La-Mulana

2013-01-28 08:38:56 pm

Quote from Anonymous52555:

@conanc2c twitch seems to have removed your run :/
.

twitch is annoying!

http://www.twitch.tv/conanc2c/c/1876796

like I said before, the stream didn't want to pick up my mic, and the splits are inaccurate for some reason

Anonymous52555

2013-01-28 09:41:38 pm

Metroidvanias are God Tier

Quote from conanc2c:

Quote from Anonymous52555:

@conanc2c twitch seems to have removed your run :/
.

twitch is annoying!

http://www.twitch.tv/conanc2c/c/1876796

like I said before, the stream didn't want to pick up my mic, and the splits are inaccurate for some reason

Alright I'll make sure to watch it later. I skipped to the end and one thing that I would like to note is you you don't need to make spriggan stop to jump on him.

TheMaxican

2013-01-28 10:24:06 pm

Break through the final confusion

Ah, congrats, Solairflaire! It's definitely great to see such an awesome improvement in the time!

Haven't seen the whole run yet, but I definitely liked what I saw. But yeah, those enemies are randomly such a pain, I know. Smiley

I'm agreeing with everyone else though - if you got this time after just a few attempts, AND you feel like you can do better, then go for it! And as BlueGlass said, keep this one around and submit if after some time things don't get better.

Good luck! I'll definitely be cheering you on!

UltraJMan

2013-02-02 04:44:20 am

It's time for some HEErooooOOOOHi cs!

Good job solair! Definitely try for a better time, cause if you don't I'm gonna :p the beginning, while not sloppy, had a lot of luck I'd reset on. I don't generally continue the run if I don't kill the bats at the pyramid immediately and I only give the pyramid skip with the damage boost three tries. Otherwise, your menu work is pretty solid, the real killer here is that damn lizard, and he always will be usually.

Great finds on the route, definitely gonna learn it when I have time.

Anonymous52555

2013-02-02 08:15:48 pm

Metroidvanias are God Tier

@conanc So I finally got the time to watch your run. I'd definitely recommend watching DeliciouPi's run posted on the last page. Your routing needs some work in a few places. During the Bahamut fight you used a lot of safe strats, you can get 2-3 axe hits on him every jump and flares don't do as much damage as the axe so it's worth it to get axe hits in over flares. Other than that there were some execution problems and the block puzzle for the flares needs to be done the new way (Watch DeliciousPi's video). So I'd recommending practing the run a bit more and change up your route a bit. On a side note, is there something wrong with your ingame background sound. A few times the sound hiccuped and went back to the beginning for no reason and in the mausoleum the audio completely disappeared for a while.

conanc2c

Edit history:

conanc2c: 2013-02-03 02:19:04 pm

conanc2c: 2013-02-03 02:09:51 pm

conanc2c: 2013-02-03 02:09:41 pm

2013-02-03 02:08:57 pm

Quote from Anonymous52555:

@conanc So I finally got the time to watch your run. I'd definitely recommend watching DeliciouPi's run posted on the last page. Your routing needs some work in a few places. During the Bahamut fight you used a lot of safe strats, you can get 2-3 axe hits on him every jump and flares don't do as much damage as the axe so it's worth it to get axe hits in over flares. Other than that there were some execution problems and the block puzzle for the flares needs to be done the new way (Watch DeliciousPi's video). So I'd recommending practing the run a bit more and change up your route a bit. On a side note, is there something wrong with your ingame background sound. A few times the sound hiccuped and went back to the beginning for no reason and in the mausoleum the audio completely disappeared for a while.

Spring in the Sky's and Mausoleum of the Giant's original tracks were fantastic and much better, so when I was doing a casual playthrough for the first time a few months ago, I swapped out the files. They don't like to loop properly I guess! The spring in the sky file is actually just an mp3 converted to ogg, so something probably got screwed up in the conversion which causes the hiccup. Once I start finishing runs and start improving those times, I'll go back to a fresh install.

My boss fights in that run were pretty terrible (especially Viy, I'm usually decent at killing him on his first eyeblast), and I'm always unsure about where I stand with money. Did I miss any obvious money/item jars? I'm probably going to try another run after the Super Bowl tonight, and I'd actually like to try to finish it without backtracking or dying!

Oh yeah, and what's the best thing to do if I don't get the confusion gate healing fairy? Because I usually don't get it.

[quote="Anonymous52555"]@conanc So I finally got the time to watch your run. I'd definitely recommend watching DeliciouPi's run posted on the last page. Your routing needs some work in a few places. During the Bahamut fight you used a lot of safe strats, you can get 2-3 axe hits on him every jump and flares don't do as much damage as the axe so it's worth it to get axe hits in over flares. Other than that there were some execution problems and the block puzzle for the flares needs to be done the new way (Watch DeliciousPi's video). So I'd recommending practing the run a bit more and change up your route a bit. On a side note, is there something wrong with your ingame background sound. A few times the sound hiccuped and went back to the beginning for no reason and in the mausoleum the audio completely disappeared for a while.[/quote]

Spring in the Sky's and Mausoleum of the Giant's original tracks were fantastic and much better, so when I was doing a casual playthrough for the first time a few months ago, I swapped out the files. They don't like to loop properly I guess! The spring in the sky file is actually just an mp3 converted to ogg, so something probably got screwed up in the conversion which causes the hiccup. Once I start finishing runs and start improving those times, I'll go back to a fresh install.

