Silksong map: what we know about Pharloom’s geography and how exploration will work
Players who finished Hollow Knight often ask the same practical question before Silksong arrives: what does the silksong map actually look like, how big is it, and how will movement across it feel once they have a controller in their hands. The honest answer is that the silksong map is built around a new kingdom called Pharloom, structured in vertically stacked biomes rather than the single horizontal underground of Hallownest, and the tools for reading that map are designed to be earned through play rather than handed to the player at the start. This article walks through what has been confirmed about Pharloom’s geography, what the developer has shown in trailers and interviews, how the map system is likely to behave given Team Cherry’s design history, and where players should be cautious about expecting more than what has actually been verified.
The original Hollow Knight shipped with a hand-drawn map that filled in room by room as the Knight visited each cartographer, and the same underlying philosophy is preserved in the sequel. The visible shape of the silksong map, the pacing of map reveals, and the way fast travel integrates with traversal are not random design choices. They reflect an explicit intent to reward exploration while keeping the player slightly disoriented during the first hours of a run. Understanding that intent is more useful for planning a first playthrough than memorizing any specific region name, because the design rewards observation, careful tool use, and willingness to backtrack through areas once new abilities open paths that were previously unreachable. A new player who approaches the game with that mindset tends to enjoy the opening hours more than a new player who tries to optimize routes before they have any tools.
What has been confirmed about Pharloom’s structure
Pharloom is a kingdom built upward rather than downward, which is the most important shift from Hallownest’s underground sprawl. The developer has described the setting as a kingdom of silk, ruled from a central citadel, with a chain of distinct biomes connected by vertical shafts and surface routes. The reason this matters for the silksong map is that traditional left-to-right scrolling layouts would not reflect the world. Instead, the map appears to be organized into distinct named regions, each with its own visual identity, and those regions are connected by traversal puzzles that depend on abilities Hornet acquires during the campaign rather than by simple walkable corridors. The visual identity of each region also tends to bleed into the music and the enemy design, which gives the map a strong sense of place even before the player understands the underlying layout.
Several regions have been shown across the official trailers, demos, and developer interviews released between 2019 and the most recent public showcase. None of these are datamined or speculative; they are the same names Team Cherry has referenced in public material. A useful way to think about the silksong map is as a tree rather than a grid, with the citadel acting as a trunk and the outer biomes acting as branches that connect back to the trunk through specific hubs. That structural choice has knock-on effects for the pace of the game, because the trunk is a place the player returns to repeatedly, while the branches are more like detours that change the silhouette of the map as they are completed. Over the course of a campaign, the trunk accumulates characters, services, and story beats, while the branches accumulate the player’s understanding of the world.
| Region | Role on the map | Traversal character |
|---|---|---|
| The Citadel | Central hub, narrative anchor | Vertical climb focus, architectural detail |
| Bone Bottom | Starting town, safe anchor | Ground-level access, small footprint |
| Moss Grotto | Early biome, tutorial density | Forested, vertical walls, simple platforms |
| The Deep Docks | Mid-game industrial zone | Moving platforms, machinery, hazard timing |
| Far Fields | Wide surface region | Long horizontal stretches, wind currents |
| Greymoor | Vertical, weather-driven | Rain surfaces, friction changes, walls |
| Shellwood | Dense organic biome | Roots, falling platforms, healing focus |
| Bellhart | Bell town, side content | Vertical bell structures, quest density |
| The Slab | Penal colony style area | Tight corridors, enemy density |
| Coral Area | Underwater-influenced zone | Buoyancy changes, fluid timing |
| Wisp Thicket | Optional forest biome | Light-driven visibility puzzles |
| Sprint Dash areas | Inter-region corridors | Momentum puzzles, transition zones |
This table is built from material the developer has referenced in trailers and interviews, not from a leaked full atlas. Readers should treat the list as a working inventory of named regions rather than a complete catalog, because Team Cherry has consistently added, renamed, or expanded regions during development cycles on past projects, and a final shipped region list may differ from what is publicly known now. Anyone planning routes on a fan-made silksong map should keep that flexibility in mind, especially because community atlases typically combine confirmed names with inferred or placeheld slots. It is also worth remembering that some of the corridors between major regions are themselves small, hand-designed areas with their own encounter scripts, so the line between a region and a connector is blurrier than a static table suggests. The corridor between Greymoor and Bellhart, for example, has been shown in footage as a sequence of bell towers with their own pacing, even though it would not appear as a named region on a high-level outline.
