Silksong Wormways walkthrough

The Wormways in Silksong are an unpleasant place, made up of tunnels packed with burrowing sand worms and spiked terrain. That said, the Wormways are one of Silksong's smaller areas, so it won't take you too long to loot the place of everything it has and then never return… until Act 3, anyway.

To ensure you don't miss out on the interesting Tools and the easily-missed Silk Skill this area provides, here's our Silksong Wormways walkthrough.

Silksong Wormways walkthrough

First things first, to access most of Wormways, you're going to need a Simple Key. You can get one from the following four places during Act One and Act Two of the game:

• Sold by Pebb (Bone Bottom) for 500 Rosaries.
• Dropped by a Roachkeeper enemy in the northeast of Sinner's Road.
• Sold by Jubilana (Songclave) for 650 Rosaries after completing The Lost Merchant Wish.
• On a corpse beside the eastern Bench in Sands of Karak.

You'll also ideally want to unlock the Swiftstep, Drifter's Cloak, and Cling Grip abilities before coming here if you haven't already.

Once you have a Simple Key to spare, let's get going. To explore this area efficiently (and get the Map early), I recommend starting from the leftmost Bench in Shellwood (pictured below).

You can, alternatively, reach Wormways from the Bench in Mosshome (closest to The Marrow's Bellway Station) using Swiftstep.

From here, you want to exit to your left into Moss Grove. Then, use the Drifter's Cloak and platforms here to carefully glide over to the ledge on your left.

Exit using the above ledge, and you'll have officially entered Wormways!

Collect the Dead Bug's Purse Tool

Upon entering Wormways, you'll find that many passages are full of worms that will constantly burrow in and out of the ceilings. You'll need to carefully sprint past these throughout your time in Wormways. That said, they're really handy for farming Silk if needed.

For now, keep downwards and go along the first ledge on your left. You'll arrive in a room with a Pilgrim corpse that has the Dead Bug's Purse Tool on it. This Tool, when equipped, allows you to keep some Rosaries upon defeat.

If you're anything like me and refuse to leave a boss or area until you're done, then this Tool likely won't come in handy all that often. Though, you do need it if you wish to 100% the game!

Up next, we're going to collect the Wormways Map.

Purchase the Wormways Map

Exit the room containing the Dead Bug's Purse and keep heading downwards (sticking to the leftmost downwards passage).

Next, look out for a ledge to your left that's accompanied by some of Shakra's Throwing Rings.

Just up ahead, you'll find Shakra who'll sell you the Wormways Map in exchange for 70 Rosaries.

Up next, continue downwards and left through this room until you reach an exit (pictured below). This exit leads to a vertical chamber.

Rescue the lost Flea

In the vertical chamber, carefully ascend down the right-hand side to arrive at a breakable wall (shown below). Destroy the breakable wall and continue to your right.

Carefully jump through the following spiked passage and you should soon hear a lost Flea nearby. If you jump up onto the platforms here, you'll soon see that they are being paraded around by an Aknid enemy. Poor thing…

Kill the Aknid holding the lost Flea to free him. You can now exit this area and continue downwards, where you'll arrive at a lever. Hit it and proceed to the very bottom of this chamber.

Collect the Mask Shard

Once in the water at the bottom of this chamber, look for a breakable wall on your right.

Upon destroying this wall, there'll be a Mask Shard for you to claim (though, I already claimed it earlier as you can see below).

Up next, we're going to unlock the Wormways Bench and meet an important NPC.

Meet Alchemist Zylotol and unlock the Bench

Go upwards from where you collect the Mask Shard and a Simple Door will be to your left. This is where we need to use the Simple Key I recommended you grab earlier, as it allows us to explore the rest of Wormways.

What follows is a narrow hallway filled with spiked flooring and burrowing worms. Make your way to the exit on the left hand side of the room, which allows you to go upwards.

The next room is a little bit of a maze of sorts, but it isn't too big. First things first, go to your right, and then make your way up to the very top of the room. You'll need to use both Cling Grip and the various ledges around the room to do this safely, as there's more burrowing worms here.

Soon enough, you should come to an exit at the top of the room that leads to Alchemist Zylotol's dwellings and the Wormways Bench.

Speak to Alchemist Zylotol twice and he'll task you with the Alchemist's Assistant Wish, which means finding three Plasmium Cocoons across Wormways and returning them to him. First things first, rest at the Bench and equip the Needle Phial that Zylotol gives you.

We'll need to use this Needle Phial to collect the Plasmium Cocoons, rather than attacking them. The first one is in the room below Zylotol, so we'll grab that first.

Collect three Plasmium Cocoons and the Memory Locket

Exit Zylotol's room to fall down into the room below, where a Gromling enemy is likely to ambush you. If you then head left from here, you'll soon see the blue glow of a Plasmium Cocoon below you.

Use the Needle Phial – making sure you charge it first – to extract the Plasmium from this cocoon.

After acquiring the first Plasmium Cocoon, continue downwards into the narrow spike-laden and worm-ridden hallway from earlier. Here, head right and continue downwards.

In the next room, keep downwards and right to soon come to your second Plasmium Cocoon; you know when you're nearby, as a blue glow begins to fill your screen.

You can also go downwards from this Cocoon to find a breakable wall that opens up a shortcut to the Chapel of the Wanderer in Moss Grotto's Bonegrave subsection; this is where you can get the Wanderer Crest.

From the second Plasmium Cocoon, head upwards and keep left this time to enter a new and very dark room; this is where the third Plasmium Cocoon is.

Keep heading left past the burrowing worms, spiked walls, and spiked floors, and only head downwards once you can't keep going left. There'll also be a breakable wall on your left to keep an eye out for. After that, you'll soon see the blue glow of the Plasmium Cocoon…

Before leaving, make your way to the bottom right-hand corner of this room and you'll also find a Memory Locket on the corpse of a Pilgrim.

With three Plasmium Cocoons collected, return to Alchemist Zylotol and give them to him.

As a reward, he'll hand over the Plasmium Phial Tool, which now allows Hornet to inject herself with Plasmium (also known as Lifeblood in Hollow Knight). Upon using the Phial, she summons extra – albeit temporary – Mask Shards to use, and you'll need to return to Zylotol whenever you wish to refill the Phial.

Collect the Sharpdart Silk Skill [optional]

We've now only one thing left to do in Wormways, and that's retrieve the Sharpdart Silk Skill, which you'll require the Needolin for. If you don't yet have this, you'll need to venture into Bellhart's bell veins and defeat Widow.

From the Wormways Bench, head south into the room below you, then keep left and downwards to eventually come to a Needolin door. Play your Needolin here to open the door and sprint left through the following chamber – taking caution of the enemies and spikes beneath you – to ultimately arrive at the Sharpdart Silk Skill.

With that collected, you've nothing more to do in Wormways and can finally leave the perilous area. That said, you will need to come here in Act 3 if you wish to defeat every boss in the game, so bear that in mind!

For more on Hollow Knight: Silksong, take a look at our Silksong walkthrough, as well as all Craftmetal locations and where to find all Spool Fragments.