How to complete Sands of Karak in Hollow Knight: Silksong.
The Пески Карака регион в Silksong, hidden away between Blasted Steps and Grand Gate, is easily missed. And honestly, unless you are looking to 100% Silksong, then it’s perhaps worth giving it a miss because this place is just horrible. So horrible that it almost puts Bilewater to shame, but maybe that’s just because my platforming skills are particularly poor…
Alas, skipping the area altogether is no fun and there’s fun Tools and other items that await us in Sands of Karak, so let’s get going. To help you with this perilous area, here’s our Silksong Sands of Karak walkthrough.
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Silksong Sands of Karak walkthrough
A word of forewarning if you haven’t experienced Sands of Karak for yourself already: this place is a platforming nightmare. Throughout the area, you must hit eggs that will spawn platforms for you to use to progress further, but these will disappear quickly.
If you don’t platform along them quick enough, there’s every chance you’ll fall into the perilous terrain below and take damage. This means that this area may take a few attempts to fully explore, but as is the case with every challenge in Silksong, practice makes perfect.
It also just so happens that during Act 2 of Silksong, Sands of Karak is home to two optional bosses, with two more secret bosses available during Act 3. With that in mind, I do recommend only exploring Sands of Karak – and taking down its bosses – when you’re prepared for a tough (and admittedly very frustrating) time.
Get yourself some extra Masks, make sure you have some Needle upgrades, and take some time to get yourself some powerful offensive Tools and/or Silk Skills to make this area easier.
You will also need Swiftstep, Clawline, and Cling Grip to fully explore this area, though if you’ve been following our walkthrough, you should have all movement abilities by now!
Соберите медальон памяти
First things first, we’re going to enter the Sands of Karak and purchase the area’s Map from Shakra.
Start from the Blasted Steps Bellway, and make your way to the Pinstress’ tent – past where you’ll have fought with the Great Conchflies – in the far-west of Blasted Steps, then rest at the Bench there. It’s going to be a while before we reach the Sands of Karak Bench…
Our route from the Pinstress’ Tent into the Sands of Karak is labeled on the below map:
From the Pinstress Tent, you want to use your Clawline ability to attach yourself to the disc to the left of the tent. From here, you’ll need to keep Clawlining and platforming until you reach the exit in the upper left-hand corner of the area.
Once you reach your first wall while Clawlining to your left, you actually want to then glide over to a platform on your right, where there is another wall to climb. This then allows you to reach some more Clawline discs on your left, which take you directly to the entrance to the Sands of Karak.
You’ll now be in a tall, spike-covered chamber that you’ll need to ascend. There’ll also be some Pharlid enemies and a falling boulder to avoid, but nothing too troubling. Atop this chamber, exit to your right. You’re officially in the Sands of Karak now… good luck. You’ll need it!
If you hit the egg just up ahead (pictured below), wooden platforms will temporarily be revealed. You need to platform across these quickly to reach the next fixed-platform, as they will begin disappearing after a short delay.
The next platform has a Choral Furm enemy to take down, and another egg to hit. Keep right using the platforms it creates to arrive at a third fixed platform and egg; hitting this one, however, reveals two platform paths to go along.
For now, head left. Once the path of platforms ends, jump to the wall on your right, where there’ll be another egg above you.
This egg then creates a passage through the red, spiked area on your left. At the end of it, you’ll be able to collect the Медальон памяти (на фото ниже).
Remember this spot for later. Once you unlock the Silk Soar ability during Act 3 of the game, there’s a hidden passage above this Memory Locket that leads to a secret boss.
With the Memory Locket retrieved, hit the egg to your right and use the path it creates to return to the fixed platform below. Hit the egg here, and head right along the platforms this time, rather than left.
Be careful of the Driznarga and their projectiles along the way, and I highly recommend clearing them out before continuing so that they don’t get in your way.
Purchase the Sands of Karak Map
While standing on the next fixed platform, you’ll no doubt see a grey, spiked route on your right. This is where you need to head next while carefully using Clawline and Cling Grip.
Atop this passage, there’s an egg you can hit that will reveal a long, winding path back through the spiked passage and north of the last fixed platform you were standing on.
You need to carefully follow this path of platforms upwards. At the top, head right and exit.
In the next room, there’ll be a breakable wall on your right; by all means destroy it but don’t go through it just yet. Instead, go upwards and left – past the Pokenabbin enemy – into a new room.
Clawline across the spikes here to arrive at Shakra, then purchase the Карта песков Карака from her for 90 Rosaries.
Collect the Crustnut [Great Taste of Pharloom Wish]
Exit the room containing Shakra and continue climbing the right-most wall upwards. You’ll quickly arrive at another Pokenabbin, as well as some breakable stalactite (pictured below).
Destroy the stalactite and it’ll fall down into Blasted Steps, creating a shortcut to the Blasted Steps Bellway and Bench for you to use. I recommend going and resting at this Bench before continuing, as we’ve still a long way to go before reaching the Sands of Karak Bench.
