Dust: An Elysian Tail (Studying the game)

2013-06-17 03:32:22 am

http://www.twitch.tv/naglfarnr/c/2437390 22:57, bizzam

nothing new here, just tightening things up. kane and gaius were pretty atrocious though. that said, I'm happy enough with this to move onto 117% once I can get a good reference for the route. this highlight was preceded by a PB of 23:11 that probably would have been even better than this run, but then the imp at mudpot died on me twice in a row and I had a horrible gaius fight, losing something like twenty seconds. so rip that urn, hooray this one. I'll keep plugging away at this category and we'll see what comes of it.

Vulajin

2013-06-17 02:40:55 pm

Sub-23! Awesome. I really like some of your rooms, especially where you've used rolling (the superior movement technique, obviously) instead of Aerial Dust Storm. World-class trolling by Gaius, you certainly could have saved like 20+ seconds on him at least. I think you might save a tiny bit of time in the first room of Cirromon by using the Aerial Dust Storm to coast through those squirt bugs, and that would also guarantee you level 2 before Tethys (instead of having to kill hounds later). This is one of the few rooms where the Aerial Dust Storm might be faster than rolling, due to the presence of enemies.

I'll be happy to pass along my notes for 117%, once they're not terrible. The route itself is pretty straightforward, the only real important things to know about are where you get certain items from chests (which I still don't even have fully internalized yet). Also, I'm still working out some issues with having enough keys at different points, so it still needs a bit of work.

ogam

2013-06-17 09:17:00 pm

grats on sub 23, I like the bottom right mansion, so fancy.

Vulajin

2013-06-21 08:36:38 pm

In Metasigma's chat today, TheAngryPanda1 unveiled a new movement technique he'd discovered: the aerial dodge-cancel. In midair, the roll animation and the ADS animation cancel each other. You can alternate these (Y, RT, Y, RT) to air dodge more rapidly than normal. This allows you to keep ground dodge-cancel speed while descending through the air. Note that you can't maintain height with this technique, so it doesn't have the same applications as the RDS. However, it should help in certain situations where you're up in the air and want to keep your horizontal momentum.

Just as a few examples:

In the Glade, after the giant skip, you can break out of the RDS and use the ADC to get rolling speed back before hitting the ground.

In Cirromon Caverns, there are several rooms where you can use the ADC to descend while moving quickly. In the first room, you can also prolong the ADS for portions of the flight to kill the squirt bugs and get some of the XP needed to be level 2 before Tethys.

TheAngryPanda

2013-06-21 09:30:31 pm

Speed > Safety

Here's the VoD (~9:30 in, rest is just me getting to that point) of what Vulajin is talking about. I'm absolutely terrible at performing the trick rapidly but it can be done very quickly in succession with enough practice. Will probably look into more things regarding this game once I'm done with a few other projects.

http://www.twitch.tv/theangrypanda1/b/419993320

Naglfar

2013-06-22 02:55:12 pm

this new chaindodge is blisteringly quick. shame that you need quite a lot of air to get any use out of it, but there's a surprising number of situations this is perfect for, and I'm sure it'll be especially crazy in 117%. welp, time to get good at this.

TheAngryPanda

2013-06-23 02:51:38 pm

Speed > Safety

Something I was thinking about regarding the non-stable height... I wonder how many RDS (I think that's the one that you can infinite hover with) it would take to gain the height lost during the dodge. If you could figure that out and find a visual reference in the game for the height above a certain trigger, you could optimize movement there to gain some time, especially if the trigger covers a long distance.

This could also be used to never get the "landing" animation when descending platform areas, but it's extremely situational at that point and most likely not useful.

Naglfar

2013-06-23 11:24:28 pm

well here, new run from me in 21:54 - http://www.twitch.tv/naglfarnr/c/2464433

holy wow

ogam

2013-06-24 09:38:19 pm

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aj7AhOQWxDRgdHNKZnNXeUVLX053SmlnSzdGU3lsc0E&usp=sharing
for your 117% if you want something more visual, just copy and color code the route

Vulajin

2013-06-24 10:03:30 pm

Awesome, dude, that will be very helpful for what I generously describe as my route.

Vulajin

2013-07-02 07:59:29 pm

I have a basic route for a 117% warps run, so I'm going to braindump it here and hopefully we can hammer it out into something good. My best time so far is 2:21:41, so let's start from that and go for an actually decent time.

Here's a reminder of all the criteria to reach 117%:

1) All maps fully explored.
2) All keys in the game world obtained.
3) All chests opened.
4) All 12 cages opened and friends obtained.
5) All power-ups obtained.
6) All notes obtained.
7) All quests completed.
8) All materials catalogued. (seems like this was patched at some point, used to be 41/42)
9) All challenge rooms completed with 4 stars.