My boss fights in that run were pretty terrible (especially Viy, I'm usually decent at killing him on his first eyeblast), and I'm always unsure about where I stand with money. Did I miss any obvious money/item jars? I'm probably going to try another run after the Super Bowl tonight, and I'd actually like to try to finish it without backtracking or dying!

Oh yeah, and what's the best thing to do if I don't get the confusion gate healing fairy? Because I usually don't get it.

DeliciousPi

2013-02-03 04:35:21 pm

What I do if I'm low on life is head to the Surface and get the Sacred Orb near the Tower of the Goddess entrance. You lose somewhere between 30-60 seconds. Alternatively you can go into Viy with less health. It all comes down to how many hits you can get in on his first attack. If done well, you can get 12-13 hits in, and you'll take very little damage to finish him off.

Solairflaire

2013-02-04 09:56:46 pm

So, an update. I've decided that I want to improve my time. I don't like some of the mistakes I made. All of last week was a dud. Nothing made it past the lizard, except 1 run. That one was mostly practice so I remember the later parts of the run. Though, it was 38 seconds ahead after killing Bahamut. After that, I just lost time everywhere.

Quote from Anonymous52555:

After watching the run I think a possible route change could be going to the shrine of the mother after getting the woman's statue to get breakshot earlier. Then on the mudman fight you could kill him without the lamp and not have to wait for it to time out. Also I noticed you had an extra bomb, perhaps you could use that to boost down a ladder earlier in the game although you might have just picked it up along the way either way if you notice yourself with extra bombs than needed there are a couple of long ladders that would benefit some explosions. Other than that Great run!

I hadn't even noticed I had an extra grenade. That's a good idea if I actually get one.

I thought you needed the Pochette Key to get the pedestal to appear in front of the small mural in the Extinction Chamber so the Ankh appears for Palenque. Getting the Talisman without putting that weight down doesn't seem like it would be faster. If something else allows that pedestal appear, please do let me know.

So, an update. I've decided that I want to improve my time. I don't like some of the mistakes I made. All of last week was a dud. Nothing made it past the lizard, except 1 run. That one was mostly practice so I remember the later parts of the run. Though, it was 38 seconds ahead after killing Bahamut. After that, I just lost time everywhere.

[quote="Anonymous52555"]After watching the run I think a possible route change could be going to the shrine of the mother after getting the woman's statue to get breakshot earlier. Then on the mudman fight you could kill him without the lamp and not have to wait for it to time out. Also I noticed you had an extra bomb, perhaps you could use that to boost down a ladder earlier in the game although you might have just picked it up along the way either way if you notice yourself with extra bombs than needed there are a couple of long ladders that would benefit some explosions. Other than that Great run![/quote]

I hadn't even noticed I had an extra grenade. That's a good idea if I actually get one.

I thought you needed the Pochette Key to get the pedestal to appear in front of the small mural in the Extinction Chamber so the Ankh appears for Palenque. Getting the Talisman without putting that weight down doesn't seem like it would be faster. If something else allows that pedestal appear, please do let me know.

conanc2c

Edit history:

conanc2c: 2013-02-05 08:28:19 pm

conanc2c: 2013-02-05 08:27:29 pm

2013-02-05 08:26:07 pm

I did another run with some bad fps lag (I'm not sure how much time it cost me), and was doing pretty well until I got owned by Tiamat in the worst possible way. If you want to trudge through some of the highlights the lagfest and evaluate some of the harder parts and the times, I'd appreciate it: http://www.twitch.tv/conanc2c/c/1900851. Specifically I'd like to know if I'm short on items or money anywhere.

On that same note, if I ever get an item fairy in confusion gate, tower of the goddess or wherever, is it ever worth it to try to manmode it without the extra health and get an extra chunk of gold to buy pistol ammo? I'm sure someone has timed it.

DeliciousPi

2013-02-05 10:38:13 pm

Your 1st quarter is more optimized than mine, which is cool. My money management is a lot different than yours since I don't use the item fairy strat. I notice you skip a lot of easily grabbable coin pots once you reach Spring in the Sky and on throughout, but that may be fine for you. You can get enough money to buy pistol ammo without an extra item fairy if you want to. Did you intentionally grab bounce.exe?

As far as Tiamat goes, that attack is ridiculously active. I don't touch the control stick until the graphic has fully faded away. The bigger but more subtle issue that killed you was not having death+move.exe active. The invincibility duration will let you kill her faster while taking less hits, so make sure you don't forget that combo. There were a few other places you forgot to use it, like Peryton (bird before Baphomet).

conanc2c

Edit history:

conanc2c: 2013-02-06 03:28:02 pm

conanc2c: 2013-02-06 03:27:56 pm

conanc2c: 2013-02-06 03:27:38 pm

conanc2c: 2013-02-06 03:26:09 pm

conanc2c: 2013-02-06 03:24:55 pm

2013-02-06 03:24:21 pm

Quote from DeliciousPi:

Your 1st quarter is more optimized than mine, which is cool. My money management is a lot different than yours since I don't use the item fairy strat. I notice you skip a lot of easily grabbable coin pots once you reach Spring in the Sky and on throughout, but that may be fine for you. You can get enough money to buy pistol ammo without an extra item fairy if you want to. Did you intentionally grab bounce.exe?

