Hollow Knight Charm Tier List: Ranking Every Notch You'll Ever Wear

Hollow Knight came out in 2017. The Godmaster DLC shipped in 2018. Team Cherry hasn't touched the balance since. The charm meta has had eight years to settle, which means the community has had eight years to argue about Quick Slash, and the argument is somehow still going.

What follows is a tier list of all 45 charms in Hollow Knight, ranked by a combination of general usefulness, notch efficiency, and how often equipping the charm makes you wonder why you ever took it off. We're evaluating charms on their own merits first and synergy potential second, because a charm that needs three other charms to justify its existence isn't really S-tier. It's a hostage negotiation.

A note on the Fragile/Unbreakable split: the Fragile versions of Strength, Heart, and Greed are mechanically identical to their Unbreakable counterparts, they just break on death. We're ranking the Unbreakable versions because that's what you're using in Pantheons, which is where tier lists actually matter. If you're still running Fragile Strength in the overworld because you haven't found Divine yet, treat it the same tier.

Forty-five charms. Eleven notches. Let's find out who deserves them.

The Ones You Never Take Off (S Tier)

These charms aren't just good. They're the reason you have a notch system at all, because without the notch cap, you'd equip all five and never think about build diversity again. Team Cherry knew what they were doing when they made the notch math tight enough to force choices between these.

Quick Slash (3 Notches)

The best charm in the game. This isn't controversial. The community argued about it for approximately one year after release and then stopped, because the math is the math. Quick Slash increases your nail attack speed by roughly 52%. That's not a buff. That's a second nail.

Everything in Hollow Knight scales off how often you hit things. Soul generation. Stagger thresholds. DPS windows during boss vulnerability frames. Quick Slash improves all of it simultaneously. It was originally 2 notches. Team Cherry raised it to 3 because it was warping every build around itself. At 3 notches it still warps every build around itself. That's how good it is.

The only scenario where Quick Slash isn't your first equip is a pure spell build, and even then you're thinking about it.

Unbreakable Strength (3 Notches)

Flat 50% nail damage increase. No conditions. No gimmick. No skill ceiling. You hit things harder. Every hit. Every time. The Nail is your primary damage source for the entire game, and Strength makes it half again as powerful.

The Fragile version breaks when you die, which sounds like a dealbreaker until you realize that Pantheon runs don't trigger the break condition, and Pantheons are where you need Strength most. Divine charges 15,000 Geo for the Unbreakable upgrade, which sounds absurd until you realize you'd pay 150,000 if she asked.

Shaman Stone (3 Notches)

The magic build's Quick Slash. Shaman Stone increases spell damage by 33% for Vengeful Spirit/Shade Soul and a staggering 51% for Desolate Dive/Descending Dark. It also increases the hitbox size on your spells, which is the part people forget and which matters more than they think.

Shaman Stone turns Shade Soul from "supplementary ranged damage" into "the reason the boss died." Descending Dark with Shaman Stone is one of the highest-DPS moves in the game and gives you invincibility frames while you're casting it. The charm doesn't make magic builds viable. Magic builds are always viable. Shaman Stone makes them dominant.

Mark of Pride (3 Notches)

Extended nail range. Sounds boring. Isn't. Mark of Pride increases your effective reach by 25%, which means you can hit things from distances where they can't hit you back. In a game where most deaths come from being slightly too close to a boss attack, "hit from farther away" is the most powerful defensive buff in the game disguised as an offensive one.

Mark of Pride makes Nail Arts hit from absurd range. It makes pogo bouncing more forgiving. It makes every boss's safe zone 25% larger. Three notches is expensive for what sounds like a quality-of-life improvement, but you'll pry Mark of Pride off players' charm bars with a crowbar.

Voidheart (0 Notches)

Costs nothing. Permanently equipped. Required for most endings. Turns all Siblings friendly. There's no decision to make here. You get Voidheart by progressing the game, and it takes up zero build space. The only reason it's S-tier instead of "doesn't count" is that it genuinely affects gameplay by removing Shade hostility, which is a real quality-of-life improvement in late-game areas.