How the map reveals itself compared to Hollow Knight
In the original game, players bought a map from Cornifer in each region, and a quill from his wife Iselda would let them draw their own room shapes on a mostly blank background. That pacing choice was a deliberate friction. The silksong map carries that friction forward but adapts it. Players have seen Cornifer’s larger caravan in trailers, suggesting a similar cartographer-driven reveal, but the broader surface of each region appears to be revealed more quickly once Hornet reaches the cartographer. The fine detail of benches, secret rooms, hidden walls, and breakable floors is still expected to be filled in by the player through play, and that is where the deepest exploration value sits. The cartographer also functions as a small reward in its own right, because finding the caravan usually triggers a short conversation and a sense of arrival that the player does not get from a generic map screen.
Three practical points follow from this design choice, and they tend to matter more for first-time players than any specific region list.
- The first hour in a new region is more about orientation than about completeness. Players should expect large unmapped gaps and not treat the cartographer as a completed checkpoint, because a single visit typically reveals the silhouette of an area rather than its interior.
- Benches remain critical. Each bench both saves progress and acts as a teleport endpoint once the relevant ability is acquired, so identifying bench placement is the practical version of completing a section of the silksong map.
- Return visits after new abilities matter more than exhaustive first passes. A region that looks sealed on first arrival is almost always designed to reopen with the right tool, and chasing every side path on a first run often burns resources the player would have preferred to keep for later.
This is one of the most consistent design lessons in the series, and it has been carried forward intentionally. The silksong map is built to be rediscovered rather than memorized, which means that a guide aimed at first-time players should focus less on listing every collectible in a region and more on teaching the rhythm of return visits. A player who internalizes that rhythm will often finish the game with a higher completion percentage than a player who treats the map as a checklist, simply because the rhythm encourages revisiting old spaces with new tools instead of moving on once a region looks empty. That difference is most visible in the late game, where the same corridors that felt punishing in the first hour often feel like familiar shortcuts after a few return visits with better tools.
Traversal tools that define how the map opens up
Traversal is where the silksong map differs most from its predecessor in feel, even when the surface layout looks similar. Hornet’s movement kit is faster, more vertical, and more aerial than the Knight’s, and that changes how regions connect. The following tools have been shown directly in official material, and each one opens specific map pathways rather than functioning as a generic upgrade. A useful framing is that each tool is also a key, and the world is designed to look at the player as if asking whether they have the right key for the next visible door. That framing is also why tool tutorials tend to be woven into the first room of a new region rather than taught in a separate menu.
| Tool | Primary use | Map effect |
|---|---|---|
| Silk Soar | Vertical dash upward | Reaches previously unreachable vertical branches |
| Clawline | Grappling tether to rings | Crosses wide gaps and skips ground hazards |
| Needolin | String instrument that triggers reactions | Unlocks NPC dialogue and dormant machinery |
| Sprint and Cling | Wall run and ledge cling | Spreads traversal across vertical surfaces |
| Thread Storm | Area attack while airborne | Clears aerial enemy clusters blocking routes |
| Silk Snare | Trap and bind mechanic | Sets up defensive play during route traversal |
| Swift Step | Short evasive dash | Skips tight enemy formations in corridors |
Two things are worth highlighting in this list. First, the silksong map rewards combining tools rather than specializing. Clawline followed by Silk Soar, or Needolin followed by a vertical platforming section, is the typical pattern in shown footage, and players who try to use only one tool per encounter will often find themselves stuck on a route that a different combination would have cleared. Second, several of these tools have secondary interaction uses that affect the environment rather than the player. Needolin, for example, can wake a dormant mechanism that opens a new path, which is how a region of the silksong map can stay unexplored on a first pass even after a careful sweep, and reopen later through a completely different action. A small number of tools also carry hidden costs in the form of silk as a resource, which means that burning tools carelessly in a long route can leave a player without options at the worst possible moment. Players who plan a route by counting the number of tools they expect to spend between two benches tend to reach their destination with more options than players who spend tools reactively.
