cool, new charm. I hope that Silksong doesn't give access to the best stuff so early on.
@@dimaginarylaw Yup. Godhome and 100%ing steel soul have really put that into perspective. Point being it's even more nuts that even not considering those two I had no reason to use the low tier charms. :/
personally, the first time i equipped dream shield it was in kingdoms edge with all the primal aspids and it blocked so many of their projectiles and thats why i love dream shield
When I played the first time, I didn't think of the dream shield as a good thing, but after a few playthroughs I thought it was super useful charm, because its not only blocking something that's flying to you, but it removes it if the shield touches it my all time favorite charm but you must know how to use it .❤
deep focus is actually REALLY insane in the right build. deep focus+quick focus+shape of unn+thorns+grubsong, makes the game trivially easy. you can heal back any damage you get hit for, doing insane thorns damage in the process. the deep/quick/unn synergies also make it really easy to heal. i beat pantheon 5 with this and it honestly is peak for an endurance test like that.
finally, some innovation! i am a more simple, directly dps oriented person who dodges and keeps nail spamming the boss, but it's nice to see a unique idea again. consider: quick slash+strength+shaman stone+defender's crest+steady body
@@cael5118 no, it really wouldn't. why do people with zero experience with things insist on being so confident? i can guarantee you've not tried either.
And then there’s me. In my first play through, my exploration charms were Wayward Compass, Gathering Swarm, Kingsoul, Sprintmaster, Dashmaster, and Grubsong. I loved Kingsoul, and kept it for hours. I didn’t even get voidheart until I learned that you needed it for p5. I even beat all three colosseums with Kingsoul equipped. (It was really useful for the shielded fools and the grub mimic because I could reach full health/soul.
WAIT, how am I a only a year younger than you?? I could never create content like this, its incredibly impressive! I adore your content, really anything longform about hollow knight. Congrats on 100k!
I'd love to see a full speedrun with this charm build (with a mod giving you the notches and charms at the start, since playing without them would be easier)
I use heavy blow consistently on nail art builds. It doesn’t hurt nail art builds, since you WANT time to recharge and also, the stagger bonus lets you fire off more of the STRONGEST ATTACK IN THREE GAME. It might not be that good, but if it were one notch, it’d be great.
i have a love/hate relationship with dream shield. i think it's really funny that it dinks when it touches geo but i also think that same thing is annoying as hell
I hate thorns. Uses your i-frames to deal a tiny bit of damage and can't move out of the animation so you are likely to get hit again. I do think that just adding thorns to the BlueSR worst charm build would make it worst in more situations.
Aaand I would be a guy to defend thorns even just a little bit. Yeah, for experienced player this is complete trash, but for a beginner, would be more comfortable overall in exploring. For bosses - useless, sure, but for small enemies, especially flying ones, for a new player would be much easier to rely on thorns damage, wich in most cases would kill a bug that hit you, than try to use given i-frames to kill it yourself.
@@EmpinadoMaxbmdggTheSunExactly. If we were to rank charms just by the number of their uses, Thorns would get a 2 out of 5, which translates to "only in certain games". Specifically, your first two to three games. It's bad, could be better, but it's still not the worst by any metric.
@@EmpinadoMaxbmdggTheSun I am casual. I used compass for most of the game and beat it once. I think I remember dying to them cause I got stuck in the thorns animation. I never used them after
yknow, defenders crest is actually kinda one of my staple charms lol. esp for broken vessels/soul warriors ghosts. i’m not particularly good at games, so i spend a lot of my time dodging. not having to worrry abt the ghosts at all helps. and i’m a very cautious player. so getting some extra damage in by hanging around the boss but not having to actually hit it is kinda nice! if it were anything more than one notch, nah, but it’s a good little buffer to have i think lol (ik defenders crest isn’t rlly in the video as one of the worst charms, but yknow xD) nice video, blue!! congrats on the milestone!!!!
defender's crest is even better when you *are* good at the game! if you spend a lot of time close to the boss and hitting it, the passive cloud damage literally splits the game time in half.
Defenders creat was a life saver when I first fought broken vessel! I was dying so much until I thought of trying it, and suddenly all those awful balloon enemies were no problem.
I could'nt have done the lost kin without it. I was malding so bad due to those orange fucking blobs before I discovered I could use Defenders Crest. And then I paired it up with that Mushroom Charm and it made lost kin trivial.
Fun fact: you can stagger a boss 137 times. No tricks, just go fight it and stagger it 137 times. Going to godhome and fighting lost kin on ascended with grubberfly's elegy, heavy blow, and old nail, and making sure to only use the grub nail hits and combo lost kin to stagger it more (search stagger combo on wiki) will let you stagger it 137 times before it dies. Poor thing.
I’m pretty sure that you can infinitely stagger false knight (not in godhome) if you manage to stagger him again before he falls through the floor. I was doing a randomizer and had wraiths when fighting false knight so it might not be possible edit: it might be possible if you get the false knight door destroy secret thing and get spirit and then refight false knight, if it’s still not possible you can get shaman stone by doing a shade skip or you could just get dash and then get up to salubra normally.
