Assuming you just beat the Last Judge in Hollow Knight: Silksong and didn’t enter into the Citadel through the horrifying biome that is The Mist, you probably crawled out of The Underworks and feel pretty overwhelmed as you enter the Choral Chambers.
These gilded halls are home to some rather annoying enemies, several fast travel tubes, the only Bellway for miles, and a ton of secrets. It’s the Forgotten Crossroads of the Citadel in a way, including containing the entrance to a rather important fight.
This is one of the largest, most complex areas in the entire game, and comprises a majority of the Citadel’s complicated infrastructure. Needless to say, a guide that details exactly how to progress here is necessary.
Just navigating around the place is pretty manageable, but exploring and finding all the hidden goodies, as well as the best path forward, can be a complicated task. I’ll be running you through just how to progress and how to find some good stuff along the way.
Lower Left-side Halls
Right from the onset, as soon as you pop out of the hole at the top of the Underworks, you can head left for a very appreciated free bench. Further to the left, you’ll find a big, circular room. You can head left here and find a shortcut to the Grand Gate, but otherwise, go up and around.
Activate the lever, and up from here, there are a few shards in the somewhat obscured lever-activated hatch to the left. Climbing up higher, we can grab a couple more beads and get a preview of the Ventrica Station, which is blocked off from this side.
Nonetheless, head right and pay for the map of this place, which will do wonders for helping us navigate the whole thing. Going forward, you can progress by opening a hatch in the floor, which drops you into a little den of easily dispatched spiders.
Out of the top, you have quite a walk ahead of you, past tons of dead denizens of the citadel, until you run into Lace. She will taunt you about your persistence, then all those dead residents will come to life, and you’re in for a fight.
Central Left-side Halls
The enemies here aren’t too bad, but do be mindful of the ones with some red on their clothing, as they tend to take big swings or throw projectiles that can catch you quite easily. Either way, this isn’t a combat room, so you can just leave if you’re low on health.
You can enter the bottom right room, but you’ll find it’s blocked off by an elevator that can only be unlocked with a very particular key. We’ll explore that later on, so make a note of this area and return to the very tall room.
Platform up, swat away the sword enemy, and break the window to the room on the left. It may seem like nothing at first, but you can jump up the wall and find a very nice Rosary Bead from looting a dead body in the back.
Back in the main tall room, head up and to the upper left exit, where you’ll find a bunch of enemies and quite a few Rosaries. The top of this room is currently blocked off, but we can keep heading to the left and see what’s over there.
Far Left-side Halls
Fight through some enemies, and then we can start making our way through the door on the left. Jump across spikes, and you can choose to go further left to see The Slab or drop down. Going down, we’re heading to the right, first and foremost.
This puts you in the Citadel Spa, which may look disappointing at first, with only a couple of showerheads, but you can break the floor in the first room of it. This takes you into an underground steam pipe system, which doesn’t hold any hidden items, but does contain an entrance to the secret area of the spa.
This entrance connects the leftmost side of the map to the middle and is a very convenient route for a quest later on. Now that that’s done, we’re heading left, fighting with a bunch of silk-strung enemies, hitting a lever, and heading further down.
Grab some rosaries, head down, and we’ll start this big room with the upper right segment, where a ton of optional enemies will spawn. Leave or beat them up, and drop down and to the right, where you’ll be met with a chest containing a ton of rosaries.
Leaving this bigger room and heading further down and to the right, we can finally activate that Ventrica Station, which will make life way easier. Once you’re using this place as a hub to get to all the areas in the citadel, these things become a necessary godsend.
Large Left-side Drop
Open the shortcut, and get back in that tall room where we took a left to get to the Ventrica Station. Start heading up, and you can enter the upper left exit to find a few Silk dispensers, which aren’t really useful, so we’re heading further up.
Up the timed platforms, the next room up and to the left has a bunch of bells that will ring out when you stand on the pressure plate. You need to repeat whatever pattern they ring out in, so you could pay attention, or you could just use this cheat sheet.
From left to right, the first pattern goes 1, 5, 4, 6. The second goes 3, 6, 5, 1, 7. The third and final one rings out 2, 4, 6, 3, 5, 1. After this, you will receive one Cogheart Piece, something that may be important later on.
Up more timed platforms, head to the right, which will make you jump with pretty strict timing while dodging an enemy. I’d recommend luring the enemy to the starting platform and killing it first, then jumping across to claim your prize.
Up even more timed platforms, the top left entrance here has us taking on a winged swordsman to protect everyone’s favorite, Grindle. There is nothing else in this room, but everyone loves Grindle, right?
Central Left-side Drop
Finally, up at the top right room, we’re going to make some real progress. Drop down and fight off the really quite tough enemies in here, and jump over to the left for some extra rosaries as a well-earned reward. Time your jumps to the right, and we’re in another massive room.
