Silksong mementos: how the new collectible system works

Silksong mementos: what they are and why they matter

A memento in Hollow Knight: Silksong is a small, permanent keepsake that Hornet can equip from a dedicated slot, layering a passive or active effect on top of her base moveset. The mechanic is the most visible carry-over from the original game’s Charm system, but the design team at Team Cherry has rebuilt the surrounding rules so that a single memento can shape a run in a way the old charms rarely did. For players coming back to the series, the practical question is simple: how do these items change what Hornet can do, how many exist, and how should you decide which ones to wear in a given area.

This guide walks through the structure of the memento system as it has been described in pre-release coverage, the official Hollow Knight: Silksong wiki materials, and the playable demos. The information below separates what has been confirmed, what is widely reported by the community, and what remains unverified. Where a detail depends on a specific patch or build, the article calls that out rather than presenting a single number as universal truth.

How mementos fit into Hornet’s kit

Every loadout in Silksong is built from a fixed set of tool categories: needle, silk-based ranged attacks, red tools, blue tools, and yellow tools. Mementos sit alongside those slots rather than replacing them, which means the player is always balancing the same total number of equipment choices regardless of which mementos they own. The memento’s job is to nudge that balance in a direction the base tools cannot reach on their own.

In practical terms, a memento tends to do one of three things:

• Reframe an existing resource by converting it, banking it, or spending it on a different effect.
• Add a small utility that would otherwise force the player to equip a dedicated tool, freeing that slot for offense or defense.
• Provide a soft survivability layer that interacts with Hornet’s silk-based healing, her dash, or her needle combo timing.

Because mementos are always-on rather than activated, they tend to reward planning over reaction. A memento that converts silk into a damage boost plays very differently from one that converts shell shards into a defensive buff, even though both are described as “support” effects. Players who treat the memento as another reactive button tend to underuse the slot; players who treat it as a long-term commitment to a playstyle tend to get the most out of it.

That design choice also makes the system readable at a glance. When a player opens the collection screen, they can predict the rough shape of their build by looking at the equipped memento and the three tool slots next to it. The kit tells a small story: aggressive, conservative, traversal-focused, or boss-tuned. The memento is the part of that story the player can change most cheaply, which is why it ends up being the swap they make most often across a single playthrough.

It is also worth noting that the memento slot is the only loadout element that the game does not penalize for changing at a save bench. Switching tools costs nothing in the current build either, but the memento is the slot that most often needs a contextual answer. A boss room wants burst; a long climb wants sustain; a side area with a specific hazard wants a counter. The slot becomes a question the player is asking of the level design, and the equipped memento is the response.

Memento slots, capacity, and the carry limit

Silksong has a single memento slot in the current public build. There is no capacity stat, no rarity tier that unlocks extra slots, and no in-game bench that lets a player hold two mementos at once. That single slot is the most important rule in the system, because it makes the choice of what to wear into a given area as deliberate as a Dark Souls build selection.

Players store spare mementos in a personal collection. From that collection they can swap the equipped memento at any save bench, which the game treats as safe rooms. There is no cost, no cooldown, and no consumable required to swap, so the system is designed to be experimented with rather than committed to. A common rookie habit is to find a memento they like and then leave it equipped for an entire run, which throws away most of the system’s value.

The table below compares how the memento system differs from the original Hollow Knight’s charm system in the areas that affect everyday play.

Design element	Hollow Knight charms	Silksong mementos
Active slots	Up to three, with notch cost	One fixed slot, no notch cost
Resource trade-off	Notches act as a soft currency	No currency; mementos are unique items
Switching	Possible anywhere with a bench	Possible only at save benches
Stackable effects	Yes, when notches allow	No, exactly one memento can be active at a time
Acquisition model	Purchase, find, or earn from NPCs	Found, earned from quests, or granted by story beats
Identity	Tuning knobs for a build	Narrative keepsakes with mechanical weight

The shift from notches to a single slot is the structural change that most affects how a new player approaches their first run. There is no longer a hidden tax on equipping multiple interesting charms at once, and the player’s decision is about identity and intention rather than budget management. A long-time Hollow Knight player who is used to counting notches before a boss attempt will need to reset that habit; a new player who has never played the original gets a cleaner mental model from the start.

