Silksong’s Secret Nerfs Are Proof Team Cherry Has a Heart

After seven years of waiting, I finally sat down with Hollow Knight: Silksong in 2026, and my hands were sweating before the title screen even finished glowing. Seven years! I have changed jobs twice, my houseplants have died and been replaced, and yet Hornet still fights like she just learned I insulted her mother. I love it. I also kind of hate it, because Silksong launched with a difficulty curve shaped like a brick wall covered in saw blades.

My first ten hours were less a heroic adventure and more a series of polite funerals for my own confidence. Compared to the original Hollow Knight, Silksong shipped with way more enemies and environmental hazards that deal double damage. That means one stupid mistake stops being a lesson and starts being a full health bar disappearing into the ether. Unsurprisingly, unhappy players flooded the internet. The launch complaints got so loud that Silksong racked up more than double the negative reviews Hollow Knight ever received. That is an achievement, just not the kind Team Cherry wanted.

When Team Cherry announced its first patch, I read the notes like they were a love letter. The official list promised a slight difficulty reduction in early game bosses Moorwing and Sister Splinter, plus a reduction in damage from Sandcarvers. They also mentioned various additional fixes and tweaks, which I assumed was polite developer language for changing the font on a menu.

Turns out, the patch notes were hiding secrets. A sharp-eyed player on Reddit named TomNook5085 noticed that some hazards got quieter nerfs than the official notes suggested. After reading that, my buddy Luke and I did our own follow-up testing, because clearly neither of us had anything better to do than get smacked by machinery in the name of science.

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