Silksong modders beat Team Cherry at sadism, lay the groundwork for the quest to beat the whole game as naked Hornet: "Her kick damage is like, 1/5 of a default nail"

As soon as I learned that Hollow Knight: Silksong has a short hidden section that replaces Hornet's attacks with barebones fisticuffs, I knew players would one day build a mod that lets you play the whole game with this deliberately underpowered moveset. Nobody has done it yet, but the foundations have been laid with terrifying speed: naked, or more accurately Cloakless Crest, challenge runs are now seemingly doable.

Silksong player and Twitter user Kele shared a video proving that this grueling challenge is looking pretty plausible. They managed to beat one early but difficult boss, Widow, as naked Hornet using a mod that unlocks seamless Crest switching.

The mod used appears to be Crest Master, uploaded to Nexus Mods by XPsyDeus. "A Hollow Knight Silksong mod that adds instant crest switching and 8 extra tool slots per crest, for quick playstyle swap," the mod description reads. "Support for up to red tools and cycling through crests in a custom order you define."

The list of supported Crests includes what players have dubbed – seemingly building on datamined labels – the Cloakless Crest, which is normally only used during the kidnapping version of The Slab. Once you reclaim your gear and escape, you can get back to playing the game normally. Unless, of course, you want to be Cloakless.

"This is so so stupid but extremely fun at the same time," Kele said of the threadbare Hornet controls.

"You can't use anything nail (including things like needolin or harpoon) or cloak-related, it's effectively a crest with no slots," they clarified in a Twitter reply. "Her kick damage is like, 1/5 of a default nail."

Fighting anything as Cloakless Hornet, even just the wimpy enemies in The Slab, is a grind, so I don't want to imagine fighting bosses. Without her gear, she's left with limited range and low damage output, not to mention no tools.

The less damage you do, the longer fights last and the more opportunities you have to mess up. It's similar to underpowered runs of FromSoftware games like Elden Ring: you have to play near-perfectly long enough to outlast health bars that seem to stretch into the horizon.

The major hurdle for a would-be Cloakless clear would be platforming sections. Without her gear, Hornet can't harpoon her way through gauntlets of spikes and flying hazards. So, a quick-swap mod like this would probably be necessary, as you'd need to semi-regularly change back to a normal crest in order to clear progress-blocking areas.

But in theory, it should be possible to beat most or all of Silksong's bosses with the Cloakless Crest, up to and including the true final boss. Now it's just a question of whether we'll see a Silksong player who's patient, determined, and skilled enough to do it. Separately, I also look forward to the videos with titles like, "Silksong, but my Crest randomly changes every 10 seconds."

Silksong player pops the hood, checks the gauges, and determines the best silk skill is one you get very early on: "This should surprise absolutely nobody."