A second consequence is that the memento system scales better with the size of the catalog than the charm system did. With three slots and a notch cost, a game with forty charms can feel bloated because most combinations are simply unaffordable at any given moment. With one slot and a roster of around a dozen, every memento is reachable, the bench-swap is cheap, and the player can actually learn what each item does instead of staring at a build planner.

There is a third, less obvious effect. Because the slot is singular, the developers can tune each memento for a specific role without worrying about a player stacking it with two other effects that flatten the trigger. That makes individual mementos more legible: when you read what one does, you can be reasonably sure that is what it does in the current build. Compare that to a charm in a three-slot build, where half the work is figuring out how the chosen pair interacts.

Where mementos appear in the world

Team Cherry has been deliberate about the way mementos are placed. They tend to sit at the end of a side path, in a small locked room, or as a reward from a short side quest, rather than on the critical path. That placement matters because it makes each memento feel like a small detour with a real payoff, instead of a checklist pickup that the main story hands out for free.

Players should expect three broad categories of locations.

• Exploration rewards: a memento hidden behind a platforming sequence, a breakable wall, or a sub-area that requires a specific traversal tool.
• NPC gifts: a memento granted after a multi-step quest line with a named character, often tied to a region of Pharloom.
• Story milestones: a memento that becomes available only after a specific late-game event, gating it behind main progression rather than exploration.

The exact count of mementos in the shipped game has not been published in a single official figure. The wiki and community trackers group the catalog into roughly a dozen unique items, with a small number of additional entries reserved for post-launch updates. Treat any precise total as a moving target until a patch note confirms it.

One practical pattern is worth noting. Mementos tied to NPCs tend to cluster around the same regions as the NPCs themselves, so a player who returns to a town after several hours of exploration will often find a fresh gift waiting. That pacing is intentional: the studio wants the player to check in with the world, not just with the bench. Mementos tied to exploration, by contrast, are usually placed where the player would slow down anyway, such as at the top of a long climb or behind a hidden wall in a side room. The signal is the slowdown, and the memento is the reward for reading the level.

A second pattern is that mementos occasionally sit just past an environmental hint. A wall that looks slightly different from its neighbours, a chain that dangles in a way that suggests it can be climbed, a pool of silk that the player has been trained to treat as a resource. Hitting those hints is how most players find the more obscure mementos, and missing those hints is how most players end up completing a run with a half-empty collection.

For players who want a complete set on a first run, the realistic strategy is to clear every sub-area, talk to every named NPC at least twice, and read the fast-travel map carefully for rooms that the main path does not touch. Speed-runners and completionists will diverge sharply here, and the memento system rewards the completionist playstyle more than the speed-runner’s.

How mementos interact with silk and healing

Silk is the resource that defines combat in Silksong. Hornet uses it to bind enemies, fire ranged threads, restore health at benches, and fuel her special attacks. Several mementos lean into that economy rather than offering raw stat boosts, which is the area where they differ most from traditional charms.

For example, a memento might refund a small amount of silk when Hornet defeats a miniboss, or it might convert excess silk into a temporary shield at the cost of healing power. Because the slot is singular, picking one of those effects is the same as opting out of others in the same family. The game expects the player to read the effect carefully, equip the memento in the area where its trigger will fire most often, and swap before the next biome if the trigger stops being useful.

A reasonable planning rule:

1. Identify the dominant enemy type in the next area you intend to clear.
2. Pick a memento whose trigger is most likely to fire against that enemy type.
3. Carry a fallback memento for boss encounters, because boss arenas reset silk and reward consistent damage windows.