@@stencillpencill False knight drop is useless,you can beat the whole game without it so in theory and practice yeah, you can get a pure nail with a nail build and go infinitely
Heavy Blow is great in most spike/liquid areas, as you can knock the enemies into environmental dangers. It's pretty fun and it kills them instantly. Quite satisfying to use it on flying mantises in that one vertical spiky room at Queen's Gardens.
One thing you didn’t mention is the anti-synergy with glowing womb and deep focus, since the longer heal time opens an even bigger window for glowing womb to burn enough soul to waste your heal
A pretty great use case for deep focus is to stack it with shape of unn and quick focus 1.2× speed and reduced hitbox while healing and the extra heal time actually allows you to properly dodge attacks, and if you stack grubberfly's elegy and grubsong to deep focus (as long as you can consistently heal) you are literally immortal. Great for white palace and path of pain.
If ur talking about the cut at foreshadowing, it’s because everyone has heard it a billion times. If ur talking about the glitchy effect at the last yippee, it’s intentional
Fully went into this expecting compass to be mentioned since it does nothing but charms being actively harmful actually made it not worth mentioning which was a twist to me
1:19 no you're amazing! Tysm for your incredibly good content. I'm really happy I discovered the HK community, it's so great, and you're IMO one of the best HK RU-vidrs out there. The fact that you achieved such heights before even turning 18 is such an awesome and actually very inspiring thing! Keep up with your work. Love your content
This comment is propaganda by the Pale King. No evidence supporting the existence of the King Soul has ever been found. Don’t believe the Pale King’s lies.
In my last playthrough after a long break I actually found kingsoul good for overcharming when delivering flowers to every possible recipient and some radiant bosses (Markoth and oblobbles, mainly), so it is at least somewhat useful sometimes! Not with glowing womb though, that is still worse than just casting shade soul at everything...
Another video! Let's go! I am glad to say that I was there when you hit 100,000 subscribers and when you did the hand reveal. It was a great time. Just wanna say congratulations again for the 100k milestone. Can't wait until you get to a million!
I love deep focus, it's what carried me through the entire game! The double healing during bosses did me so much wonders!!! Especially with Basin Hornet, Nightmare king Grimm, and a few other bosses
I can't agree about the total uselessness of Glowing Woomb. It really helped me to complete some fights (including the 2nd Colosseum and Failed Champion). You see, I am a lame player and really struggled with those fights. But having all pet charms + Grubsong allowed me to just stay in the very top (left or right walls of the arenas) and let the pets do the work. Yes, it was very long and not guaranteed, but still I managed to win over. So, even those charms that you deem to be completely useless and even harmful in general, can be useful.
In defence of heavy blow i found it actually usefull when doing Sly on radiance. The build i was using was mark of pride, longnail, strengh, steadybody and heavy blow. it alowed me to get more safe hits on him and run away more easly. I know its not the most optimal way but i had a lot of satisfaction needing to take of the optimal damage output for a nonconventional build that in the end worked out way better. (sorry for bad english, its not my first language)
My first playthrough I had dreamshield equipped for a long time. Mostly, what it did was make me feel I was fine just dodging, since I was guaranteed a bit of damage any way. That way, I could learn to dodge first, and only go for hits when I had an opening. So not so much the effect of the charm itself was useful, but my reaction to it.
Deep focus+grubsong was my "I'm so bad at platforming" crutch build, like for Sheo's gauntlet. A lot of the suboptimal charms are beginner friendly little helpers (like thorns, joni, weavers, soul catcher...)
I really like glowing womb. It's just so nice to have this constant supply of friends/kids to help me in my battle, and if I'm playing well I don't need to heal much, and I've always focused more on nail than spells. ...that said I can't claim it's GOOD. even back then when I sucked at using spells I was a bit frustrated by it. rip. x
Fantastic video, BlueSR. Great editing and humor got me good. Keep at it! I'm surprised you didn't talk about Kingsoul due to extremely high notch cost + slow regeneration of SOUL build-up. It's useful for earlier pantheons for survivality, then at some point it's better to pick up Dreamwielder before the player peaked at the Pantheon's final bosses. My friend played the funny strat with Markoth's ascended/radiant mode. They pick up Glowing Womb + Kingsoul. Somehow they actually defeated him with little nail arts attacks and shaman's stone spells, letting it be passive then abuse the overcharming build. It was slowest way to get him done. We were hoping that Godseeker mode allow us to play two charms such as Kingsoul & Carefree Melody, but it replaces as a Void Heart & Grimmchild. Exploring this game is fun anyway, we don't mind replaying it.
0:48 HBomberGuy really did just invent the worst joke ever. I hate this more then that morbius line "is the X of all time" like guys, for the love of god, can we stop with the self aware bits in which we do a thing, point out, and do it anyways? Let me watch the video bro, shut up, don't spoil the ending god damn! I'm begging bro. I would actually like the foreshadowing if you didn't point it out.
I did not know about the leg eater discount with defenders crest. THANK YOU. I was literally on my way to pick up those charms to feed them to whats her face at the grimm troupe tent.
