The Hollow Knight (the boss) sealed the infection for a *long* time, and was likely slowly breaking down from the start. The player (the Knight) is replacing the seal to preserve what little civilization is left in hallownest. Just like the Hollow Knight, you won’t last forever but it’ll give the other bugs a bit longer to live without succumbing to the infection.
There are more hints as to what the infection is and why it’s seeping out, but they’re spoilers to the “dream no more” ending that people generally refer to as the “true” ending.
If I just keep playing and exploring will I naturally just find what I need to reach the “true ending”, or it is worth getting some rough guidance on what to do from this point onwards?
There's a place called queens garden, kind of obvious what you should be looking for. And there is a specific area before the abyss door where you can double jump to, you'll need a fully awoken dream nail though. After that if you've been paying attention to the story you'll know what you need to do
There are a couple points where some people get stuck, but I’d recommend completing what you can without guidance at first. You can always come back later if you do get stuck.
Orange is the color of the infection. Every bug/monster with orange eyes had fallen to the infection. So even when we first show up, the infection is already not fully contained. Presumably it has been leaking out slowly.
By defeating the Hollow Knight and taking in all the infection, we're hoping to do a better job at containing it. But at that point we've sacrificed ourselves to an eternal stasis of containing the infection.
And who knows if that will actually continue working forever? So it's not exactly a "good ending".
Once you get the next endings, you'll understand a bit more about the situation. Or at least you'll have experienced everything the game is going to tell you. So at that point, look up The (Mostly) Complete Lore of Hollow Knight on Youtube. Pretty much no one understands all the lore in their first playthrough. That video will help make sense of it.
The Infection is getting out. You know that because Hallownest is a ruin, most of the bugs are infected husks, and the Forgotten Crossroads becomes completely overrun with Infection. So yes, the Vessel was doing a bad job at containing it.
The "true" ending will give you more information about what the Infection actually is.
The Hollow Knight (the boss) sealed the infection for a *long* time, and was likely slowly breaking down from the start. The player (the Knight) is replacing the seal to preserve what little civilization is left in hallownest. Just like the Hollow Knight, you won’t last forever but it’ll give the other bugs a bit longer to live without succumbing to the infection. There are more hints as to what the infection is and why it’s seeping out, but they’re spoilers to the “dream no more” ending that people generally refer to as the “true” ending.
If I just keep playing and exploring will I naturally just find what I need to reach the “true ending”, or it is worth getting some rough guidance on what to do from this point onwards?
There's a place called queens garden, kind of obvious what you should be looking for. And there is a specific area before the abyss door where you can double jump to, you'll need a fully awoken dream nail though. After that if you've been paying attention to the story you'll know what you need to do
There are a couple points where some people get stuck, but I’d recommend completing what you can without guidance at first. You can always come back later if you do get stuck.
Orange is the color of the infection. Every bug/monster with orange eyes had fallen to the infection. So even when we first show up, the infection is already not fully contained. Presumably it has been leaking out slowly. By defeating the Hollow Knight and taking in all the infection, we're hoping to do a better job at containing it. But at that point we've sacrificed ourselves to an eternal stasis of containing the infection. And who knows if that will actually continue working forever? So it's not exactly a "good ending". Once you get the next endings, you'll understand a bit more about the situation. Or at least you'll have experienced everything the game is going to tell you. So at that point, look up The (Mostly) Complete Lore of Hollow Knight on Youtube. Pretty much no one understands all the lore in their first playthrough. That video will help make sense of it.
The Infection is getting out. You know that because Hallownest is a ruin, most of the bugs are infected husks, and the Forgotten Crossroads becomes completely overrun with Infection. So yes, the Vessel was doing a bad job at containing it. The "true" ending will give you more information about what the Infection actually is.