Hollow Knight: Silksong Patch Notes, One Year Later: What Actually Changed by Hour 25
Hollow Knight: Silksong turned one year old on September 4, and this month it got something new players didn't have at launch: a $39 physical edition, on shelves October 16. Between those two dates, Team Cherry shipped five numbered patches and one console-only hotfix. None of that is marketing copy — it's version numbers and changelog text the studio posted itself. The question worth answering isn't whether Silksong is good; critics and players settled that months ago. It's narrower and more useful: if you install it today, what is actually different from the game that shipped in September 2025, and does the new physical box get you anything the $19.99 digital version doesn't?
'It kept patching all year' — four of the five landed in nine weeks
Here is the patch history as Team Cherry posted it, condensed to the changes that affect how the game plays rather than the dozens of individual out-of-bounds and soft-lock fixes:
| Patch | Shipped | What it actually changed |
|---|---|---|
| Patch 1 (1.0.28497) | Sept 9–12, 2025 | Slightly reduced difficulty on the early bosses Moorwing and Sister Splinter; cut Sandcarver contact damage; enlarged the pea pod hit-collider; raised rosary rewards from relics, psalm cylinders, and courier deliveries; lowered some mid-game Bellway/Bench prices |
| Patch 2 (1.0.28650) | Sept 16–22, 2025 | Mostly stability: fixed Shrine Guardian Seth and Lugoli getting stuck out of bounds, several death-sequence and soft-lock bugs; added a Dithering video option |
| Patch 3 (1.0.28891) | Oct 3–7, 2025 | Added official DualSense Edge support and better Mac controller handling; raised Sharp Dart and Cross Stitch damage slightly; lowered Thread Storm damage at high needle levels; changed the Fine Pins wish item drop rate from 50% to 100% (with a higher required quantity); fixed Crafting Kits not boosting blue-tool damage |
| Patch 4 (1.0.29315) | Oct–Nov 2025 | Switched the game to Unity's newer Input System for broader controller/rumble support; smoothed Thread Storm's damage taper over multiple hits; fixed Rune Rage's damage scaling; shortened an unintentionally long Multibinder bind time; added a community-requested tweak to Multibinder's maggot-clearing behavior |
| 1.0.29354 (console) | Jan 2, 2026 | Fixed a critical, progression-blocking crash on console |
| Patch 5 (1.0.30000) | ~March 2026 | Reduced Last Judge's death-explosion damage from 3 to 2; made the Magma Bell block all fire-type explosions, not just some; added a new bench near Pale Lake, ahead of the Flea Caravan's arrival |
On March 16, 2026, Team Cherry said directly that Patch 5 was intended as the last significant update before the studio's next major release, the Sea of Sorrow expansion. That statement is the reason this looks like a finished, settled patch cycle rather than a game still being actively rebalanced — and it's why someone starting now, seven months after Patch 5, is getting a materially different early and mid-game than someone who played in September 2025.
'It sold on price' — five million players arrived in three days
A few figures are worth anchoring on before anything else, because they come from the developer and its own marketing partner rather than estimates. Silksong released September 4, 2025, for PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series, Switch, Switch 2, and Game Pass, priced at $19.99. In the first three days, more than five million people played it — roughly three million through Steam and one million through Game Pass, according to figures Team Cherry gave to Bloomberg. By December 2025, the studio said the game had sold more than seven million copies. Those are the two hard numbers behind everything that follows: a very large, very fast install base, which is exactly the kind of player count that makes post-launch balance patches matter more than they would for a niche release.
'The patches made it easier' — one boss nerf and one economy fix
The changes that land earliest are the Patch 1 adjustments, because they touch the first bosses and the first hour of exploration. Moorwing and Sister Splinter — both early roadblocks — got a slight difficulty reduction within a week of launch, which is a direct response to how punishing the unpatched versions were for players who hadn't yet learned Hornet's parry timing. The enlarged pea pod collider and reduced Sandcarver damage matter less dramatically, but both remove a specific category of "that hit didn't feel fair" death that generated real complaint volume in the first days after release. None of this makes the early game easy; Silksong's difficulty reputation is intact. It removes a layer of friction that had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with numbers Team Cherry itself judged too harsh within a week of shipping.
The more interesting changes are economic, and one is worth actually calculating rather than just describing. The Fine Pins wish — a mid-game side quest — originally required collecting 10 pins with each kill having a 50% chance to drop one. Patch 3 changed that to a guaranteed 100% drop rate, but raised the requirement to 12 pins. On the surface that reads like a wash: more required, easier to get. Worked out as expected value, it isn't. Under the original rule, getting 10 drops at a 50% rate takes an expected 10 ÷ 0.5 = 20 kills. Under the patched rule, getting 12 drops at a 100% rate takes exactly 12 kills. That's a real reduction of eight expected kills — 40% fewer enemies you have to fight to close out that quest — even though the headline number (how many pins you need) went up. It's the kind of change that reads as neutral in a patch note and isn't.
The Silk Skill damage tuning across Patches 3 and 4 — Sharp Dart and Cross Stitch up, Thread Storm down at high needle levels then smoothed, Rune Rage's scaling fixed outright — reshapes which tools feel worth equipping in the mid-game, where players start specializing in a Crest loadout. A player who looked at Thread Storm's damage numbers at launch and built around it would find that build weaker today than it was in September 2025; a player starting now won't notice anything, because they're only ever seeing the current numbers.
