Within the windswept expanse of Far Fields in Hollow Knight Silksong, few environmental mysteries are as immediately intriguing as the sealed door in Pilgrim’s Rest. The ominous banging sounds emanating from behind this metal barrier suggest something urgent—and possibly dangerous—waiting beyond. Yet the door stands resolute, offering no obvious mechanism for entry and leaving many players puzzled about how to proceed.
This isn’t just a simple locked door requiring a key. The Pilgrim’s Rest door represents one of Silksong’s more elaborate environmental puzzles, requiring keen observation skills, advanced movement abilities, and the willingness to explore hidden passages that most players might walk right past. The solution involves one of the game’s most cleverly concealed obstacle courses, culminating in an encounter that tests both your platforming skills and combat prowess.
Understanding Pilgrim’s Rest and Its Context
Location and Significance in Far Fields
Pilgrim’s Rest sits within the broader Far Fields region, an area that serves as a crucial transition zone between different acts of Silksong’s story. The room’s name suggests it once provided sanctuary for travelers crossing these vast open spaces, but now it harbors something that clearly doesn’t want to remain contained.
The architectural design of the room hints at its former purpose—benches for rest, sturdy construction for protection from the elements, and strategic placement along major travel routes. However, the sealed door and the sounds beyond suggest this sanctuary has been repurposed or compromised in some significant way.
Prerequisites for Success
Before attempting to unlock Pilgrim’s Rest door, ensure you have:
- Drifter’s Cloak (Float ability): Essential for navigating air currents in the obstacle course
- Advanced movement skills: Wall jumping, precise platforming, and pogo techniques
- Combat readiness: You’ll face the challenging Rhinogrund
- Patience: The hidden path and obstacle course require careful, methodical progression
The Drifter’s Cloak is particularly crucial, as the obstacle course includes sections that are completely impassable without the floating ability.
Step 1: Finding the Hidden Entrance
The Bell Beast Room: Your Starting Point
The key to unlocking Pilgrim’s Rest door doesn’t begin in the room itself—instead, you need to start from the adjacent Bell Beast room. Exit Pilgrim’s Rest through the left entrance and descend to the mid-point of the vertical area outside. Here you’ll find a room containing both a bench for saving your progress and the intimidating Bell Beast enemy.
This room serves multiple purposes in the overall puzzle design. The bench provides a convenient save point before attempting the challenging obstacle course ahead, while the Bell Beast creates an atmospheric element that reinforces the danger and mystery surrounding this entire area.
Discovering the Secret Path
The hidden entrance to the obstacle course is one of Silksong’s more cleverly concealed secrets. In the Bell Beast room, focus your attention on the small platform positioned to the right of the beast itself. The secret isn’t on top of this platform—it’s underneath it.
Critical technique: Position Hornet directly beneath the small platform and hold the right directional input. What appears to be solid wall is actually a hidden passage that leads to the obstacle course. This type of secret passage represents classic Metroidvania design, rewarding players who investigate seemingly solid surfaces.
Many players walk right past this entrance because it requires counter-intuitive movement—instead of jumping onto platforms, you need to investigate what’s beneath them. This design choice encourages thorough exploration and challenges assumptions about how game environments work.
Step 2: Mastering the Obstacle Course
Understanding the Challenge Layout
The obstacle course beyond the hidden entrance represents one of Far Fields’ most demanding platforming sequences. The course combines multiple movement mechanics—red orb pogoing, air current navigation with the Drifter’s Cloak, and precise spike avoidance—into a flowing sequence that tests your mastery of Hornet’s full movement kit.
The course design follows Silksong’s philosophy of escalating challenges. Early sections introduce individual mechanics, while later portions require you to chain these abilities together in increasingly complex combinations. Success requires not just mechanical skill, but understanding the rhythm and flow of the entire sequence.
Red Orb Pogoing Techniques
The red orbs scattered throughout the course serve as both platforms and momentum generators. Unlike standard enemies, these orbs don’t take damage from your needle strikes—instead, they provide consistent bounce surfaces that allow for precise navigation through spike-filled passages.
Pogoing strategy: Maintain steady rhythm rather than rushing. Each orb bounce should be deliberate and controlled, setting up your position for the next obstacle. Don’t try to skip orbs or take shortcuts—the course is designed with specific timing expectations that shortcuts can disrupt.
Air Current Mastery
The Drifter’s Cloak sections require understanding of the air current mechanics introduced elsewhere in Far Fields. These currents don’t just provide upward lift—they create complex three-dimensional navigation challenges that demand precise timing and spatial awareness.
Floating techniques: Use short, controlled bursts of the Drifter’s Cloak rather than holding the ability button continuously. This provides better control over your trajectory and prevents overshooting your intended landing spots. Watch for visual cues that indicate air current strength and direction changes.
Spike Navigation
The spikes scattered throughout the course aren’t just obstacles—they’re timing mechanisms that create safe and unsafe windows for movement. Many spike sections operate on predictable patterns that you can learn to anticipate and work with rather than simply avoid.
Safety approach: Take time to observe spike patterns before committing to movement. Most sections provide safe waiting areas where you can study the timing without risk. Patience here prevents frustration and repeated deaths.