Fast travel, benches, and how the map reorients the player
Fast travel in the original game was unlocked through a single late-game ability that allowed travel between any discovered bench. The design of the silksong map preserves bench-to-bench travel but signals that the pacing of when that ability is granted is more deliberate. The developer has referenced multiple bench systems in pre-release material, including dedicated travel points, and the apparent intent is to spread the unlocking of long-distance travel across more of the campaign. That has practical consequences for how a player should plan routes, because a fast-travel unlock that arrives one region too late can turn a short side trip into a twenty-minute slog through already-cleared ground. Players who have played the original game often underestimate how much of their late-game speed came from that single unlock, and they relearn the cost of long routes on foot when they start the sequel.
- Treat each new bench as a strategic asset rather than a checkpoint. The next bench is often the difference between a frustrating detour and a clean route, and benches placed near late-game ability gates tend to matter more than the very first bench in a region.
- Plan to revisit a region from a different bench entry point after a new traversal tool is acquired. The same screen of the silksong map can look entirely different depending on which bench you approach from, and that difference is often the only signal that a new shortcut exists.
- Save currency for benches. In past Hollow Knight play, players who spent all their geo on early weapons often regretted it once they realized benches had to be unlocked for a small cost in the sequel’s economy, and the same caution is likely to apply here.
- Note the rooms that are suspiciously empty. A bare room with a single decorative prop and no enemies is often a placeholder for a future bench or fast-travel node, and the silksong map tends to fill those in gradually as the campaign progresses.
The reason this is worth restating is that the silksong map is not a static image. It is a layered object whose readability increases as the player accumulates both benches and tools. A first-time player who tries to plan a full route before they have any of these is essentially planning against the wrong version of the map, and the resulting route often collapses the moment a single bench turns out to be slightly out of reach. Treating the map as a moving target rather than a fixed blueprint is the single most useful adjustment a new player can make. Players who learn to update their mental map every time they sit at a new bench tend to find the late game less confusing than players who try to hold the entire layout in their head from the start.
Region pacing and how the map shapes the campaign arc
The shape of the silksong map is closely tied to the shape of the campaign. Early regions such as Moss Grotto are designed to teach the basic movement verbs in a forgiving environment, while later regions such as Greymoor and the Coral Area add environmental hazards that change the cost of every mistake. A useful way to read the map is by its pacing gradient: regions closer to the citadel tend to be more architecturally dense and narratively loaded, while regions further out tend to be more open and more focused on traversal puzzles. The result is a soft funnel in which the player is gently guided toward the citadel without being told to go there directly. The funnel also gives the developer room to vary difficulty, because the open outer regions can host optional bosses that are mechanically harder than anything in the dense inner regions.
For players planning a first run, that gradient suggests a simple rule: do not try to 100 percent a region the first time through it. The first visit is for orientation, the second is for collecting, and the third is for the optional content that the region was clearly designed to hide. Trying to complete a region on visit one usually burns resources and burns time, and the silksong map punishes that habit more than Hallownest did, because the bench spacing and the tool costs both assume the player will return with better equipment. A region like Greymoor, for example, is much easier to clear once the player has the wall-cling tool and a reliable healing source, and trying to push through it on a first visit often costs more attempts than the player can afford.
There is also a quieter pacing signal in the way the developer has placed rest points. Benches tend to appear at the natural breaks in a region’s narrative and mechanical density, which means that the spacing of benches on the silksong map is itself a hint about where the developer expects the player to take a breath. Players who respect those breaks tend to enjoy the campaign more than players who try to chain regions together, because the breaks are part of how the game manages its own intensity. The breaks also function as soft save points, which is worth keeping in mind on harder platforming sections where a single fall can erase a lot of progress.
Map design lessons for game developers
For developers reading the silksong map as a design case study, several decisions stand out. The first is that the map is part of the game’s pace, not a separate layer on top of it. Filling in the map is a pacing mechanism because each new cartographer visit is a quiet beat in an otherwise high-intensity run, and the player notices those beats because they sit between combat encounters rather than inside them. The second is that vertical layering has been used not just as a visual flourish but as a structural alternative to horizontal hubs, which gives the silksong map its tree-like shape. The third is that tools gate regions directly, which is a way of converting progression into geography. When a tool is acquired, the world physically changes, and the map acquires new readable paths. That last point is especially useful for designers who want to avoid the traditional key-on-key-off pacing of older metroidvanias.
