Why Hollow Knight Speedrunners play on Patch 1221

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Every Hollow Knight Speedrunner that runs main categories has gotten questions like this 100s of times, so I figured someone should finally make a full video breaking down why the fastest way to play HK is on the last patch of the 2nd DLC. Hope you enjoy

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27 thoughts on “Why Hollow Knight Speedrunners play on Patch 1221”

  4. Awesome video, I really love this documentary-like narration style. Even though I knew most of what's been said in here already this was still informative and pretty fun to watch, keep it up man! 🙂

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  10. Great video, and sad that my potato PC can't take advantage of any of the cool 1221 tech.

    Not sure if they changed after 1221 in particular, but some other (negative) changes from a speedrunning perspective on current patch would be:
    – Uumuu taking more knockback (forcing the fight to take an additional cycle in Any% by our current knowledge)
    – Spiny Husk projectiles in Queen's Gardens actually damage the Knight as intended and present an additional hazard (looking at you, Flower Quest!)
    – In-game cutscenes cannot be skipped (Dreamer cutscenes add up to 3×12 = 36 seconds alone)

    There's probably others as well, but this does a great job of covering the major points (and deepening my own personal sadness as a 1432 runner)

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  20. Great video vys, really clean and informative stuff 🙂

    Regarding differences between patches – the list is very long, there are a lot of minor changes that can affect runs in a bigger way than one would think:

    – Enemy spawn locations being more consistent, which, actually, can both make some rooms slower than on 1221 but also way easier and in some cases faster, there is a lot of that to be seen in city, where, the first shield husk you encounter is always blocking the way, but the rest of the split is actually very consistent

    – Similar to the crystal hunters, the miners also throw faster, as far as I can see, which makes pogaxe really inconsistent to go for, not to mention THK is a lot faster in every aspect, making that very inconsistent too

    – There's also been recent discovery by one of the runners that says you have less coyote time on current patch, which makes tricks like the greenpath fireball skips and the king's station jump more difficult

    – WK fight is quite different: they don't roll at you from offscreen anymore, they don't bug out as much, and having a fireball pass through them as they spawn causes quite big freezeframes, which actually loses time, this makes me think the 1221 fight is faster on average

    – Tiny timesave current patch does get over 1221 is that the devout just before Herrah disappears once you get the dreamer, which lets you go over to the left instead of taking the small detour in categories like any%

    – And a bunch of minor things, like a lot of objects not being pogoable anymore (signs in city for example, tiny timeloss there), some bosses taking one more hit to stagger, some rooms having loadzones added to them, dreamnail buffering being removed, some rooms having enemies removed from them (vk room is a good example), planks behaving slightly differently, falling spikes behaving differently on nailhit, moss knight hitboxes being shifted forward, and many more things, some of which were mentioned in other comments

    As someone with awful performance in 1221 but still having a decent time there, I can say Current Patch is a lot friendlier on bad PC's and feels great to play, but it has quite big timelosses compared to 1221, even outside of just not being able to perform some of the faster tricks. If you want to run Current Patch, treat it as a different run, otherwise comparing to the 1221 version will bring nothing but disappointment :).

    Also, streamer, why are you playing on bad performance patch? <3

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