If you’re merrily strolling your way through Hollow Knight: Silksong right now, not a care in the world, you may want to brace yourself. Because aside from Silksong’s usual slate of super-tough bosses that’ll have you corpse running over and over again, there’s one very early miniboss enemy that’s causing a lot of players a whole heap of trouble.
Warning: Very minor spoilers for an early-game miniboss in The Marrow appear below. Don’t read on if you don’t want to know anything about any of the game’s enemies.
The miniboss in question is considered so minor by the game that it doesn’t appear with a name on-screen, making it tough to Google a guide when you get stuck on him. But his name is Skarrgard, and he’s a bulky red bug enemy wielding a big piece of bone as a weapon. You can find him waiting in a cave on the east side of The Marrow, just above the prison.
Skarrgard seems inocuous when you first approach him, just like a slightly tougher regular enemy. But this guy really has some folks on tilt. He’s got three attacks: one where he disappears underground and pops up for an attack, a jump attack, and one where he swings his bone around. He’s got some real range on that bone weapon, and because the tunnel is so tiny, most of his moves are very hard, if not impossible, to jump over. What’s more, his attacks hit for two whole masks of damage rather than just one.
There are two ways to beat Skarrgard, the easy way and the hard way. The hard way is to keep practicing and eventually defeat him (see our red axe ant mini boss thing strategy guide for exactly how to do beat him early). You can lure him down the narrow tunnel a bit so he can’t do his jump attack more, and if you run past him whenever he goes underground, you can sort of bounce him back and forth in the center of the room, taking careful swings, and eventually bring him down.
But I recommend the easy way, which is to come back later. You’ll eventually get a dash ability that makes it much easier to avoid his hits, and it seems like you’re meant to have that ability before challenging Skarrgard for real. Even if you’re tempted by a juicy reward for killing him early, maybe don’t bother? The reward for fighting him is that it unlocks access to a new area, and if you’re fighting him early you probably have plenty else to explore that isn’t hidden behind a giant, bone-swinging bug man.
Either way, good luck with this guy. For many, he’s significantly tougher than any of Silksong’s early actual bosses, so don’t feel discouraged if you die to him a lot before you finally score a win.
Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now, and we’re hard at work on our Wiki guides of everything you might possibly want to know as you start your adventures in Pharloom. We’ve also got a review-in-progress covering our thoughts so far that we’ll update with a score as soon as we’ve finished the game.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
