Hollow Knight is a Metroidvania game where gamers play as a nameless bug who is often referred to as the Knight. Entering the land of Hallownest, the player is encouraged to explore and fight their way through the old and dying lands of a once-mighty insect kingdom.
The game has features like spells, nail arts, and a relatively simple combat system. But one of the more prominent features is the charm system. Capable of giving the player character a variety of effects, the use of charms allows players to enhance or customize their combat styles depending on which charms they choose to equip.
Where to Find Charms in Hollow Knight
Charms can be found in a variety of ways. Several of them can be bought from merchants scattered throughout the kingdom. Others are located throughout Hallownest itself and can only be found through exploration or by completing various platforming challenges. Which is to say nothing of the charms that are dropped by certain bosses throughout the game.
Bottom line: the more the player plays, the more charms they can come across. Although it should be noted that some of these charms are stored in some exceptionally well-hidden spots. Within the game lies breakable walls, floors that can only be broken with the desolate dive ability and even darkened rooms that are not visible on the map. This means the player should keep an eye out when traveling through Hallownest’s various regions so they don’t miss out on any useful charms.
How to Use Charms in Hollow Knight
Equipping charms, as described by the game, is easy. Just go to the nearest bench, open the inventory, and select the charm. But players will quickly realize that they can’t wear all the charms they want. The Knight starts with 3 notch slots, and each charm takes up a certain amount of these notches. As with charms, players can collect more notches through purchase, defeating certain enemies and exploration.
But regardless of the number of notches the Knight has, this notch system forces players to pick and choose which charms to equip at any one time. This encourages players to change out their charm loadout through the game and to tailor their charm combinations depending on the situation.
Although it should be mentioned that the player can engage in “overcharming” if they really need the effect of that one additional charm. As the name implies, overcharming occurs when the player forcefully equips an additional charm that goes beyond the player’s notch limit. This triggers the overcharm effect, which doubles the amount of damage the Knight receives from all sources. It’s a risky move, but the player does have the option to resort to it. Now normally the game returns a charm to the player’s inventory if there are not enough notch slots, but if it constantly selected it will trigger the overcharmed effect.
What Charms Do in Hollow Knight
As mentioned in the intro, charms have a variety of effects. They can lengthen the player’s nail, surround the Knight with a shield, increase their running speed, etc. Each effect is described in the charm’s description. But what the game doesn’t tell the player is how several of these charms can be used together to create impressive charm combos. Some of them are relatively expected.
Here’s a couple of examples:
- Sprintmaster (increases the player’s base movement speed) + Dashmaster (decreases the cooldown for dashing and enables downward dashing) = Increases movement speed across the board
- Longnail (increases the range of the player’s nail attacks) + Mark of Pride (also increases the range of the player’s nail attacks) = Stack on top of eachother to give the player’s nail a massive range
But some of these charm combos result in more drastic effects or combine in ways that are not immediately obvious from their descriptions.
Examples include:
- Glowing Womb (spawns hatchlings) + Defender’s Crest (surrounds the players with a harmful stink) = Hatchlings that now explode into gas that deals aoe damage
- Dreamshield (gives the player a rotating shield) + Dreamwielder (decreases the cast time for the dream nail and increases soul collection) = Increases the size of the dreamshield considerably
With these combinations resulting in a variety of effects, it is recommended that players take the time to experiment with their charm loadout. See what works with their preferred playstyle, what only works for certain situations, or just try out different charm combos to see what happens.
Hollow Knight is available on PCs, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.