From where you destroyed the stalactite, keep climbing the walls upwards until you come to two floating platforms and another Pokenabbin. On your left here, there’s a breakable wall you can destroy (pictured below).
There’ll be a second breakable wall just up ahead, and then you’ll arrive in a room full of breakable barriers and another Choral Furm enemy. I highly recommend not going upwards in this room, as this causes a very annoying Driznit to spawn.
Instead, you want to carefully head downwards, using downward attacks and Cling Grip to attack the upcoming barriers without taking too much damage.
At the bottom of the first section of this room, you’ll come to a spiked passage on your left that you need to Clawline through to reach a wall you can cling to. Above, there is yet another breakable barrier to deal with, while being cautious of the sandworms below you.
This is where the Ascendant’s Grip Tool (which allows you to grip to walls without sliding) comes in great use, so consider equipping that if you’re struggling and wind up being returned to a Bench.
Next, you can continue heading upwards to unlock a shortcut back to the beginning of the area. To keep progressing however, we want to head left through another red, spiked passage. Another Choral Furm enemy will spawn on the platform directly after this.
Keep left, through another spiked passage, and cling to the wall here.You can go downwards or upwards here, but they’re both dead ends. Instead, destroy the barrier on your left (pictured below) and keep left.
In the next area, quickly deal with the Choral Furm enemy. Then, destroy the breakable barriers that are along the left wall. After that, you’ll need to Clawline through another spiked passage to reach a wall, and then carefully destroy the barrier below you.
Below the barrier, there is yet another breakable barrier on your left, positioned directly above some sandworms… It’s precarious, but you need to destroy this barrier and keep left still.
Through this wall, you’ll be able to retrieve the Крастнат item from a large conch shell. This is one of the five food items you need to fulfil the Великолепный вкус Фарлума Желание, which you definitely want to complete, as it gives you access to another Needle upgrade.
Спасите потерянную блоху
With that done, return all the way back to the chamber where there where multiple Pokenabbin enemies – also where you attacked the stalactite – and go through the breakable wall in the bottom-right of this room.
In the next room, there are more eggs that you can attack to spawn wooden platforms temporarily. Lots of them. Hit the first egg and head right to arrive at – you guessed it – another egg, and a horrible Driznarga enemy. I used the Cogfly Tool to help me quickly clear these out.
Attack the second egg and keep heading right, where you’ll come to a platform with a Choral Furm enemy. Kill them and head right onto another platform. Above you, there’ll be a ledge with a breakable barrier heading left and an egg; ignore the egg for now and go left, destroying the barriers.
At the end of the platform, you want to double-jump over your left, Clawlining onto the egg here (pictured below). This will reveal another set of platforms, and these ones are particularly tricky to traverse.
You’ll need to cling to the wall beside the egg until the path has emerged, then very quickly drop and Clawline onto the platform on your left. It should give you enough height to Clawline onto the next wall on your left. You then need to repeat this process again, being careful of the spikes on the upcoming walls.
You then need to carefully Clawline through the gap in the wall, while avoiding the spikes, to reach yet another wall…
Slide down this wall carefully, and Clawline onto another wall on your left that is beneath the spikes. Then, jump up to the wall on your right, and begin ascending the passage here.
Atop the passage, you will find the потерянная блоха for this area. Attack him to free him and send him back to the Flea Caravan.
Go back on yourself (to your right), and return to the egg we ignored earlier (pictured below). This egg is directly beside the passage we destroyed to be able to reach the lost Flea.
Unlock the Bench and collect the Simple Key
Attack the egg here and use the platforms it reveals to keep heading to your right, where you can finally exit into a new chamber.
In this chamber, destroy the breakable wall that’s directly opposite you, on the right-hand side. Destroy a second wall to arrive in a room with an elevator. If you ride the elevator and destroy the barrier at the bottom, you’ll unlock a shortcut to the Grand Gate.
It’s here that you’ll need to fight The Last Judge if you haven’t already. On top of that, the Flea Caravan will also move here once you have defeated The Last Judge, rescued multiple lost Fleas, and spoken to Fleamaster Mooshka. Make sure to check in with them regularly!
Shortcuts aside, you want to keep heading to the right of the elevator (while it is at the top, in Sands of Karak) to keep progressing. There’ll be some Conchflies along the way, but you can safely sprint past them.
Soon enough, you will finally arrive at the Sands of Karak Bench, where you can rest and collect a Простой ключ от трупа.
There’s only two things left to go and do in the Sands of Karak, and they’re both boss fights. For the first fight – the Raging Conchfly – we don’t actually want this Sands of Karak Bench to be our respawn point if we die. Technically, the northmost Blasted Steps Bench (beside the Bellway) is closest.
First, however, we need to unlock the shortcut back to that Bench and it is no easy feat. Prepare yourself for some more frustrating platforming!