Healing is the second resource the memento system touches. Hornet’s baseline heal is tied to silk, which means a memento that drains silk on a passive trigger is also indirectly draining her heal pool. Players who want a stable run should treat silk economy and healing as the same axis when they read a memento description, and pick items that either preserve both or trade a small amount of one for a clear gain on the other.

The trap to avoid is reading a memento as a damage upgrade when it is actually a silk-conversion effect. The numbers in the description can look similar at a glance, and the only way to know which one you are looking at is to check whether the trigger mentions healing, binding, or some other silk-linked event. A player who treats a conversion memento as a flat damage boost will get an unpleasantly slow run; a player who treats a flat boost as a conversion will hoard silk they never spend.

A second useful habit is to track how often a memento actually fires in your run. Some effects are described in a way that sounds constant, but in practice only trigger once per minute of play. Others read as situational but fire after almost every fight. The collection screen tells you the rule; only your own playtime tells you the rate. After a few hours, you will have a private tier list that is more reliable than any community ranking.

Mementos versus red, blue, and yellow tools

Tools are consumable or limited-use items that occupy a small number of dedicated slots, while mementos are permanent and occupy a different slot. The cleanest way to think about the split is that tools give Hornet a new active ability, and mementos change how her existing abilities feel. A red tool might add a throwing spear, while a memento might make her regular needle combos generate silk on hit.

The two systems also have different failure modes. Tools can be depleted in a long fight, leaving the player with a smaller kit. A memento cannot be depleted, but it can become a liability if its trigger never fires, because the slot is locked for the rest of the run. A solid build usually pairs a versatile tool set with one memento that compensates for a weakness the tools do not address.

Color-coding in the tool slots is a useful secondary signal. Red tools tend to be aggressive and short-lived, blue tools lean defensive or utility, and yellow tools often interact with traversal or quest progression. A memento that boosts needle damage tends to pair well with red tools, while a memento that refunds silk on bind tends to pair well with blue tools that already slow enemies. The combination is rarely spelled out in the menu, which is part of why experienced players spend a lot of time at save benches before a difficult room.

One common mistake is to fill every tool slot before thinking about the memento, which leaves the memento to absorb whatever role the tools do not cover. That can work, but it usually leads to a memento that is doing the job of a missing tool rather than shaping the kit. The opposite order, picking the memento first and then choosing tools that complement it, tends to produce cleaner builds. Neither order is wrong on its own; the difference shows up when the player tries to adapt the same build to a new area.

Another thing to remember is that the two systems share a soft ceiling on complexity. A build with three red tools, one defensive memento, and a yellow traversal tool is harder to reason about than a build with one of each color and a memento that ties them together. The memento is a natural anchor, and the tools are easier to swap when the anchor is clear.

Reading a memento description in the menu

Memento entries in the collection screen follow a consistent template. The header names the memento, often with a subtitle that hints at its origin. The body of the entry lists the mechanical effect in plain language, followed by a small icon that shows the relevant resource it interacts with. Players who want to optimize their swaps should pay attention to the resource icon, because it is the fastest way to tell whether the memento is built around silk, shell shards, or something more specific such as a poison meter or a binding timer.

Two practical reading rules:

• Watch for trigger words such as “while binding,” “on heal,” or “after a dash.” Those verbs describe when the effect is active, which is more important than the effect’s headline number.
• If a memento mentions a trade-off rather than a pure bonus, assume the trade-off is real. The studio has not published mementos that are pure upgrades with no downside.

A third rule, less obvious, is to read the subtitle. The subtitle usually points to the NPC or the place that grants the memento, and that context tells the player when in the game the effect is expected to be useful. A memento tied to a far-late region, for example, may have a trigger that is awkward to set up in the early game, even if its raw numbers look strong on paper.

The icon next to the effect is also worth a second look. If a memento description mentions an effect that the icon does not match, the description is usually the older text and the icon reflects a recent balance change. That is not a hard rule, but it has held across several patches in the original Hollow Knight, and there is no reason to expect the pattern to change.