The Build Completers (A Tier)

S-tier charms define builds. A-tier charms perfect them. The difference is that you'd never build around an A-tier charm, but you'd always build with one. These are the charms that fill in the notch gaps after your S-tier picks and make everything click.

Spell Twister (2 Notches)

Reduces spell cost by 33%. In practice, this means you get roughly one extra spell per full soul meter. Pair it with Shaman Stone and you're casting Shade Soul like it's free. Pair it with Soul Catcher or Dream Wielder and you're casting it like it's actually free. Magic builds without Spell Twister work. Magic builds with it feel unfair.

Half the community thinks this belongs in S-tier. They have a point. The only thing keeping it here is that melee builds don't need it, and S-tier charms are the ones that transcend build identity.

Quick Focus (3 Notches)

Healing in Hollow Knight is slow by design. Quick Focus makes it fast enough to sneak heals into windows that shouldn't exist. Boss staggers become full-heal opportunities. Momentary breathing room becomes one mask recovered. Three notches is steep for a defensive charm, but Quick Focus is the difference between "I can beat this boss if I play perfectly" and "I can beat this boss if I play well."

Mark of Pride's Quieter Sibling: Grubsong (1 Notch)

One notch. Generates soul when you take damage. Sounds minor. Becomes essential. Grubsong means every hit you take gives you resources to heal back, creating a damage loop that sustains aggressive play instead of punishing it. At one notch it fits into literally any build with leftover space, and leftover space is exactly where the best charm decisions happen.

Nailmaster's Glory (1 Notch)

Faster nail art charging at one notch. This is the charm that makes Great Slash go from "situational opener" to "primary damage tool." Cyclone Slash with Nailmaster's Glory melts crowds. Dash Slash with Nailmaster's Glory is a sniper rifle. One notch. One notch!

Lifeblood Core (3 Notches)

Four extra blue masks that can't be healed but don't need to be. Lifeblood Core gives you a buffer of mistakes at the start of every room, which in Pantheon runs is the difference between reaching the final boss at full health and reaching the final boss already tilted from earlier damage.

Grubberfly's Elegy (3 Notches)

At full health, your nail fires a beam projectile. The range is enormous. The damage is real. The condition ("at full health") sounds restrictive until you pair it with Grubsong — now taking a hit generates soul to heal back to full, which re-enables the beam. The Grubsong/Elegy loop is one of the most satisfying synergies in the game. Finding all 46 Grubs to unlock it is the less satisfying part.

Carefree Melody (3 Notches)

The charm everyone underestimates because its effect is probabilistic. Carefree Melody has a chance to block damage, starting at 10% and increasing with each consecutive non-block up to about 80%. Over a long fight, it blocks roughly 30-35% of all incoming damage. That's absurd for a passive effect. The community prefers Grimmchild because Grimmchild is cute, but Carefree Melody is better, and it's not close.

Unbreakable Heart (2 Notches)

Two extra masks, permanently. Simple. Effective. Two notches for two masks is fair math, and having 11 masks instead of 9 makes a material difference in every boss fight. Not exciting. Extremely reliable.

Useful Until You Know Better (B Tier)

These charms work. Some of them work well. All of them get replaced once you've collected enough S and A-tier options to fill your notch bar, which is the defining characteristic of B-tier: they're the charms you love in early game and bench in late game.

Fury of the Fallen (2 Notches)

75% damage increase at one mask of health. The risk-reward ratio is outrageous. Fury of the Fallen is the best charm in the game if you never get hit and the worst charm in the game if you get hit once. Speedrunners love it. Mortals fear it. Respect the skill ceiling.

Soul Catcher (1 Notch)

More soul per nail hit. One notch. Fine. Soul Catcher is the training wheels version of "I want to cast more spells," and for one notch there's nothing wrong with training wheels. Gets outscaled by Spell Twister's efficiency in late game but never truly becomes bad.

Steady Body (1 Notch)

Prevents knockback when you hit enemies with your nail. The community spent years calling this useless before collectively realizing that not getting pushed away from the thing you're trying to kill is, in fact, good. Steady Body's rehabilitation arc is one of the great charm discourse stories. One notch. Quietly excellent.