Break open the wall directly to the right, drop down to grab some silk, and acknowledge the big, scary saw blades you can’t pass. Fall down this room with all due respect to the sharp, golden spikes, and break open the cracked wall on the right side, which will let you flick a lever, go back up, soar past the saws, and save a flea.
Head back to the bottom, where you can open up a nice shortcut to the tall room that started us on this entire thing, then head right into a very cramped hallway. Walking past the tattered curtains, we can find a fly-infested room, head a little farther up, and get a glimpse of that sweet, rare Pale Oil.
You can’t quite break this wall down, though, so instead, head to the top right and nab a Silkeater, then head out. Falling back down the tall room, and going right, we can finally head up to the top right entrance and grab another blessing in the form of a bench.
Lower Middle Halls
Heading right from that bench and opening up the hatch, get ready to fight off some spiders and steam. Every path here will coalesce on the bottom right and lead into a very long, straightforward hall. Since you’re here, head over to the left and open a shortcut to the left-side halls.
The area to the right has some moving cogs and a flying mechanical bug, but it’s all rather light work to take care of. The end of this hallway is rather packed tight with enemies that love throwing their heavy-hitting blows toward you, but you should be able to do a few hit and runs to take care of them.
Lower Right-side Halls
As soon as you enter the room on the right, you should drop all the way down, and go open up the Grand Bellway, then buy the bench and Ventrica Station alongside it. This comes in incredibly handy, as the trek out of the Citadel and back to the rest of Pharloom is really arduous.
The room up and to the left of this isn’t much special; you can just dodge the spikes, take out the two thieves, and break the cocoons to nab a Silkeater. You can also enter the door right above the Bellway, but there isn’t much for us there at the moment, aside from a little lore.
Further up, you can break the glass blocking an entrance marked by three pins, but the internals are just another teaser of more Pale Oil, and an easy way to get away from enemies. Head back, pogo off the bells that remind me of the Terraria Calamity Mod OST, and enter into another dark, cramped hallway.
There’s a big lever in here that turns the massive wheel with a hole in it, a feature of any good modern home. Turn it to go vertically, and wall jump up the thing. You can head left for more silk dispensers, but who cares?
Upper Right-side Halls
Pogo off more bells, and open up the door at the top right, since it’s the only option currently. This hallway is pretty straightforward and just requires a few well-timed dashes to get through, so you shouldn’t have any trouble.
At the other end of it, you’ll come across a very big, regal-looking chapel. Head inside, ring the bell, bask in the free bench, and come outside to be chewed out by an old man. This begins the town of Songclave, which will gradually get more residents as you progress.
At the very rightmost part of Songclave, you can find the White Key that will be able to open up the elevator we found forever ago, which leads to a smaller, separate area. For now, though, head back to the left and climb all the way up.
At the top here, you can activate another Ventrica station, which will be incredibly useful throughout most of Act 2. Head down and start going to the left, across the extremely long hallway with a glass floor, containing several beefy guards.
You can execute a well-timed dive kick to bounce up and over these guys, but they do drop a ton of money, so you may want to try killing them. Continuing left, you can find an upper entrance that you won’t be able to access without wings, and you can head down to unlock a shortcut.
Be careful now, as going much further left will throw you into a boss fight with the Cogwork Dancers, and you have plenty of opportunity to gear up beforehand. You do need to defeat them to make progress, open up the Cogwork Core, and head to the upper left, so give it your best shot.
Upper Left-side Halls
Now that those guards have been dispatched, and you can enter the top left area, there are a couple of options forward. You can go left, as the route upwards is locked currently, or descend to explore more of the Choral Chambers, which is what we’re going to do first.
The top two gates on the right of this room are simply shortcuts to exit the Cogwork Core, so don’t worry about them. You can enter the top left gate by dropping in from above, and the lower left gate is always unlocked. Head further down, and find two more gates.
The right gate can be bypassed by going underneath it, but correct me if I’m wrong; there is no way to bypass the left gate here. Either way, drop down, run across this huge dining hall, and find the Royal Mergwin, who will task you with a massive quest for some pale oil.
With that, open up those shortcuts, then climb back up to the room that was further left of the Cogwork Dancers, behind a breakable wall. Here, you can head up a big vertical platforming challenge on timed platforms and open up a treasure chest for your reward of seeing Grindle. This is way easier if you wait till you acquire wings, though.
Further to the left, you’ll find some rings that you need to grapple onto to climb. It just leads you into High Halls proper and lets you unlock that shortcut we saw earlier. That said, grab the bench here, and from here, you have plenty of new places to explore, all connected to these chambers.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Released
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September 4, 2025
- ESRB
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E10+ For Everyone 10+ // Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood
- Developer(s)
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Team Cherry
- Publisher(s)
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Team Cherry
- Engine
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Unity
- Franchise
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Hollow Knight
#Choral #Chambers #Full #Guide #Walkthrough