Actually, I have found 1 use case for Glowing Womb: it makes going through soul sanctum much easier. The mages who often teleport when you get within nail distance don't dodge the flies, and theres plenty of soul pots lying around so you don't need to worry about running out of soul. But yeah, its generally a trash tier charm
Heavy Blow is good for more casual players who instead of minmaxing their damage instead gotta focus on dodging and stayin alive, because it gives a bit of breathing room and time to dodge the next attack. Also kinda good for colloseum imo, you can just throw things into spikes easily
The problem with that is that King's Soul's constant soul refill partially negates Womb's problem of making the player constantly out of soul. With Deep Focus' long heal time, you're almost guaranteed to never be able to heal, since you'll never stay above 1 cast worth of soul long enough. Without it and with regenerating soul, you could probably heal fairly often.
The thing is that specifically overcharming for Deep Focus is what makes it actively harmful. With Deep Focus, you heal slower, but restore 2 health instead of 1. When overcharmed, you take double damage from all sources, meaning instead of most things doing 1 damage to you, they now do 2 damage. So in the end, you just heal slower without actually getting any benefit from it, because your extra point of healing is directly offset by taking an extra point of damage.
I used a Joni's Blessing/Lifeblood build to beat GPZ my first time because i didn't want to deal with his annoying fight lol. Stalwart Shell also. Niche application, but Glowing Womb is also good for early randomizers when you need to clear Elder Baldurs.
glowing womb have niche use if you have skill issue. In a boss fight that you can wall jump you can combine it with kingsoul to beat a boss u aren't skilled enough to beat just by walljumping. I beat failed champion the first time by doing this
Here's a nice Heavy Blow build, just because... Heavy Blow, obviously. Steady Body for less recoil. Sprintmaster for faster recoil recovery. Quick Slash for faster attacks. Longnail for better reach. Either Strength for higher damage. If you're okay with overcharming you can replace Longnail with Mark of Pride.
Well I have over 500hours and... Yeah, hunters mark was always too annoying for me to finish, so I think I'll never get all achievements because I'm too lazy for that)
@@HenryBuck-mh8zc because you can reset your steam achievements? my guy, blue literally speedran all achievements. it is a video. it exists. it will take you literally 5 seconds of scrolling to find it.
@@HenryBuck-mh8zcnot sure if my previous reply went through but you can reset your steam instance of hollow knight. he has a speedrun of all achievements on literally this channel, it would take you 5 seconds of scrolling for you to find it. runners can sometimes reset their hollow knight data to start from a fresh file, it's a thing that happens. he just hasn't bothered to redo all of them again
Heavy blow isn't bad, you're just not using it properly and expecting it to do what you want rather than what it does. When i was first playing the game Heavy Blow allowed me to keep enemies at a distance, learn their moves better if they required timing to react to, and keeping them at bay if they were swarming me from multiple directions. It's not a dps charm but ome geared to give you a breathing room from opponents, and at that it does it's job decently well. Stop slandering it when you claim it's purpose is a detriment, it simply doesn't fit your playstyle, but it does so for a lot of beginer players who aren't as accostumed to things like spells or like to save their soul when exploring
thanks for the great video blue! I remember using defenders crest +glowing womb+ dreamshield +weaversong +grimmchild for radiance fight once, and it was kinda hilarious since dung bombs were all over the mighty goddess's face
Dream Shield actually did help me when doing a Randomizer once. Managed to get a bunch of quick dreamers and so went to fight THK and equipped it as one of my only charms I had gotten to that point (and it was randomized to be 1 cost instead of 3 so it wasn't using up a ton of notch space). It then proceeded to save me from several sets of THK's infection shot move that he shoots in an arc, one of those attacks having every single shot blocked by the dream shield. It is highly situational but I will say I'm a little fond of it after that experience.
icl i liked glowing womb because i got it early asf (my hk nerd friend told me i wouldnt be able to get it so i spent 20 mins getting through the spike tunnel without crystal heart) and it acc helped me when i was bad at control for some bosses
Tbf most of the better charms for damage are also super dull. Like a bigger that attacks faster is not nearly as fun as a mini spider army with a magic shield flying around you
Deep focus is in the BEST (unironically) build in the game (I first tried Nailsage Sly) This build makes ANY damage you take meaningless and it is completely brainless to use, here is the build that can kill every boss in the game: Deepfocus: Heals you for 2 every heal Quickfocus: Works beautifully with deepfocus and shape of unn Shape of unn: Makes you not be a sitting duck and shrinks your hitbox (free heal) Spore shroom: healing damage, not a lot but it adds up in the long game (you will be healing A LOT) Grub song: Gives you even more healing and allows complete brain dead plays This build makes it so that if you get hit, you punish the boss, you will NEVER DIE with this build.
alternatively: quickslash, quick focus, stalwart shell. 3 notches left over for anything you want. qs means you get good damage in on the boss (unlike spore shroom). qf + stalwart allow you to heal during s, meaning as long as you're only being hit for 1 damage, you can stall infinitely with good enough soul generation, while making that stall far more bearable with good combat charms.
I just want to say weaversongs actually pretty good in a spell build with grubsong You literally never need to use your nail at all to do consistent spells if you add twister
