Madman modder takes one of Silksong's worst bosses and makes them even harder: 'This is seriously mucked up'

A screencap of Hollow Knight: Silksong's opening cutscene. A close-up shot of protagonist Hornet moments before she breaks out of a metal cage. Her curved white mask and red cloak are lit up as a glowing strand of silk surrounds her.
(Image credit: Team Cherry)

I thought Team Cherry was evil for making me fight a boss as annoying as the Savage Beastfly in the first few hours of Hollow Knight: Silksong, but now I'm thankful for its restraint. The Savage Beastfly could've been worse. A lot worse. And one modder with a far more malicious imagination than the developers stepped in to make that a reality.

NexusMods user JngoCreates calls their creation "Mucked Beastfly", and it's essentially the same flying bug we all hate combined with the nasty effects of an area we all hate too.

Mucked Beastfly is what happens if you let the Savage Beastfly hang out in Bilewater, the maggot-infested swamp I would've preferred to never think about again. In the room where you normally fight Groal—an already notoriously hard boss—will be a vile version of the Savage Beastfly with new attacks that can infect Hornet, preventing her from being able to heal.

Groal is nice enough to leave you a few sturdy platforms to safely land on during the fight. Not the Mucked Beastfly. There are platforms in the boss room but they sink into the pool of maggots after standing on them for a few seconds. JngoCreates also made sure to keep the Savage Beastfly's worst trait and has it call for backup. But it isn't just any random bugs that join the fray, it's the poison-spitting flies from the area right above Bilewater.

And that's just the fight itself. The runback is equally horrible. It's the exact same series of rooms you have to survive to get back to Groal. Have fun getting chased by poisonous enemies while dashing over maggots and avoiding spike traps to have another attempt at a boss capable of deleting you in a few seconds.

YouTuber CrankyTemplar has a video where they face this monster and come out of it unscathed, calling it "slightly more challenging" than normal. "It's overall not too bad provided you don't let the minions live for too long," they wrote in the description. Sounds like something the Savage Beastfly would say to tempt people into dueling them, if you ask me.

Mucked Beastfly is Kind of Crazy... - YouTube Mucked Beastfly is Kind of Crazy... - YouTube
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"This is seriously mucked up," YouTube commenter grfrjiglstan wrote.

Several other commenters think this is exactly the kind of boss Team Cherry would've tossed in there. I can see it, especially considering it designed a whole second version of the Savage Beastfly for anyone who is trying to 100% the game. A third round with the bug would've made sense. Maybe we'll see its return in the DLC.

The small notice at the end of the mod's description made me laugh: "The defeat state of this fight is not saved, so coming back to this room will re-trigger the fight every time." You can defeat the Mucked Beastfly, but it will always come back.

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Tyler has covered videogames and PC hardware for 15 years. He regularly spends time playing and reporting on games like Diablo 4, Elden Ring, Overwatch 2, and Final Fantasy 14. While his specialty is in action RPGs and MMOs, he's driven to cover all sorts of games whether they're broken, beautiful, or bizarre.

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