Requirements 1-7 and 9 are covered by the route (below), so let's talk about requirement 8 first. The following materials are required for quests:

Mudpot dude: 4 Trolk Fingers, 10 Hound Teeth
Fale: 5 Imp Hides, 8 Beast Spears, 4 Slimy Spikes & Coats, 2 Giant Rocks & Cores, 6 Avee Claws & Wings, 3 Florn Tentacles & Sparks

First of all, it's essentially pointless to farm materials until you get rings with +Item Drop. (Exception: always kill trolks, there aren't many and you need two items.) Fortunately, you can get Master Rings of Vigilance (3x Item Drop) early on - as early as Cirromon Caverns. I'm not completely sure what triggers the vendors to sell them, but it's probably [selling them] some food item you can get from a chest.

Once you get those rings, start killing monsters selectively to get what you need. Don't go out of your way to find extras to kill, but make sure to kill any monster you see that drops something you don't have yet. Here's a full breakdown of materials and where to get them:

Lumber, Nails, Fabric, Wire, Glue, Paper, Cotton, Dye, Scrap Metal, Thread, Bottle, Junk: almost everything drops these; if you don't get any, you are the master of bad RNG
Imp Hide, Imp Claw: drops off imps, the shorter, ugly, unarmed dudes you see starting in The Glade
Beast Spear, Beast Leather: drops off beasts, the taller, bipedal, mace-wielding dudes you see starting in The Glade
Avee Claw, Avee Wing: drops off avees, the flying imps
Slimy Coat, Slimy Spike: drops off slime/ooze thingies - several in Archer's Pass/Abadis Forest, a bunch in Sorrowing Meadow
Giant Rock, Giant Core: drops off giants - there are several in Abadis Forest, a few in challenge rooms, and one in Archer's Pass
Florn Tentacle, Florn Spark: drops off florns, the tentacled floaty thingies - plenty in Cirromon Caverns
Hound's Teeth, Hound Hide: drops off hounds, the large-mouthed bitey creatures from Cirromon
Stone Carapace, Stone Feeler: drops off stone-cutters, the large spider-looking bugs in Cirromon (first room is a good farm spot)
Squirt-Bug Eye, Squirt-Bug Arm: drops off squirt bugs, the little puffballs that spew poison (first room in Cirromon also a good farm spot for these)
Trolk Shell, Trolk Finger: drops off trolks, the large mace/shield-wielding giants (room immediately left of Mudpot is a decent farm spot)
Rotten Flesh, Bone: drops off zombies
Ectoplasm, Lost Soul: drops off wizards, the zombie-summoning jerks that can only be hit with Fidget projectiles (three in the room left of the Meadow's right entrance)
Maggot: drops off flesh flies, the flies that apparently eat flesh in Sorrowing Meadow
Wolf Pet: drops off wolves in Blackmoor, also war dogs in Everdawn Basin
Hollow Shard: drops off frites, the weird crystalline things in Blackmoor
Kush Pelt, Tough Metal: drops off kushes, the very large axe-wielding jerks in Blackmoor and Everdawn
Dog Tag: drops off soldiers

Returning to requirements 1-6 - there are surprisingly few cases of needing to backtrack to a zone to complete something that was inaccessible before. By and large, these have to do with the ground slide, since we don't currently know of any way to clip through ground slide corridors without the actual power-up. Details per zone, in case someone can think of a better way to optimize the ordering of these:

The Glade - You can't access the room in the bottom-left without the ground slide, nor collect the chest there. You can't do the challenge room (for all intents and purposes) without the wall grip.
Aurora Village - You don't want to have to get a key in the challenge room without double jump. You also can't afford the keys to open the cage in the middle until later on.
Abadis Forest - You need the ground slide and wall grip to get items along the main path.
Cirromon Caverns - You need the ground slide for 3 keys in an early room. You need the wall grip for the challenge room.
Archer's Pass - You need the ground slide to get to the challenge room and 3 keys at the top. You also need every single resonance gem to get to the Kid from Bastion.
Geehan's Farm - No powerups needed.
Ivydale Glen - No powerups needed.
Hidden Cove - You need the ground slide, but you can do it without the wall grip.
Sorrowing Meadow - You need the white resonance gem from the blacksmith to get a chest here.
Blackmoor Mountains - You can do the entire zone on the first visit.
Everdawn Basin - You can do the entire zone on the first visit.

Finally, here's the actual route.

The Glade 1: Advance to the end of the area, collecting all keys and opening all chests, but skip the friend cage for now and don't try the challenge room. Don't forget the giant skip at the end!

Aurora Village: Pass through, collecting quests and such. Skip the store, you'll be using the Moonblood vendor later.

Abadis Forest 1: Immediately exit the zone and warp to the Flesh Sheath room, any%-style. Get the Flesh Sheath, go to Denham Village, then teleport out. Warp to the exit room, go back to collect the Fidget projectile that Fuse "dropped", then go back to the exit. Don't forget the challenge room before leaving!

