The system
🔴 Red
Ammunition: pins, tacks, drills, rings. Each has a stock that a bench refills for shell shards. The crest decides how many red slots you have; the Architect has the most.
🔵 Blue
Passives for survival: bells that block, masks that absorb, bands that heal. No cost, no stock.
🟡 Yellow
Passives for the world: the Compass, the Shard Pendant that drops more shards, the Magnetite Brooch that pulls rosaries, the Weighted Belt.
🔧 Crafting kits and tool pouches
Four kits raise the red tools’ stock; four pouches add slots. Eight upgrades, 8% of completion, scattered across shops and wishes (Crawbug Clearing is a kit; Bugs of Pharloom is a pouch).
Eight to keep
- Compass: until you know the map by heart, which is never.
- Shard Pendant: more shell shards, which is more red ammunition.
- Magnetite Brooch: rosaries come to you. The 120 it costs at Pebb (220 from Grindle in act 3) pays back in an hour.
- Straight Pin: the first red tool and still a good boss opener.
- Druid’s Eye: the Berry Picking reward that gives silk when hit; it turns mistakes into a spool.
- Warding Bell / Magma Bell: a block on a cooldown for the fights you are learning.
- Multibinder: a slower Bind that heals more, from Bellhart’s upgraded store. Expensive and worth it.
- Silkspeed Anklets: the sprint gets faster; act 3 backtracking gets shorter.
Still to verify
Cross-checked on 17 September 2026 and re-checked on 26 September 2026 against Nintendo Life’s tools list, the Hollow Knight Wiki and the tool lists of Eurogamer and Vandal. What is still unverified is the only thing reading cannot settle — nobody here has played it.