Every Enemy Is a Question

Rats are fodder. They teach hits, and anything kills them. The elite rat leaps, and from the moment the Bladebow arrived it learned to dodge back when the Hunter winds up a whirl, so you chain it or shoot it as it lands. A nest spawner pours rats until it is burned: the Flame arrow's first real job. The bramble wraith retreats and pulls you into thorns, answered by a Blink through or by burning the brambles first.

The Hollow is where the bow meets its first real refusal. The Hollow Warrior is a gaunt ranger in tattered leather with a cracked round shield and a spear. When an arrow comes at his front, the shield comes up. Just over half of front arrows stick in the wood and ride on the shield; the rest glance off spent. Front cuts clang for no damage. Three turned blows or four arrows break the guard for under a second. The roll-stab goes under the shield, the skyfall stab goes over it, and anything from behind lands for 1.3 times. He is the first enemy that answers the bow, and he was built specifically so the Bladebow could be tuned against something rather than nerfed in a vacuum.

One shape per stage, never the same fight twice. The Rat King is the brawler: stalk, telegraph, lunge, and summon the nest. Dodge the lunge, kill the adds, punish the recovery.

The Oathkeeper, the first Hollow boss to ship, is the wall. Six hundred and twenty health behind a front shield that cuts melee to 15 percent and blocks chest-height arrows. Four blocked hits break the guard for 1.6 seconds. He ground-slams with a jumpable shock, sweeps a foreshortened mace, leaps for real and lands heavy, and everything gets faster below 45 percent health. Fire and venom still work on him, and exposed damage is multiplied. Beat him once and the far gate opens for good; he does not respawn.

The Hollow Knight is the duelist still to come: parry stance, spear thrusts, a shield bash, two warriors as adds. The Ash Stag is the charger, room-length runs and antlers that pin you to the wall, its fire the Phoenix's own. The Gatekeeper is the caster: teleports, sealed doors, and a mirror phase that turns your own magic on you, answered with every cloak once. Act 2's wardens are the gauntlet, two Keepers at once or a Keeper plus a room hazard, with no single answer.

Cinder hounds hunt as a fast pack, hit and run, and scatter from a whirl wind-up. Chain them in a doorway or skyfall the pack as it regroups. Ember wisps float and only arrows touch them; the Bladebow is useless here by design. The ash thrall is a burned ranger that explodes on death, so kill it at range or dash away. The sanctum sentinel is armoured against low and spinning hits and weak to the skyfall from above. And the mirror hunter, a shade with your own kit, shoots, dashes and glides exactly as you do. It cannot mist.

Rishi's rule from the fifth of September: the forest should have fauna, two kinds, both cheap. Prey never fights and rewards the hunter for hunting. Rabbits bolt when you get close and leave back the arrow you spent, plus one. Deer graze in clearings, lift their heads when you run, and a clean arrow while they graze is a big heal and a scrap of hide for a charm shrine. Crows and a heron scatter when you jump, a tell that the forest saw you. Glow-moths drift to the lantern and briefly light a dungeon if you catch one.

Beasts are real enemies in animal shapes so the ladder is not all rats and men. Wolves circle in packs of three and lunge in turns, and the pack splits from a whirl wind-up. Bears are slow and huge and stand up to roar, which is the punish window. Bats hang from every dungeon ceiling and drop as a cloud when you walk under them or fire; the whirl was made for this. Boars charge in a straight line into brambles and stun themselves. Spiders drop on a thread. Owls dive at you on a ledge and knock you off. The troll folder is being saved for an Act 2 warden.