As far as Tiamat goes, that attack is ridiculously active. I don't touch the control stick until the graphic has fully faded away. The bigger but more subtle issue that killed you was not having death+move.exe active. The invincibility duration will let you kill her faster while taking less hits, so make sure you don't forget that combo. There were a few other places you forgot to use it, like Peryton (bird before Baphomet).

I didn't really mean to grab bounce. The middle of the run has a lot of silly mistakes like that, like warping back to the tower grail before placing the weight that unlocks the eye of truth chest, or forgetting to talk to Xelpud about the diary.

The majority of the route I use is based on the RTA that's on youtube, and I know about how the mudman shop in the Wii version sells three boxes of ammo instead of one. Since I'm on the PC version I'm always a bit uneasy about what I may be missing. I'm pretty busy, but once I get some time I'll have to sit down and watch your latest run.

I probably worry about the pistol difference too much, but is there any information about how much damage compared to the main weapons that the subweapons do? All I know is that the ring chakrim does a boatload of damage.

It's too bad that the temple of moonlight shop is such a detour.

[quote="DeliciousPi"]Your 1st quarter is more optimized than mine, which is cool. My money management is a lot different than yours since I don't use the item fairy strat. I notice you skip a lot of easily grabbable coin pots once you reach Spring in the Sky and on throughout, but that may be fine for you. You can get enough money to buy pistol ammo without an extra item fairy if you want to. Did you intentionally grab bounce.exe?

As far as Tiamat goes, that attack is ridiculously active. I don't touch the control stick until the graphic has fully faded away. The bigger but more subtle issue that killed you was not having death+move.exe active. The invincibility duration will let you kill her faster while taking less hits, so make sure you don't forget that combo. There were a few other places you forgot to use it, like Peryton (bird before Baphomet).[/quote]

I didn't really mean to grab bounce. The middle of the run has a lot of silly mistakes like that, like warping back to the tower grail before placing the weight that unlocks the eye of truth chest, or forgetting to talk to Xelpud about the diary.

The majority of the route I use is based on the RTA that's on youtube, and I know about how the mudman shop in the Wii version sells three boxes of ammo instead of one. Since I'm on the PC version I'm always a bit uneasy about what I may be missing. I'm pretty busy, but once I get some time I'll have to sit down and watch your latest run.

I probably worry about the pistol difference too much, but is there any information about how much damage compared to the main weapons that the subweapons do? All I know is that the ring chakrim does a boatload of damage.

It's too bad that the temple of moonlight shop is such a detour.

DeliciousPi

2013-02-09 02:27:33 am

So tonight I clocked in a 2:12:58 run. There's still tons of sloppy play, but it's getting more and more consistent which is great. I finally succeeded in killing Mother without healing before the fight, which saves a lot of time.
I'll post a link to the run for anyone interested in watching, though you'll have to excuse or mute the guild wars 2 banter some of my buddies were discussing at the time (it was a casual practice run that went much better than expected).
http://www.twitch.tv/deliciouspi/c/1910250

It looks like the real time I'm aiming for with my route is below 2:10.

Anonymous52555

2013-02-10 04:02:24 am

Metroidvanias are God Tier

@Solairflaire Whoops, completely forgot that you need to Pochette key for that. Nevermind about what I said.

Solairflaire

2013-02-15 10:52:50 pm

This is the most bittersweet run. I had awesome luck, but screwed up majorly in one spot. I want to improve this, but I also want to take a break and work on a couple other games. So, I think this will be the run I submit.

Anonymous52555

2013-02-21 08:42:19 pm

Metroidvanias are God Tier

@Solairflaire, nice run, good luck on the submission!

So for the remake I've been playing around ALOT with wall glitches. I've discovered alot of neat tricks but maybe they aren't that useful, i dunno.

One wall glitch in the moon temple in the room that connects the twin labyrinths. If you put a weight down and stand under the falling block while taking damage the block will knock you into the room where you have to sleep for the ocarina. Basically this just lets you skip the feather for a while. I'm actually getting a bit curious if the feather is completely skipable through glitching. But I'll need to find some more glitches first.

Now with the grapple claw and pot tricks I found out some facts about them.

(1) when you glitch into a pot next to a wall you must have atleast half a block free over your head
(2) when you glitch into a pot next to a wall you will always be show leftwards
(3) Movable blocks will also work instead of pots
(4) The only place you can't glitch that meets condition 1 is the room the connects the labyrinth to the moonlight temple.
(5) You can only glitch into loaded rooms, unloaded rooms will kick you back to the surface
(6) If you Jump while stuck in a wall you will always go down
(7) If you take damage while you are stuck in a wall you will go up (Although sometimes it will knock you out of the wall.
(8) If you jump through a half platform you will get kicked the the surface
(9) Glitching always knocks you a half wall plus your width into a wall, if you glitch into a half wall you will appear free on the other side.