Dream Wielder (1 Notch)

Faster Dream Nail, more soul from Dream Nail hits. Exploration utility plus resource generation. Dream Wielder is the charm you equip when you're farming soul in a safe room before a boss, and one notch means it barely costs anything to keep around.

Sharp Shadow (2 Notches)

Your shadow dash deals damage. The damage scales with nail upgrades and Dashmaster. Sharp Shadow turns a defensive movement tool into an offensive one, which sounds great and occasionally is great and also occasionally gets you killed because you dashed into the boss instead of away from it. High ceiling. Memorable floor.

Defender's Crest (1 Notch)

A cloud of stink that damages nearby enemies. One notch. Sounds like a joke. Combine it with Glowing Womb or Spore Shroom and the joke starts doing real damage. Defender's Crest is the ultimate synergy charm — mediocre alone, surprisingly effective in the right company.

Flukenest (3 Notches)

Replaces Vengeful Spirit with a swarm of flukes. Against large targets, Flukenest does more damage than the base spell. Against small targets or at range, it's worse. The charm for people who enjoy seeing a boss's health bar evaporate and don't mind the visual noise.

Shape of Unn (2 Notches)

Move while healing. The slug form lets you dodge attacks during Focus, which sounds niche until you fight a boss with constant pressure and realize that standing still to heal is the main reason you're dying. Shape of Unn doesn't make you immortal. It makes you slippery.

Dashmaster (2 Notches)

Faster dash cooldown and downward dashing. The movement speed is nice for exploration. The downward dash is nice for platforming. Neither is nice enough to justify 2 notches in a combat build, which is why Dashmaster lives here and not higher.

Soul Eater (4 Notches)

Soul Catcher but more soul and four times the notch cost. The math works out to roughly the same efficiency as Soul Catcher + Spell Twister for the same notches, but without the spell cost reduction. Soul Eater exists for builds that want raw soul income above all else. Those builds exist. They're not common.

Fine, But You'll Outgrow Them (C Tier)

These charms have a job. Most of them do that job adequately. None of them will be in your loadout when you're pushing Pantheon 5, and that's the polite version of what C-tier means.

Wayward Compass (1 Notch)

Shows your position on the map. Essential for your first playthrough. Completely useless once you know the map. The most beloved C-tier charm in gaming history.

Long Nail (2 Notches)

Mark of Pride but less range and fewer notches. Exists as a stepping stone. Gets replaced. Knows its place in the ecosystem.

Sprintmaster (1 Notch)

Faster walking. Nice for backtracking. Pointless in combat. One notch means it doesn't cost much to keep around, but one notch is still one notch that could be Grubsong.

Hiveblood (3 Notches)

Regenerate one mask of health over 12 seconds. Sounds good. Twelve seconds is an eternity in boss fights. Hiveblood is the charm for exploration and platforming challenges where you have time to wait. White Palace loves it. Pantheons don't.

Stalwart Shell (1 Notch)

Longer invincibility frames after taking damage. The budget defensive option. One notch, does what it says, gets replaced by "stop getting hit" as a defensive strategy.

Gathering Swarm (1 Notch)

Bugs collect your Geo for you. Genuinely pleasant. Genuinely useless once you have enough Geo to not care.

Heavy Blow (2 Notches)

More enemy knockback and faster boss staggering. The problem is that Quick Slash and Steady Body both want enemies to stay close, and Heavy Blow pushes them away. Using Heavy Blow with Quick Slash is like pressing the gas and brake simultaneously.

Spore Shroom (1 Notch)

Damage cloud when you heal. Cute. Only really works with Defender's Crest. One notch means it's almost free, but "almost free" still costs a notch.

Unbreakable Greed (2 Notches)

More Geo per kill. The Geo economy becomes irrelevant in late game. Two notches for money you don't need is the definition of C-tier.

Baldur's Shell (2 Notches)

Protective shield while focusing. Breaks after four hits. The training wheels for healing, replaced by Quick Focus once you learn the boss patterns well enough to find safe windows.