Cirromon Caverns: After Abadis, warp directly to the bottom of Aurora Village and enter Cirromon. Go to the second room and hit up the vendor to pick up 2 keys and 2 teleport stones. (You will need to sell pretty much everything you have but the Flesh Sheath.) Teleport out and warp to the ground slide, any%-style. After collecting the ground slide, backtrack up to the room below Mudpot, then teleport out and warp back to the second room. From here, advance normally to Mudpot, stopping at a vendor along the way to pick up 2 Master Rings of Vigilance and a lot more teleport stones. (Skip the challenge room for now.) In Mudpot, pick up all quests and turn in the hittin' stick. Go upstairs and collect the key and cage, then return to Mudpot and go on to the final section. Complete the entire final section normally (no Cirromon skip needed), then use the save point below Mudpot to teleport out.

Archer's Pass: Advance normally to the top, making sure to leap off the statue's hand for the three hidden chests. Don't forget the challenge room either! On the way out, collect the key from behind the resonance gate in the entrance room

Quests 1: Go right-to-left through Aurora Village, picking up and turning in quests as you go. Don't forget the doll! Go on and do Geehan's Farm, Ivydale Glen, and the Hidden Cove. Stop at the Sanctuary to collect the Purple Resonance Gem, too. Once complete, go directly to Sorrowing Meadow.

Sorrowing Meadow: Advance normally to the quest hub room and start the quest. Go down to the left to the first mansion; use the save point right outside to teleport and warp back directly to the end of the mansion. Get the quest item and wall grip, exit the mansion, and use the save point to teleport again and warp back to the quest hub. Same thing for the second mansion; go up and left, teleport from the room outside the mansion and warp to the quest item, then exit, teleport, and return to the quest hub. Same thing for the third mansion in the bottom-right, except you have to blow up the destructible walls at the mansion entrance before warping in. Finally, when you teleport from the third mansion, warp to the room directly above the right Sorrowing Meadows exit. This will put in the secret room with the next cage. Get it, then exit and head up to the right to the final mansion. (Don't forget the challenge room!) Use the same teleport shenanigans to do this mansion, then warp back to the quest hub to do Kane. Finally, teleport again and enter through the main entrance to go to Blackmoor.

The Glade 2: From the first room of Blackmoor, immediately teleport out. First go to the bottom entrance of The Glade, and collect the chest there. Then, warp to the room below the challenge room, and go up and do it. Return downstairs, go left and get the cage and the room below it with two keys. Finally, go left and teleport out.

Abadis Forest 2: Get to the third room, and use the save point to teleport out. Warp to the room two right of that (let's call it "Room 5"), go right and use the ground slide to get to the underground section where you can collect the cage. Finally, return above ground to the third room and teleport out. This time, select the right Abadis exit before warping to Room 5 again. This will put you at the top part of the room, where you can quickly go up to the big wall climb for another chest. Finally, return below and advance normally until the room where you break the walls to release the water and put out the village fire. Finally, return to the big bridge room and teleport out.

Blackmoor Mountains: Set up by entering the main entrance of Cirromon Caverns (the underground one) and immediately exiting. Then, warp to the room 1 up and 1 right of the Blackmoor entrance. This will put you halfway through the Fez area - go get Fez, then return to the normal map. Drop down to the room below to collect a chest, then advance upwards normally. When you get to the stage of advancing up the mountain through the avalanches, you will come to the room where you collect a key hovering above a collapsing platform. Get this key and drop all the way down again, then go right to the save point and teleport out. Now, warp to the room 1 up and 1 left of the room where you got that key. Zone right to discover the area you skipped, then return left and continue up the mountain. When you get to the save and vendor right before the village, teleport out and warp to the last room of the zone (8 up from the entrance, for reference). Quickly zone right, then return to the village and do the cutscene stuff as normal, then exit.

Everdawn Basin: Advance normally until you discover the teleporter, then use it to exit the zone.

Quests 2: Warp to Mudpot and turn in trolk fingers, hound's teeth, the doll, and the snow. With box in hand, return to Aurora. Go left-to-right across the village, turning in the watch, Gianni's laundry, Moska's autograph, Reed's box, the 1,000 hit combo (presumably you got this somewhere along the way), and all of Fale's items. Go back to Everdawn and use the teleporter to get to a battle area, then de-equip all your +Defense items so you die quickly. Once you die, use the teleporter to exit again, and warp to the middle room in Aurora to turn in the box. Go downstairs and do the challenge room and collect the cage. Finally, warp to the Kid's room in Archer's Pass, and open his final cage.