Some cool spots to glitch:

Tower of the Goddess E1 will take you to GraveYard of giants G4
Twin labyrinths D1 can function as a shortcut down instead of going around
Twin labyrinths J3 can let you skip the horse miniboss (Maybe)

I can't find any others of interest that haven't already been stated so if you find anymore that would be awesome. One room i'm interested in is the Guidance gate A3/B3 wouldn't it be funny if we could get into the confusion gate while it was still eden?

@Solairflaire, nice run, good luck on the submission!

So for the remake I've been playing around ALOT with wall glitches. I've discovered alot of neat tricks but maybe they aren't that useful, i dunno.

One wall glitch in the moon temple in the room that connects the twin labyrinths. If you put a weight down and stand under the falling block while taking damage the block will knock you into the room where you have to sleep for the ocarina. Basically this just lets you skip the feather for a while. I'm actually getting a bit curious if the feather is completely skipable through glitching. But I'll need to find some more glitches first.

Now with the grapple claw and pot tricks I found out some facts about them.

(1) when you glitch into a pot next to a wall you must have atleast half a block free over your head
(2) when you glitch into a pot next to a wall you will always be show leftwards
(3) Movable blocks will also work instead of pots
(4) The only place you can't glitch that meets condition 1 is the room the connects the labyrinth to the moonlight temple.
(5) You can only glitch into loaded rooms, unloaded rooms will kick you back to the surface
(6) If you Jump while stuck in a wall you will always go down
(7) If you take damage while you are stuck in a wall you will go up (Although sometimes it will knock you out of the wall.
(8) If you jump through a half platform you will get kicked the the surface
(9) Glitching always knocks you a half wall plus your width into a wall, if you glitch into a half wall you will appear free on the other side.

Some cool spots to glitch:

Tower of the Goddess E1 will take you to GraveYard of giants G4
Twin labyrinths D1 can function as a shortcut down instead of going around
Twin labyrinths J3 can let you skip the horse miniboss (Maybe)

I can't find any others of interest that haven't already been stated so if you find anymore that would be awesome. One room i'm interested in is the Guidance gate A3/B3 wouldn't it be funny if we could get into the confusion gate while it was still eden?

TheMaxican

2013-02-21 10:46:49 pm

Break through the final confusion

@Solairflaire, I just finished watching the run. Really amazing stuff! It is very obvious that a lot of skill is involved here, even with all the great luck you were given (especially those boss fights! Holy crap, that Tiamat fight could have gone a lot worse than it did!). It was clear that a lot of situations could have gone a lot worse, but you handled them very well. This, coupled with the insane amount of time saved from the posted SS, make this a great run to submit.

Yeah, I think it'd definitely be hard to top this time, with all the luck involved. The big mistake you mentioned (I'm assuming you meant forgetting about the small mural for the Palenque fight?) actually didn't seem to waste as much time as the two times the game utterly trolled you in the Twins' Labyrinth elevator and the top left of Tower of the Goddess - maybe it's just because they were so painful to watch. It's like the game was saving up all the bad luck for those two sections... Smiley

Anyway, only 3 ugly sections in a 2 hour run of a game that likes to troll you isn't too shabby.

I gotta say - you nailed ALL your Grapple Claw jumps. You definitely gotta teach me your style, I could use it on my Hell Temple segments later. Smiley

Also, I noticed your game lagged pretty bad on the Amphisbaena fight. I've never seen that happen, so potentially running on a slightly faster CPU/graphics card could save you a couple of seconds, haha.

Other than that, nothing else to say other than great job, and good luck on verification!

@Solairflaire, I just finished watching the run. Really amazing stuff! It is very obvious that a lot of skill is involved here, even with all the great luck you were given (especially those boss fights! Holy crap, that Tiamat fight could have gone a lot worse than it did!). It was clear that a lot of situations could have gone a lot worse, but you handled them very well. This, coupled with the insane amount of time saved from the posted SS, make this a great run to submit.

Yeah, I think it'd definitely be hard to top this time, with all the luck involved. The big mistake you mentioned (I'm assuming you meant forgetting about the small mural for the Palenque fight?) actually didn't seem to waste as much time as the two times the game utterly trolled you in the Twins' Labyrinth elevator and the top left of Tower of the Goddess - maybe it's just because they were so painful to watch. It's like the game was saving up all the bad luck for those two sections... :) Anyway, only 3 ugly sections in a 2 hour run of a game that likes to troll you isn't too shabby.

I gotta say - you nailed ALL your Grapple Claw jumps. You definitely gotta teach me your style, I could use it on my Hell Temple segments later. :)

Also, I noticed your game lagged pretty bad on the Amphisbaena fight. I've never seen that happen, so potentially running on a slightly faster CPU/graphics card could save you a couple of seconds, haha.

Other than that, nothing else to say other than great job, and good luck on verification!

BlueGlass

2013-02-21 11:11:11 pm

Yep yep yep!

