Silksong is slowly but surely unraveled, as more and more players dive deeper and deeper into the game and discover more gems of wisdom along the way – mostly paid for with blood, sweat, and tears.
This time, we have a little nugget of truth for you, since it was confirmed that Pale Oil, the new collectible resource (replacing Pale Ore), is tied majorly to upgrading Hornet’s needle. With this little pointy thing being your main source of stabbiness, it makes sense to upgrade it as soon and as efficiently as possible.
What Does The Pale Oil Needle Upgrade Do?
With Hornet already being a lot more agile than the Knight, the toolkit also changes – speed, reach, and style are way more important here than pure brawn, as we touched on in our top tips for Hollow Knight Silksong beginners.
The Needle isn’t just about hitting harder, it’s about enhancing existing moves or even unlocking entirely new ones, as well as creating silk-based finishers tied to the upgraded weapon. So there’s a lot to unlock, if you’re willing to do the work.
True, Team Cherry hasn’t laid out the full details to us and we doubt anyone has explored every nook and cranny of the massive title, but allowing tougher bosses with confidence seems like a no-brainer.
How to Find Pale Oil in Silksong
You can actually get the first needle upgrade for free by freeing Bellhart.
By entering Shellwood and defeating Sister Splinter, you can acquire the Cling Grip upgrade in order to wall jump.
Here you can use the wall jump to leap into the Bellhart tunnels and sweep aside the Widow boss to free Bellhart.
Go past Relic Seeker Scrounge’s bellhome afterwards to locate Pinmaster Plinney’s workshop, who will not only unlock your first needle upgrade, but send you on the Pinmaster’s quest to find Pale Oil in the Citadel.
Exploration As The Actual Reward in Silksong
If we know Team Cherry, Pale Oil won’t be given to you willy-nilly – you’ll have to work for it, just as much as you had to for Pale Ore, back in the day. It will most likely be tucked away in some random corner of Pharloom’s hardest to reach areas, or even guarded by bosses/their smaller minions, in order for you to really have to earn that reward.
The beauty for us in that case is, that it ties in directly to other Metroidvania titles, without feeling like a rehash of what made the genre so great and beloved in the first place. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but it sure is the essence of what Silksong is all about.