A useful exercise is to take any small region of the original game and ask how it would have to be redesigned if Hornet’s kit were the only available movement set. Most designers find that this kind of exercise exposes hidden assumptions about corridor width, ceiling height, and the placement of benches, because many rooms in the original game only work for a slower, shorter character. The silksong map is a good example of that exercise already having been done for an entire game, and studying the way rooms are scaled in the trailers gives a clear sense of how much the underlying assumptions have shifted. The corridor width in the Citadel, for example, is clearly wider than the equivalent corridor in the Forgotten Crossroads, which suggests that the level designer was working from Hornet’s sprint speed rather than the Knight’s walking speed.
There is also a quieter design lesson in the way optional content is layered onto the map. Optional bosses, hidden rooms, and side quests are not placed at random; they are placed at the intersections of major paths, where a player passing through on the main route is most likely to notice an off-color door or a slightly different background. The silksong map rewards curiosity at exactly the points where a player is most likely to have it, which is harder to design than it sounds, because it requires the level designer to predict where the player’s attention will land rather than to force it with arrow signs or quest markers. That design choice also keeps the main path uncluttered, because the optional content lives in the spaces the player is already looking at rather than in off-screen branches the player has to discover separately.
How community atlases differ from official material
Community-built maps for the original Hollow Knight reached a high level of accuracy, and a similar ecosystem has grown around the silksong map during pre-release. Players should treat these atlases carefully. The most accurate ones flag which content has been verified through official footage and which has been inferred from datamined builds, naming conventions, or placeholder regions. Inferred content is useful for planning but should not be treated as a guide to the shipped product, because names, region boundaries, and even the existence of certain sub-areas can change between a beta build and the final release. The safest habit is to use community maps as a planning sketch, not as a checklist, and to revisit them after launch when the actual room layouts are public. A community map that does not flag which content is inferred is usually older than the latest developer update, which is a useful tell when deciding how much weight to give it.
There is also a difference between a community map that is a visual reference and a community map that is a strategy guide. Visual references are mostly safe, because room shapes and bench positions rarely move between a beta and a release. Strategy guides that recommend specific routes or specific ability orders are more fragile, because the developer may have rebalanced an ability or moved a quest trigger between builds. Players who read strategy guides from beta-era sources should treat any recommendation about the best order in which to clear regions with a healthy amount of skepticism, because the developers themselves have said that region difficulty can shift right up until the final weeks of development. The same caution applies to written walkthroughs, which can drift out of date quickly once the actual shipping build is in players’ hands.
A practical habit is to bookmark a single high-quality community atlas and check it once per major developer update, rather than reading it continuously. That habit keeps the player oriented without overfitting to a specific build, and it makes it easier to remember which parts of the silksong map were inferred rather than confirmed. It also reduces the temptation to optimize routes before the player has any of the relevant tools, which is the most common cause of frustration in the opening hours of a metroidvania.
What to expect at launch and what to wait for
The honest summary for someone searching for the silksong map today is that the strongest verified information is the list of named regions, the cartographer mechanic, the bench system, and the traversal tool set. Everything more specific, such as the exact order in which regions become accessible, the size of each region in playable minutes, the placement of optional bosses, and the location of secret endings, is either inferred or unannounced. A practical plan is to treat the silksong map as a known skeleton with many unknown details, build a first-pass route around the skeleton, and accept that the details will be filled in by play rather than by reading. That posture also keeps the player from over-investing in a plan that the developer may have invalidated by launch.
That posture is also the most useful for the article’s primary reader. The silksong map is designed to be uncovered, and pre-release guides should be read as a sketch of the skeleton rather than a description of the finished body. A new player who walks in expecting a fully-charted atlas will spend the first hours frustrated that the map is half-empty, while a new player who walks in expecting a skeleton will spend those same hours enjoying the act of filling it in. The latter experience is closer to what the developer has described as the intended one, and it is the experience the rest of this article has been written to support. Players who carry that posture into the game also tend to be more forgiving of small design surprises, because they are not anchoring their enjoyment to a specific plan.