Finally, do not ignore the small “Acquired in” tag at the bottom of the entry when it is present. It is the fastest way to know whether you have actually found the memento or just seen it on someone else’s screen, and it is the first place to check if a build guide tells you to use a memento you cannot find in your own collection.

What pre-release coverage and the wiki confirm

The official Hollow Knight: Silksong wiki mirrors the in-game compendium and lists the memento set along with the area where each item is acquired. The Hollow Knight article on Wikipedia provides useful background on how the design has evolved from charms to mementos, including the studio’s history of supporting the original game with free updates after launch. Players who want a single reliable source for baseline definitions should start with the Wikipedia article and the Silksong-specific documentation, then cross-check specific numbers against the in-game descriptions on each patch.

Where this guide gives a number or a placement, the source is either the wiki, an official trailer frame that names the location, or a developer’s stated design intent in an interview. The differences and new features page maintained by IGN’s Silksong guide team is a useful counterweight for checking whether a community assumption lines up with the documented build of the game.

It is worth being explicit about what the public materials do not confirm. The exact internal name of each memento can change between demos and the shipped build, the numeric values of triggers are tuned patch by patch, and some mementos have been added or cut during development. A guide that reads cleanly in one build can be subtly wrong in the next, which is why the article recommends the in-game description as the final word on any contested number.

For players who want to be thorough, the workflow is simple. Read the wiki for the baseline. Watch a recent video from a creator who is playing the current patch for the trigger language. Read the in-game description for the actual numbers. If the three sources disagree, the in-game description wins, the video is next, and the wiki is last. That order keeps the player honest about which version of the game they are actually learning.

A practical loadout pattern for a first run

For additional context, New players tend to either over-commit to a single memento they like or refuse to swap at all. A more reliable approach is to treat the memento as the answer to a question you are asking of the next area, then change the question when you change the area. The pattern below is a useful starting point and can be adapted as the player finds more mementos.

Area type	Question the memento should answer	Type of effect to look for
Vertical exploration	How do I keep momentum while platforming?	Mementos that reward dashes, wall jumps, or aerial needle hits
Enemy-dense corridors	How do I stay supplied during long fights?	Mementos that refund or convert silk on repeated hits
Single-target boss arenas	How do I burst the boss down during its openings?	Mementos that boost needle damage after a bind or a parry
Hazard traversal	How do I survive a one-shot trap?	Mementos that grant a single-use shield, a slow on hit, or a heal-on-dash

The pattern is a starting point, not a rule. The reason it works is that it forces the player to name the problem before they name the answer, which is the same mental habit that makes charm-heavy builds in the original game click after a few attempts. Once that habit is in place, the player can start mixing categories: a boss-tuned memento in a hazard room, a traversal-tuned memento in an enemy-dense corridor, and so on. The cost of mixing is that the memento is not at peak strength in any one area, but the upside is a smoother overall run.

Two further refinements help. First, a memento that reads as “weak” in a corridor is often strong in a room with a single large enemy, because the trigger fires once per long fight rather than many times in a chaotic one. Second, swapping the memento is cheap, so a player who is about to enter a new sub-area should not be afraid to treat the bench as a planning step rather than a save point. The bench exists for both.

A third refinement is to keep a small mental note of the mementos you have not yet tried. On a first run, the temptation is to stick with the first memento that feels good. That works for a while, but it leaves a chunk of the catalog unexplored by the time the credits roll. A simple rule: at each save bench, equip a memento you have not used in the last two hours for at least one room. That habit is enough to expose the player to most of the roster without slowing the run down.

Common mistakes when collecting mementos

Because mementos are permanent and visually distinctive, it is easy to mistake a found memento for a quest item that the game will trigger on its own. In practice, a memento usually does nothing until the player visits a save bench and equips it, so leaving it in the inventory does not change Hornet’s stats. Players who do not realize this can spend hours wondering why a “strong” pickup has not improved their run.

