Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Greenalink

Edit history:

Greenalink: 2009-05-16 07:06:30 am

2009-05-16 04:55:24 am

DS Dictator

I made this one months ago but never got the chance to upload it onto Filefront.

http://files.filefront.com/HODMaximhardbossmp4/;13763862;/fileinfo.html

It's Maxim Hard Boss run again but this time it's 20+ seconds faster (11:03:01)

Small note: It was also my first attempt that I got the hang of performing Maxim's powerful clone attack and I found out that bosses like Legion Corpse and Talos isn't effective because the number of hits dealt is quite low.

Death does not flinch when he peforms an attack. The move that makes Death easily vulnerable is his vertical laser beams (9:46 of the video is a good example).

I'll try and upload Simon Belmont Hard boss run too.

Edit:
Simon Belmont Hard Boss Rush run in 13:01:05
http://files.filefront.com/HODSimonHardBossmp4/;13764365;/fileinfo.html

Living Armor looks a bit sloppy and he cannot get flinched (goes back a few steps) during his attack animation :(.

Graphf

2009-09-05 02:36:02 am

Hey good luck on the run! I've been a long time lurker and noticed that C:HOD wasn't on the list. I've been playing thru it for fun the last day or so because I really enjoy this game. Best of luck, can't wait for this one to be "done".

charleon

Edit history:

charleon: 2013-08-07 06:50:52 am

charleon: 2013-08-07 06:23:11 am

charleon: 2013-08-07 05:06:10 am

2013-08-07 04:37:19 am

What is a man?

Hmm, I don't know if there is any point in reviving this old thread; but my other thread is called all things Maxim so..
And for information on the right place's sake, I'll just post in here about the boss rush. In Addition to soon doing SDA Maxim Any% and SDA Maxim All bosses attempts I'm also planning on doing Maxim Boss Rush (Hard) and Simon Belmont Boss Rush (Hard)

Currently my best time for Simon Belmont Boss Rush is 12:30 (Holy Water), and I will outline some boss fights here, coupled with a couple of strats.. Will complement with a video later.

Actually me and KennyMan66 wondered for a long time which subweapon that was best for bossrush: Cross or Holy Water? We did a race at ESA 2013 and Holy water won by a large amount, but i saw someone in this thread mentioning some trick concerning cross?

The real problem bosses for Simon Belmont are Death And Legion Corpse though:
Holy Water Strats:
General Comments/Optimizations:
Holy Water is not as Heart-hungry as the cross, so most of the times you will only be needed to pick the first candle/heart after each boss, not wasting any time.. And by wasting time I mean that there is a slight delay when you jump and attack with Simon; after he reaches the ground, he does not start moving directly. To Minimize this delay, hit with your whip as SOON as you jump to hit a candle, that will make the hit-animation take place in the air rather than on the floor. Now the first candle after every boss room is placed in such a way that you can jump from a down-going stairway and let the whole attack-animation play before you reach the ground. That way you won't waste time by being stuck in the attack-animation and lose horisontal movement.

Also after a boss is dead, you CAN jump up to the ledge and enter the next intermission room once the door has started moving, So good timing here will save ~4-5 seconds in the end.

Boss-Strats
1) Giant Bat
Straight forward.. Stand in the middle, wait for the bat to shoot the fire, hit the fire with your whip and move slightly forward so you trigger his drill attack a bit sooner. Dodge his drill attack and time a holy water so it hits him before he reaches the ground. Hit with your whip 2 or 3 times (can't remember at the moment). After the drill attack he will always fly to the left and throw another fireball, and then move closer to drill you again. Repeat the step before and he should be dead.

2) Living Armor
The basic strategy is as follows: Walk forward, jump and throw a holy water so it ends up under him as he will always do a sword attack in the beginning, which keeps him in place. You will damage-boost a bit back. Walk forward and keep hitting him with the whip. Sometimes he will stumble backwards, just keep follow him. If he does another sword attack, place a holy water under him; don't care if you get hit by the sword. If you push him all the way into the corner, place a holy water under him, because he can't move from that spot.

3) Skull Knight
Pretty much an RNG fight.
Phase 1:
Throw holy water as he becomes vulnerable and whip him at the same time.
He will shield himself, once he unshields, repeat.
Phase 2: same as Phase 1
Phase 3: He won't be able to shield himself, so pray that he stays stationary. otherwise you'll have to hunt him around and place holy waters under him while whipping.

4) Golem
Another RNG fight. I haven't found a way to manipulate him yet.. Basically just throw holy waters and whip him in Phase 1.
GOOD RNG: He stays stationary and does his jump-stonefalling attack, preferrably twice in a row; why do you want this? because in the second phase you want to be able to throw a holy water at the platform so it can damage his Orb; this will save 10 - 20 seconds I believe.
BAD RNG: He does his punch attack and moves away form the platform so you have to stand at the platform/jump and attack to hurt him in phase 2.

5) Devil
Can easily be manipulated to land early. Move forward at the start of the battle until you're under him. Go back the way you came, he will follow over you until you are under the platform, he will then dive down and you can throw a holy water/start hitting him while he does his fire laser attack. after his attack is over, jump up and throw a holy water at the platform and start hitting with your whip, he should die after 2 - 3 whips/before he flies away.
6) Giant Merman
Really easy/consistent: go to the right so you fight him at the right side of the room. This is because you want to reach the door as fast as possible after killing him. if you stand at his left side the door has been open for seconds before you reach it (why you no dash, simon?)

7) Max Slimer
Really easy, just throw a holy water as early as possible and stand beside him and whip him to death. The hitbox of your whip is really large so it will take care of slimes that come at you from behind. Throw Holy waters as fast as possible after the cooldown has ended.

8) Peeping Big
Peeping big won't get knocked back by subweapons, so don't move when you enter the room, he will start moving towards you, so place yourself halfway between the platform and the door. Jump and throw a holy water at the platform so it damages him, but DONT hit him with the whip. Jump and throw another one as fast as possible; but don't let ALL the hits from it go in, only about 3/4. Jump and whip him while starting to move forward, repeat until he is dead. Why? you won't reach the door when it opens if you kill him only with holy waters. Starting to move across the room before he dies saves some time.

9) Legion Saint
One of the bosses where Cross is actually better. Not much to say about this other than it's mostly RNG. Just jump up on top of the platform and start whipping away. Hope he stays close to the platform when his core is visible because attacking from platform > jumping and attacking. don't waste too many holy waters on him.. preferrably none.

10) Shadow
Pretty Easy, only about timing. Once he manifests he will spawn vertically under where he is hovering. after that he will always run towards you and stay in the corner. You want to land a holy water where he descends and immediately start moving to the corner. Throw a new holy water in the corner and damageboost/jump over him. While he is hit by the holy water in the corner whip him a couple of times and he should be dead.

11) Pazuzu
Really easy fight .. he will jump 3 times. First jump: throw a holy water underneath him, hit him with whip once or twice. Move back and throw a new holy water at the platform. Third jump (he will jump into the corner), time a holy water under him and just whip him until he is dead.

12) Minotaur (Axe)
Some RNG involved here: he can be damage-boosted backwards which is seemingly random. In this fight you will optimally be forced to take some damage to get some damage in: Start by whipping him a couple of times, your actions acre based on his actions. Start by whipping at max length. If he damageboosts backwards, follow him, repeat. If he moves towards you once, continue whipping, if he does it twice; throw a holy water and whip afterwards to force him to damage-boost back. If he tries to throw his axe at you OR starts to use his charge: place a holy water under him as he will be stationary and won't be damageboosted. The whole battle is kinda flowchart-driven. Oh! and if you manage to drive him into a corner; throw a holy water there too

13) Minotaur (Ballchain)

Same as the previous battle, with slight modification: when he swings his ball, move in close and throw a holy water and DUCK. His attack won't affect you; continue whipping.

14) Legion Corpse
The SINGLE most infuriating battle of this boss rush, and it is ALL RNG and a single hiccup costs about 10 seconds. This boss is the sole reason I was pondering of using the cross in the first place. So basically how this boss works is that you have to jump and whip the "shell" until the boss opens up. From there you need to go down from the platform and whip the core. Missing the core or being a bit late with even ONE whip might trigger Legion Corpse to close up again and you need to start over from scratch. Sometimes in his flightpattern he rises just above the whip hitbox so you can't hit him. I've succeeded 2 / 50 tries to kill him in 1 cycle, that is: he doesn't close. Basic strats are:
1. Attack shell until he opens up.
2. If you're lucky he's moving towards you when he opens up so you can throw a holy water and he "moves into it" and you get bonus damage.
3. Otherwise use holy waters to deal with the small worms crawling towards you and keep hitting the core. His hitbox is really strange so sometimes you will take damage and damageboost backwards. if this happens you will most likely have to open him up again, So you need to learn what's safe and what's not. Once again, if you see him moving towards you you can risk being hit by him and throw a holy water. Hopefully it will hit him multiple times and then your damage-boost backwards is actually okay as he won't close up.

16) Talos
Easy fight, you just have to learn how to place your holy waters. First walk up to him and throw a holy water at his foot. Walk backwards and throw another holy water where he sets down his foot after walking forward. Keep moving backwards. Repeat this a third time, also whip this time, he should be dead.

15) Death
The second most infuriating battle. First Phase is complete RNG. You want to be close to the platform at all times, because you will want to place the holy water on it to damage him multiple times.

BEST:
1. he teleports on top of the platform and initiates his beam attack / throwing scythe attack. Place a holy water on the platform where he is and jump-attack him.
2 He teleports close to the platform and immediately readies his scythe and moves towards you with a swing. His end position should be where you ahve readied a holy water on the platform. This is semi-rare though as he likes to be jsut out of reach of the holy water.
WORST:
1. You have to hunt him jumping and whipping for the whole phase.

when the second phase starts you need to stand under the righternmost platform. When the death-train spawns, be sure to have placed a holy-water on the platform and immediately make your way to the leftern platform. Place a holy water on the leftern platform; he will run into it also. From there jump and hit him as many times as you can; he should almost be dead. This is how you can manipulate his movementpattern.

17) Cyclops

Not much to say: drop holy water and whip in the beginning. Jump over him when he charges into the corner. Drop a holy water at his righternmost foot. The area where he is vunernable is pretty small. You can jump up to the platform and he can't hit you, even if the hammer goes straight through you. Don't get hit by the hammer, it HURTS. He should die shortly.

18) Dracula
First phase is a joke. optimally you want him to spawn under the platform; just throw a holy water on the platform and whip his head: he should die.

Second phase is a slugfest: throw holy water, hit him.. it's as easy as dat!

As a final note; I think we can push down Maxim Boss rush under 10 minutes because of the recent discovery that shuriken glitch can be done outside of TAS pretty easily

Hmm, I don't know if there is any point in reviving this old thread; but my other thread is called all things Maxim so..
And for information on the right place's sake, I'll just post in here about the boss rush. In Addition to soon doing  SDA Maxim Any% and SDA Maxim All bosses attempts I'm also planning on doing Maxim Boss Rush (Hard) and Simon Belmont Boss Rush (Hard)

Currently my best time for [b]Simon Belmont Boss Rush[/b] is 12:30 (Holy Water), and I will outline some boss fights here, coupled with a couple of strats.. Will complement with a video later.

Actually me and KennyMan66 wondered for a long time which subweapon that was best for bossrush: Cross or Holy Water? We did a race at ESA 2013 and Holy water won by a large amount, but i saw someone in this thread mentioning some trick concerning cross?

The real problem bosses for Simon Belmont are Death And Legion Corpse though:
[b]Holy Water Strats:[/b]
[u]General Comments/Optimizations:[/u]
Holy Water is not as Heart-hungry as the cross, so most of the times you will only be needed to pick the first candle/heart after each boss, not wasting any time.. And by wasting time I mean that there is a slight delay when you jump and attack with Simon; after he reaches the ground, he does not start moving directly. To Minimize this delay, hit with your whip as SOON as you jump to hit a candle, that will make the hit-animation take place in the air rather than on the floor. Now the first candle after every boss room is placed in such a way that you can jump from a down-going stairway and let the whole attack-animation play before you reach the ground. That way you won't waste time by being stuck in the attack-animation and lose horisontal movement.

