Hollow Knight Silksong walkthrough: Part 33 (The Cradle)

How do you defeat the final bosses of Act 2 in Hollow Knight: Silksong? Just two boss fights now stand between you and the end credits of Hollow Knight: Silksong - but don't worry, there's a whole extra hidden Act 3 to experience afterwards, as long as you do some prep work between the two bosses.

In Part 33 of our Silksong walkthrough, I'll explain what awaits you at the top of Pharloom once you play the Threefold Melody, and how to defeat your final adversaries. Just as importantly, I'll explain what you need to do in order to unlock Act 3 before you face the final boss.

Want the walkthrough for a different area of the game? Check out our Hollow Knight: Silksong walkthrough hub!

The Cradle walkthrough steps:

1. Play the Threefold Melody in the Cogwork Dancers arena.
2. Defeat Lace.
3. Reach the Terminus Ventrica Station.
4. Speak with the Caretaker.
5. Complete the Silk And Soul Wish.
6. Speak with the Caretaker in the Cradle.
7. Defeat Grand Mother Silk.
8. After the end credits, load your save file.

1. Play the Threefold Melody in the Cogwork Dancers arena.

I highly suggest that before you play the Threefold Melody, you go to the Bench just underneath the Cogwork Dancers arena (through the doorway on your left), and rest there. This will give you the shortest possible runback if you die during the boss fight that awaits you at the top of the elevator.

Once you're rested and have equipped all your favourite boss-fighting tools, stand in the centre of the Dancers' arena and listen once more to the Threefold Melody request. When prompted, play your Needolin to unlock the elevator.

Breathe deep, step in, and ascend to The Cradle.

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2. Defeat Lace.

Awaiting you at the top is a beautiful landscape of white flowers, and asleep in the flowers is Lace. A brief cutscene plays the first time you ascend, where Hornet and Lace meet each other once more, and then the boss fight immediately begins.

Both sides of this arena are cut off by steam, which obviously damages you if you fall in it. Add to this Lace's fast charging attacks and the ways in which she cleaves the space between you during her attacks, and this boss fight becomes a lengthy test of positioning and situational awareness.

To start with, Lace is as you might remember her from the Deep Docks fight. Her combos are fast and distance-closing, and she can very quickly follow up one of her attacks with a deflect, punishing you for attempting to punish her.

Lace's new trick is that she has a specific aerial counterattack to your Pogo attacks, where she'll teleport into the air and attack diagonally downwards at you. It's surprising at first, but I found that this actually was quite easy to predict and avoid.

The Sharpdart and the Flintblade are both great here for large amounts of burst damage on Lace in a short space of time. Otherwise, it's just a matter of trying to keep pace with her myriad attacks. In her second phase, she'll start to restrict your space even further by leaving area-of-effect explosions behind her as she dashes through the air; and in phase 3, she'll employ Phantom's old trick of slashing wildly inside a predefined circle of light.

Of these two extra attacks, the first is most dangerous. It's harder to see coming, and it essentially grounds you and forces you to play it very confident, tucking yourself just under the bubbles of light to avoid Lace's downward charge, and staying near to her in order to punish her afterwards.

It's a tough fight, of course - as is to be expected. In fact, I find it by far the tougher of the two fights you'll face in The Cradle. But keep at it, learn her attack patterns inside and out, and focus on high amounts of burst damage while keeping yourself distant and safe. You'll beat her soon enough.

After the fight, speak with Lace for some final illuminating dialogue about Lace's nature, before she falls at last. After that, you can collect the final of the three Silk Hearts in Silksong to increase your Silk regeneration rate - after completing another strange dream-world parkour puzzle, of course.

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3. Reach the Terminus Ventrica Station.

After you awaken from the dream-world, head out the new exit to your right, into the shaft beyond. Climb up to the first exit on your right and pull the lever to enter the Terminus Ventrica Station! Yep, it was up here all along, and you don't even need to pay to unlock it. Rest at the Bench to the right.

While you're here, go to the left-most of the strange little pressure plates in front of the unused Ventricas, and do a few jump-and-downward-attacks on it until it breaks. Follow the path to the left (mind out, there's a steam vent immediately after the lever), and it'll take you to a Silkeater - not that you really need them for the final fight, because you'll always be able to collect your Silk ahead of the fight.

Head back to the shaft to the left of the Ventrica Station, and climb up to its top exit. Head through the next room, and climb up to the upper-left ledge, where you can pay 70 Rosaries for the map of The Cradle.

Aside from this, there's a room lower down filled with lore, and some breakable walls above on the right-hand side which lead back to the Ventrica shaft. Take your time exploring these, but don't ascend to the very top of The Cradle just yet.

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4. Speak with the Caretaker.

When you're ready, fast travel from the Terminus to the First Shrine, and speak with the Caretaker in Songclave. Some interesting and very important dialogue here will lead to the offer of a new quest: Silk And Soul. This quest must be completed in order to reach Act 3, so give it your entire focus for now.

We'll go over everything briefly below, but for full details on this alternate path, check out our detailed guide on how to unlock Act 3 in Silksong.

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5. Complete the Silk And Soul Wish.