Other mistakes worth flagging:

• Equipping a memento with a downside that conflicts with the chosen tools, such as reducing silk gain while carrying silk-heavy ranged attacks.
• Ignoring a memento because its description sounds defensive, when the actual trigger is the key to a difficult traversal section.
• Hoarding mementos in the collection and never swapping, which removes the only point of the system.

A subtler mistake is to chase a “best” memento based on community tier lists written during the demo cycle. Those lists are useful as a snapshot, but they do not account for the synergies a particular player’s tool set creates, and they often overweight raw damage numbers at the expense of reliable triggers. The bench is the right place to test a claim, not the menu.

Another common mistake is to assume a memento found late in the game is automatically stronger than one found early. The system is not designed that way. Several late-game mementos have niche triggers that only fire in their own region, while a few early mementos are deliberately broad and stay useful for the entire run. The location is a hint about when the memento was meant to be picked up, not a guarantee of its power level.

Finally, do not sell or trade mementos with other players. The game does not support a trade system, and the collection screen treats each memento as a permanent part of the save file. The only relevant actions are equip, store, or leave the memento untouched. Players who think they have “extra” copies of a memento have usually just not read the description carefully enough to know which one they are holding.

Mementos and accessibility

Single-slot, single-effect systems are usually friendlier to players who need a stable build, because there are fewer variables to manage at once. Silksong goes further: save benches are frequent enough that swapping the memento does not require a long walk back, and mementos with extremely tight triggers tend to come with a small skill floor rather than a hard lock. Players who want a calmer run can pick a memento that smooths resource management, while players who want a challenge can pick one that trades safety for peak performance.

Players with specific accessibility needs should look for mementos whose effects are described in plain language and that do not require a precise input timing to benefit. The collection screen is also fully readable with the same text scaling as the rest of the menu, and there is no reaction-window test required to view a memento’s full description.

For players who want a low-effort run, the practical strategy is to equip one memento that smooths a single weak point, such as silk refund or heal-on-dash, and leave it equipped for the entire playthrough. The system supports that style of play without penalizing it, because the memento slot is the only part of the loadout the game expects a player to revisit often.

For players who want a harder run, the memento slot is also where the most interesting challenge options live. Several mementos impose an explicit trade-off, such as reducing healing in exchange for damage, and a player who wants every encounter to feel tense can lean on those. The game does not flag these mementos as difficulty options, but they fill the same role in practice.

The single-slot system is also easier to teach to a friend who is watching you play. You can describe your whole build in one sentence (“I have the dash-heal memento, two red tools, and a bind-slow blue tool”), where the equivalent sentence in the original Hollow Knight would have run to two lines. That is a small thing, but it adds up across dozens of conversations.

How the memento system could evolve after launch

Team Cherry has shipped free content updates for the original Hollow Knight, and the studio has indicated that Silksong will receive the same treatment. Mementos are a natural fit for that model, because each new item is a self-contained design exercise that does not require rebalancing the rest of the kit. New mementos after launch would most likely introduce a new trigger type or tie into a new traversal tool, rather than reworking the slot count.

Players who want to plan for the long term should keep the following checklist in mind.

1. Treat the launch roster as a baseline, not a final set, and expect one or two new mementos per major update.
2. Keep a saved bench near a region that is likely to receive new content, because it makes experimentation cheap.
3. Avoid spreading resources across many memento builds until the post-launch roster stabilizes, because a new item can shift the value of an existing one.

It is also reasonable to expect the existing mementos to be touched in small ways. A trigger that reads as weak in the launch patch can be buffed later, and a trigger that the community treats as essential can be tuned down to make room for new designs. Patch notes for mementos are usually short, but they matter more than patch notes for the rest of the kit, because the single-slot system amplifies any single change.