Also after a boss is dead, you CAN jump up to the ledge and enter the next intermission room once the door has started moving, So good timing here will save ~4-5 seconds in the end.

[u]Boss-Strats[/u]
[b]1) Giant Bat[/b]
Straight forward.. Stand in the middle, wait for the bat to shoot the fire, hit the fire with your whip and move slightly forward so you trigger his drill attack a bit sooner. Dodge his drill attack and time a holy water so it hits him before he reaches the ground. Hit with your whip 2 or 3 times (can't remember at the moment). After the drill attack he will always fly to the left and throw another fireball, and then move closer to drill you again. Repeat the step before and he should be dead.

[b]2) Living Armor[/b]
The basic strategy is as follows: Walk forward, jump and throw a holy water so it ends up under him as he will always do a sword attack in the beginning, which keeps him in place. You will damage-boost a bit back. Walk forward and keep hitting him with the whip. Sometimes he will stumble backwards, just keep follow him. If he does another sword attack, place a holy water under him; don't care if you get hit by the sword. If you push him all the way into the corner, place a holy water under him, because he can't move from that spot.

[b]3) Skull Knight[/b]
Pretty much an RNG fight.
Phase 1: 
Throw holy water as he becomes vulnerable and whip him at the same time.
He will shield himself, once he unshields, repeat.
Phase 2: same as Phase 1
Phase 3: He won't be able to shield himself, so pray that he stays stationary. otherwise you'll have to hunt him around and place holy waters under him while whipping.

[b]4) Golem[/b]
Another RNG fight. I haven't found a way to manipulate him yet.. Basically just throw holy waters and whip him in Phase 1.
GOOD RNG: He stays stationary and does his jump-stonefalling attack, preferrably twice in a row; why do you want this? because in the second phase you want to be able to throw a holy water at the platform so it can damage his Orb; this will save 10 - 20 seconds I believe.
BAD RNG: He does his punch attack and moves away form the platform so you have to stand at the platform/jump and attack to hurt him in phase 2.

[b]5) Devil[/b]
Can easily be manipulated to land early. Move forward at the start of the battle until you're under him. Go back the way you came, he will follow over you until you are under the platform, he will then dive down and you can throw a holy water/start hitting him while he does his fire laser attack. after his attack is over, jump up and throw a holy water at the platform and start hitting with your whip, he should die after 2 - 3 whips/before he flies away.
[b]6) Giant Merman[/b]
Really easy/consistent: go to the right so you fight him at the right side of the room. This is because you want to reach the door as fast as possible after killing him. if you stand at his left side the door has been open for seconds before you reach it (why you no dash, simon?)

[b]7) Max Slimer[/b]
Really easy,  just throw a holy water as early as possible and stand beside him and whip him to death. The hitbox of your whip is really large so it will take care of slimes that come at you from behind. Throw Holy waters as fast as possible after the cooldown has ended.

[b]8) Peeping Big[/b]
Peeping big won't get knocked back by subweapons, so don't move when you enter the room, he will start moving towards you, so place yourself halfway between the platform and the door. Jump and throw a holy water at the platform so it damages him, but DONT hit him with the whip. Jump and throw another one as fast as possible; but don't let ALL the hits from it go in, only about 3/4. Jump and whip him while starting to move forward, repeat until he is dead. Why? you won't reach the door when it opens if you kill him only with holy waters. Starting to move across the room before he dies saves some time.

[b]9) Legion Saint[/b]
One of the bosses where Cross is actually better. Not much to say about this other than it's mostly RNG. Just jump up on top of the platform and start whipping away.  Hope he stays close to the platform when his core is visible because attacking from platform > jumping and attacking. don't waste too many holy waters on him.. preferrably none.

[b]10) Shadow[/b]
Pretty Easy, only about timing. Once he manifests he will spawn vertically under where he is hovering. after that he will always run towards you and stay in the corner. You want to land a holy water where he descends and immediately start moving to the corner. Throw a new holy water in the corner and damageboost/jump over him. While he is hit by the holy water in the corner whip him a couple of times and he should be dead.

[b]11) Pazuzu[/b]
Really easy fight .. he will jump 3 times. First jump: throw a holy water underneath him, hit him with whip once or twice. Move back and throw a new holy water at the platform. Third jump (he will jump into the corner), time a holy water under him and just whip him until he is dead.

[b]12) Minotaur (Axe)[/b]
Some RNG involved here: he can be damage-boosted backwards which is seemingly random. In this fight you will optimally be forced to take some damage to get some damage in: Start by whipping him a couple of times, your actions acre based on his actions. Start by whipping at max length. If he damageboosts backwards, follow him, repeat. If he moves towards you once, continue whipping, if he does it twice; throw a holy water and whip afterwards to force him to damage-boost back. If he tries to throw his axe at you OR starts to use his charge: place a holy water under him as he will be stationary and won't be damageboosted. The whole battle is kinda flowchart-driven. Oh! and if you manage to drive him into a corner; throw a holy water there too

[b]13) Minotaur (Ballchain)[/b]

Same as the previous battle, with slight modification: when he swings his ball, move in close and throw a holy water and DUCK. His attack won't affect you; continue whipping.

[b]14) Legion Corpse[/b]
The SINGLE most infuriating battle of this boss rush, and it is ALL RNG and a single  hiccup costs about 10 seconds. This boss is the sole reason I was pondering of using the cross in the first place. So basically how this boss works is that you have to jump and whip the "shell" until the boss opens up. From there you need to go down from the platform and whip the core. Missing the core or being a bit late with even ONE whip might trigger Legion Corpse to close up again and you need to start over from scratch. Sometimes in his flightpattern he rises just above the whip hitbox so you can't hit him. I've succeeded 2 / 50 tries to kill him in 1 cycle, that is: he doesn't close. Basic strats are:
1. Attack shell until he opens up.
2. If you're lucky he's moving towards you when he opens up so you can throw a holy water and he "moves into it" and you get bonus damage.
3. Otherwise use holy waters to deal with the small worms crawling towards you and keep hitting the core. His hitbox is really strange so sometimes you will take damage and damageboost backwards. if this happens you will most likely have to open him up again, So you need to learn what's safe and what's not. Once again, if you see him moving towards you you can risk being hit by him and throw a holy water. Hopefully it will hit him multiple times and then your damage-boost backwards is actually okay as he won't close up.

[b]16) Talos[/b]
Easy fight, you just have to learn how to place your holy waters. First walk up to him and throw a holy water at his foot. Walk backwards and throw another holy water where he sets down his foot after walking forward. Keep moving backwards. Repeat this a third time, also whip this time, he should be dead.

[b]15) Death[/b]
The second most infuriating battle. First Phase is complete RNG. You want to be close to the platform at all times, because you will want to place the holy water on it to damage him multiple times.

BEST: 
1. he teleports on top of the platform and initiates his beam attack / throwing scythe attack. Place a holy water on the platform where he is and jump-attack him.
2 He teleports close to the platform and immediately readies his scythe and moves towards you with a swing. His end position should be where you ahve readied a holy water on the platform. This is semi-rare though as he likes to be jsut out of reach of the holy water.
WORST:
1. You have to hunt him jumping and whipping for the whole phase.

when the second phase starts you need to stand under the righternmost platform. When the death-train spawns, be sure to have placed a holy-water on the platform and immediately make your way to the leftern platform. Place a holy water on the leftern platform; he will run into it also. From there jump and hit him as many times as you can; he should almost be dead. This is how you can manipulate his movementpattern.

17) Cyclops

Not much to say: drop holy water and whip in the beginning. Jump over him when he charges into the corner. Drop a holy water at his righternmost foot. The area where he is vunernable is pretty small. You can jump up to the platform and he can't hit you, even if the hammer goes straight through you. Don't get hit by the hammer, it HURTS. He should die shortly.

[b]18) Dracula [/b]
First phase is a joke. optimally you want him to spawn under the platform; just throw a holy water on the platform and whip his head: he should die.

Second phase is a slugfest: throw holy water, hit him.. it's as easy as dat!

[b]As a final note;[/b] I think we can push down Maxim Boss rush under 10 minutes because of the recent discovery that shuriken glitch can be done outside of TAS pretty easily

Sopha

2014-05-12 01:14:00 am

Hey.

I've been working on a Juste run of this for a little while now. The only existing speed-run I could find was a Japanese one that doesn't make use of any glitches or save-warping and goes about an hour, so I take it I'm alone in this. Anyway, using the more reasonable techniques employed in the TAS (and some of the less as well,) I have a pretty good route now and got 47:30 with a decent run. With better execution, I think I can push this down by about 5 minutes, 3 more minutes by skipping some out-of-the-way armor I get (which takes me from 2 to 5 hits before I die,) and about 5 more if I get the floating boots--a rare item drop half-way through that is frankly crazy to attempt getting in a single-segment run.

Before I really start the grind for a good run, I wanted to ask something. So I've tried the wall-zips that I've seen in Maxim runs and Juste and Maxim TASes. I could only get the ones that worked at all about 1/100 times and even when I seem to get the right timing it barely ever works. What I wanted to ask was if there are any feasible zips for Juste that can cut the route down further.

I wanted to ask this UNTIL I just now found this on the Maxim thread:

Quote from charleon:

In my attempts to unlock Maxim I just played around a little and sequence-broke the game with Juste:

http://www.twitch.tv/sethcharleon/c/2342644

Which shows a feasible zip for Juste that can save ~2 minutes and will make the run even more difficult by including Golem and excluding 2 high potions that were the only things keeping me alive in more ways than one. Getting those high potions was the only little bit of leeway I had. Having to keep a save to reset to means any death is GAME OVER and now I'm even MORE underleveled and now I skip the balloon room which is the only viable place to grind for levels early on. If I don't get the instant kill on shadow now it's DONE! Death wants to prod me with his scythe a bit? It's OVER! And when Maxim decides to double-hit me with one of his stupid instant start-up attacks I guess that's RIP for that one. Those were my only 2 salvations man! LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME!! On the bright side maybe I'll be so underleveled I'll die from one hit anyway.

Now the only thing I want to ask is if you're proud of yourself. And where I could find the info on the places zips work in and go to so I could test them out further.

Hey.

I've been working on a Juste run of this for a little while now. The only existing speed-run I could find was a Japanese one that doesn't make use of any glitches or save-warping and goes about an hour, so I take it I'm alone in this. Anyway, using the more reasonable techniques employed in the TAS (and some of the less as well,) I have a pretty good route now and got 47:30 with a decent run. With better execution, I think I can push this down by about 5 minutes, 3 more minutes by skipping some out-of-the-way armor I get (which takes me from 2 to 5 hits before I die,) and about 5 more if I get the floating boots--a rare item drop half-way through that is frankly crazy to attempt getting in a single-segment run.

Before I really start the grind for a good run, I wanted to ask something. So I've tried the wall-zips that I've seen in Maxim runs and Juste and Maxim TASes. I could only get the ones that worked at all about 1/100 times and even when I seem to get the right timing it barely ever works. What I wanted to ask was if there are any feasible zips for Juste that can cut the route down further.

I wanted to ask this UNTIL I just now found this on the Maxim thread:
[quote="charleon"]In my attempts to unlock Maxim I just played around a little and sequence-broke the game with Juste:

http://www.twitch.tv/sethcharleon/c/2342644[/quote]

Which shows a feasible zip for Juste that can save ~2 minutes and will make the run even more difficult by including Golem and excluding 2 high potions that were the only things keeping me alive in more ways than one. Getting those high potions was the only little bit of leeway I had. Having to keep a save to reset to means any death is GAME OVER and now I'm even MORE underleveled and now I skip the balloon room which is the only viable place to grind for levels early on. If I don't get the instant kill on shadow now it's DONE! Death wants to prod me with his scythe a bit? It's OVER! And when Maxim decides to double-hit me with one of his stupid instant start-up attacks I guess that's RIP for that one. Those were my only 2 salvations man! LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME!! On the bright side maybe I'll be so underleveled I'll die from one hit anyway.

Now the only thing I want to ask is if you're proud of yourself. [size="6"]And where I could find the info on the places zips work in and go to so I could test them out further.[/size]

charleon

Edit history:

charleon: 2014-05-12 05:00:17 am

charleon: 2014-05-12 04:59:23 am

2014-05-12 04:56:26 am

What is a man?