Okay, I meant to make a post after watching Solairflaire's run, I thought I had made a post, but apparently I didn't actually make said post. Anyway, I agree with Anon and Maxican that you should submit. The quality play throughout the run, plus the luck with things like the lizard and the keyblade worm (the speed with which you finished that fight was ridiculous, considering how long it can take if he moves in bad patterns) more than make up for those two points of bad luck and the Palenque screwup (which cost ~50 seconds btw).

Congratulations on the run, and you even had another clutch finish!

TheMaxican

2013-02-25 02:28:36 am

Break through the final confusion

Hey all,

So, it's almost the 6th month-aversary of me not giving you any segments! Man, it's hard to believe it's been so long... but it makes sense, as not only is Segment 29 the hardest segment so far, it requires me to have huge blocks of uninterrupted time to make the attempts for a 9 minute segment.

BUT, you knew that already. What you didn't know was that this weekend was the first time in a while that I'd get that uninterrupted chunk of time. After watching Solairflaire's awesome run, it drove me to try to make this weekend be THE weekend that I finally finished this damn segment. And if I did not finish this weekend, then I was going to bring up an idea I had for a while, but really did NOT want to be forced to do - the possibility of splitting this up into 2 segments, right after reading the Grail Glyph and before taking on the stupid worm (the reasons why this would look really bad should be obvious, but let me know if you'd still like to hear them!).

So I played for hours and hours today, and just a bit ago, this happened:

Segment 29:

So it's obviously not optimal, but at 9 minutes, this should bring back memories of my time during Segment 10. Smiley

I'm really happy with this one though, for reasons I'll explain in my usual novel of notes.

I'll put my notes inside spoiler tags from now on, as I realized it's probably a good way to avoid clogging up this forum.

That's right, almost 6 months between the last segment and this one. This is because, thanks to Tiamat's power over my Grail, I'm forced to do the entire Dimensional Corridor in one go. When I was first planning around the run, I theorized that this would be the hardest segment yet. Turns out, I was completely correct, though not for the reasons I first thought! I figured that the Life Jewel + 2 cycle Tiamat would take forever, but as it turns out, pretty much every room before those is a bigger run killer! At a little less than 9 minutes, this is the segment longest segment so far, beaten only by Segment 10. And so, just like in Segment 10, I realized a perfect segment is simply not possible, not just due to the time required but basically because most rooms in the route have jumps and/or enemies that have a very high likelihood of ending the run right there and then. It's interesting because even though the segment takes 9 minutes, most of the attempts didn't make it past the first or second minute. Once I realized that I had spent hours and hours without getting past the first Tiamat Child, I hit the realization that I would have to accept a sub-optimal segment yet again. I think this was harder than before due to all the perfect segments I've been able to achieve up until now, so to have to go back to having another segment where Lemeza is beaten left and right was pretty sad. Although definitely necessary, because, man, this segment was tough!

We start with the good-old Tower of the Goddess grinding strat, which I'm sure you're sick and tired of by now. Not much grinding left!

Now we start from the Twin's Labyrinth, and you'll see me use the Lamp of Time immediately. Yep, this is indeed the best usage of the Lamp of Time in this segment, because those damn birds just LOVE to eat attempts. By using the Lamp of Time here, it makes it so that I don't have to worry about the next two rooms, which is probably the one thing that kept me from going insane.
Right, there's also the switch to Video Hustler + Break Shot, adding a bit of complication to the menu work here. Luckily it goes really well here.

Now we take a detour to Shrine of the Mother for the Map. Let's talk about this room for a bit, because boy do I hate this room. A vast majority of attempts ended right here in this room. Why? Because to get the Map, I have to awaken both statues in the upper corners (which are some of the most hyperactive shooters in the game!), and then somehow manage to get the Dias that's right in the middle of their now-intense firepower. All in all, I'm basically guaranteed to get knocked around the room a couple of times. Details:
First off, those annoying enemies are really fast and LOVE to knock me around, though to be honest, probably not as much as they should. At least I'm able to kill one of them guaranteed, so I only have to deal with two. You may ask why I didn't use the Lamp of Time in this room, and the simple answer is because of the raw numbers: those damn birds in the Twin's Labyrinth are much, much more likely to hit me than these guys (plus, if the birds hit me, it's the end of the run, as opposed to here where it just wastes a bit of time). AND the Lamp of Time doesn't even work on the statues, which both waste much more time than the dumb fast guys. So I'm forced to grin and bear it. Anyway, here I was able to kill both of them pretty quick so they weren't much of an issue. And on that second guy, note that I can make the jump to the statue AND I can kill the guy midguy, but I usually can't do both. Smiley