From the Sands of Karak Bench, sprint left past the Conchfly enemies and elevator again. When you’re in the tall chamber that is to the left of the elevator on your map, you need to carefully glide to the bottom.
Here, there’s yet another egg to hit that reveals a very tall, winding path upwards. You’ll need to very – and I mean, very – quickly scale up this path to the very top before it disappears while being cautious of the Pokenabbin enemies and spiked terrain around the area.
At the very top of the passage, you’ll need to jump or Clawline onto the wall onto your right and climb upwards before going left into a new room.
In the new room, there’s more platforming to be done. Jump down your left and you should soon see another egg above you. You know the drill, hit it and platform along the path it creates (pictured below).
As you hop along this path, you’ll soon arrive at a bit of wall you can cling to, and a second egg will be above you. You’ll need to hit this quickly so that it creates a new path before the former one disappears. Then, you’ll need to jump to your left – along this new path – while being careful to not fall into the sandworms below.
As you hop along the new path, there’ll be a wall on your right to jump on, as well as a nearby Pokenabbin enemy. From the wall, you want to either Clawline or double-jump over to the ledge on your left, past the Pokenabbin. Here, there’s more breakable barriers for you to destroy (pictured below, as well as another egg beneath the ledge).
Destroy the breakable barriers to reveal another wall, just below, that you can cling to. This then allows you to hit the egg beneath the ledge (pictured above). As per usual, this egg reveals yet another path to try and traverse.
For this particular path, I jumped down from the wall and Clawlined over to the spiked bit of platform on my left, before then double-jumping to the wall on my right (pictured below).
From this wall, I then quickly downwards jumped off the spiked bit of platform on my left again and glided over to my left. You’ll then arrive at another egg above a piece of the temporary platform; you need to hit this quickly and jump onto the new path – which starts with a piece of wall just above and to your left (pictured below) – before the former path disappears.
It’s super tricky, but the good news is that once it’s done and you exit into the following room, you can soon forget about having to platform through this section ever again.
In the next room, you’ll find yourself atop a bridge. Before continuing to your left, head upwards to find a large stalactite you can destroy. Upon doing so, it destroys a portion of the bridge and creates a shortcut back down to the bottom of the Sands of Karak.
At this point, I recommend going downwards and back into Blasted Steps, and resting at the Bench beside the Bellway there. This is ultimately closer to the upcoming boss and a quicker way of reaching them that saves you from repeating the horrible platforming sequence we just had to do.
Defeat Raging Conchfly [optional]
You no doubt remember the Great Conchflies from Blasted Steps. You will have killed one during this fight, while the other flew off into the distance. Sure enough, they make a return in Sands of Karak and are a little more formidable this time around.
From where you will have just dropped the stalactite, enter the room to your left. You need to ultimately sprint and double-jump to the left of this room, being careful of the sandworms along the floor and the Conchfly enemies along the path. You will very quickly reach the Raging Conchfly boss fight.
Now, this is a completely optional fight and you don’t have to fight the Raging Conchfly if you don’t want to. That said, there is another boss – exclusive to Act 3 – that is found in the Coral Tower area past the Raging Conchfly. So if you want to see every boss that Silksong has to offer, you’ll want to beat the Raging Conchfly sooner or later.
Есть также Conchcutter Tool to be collected in Coral Tower after felling the Raging Conchfly, and if you’re hoping to 100% Silksong, you’ll need to grab this!
Fortunately, if you’ve already beaten the Great Conchflies, you likely already know what to expect here and it isn’t слишком bad of a fight. For more help with it, take a look at our Raging Conchfly boss guide.
Now, we’ve another boss to pay a visit to nearby…
Defeat Voltvyrm [optional]
If you return to the bridge from earlier (the one with the shortcut back down to Blasted Steps), there’s actually a hidden passage that you can take here.
Climb up the wall on your left here, and Clawline over to the wall on your right then immediately double-jump. You’ll find yourself in a hidden passage, and if you keep ascending using Clawline, you’ll then arrive in Voltnest (pictured below).
In Voltnest, you’ll need to keep right through a passage littered with electrical currents that you’ll need to carefully avoid.
Soon enough, you’ll be facing the electrifying Voltvyrm boss in the Voltnest area of the Sands of Karak.
Again, the Voltvyrm is an optional boss and you do not need to fight them if you don’t want to, or can always come back later. That said, those wanting to 100% the game will need to defeat this boss sooner or later, as they reward you with the Volt Filament Tool upon defeat (which contributes to 100%).
You can also pay a visit to the Voltvyrm’s arena after defeating them and resting again to encounter the adorable Nuu!
With this all done, you’re done with the Sands of Karak until Act 3, where you’ll need to return to the area to fight two new, secret bosses.
For more on Hollow Knight: Silksong, take a look at all Mask Shard locations, all Spool Fragment locations, and all Craftmetal locations.