Hi Sopha, glad to see someone giving Juste some love! I never really got into his route, but might do it in the future. 47:30 sounds ridiculously good as the current official WR run is at 55 minutes (please check the coming link for reference). When you feel you have something good recorded at twitch or youtube, don't forget to submit your run here: http://cvspeedruns.com/, where we try to keep track of the best times of all the CV games. Now for the matter at hand:
So how the zip works is basically the horisental momentum going over 7 pixels a frame (IIRC), as juste accelerates way slower than Maxim, there will be a limited amount of spots where he can do this. The only obvious one I can think about is the spot you mentioned (my highlight). Also another question: Do you utilize the damage-glitch with Juste? Shortly after finishing up Maxim Any% and Maxim All bosses I started to work on Juste boss-rush, and found out that using the cross would make you able to damage-glitch even harder than Maxim, are you doing this? I assume you do as you mention "instant kill on shadow". Sorry that I can't give more advice, but Juste isn't really my thing ;/

Sopha

Edit history:

Sopha: 2014-05-13 02:21:26 am

2014-05-13 02:20:06 am

Yeah, I'm doing the damage-glitch as soon as I can get a cross. For extra dps I also get a fire book and alternate between air and ground attacks to confuse the hit-invincibility enemies have.

I actually tested the zip I mentioned and remembered that the layout of the room is different the first time you go through it, and you have to wait for the water to fill before you can get the right platforms to zip from. That takes 1 minute to happen and coupled with how inconsistent that zip is, that route change creeps dangerously close into the not-worth-it category.

But it does show that there may be other useful zips in different places. So do you have any information on which walls lead exactly to which rooms so I could narrow down my search? Otherwise I'd have to go and test every wall in the castle and that might take a while.

For now, I think I'll try to get a nice sub 45:00 using my current route not taking away the safeties of Guardian Armor and upload it. At least to have a baseline and since it might be some time before I can incorporate zips fully into the route.

On that note, when exactly should I start and end timing? The in-game timer doesn't record menuing and apparently other things since it's more than a few minutes lower than a real timer at the end. Currently I start right after I enter finish the name-entry screen, but I'm not sure whether to end when I grab the final orb or when the credits start playing. Between them there's a dialogue that takes ~1:30 to tap A through, and the game only saves when the credits start. I think Aria of Sorrow had something similar so what does it use?

Yeah, I'm doing the damage-glitch as soon as I can get a cross. For extra dps I also get a fire book and alternate between air and ground attacks to confuse the hit-invincibility enemies have.

I actually tested the zip I mentioned and remembered that the layout of the room is different the first time you go through it, and you have to wait for the water to fill before you can get the right platforms to zip from. That takes 1 minute to happen and coupled with how inconsistent that zip is, that route change creeps dangerously close into the not-worth-it category.

But it does show that there may be other useful zips in different places. So do you have any information on which walls lead exactly to which rooms so I could narrow down my search? Otherwise I'd have to go and test every wall in the castle and that might take a while.

For now, I think I'll try to get a nice sub 45:00 using my current route not taking away the safeties of Guardian Armor and upload it. At least to have a baseline and since it might be some time before I can incorporate zips fully into the route.

On that note, when exactly should I start and end timing? The in-game timer doesn't record menuing and apparently other things since it's more than a few minutes lower than a real timer at the end. Currently I start right after I enter finish the name-entry screen, but I'm not sure whether to end when I grab the final orb or when the credits start playing. Between them there's a dialogue that takes ~1:30 to tap A through, and the game only saves when the credits start. I think Aria of Sorrow had something similar so what does it use?

charleon

Edit history:

charleon: 2014-05-13 03:27:44 am

2014-05-13 03:06:34 am

What is a man?

Everyone I know start the timer when you hit start on the name input screen and end the time when you lose control, that is when you grab the drac orb.

For Aria of sorrow it's quite similar, start when you hit start on name selection and end split on the final hit of final form Chaos.

Outside of the TAS Juste's zipping capability is kind of untested I would say, so you might have some work ahead of you. The TAS does seem to be able to accelerate Juste further by doing a whiplaunch and then on the ground/in the air throw a knife (I think this is the only reason he picks up a knife in the beginning of the run), question is if it's viable with a cross as well?. Other than what I know from my Maxim All bosses and Any% route, I don't really know where stuff leads to be honest. One more thing to check out would be where you end up if you backdash when entering a door. If you backdash during the first few frames on the next screen you'll go back to the previous room (that's what one would think at least), actually you'll not, you'll get teleported somewhere completely random, but I guess you know about this.

and
for reference for a lot of zips.

as a final note, i managed to discover this a couple of months ago:

I have no idea if it's viable in anything though, as you need to be able to use maxim to actually trigger it.. and it would mean a new cathegory

Everyone I know start the timer when you hit start on the name input screen and end the time when you lose control, that is when you grab the drac orb.

For Aria of sorrow it's quite similar, start when you hit start on name selection and end split on the final hit of final form Chaos.

Outside of the TAS Juste's zipping capability is kind of untested I would say, so you might have some work ahead of you. The TAS does seem to be able to accelerate Juste further by doing a whiplaunch and then on the ground/in the air throw a knife (I think this is the only reason he picks up a knife in the beginning of the run), question is if it's viable with a cross as well?. Other than what I know from my Maxim All bosses and Any% route, I don't really know where stuff leads to be honest. One more thing to check out would be where you end up if you backdash when entering a door. If you backdash during the first few frames on the next screen you'll go back to the previous room (that's what one would think at least), actually you'll not, you'll get teleported somewhere completely random, but I guess you know about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA6ItRYTaKk
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqLLFNH3nDo for reference for a lot of zips.

as a final note, i managed to discover this a couple of months ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6_HRV3avQE&list=UUf6ZipgBWW8LakxD4r4Na_w

I have no idea if it's viable in anything though, as you need to be able to use maxim to actually trigger it.. and it would mean a new cathegory

Sopha

2014-05-13 04:40:46 am

Whiplaunches have the same effect with any subweapon as with the knife, but cross eats through hearts really quickly and only two of them can be out at any one time (knife is essentially unlimited.) In fact, subweapon-throwing acts exactly the same as a whip from what I've seen, but it ends much earlier, so having enough acceleration to zip hinges on chaining them together what seems to be frame-perfectly. That's what I was getting my 1/100 success rate from.

The door-warps I know. It only actually warps on a few of the doors though. I bookmarked a post on TASVideos that has all of them.

Quote from Kaz:

Castle A door warps:

Walkway/Aquaduct --> Merman Boss room A
Aquaduct/Cavern --> middle of Cavern A (skips having to go through Top Floor A)
Clock tower/Walkway --> top of the Walkway B room where ghost faces appear in windows
Cavern/Treasury --> merchant of castle treasury B

Castle B door warps:

Walkway/Aquaduct --> Merman Boss room B
Clock tower/Walkway --> top of vertical shaft connecting ball race room and clock tower A
Treasury/Skeleton Cave --> next screen of the skeleton cave B (saves some time)
Aquaduct/Cavern --> middle of Aquaduct B

Black screen warps:

Cavern/Treasury (B)
Treasury/Skeleton Cave (A)

Moon Juste looks very interesting, I'll try playing around with it and see if it can't be used to skip half the game or something.

And I feared that I'd have to test Juste's zips myself. Thanks for the help. The zip you use to get to Death looks really promising, and might let me route out getting the floodgate key entirely.

Whiplaunches have the same effect with any subweapon as with the knife, but cross eats through hearts really quickly and only two of them can be out at any one time (knife is essentially unlimited.) In fact, subweapon-throwing acts exactly the same as a whip from what I've seen, but it ends much earlier, so having enough acceleration to zip hinges on chaining them together what seems to be frame-perfectly. That's what I was getting my 1/100 success rate from.

The door-warps I know. It only actually warps on a few of the doors though. I bookmarked a post on TASVideos that has all of them.

[quote="Kaz"]
Castle A door warps:

Walkway/Aquaduct --> Merman Boss room A
Aquaduct/Cavern --> middle of Cavern A (skips having to go through Top Floor A)
Clock tower/Walkway --> top of the Walkway B room where ghost faces appear in windows
Cavern/Treasury --> merchant of castle treasury B

Castle B door warps:

Walkway/Aquaduct --> Merman Boss room B
Clock tower/Walkway --> top of vertical shaft connecting ball race room and clock tower A
Treasury/Skeleton Cave --> next screen of the skeleton cave B (saves some time)
Aquaduct/Cavern --> middle of Aquaduct B

Black screen warps:

Cavern/Treasury (B)
Treasury/Skeleton Cave (A) 
[/quote]

Moon Juste looks very interesting, I'll try playing around with it and see if it can't be used to skip half the game or something.

And I feared that I'd have to test Juste's zips myself. Thanks for the help. The zip you use to get to Death looks really promising, and might let me route out getting the floodgate key entirely.

charleon

2014-05-17 11:01:40 am

What is a man?

Quote from Sopha:

Whiplaunches have the same effect with any subweapon as with the knife, but cross eats through hearts really quickly and only two of them can be out at any one time (knife is essentially unlimited.) In fact, subweapon-throwing acts exactly the same as a whip from what I've seen, but it ends much earlier, so having enough acceleration to zip hinges on chaining them together what seems to be frame-perfectly. That's what I was getting my 1/100 success rate from.

The door-warps I know. It only actually warps on a few of the doors though. I bookmarked a post on TASVideos that has all of them.

Quote from Kaz:

Castle A door warps:

Walkway/Aquaduct --> Merman Boss room A
Aquaduct/Cavern --> middle of Cavern A (skips having to go through Top Floor A)
Clock tower/Walkway --> top of the Walkway B room where ghost faces appear in windows
Cavern/Treasury --> merchant of castle treasury B

Castle B door warps:

Walkway/Aquaduct --> Merman Boss room B
Clock tower/Walkway --> top of vertical shaft connecting ball race room and clock tower A
Treasury/Skeleton Cave --> next screen of the skeleton cave B (saves some time)
Aquaduct/Cavern --> middle of Aquaduct B

Black screen warps:

Cavern/Treasury (B)
Treasury/Skeleton Cave (A)

Moon Juste looks very interesting, I'll try playing around with it and see if it can't be used to skip half the game or something.

And I feared that I'd have to test Juste's zips myself. Thanks for the help. The zip you use to get to Death looks really promising, and might let me route out getting the floodgate key entirely.

It would be nice to see a vid soon, i've got several people that are interested Smiley

[quote="Sopha"]Whiplaunches have the same effect with any subweapon as with the knife, but cross eats through hearts really quickly and only two of them can be out at any one time (knife is essentially unlimited.) In fact, subweapon-throwing acts exactly the same as a whip from what I've seen, but it ends much earlier, so having enough acceleration to zip hinges on chaining them together what seems to be frame-perfectly. That's what I was getting my 1/100 success rate from.

The door-warps I know. It only actually warps on a few of the doors though. I bookmarked a post on TASVideos that has all of them.

[quote="Kaz"]
Castle A door warps:

Walkway/Aquaduct --> Merman Boss room A
Aquaduct/Cavern --> middle of Cavern A (skips having to go through Top Floor A)
Clock tower/Walkway --> top of the Walkway B room where ghost faces appear in windows
Cavern/Treasury --> merchant of castle treasury B

Castle B door warps:

Walkway/Aquaduct --> Merman Boss room B
Clock tower/Walkway --> top of vertical shaft connecting ball race room and clock tower A
Treasury/Skeleton Cave --> next screen of the skeleton cave B (saves some time)
Aquaduct/Cavern --> middle of Aquaduct B

Black screen warps:

Cavern/Treasury (B)
Treasury/Skeleton Cave (A) 
[/quote]

Moon Juste looks very interesting, I'll try playing around with it and see if it can't be used to skip half the game or something.

And I feared that I'd have to test Juste's zips myself. Thanks for the help. The zip you use to get to Death looks really promising, and might let me route out getting the floodgate key entirely.[/quote]

It would be nice to see a vid soon, i've got several people that are interested :)

Sopha

2014-05-28 04:09:22 am

Finally, I got a run of 43:29 without any large mistakes, though a lot of small ones. It was immediately following a run that was on track to be sub-43:00 if I didn't forget a key part of the route, so I was a bit disheartened at first. This is recorded on emulator.