'A second run plays the same' — the Steel Soul fixes say otherwise
The bulk of Patches 2 and 4's content is bug fixes that mattered most to players doing a second playthrough, speedrunning, or playing Steel Soul mode (Silksong's permadeath mode), where a single out-of-bounds glitch or soft-lock ends the run entirely. Patch 2 fixed a Liquid Lacquer courier delivery that was unreachable in Steel Soul specifically. Patch 5's Last Judge fix — cutting that boss's death-explosion damage from 3 to 2, and making sure the Magma Bell charm actually blocks it — is a small number, but it's exactly the kind of late-game "I died to the thing I already beat" moment that turns people off replaying a boss rush. None of these are things a first-time player notices. They're why a second or third playthrough today is measurably less frustrating than one attempted in the first month.
'Sea of Sorrow is basically here' — ten months on, still no date
Team Cherry announced Sea of Sorrow on December 15, 2025 — a free expansion described as a "nautically themed" voyage adding new areas, bosses, and tools. As of this writing it still carries no release date beyond "2026," and the March 16 statement above confirms it, in the studio's own words: Patch 5 was the last significant update "before Silksong's upcoming major expansion." That's the core trade-off facing anyone deciding whether to buy now or wait. The patches already covered above are done and won't change; the expansion is not here and has no confirmed date, which means neither "I'll wait for the DLC" nor "it's basically done, buy now" is fully correct. The honest version: the base game is in its most polished state since launch, and the next genuinely new content has no date attached to it.
Everything above is true of the game as it stands in October 2026, patched and stable, with no numbered update expected until Sea of Sorrow ships. The one thing worth tracking going forward isn't another balance pass — Team Cherry has said there won't be one before the expansion — it's whether Sea of Sorrow gets an actual date. Once it does, the physical edition's missing-expansion gap becomes a known, bounded wait instead of an open one, and that's the point at which "wait or buy now" stops being a guess.
'The disc is the better buy' — 73 cents an hour says no
The physical edition, published by Fangamer and sold on PS5 and Xbox Series for $39 ($45 on Switch 2), ships with the game, a reversible cover sheet, a 32-page manual, and a mini poster. It does not include Sea of Sorrow on the disc or cartridge; Fangamer's own announcement is explicit that the expansion will only be a free download once it exists, for physical and digital owners alike.
Nintendo Life's own completion-time testing — not an official figure, but the most detailed public estimate available — puts a normal-ending playthrough at roughly 25–30 hours for an average player, 35+ for someone exploring more fully. Taking the midpoint, 27.5 hours, as a working assumption: the $19.99 digital version costs about $0.73 per hour of base-game content. The $39 physical PS5/Xbox edition, for the identical game, costs about $1.42 per hour — nearly double — and the $45 Switch 2 edition works out to roughly $1.64 per hour. That gap isn't paying for more game; it's paying for a manual, a poster, and a disc you can resell, which is a legitimate thing to want but a different purchase than "more Silksong." Whichever version someone owns, Sea of Sorrow will eventually add free hours to both, which only widens the digital version's cost-per-hour advantage further once it ships.
The one place physical has a real, non-sentimental edge: a disc or cartridge doesn't depend on a storefront staying online or a download license surviving an account issue, and it holds resale value a Steam key doesn't. That's worth something to a specific kind of buyer. It is not worth something to a buyer whose actual question is "how do I get the most Silksong for my money," and conflating the two is the mistake the physical edition's announcement makes easy to make.
Tip: If the hour-25 boss fights above are where your runs keep ending, input and audio gear matter more than they did at launch — a responsive gaming controller for the hour-25 bosses, and a gaming headset that makes the telegraph cues audible on a second run. (These are Amazon Associate links — we may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.)
Correction October 28, 2026: the affiliate tip box previously referred to "tightened parry windows" as a patch change; no patch in the table above alters parry timing, so that line now points to the hour-25 boss fights the patch notes do cover (source: Silksong Updates, Hollow Knight Wiki, as listed below).
Sources
- Hollow Knight: Silksong — Wikipedia (release date, sales and player figures sourced to Team Cherry/Bloomberg)
- Silksong Updates — Hollow Knight Wiki (patch-by-patch changelog compiled from Team Cherry's own patch notes)
- Sea of Sorrow — Hollow Knight Wiki (expansion announcement date and Team Cherry's March 16, 2026 statement)
- Gematsu: Silksong physical edition announced (price, release date, and box contents from Fangamer's announcement)
- Nintendo Life: How Long Does It Take To Beat? (completion-time estimate used for the cost-per-hour calculation)
Related reading
- Into the Breach on a Busy Week: Short Sessions, New Options, and the Repetition Test
- Control Resonant Review: What Opens Up After 15 Hours, and What Starts Repeating After 30
- Slay the Spire: Spend Your First Ten Hours Learning Decisions, Not Chasing a Perfect Deck
General information only. Playtime estimates, prices, and patch details are current as of October 19, 2026 and sourced as linked above; prices are in USD and may vary by region or retailer.
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