Hollow Knight kept adding free content for years — Hidden Dreams, Grimm Troupe, Godmaster — and each update didn't just add bosses; it changed the routing fabric speedrunners build on. Skips got patched out, movement tech shifted, glitch categories that depend on a specific engine quirk only exist on the patch that has the quirk. The result is the most version-literate community in this whole series: ask "which Hollow Knight" and a speedrunner answers with a four-part number and the reason. The second audience is modders, for a structural reason covered below — the Modding API is rebuilt per patch — but make no mistake whose game this is. The speedrun.com guides are the canonical reference, and remarkably, they document the DepotDownloader command themselves: this is a community that adopted the tool as official infrastructure.
01The patch ladder
The whole decision is a short table, settled by the community and stable for years. Read your category's rules first, then pick its patch — never the reverse:
| Patch | What it is | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| 1.2.2.1 | Grimm Troupe final patch | The default — most No Major Glitches runs live here; the speedtech the routes assume still works. |
| 1.0.2.8 | Launch-era build | All Glitches and No Main Menu Storage — the engine quirks those categories exploit only exist this early. |
| 1.4.3.2 | Godmaster final patch | Current Patch runs — and the modding baseline, since this is the last stable target the mod toolchain settled on. |
This is the same versions-carry-rules culture as L4D2's, taken further: in Hollow Knight the patch number is practically part of the category name. If you're not running, the ladder still helps — "play it like it was at launch" is 1.0.2.8, "the complete game before any of this" is 1.4.3.2.
02Getting a patch: branch or depot
Team Cherry keeps the named patches on an official shelf: Properties → Betas lists them — 1.2.2.1, 1.4.3.2 and the rest — and selecting one is the whole job, switching back is "None." Use this first. When you want a build the dropdown doesn't carry, or you want it in its own folder rather than swapping your install, the depot route is what the speedrun guides themselves print. App 367520, depot 367521; the community-verified anchor everyone cites is 1.2.2.1 = manifest 648876203478229944:
> .\DepotDownloader.exe -app 367520 -depot 367521 -manifest 648876203478229944 \
-username you -remember-password -dir .\hk-1.2.2.1For the other rungs, date-match against SteamDB's depot 367521 using the patch dates from the speedrun resources. The game is small — a couple of gigabytes — so the entire ladder fits in a folder with room to spare. On my last check, June 2026, the 1.2.2.1 anchor above still pulled the right build, which is why I keep that manifest written down rather than trusting memory. (Saves live in %APPDATA%\..\LocalLow\Team Cherry\Hollow Knight\ and are generally portable across patches; runs use fresh files anyway, but back the folder up before experimenting if you have a completion save you care about.)
03Keeping patches side by side
Serious runners don't swap — they keep every category's patch installed at once, and the community's method (straight from their video guides) is the appid trick applied per version:
- Make a folder per patch — the guides suggest something like
HK game versions\1221\(drop the dots, they confuse some tooling). - Into each, copy that build's
hollow_knight_Datafolder and the game executable. - Add a
steam_appid.txtcontaining367520beside the exe, so the build talks to Steam without Steam dragging it to the current version. - Launch each version's exe directly (or add them as non-Steam games). Your live Steam install stays on whatever you like; the ladder sits beside it.
04The version-locked Modding API
Here's the structural fact that pulls modders onto this page: Hollow Knight modding runs on a Modding API that is rebuilt for each game patch — the API for 1.5 only works on 1.5, the API for 1.4.3.2 only on 1.4.3.2, and a mod built against one won't load on another. That's why the modding community standardized on a baseline (1.4.3.2 is the common one) and why "my mods stopped working after an update" is answered with "downpatch." The community's installer — Scarab, succeeded by Lumafly — is version-aware: point it at a patched install and it fetches the matching API and the mods compiled for it, the same per-version bookkeeping CKAN does for KSP. Manual installs drop the API and mod DLLs into hollow_knight_Data\Managed\Mods\. The discipline is the series standard with a Hollow Knight accent: game patch, matching API, mods for that API — one rung of the ladder, all three.
05Status in 2026
Hollow Knight is one of the calmer entries on the status spectrum. The named patches sit on an official Betas shelf (live, immune to manifest weather); the speedrun community not only documents the depot fallback but treats it as standard, keeping the recipes current; and the catalog is effectively finished, so the ladder isn't growing new rungs to chase. The one quiet caveat is the usual: official shelves are the developer's to curate and manifests answer at Valve's pleasure, so the verified 1.2.2.1 coordinates above are worth keeping in a note of your own. But of all the communities in this guide series, Hollow Knight's is the one least likely to lose its history — because the people who care about it have already written everything down, tool commands included. If it were my install, I'd keep all three rungs side by side from the start; they're tiny, and I've regretted not having a patch on hand more than I've regretted the disk space. Pick your rung, archive the folder, run.