Since this is the first run doing a lot of these things and uses some unintuitive tricks, I'll document it a little here, if anyone's interested.

Notes:

- You can skip the movies if you cleared the game once already.
1:08- There's a door-glitch right off the bat. Probably a good idea to reset if you don't get this the first few tries, since each missed attempt costs 5 seconds and it really adds up.
-Every little bit of EXP in the first part is important, including the bats. Getting a level-up before the skeleton soldiers lets them take one hit less.
2:33- Starting on the skeleton soldiers I alternate jumping and standing whips. This cancels out the usual delay between being able to attack them since the game counts them as different attacks. The hard part is doing it quickly without flying all over the place.
- I get the first 2 heart max ups because I usually run out of holy water on the skull knight, though I didn't this time.
3:36- Jumping over the bomber armors is pretty difficult, as I demonstrate.
4:24- Entering Skeleton Cave is an optional door-warp to skip a room. Though the first time you try to door-warp from an area you just visited, Juste just dashes back without warping. That means you have to do it twice in a row otherwise you lose time.

4:45- I skip rolling the skull down by doing the motion for a whiplaunch without a whip (I'll call it a ledgelaunch), then I use the few frames Juste can still jump after falling to jump to the other side with the extra boost from the ledgelaunch.
5:03- This jump I get with a dash-jump. By dashing and jumping without holding a direction, Juste jumps at the speed of the dash for a little while. Then starting to hold in the direction after that boost wears off, it allows jumps to travel further. I do this for as many jumps as I can.
5:34- You can see here and possibly other places that I stick a whip out to keep the momentum of the slide off the ledge. It saves a little bit of time and is generally not worth it.
- Skull knight is where the dps trick really comes in handy. Also you want to use all of your holy water here. It's most effective on the second form throwing it onto the ledge to stall it in place. The third form can move really erratically, so sometimes it's good to slow down a little to be prepared.
- Reset by pressing A+B+Start+Select. It's harder than it looks.

8:11- I do a ledgelaunch like at the big skull to activate the warp there and get the platinum tip. This is probably the biggest skip of the run.
8:34- I do an aerial whiplaunch to save about 1 second. It involves a setup analogous to a regular whiplaunch, and then whipping on the exact frame that the divekick hits. That happens to be the only time I get it in the run despite many tries and that's fairly typical. On average it saves me around -8 seconds total. Yes, that's negative. I call it the swaglaunch B)
9:12- I'm not sure if the fire book actually saves time, but it only takes 15 seconds to get and it helps over the course of the run, especially if you run out of hearts on Dracula since he's one of the few enemies you can damage-glitch with it. The summer clothes are less necessary. They boost magic power and defense but they only make an axe armor take one less hit later. It might be more helpful if guardian armor is skipped.
- 9:42-9:43 features the demise of the bat with what appears to be a chainsaw. Though it looks like a skippable boss, it's necessary to lower the drawbridge. It would be skipped if you were going for the bad ending though.
- You can switch the spellbook on and off by pressing Down+L+R. This can't be done during down-time like going through a door, so that complicates things.

- There are several different ways of going through the right part of the castle with different numbers of doors and bosses, and the save used depends on which route is taken. I'll go into a little more detail later.
13:49- The dark room is memorizable. Normally the game wants you to go through devil to get the specatacles to see.
14:05- There's another optional door-warp going into the aqueduct which warps you straight to giant merman. This one is more worthwhile, though again, it takes 2 door glitches in a row.
14:14- I forget the route a bit in the aqueduct and forget that I have full health, since the sword almost always gets a hit in. The sword curses by the way, which is what the anti-curse from the cavern is good for.
- I consider any Giant Merman fight ending before he spawns other mermen to be good. Here I also start doing 2 whips together so that they both damage-glitch. I think this has to do with one of them being started in air and the other on the ground. Note that 2 hits will kill you on him, so not getting hit is very important. Luckily, there's an optional life-up you can take if you did lose any health.

15:21- The pendulum room and the candle near the first save are the best places to refill hearts. I take as many as I can since it doesn't take too long and there's a huge time loss if I run out.
15:33- That pendulum room, or pendu-room, is designed to be the biggest troll possible. Getting anywhere faster than the boring way of riding them is good in my book. It's perhaps the only place a swaglaunch is actually useful. Otherwise, the best way to get through is to whiplaunch with a cross (crosslaunch?) and double-jump before you hit the spikes. You can only have 2 crosses on-screen though, so it won't take you all the way through.
15:52- The hit pushes the harpy back. Harpies kill you quickly.
16:09- Timing it now, getting guardian armor takes only 50 seconds and raises your life expectancy by a lot more.
18:03- Talking to death in the clock tower is the only way to be able to use the warps, so Max Slimer is here to stay.
18:26- The lure key is used to unlock certain glowing warp doors, which I'll need to do.
18:45-I forget to heal before Peeping Big, but it turned out OK.
20:31- I get the first of 3 invincibility jars. I'm still not entirely sure where to use them, but they come in handy in a few places. The final pendu-room is a good candidate.
21:40- Legion is pretty hard to chainsaw into, especially with its random twitchy movements. Also, the things it spawns curse you, and you don't want to be cursed.
23:20- I go back after shadow to door-warp to Dracula's Tooth. It skips having to break the wall leading to it and then going back in the other castle. The tooth gives +10 defense, which helps surviving some more.
26:24- The eyeball makes you immune to curse, so you don't have to worry about it after. Curse slows you down, so it's really important to avoid.

- It's possible to go through Pazuzu instead of resetting and having to get the door-warp in the aqueduct, but that might run you low on hearts for death, and it's slower if you can get the warp fast.
30:00- Moon Armor and Sun Armor increase defense a whole lot depending on which castle you're in. Going here early doesn't lose time since I use the warp to go to Dracula later.
- I go through SkeletonCaveB again and then switch castles at the warp because SkelCaveA has a lot of block puzzles which probably take longer.
33:45- The room to the right is a shop that you can access if you have an odd-numbered level. It actually doesn't take very long to farm money near the lure key/platinum tip and get 2 high potions per money bag. That would only lose about a minute, though more if you have an even-numbered level.
- Using the floodgate key drains the water so you can get to death. Even if you walk all the way through with tons of high potions, the door at the end will be closed.
34:26- I get the leggings and forget to equip them. They help boosting defense in the short time before you get crush boots. Luckily I got a bloody glove, which is good too.
- I'm not really all too sure about death to be honest Undecided

37:11- Clear bones are really dangerous. They appear seemingly at random and kill you in 2 hits.
38:31- I used to think it was a good idea to invincibility jar through to get the crush boots, but after getting those 2 high potions I'm thinking I won't.
40:47- It's not necessary to save at the end. I'm just doing it for safety. The in-game time will go all the way as long as you have a save at all and wait until the credits.
- Maxim is the real deal. He's immune to the damage-glitch, so you just have to trust your instincts. Basically, he can do all of his high-damaging attacks randomly and instantly, so you'd think bouncing on him, which is the safest way, would be the way to go. However, if you do enough damage quickly, he gets stunned and gives you one chance to damage-glitch, which can save a large amount of time. So it's worth taking as many chances as you can to do the whip-alternation on him while still remaining safe. The safest time to do that is when he's in the corner, and you also want to do it when he's starting his clone attack to knock him out of it, though he can get a free shot on you after being the scumbag that he is. I actually got lucky and really should have gotten hit a few more times based on how unsafe I was, but I had the potions to cover it.
- You only need to equip the rings during the brief period I equip them.
- Dracula is fairly straight-forward. If you run out of hearts, you want to try damage-glitching with magic, and it helps to get behind him with invincibility if that's the case. I save the invincibility to this point mostly for insurance.

Thanks for reading my novel. Stay tuned for the next volumes of the trilogy: general movement and alternate routes.

Finally, I got a run of 43:29 without any large mistakes, though a lot of small ones. It was immediately following a run that was on track to be sub-43:00 if I didn't forget a key part of the route, so I was a bit disheartened at first. This is recorded on emulator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klMOgjfcufw

Since this is the first run doing a lot of these things and uses some unintuitive tricks, I'll document it a little here, if anyone's interested.

Notes:
[hidden]
- You can skip the movies if you cleared the game once already.
1:08- There's a door-glitch right off the bat. Probably a good idea to reset if you don't get this the first few tries, since each missed attempt costs 5 seconds and it really adds up.
-Every little bit of EXP in the first part is important, including the bats. Getting a level-up before the skeleton soldiers lets them take one hit less.
2:33- Starting on the skeleton soldiers I alternate jumping and standing whips. This cancels out the usual delay between being able to attack them since the game counts them as different attacks. The hard part is doing it quickly without flying all over the place.
- I get the first 2 heart max ups because I usually run out of holy water on the skull knight, though I didn't this time.
3:36- Jumping over the bomber armors is pretty difficult, as I demonstrate.
4:24- Entering Skeleton Cave is an optional door-warp to skip a room. Though the first time you try to door-warp from an area you just visited, Juste just dashes back without warping. That means you have to do it twice in a row otherwise you [i]lose[/i] time.

4:45- I skip rolling the skull down by doing the motion for a whiplaunch without a whip (I'll call it a ledgelaunch), then I use the few frames Juste can still jump after falling to jump to the other side with the extra boost from the ledgelaunch.
5:03- This jump I get with a dash-jump. By dashing and jumping without holding a direction, Juste jumps at the speed of the dash for a little while. Then starting to hold in the direction after that boost wears off, it allows jumps to travel further. I do this for as many jumps as I can.
5:34- You can see here and possibly other places that I stick a whip out to keep the momentum of the slide off the ledge. It saves a little bit of time and is generally not worth it.
- Skull knight is where the dps trick [i]really[/i] comes in handy. Also you want to use all of your holy water here. It's most effective on the second form throwing it onto the ledge to stall it in place. The third form can move really erratically, so sometimes it's good to slow down a little to be prepared.
- Reset by pressing A+B+Start+Select. It's harder than it looks.

8:11- I do a ledgelaunch like at the big skull to activate the warp there and get the platinum tip. This is probably the biggest skip of the run.
8:34- I do an aerial whiplaunch to save about 1 second. It involves a setup analogous to a regular whiplaunch, and then whipping on the exact frame that the divekick hits. That happens to be the only time I get it in the run despite many tries and that's fairly typical. On average it saves me around -8 seconds total. Yes, that's negative. I call it the swaglaunch B)
9:12- I'm not sure if the fire book actually saves time, but it only takes 15 seconds to get and it helps over the course of the run, especially if you run out of hearts on Dracula since he's one of the few enemies you can damage-glitch with it. The summer clothes are less necessary. They boost magic power and defense but they only make an axe armor take one less hit later. It might be more helpful if guardian armor is skipped.
- 9:42-9:43 features the demise of the bat with what appears to be a chainsaw. Though it looks like a skippable boss, it's necessary to lower the drawbridge. It would be skipped if you were going for the bad ending though.
- You can switch the spellbook on and off by pressing Down+L+R. This can't be done during down-time like going through a door, so that complicates things.

- There are several different ways of going through the right part of the castle with different numbers of doors and bosses, and the save used depends on which route is taken. I'll go into a little more detail later.
13:49- The dark room is memorizable. Normally the game wants you to go through devil to get the specatacles to see.
14:05- There's another optional door-warp going into the aqueduct which warps you straight to giant merman. This one is more worthwhile, though again, it takes 2 door glitches in a row.
14:14- I forget the route a bit in the aqueduct and forget that I have full health, since the sword almost always gets a hit in. The sword curses by the way, which is what the anti-curse from the cavern is good for.
- I consider any Giant Merman fight ending before he spawns other mermen to be good. Here I also start doing 2 whips together so that they both damage-glitch. I think this has to do with one of them being started in air and the other on the ground. Note that 2 hits will kill you on him, so not getting hit is very important. Luckily, there's an optional life-up you can take if you did lose any health.