Kingsoul (5 Notches)

Slowly regenerates soul. Five notches. Five! The charm exists as a plot device to unlock Voidheart, not as a build choice. Equipping Kingsoul voluntarily is an act of performance art.

The Bottom of Hallownest (D Tier)

These charms aren't unequippable. Nothing in Hollow Knight is truly unequippable if you're stubborn enough. But equipping any of these is a choice that requires justification, and the justification usually starts with "well, I think it's fun" rather than "well, it's optimal."

Grimmchild (2 Notches)

Here it is. The charm the community loves and the tier list has to be honest about. Grimmchild follows you around and shoots fireballs at enemies. The damage is low. The targeting is unreliable. The fireballs interrupt boss staggers, which actively hurts your DPS. The charm requires completing the entire Grimm Troupe questline to upgrade, and at maximum level it's still worse than Carefree Melody, which you get by not completing the questline.

Grimmchild is adorable. Grimmchild has personality. Grimmchild is a bad charm. All three of these statements are true simultaneously, and the community's refusal to accept the third one is one of the great coping events in gaming history.

Dreamshield (3 Notches)

A floating shield that orbits you and blocks projectiles. In theory. In practice, the shield's rotation speed means it's rarely between you and the thing shooting at you. Three notches for unreliable projectile defense is a hard sell when Mark of Pride exists for the same cost and is useful in every situation.

Thorns of Agony (1 Notch)

Damage thorns when you get hit. Sounds like free damage. The problem is that the thorn animation replaces your normal invincibility frame behavior, which can result in taking additional hits during the animation. A charm that punishes you for using its own effect is a special kind of design irony.

Joni's Blessing (4 Notches)

Converts all health to blue Lifeblood masks (40% more total HP). Removes the ability to heal. Four notches. The charm for people who have decided that healing is a crutch and they'd rather just have more health and never recover it. In a game built around the Focus heal mechanic, voluntarily locking yourself out of healing is a philosophical statement more than a build choice.

Glowing Womb (2 Notches)

Spawns hatchlings that chase enemies. Costs soul continuously. The hatchlings do trivial damage and the soul drain competes with your ability to heal or cast spells. Glowing Womb is the charm that sounds fun until you realize it's eating your survival resources to deal chip damage.

Weaversong (2 Notches)

Spawns weaverlings that do tiny damage. Two notches. The minion charm fantasy without the minion charm payoff. Weaversong's best use case is soul generation when paired with Grubsong, but at that point you're spending 3 notches and two charm slots for what Soul Catcher does in one slot for one notch.

Deep Focus (4 Notches)

Double healing per Focus. Halved Focus speed. Four notches. The math works out to roughly the same healing-per-second as normal Focus, which means you're spending four notches to heal the same amount but less often. The only upside is fewer Focus casts needed, which matters in exactly zero situations where you'd actually want to equip a 4-notch charm.

The Real Takeaway

Hollow Knight's charm system works because the notch math is tight. Eleven notches. S-tier charms cost 3 each. You can fit three S-tier charms and have two notches left for a Grubsong and a Soul Catcher. That's a complete build. The entire tier list above is, in some sense, a conversation about what to do with eleven notches when five of the best options cost three each.

The game has been static since 2018. The meta won't change. Quick Slash is the best charm, Unbreakable Strength is the best damage charm, Shaman Stone is the best spell charm, and Grimmchild is the community's favorite bad charm. These truths have survived eight years of Reddit arguments and they'll survive eight more.

If you're here because you're playing Hollow Knight for the first time — equip Quick Slash, Unbreakable Strength (or Fragile Strength), and Mark of Pride. Fill the remaining notches with Grubsong and whatever makes you happy. You'll clear the game. You'll clear the Pantheons. You'll understand why people have been arguing about this charm system for nearly a decade.

Hollow Knight is available on Steam for $14.99. If you're into metroidvanias, it's one of the best ever made — and if you want something lighter with an entirely different loop, Granny's Rampage is our bullet heaven launching on Steam June 22.