Finale: Return to Everdawn and use the teleporter to advance again. Use the legitimate underground path to bypass the first cannon, since it contains a chest. Don't actually bother killing the cannon; just use the ADS to boost up off the soldiers to the room above, where you can get the Wedding Ring chest. Go right, then go back down to collect keys from the room you skipped below. From the top-right room of this "square" of rooms, peek up into the next room for an instant, then go back down and teleport out. Finally, warp into the room 2 right of the room you just peeked into. This is the final save+vendor room. From here, peek left to unveil the last room, then return and verify your 117% status. Finally, teleport out and do the partial Gaius skip. Finish the game. \o/

I have a basic route for a 117% warps run, so I'm going to braindump it here and hopefully we can hammer it out into something good. My best time so far is 2:21:41, so let's start from that and go for an actually decent time.

Here's a reminder of all the criteria to reach 117%:

1) All maps fully explored.
2) All keys in the game world obtained.
3) All chests opened.
4) All 12 cages opened and friends obtained.
5) All power-ups obtained.
6) All notes obtained.
7) All quests completed.
8) All materials catalogued. (seems like this was patched at some point, used to be 41/42)
9) All challenge rooms completed with 4 stars.

Requirements 1-7 and 9 are covered by the route (below), so let's talk about requirement 8 first. The following materials are required for quests:

Mudpot dude: 4 Trolk Fingers, 10 Hound Teeth
Fale: 5 Imp Hides, 8 Beast Spears, 4 Slimy Spikes & Coats, 2 Giant Rocks & Cores, 6 Avee Claws & Wings, 3 Florn Tentacles & Sparks

First of all, it's essentially pointless to farm materials until you get rings with +Item Drop. (Exception: always kill trolks, there aren't many and you need two items.) Fortunately, you can get Master Rings of Vigilance (3x Item Drop) early on - as early as Cirromon Caverns. I'm not completely sure what triggers the vendors to sell them, but it's probably [selling them] some food item you can get from a chest.

Once you get those rings, start killing monsters selectively to get what you need. Don't go out of your way to find extras to kill, but make sure to kill any monster you see that drops something you don't have yet. Here's a full breakdown of materials and where to get them:

Lumber, Nails, Fabric, Wire, Glue, Paper, Cotton, Dye, Scrap Metal, Thread, Bottle, Junk: almost everything drops these; if you don't get any, you are the master of bad RNG
Imp Hide, Imp Claw: drops off imps, the shorter, ugly, unarmed dudes you see starting in The Glade
Beast Spear, Beast Leather: drops off beasts, the taller, bipedal, mace-wielding dudes you see starting in The Glade
Avee Claw, Avee Wing: drops off avees, the flying imps
Slimy Coat, Slimy Spike: drops off slime/ooze thingies - several in Archer's Pass/Abadis Forest, a bunch in Sorrowing Meadow
Giant Rock, Giant Core: drops off giants - there are several in Abadis Forest, a few in challenge rooms, and one in Archer's Pass
Florn Tentacle, Florn Spark: drops off florns, the tentacled floaty thingies - plenty in Cirromon Caverns
Hound's Teeth, Hound Hide: drops off hounds, the large-mouthed bitey creatures from Cirromon
Stone Carapace, Stone Feeler: drops off stone-cutters, the large spider-looking bugs in Cirromon (first room is a good farm spot)
Squirt-Bug Eye, Squirt-Bug Arm: drops off squirt bugs, the little puffballs that spew poison (first room in Cirromon also a good farm spot for these)
Trolk Shell, Trolk Finger: drops off trolks, the large mace/shield-wielding giants (room immediately left of Mudpot is a decent farm spot)
Rotten Flesh, Bone: drops off zombies
Ectoplasm, Lost Soul: drops off wizards, the zombie-summoning jerks that can only be hit with Fidget projectiles (three in the room left of the Meadow's right entrance)
Maggot: drops off flesh flies, the flies that apparently eat flesh in Sorrowing Meadow
Wolf Pet: drops off wolves in Blackmoor, also war dogs in Everdawn Basin
Hollow Shard: drops off frites, the weird crystalline things in Blackmoor
Kush Pelt, Tough Metal: drops off kushes, the very large axe-wielding jerks in Blackmoor and Everdawn
Dog Tag: drops off soldiers

Returning to requirements 1-6 - there are surprisingly few cases of [i]needing[/i] to backtrack to a zone to complete something that was inaccessible before. By and large, these have to do with the ground slide, since we don't currently know of any way to clip through ground slide corridors without the actual power-up. Details per zone, in case someone can think of a better way to optimize the ordering of these:

The Glade - You can't access the room in the bottom-left without the ground slide, nor collect the chest there. You can't do the challenge room (for all intents and purposes) without the wall grip.
Aurora Village - You don't want to have to get a key in the challenge room without double jump. You also can't afford the keys to open the cage in the middle until later on.
Abadis Forest - You need the ground slide and wall grip to get items along the main path.
Cirromon Caverns - You need the ground slide for 3 keys in an early room. You need the wall grip for the challenge room.
Archer's Pass - You need the ground slide to get to the challenge room and 3 keys at the top. You also need every single resonance gem to get to the Kid from Bastion.
Geehan's Farm - No powerups needed.
Ivydale Glen - No powerups needed.
Hidden Cove - You need the ground slide, but you can do it without the wall grip.
Sorrowing Meadow - You need the white resonance gem from the blacksmith to get a chest here.
Blackmoor Mountains - You can do the entire zone on the first visit.
Everdawn Basin - You can do the entire zone on the first visit.

