The many Crests of Hollow Knight: Silksong adjust the attacks and tools available to protagonist Hornet, and a new video from a silk scientist has confirmed what the true believers already knew: Wanderer is king.
That's a bit dramatic, admittedly. YouTuber Visic peeled back the obfuscation of Team Cherry's latest Metroidvania gem to determine exactly how much damage Hornet deals with different attacks. This testing, which reveals true damage numbers and HP bars, focuses on her needle attacks, charged attacks, and running attacks, so added damage from red tools – with some Crests notably allowing more red options for layered DPS – isn't factored in.
For my money, the most important findings cover normal attacks, as that's what you'll normally be using to dispatch enemies. Here's the shortlist for damage per hit and overall DPS accounting for attack speed, according to Visic's testing:
- Hunter: 21/26/29 per hit for 50.9/63.1/69.4 DPS (if you never get hit and lose buff stacks)
- Reaper: 21 per hit for 41.6 DPS
- Wanderer: 21 per hit for 68.3 DPS (assuming you never crit for 3x damage)
- Beast: 21 / 26 per hit for 52.4/78.9 DPS (power and speed up after binding)
- Witch: 21 per hit for 45.7 DPS
- Architect: 23 per hit for 50.2 DPS
- Shaman: 21 per hit for 41.5 DPS
This lines up with my own anecdotal experience testing all seven styles. Normalized DPS testing puts Wanderer in "a league of its own," Visic finds, which makes sense. You're giving up attack range and a second red tool to focus on faster needle swings.
However, DPS testing isn't perfect because it assumes unrealistic attack uptime during battles where you naturally have to bob and weave a lot. Additionally, some styles do eek out wins elsewhere.
If you factor in certain tools, notably the Flintslate fire weapon buff, the Architect style's already potent charge attack gets an outsized boost thanks to its repeated hits. Wanderer also gets a nice bump with its five-hit charged attack, but Architect – and for similar reasons, Witch – come out far ahead with Flintslate active. That's pure charge attack DPS, and you have to build around that play style with certain tools, but it's pretty impressive, especially for a style that revolves around ranged attacks.
Wanderer is still probably the biggest winner because this testing shows that it can out-DPS even a hitless run with the upgraded Hunter crest if you land so much as a single critical hit, which is possible whenever you have a heal's worth of silk generated.
The fast attack speed from Wanderer is already valuable defensively because it lets you counterattack certain incoming moves more easily and generate more silk. Shockingly, it makes for high DPS too.
Another standout: the Witch sprinting attack deals a lot of damage and can generate two points of silk, which is a big deal.
But while Wanderer is perfect for the melee-minded like me, if you want to make the most of red tools – and there's a reason people are hyping up poison cogflies, the power drill, and Flintslate so much – there is room for several strong play styles.
On the whole, this test reflects pretty good balancing from developer Team Cherry. Wanderer is very good at the one thing it's designed around, and that one thing is what much of the whole game is built around, but all seven Crests can shine. The fact that every Crest discussion I see inevitably features seven camps of people all convinced that their Crest is the best one is a pretty good sign, too. Obviously, six of them are wrong: Wanderer supremacy.
I finally finished Silksong 100%, so now I'm positive: I like Hollow Knight more.