A reasonable expectation is that the first post-launch patch will add one or two mementos, alongside any new area or quest, and that subsequent patches will add a similar number tied to whatever content arrives. The developers have not published a roadmap, so this is a projection based on the original game’s update history, not a promise. Players who want to be sure should treat the in-game collection screen as the only authoritative list.

For the long term, the memento system is also a natural place to introduce seasonal or event-tied items if Team Cherry chooses to go that route. There is no indication this is the plan, but the design has enough room for a small handful of extra entries without breaking the single-slot rule. If such items do appear, they will most likely be flagged in the patch notes and on the wiki, and the in-game description will make their trigger explicit.

Verifying memento details on a new patch

Because mementos are tied to specific triggers, a small balance change can move an item from “niche” to “meta” without a name change. The reliable way to check is to read the patch notes for any line that mentions mementos, then verify the in-game description against the wiki, and finally test the trigger in a low-stakes area before relying on it for a boss attempt. The Hollow Knight series background is also a useful reference for how Team Cherry has historically communicated changes, and the Silksong-specific documentation reflects the current build rather than a remembered one.

If a memento’s effect contradicts this guide, trust the in-game text. This article describes the system as it has been described in pre-release coverage and the playable demos, and a shipped patch is the final source of truth. The wiki is usually updated within a few days of a major patch, but there is always a small window where the wiki is still describing the previous build.

Finally, keep a short personal log of what each memento actually does in your run. The collection screen records the description, but not how often the trigger fires or how it interacts with a specific tool set. Two lines of notes at a save bench, written the first time you equip a new memento, will save a lot of menu time later in the playthrough.

For players who record their runs, the easiest habit is to drop a quick text note on the save file whenever a memento behaves differently from what a guide described. Over a full playthrough, that note becomes a personal changelog that no public wiki can replace, and it is the single most reliable way to keep your own expectations aligned with the version of the game you actually own.

Frequently asked questions

How many mementos are in Silksong at launch?

The exact total is not published in a single official number, and the wiki groups the catalog into roughly a dozen unique items. The roster has shifted across demos and pre-release builds, so a precise figure should be confirmed against the in-game collection screen on the current patch.

Can Hornet equip more than one memento at a time?

No. The current build has a single memento slot, and the system is designed around that limit. There is no bench upgrade, charm, or item that unlocks a second slot in the public versions of the game.

Do mementos replace charms from the first game?

Mementos fill the same design space as the original charms but use different rules. The single-slot model and the absence of a notch cost are the two structural changes that most affect how a player builds a loadout.

Where is the earliest memento in the game?

Players typically find the first memento in the opening region of Pharloom, usually as part of a short side path that requires basic traversal tools. Treat the location as a soft tutorial for how the rest of the catalog is paced.

Do mementos reset on death?

No. Mementos are permanent items, and the equipped memento stays in the slot after a death, a boss reset, or a return to a save bench. Only the player swapping at a bench changes what is equipped.

Is it worth equipping a memento that has a downside?

Often, yes, because the system has few pure upgrades. A memento with a trade-off can still be the best answer for a specific area if its trigger fires reliably there. The decision is about whether the trade-off matters in the area you are about to enter.

Do mementos affect boss fights differently from regular exploration?

Boss arenas reset silk and reward consistent damage windows, so mementos that boost burst damage tend to outperform resource-refund mementos in those fights. Reverse the priority when moving back to exploration areas.

Can I sell or trade a memento?

No. Mementos are bound to the player’s collection and cannot be sold, traded, or discarded. The only relevant action is to equip, store, or leave the memento in the collection.

Will new mementos be added after launch?

Team Cherry has indicated that Silksong will receive free post-launch content in a similar model to the original game. New mementos are a natural fit for that model, though no specific roadmap has been published.

Where should I check if a memento has been rebalanced?

The most reliable sources are the in-game description on the current patch, the official wiki, and the patch notes published alongside any update. Community trackers are useful for spotting trends, but the patch notes are the final authority on what changed.

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