At least I made the first jump though (which the first guy almost interrupted), which I'm happy about.
Then we have the statues. I found out pretty quickly that waking them up has nothing to do with how many times you hit them - you simply have to wait in front of them for about 5 seconds. So I simply use the Mace to help me count to 5, at which point either (a) very commonly, the statue will hit me off the ledge (looks like they're wired so that they have a good chance to start shooting as soon as they can), or (b) just go ahead and try to jump off without them hitting me on the way down.
Alright, then there's hitting the Dias. Basically, if the second statue doesn't hit me, I just take a leap of faith and hope for the best. This pretty much never works because of how fast those damn things tend to shoot. So I have nothing else I can do but keep trying to jump in and hope for the best. I tried equipping Athletic Land + Cabbage Patch Kids, but I found that it simply wasn't worth it - all that time in the menus, plus the (very high!) chances of me screwing it up and having to start over, tends to be slower than just jumping in until it works. So what I did was that I said that I would accept no more than 2 failed jumps - since that's the point at which Athletic Land + Cabbage Patch Kids would have saved time. Good thing too, because that's exactly the number of jumps it took here. Smiley

Ok, back down to the Twin's Labyrinth. Before getting the Katana I have to take a detour to pick up the Ganbare Goemon ROM. It's a pretty tricky jump there and back, but PALES in comparison to the crap that's about to unfold.
The only other thing to mention here is the Katana room, where there's a decent chance one of the skeletons will hit me with a bone. The worst is when it happens as I'm trying to push the door open...

Alright, Dimensional Corridor. I tested a LOT of routes and different weapon + ROM combinations to see what was fastest (there's a LOT of choices). This is what I found to be fastest overall - basically, lots of Bombs and powered-up Knife. Due to all that Tower of the Goddess grinding, I have plenty of Bombs to spare, and you'll see me picking up a few more along the way.
So, let's get started. Right off the bat, the first screen is the next big run killer. Lots of tricky jumps with severe penalties if they're missed (it's a long way back up), and 3 bats right in the middle of it. Fun. Somehow it goes perfectly here, so I can't complain (that was REALLY CLOSE at the end though!)
Jumping down to the first Tiamat Child, it's VERY easy to get hit by a Satan or a bat and make you land in the water below, which ends the run. Thankfully that didn't happen here.

Alright, Child #1 (a.k.a. Trolling Mermaid) is, believe it or not, the biggest run killer of all the Children! (Even the stupid Worm, for reasons I'll explain later). This is because it's 100% random; if she jumps from the right side, there's absolutely nothing I can do - anywhere she stops, I can't hit her because she spraws water all around her, so I can't get close enough with the Knife, AND I'm guaranteed to get hit (due to the way she approaches) so I can't hit her fast enough with Bombs so that she'll die in one cycle. So, I NEED her to come from the left. Unfortunately, even then it's not a guaranteed 1-cycle finish - if she stops on the lower path I'm ok, but if she's on the higher path then I have to time my two Bomb throws VERY carefully, because she only dies if the ENTIRE Bomb explosion damages her. That's what ended up happening here - see how it close it was!
Coming back up, this is the start of dealing with Satans. Those guys are definitely well named - they have ended a LOT of attempts, particularly in this room since it's VERY easy to fall back down and kill the attempt. I have to pick up a ROM here too, so all in all, I have to get VERY lucky here. And get very luck I did.

I take a bit of time to setup on Child #2 (a.k.a Big Orbs Bull), because starting the fight like this puts you in a good position to beat him quickly. You can actually go fast enough so that the orb doesn't spawn, but your timing has to be perfect - too fast and you won't keep up with him, too slow and you'll run right into him. It's not much slower, but the problem is that the orb is huge and ridiculously fast, so you're basically guaranteed to get knocked around by it. Miraculously this didn't happen here.
Ah yes, another Sage with loads of text. Luckily this is the last one.
The next room involves pushing against the wall for quite a while - and if a bat hits you while this is happening, you won't have time to finish before the "moon" dias thing goes away, which is a run ender. So an SS obviously kills the bats first, but I don't have that luxury. So that's why I did my best to get rid of the ones I could, even though one trolled me a bit (but I got him, so it's all good). That last bat started making me VERY nervous but luckily he kept his distance.

Child #3 (a.k.a. Resurrecting Griffin) is a bit tricky. He has a LOT of health, enough so that even 2 Bomb volleys isn't enough to kill it. I tried a whole bunch of different strats and finally decided on what you see here - throw 2 Bombs (which is tricky, by the way - you have to throw them a bit higher than you'd think, so that you can hit his head no matter how he moves it) and then stand underneath him and Flare him for the rest. The reason this is tricky though (besides the Bomb throws) is that, because I'm purposely throwing the Bombs high, it doesn't stop his projectiles, so I'm essentially guaranteed to get hit. So the best thing I found to do is purposely walk off the platform, into the spikes (which knock me into said platform, so it doesn't waste too much time), which gives me the invincibility to jump on the ledge underneath him (which is ALSO tricky, since you have to try to avoid his head + Bomb explosions above, and you have to get quite close to him to ensure all the Flares hit him when he raises his head high). So yeah, even with this fairly consistent strat, you can imagine it it doesn't always go so smoothly. This is actually the best time I've had with him out of all the attempts I did.
The Angel Shield room has a couple of time saving tricks to it, which all change depending on my visit number. This first visit is the most straightforward - just stab them all. They're not too bad, but they will randomly choose to shoot their fire at the worst possible time. This ended up working out pretty well.