15:21- The pendulum room and the candle near the first save are the best places to refill hearts. I take as many as I can since it doesn't take too long and there's a huge time loss if I run out.
15:33- That pendulum room, or pendu-room, is designed to be the biggest troll possible. Getting anywhere faster than the boring way of riding them is good in my book. It's perhaps the only place a swaglaunch is actually useful. Otherwise, the best way to get through is to whiplaunch with a cross (crosslaunch?) and double-jump before you hit the spikes. You can only have 2 crosses on-screen though, so it won't take you all the way through.
15:52- The hit pushes the harpy back. Harpies kill you quickly.
16:09- Timing it now, getting guardian armor takes only 50 seconds and raises your life expectancy by a lot more.
18:03- Talking to death in the clock tower is the only way to be able to use the warps, so Max Slimer is here to stay.
18:26- The lure key is used to unlock certain glowing warp doors, which I'll need to do.
18:45-I forget to heal before Peeping Big, but it turned out OK.
20:31- I get the first of 3 invincibility jars. I'm still not entirely sure where to use them, but they come in handy in a few places. The final pendu-room is a good candidate.
21:40- Legion is pretty hard to chainsaw into, especially with its random twitchy movements. Also, the things it spawns curse you, and you don't want to be cursed.
23:20- I go back after shadow to door-warp to Dracula's Tooth. It skips having to break the wall leading to it and then going back in the other castle. The tooth gives +10 defense, which helps surviving some more.
26:24- The eyeball makes you immune to curse, so you don't have to worry about it after. Curse slows you down, so it's really important to avoid.

- It's possible to go through Pazuzu instead of resetting and having to get the door-warp in the aqueduct, but that might run you low on hearts for death, and it's slower if you can get the warp fast.
30:00- Moon Armor and Sun Armor increase defense a whole lot depending on which castle you're in. Going here early doesn't lose time since I use the warp to go to Dracula later.
- I go through SkeletonCaveB again and then switch castles at the warp because SkelCaveA has a lot of block puzzles which probably take longer.
33:45- The room to the right is a shop that you can access if you have an odd-numbered level. It actually doesn't take very long to farm money near the lure key/platinum tip and get 2 high potions per money bag. That would only lose about a minute, though more if you have an even-numbered level.
- Using the floodgate key drains the water so you can get to death. Even if you walk all the way through with tons of high potions, the door at the end will be closed.
34:26- I get the leggings and forget to equip them. They help boosting defense in the short time before you get crush boots. Luckily I got a bloody glove, which is good too.
- I'm not really all too sure about death to be honest :-\

37:11- Clear bones are really dangerous. They appear seemingly at random and kill you in 2 hits.
38:31- I used to think it was a good idea to invincibility jar through to get the crush boots, but after getting those 2 high potions I'm thinking I won't.
40:47- It's not necessary to save at the end. I'm just doing it for safety. The in-game time will go all the way as long as you have a save at all and wait until the credits.
- Maxim is the real deal. He's immune to the damage-glitch, so you just have to trust your instincts. Basically, he can do all of his high-damaging attacks randomly and instantly, so you'd think bouncing on him, which is the safest way, would be the way to go. However, if you do enough damage quickly, he gets stunned and gives you one chance to damage-glitch, which can save a large amount of time. So it's worth taking as many chances as you can to do the whip-alternation on him while still remaining safe. The safest time to do that is when he's in the corner, and you also want to do it when he's starting his clone attack to knock him out of it, though he can get a free shot on you after being the scumbag that he is. I actually got lucky and really should have gotten hit a few more times based on how unsafe I was, but I had the potions to cover it.
- You only need to equip the rings during the brief period I equip them.
- Dracula is fairly straight-forward. If you run out of hearts, you want to try damage-glitching with magic, and it helps to get behind him with invincibility if that's the case. I save the invincibility to this point mostly for insurance.

Thanks for reading my novel. Stay tuned for the next volumes of the trilogy: general movement and alternate routes.
[/hidden]

charleon

2014-05-28 06:38:20 am

What is a man?

Really nice Sopha! I think it would be good if you grinded the death-fight more, learn which distances are safe to damage-glitch from, otherwise the run looks phenomenal. To be honest I think Sub 40 is possible with really good execution and movement optimizing in each room. Will play around with this and see if I can find better strats for stuff

charleon

Edit history:

charleon: 2014-05-28 06:40:26 am

2014-05-28 06:39:52 am

What is a man?

Quote from charleon:

Really nice Sopha! I think it would be good if you grinded the death-fight more, learn which distances are safe to damage-glitch from, otherwise the run looks phenomenal. To be honest I think Sub 40 is possible with really good execution and movement optimizing in each room. Will play around with this and see if I can find better strats for stuff

In one part of the run i saw that you didn't unequip the stone-breaking tip and kept it on until you went into the menu and was about to equip it again, I presume this was a mistake, because I guess platinum tip gives you more attack?

uh, brainfart, instad of editing my post i did a quote of it.. sorry Sad

Sopha

Edit history:

Sopha: 2014-05-29 09:43:20 pm

Sopha: 2014-05-29 09:39:48 pm

2014-05-29 07:48:52 pm

Sub 40 is definitely possible since that's where my sum of bests is right now, and that's not including minor route changes that would make the run significantly harder. That would be an ideal run for me, since there's so many places things can go wrong and cost a lot of time.

Platinum tip gives a lot more attack. I used to equip it in that part going through SkelCave again, but all the enemies die quickly enough anyway that I don't think it's worth it anymore.

I tried moon juste recently, and the only places that weren't useless I could make it warp to basically locked the game due to the lack of a double-jump. One warp to TopFloorA and one to SkelCaveA. There's just a single room right after the first block puzzle in SkelCaveA that can't be gone through either way that prevents you from getting the floodgate key, then super jump, then skeleton key to unlock the rest of the castle. So sadly I don't think it can be used for anything.

Anyway, to continue my documentation...

Advanced techniques:

-The whip alternation technique (WAT) basically consists of whip->dash-cancel->short hop->air-whip->dash-cancel->crouch-cancel->whip and repeat. Whipping right after the end of a backdashed short hop gives you the most possible mobility from an air whip. Normally Juste has a huge amount of inertia from an air-whip and it makes the game really clunky, but whipping only after the end of a short hop keeps him on the ground more. It's also good to short hop the second jump of a double jump to get more mobility when attacking in air.
WAT gives you a large amount mobility between whips if your fingers can move fast enough. Technically, it's possible to go an entire fight against a moving enemy without stopping.

-To do a swaglaunch, first you need the air setup. Move forward in air after the double jump, stop for a frame or two (this corresponds to stopping right before a whiplaunch), then before you slow down horizontally all the way, divekick with neutral down. He should still go forward even without pressing left or right as long as he didn't run out of momentum. Whip on the exact frame the divekick hits, and this should launch you quite a ways. He'll jump whether you're holding jump or not. It can be extended with well-timed extra subweapons or whips, but that's TAS territory (if it wasn't already).

-Some more on doors. I did some testing and you only get a single frame to warp from them. It has to be pressed at the very end of the black screen between areas. And sometimes, probably depending on sub-pixels, it's completely impossible. Other times, the exact frame to input the dash shifts by one. If that wasn't enough to make you hate doors, the timing varies depending on which one it is. The one from aqueduct to cavern in particular has a considerably longer loading time.
Getting door warps even a fourth of the time is pretty amazing, I'd say. Personally I just press the dash button once and try to time it, but now knowing that it can vary so much, it might be better to mash. I'm seriously considering going through Pazuzu just to avoid as many of them as possible.

-You can damage-glitch without a divekick. Put a subweapon on the enemy and quickly attack with both air and ground whips. The second one of them will damage-glitch. The is really only useful when the enemy's hitbox prevents you from divekicking in and when you don't have a double-jump. There's an axe in the treasury that can be used to damage-glitch skull knight, but that's quite a bit harder than holy water strats.

-As it turns out, these aren't that useful for Maxim. He can't dash-cancel his attacks so whip alternation doesn't work. And swaglaunching is even harder and even less useful, since he slows down momentum faster. Maybe it can be used for some zany zips, but that's going to be ridiculously inconsistent.

Edit:
-Another thing to worry about. When Juste slides or dashes off a ledge and you try to divekick, whether you divekick or jump depends on if the last time you were in air you used up your double jump. If you didn't use it up, a jump comes out. I blame the times I awkwardly get stuck in the air on this. So it's basically always good to use up the double jump if you can, even if it doesn't speed anything up.

Sub 40 is definitely possible since that's where my sum of bests is right now, and that's not including minor route changes that would make the run significantly harder. That would be an ideal run for me, since there's so many places things can go wrong and cost a lot of time.

Platinum tip gives a lot more attack. I used to equip it in that part going through SkelCave again, but all the enemies die quickly enough anyway that I don't think it's worth it anymore.

I tried moon juste recently, and the only places that weren't useless I could make it warp to basically locked the game due to the lack of a double-jump. One warp to TopFloorA and one to SkelCaveA. There's just a single room right after the first block puzzle in SkelCaveA that can't be gone through either way that prevents you from getting the floodgate key, then super jump, then skeleton key to unlock the rest of the castle. So sadly I don't think it can be used for anything.

Anyway, to continue my documentation...

Advanced techniques:
[hidden]
-The whip alternation technique (WAT) basically consists of whip->dash-cancel->short hop->air-whip->dash-cancel->crouch-cancel->whip and repeat. Whipping right after the end of a backdashed short hop gives you the most possible mobility from an air whip. Normally Juste has a huge amount of inertia from an air-whip and it makes the game really clunky, but whipping only after the end of a short hop keeps him on the ground more. It's also good to short hop the second jump of a double jump to get more mobility when attacking in air.
WAT gives you a large amount mobility between whips if your fingers can move fast enough. Technically, it's possible to go an entire fight against a moving enemy without stopping.

-To do a swaglaunch, first you need the air setup. Move forward in air after the double jump, stop for a frame or two (this corresponds to stopping right before a whiplaunch), then before you slow down horizontally all the way, divekick [i]with neutral down.[/i] He should still go forward even without pressing left or right as long as he didn't run out of momentum. Whip on the exact frame the divekick hits, and this should launch you quite a ways. He'll jump whether you're holding jump or not. It can be extended with well-timed extra subweapons or whips, but that's TAS territory (if it wasn't already).

-Some more on doors. I did some testing and you only get a single frame to warp from them. It has to be pressed at the very end of the black screen between areas. And sometimes, probably depending on sub-pixels, it's completely impossible. Other times, the exact frame to input the dash shifts by one. If that wasn't enough to make you hate doors, the timing varies depending on which one it is. The one from aqueduct to cavern in particular has a considerably longer loading time.
Getting door warps even a fourth of the time is pretty amazing, I'd say. Personally I just press the dash button once and try to time it, but now knowing that it can vary so much, it might be better to mash. I'm seriously considering going through Pazuzu just to avoid as many of them as possible.

-You can damage-glitch without a divekick. Put a subweapon on the enemy and quickly attack with both air and ground whips. The second one of them will damage-glitch. The is really only useful when the enemy's hitbox prevents you from divekicking in and when you don't have a double-jump. There's an axe in the treasury that can be used to damage-glitch skull knight, but that's quite a bit harder than holy water strats.

-As it turns out, these aren't that useful for Maxim. He can't dash-cancel his attacks so whip alternation doesn't work. And swaglaunching is even harder and even less useful, since he slows down momentum faster. Maybe it can be used for some zany zips, but that's going to be ridiculously inconsistent.

Edit:
-Another thing to worry about. When Juste slides or dashes off a ledge and you try to divekick, whether you divekick or jump depends on if the last time you were in air you used up your double jump. If you didn't use it up, a jump comes out. I blame the times I awkwardly get stuck in the air on this. So it's basically always good to use up the double jump if you can, even if it doesn't speed anything up.
[/hidden]

Sopha

Edit history:

Sopha: 2014-06-05 07:40:42 pm

2014-06-05 02:10:05 am

I intended to do some segment practice after the last one but then I went and got 41:05 during a test run, thanks largely to better door-warps and death and maxim fights. With this there's no more easy time-savers left.

I expected that the route would have to be updated once I found some zips, but having went through most of the castle now they were either really inconsistent or didn't save time. So there go my dreams of a sub-30 ever.