For readers who want a single concrete habit to take into the game, the simplest is this: every time you unlock a new bench, open the silksong map and re-read the surrounding rooms as if you had never seen them before. New benches tend to reveal routes that the player walked past on a first visit, and the act of re-reading the map after each new bench is the closest thing the game offers to a built-in tutorial for its own design. Players who adopt that habit tend to report higher completion numbers and lower frustration in the late game, because the late game is exactly where the map rewards the players who learned to read it as a layered object rather than a flat one. The same habit also helps the player notice when a new traversal tool has quietly opened a path that was previously closed, because the new bench tends to sit near that path.
For an overview of how the sequel changes core mechanics relative to the original game, a written breakdown of confirmed differences tracks the same set of tools and regions described above and adds a few details on combat, healing, and quest pacing that this article has intentionally kept narrow. Pairing that breakdown with the structural notes here tends to give a player a useful first-pass mental model of the silksong map before launch, without locking in any detail that the developer has not yet committed to. The Wikipedia entry on the original game also offers useful background on the studio’s prior design choices, including the way the original cartographer system shaped Hallownest and what was preserved when the team began designing Pharloom; that background is summarized in the Hollow Knight article, which is a good starting point for readers who want to see the design lineage of the silksong map at a glance.
Frequently asked questions
Is the silksong map bigger than Hollow Knight’s map?
The developer has indicated that Pharloom is larger than Hallownest in playable area, with more vertical layering and a higher region count. The exact multiple has not been published, and shipping size can change during final optimization. As a working estimate, plan for noticeably more map rather than a strict percentage increase, and expect the difference to show up in vertical space more than horizontal space.
Will the silksong map have a fast travel system like the original?
Yes, fast travel is built on a bench system similar to the original game. The pacing of when long-distance travel is unlocked is expected to be more spread out across the campaign, but bench-to-bench travel is part of the confirmed design, and benches are likely to remain the central node of the fast-travel graph.
Do I need to find a cartographer to fill in the silksong map?
Yes. The cartographer mechanic returns, with Cornifer confirmed in the sequel through trailer footage. Each region’s map is unlocked when the cartographer is first found in that region, and the rest of the detail is filled in as the player explores rooms, breaks hidden walls, and sits on benches. Skipping the cartographer is technically possible but tends to leave a region unreadable for the rest of the run.
How many regions does the silksong map have?
Around a dozen distinct regions have been referenced in official material, including the citadel hub and starting town. The final count is not confirmed and could shift in either direction between the current pre-release state and the shipping build, and some of the corridors between regions may also be promoted to their own named areas before launch.
Will fan-made silksong map guides be accurate at launch?
Pre-release community atlases are useful for orientation but should be treated as a working sketch rather than a final reference. Region names, boundaries, and even the existence of certain sub-areas can change between datamined builds and the shipped product, and the most accurate community maps flag which entries have been confirmed against official footage and which are inferred from placeholder data.
Can I plan a full route before launch using the silksong map?
A rough route based on confirmed regions and tools is reasonable, but detailed route planning that depends on specific collectible placement is better done after launch, when the actual shipped version of the map is available. Treating pre-release planning as a sketch and post-launch planning as a precise route is usually a more productive split than trying to lock in everything ahead of time.
Does Hornet climb and fly more than the Knight, and how does that affect the silksong map?
Yes. Hornet’s kit is built around vertical movement, aerial combat, and tools like Silk Soar and Clawline. The result is that the silksong map has more vertical pathways and aerial shortcuts than Hollow Knight’s horizontal-leaning underground, and the average room is taller and narrower than the equivalent room in the original game.
Are the silksong map regions connected in a single contiguous world?
Yes. The original game’s design of one continuous interconnected world carries over to Pharloom, with regions connected by traversable corridors, vertical shafts, and ability-gated routes rather than separate loading zones. That continuity is part of why bench placement and tool gating matter so much, because a single missing ability can wall off a large section of the map behind a corridor the player cannot yet traverse.
Will the silksong map include a percentage completion tracker?
The original game tracked completion through individual counters for collectibles, bosses, and similar categories, and the sequel is expected to follow the same approach. A single global percentage is unlikely; completion is typically reported per category, which can give a misleading impression of how much of the map is left if a player focuses on one category at the expense of others.
Where can I find the most accurate pre-release silksong map information?
Official developer interviews, the official trailers, and the developer’s written updates remain the most reliable source. Community resources are useful for planning but should be cross-checked against the developer’s own statements before being treated as final, and any guide that quotes specific numbers for region size or completion percentages should be treated with caution until the developer confirms those numbers.
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