Child #4 (a.k.a. Snakes on a Ball) is interesting in that he can either go really fast or take forever. It's ALL on the first attack - the position from where you spawn him to where he appears is VERY precise, so you have to land it perfectly, AND then hope he doesn't roll left. This went perfectly here. By the way, this was the point at which I started to realize this segment may be the one (I had made very very few mistakes up to this point, which is very rare).
Then the second Angel Shield trip, this is where I use Bombs to speed things up. That first throw is VERY tricky but saves the most time, and went perfect here. The second throw could have gone better (ideally it doesn't hit me), but it killed the upper one so no biggie.
I totally got trolled by that bat on the landing, darn it. You can even see that I tried to stab it and missed somehow!

Child #5 (a.k.a. Parentheses Pony) also ended a whole bunch of attempts. He has to spawn at a somewhat decent place. I would have LOVED to use the Lamp of Time here like the SS, but unfortunately this would make not recharge in time for the Life Jewel room, so it's out of the question here... Anyway, it went well here, but obviously I'd prefer it if he spawned on the left. Oh well, it was a 1-cycle so I'm not complaining!

Child #6 (a.k.a. lol wut) is the best child ever.
Between the next two, I have to do quite a bit of menu work to equip the Glyph Reader (and then the Keyblade + Hand Scanner), read the Glyph (which I'll need to keep coming back to the Sage to make more medicines for Hell Temple), then switch to Atheletic Land + Cabbage Patch Kids for the worm. And then AFTER the worm, there's the switch back to Video Hustler + Break Shot. Obviously, at about 5 minutes into the segment this can be a bit nerve-wracking. But somehow I pulled these off pretty well.

Child #7 (a.k.a. Trolling Worm) has the potential to easily be the worst Child here, because he's only weak to the Keyblade (the worst weapon you have), and he's 100% random in the path he takes - some paths make him much harder to hit than other paths, and keep in mind you're taking damage pretty much the entire time. The reason I say it isn't so bad, though, is because I quickly realized that killing him optimally is, quite simply, impossible - there's TOO many "good" choices he has to take in his path, so it's just not going to happen. Because of that, I didn't have to worry about getting a good run here - no matter what, it's going to go horribly wrong and take forever. So I don't have to stress about this guy, because having a good run elsewhere far outweighs whatever time this guy wastes. It's sad, but at least it's one less thing to worry about.
So anyway, here he gives me pretty much one of the worst routes (where you can't see his head so you have no idea where to aim). But I somehow was able to keep getting hits on him, and at the end he gave me a fairly decent route that let me kill him before he got too far away. So in the end I got a 22 second worm kill, which is of course far from optimal but actually pretty damn good (to give you some perspective, I was willing to allow under 30 seconds, easily).
I got REALLY lucky with that Satan's bullet on the next screen! Smiley

Child #8 (a.k.a. Some-Assembly-Required Knight) is really interesting because even though he's pretty easy in an SS, here I have to grab the Gradius 2 ROM in the water, and obviously the best time to do it is while he's assembling himself. BUT, the best place to assemble him in at the upper-right, where he's easiest to kill. So, I had two choices: (1) Go to the upper right until he starts spawning, then run down to the ROM, come back up to the ledge below him, and Flare him, OR (2) Get the ROM, spawn him on the lower right, then get above him and Spear him. I chose the latter because (a) it's actually faster (you can leave much earlier after killing him), and (b) I'm a little low on Flares anyway - too many other Children to kill with them.
On the way back to the Grail Glyph room, it's basically just hoping the Satans don't troll you. It went surprisngly well here - the first one wasn't an issue (though I had to wait a bit on the stairs there - not too bad), the second one did cause me to get hit by that turtle thing, and then I realized he was out of range for the Knife. But then he DID damage-boost me the right way, so I forgive him. Cuz yeah - it normally goes much worse than this.

Child #9 (a.k.a. Leaping Lion) can jump all over the place and be really annoying. But this actually went extremely well - I jumped into him at the end hoping that he was on his last Knifeing, but sadly he wasn't, which cost a little time. Oh well, I got him on the next one, so it was still faster than usual.

Child #10 (a.k.a. Tornado Mutalisk) is pretty easy with this strat. It takes some careful timing to do it as fast as possible, and luckily I did just that here.
Holy crap did I get lucky jumping on Child #11 to go up to the Life Jewel! That could have been pretty run ending. It was at this point that I realized just how lucky I had been getting on this run!
So, the Life Jewel room. This is one of the few things in the segment that is 100% skill, but it's quite tricky to do. Of course, when you're me at this point - realizing that this segment is by far the best after MONTHS of attempts - this quickly becomes very scary to do. Somehow, I pulled through, although it should be obvious I was being VERY careful with every jump. Of course, I miss a jump, but that jump is actually quite tricky, so given how nervous I was here it was bound to happen. I'm glad I didn't waste more time like at the end of Segment 10!

Child #11 (a.k.a. Platform Demon) is a joke after all this.