Finally, here's the actual route.

[b]The Glade 1:[/b] Advance to the end of the area, collecting all keys and opening all chests, but skip the friend cage for now and don't try the challenge room. Don't forget the giant skip at the end!

[b]Aurora Village:[/b] Pass through, collecting quests and such. Skip the store, you'll be using the Moonblood vendor later.

[b]Abadis Forest 1:[/b] Immediately exit the zone and warp to the Flesh Sheath room, any%-style. Get the Flesh Sheath, go to Denham Village, then teleport out. Warp to the exit room, go back to collect the Fidget projectile that Fuse "dropped", then go back to the exit. Don't forget the challenge room before leaving!

[b]Cirromon Caverns:[/b] After Abadis, warp directly to the bottom of Aurora Village and enter Cirromon. Go to the second room and hit up the vendor to pick up 2 keys and 2 teleport stones. (You will need to sell pretty much everything you have but the Flesh Sheath.) Teleport out and warp to the ground slide, any%-style. After collecting the ground slide, backtrack up to the room below Mudpot, then teleport out and warp back to the second room. From here, advance normally to Mudpot, stopping at a vendor along the way to pick up 2 Master Rings of Vigilance and a lot more teleport stones. (Skip the challenge room for now.) In Mudpot, pick up all quests and turn in the hittin' stick. Go upstairs and collect the key and cage, then return to Mudpot and go on to the final section. Complete the entire final section normally (no Cirromon skip needed), then use the save point below Mudpot to teleport out.

[b]Archer's Pass:[/b] Advance normally to the top, making sure to leap off the statue's hand for the three hidden chests. Don't forget the challenge room either! On the way out, collect the key from behind the resonance gate in the entrance room

[b]Quests 1:[/b] Go right-to-left through Aurora Village, picking up and turning in quests as you go. Don't forget the doll! Go on and do Geehan's Farm, Ivydale Glen, and the Hidden Cove. Stop at the Sanctuary to collect the Purple Resonance Gem, too. Once complete, go directly to Sorrowing Meadow.

[b]Sorrowing Meadow:[/b] Advance normally to the quest hub room and start the quest. Go down to the left to the first mansion; use the save point right outside to teleport and warp back directly to the end of the mansion. Get the quest item and wall grip, exit the mansion, and use the save point to teleport again and warp back to the quest hub. Same thing for the second mansion; go up and left, teleport from the room outside the mansion and warp to the quest item, then exit, teleport, and return to the quest hub. Same thing for the third mansion in the bottom-right, except you have to blow up the destructible walls at the mansion entrance before warping in. Finally, when you teleport from the third mansion, warp to the room directly above the right Sorrowing Meadows exit. This will put in the secret room with the next cage. Get it, then exit and head up to the right to the final mansion. (Don't forget the challenge room!) Use the same teleport shenanigans to do this mansion, then warp back to the quest hub to do Kane. Finally, teleport again and enter through the main entrance to go to Blackmoor.

[b]The Glade 2:[/b] From the first room of Blackmoor, immediately teleport out. First go to the bottom entrance of The Glade, and collect the chest there. Then, warp to the room below the challenge room, and go up and do it. Return downstairs, go left and get the cage and the room below it with two keys. Finally, go left and teleport out.

[b]Abadis Forest 2:[/b] Get to the third room, and use the save point to teleport out. Warp to the room two right of that (let's call it "Room 5"), go right and use the ground slide to get to the underground section where you can collect the cage. Finally, return above ground to the third room and teleport out. This time, select the right Abadis exit before warping to Room 5 again. This will put you at the top part of the room, where you can quickly go up to the big wall climb for another chest. Finally, return below and advance normally until the room where you break the walls to release the water and put out the village fire. Finally, return to the big bridge room and teleport out.

[b]Blackmoor Mountains:[/b] Set up by entering the main entrance of Cirromon Caverns (the underground one) and immediately exiting. Then, warp to the room 1 up and 1 right of the Blackmoor entrance. This will put you halfway through the Fez area - go get Fez, then return to the normal map. Drop down to the room below to collect a chest, then advance upwards normally. When you get to the stage of advancing up the mountain through the avalanches, you will come to the room where you collect a key hovering above a collapsing platform. Get this key and drop all the way down again, then go right to the save point and teleport out. Now, warp to the room 1 up and 1 left of the room where you got that key. Zone right to discover the area you skipped, then return left and continue up the mountain. When you get to the save and vendor right before the village, teleport out and warp to the last room of the zone (8 up from the entrance, for reference). Quickly zone right, then return to the village and do the cutscene stuff as normal, then exit.

