One of Hollow Knight: Silksong’s late-game boss fights doesn’t have to be a fight at all. It turns out, you can simply smack them so hard they turn off and let you defeat them.
Using a glitch found by a member of the Silksong speedrunning Discord, YouTuber Kilroy Was Here figured out a reliable method for trivializing one of the toughest fights in the second act. It requires nothing but some precise movement and zero shame for abusing what is a pretty ridiculous glitch.
Spoilers below for the second-to-last boss of act 2.
Kilroy calls the trick an “upslash AI break,” and all it involves is swiping upward with Hornet’s needle over and over until you win. For reasons that only Team Cherry would know, this is how you can easily defeat Lace in the second encounter with her near the end of the game. She will simply stand there and take each hit until it’s basically over.
You won’t need any particular crest or tool equipped. Kilroy says the only fiddly part is nudging yourself up just close enough to Lace that you don’t take damage. Lace won’t move away once you’ve locked her in place and then all you need to do is quickly line yourself back up when she eventually gets knocked backward near the edge of the platform. You can continue to smack her there until she falls off and takes a huge chunk of damage, leaving her only a few hits away from defeat when she reappears on the other side.
“All you really need to do to not take damage at that point is just, I guess, lock in,” Kilroy says.
Normally, Lace is all over the place during this fight. She hits for two damage and dashes around in a way that can make it feel like you’re dueling a different version of Hornet. By that point in the game I had picked up enough upgrades to finish the fight after a few tries, but apparently my method was overkill.
Nobody is really sure what’s going wrong here and why attacking upward freezes Lace in place. Kilroy tested it on a similar act 3 boss and couldn’t get it to work. Most of Silksong’s bosses teleport around too much. I can think of two or three other bosses I’d love to use this on, but sadly it’s tied to this one only.
It’s extremely efficient if you’re going for speed, though. Kilroy takes Lace out with it in around 35 seconds, which was, at least at the time of the video going up, faster than the current speedrun world record holder’s fight. If the trick ends up being fair game for speedruns, poor Lace is destined to be humiliated until Team Cherry frees her with a patch.