There are several parts to the Silk And Soul Wish, but thankfully you've already done a number of them if you've followed this walkthrough. You need to collect three Souls - the Maiden's Soul, the Hermit's Soul, and the Seeker's Soul - and you also need to have acquired the Snare Setter from Weavenest Atla. Our walkthrough has already covered the obtaining of the Snare Setter, and the Seeker's Soul (defeating Groal The Great in Bilewater).

So, for the remaining two souls, you simply need to speak with the other members of the Caretaker's secretive family:

• The Bell Hermit in the Bellveins below Bellhart.
• The Chapel Maid at the top of Moss Grotto.

Speak with them both and they will both give you their souls so that you and the Caretaker can trap the monarch of Pharloom, rather than simply destroying her and having Hornet (unhappily) take her place.

Once you have the Souls you need, head back to Songclave and speak with the Caretaker once more. He'll go up to The Cradle to set the trap.

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6. Speak with the Caretaker in the Cradle.

Head back up to The Cradle, and ascend to near the top. This actually involves a bit of slightly tricky platforming, where you must use your Clawline to pass over the spike-covered platforms to continue ascending.

Near the top, you'll find the Caretaker. Speak with him one more time, and he'll tell you the trap is laid, and to activate it at the right moment by playing your Needolin. Don't worry, the moment is clear as crystal, you'll be prompted to either Bind or use your Needolin once the final boss is defeated to choose your ending (Needolin unlocks Act 3, Bind doesn't!).

Now head up past the Caretaker, to the very top platform. Stand in the centre, and a prompt will appear to challenge the pale monarch who has spun their web all this time at the top of Pharloom. Do so, and prepare for the final boss fight of Act 2.

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7. Defeat Grand Mother Silk.

The monarch's name is Grand Mother Silk, and she is quite a sight to behold. The Grand Mother attacks mainly with her long needles, slicing up the arena both vertically and horizontally (and later, both at once). She can also create a web of silk across the arena where you must stand in the spaces between them to avoid a nasty 3 Masks of damage, but this is easy enough to avoid most of the time.

The thing that might trip you up at first is her claw attacks, which go from one side of the arena to the other. It's not exactly clear what she's doing or what you must do to dodge her when she does this, but all you need to do is jump - the actual claw attack is right along the ground, so you can easily jump over it. It's immediately followed up by more needles dropping from the sky, so make sure you position yourself between them.

Grand Mother Silk has a number of phases, and quite a bit of health. In the second phase she starts to double up her arena-wide web attacks so there are two in quick succession, and she starts to let needles fly both horizontally and vertically at once. Still, in the first couple of phases, she's not actually that hard, and there are plenty of opportunities to repeatedly hit her between her attacks.

At the end of her second phase she'll disappear for a moment, and rocks will start to fall from the ceiling that you'll need to avoid. When the Grand Mother returns, she'll start to augment her regular attacks with more of these falling rocks, limiting the amount of space you have for dodging.

It's never very difficult to attack the Grand Mother - her hitbox is large, and she doesn't dodge much. So you need to keep up the pressure as much as possible in between her attacks. Again, Sharpdart and Flintslate are phenomenal for high burst damage on the Grand Mother, and she doesn't really have an answer to it.

Things become considerably more difficult when she starts to summon sections of spikes on the ground, limiting your space even further. You can Pogo up off these spikes, but it still requires a deft touch to avoid damage in these moments. Expect to take lots of chip damage while you're learning. I find equipping the Multibinder with the Injector Band works wonders at keeping you in the fight for longer.

There's not much more to say, but keep at it, and you'll beat her - probably without it even coming close to your most hardest boss fight in the game.

Once the Grand Mother goes down and Hornet is ramming her needle into the creature's face, now is the time. You will have two prompts at the bottom of the screen - one to Bind, and the other to play your Needolin.

Play the Needolin. This prompts what's known as the "Snared Silk" ending to Hollow Knight: Silksong. This is the ending which allows you to reload your save after the end credits, and begin Act 3 of the game.

In this moment, the Caretaker's trap is sprung, and the Grand Mother is pulled downwards by strands of black void. In her last moments she grabs Hornet, and it looks like both will be pulled down into the abyss together - but at the last second, Lace reappears, and severs the Grand Mother's hand that was clutching Hornet, taking her place.

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8. After the end credits, load your save file.

After a cutscene where it appears the world is falling apart, the end credits to Silksong will play. Congratulations! You've come very far, and done very much - but the game isn't over yet.

Once you're past the end credits, a game completion screen will show, and you'll unlock Steel Soul mode for your next playthrough. After that, you'll be brought back to the main menu.

From here, click Start Game, and you'll see that your save file has an odd look about it, all covered in black strands of void. Select that save file several times, and the strands will break, allowing you to head back into Pharloom and begin Act 3 of Silksong.

That's all for Act 2, and well done for beating Lace and snaring Grand Mother Silk. Unfortunately, the Caretaker's trap appears to have unleashed perhaps an even greater evil upon Pharloom, and it's up to us to get to the bottom of it. Join us in Part 34 of our Silksong walkthrough for guidance on where to go next.