[b]Everdawn Basin:[/b] Advance normally until you discover the teleporter, then use it to exit the zone.

[b]Quests 2:[/b] Warp to Mudpot and turn in trolk fingers, hound's teeth, the doll, and the snow. With box in hand, return to Aurora. Go left-to-right across the village, turning in the watch, Gianni's laundry, Moska's autograph, Reed's box, the 1,000 hit combo (presumably you got this somewhere along the way), and all of Fale's items. Go back to Everdawn and use the teleporter to get to a battle area, then de-equip all your +Defense items so you die quickly. Once you die, use the teleporter to exit again, and warp to the middle room in Aurora to turn in the box. Go downstairs and do the challenge room and collect the cage. Finally, warp to the Kid's room in Archer's Pass, and open his final cage.

[b]Finale:[/b] Return to Everdawn and use the teleporter to advance again. Use the legitimate underground path to bypass the first cannon, since it contains a chest. Don't actually bother killing the cannon; just use the ADS to boost up off the soldiers to the room above, where you can get the Wedding Ring chest. Go right, then go back down to collect keys from the room you skipped below. From the top-right room of this "square" of rooms, peek up into the next room for an instant, then go back down and teleport out. Finally, warp into the room 2 right of the room you just peeked into. This is the final save+vendor room. From here, peek left to unveil the last room, then return and verify your 117% status. Finally, teleport out and do the partial Gaius skip. Finish the game. \o/

TheAngryPanda

2013-07-03 07:50:40 pm

Speed > Safety

I'm going to try and test some things with sliding mechanics and momentum boosts on the ground sometime this weekend. If what I'm envisioning is actually possible, we'll hopefully be able to carry over that "boost" of speed (faster than dodge canceling on the ground initially) as we continue moving along the ground. I'm hoping there's a way to force the sprite animation into the sliding state thus allowing us to "store" that speed boost we'd get from rocketing out of the holes and off ledges. I'm not sure of the applications yet if this were to function well enough for a real-time run but I'm sure there's some pretty interesting things to be done with it if possible.

Another thing I want to look at is how certain enemies react to certain attacks, perhaps there are more efficient and rapid ways to eliminate specific groups of enemies, which will undoubtedly help in 117% runs. The actual time saved will be relatively minimal should anything change though, because since we're on casual things die so rapidly anyways. Should we move on to higher difficulties, this will be useful knowledge to have.

Finally I want to take a quick look at certain routing decisions Vulajin posted and see if I can't learn the route to possibly improve upon it (it's pretty solid overall tbh) and push that time even lower.

Eventually I might actually pick the game up and do serious attempts for it, but that is a long ways away from now.

I'm going to try and test some things with sliding mechanics and momentum boosts on the ground sometime this weekend. If what I'm envisioning is actually possible, we'll hopefully be able to carry over that "boost" of speed (faster than dodge canceling on the ground initially) as we continue moving along the ground. I'm hoping there's a way to force the sprite animation into the sliding state thus allowing us to "store" that speed boost we'd get from rocketing out of the holes and off ledges. I'm not sure of the applications yet if this were to function well enough for a real-time run but I'm sure there's some pretty interesting things to be done with it if possible.

Another thing I want to look at is how certain enemies react to certain attacks, perhaps there are more efficient and rapid ways to eliminate specific groups of enemies, which will undoubtedly help in 117% runs. The actual time saved will be relatively minimal should anything change though, because since we're on casual things die so rapidly anyways. Should we move on to higher difficulties, this will be useful knowledge to have.

Finally I want to take a quick look at certain routing decisions Vulajin posted and see if I can't learn the route to possibly improve upon it (it's pretty solid overall tbh) and push that time even lower.

Eventually I might actually pick the game up and do serious attempts for it, but that is a long ways away from now.

Vulajin

2013-07-04 01:22:45 am

It almost goes without saying that higher difficulty runs would be their own category(ies?), because of things like stamina regeneration and not being able to perpetually RDS. From a pure speed perspective, I can't imagine any way that a higher difficulty would be faster, other than being able to specifically assign your stat gems (and we do sometimes abuse this feature even in casual runs). Obviously, though, no one would be trying a higher difficulty run for speed's sake. Wink

I think the biggest improvements to my route will likely come from improved usage of map warps. The game mostly routes itself through selective unlocking of new areas, so all I did was decide when to do quests. Ogam and Naglfar provided a lot of useful suggestions on places to warp, better orders to do things, or other sorts of skips.

