The smith who forges every Nail upgrade for the Knight. Asks to be cut down once the Pure Nail is finished.
The Nailsmith's hut sits at the western edge of the City of Tears, isolated above a long drop. Per the wiki, this is the only merchant in Hallownest who upgrades the Knight's Nail. Old Nail to Sharpened, then three more upgrades that need Pale Ore on top of Geo.
The full ladder is five tiers. Old Nail (5 damage) to Pure Nail (21 damage). The wiki specifies the cost: 7,050 Geo and 6 Pale Ore across four Nailsmith visits. Most runs stall at Channelled or Coiled because the player has the Geo but no Ore in hand.
The pivot is the Pure Nail conversation. According to the wiki, after the Nailsmith forges the Pure Nail, he steps outside and asks the Knight to cut him down. Obliging him sends him plummeting into the waters below and awards the Purity achievement. Sparing him sends him to Sheo's hut in Greenpath, where he lives out a happy retirement.
This guide covers the four upgrade tiers with exact Geo and Pale Ore costs, the Purity choice and both outcomes, the Sheo retirement scene, the Godmaster DLC Junk Pit Dream Nail line, and how the Nailsmith fits into the wider Hallownest merchant cast.
Nailsmith, the smith who refines the Old Nail through four upgrades to the Pure Nail.
the west edge of the City of Tears, in an isolated hut above the waters.
7,050 Geo and 6 Pale Ore across all four upgrades. Pale Ore appears starting at the Channelled Nail tier.
kill for the Purity achievement; spare to send him to Sheo's hut in Greenpath.The Nailsmith is a merchant by classification, but his service is specific: only Nail upgrades. Per the wiki, no other vendor in Hallownest sells Nail tiers. The Old Nail starts the Knight at 5 damage; every step up the ladder goes through this hut.
According to the wiki, the Nailsmith is connected to the Nailmaster system. Sheo, Mato, and Oro are the three Nailmasters who teach the Knight Nail Arts (Great Slash, Cyclone Slash, Dash Slash). The Nailsmith is implied to have a personal history with Sheo specifically; his retirement destination if spared is Sheo's Greenpath hut.
The wiki notes that the Nailsmith's personal arc parallels the Knight's. His life's work is the Pure Nail. Once he completes it, he considers his purpose served and asks to be ended. The Knight, by contrast, has a sealing-the-Hollow-Knight purpose that does not resolve with a single object. The wiki frames the two as mirrored craftsmen, one bug and one Vessel.
The hut is in the west part of the City of Tears. Per the wiki, the entrance is a small door on a platform overhanging the waters below. The Mantis Claw is required to wall-jump into the room from the City corridor.
According to the wiki, the platform outside the hut is where the kill-or-spare animation plays. The Knight stands on the platform; the Nailsmith asks for the cut; the camera holds on both for the response. Killing him plays a fall animation into the waters below.
The wiki specifies that the platform is otherwise empty after the Pure Nail. No follow-up encounter, no return dialogue if the Knight leaves and returns. The Nailsmith does not refill the hut. Sparing him sends him elsewhere; killing him removes him from Hallownest entirely except for the Godhome corpse.
The Nailsmith provides four upgrades from the Old Nail starter. Per the wiki, the first costs Geo only; the next three add Pale Ore on top. The damage scaling is +4 per tier.
| Tier | Name | Damage | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Old Nail | 5 | Starter (free) |
| 2 |  Sharpened Nail | 9 | 250 Geo |
| 3 |  Channelled Nail | 13 | 800 Geo + 1 Pale Ore |
| 4 |  Coiled Nail | 17 | 2,000 Geo + 2 Pale Ore |
| 5 |  Pure Nail | 21 | 4,000 Geo + 3 Pale Ore |
The total bill is 7,050 Geo and 6 Pale Ore for the full ladder. Per the wiki, the Geo cost shows up gradually (250 to 4,000 per tier) but most runs hit a Pale Ore bottleneck before a Geo one. The six Ore are scattered across the Crystal Peak, Ancient Basin, the Seer, the Grubfather, the Colosseum of Fools, and the Nosk fight.
Plan the Pale Ore route before saving the 4,000 Geo for Pure Nail. Per the wiki, the Nailsmith asks for 3 Ore on top of the Geo. In actual play, the Geo accumulates from standard combat but the Ore requires specific detours. Players who farm the Geo first then find themselves an Ore short are the common stall pattern.
The Pure Nail conversation is the Nailsmith's narrative pivot. Per the wiki, after he forges the Pure Nail, he steps outside the hut and speaks to the Knight about his life's work being complete. He then asks the Knight to end him.
The choice is binary:
| Choice | Outcome | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Cut him down | He falls into the waters below the hut | Purity achievement; corpse in Junk Pit (Godhome) |
 Spare him | He moves to Sheo's hut in Greenpath | Happy ending dialogue; no achievement |
Per the wiki, the Purity achievement is the only mechanical reward for the kill. The Pure Nail itself is delivered regardless of choice; the Knight already has it when the conversation starts. According to the wiki, the choice is purely narrative and the Purity achievement is the completionist's reason to choose the kill on at least one save.
In our testing, the kill is the harder read emotionally. The Nailsmith's logic (purpose served, life complete) reads as honest in the moment, but the Sheo retirement scene shows him alive and happy with another future. Players who choose the kill once and the spare on a second file see both endings.
Sparing the Nailsmith sends him to Sheo's hut. Per the wiki, Sheo is one of the three Nailmasters (the others are Mato and Oro), and his hut sits in Greenpath. After the spare, the Nailsmith appears in Sheo's studio working alongside him.
According to the wiki, the dialogue between the Nailsmith and Sheo in this scene implies a previous connection. The Nailsmith calls Sheo by name without introduction, and Sheo's response carries the familiarity of an old colleague. The wiki frames Sheo's hut as the Nailsmith's second life: not forging weapons any more, working on art and craft instead.
The Knight can return to Sheo's hut to find the Nailsmith there across the rest of the playthrough. Per the wiki, the dialogue updates each major story beat; the Nailsmith comments on the Pure Nail in the Knight's hand, the Nail Arts the Knight has learned from Sheo, and the kingdom outside the studio.
The Godmaster DLC adds a Junk Pit cameo. Per the wiki, if the Nailsmith was killed (Purity route), his corpse can be found in the Junk Pit after the Knight has completed two Pantheons in Godhome and spoken to the Godseeker. The corpse is reachable through the standard Junk Pit navigation route.
According to the wiki, Dream Nailing the Junk Pit corpse returns a single fragment: ...Pure... and nothing else. The line confirms that his end-of-life thought was about the Pure Nail he forged, which is the wiki's strongest argument for the kill route reading as merciful rather than cruel.
The wiki notes that the Junk Pit corpse only appears on the kill route. On the spare route, no Junk Pit echo fires; the Nailsmith remains in Sheo's hut for the entire Godhome content. Across multiple runs, completionists who want both ending reads need two save files to see the Junk Pit Dream Nail line and the Sheo dialogue chain in the same playthrough.
The Nailsmith's arc threads through Pale Ore farming, the Nailmaster system, and the Godmaster DLC. These spokes pick up the related threads.
Game data and screenshots adapted from hollowknight.fandom.com, used under CC BY-SA 3.0. Original content remains the property of the wiki contributors and Team Cherry.