Hollow Knight: Silksong New Patch Update Comes with More Hidden Changes

Team Cherry's latest balance patches for Hollow Knight: Silksong effectively changed the game in ways that didn't always make it into the big-money patch notes—and players got right into the files and ran the numbers. What looks on the surface like a modest balance tuning patch has, in fact, remapped what silk abilities, crests, and tools are now worth spending money on. 

Community deep-dive testing uncovers Thread Storm—once the raw-DPS monarch of the sequel—has suffered the hardest blow of all, with some tools and less popular skills picking up speed. The changes are small on paper but significant in-game.

Official patch vs. community discovery

Team Cherry's patch pages list a mix of bug fixes, quality-of-life adjustments, and the occasional gameplay balance change, but fail to enumerate all of the internal damage-scaling tweaks that affect players' damage-per-second calculation. 

Community posts and tests following the patches revealed several "under the radar" changes: damage-scaling fixes to certain blue tools (so that they now effectively benefit from bonuses to crafting kits), minor buffs to Sharp Dart and Crossstitch, and a rework to the method by which Rune Rage scales with other silk skills. Those discoveries filled in gaps left by the official announcements and created new theory-crafting.

Shaman Crest streamlined

The easiest change to identify immediately is Shaman Crest's stat reduction. According to tests posted by players, the crest bonus to silk skills was reduced from a flat +50% to +40%. That is a 10-point drop, but since many silk builds had multiple multipliers compounded (crest + tool + filament), the net reduction in output is something to be concerned with for damage-focused builds—particularly ones that are centered around Thread Storm.

Thread Storm: the crown falters

Thread Storm—the ring whip-like silk talent that players acquire early on in Greymoor and have wielded to deadly success ever since—was already cemented as an outsize damage factor in Silksong. Community breakdowns and several popular content creators reported that Thread Storm consistently dominated its nearest competitor by a large margin before the patch.

After the subsequent round of tweaks, testing reveals two strikes against Thread Storm's mastery. First, its base (short) cast has been reported to have a −16% damage reduction in some test cases compared to the pre-patch short form. 

Second—and more importantly—the extension mechanism that allowed players to "spam" the ability and extend its duration has been underappreciated: where extended casts previously added about +50% damage relative to the short version, testing now shows the extended section adds only a +13% difference to the short cast. 

When you combine the base nerf with the lower extension, community measurements put Thread Storm's total effective damage down by about 38% from pre-patch performances. Because Thread Storm had been so overpowered at all levels of needle, players have termed this a blunt but sweeping nerf.

Rune Rage normalization—and letdown

Rune Rage was another skill changed behind the scenes. It previously benefited from an unstable stacking synergy with two pouch damage boosts; the synergy caused its scaling to be unstable compared to other silk skills.

The latest patches normalize Rune Rage's bonuses from Volt Filament and Shaman Crest, which, in practice, translates to the raw values of the skill being reduced in some builds. They had anticipated a buff or repair that made it more effective, but the update did something different and put Rune Rage in a more "correct," if lower, damage category.

Tools, crests, and some winners

Not all the updates were nerfs. Several blue pieces were toned so that they actually do gain from crafting-kit damage bonuses — the biggest winner noted by players is the Sawtooth Circlet, whose already-super combo potential was further increased after those scaling bugs were patched. 

Cancel combos with animation (pogo → double-jump cancel → dash down cancel → pogo). High-skill now can get the circlet to ridiculous levels of DPS in the hands of a skilled player, turning the circlet into a very effective—but execution-dependent—weapon on silk builds.

Wisp Fire Lantern received level-based improvements, too, and Crossstitch and Sharp Dart were upped to be at or close to the level of their counterparts.

Crest tuning was uneven: Wanderer and Wish Crest charge attacks were nerfed, whereas Shaman and Beast crests enhanced their fury state.

Hunter Crest's focus mechanic was also slightly buffed (approximately +4% at Focus level 1 and +10% at level 2), making its Focus 2 DPS closer to that of Beast Crest in fury—a quality of life change for players who play cautiously to build focus.

What will it mean for players

The patch pulls Silksong's damage curves inward: the previously humongous DPS gaps between Thread Storm and the rest of the silk skills are filled, and some tools and skills became more viable possibilities for optimized play.

For speedrunners, min-maxers, and build theorists, it means re-running simulations, re-writing guides, and testing tools like the Sawtooth Circlet that now scale upward on the tier lists—so long as you can consistently enter the required inputs.

Team Cherry's formal notes touched on many of the patches and some surface-level changes, but community detective work finds there's often more under the hood than a patch title suggests.

Expect continued small-but-significant twiddling over the next few weeks as players find new synergies and, naturally, catch sight of the next set of changes.