New things since I posted the route:

- The trigger for buying the Master Ring of Vigilance is that you acquire the Ring of the Scavenger (1.5x Item Drop) from the chest in the very bottom room of the first section of Cirromon (east of Mudpot). Needless to say, you want this item as soon as you can possibly get it.
- There are several possible warps in the first and second halves of Cirromon. Unfortunately, keys and gold are both scarce at this stage, so you can't really afford a ton of extra teleport stones. I'm playing with this on stream a little bit tonight.
- Ogam reminded me of the OOB in Blackmoor Mountains to skip the three-frite miniboss (posted by MilsTailsPrower on the previous page) - this saves some time, but also requires you to kill more frites elsewhere for frozen shard drops. It might not actually be worthwhile.
- There's at least one more warp in Blackmoor and another few warps in Everdawn to reduce tedious walking and jumping.

Several of the above are incorporated in my run from last night, which clocked in at 2:03:01: http://www.twitch.tv/vulajin/c/2519995

It almost goes without saying that higher difficulty runs would be their own category(ies?), because of things like stamina regeneration and not being able to perpetually RDS. From a pure speed perspective, I can't imagine any way that a higher difficulty would be faster, other than being able to specifically assign your stat gems (and we do sometimes abuse this feature even in casual runs). Obviously, though, no one would be trying a higher difficulty run for speed's sake. ;)

I think the biggest improvements to my route will likely come from improved usage of map warps. The game mostly routes itself through selective unlocking of new areas, so all I did was decide when to do quests. Ogam and Naglfar provided a lot of useful suggestions on places to warp, better orders to do things, or other sorts of skips.

New things since I posted the route:

- The trigger for buying the Master Ring of Vigilance is that you acquire the Ring of the Scavenger (1.5x Item Drop) from the chest in the very bottom room of the first section of Cirromon (east of Mudpot). Needless to say, you want this item as soon as you can possibly get it.
- There are several possible warps in the first and second halves of Cirromon. Unfortunately, keys and gold are both scarce at this stage, so you can't really afford a ton of extra teleport stones. I'm playing with this on stream a little bit tonight.
- Ogam reminded me of the OOB in Blackmoor Mountains to skip the three-frite miniboss (posted by MilsTailsPrower on the previous page) - this saves some time, but also requires you to kill more frites elsewhere for frozen shard drops. It might not actually be worthwhile.
- There's at least one more warp in Blackmoor and another few warps in Everdawn to reduce tedious walking and jumping.

Several of the above are incorporated in my run from last night, which clocked in at 2:03:01: http://www.twitch.tv/vulajin/c/2519995

Naglfar

2013-07-07 08:56:12 am

http://www.twitch.tv/naglfarnr/c/2538128

2 1 3 0

showing off the new bottom right mansion strats. to some extent.

Vulajin

2013-07-08 07:36:41 pm

Yesterday, I streamed a speedrunning tutorial for this game. It comes in around 6 hours in 4 parts:

Part 1 - Game overview + techniques: http://www.twitch.tv/vulajin/c/2546204 (1h 20m)
Part 2 - Any% warpless walkthrough: http://www.twitch.tv/vulajin/c/2546304 (2h 15m)
Part 3 - Any% warps walkthrough: http://www.twitch.tv/vulajin/c/2546332 (1h)
Part 4 - 117% route overview: http://www.twitch.tv/vulajin/c/2546364 (1h 15m)

I hope this proves useful to anyone who's interested in running this game. ^^

Lighteagle

2013-07-08 08:56:25 pm

I have done some testing with shop and how defense works in hardcore difficulty. I think most of you know how shop work, when you find item in chest it causes that item, next item from it and all items before that become available to shop.
In hardcore difficulty every 10 points of defense decreases damage taken by 8, up to maximum reduction of 90%. I hope this helps if someone plans to run hardcore difficulty in future.

ogam

Edit history:

ogam: 2013-07-12 08:03:23 pm

ogam: 2013-07-12 08:01:20 pm

2013-07-12 08:00:00 pm

Hardcore any% is pretty dull, in terms of pure hardcore, no mode changing; get revival stone in glades, perfect flesh sheath and for gaius to play it safe you only do grabs which is a really long fight.. Route is same as casual except that you talk to everyone to get more levels for damage.
If you can pull off being red most of the time to get the invul damage boost off of spamming dust storm since that always leaves you at 1 hp, it can make for some more risky boss fights and passing through glades since you won't have infinite stamina to dodge cancel through everything.

