Hollow Knight is the greatest game of all time for me. I replayed it recently and it was such a different experience for me to move through confidently and quickly when I had a grasp of combat from the beginning. It took me months to finish it the first time because of getting lost and not knowing where to go next.
Some generic (no spoiler) tips:
go in another direction and come back to the boss later if that’s possible. If a boss is way too difficult then there may be an upgrade you haven’t gotten yet.
take your time. It is more important to save your health rather than rushing to get a hit in. Sometimes it’s worth going to a boss and not hitting him at all and just focus on learning movement, patterns and figuring out where the openings are.
play around with your charms and get the best setup you need to help with the boss fight.
try to avoid attacks by running into the gap in projectiles rather than relying on dashes all the time.
if you’re coming to thinking of quitting the game based on difficulty, then there’s no shame in watching a boss guide video on YouTube. Or space it out with a secondary game so you can play something else and come back later.
Whatever you want. I’ve got drive impact on left thumb. Middle white button is start and pinky white button is unassigned currently (but Daigo uses this for drive impact)
I’m using a R.Pi with GP2040-CE firmware. It doesn’t work with PS5, but I have a Brooke USB convertor (that’s just for local events, I only have a PC at home). I used to have the Brooke convertor embedded inside the hitbox but that gave trou le with my Linux PC at home.
Let me know if you need help with the process. If you don’t have woodworking g experience there’s still a very easy way to make this yourself (with some tools).
I got buttons from here. The small buttons are 24mm, the big ones are 30mm.
I wouldn’t recommend these for a mouse. These buttons don’t give much tactile feedback and don’t feel particularly crisp. They are nice prominent buttons for bashing in this context for fighting games.
This is more ergonomic and precise compared to a stick. It’s completely down to personal preference, but this layout is getting a lot more popular. Fight sticks have been popular because of oldschool arcade machines and historical inertia, but designs are branching out now (see “mixboxes”, keyboard users and all sorts of custom layouts online).
The USB stick takes input from any controller and makes it compatible with PS5. Yes that Raspberry Pi board is not compatible with PS5. I play exclusively on PC so it didn’t matter to me initially, but now that I go to local events where they play on PS4 and PS5 I do need the compatability. I haven’t tried the hub controller with the Playstation but that shouldn’t make a different really. SOCD cleaning is on the Raspberry Pi chip and can be changed to your liking. It can be altered to fit the tournament rules.
I’ll make a detailed guide to show their whole process, there seems to be interest for that.
This picture should make it clearer. One controller has multiple USB ports because there’s a USB hub embedded inside it. This should make it clearer.. The little box in the top right corner is this USB hub.
The down button is used constantly and used with the directions to input quarter circle motions etc for special moves. It would be very awkward to have down under the thumb. Up should be used much more cautiously and purposefully.
Other layouts are possible and some people find the WASD layout more comfortable. Some even end up using keyboard buttons for the left hand in WASD layout with arcade buttons on the right (a.k.a. mixbox).
The person commenting above you seems surprised by this “all button” design, but this is becoming very popular for its precision compared to stick or controller. And it’s no different using WASD keys to walk around in an FPS game rather than using an analog stick on a controller. If you play fighting games I’d highly recommend trying a leverless controller like this.
Any layout will come down to personal preference and the best thing about making something completely DIY is you can customise it to your liking.
The layout I made was the standard template most controllers use now and I wanted to stay close to that so the muscle memory easily carries over to using other controllers. Frankly, I don’t find it interferes much with reaching LP or MK quickly. I tend to rest my fingers across the upper row and come down as needed for kicks.
Resting the hand on LP and MK would make an odd position for twisting to get to other buttons. Also it would put the pinky finger farther away from the drive impact shortcut (right most upper button).
For anyone planning to use a hitbox controller I’d recommend printing the template on a page and seeing how your hand rests and if you want yo change button positions. Or if you’ve ordered the buttons then I’d recommend cutting holes in a cardboard box to test fit your button layout and test what you like. On the upper controller in my picture I’ve moved the jump button further down so it is more comfortable under my thumb.
My primary aim was to make the size as small as possible with full size arcade buttons.
But wait, there’s more. The controller with 6 action buttons has an embedded USB hub. I usually play on the Steam Deck (which only has one USB port) and this way I can plug a charger or second controller into the side of my hitbox, or even wired headphones.