And now the thrilling finale:

Alternate Routes:

Early Part:
-I forgot to mention earlier, but I skip the orb that shows the damage you do. It's used to see the criticals you get and then go through enemies faster by sliding, but that's hard to react to and probably isn't worth it. I just slide through at the end, assuming no criticals, which is the case most of the time.
-There's a slightly possible zip going up to the first save by chaining knives together from the platform at 1:56 in the video above. It would save around 15 seconds, so it's not worth it. I only mention it since it's so close to the beginning.
-There's an axe in the treasury I try getting instead of holy water in the video. It lets you damage-glitch on skull knight which should be faster, but damage-glitching with axe is really hard, and you don't get many hearts to do it.
-One of the less impossible zips I found was chaining knives into the wall next to Drac's Ring which sends you to wailing way of the opposite castle. This puts you very near the pike master. You'll know why that's useful.

-This is the big one in the early part: it's possible to get to platinum tip and the warp next to it without a double-jump. This takes ledgelaunching and then using ice-fist at what seems to be perfect timing, and you only get a few tries due to limited magic. You'd have to get the fist near the damage-seeing orb I mentioned (this might make getting the orb worthwhile.) Then after getting the ice book, there's another split between possible routes.
The first would go: Save-> IceBook->Reset-> PlatTip+HintCard+Cross-> Continue normal route -- This would give cross and platinum tip going to skull-knight, and damage-glitching without divekick with cross is easier than with axe.
The second: Save-> IceBook-> FireBook-> Bat (using fire-fist and whip alternation)-> ice-fist to Drac's Ring-> Reset-> PlatTip+HintCard+Cross-> Save at Cavern-> LizardFeather-> Reset-> Continue normal route -- This would let you not have to go through the treasury more than once. I haven't tested it, but I think this is the fastest one.
-It should be noted here that ice-cross is simply no good, so ice book won't help in that way.

-There's a zip in the room after golem that can be used after the water rises all the way that takes you next to giant merman. It's by far the most consistent useful zip I know, though it skips 2 high potions and adds an RNG boss. In a perfect run I think it's probably faster than not, but the middle part it warps to is confusing enough that I'm not sure. If it is faster, it's probably not by enough to be worth it.

Middle Part:
-This is where I get headaches routing. There's 2 useful saves to reset to, 4 optional bosses, 5 door-warps to consider, 4 of dracula's relics, and just a bunch of stuff that's not linear and you'd have to weigh your consistency with door-warps with other things and ugh. More than a few TASes I've seen go through this sub-optimally.

-I'm not even sure where to start.
-Door-warping from near in ClockTowerB to the tooth is the most useful door-warp aside from getting the very beginning. So I'll only consider the others for consistency trade-offs.
-You can skip getting the guardian armor set and get something similar from items just lying around. In effect, this means less defense starting from Max Slimer to right before Death and saving around 30-40 seconds. Less due to having to be more careful.
-You probably want to get lure key right after opening the warps.

-The fastest route if you can get doors I call Door Hell. The difference between it and the one I use is, right before Legion, door-warp and get the tooth instead of fighting shadow first. Reset to SkyWalkwayA, and go through Devil (this should take very little time with good damage-glitching), and door-warp from ClockTowerA to ChapelB. There's a high potion right there which is useful, then go down to get the heart and then fight shadow and reset. This skips legion which is a slow boss due to not being able to damage-glitch the first part and it being difficult to damage-glitch the second. Note that this includes 2 possible door-warps through aqueduct that save ~15 seconds each. This has 3 door-warps that will kill runs if you can't get them quickly. I used to think this was the fastest way through, but now with a faster zip to aqueduct I'm not sure, since you can't reset to sky walkway using it.

-A more consistent route would get the nail the first time in the aqueduct, then go through pazuzu after getting the eyeball instead of door-warping through to CavernA. This also is the only route if you're getting the bad ending, since that involves opening the center room from the top floor.

-Then it's also possible to save at aqueduct instead of walkway, and coming back to get maxim's ring and drac's eyeball later through either cavernA or the clock tower warp.

Since I don't know what I'm talking about anymore I'll move on.

Late Part:
-You can go through either SkelCaveA or SkelCaveB to get floodgate key. Probably B is faster.
-OR you can take an inconsistent zip I found in TopFloorA to zip straight to the floodgate key. It would have to be done within 3 minutes in order to save time which is a tall order. It actually let me drain the water after using moon juste, but then the jump to death's room has proven insurmountable Sad

-Then there's the floating boots. After getting Moon Armor (helps a lot) in the center lure warp, you can warp to EntranceB and try your luck at getting the pike master to drop floating boots. It's a rare drop and lets you go anywhere the super jump would regularly take you. It can be used to then get crush boots early.
-Then optionally after crush boots, you can farm jumping bone pillars in the shrine. There's a good spot where you just have to dash-jump and whip and you get three per screen transition. They give huge amount of exp, but since I get crush boots so late I don't think it's worth it in the route I take.
-I'll just note here that in this game, the fastest exp comes from enemies with low hp and high damage. The other ones to get are scarecrows, the floating thingys in the clock tower, and especially balloons. It might be worthwhile to farm the big balloon that splits into three smaller ones. I'm not sure why I'm putting this in the late part but I don't know what I'm talking about anymore.
-Then, reset back to the EntranceB save, and you can go through the basement using floating boots to get floodgate key early.

-So basically, the two ways to get floodgate key faster are both extremely inconsistent.

-If you're feeling like it's the urn, you should pick up the urn on your way to drac's rib. It will literally be the urn.

-Back to floating boots, I'm pretty sure they can break the game by opening up more zips. Coupled with being able to get them early with the zip I mentioned, something may just be broken beyond repair.

EDIT: Forgot to mention where the top floor zip is. It takes stringing three knives together into the wall above the merchant.

So yeah, this is begging for a segmented run of some sort since so many of the skips are inconsistent or RNG or both. If it goes well going through the castle again looking for zips with floating boots, it might make it go pretty fast.
Pretty fast.

I intended to do some segment practice after the last one but then I went and got 41:05 during a test run, thanks largely to better door-warps and death and maxim fights. With this there's no more easy time-savers left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re7l_pdZm0k

I expected that the route would have to be updated once I found some zips, but having went through most of the castle now they were either really inconsistent or didn't save time. So there go my dreams of a sub-30 ever.

And now the thrilling finale:

Alternate Routes:
[hidden]
[u]Early Part:[/u]
-I forgot to mention earlier, but I skip the orb that shows the damage you do. It's used to see the criticals you get and then go through enemies faster by sliding, but that's hard to react to and probably isn't worth it. I just slide through at the end, assuming no criticals, which is the case most of the time.
-There's a slightly possible zip going up to the first save by chaining knives together from the platform at 1:56 in the video above. It would save around 15 seconds, so it's not worth it. I only mention it since it's so close to the beginning.
-There's an axe in the treasury I try getting instead of holy water in the video. It lets you damage-glitch on skull knight which should be faster, but damage-glitching with axe is really hard, and you don't get many hearts to do it.
-One of the less impossible zips I found was chaining knives into the wall next to Drac's Ring which sends you to wailing way of the opposite castle. This puts you very near the pike master. You'll know why that's useful.

-This is the big one in the early part: [i]it's possible to get to platinum tip and the warp next to it without a double-jump.[/i] This takes ledgelaunching and then using ice-fist at what seems to be perfect timing, and you only get a few tries due to limited magic. You'd have to get the fist near the damage-seeing orb I mentioned (this might make getting the orb worthwhile.) Then after getting the ice book, there's another split between possible routes.
The first would go: Save-> IceBook->Reset-> PlatTip+HintCard+Cross-> Continue normal route -- This would give cross and platinum tip going to skull-knight, and damage-glitching without divekick with cross is easier than with axe.
The second: Save-> IceBook-> FireBook-> Bat (using fire-fist and whip alternation)-> ice-fist to Drac's Ring-> Reset-> PlatTip+HintCard+Cross-> Save at Cavern-> LizardFeather-> Reset-> Continue normal route -- This would let you not have to go through the treasury more than once. I haven't tested it, but I think this is the fastest one.
-It should be noted here that ice-cross is simply [i]no good[/i], so ice book won't help in that way.

-There's a zip in the room after golem that can be used after the water rises all the way that takes you next to giant merman. It's by far the most consistent useful zip I know, though it skips 2 high potions and adds an RNG boss. In a perfect run I think it's probably faster than not, but the middle part it warps to is confusing enough that I'm not sure. If it is faster, it's probably not by enough to be worth it.

[u]Middle Part:[/u]
-This is where I get headaches routing. There's 2 useful saves to reset to, 4 optional bosses, 5 door-warps to consider, 4 of dracula's relics,  and just a bunch of stuff that's not linear and you'd have to weigh your consistency with door-warps with other things and ugh. More than a few TASes I've seen go through this sub-optimally.

-I'm not even sure where to start.
-Door-warping from near in ClockTowerB to the tooth is the most useful door-warp aside from getting the very beginning. So I'll only consider the others for consistency trade-offs.
-You can skip getting the guardian armor set and get something similar from items just lying around. In effect, this means less defense starting from Max Slimer to right before Death and saving around 30-40 seconds. Less due to having to be more careful.
-You probably want to get lure key right after opening the warps.

-The fastest route if you can get doors I call Door Hell. The difference between it and the one I use is, right before Legion, door-warp and get the tooth instead of fighting shadow first. Reset to SkyWalkwayA, and go through Devil (this should take very little time with good damage-glitching), and door-warp from ClockTowerA to ChapelB. There's a high potion right there which is useful, then go down to get the heart and then fight shadow and reset. This skips legion which is a slow boss due to not being able to damage-glitch the first part and it being difficult to damage-glitch the second. Note that this includes 2 possible door-warps through aqueduct that save ~15 seconds each. This has 3 door-warps that will kill runs if you can't get them quickly. I used to think this was the fastest way through, but now with a faster zip to aqueduct I'm not sure, since you can't reset to sky walkway using it.

-A more consistent route would get the nail the first time in the aqueduct, then go through pazuzu after getting the eyeball instead of door-warping through to CavernA. This also is the only route if you're getting the bad ending, since that involves opening the center room from the top floor.

-Then it's also possible to save at aqueduct instead of walkway, and coming back to get maxim's ring and drac's eyeball later through either cavernA or the clock tower warp.

Since I don't know what I'm talking about anymore I'll move on.

[u]Late Part:[/u]
-You can go through either SkelCaveA or SkelCaveB to get floodgate key. Probably B is faster.
-OR you can take an inconsistent zip I found in TopFloorA to zip straight to the floodgate key. It would have to be done within 3 minutes in order to save time which is a tall order. It actually let me drain the water after using moon juste, but then the jump to death's room has proven insurmountable :(

-Then there's the floating boots. After getting Moon Armor (helps a lot) in the center lure warp, you can warp to EntranceB and try your luck at getting the pike master to drop floating boots. It's a rare drop and lets you go anywhere the super jump would regularly take you. It can be used to then get crush boots early.
-Then optionally after crush boots, you can farm jumping bone pillars in the shrine. There's a good spot where you just have to dash-jump and whip and you get three per screen transition. They give huge amount of exp, but since I get crush boots so late I don't think it's worth it in the route I take.
-I'll just note here that in this game, the fastest exp comes from enemies with low hp and high damage. The other ones to get are scarecrows, the floating thingys in the clock tower, and especially balloons. It might be worthwhile to farm the big balloon that splits into three smaller ones. I'm not sure why I'm putting this in the late part but I don't know what I'm talking about anymore.
-Then, reset back to the EntranceB save, and you can go through the basement using floating boots to get floodgate key early.

-So basically, the two ways to get floodgate key faster are both extremely inconsistent.

-If you're feeling like it's the urn, you should pick up the urn on your way to drac's rib. It will literally be the urn.

-Back to floating boots, I'm pretty sure they can break the game by opening up more zips. Coupled with being able to get them early with the zip I mentioned, something may just be broken beyond repair.

EDIT: Forgot to mention where the top floor zip is. It takes stringing three knives together into the wall above the merchant.
[/hidden]

So yeah, this is begging for a segmented run of some sort since so many of the skips are inconsistent or RNG or both. If it goes well going through the castle again looking for zips with floating boots, it might make it go pretty fast.
Pretty fast.

charleon

Edit history:

charleon: 2014-06-06 04:19:12 am

2014-06-06 04:18:51 am

What is a man?

