White Palace

The Palace of the Pale King and his court. Mysteriously vanished from Hallownest sometime after the Infection reappeared.

The White Palace is accessible in the dream realm through obtaining the Awoken Dream Nail and using it on the corpse of a Kingsmould in the Palace Grounds in the Ancient Basin.

Once the home of the Pale King, at an unknown point the Palace, according to Relic Seeker Lemm, vanished.

The White Palace is primarily a platforming challenge (as it also contains two separate fights with Kingsmoulds), and is required to unlock the Void Heart for most of the endings.

Tips

 * There are several hidden platforming skips that the Knight may use; however, some of these have been patched out.
 * The White Palace contains sets of difficult platforming sections, therefore it is advised to use a good combination of Charms:
 * Hiveblood: Allows the Knight to wait between attempts at platforming to avoid losing health.
 * Deep Focus + Grubsong (+Grubberfly's Elegy): Allows healing most of the lost health after being damaged (two hits gives 30 SOUL, which get healed for 33 SOUL). Grubberfly's Elegy makes the return positive (50 SOUL for two hits).
 * Longnail/Mark of Pride: Provide a bigger window for the Knight to nail-pogo on spikes, saws, or Wingmoulds, though it will make some narrow horizontal platforming challenges difficult.
 * Quick Slash: Allows the Knight to spam the downward strike lots of times without worrying about missing the timing.
 * Dashmaster: Allows the Knight to easily complete one section in which you fall between sets of retracting spikes.
 * Sharp Shadow: While this could help to reach platforms from a further distance, it may become troublesome since many obstacles are built with regular dashing range in mind.
 * Any health-boosting charm like Fragile Heart or Lifeblood Core will also help with survivability.

Sub-area: Path of Pain
A secret, extra-challenging section of the White Palace, hidden behind a breakable wall (pathway opens despite being invisible) at the beginning of the first buzz-saw room on the second floor, above the large room with a bench in the middle. Completing this area unlocks a special cutscene depicting the Pale King and a younger version of the Hollow Knight, alongside a Journal Entry for the Seal of Binding. Note that after the challenge is completed, the Path of Pain becomes inaccessible.

The Path of Pain is made up of several sections each separated by an infinitely usable Soul Totem depicting the Hollow Knight. Platforming here is heavily difficult and requires excessive aerial and wall movement, as well as requiring the Nail to be swung towards most of the mobile hazards to gain height. There are many buzz-saws, spikes, and small wall sections, alongside thorns on the sides of most sections. After the final platforming section, the Knight will fall down a pit into a room surrounded by thorns on the walls. In this room are two Kingsmoulds which the Knight must defeat in order to finally reach the end of the challenge.

After completing the Path of Pain, the Knight will wake up directly outside it. The Path of Pain cannot be entered again (the wall cannot be broken).

Tips

 * The Soul Totems in this area as mentioned earlier, grant an endless supply of SOUL to the Knight, allowing for plenty of healing after each section. However, as not every section has a SOUL totem, it is still useful to have charms that improve survivability.
 * As all of the difficult challenges without a SOUL totem are to reach the switch inside the path, if trying the Path of Pain after the switch has been hit, survival-boosting charms are no longer needed.
 * All of the charms that are useful for the main White Palace are still useful in the Path of Pain, except Dashmaster as it is very easy to accidentally down-dash due to the amount of time DOWN will be held to pogo on saws.
 * It is recommended to defeat the Kingsmoulds at the end with Desolate Dive or Descending Dark, as using these spells makes the Knight immune to damage for several frames. Having Shaman Stone equipped can help to deal more damage.

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