How to get through The Mist in Hollow Knight Silksong

How do you escape The Mist in Silksong? Found in the southwestern exit of Bilewater but above the path to Sinner's Road, the tricky turnback-type puzzle surrounding this area can quickly convince you to turn tail and never come back. Figure out its subtle clues, and you'll find friends to follow all the way to the exit. If you can brave the obstacle course, that is.

Before taking on the challenge of the Hollow Knight Silksong version of Zelda's Lost Woods, make sure to unlock abilities like the Silksong Wall Jump and utilise the Silksong fast travel mechanic. Both can save you a lot of time and effort going forward. If The Mist has you close to dropping the adventure in favor of the other best Metroidvanias around, Silksong mods might be able to ease the road ahead.

You can escape The Mist in Silksong simply by playing a tune for the butterflies that first follow you into the area. This is a mechanic you unlock as part of the Bellhart questline.

Seek them out in The Mist, play a little ditty, and follow them to their next location. This is a callback to the butterflies from the beginning of the game and one a statue back in Hunter's March alluded to early on. The safe route through The Mist is completely random, so we can't annotate a simple Silksong map for you to follow.

So, to avoid getting lost, seek out the butterflies, play a song, and head in the general direction they flutter off to once they're happy with your tune. They never stray too far. Repeat this enough times and you'll find your way out of The Mist without too much trouble. Stray off the path and you'll have to reload your save to get back to where you were.

The butterflies are not paramount to your success. Unlike what you need to do to get to Verdania in Silksong, you can find the path through The Mist through sheer dumb luck or relentless determination. The butterflies just take out the guesswork.

That being said, The Mist in Silksong isn't without its dangers. Whether you follow the butterflies or not, it's more than a place that simply messes with your sense of direction to loop you back around. The Mist is teeming with tricky platforming sections, traps, spikes, and enemies that are all too happy to help send you back to the entrance, even while you're on the right path.

Brave the whole ordeal and you'll reach an area where you'll find more Silksong fleas and trigger a fight with one of the trickier early Silksong bosses around. The Mist is an alternate route through Act 1 that removes the need to fight Last Judge.

Struggling to fight your way through? Grabbing a few extra Silksong mask shards and upgrading Needolin can help massively in the fight ahead. If you're rummaging around The Mist as part of a second run, you might want to read up on every one of the Silksong endings we've uncovered so far.