Awesome work Sopha! I know that there are a handful that wants to learn Juste, and you just made their wet dreams come true Smiley

KentaKurodani

2014-07-01 03:21:22 pm

Metroid 2 Ho!

So a friend of mine who is a taser and a zero mission runner found this. Juste has been broken ladies and gentlemen! gotta go a while but that could still cut god knows how much off the route. Even for good end, just gotta kill the shadow and get Maxims bracelet.

Sopha

2014-07-02 10:15:48 pm

That's amazing! I actually thought about trying that out with medicine jar since I knew that was the perfect distance for a zip, but I assumed it would go to aqueduct-A normally and having to get a medicine jar by then wouldn't have saved time. Abusing hit invincibility didn't work either.

I just tried it out and it looks like it could cut it down to less than 30 minutes, cutting out almost the entire late portion of the run, but sadly not doing too much before then. I'll work on the route optimization using that. Right now I'm a little bit worried about the Maxim fight, since it locks the screen and you'll be underleveled to the point of him insta-killing you. I'll have to work in some level-grinding in there.

In the meantime, I found out that the ideal distance for Juste zipping is around 174-176 pixels. Pushing a crate to that distance opens up a lot of more or less consistent zips. It turned out that most of the zips were useless, but there was one neat one going into the right wall of where you get the floodgate key. Normally you have slide out of the little hole and it zips you back to the same room, but combined with a momentum stopping spell, it can go to Cavern-A or Aqueduct-B. I was practicing a run using that to save a minute or two and bypass the last door-warp, but with this new skip, that seems to have been in vain.

That's amazing! I actually thought about trying that out with medicine jar since I knew that was the perfect distance for a zip, but I assumed it would go to aqueduct-A normally and having to get a medicine jar by then wouldn't have saved time. Abusing hit invincibility didn't work either.

I just tried it out and it looks like it could cut it down to less than 30 minutes, cutting out almost the entire late portion of the run, but sadly not doing too much before then. I'll work on the route optimization using that. Right now I'm a little bit worried about the Maxim fight, since it locks the screen and you'll be underleveled to the point of him insta-killing you. I'll have to work in some level-grinding in there.

In the meantime, I found out that the ideal distance for Juste zipping is around 174-176 pixels. Pushing a crate to that distance opens up a lot of more or less consistent zips. It turned out that most of the zips were useless, [i]but[/i] there was one neat one going into the right wall of where you get the floodgate key. Normally you have slide out of the little hole and it zips you back to the same room, but combined with a momentum stopping spell, it can go to Cavern-A or Aqueduct-B. I was practicing a run using that to save a minute or two and bypass the last door-warp, but with this new skip, that seems to have been in vain.

ZX497

Edit history:

ZX497: 2014-07-10 09:48:20 am

2014-07-10 09:40:56 am

So here's some stuff.

A lot of this doesn't quite fit right into a speedrun, but stuff is stuff, and I actually had a blast just messing around with this Tongue

Oh yeah, one thing I'll mention, is that by doing some zipping and stuff, a 0 Relic Bad Ending run is now possible. To get the good ending, you still need the Lizard Tail as far as I can tell, since getting MK's Bracelet requires the Crushing Stone, and getting the Crushing Stone requires, well, the Lizard Tail. It is quite possible there are some zips to either get Crushing Stone without Lizard Tail, or to get inside the Shadow / MK's Bracelet rooms.

ZX497

2014-07-11 06:03:42 am

So, 0 Relic Good Ending is now a thing too, due to this being possible:

A-M

2014-07-11 08:35:02 am

Amazing stuff ! Glad to see new discoveries on this game !

Sopha

2014-07-11 02:16:15 pm

Whoa, that last one is pretty wacky. So you're talking to maxim in one file and having the ring appear in another one? These are great! Even if some might not seem useful at first, everything's on the table when it comes time for Furniture%

Can you get these consistently at all or is it a 50+ tries sort of thing like it is with me?

So I found (took from tas) two more zips that could be good:
--There's one in the room in skeleton cave with the rolling skull, multi-knife-launching out the exit from the highest platform takes you to a very convenient place you can get the moon physics very early.

--And this is A BIG one. In the room of illusions on the right, you have to air-whiplaunch from the first candle and whip again the moment the first whip ends. It connects to a few good places, most importantly if you have floating boots to the top floor room. With floating boots that's a major hub, it has an exit for moon physics and it joins up with maxim any% to glitch straight to the end in castle-B.
The best part is that the double-frame-perfect trick for it, when I get it, feels very consistent. It's definitely one to practice.

So for a bad ending route what I have planned out is a zip from marble gallery A to B, grind for some exp, then grind the '0' enemy for a cross or axe to damage-glitch with, then grind pike master for floating boots, then reload and get the second zip I mentioned, from which you float to the end. This can be 0 relic too since floating boots can let you divekick like a double jump.

Judging from your video descriptions you had a different route in mind. What was it?

Whoa, that last one is pretty wacky. So you're talking to maxim in one file and having the ring appear in another one? These are great! Even if some might not seem useful at first, everything's on the table when it comes time for Furniture%

Can you get these consistently at all or is it a 50+ tries sort of thing like it is with me?

So I found (took from tas) two more zips that could be good:
--There's one in the room in skeleton cave with the rolling skull, multi-knife-launching out the exit from the highest platform takes you to a very convenient place you can get the moon physics very early.

--And this is A BIG one. In the room of illusions on the right, you have to air-whiplaunch from the first candle and whip again the moment the first whip ends. It connects to a few good places, most importantly if you have floating boots to the top floor room. With floating boots that's a major hub, it has an exit for moon physics and it joins up with maxim any% to glitch straight to the end in castle-B.
The best part is that the double-frame-perfect trick for it, when I get it, feels very consistent. It's definitely one to practice.

So for a bad ending route what I have planned out is a zip from marble gallery A to B, grind for some exp, then grind the '0' enemy for a cross or axe to damage-glitch with, then grind pike master for floating boots, then reload and get the second zip I mentioned, from which you float to the end. This can be 0 relic too since floating boots can let you divekick like a double jump.

Judging from your video descriptions you had a different route in mind. What was it?

Sopha

2014-07-15 02:50:48 am

Thanks to two new skips, here's a sub 30 good ending run!

The new camera glitch cuts off a lot, and I get some very good speed for most of the skips other than a big 40 second loss at one point.

2:48- New knife launches
5:41- Neat damage boost since I want to conserve hearts
- I use the axe correctly on skull knight this time. It saves around 30 seconds.
8:19- A new zip to aqueduct from the candle I mentioned. The window for the warp is fairly small and it has a penchant for hardlocking. I get it third try when in practice it takes around ten. By the way, the candle reappears if you don't take what's inside.
17:42- Route change starting after shadow
19:06- I pick up an extra elixir. The point is to damage-boost myself back by the bone dragon
20:50- New golem fight. I get really good RNG for this one. He can lose a lot of time since I don't have a good second form strategy.
21:20- I mess up the blood elevator zip. If I get up there well with the ghost jump I can get three tries.
22:18- Get the camera-glitch
22:53- I get the door-warp on second try, amazingly. I'm usually happy if it takes less than 30 seconds (6 tries.)
23:06- I take the longest time possible figuring out I'm in the wrong castle
23:30- Narrowly avoid a ghost bone. I think it kills you in one hit.
24:20- Get a cloak for extra defense and generally good fashion
25:04- A two minute grinding session. Level-ups give you a lot of defense and attack power. I go from level 15 to 36.
27:44- Skip the gate to dracula since it's off-screen and not loaded.
- Not the best final boss fight. Could save over 30 seconds by better playing and better RNG.

Sub-28 is possible using this route with better play and RNG alone. Then there's around 4 minutes to save by being less equipped overall starting with taking out guardian armor. Considering the skips are really reset heavy, it would take some major clutch to beat maxim and dracula while saving all of that time.

There's also a different route to get to dracula by way of the treasury that takes around a minute longer but does have moon armor along the way. It's probably worth it if you're skipping guardian armor.

And finally there's more inconsistent zips and floating boots that might save time. They would make the run lean even further toward reset-heavy skips and clutch at the end. And throw an RNG grind in there for good measure.

Thanks to two new skips, here's a sub 30 good ending run!

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_B9vprcbVI[/url]

The new camera glitch cuts off a lot, and I get some very good speed for most of the skips other than a big 40 second loss at one point.

2:48- New knife launches
5:41- Neat damage boost since I want to conserve hearts
- I use the axe correctly on skull knight this time. It saves around 30 seconds.
8:19- A new zip to aqueduct from the candle I mentioned. The window for the warp is fairly small and it has a penchant for hardlocking. I get it third try when in practice it takes around ten. By the way, the candle reappears if you don't take what's inside.
17:42- Route change starting after shadow
19:06- I pick up an extra elixir. The point is to damage-boost myself back by the bone dragon
20:50- New golem fight. I get really good RNG for this one. He can lose a lot of time since I don't have a good second form strategy.
21:20- I mess up the blood elevator zip. If I get up there well with the ghost jump I can get three tries.
22:18- Get the camera-glitch
22:53- I get the door-warp on second try, amazingly. I'm usually happy if it takes less than 30 seconds (6 tries.)
23:06- I take the longest time possible figuring out I'm in the wrong castle
23:30- Narrowly avoid a ghost bone. I think it kills you in one hit.
24:20- Get a cloak for extra defense and generally good fashion
25:04- A two minute grinding session. Level-ups give you a lot of defense and attack power. I go from level 15 to 36.
27:44- Skip the gate to dracula since it's off-screen and not loaded.
- Not the best final boss fight. Could save over 30 seconds by better playing and better RNG.

Sub-28 is possible using this route with better play and RNG alone. Then there's around 4 minutes to save by being less equipped overall starting with taking out guardian armor. Considering the skips are really reset heavy, it would take some major clutch to beat maxim and dracula while saving all of that time.

There's also a different route to get to dracula by way of the treasury that takes around a minute longer but does have moon armor along the way. It's probably worth it if you're skipping guardian armor.

And finally there's more inconsistent zips and floating boots that might save time. They would make the run lean even further toward reset-heavy skips and clutch at the end. And throw an RNG grind in there for good measure.

ZX497

2014-07-15 09:25:45 am

Whoa, nice! Definitely cool to see some of this put to speedrunning use already... I actually had no idea damage glitching with the Axe was a thing for real time runs too, haha.

Quote from Sopha:

Whoa, that last one is pretty wacky. So you're talking to maxim in one file and having the ring appear in another one? These are great! Even if some might not seem useful at first, everything's on the table when it comes time for Furniture%

Can you get these consistently at all or is it a 50+ tries sort of thing like it is with me?

Yeah, basically I trigger the cutscene in another file, and since there's that incredibly convenient Simon Boss Rush ending located near the end of that zip, the game ends prematurely, with the cutscene still running in the background. This allows me to load another file (or the same file), and Maxim just hands the stuff out. Sadly, New Game doesn't _quite_ work for this, since Maxim's position on the first screen is just under the floor: he does hand out the bracelet, but it just drops into oblivion... if only he was, like, 5 pixels higher or something Tongue

This stuff is very inconsistent for me, particularly the zip to get Floating Boots early. I have no idea what the frame window for that zip is, or what actually even matters for it, but yeah, it's a fairly annoying one to get. The zip at the Chapel of Dissonance on the other hand isn't bad at all. I do miss it a fair bit, but a 30-50% success rate wouldn't be much of an exaggeration.

Quote from Sopha:

--And this is A BIG one. In the room of illusions on the right, you have to air-whiplaunch from the first candle and whip again the moment the first whip ends. It connects to a few good places, most importantly if you have floating boots to the top floor room. With floating boots that's a major hub, it has an exit for moon physics and it joins up with maxim any% to glitch straight to the end in castle-B.
The best part is that the double-frame-perfect trick for it, when I get it, feels very consistent. It's definitely one to practice.

Wow. I've still yet to get a single whip launch off a candle, and I don't actually even know what kind of a timing I'm looking for there. I whip on the first frame after divekicking a candle or what? Seriously amazing you can actually do this stuff either way, lol.

Quote from Sopha":

Judging from your video descriptions you had a different route in mind. What was it?

