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This fight is easily missable if you cure the curse.
The fight, while not required for game completion, is missable since you can’t get the curse back once you cure it. You can still rewind your save in the main menu if you’d like to attempt this without starting a whole new playthrough.
Difficulty
The fight that IMO deserves to be the “final boss” of Act 2. Unsure if the difficulty changes if you do this with the Act 3 prerequisites done, but the debuff to Hornet makes the boss significantly harder. Enjoyed learning the fight! Personally took me ~10 tries over ~40 minutes.
The runback is a little bit harder than the runback in the vanilla fight. You’re locked into the cursed Witch’s Crest, so the downward attack pulls you in instead of propelling you upward—which means pogo-ing off the spikes is not a choice. Still manageable.
Loadout
Traversal skills
- Clawline. Helps close some gaps and avoid hazards. I think I’ve had instances where I completely dodge some hazardous attacks with the Clawline, and could also possibly help with the area denial web attacks.
Upgrades
- Needle upgrade 3. Deal more damage / makes the fight shorter. Already did the first two Pale Oil upgrades (see Courier’s Rasher run if you’re having trouble).
Locked crest, no binds, no tools, no silk skills.
The only help you’ll get from this fight is the needle upgrade. It may be easier if you get another needle upgrade (I won’t spoil where you can get this), but aside from that you’re on your own.
Tips
- GM Silk’s moveset is rather simple. She only personally does the swiping attack and deals no contact damage herself. The swiping attack is parryable and can help u reposition yourself for the upcoming downwards scissor array.
- Play this fight more conservatively. Getting a hit in at the cost of a mask or two is definitely not worth it as you lose the ability to regain masks at all in this fight.
- However, learn where you can sneak some hits in as the lack of tools forces you to deal damage only via your needle. An upwards attack while dodging spikes, Clawline when you can, stuff like that.
- DO NOT pogo the spikes. The Witch’s Crest’s downwards attack pulls you in instead of propelling you upward, leading to some damage.
- The landed scissors will block Clawline. Better to just dash if you don’t have the vertical clearance.
- As tempting as it is, don’t go off the arena at the top. While it’s relatively safe from attacks, the area denial web attack GM Silk does still catches you when you’re off-arena.
- The falling boulders in the last phase not only partially obscures the horizontal scissor attacks, but can also be buggy during the transition. I’ve seen these hit me even without any boulders falling or just at the silk string phase of the animation, so be careful.
- The area denial web attack deals THREE masks of damage, so avoid as much as possible. Rather get hit by a spike than to be caught in the web.