Step 3: The Rhinogrund Encounter and Switch Activation
Meeting the Guardian
At the end of the obstacle course, turning left leads you to one of Silksong’s more formidable regular enemies: the Rhinogrund. This heavily armored foe serves as the final guardian before the switch that unlocks Pilgrim’s Rest door, representing a combat skill check after the platforming challenges.
The Rhinogrund’s placement isn’t arbitrary—it ensures that only players who have demonstrated both movement mastery and combat proficiency can access the door switch. This creates a sense of earned progression that makes the door’s eventual opening feel genuinely rewarding.
Combat Strategy for Rhinogrund
The Rhinogrund presents a significant combat challenge with its heavy armor, powerful charges, and ability to control space within the confined arena. Success requires understanding its attack patterns and exploiting the brief vulnerability windows that appear between its aggressive maneuvers.
Key tactics:
- Maintain distance to avoid its devastating charge attacks
- Use the arena’s vertical space to create positioning advantages
- Watch for the brief moments when its armor shifts, exposing weak points
- Don’t get greedy with attacks—focus on consistent, safe damage over risky high-damage opportunities
Important consideration: If you hit the switch and then die to the Rhinogrund, the enemy will disappear permanently. This creates a strategic choice about when to activate the switch. Players interested in completing their Hunter’s Journal or claiming the Beast Shard (worth 140 shell shards) should defeat the Rhinogrund before activating the switch.
The Switch and Door Mechanism
The switch itself sits just past the Rhinogrund’s position, positioned so that it’s clearly the reward for overcoming the combat challenge. Striking it with Hornet’s needle sends a signal back through the complex mechanical systems connecting this hidden area to Pilgrim’s Rest, finally opening the long-sealed door.
This mechanical connection showcases Silksong’s attention to environmental storytelling. The switch isn’t just a game mechanic—it’s part of an ancient system that once allowed pilgrims to seal areas for safety, now repurposed to contain whatever has been making those ominous sounds.
Bonus Discovery: The Lost Flea
Alternative Exploration Path
The obstacle course offers more than just the route to the door switch. By heading right instead of left after completing the platforming challenges, you can discover one of Far Fields’ hidden collectibles: a Lost Flea that many players miss entirely.
This alternative path requires using your wall grip abilities to navigate past spools of silk and reach a concealed alcove. The Lost Flea’s placement rewards thorough exploration and provides an additional incentive for players to fully investigate the area beyond the main objective.
Collectible Strategy
For completionist players, the Lost Flea represents an important find that’s easily missed if you focus only on the door-opening objective. Consider exploring this alternative path before activating the switch, as the area’s layout makes backtracking more complex once the main objective is completed.
What Lies Beyond: The Opened Door
The Reward for Persistence
Opening Pilgrim’s Rest door reveals the source of those mysterious banging sounds and provides access to additional secrets within Far Fields. Without spoiling the discovery, the contents justify the elaborate puzzle required to access them, offering both narrative revelations and practical rewards for your efforts.
The revelation also adds context to the area’s history and the reasons for the door’s initial sealing, creating satisfying closure to the environmental storytelling that began with those first ominous sounds.
Where to Experience This Hidden Challenge
Ready to uncover the secrets behind Pilgrim’s Rest door? Begin your journey in Hollow Knight Silksong on any platform:
- Steam: Download for PC
- Nintendo Switch: Get the latest edition
- PlayStation: Available on PlayStation Store
- Xbox: Download from Xbox Store
Advanced Tips for Success
Resource Management
The obstacle course and Rhinogrund fight can be resource-intensive, particularly if you’re still mastering the required techniques. Consider stocking up on healing items and ensuring your thread gauge is ready for emergency healing before beginning the sequence.
Practice Areas
If you’re struggling with specific mechanics used in the obstacle course, consider practicing them in safer areas of Far Fields first. The red orb pogoing and air current navigation techniques appear in other, less punishing contexts where you can develop your skills without the pressure of the complete course.
Sequence Breaking Opportunities
Advanced players may discover alternative routes through portions of the obstacle course, though these typically require precise execution of advanced techniques. While not necessary for completion, these alternatives can provide interesting challenges for players seeking to push their movement skills to the limit.
The Art of Hidden Progression
The Pilgrim’s Rest door puzzle exemplifies Silksong’s approach to rewarding curiosity and thorough exploration. Unlike simple key-and-lock mechanics, this challenge requires players to investigate seemingly innocuous environmental details, master complex movement sequences, and demonstrate combat proficiency—all while following subtle visual and audio cues.
The multi-stage nature of the puzzle creates a sense of discovery and accomplishment that simpler obstacles couldn’t match. Each revelation—finding the hidden entrance, mastering the obstacle course, defeating the Rhinogrund—builds toward the final moment of success when the door finally opens and reveals its long-hidden secrets.
This design philosophy extends throughout Silksong, where the most rewarding discoveries often require the greatest investment of time, skill, and attention to detail. The Pilgrim’s Rest door serves as an excellent example of how environmental storytelling, challenging gameplay, and meaningful rewards can combine to create genuinely memorable gaming experiences.