Vulajin

2013-07-13 09:16:53 am

http://www.twitch.tv/vulajin/c/2569240

Got a 21:39 tonight, an improvement of 1:02 over my previous PB. I'm pretty confident sub-21 is possible, but challenging. I'm going to keep working on it, since Naglfar is busy working on a 117% route to top my current run of that. <_<

ogam

2013-07-13 10:54:28 am

grats on 21:39, extra mansion warp saves a lot of time due to back tracking.

kwanzai

Edit history:

kwanzai: 2013-07-19 06:55:09 am

2013-07-19 06:52:14 am

Not sure if this is known, but I didn't see anything in this thread about it.
I started learning the Any% route for this game today and I may have stumbled upon a useful glitch during practice.
After realizing that you can't skip the ending, I decided to just exit the game during Gaius. For some reason this caused my next new game to skip a large portion of the intro.
I believe it cut the intro down to ~20s.

I have no idea what caused this and haven't had time to do any real testing yet, but I tried it about 7 times and it always worked. (mostly loading the autosave, but once I even played through the entire route)
I find it hard to believe that no one else has ran into this, so there may be other factors besides just quitting during Gaius in a warped run.

Raelcun

Edit history:

Raelcun: 2013-07-19 10:31:53 am

Raelcun: 2013-07-19 10:29:32 am

Raelcun: 2013-07-19 10:28:14 am

2013-07-19 10:27:22 am

We require more minerals

My game does something similar. None of the fully animated sequences play while I play the game. The intro skips the rendered sword and skips straight to the scene with Cassius in the burning village. The rest of the cutscene is just black while the announcer talks.

It saves a couple of seconds throughout the run because a few of the animated cutscenes that I would normally have to enter the menu to skip just don't play on their own. The loading screens for the chapters don't display the stylized Dust and Fidget figures as well.

I'm using the current version on Steam so I'm not sure if it's an issue with the current version or if it's related to my screwing around on the keyboard until the final cutscene skipped. I was trying to figure out if there was a way to skip the ending cutscene and I pressed a few keyboard buttons and it skipped. Ever since, it doesn't even show those cutscenes anymore.

At the end of the game, I get the crawling scene and then it just skips to the credits, then after the credits it goes directly to the menu.

What you're doing doesn't really make a huge difference in the scheme of things, though. We wouldn't time the intro part that you're skipping anyway so it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

My game does something similar. None of the fully animated sequences play while I play the game. The intro skips the rendered sword and skips straight to the scene with Cassius in the burning village. The rest of the cutscene is just black while the announcer talks.

It saves a couple of seconds throughout the run because a few of the animated cutscenes that I would normally have to enter the menu to skip just don't play on their own. The loading screens for the chapters don't display the stylized Dust and Fidget figures as well.

I'm using the current version on Steam so I'm not sure if it's an issue with the current version or if it's related to my screwing around on the keyboard until the final cutscene skipped. I was trying to figure out if there was a way to skip the ending cutscene and I pressed a few keyboard buttons and it skipped. Ever since, it doesn't even show those cutscenes anymore.

At the end of the game, I get the crawling scene and then it just skips to the credits, then after the credits it goes directly to the menu.

What you're doing doesn't really make a huge difference in the scheme of things, though. We wouldn't time the intro part that you're skipping anyway so it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

Vulajin

2013-07-19 01:27:58 pm

Kwanzai, I know at least Ogam, Naglfar and I have experienced that issue. Apparently something about the partial Gaius skip screws up the cutscene the next time you start a new game. Restarting the game fixes it. Up to now, we have been timing the opening cutscene (it's about 1:03) - under that timing scheme, skipping the cutscene alters your time and would be considered effectively an NG+ category.

I guess SDA timing normally starts from first player control? That would shorten all our current runs by 1:03, and wouldn't be a huge deal. I'm more concerned about the bug Raelcun described - since the any% warps run is so short, getting a free pass on some cutscenes sounds like a non-trivial advantage. Does this only happen to you on second runs while still running the game, Raelcun? Or does it still happen after restart?

Raelcun

2013-07-19 01:32:08 pm

We require more minerals

Warps makes you skip all of the affected cutscenes except for the one in Zeplich anyway. So for any% with warps it'd be half a second at most as long as you skip it fast enough. It has happened to me every time I've run the game after the first. I'd seen the ending before and didn't feel like sitting through it again and I hit a bunch of keys on the keyboard to see if I could skip it. It stopped playing about halfway through and now I just don't see those cutscenes at all.

I'm not sure what button it was, but it was something on the number pad. Even before this happened though, I never saw the extra detail on the Chapter screens. They still take the same amount of time, just don't have the Dust and Fidget present on them.

Vulajin

2013-07-19 01:36:15 pm

Very, very weird. I wonder if you'd be willing to try reinstalling and seeing if that fixes it, and subsequently if you can repro? I'll give it a shot myself this weekend as well.

This game is really buggy in general. Just last night I started having an issue where only half of the cutscenes play. (I don't mean, like, half by number - I mean, literally, physically the bottom half plays, and not the top half.)

Raelcun

2013-07-19 01:41:56 pm

We require more minerals

Not going to be home until Tuesday ish, I can try it then but it'll be a bit.