Uhh, well, I don't actually quite now anymore. The only route I had planned was for 0 relic good / bad ending, which started with File Select warping to Skeleton Cave A, saving there, Copy File Warping back to the beginning, zipping to Floating Boots, Saveroom warping back to Skeleton Cave A, getting the Skull Key, Copy File Warping back to the beginning again, doing the zip to Wailing Way B again, and then getting to Luminous Cavern B through the Skull Door for the Camera Lock glitch. This was the way I did my 0 relic runs, but since there's the candle launch whip at Marble Gallery A now, a lot of this seems highly unnecessary Tongue

Whoa, nice! Definitely cool to see some of this put to speedrunning use already... I actually had no idea damage glitching with the Axe was a thing for real time runs too, haha.

[quote="Sopha"]
Whoa, that last one is pretty wacky. So you're talking to maxim in one file and having the ring appear in another one? These are great! Even if some might not seem useful at first, everything's on the table when it comes time for Furniture%

Can you get these consistently at all or is it a 50+ tries sort of thing like it is with me?[/quote]

Yeah, basically I trigger the cutscene in another file, and since there's that incredibly convenient Simon Boss Rush ending located near the end of that zip, the game ends prematurely, with the cutscene still running in the background. This allows me to load another file (or the same file), and Maxim just hands the stuff out. Sadly, New Game doesn't _quite_ work for this, since Maxim's position on the first screen is just under the floor: he does hand out the bracelet, but it just drops into oblivion... if only he was, like, 5 pixels higher or something :P

This stuff is very inconsistent for me, particularly the zip to get Floating Boots early. I have no idea what the frame window for that zip is, or what actually even matters for it, but yeah, it's a fairly annoying one to get. The zip at the Chapel of Dissonance on the other hand isn't bad at all. I do miss it a fair bit, but a 30-50% success rate wouldn't be much of an exaggeration.

[quote="Sopha"]--And this is A BIG one. In the room of illusions on the right, you have to air-whiplaunch from the first candle and whip again the moment the first whip ends. It connects to a few good places, most importantly if you have floating boots to the top floor room. With floating boots that's a major hub, it has an exit for moon physics and it joins up with maxim any% to glitch straight to the end in castle-B.
The best part is that the double-frame-perfect trick for it, when I get it, feels very consistent. It's definitely one to practice.[/quote]

Wow. I've still yet to get a single whip launch off a candle, and I don't actually even know what kind of a timing I'm looking for there. I whip on the first frame after divekicking a candle or what? Seriously amazing you can actually do this stuff either way, lol.

[quote=Sopha"]Judging from your video descriptions you had a different route in mind. What was it?[/quote]

Uhh, well, I don't actually quite now anymore. The only route I had planned was for 0 relic good / bad ending, which started with File Select warping to Skeleton Cave A, saving there, Copy File Warping back to the beginning, zipping to Floating Boots, Saveroom warping back to Skeleton Cave A, getting the Skull Key, Copy File Warping back to the beginning again, doing the zip to Wailing Way B again, and then getting to Luminous Cavern B through the Skull Door for the Camera Lock glitch. This was the way I did my 0 relic runs, but since there's the candle launch whip at Marble Gallery A now, a lot of this seems highly unnecessary :P

ZX497

Edit history:

ZX497: 2014-07-15 10:26:58 am

ZX497: 2014-07-15 10:24:24 am

ZX497: 2014-07-15 10:21:54 am

2014-07-15 10:12:24 am

Oh hang on, I do have tentative route for any% bad ending too.

Again, File Select Warp to Skeleton Cave A, save, Copy File Warp back to beginning, play up to Sylph's Feather (double jump) regularly, with the exception of opening the shop along the way, reload yourself into Skeleton Cave A, grab a Medicine Jar at Luminous Caverns A, door warp at Luminous Cavern A to get into the shop you opened earlier, Camera Lock glitch, finish.

I have no idea how this fares against what you mentioned, though, but at least there's no grinding for Floating Boots. At Skeleton Cave A, there's a pretty good grinding room one room over to the right of the save, with a bunch of those Glass Skeletons: they give pretty good EXP, not to mention they drop quite a bit of money usually. Since you'll be door warping back to Castle B, right into a shop, you'll actually have a chance to burn some of that money too for potions and stuff.

Maxim is still a problem, but there's actually quite a few good defensive items to grab nearby at Luminous Cavern A, enough for you to perhaps survive a hit and spend that money on potions. Also, there's the Wind Book fairly close (maybe a minute's worth of a detour?) to the Maxim boss fight, so, that's perhaps useful.

Also, I'm not entirely sure how we're defining bad ending, considering there's three endings:

- Beating Dracula at Castle B (This one is obviously good!)
- Beating Maxim at Castle B
- Beating Maxim at Castle A

And why there's a difference between Castle A and Castle B, is that in Castle B ending, Lydie isn't with you, while for Castle A, she is with you. So yeah, I dunno, should these be grouped the same? Is it Best or Bad, or Best, Medium, Bad?

Oh hang on, I do have tentative route for any% bad ending too.

Again, File Select Warp to Skeleton Cave A, save, Copy File Warp back to beginning, play up to Sylph's Feather (double jump) regularly, with the exception of opening the shop along the way, reload yourself into Skeleton Cave A, grab a Medicine Jar at Luminous Caverns A, door warp at Luminous Cavern A to get into the shop you opened earlier, Camera Lock glitch, finish.

I have no idea how this fares against what you mentioned, though, but at least there's no grinding for Floating Boots. At Skeleton Cave A, there's a pretty good grinding room one room over to the right of the save, with a bunch of those Glass Skeletons: they give pretty good EXP, not to mention they drop quite a bit of money usually. Since you'll be door warping back to Castle B, right into a shop, you'll actually have a chance to burn some of that money too for potions and stuff.

Maxim is still a problem, but there's actually quite a few good defensive items to grab nearby at Luminous Cavern A, enough for you to perhaps survive a hit and spend that money on potions. Also, there's the Wind Book fairly close (maybe a minute's worth of a detour?) to the Maxim boss fight, so, that's perhaps useful.

Also, I'm not entirely sure how we're defining bad ending, considering there's three endings:

- Beating Dracula at Castle B (This one is obviously good!)
- Beating Maxim at Castle B
- Beating Maxim at Castle A

And why there's a difference between Castle A and Castle B, is that in Castle B ending, Lydie isn't with you, while for Castle A, she is with you. So yeah, I dunno, should these be grouped the same? Is it Best or Bad, or Best, Medium, Bad?

Sopha

2014-07-15 09:16:52 pm

Oh I didn't think of using the copy file warp to keep a save to reset to. That lets you get a medicine jar earlier than I assumed was possible. While the route I had can technically be faster, especially since it can technically skip the double jump, your route is probably more consistent. Between them a sub 20 bad ending is surely possible.

The shop sells potions dirt cheap compared to the best money grinding spots. If it's possible to survive a hit and have a ton of potions, no further grinding should be necessary. The moon/sun armors give a big defense boost even without the special castle bonus, and it's perfectly in the route after getting the camera lock.

There are four zips to get floating boots early. One in the entrance that's extremely inconsistent. One in the big room with medusa heads in marble gallery that's extremely inconsistent. One with the candlewhiplaunch in room of illusions that requires a double jump. And one at dracula's ring that's only very inconsistent. I was planning to do the last of those though it's further away than the first two. You can even slide out of the zip to get the luck bonus of dracula's ring to help with the floating boots drop.

I'm not even sure which one of these routes I want to do now. They'll probably end up giving similar times.

Quote from ZX497:

Wow. I've still yet to get a single whip launch off a candle, and I don't actually even know what kind of a timing I'm looking for there. I whip on the first frame after divekicking a candle or what? Seriously amazing you can actually do this stuff either way, lol.

It has two parts. First you go towards the candle in air and divekick with neutral down, rather than forward down; it should still go forward. Then you whip on the frame you hit the candle. Juste does different things depending on what messed up.
- He doesn't whip -- means you whipped too early
- He launches straight up and whips -- means you whipped too late
- He launches backwards slowly and whips -- means you got the timing right but the setup wrong

Quote from ZX497:

Also, I'm not entirely sure how we're defining bad ending, considering there's three endings:

- Beating Dracula at Castle B (This one is obviously good!)
- Beating Maxim at Castle B
- Beating Maxim at Castle A

And why there's a difference between Castle A and Castle B, is that in Castle B ending, Lydie isn't with you, while for Castle A, she is with you. So yeah, I dunno, should these be grouped the same? Is it Best or Bad, or Best, Medium, Bad?

I was thinking the two non-dracula endings would both be bad. With the route I had, when floating to the end, you can either go straight into the maxim B room or open up the maxim A door and come out near its entrance. Between the two it would be 99% the same run. The difference in your route would only be an extra door-warp and run through part of the treasury, probably amounting to less than a minute. So I don't think it's worth differentiating between them.

Then there's the secret ending that absolutely nobody knows about! Apparently if you get all furniture and get the good ending, while the dialogue is still exactly the same, Lydie moves slightly closer to Juste at one point. I haven't verified if this is actually true or just a youtube conspiracy yet, and I don't remember if it happened when I got all furniture, but if it is true it would be the best ending. So it would go:

- Bad Ending/Any% -- Beat maxim without dracula
- Good Ending -- Beat dracula
- Best Ending/Furniture% -- Beat dracula with all furniture

Oh I didn't think of using the copy file warp to keep a save to reset to. That lets you get a medicine jar earlier than I assumed was possible. While the route I had can technically be faster, especially since it can technically skip the double jump, your route is probably more consistent. Between them a sub 20 bad ending is surely possible.

The shop sells potions dirt cheap compared to the best money grinding spots. If it's possible to survive a hit and have a ton of potions, no further grinding should be necessary. The moon/sun armors give a big defense boost even without the special castle bonus, and it's perfectly in the route after getting the camera lock.

There are four zips to get floating boots early. One in the entrance that's extremely inconsistent. One in the big room with medusa heads in marble gallery that's extremely inconsistent. One with the candlewhiplaunch in room of illusions that requires a double jump. And one at dracula's ring that's only very inconsistent. I was planning to do the last of those though it's further away than the first two. You can even slide out of the zip to get the luck bonus of dracula's ring to help with the floating boots drop.

I'm not even sure which one of these routes I want to do now. They'll probably end up giving similar times.

[quote="ZX497"]
Wow. I've still yet to get a single whip launch off a candle, and I don't actually even know what kind of a timing I'm looking for there. I whip on the first frame after divekicking a candle or what? Seriously amazing you can actually do this stuff either way, lol.
[/quote]
It has two parts. First you go towards the candle in air and divekick with neutral down, rather than forward down; it should still go forward. Then you whip on the frame you hit the candle. Juste does different things depending on what messed up.
- He doesn't whip -- means you whipped too early
- He launches straight up and whips -- means you whipped too late
- He launches backwards slowly and whips -- means you got the timing right but the setup wrong

[quote="ZX497"]
Also, I'm not entirely sure how we're defining bad ending, considering there's three endings:

- Beating Dracula at Castle B (This one is obviously good!)
- Beating Maxim at Castle B
- Beating Maxim at Castle A

And why there's a difference between Castle A and Castle B, is that in Castle B ending, Lydie isn't with you, while for Castle A, she is with you. So yeah, I dunno, should these be grouped the same? Is it Best or Bad, or Best, Medium, Bad?
[/quote]
I was thinking the two non-dracula endings would both be bad. With the route I had, when floating to the end, you can either go straight into the maxim B room or open up the maxim A door and come out near its entrance. Between the two it would be 99% the same run. The difference in your route would only be an extra door-warp and run through part of the treasury, probably amounting to less than a minute. So I don't think it's worth differentiating between them.

Then there's the [i]secret[/i] ending that absolutely nobody knows about! Apparently if you get all furniture and get the good ending, while the dialogue is still exactly the same, Lydie moves slightly closer to Juste at one point. I haven't verified if this is actually true or just a youtube conspiracy yet, and I don't remember if it happened when I got all furniture, but if it is true it would be the best ending. So it would go:

- Bad Ending/Any% -- Beat maxim without dracula
- Good Ending -- Beat dracula
- Best Ending/Furniture% -- Beat dracula with all furniture