Hollow Knight The Collector is a dark and mysterious threat. It’s locked inside the Tower of Love and preserves the creatures of the Hallownest in jars. In particular, it seems to love Grubs. This is not a nice creature to come across, but you’ll have to face it if you want to beat Hollow Knight in its entirety. In this guide, we’ll be covering how to kill this boss. We’ll also throw in some tips and information that you may not have known before reading this either.
What is Hollow Knight The Collector?
The Collector is a boss that you can hear laughing outside the door to the Tower of Love. It’ll leap from the ceiling and attack you once you enter its room. You’ll see that it’s a shadowy figure that doens’t actually seem to have any defining features. It’s just a black mass. As if the name didn’t give it away, this boss collects the creatures of the Hallownest. If you die to it, you’ll find your shade in one such jar before you enter the arena again. Once killed, void particles spew out of it, and it laughs as it falls to the floor before literally melting before your eyes.
Attacks and Strategies
The Collector is an interesting fight. It has its own moves, but it will also throw jars into the arena to spawn enemies for you to fight. This is the main way in which it’ll fight you, so you need to be well versed in killing the enemies of the Hallownest. If there’s a certain enemy that you actively avoid in the area, go back and get better at fighting it. You need to have a decent amount of skill in facing all of the enemies here if you want to win. The Collector itself will be the easy part.
Now, we’ll look at the actual moves this boss uses in the brief moments that you’re fighting it.
Grab
The boss will leap at your position and make a grabbing motion for you. It’ll deal damage on contact, and this is something that could end up killing you. With so many other enemies to contend with, the last thing you need is The Collector getting its hands on you. Dodge out of the way of this attack when you see it coming. Don’t get caught.
Hop
This isn’t an attack. It’s the method the boss uses to move about the arena. It’s not to be confused with the Grab attack above, because that starts with a leap. It’ll raise its hands and then leap forward a set distance. There are a set number of Hops that The Collector can perform before it can actually use an attack. Use this to your advantage and get the hits in while it’s hopping. It can’t even throw jars at you during this time.
Jars
This is the main move that we mentioned at the start of this section of the guide. The Collector leaps up to the ceiling, where the jars themselves are being kept. It’ll cause these jars to rain down randomly onto the floor below, smash, and then leave you with enemies to fight. If you’re hit by a jar, it won’t break. But it will do damage, so you need to try to dodge each falling one as if it would kill you. At some point it might.
There are three possible enemies that you’ll face from each jar. A Vengefly, Baldur, or Aspid Hunter. You’ll need to kill one enemy for every jar that falls. You can track how many are going to fall from the rattling that The Collector is doing above you. A puff of dust is also gong to show where a jar will fall from. Use this to help you avoid being hit by it.
Once The Collector is done dropping jars on your head, he’ll drop back to the arena for a fight against you. This is when he’ll use his Grab and Hop moves.
The number of jars that are dropped depends on the phase of the fight. The boss will drop jars when there is fewer than three summons on the field, but stop after there are four. In phase 1, it’ll drop two jars and summon a maximum of five enemies. In phase 2, it’ll drop two or three jars for a maximum of six enemies.
Best Strategy
As you can see, the only real attack this boss has to worry about is the Jars move. You can easily avoid its Grab as long as you pay attention to it. Dodge when you see it leap towards you, but only if the hands aren’t raised. If the are, this is a Hop move.
The Hollow Knight The Collector is proud of its jars, but it has no real power to kill you. That’s why it surrounds itself with enemies in jars. It can use those to kill anything that tries to attack it. You need to keep on top of the enemies that are swarming the arena. Otherwise, you’ll end up getting overwhelmed. Focus on killing as many of the smaller enemies as you can whilst avoiding taking damage. Then, battle The Collector as it leaps around the arena. You’ll have to get hits in where you can.
You should use items that you’re comfortable with for this fight. The Collector gets faster and more frantic as it goes on, so you’ll need to be on top of your game and have a lot of skills with whatever you’re using. The boss can even surprise you and attack you while you’re healing, it’s that fast.
The Coiled Nail makes this fight a little easier. Using Fragile Strength or Unbreakable Strength will also help you out. Use your Nail Arts as often as you can, and remember to keep the enemies down and hurt The collector as much as possible.
Hollow Knight The Collector Lore
This is a void creature. It has a preserved collection of alive and dead bugs from the Hallownest and is locked in the Tower of Love. While it always appears happy, its only goal is to preserve other creatures. It trapped the Grubs from the Forgotten Crossroads and tracked their locations on a map. However, it only has three in the tower. It’s also got a connection to the tower’s previous owner, an aristocrat bug that you can find in the Queen’s Gardens. Though it’s dead.