Ah yes, then comes Tiamat. Honestly, beating her in 2 cycles is not terribly difficult (having those be optimal, though...), but keep in mind at this point my heart was pounding because I knew that a 2-cycle Tiamat was all that was keeping me from finally having my segment. So after staring with the obligatory 1-2-3-4, I start the fight. The first, easier cycle goes well, even though I missed that last figure-8 but no biggie (again, nerves). Note that I start the second cycle by shooting Shurikens at her face because I've found that this sometimes "resets" her timing and she doesn't do a tail whip as I'm ascending on the left. It's really rare though and didn't work here, shucks. Then of course I run into that glowing orb like an idiot - I really shouldn't have missed that (this is probably the ONLY mistake in the whole segment that really makes me flinch) but, again, nerves. Oh well, in the end I got a fast 2-cycle finish (my stabs were perfect, somehow), so I have no regrets.

Now all I have to do before leaving is pick up the Angel Shield on my third visit. I very commonly miss that Bomb throw after Tiamat but somehow pulled it off here, and then I even got the perfect strat on the last guy (jump, stab him 3 times in midair, and land on the ledge on that same jump), so I'm quite happy I was able to pull this off so late in the segment.
Then it's just avoiding random enemies to the exit. Of course I lose some time getting stuck on the elevator and waiting for it to go back down, but this ALWAYS happens to me for some reason so I don't worry about it, go save, and finally bid farewell to this horrible segment.

So yeah, overall, I'm extremely happy with this segment - it's obviously far from optimal, but I actually made very few mistakes (and none of them were big time wasters either), so it honestly couldn't be much faster than this aside from better luck in the Shrine of the Mother Map room and the stupid worm. This, coupled with the fact that this segment literally brought the run to a screeching halt for almost 6 months, makes me very happy to accept this as the best it's going to get, and move on to the rest of the run!

So that's that.

First off, a special shout out to Solairflaire for unconsciously giving me the will to finish this weekend with that sweet SS run!

Other than that, any thoughts? I'm hoping the segment, even though sub-optimal, was still impressive and entertaining! I've explained my reasons for why this segment is what it is, and hopefully you agree. Otherwise let me know! Because if there's no issues, then MAN am I happy to move on, and hopefully start bringing you segments with some regularity again!

Jeez... just realized that after the next one, this run is 3/4ths done!

Finally, a thanks to everyone who has stuck with me this far; sorry to have kept you waiting, and hopefully I can get this run back on track now! I'm hoping the segments up until Hell Temple are going to be straightforward enough that I won't hit another snag, but as always we'll see how it goes!

Hey all,

So, it's almost the 6th month-aversary of me not giving you any segments! Man, it's hard to believe it's been so long... but it makes sense, as not only is Segment 29 the hardest segment so far, it requires me to have huge blocks of uninterrupted time to make the attempts for a 9 minute segment.

BUT, you knew that already. What you didn't know was that this weekend was the first time in a while that I'd get that uninterrupted chunk of time. After watching Solairflaire's awesome run, it drove me to try to make this weekend be THE weekend that I finally finished this damn segment. And if I did not finish this weekend, then I was going to bring up an idea I had for a while, but really did NOT want to be forced to do - the possibility of splitting this up into 2 segments, right after reading the Grail Glyph and before taking on the stupid worm (the reasons why this would look really bad should be obvious, but let me know if you'd still like to hear them!).

So I played for hours and hours today, and just a bit ago, this happened:

Segment 29:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt3GGXrQRJ0

So it's obviously not optimal, but at 9 minutes, this should bring back memories of my time during Segment 10. :) I'm really happy with this one though, for reasons I'll explain in my usual novel of notes.

I'll put my notes inside spoiler tags from now on, as I realized it's probably a good way to avoid clogging up this forum.

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That's right, almost 6 months between the last segment and this one. This is because, thanks to Tiamat's power over my Grail, I'm forced to do the entire Dimensional Corridor in one go. When I was first planning around the run, I theorized that this would be the hardest segment yet. Turns out, I was completely correct, though not for the reasons I first thought! I figured that the Life Jewel + 2 cycle Tiamat would take forever, but as it turns out, pretty much every room before those is a bigger run killer! At a little less than 9 minutes, this is the segment longest segment so far, beaten only by Segment 10. And so, just like in Segment 10, I realized a perfect segment is simply not possible, not just due to the time required but basically because most rooms in the route have jumps and/or enemies that have a very high likelihood of ending the run right there and then. It's interesting because even though the segment takes 9 minutes, most of the attempts didn't make it past the first or second minute. Once I realized that I had spent hours and hours without getting past the first Tiamat Child, I hit the realization that I would have to accept a sub-optimal segment yet again. I think this was harder than before due to all the perfect segments I've been able to achieve up until now, so to have to go back to having another segment where Lemeza is beaten left and right was pretty sad. Although definitely necessary, because, man, this segment was tough!

We start with the good-old Tower of the Goddess grinding strat, which I'm sure you're sick and tired of by now. Not much grinding left!

Now we start from the Twin's Labyrinth, and you'll see me use the Lamp of Time immediately. Yep, this is indeed the best usage of the Lamp of Time in this segment, because those damn birds just LOVE to eat attempts. By using the Lamp of Time here, it makes it so that I don't have to worry about the next two rooms, which is probably the one thing that kept me from going insane.
Right, there's also the switch to Video Hustler + Break Shot, adding a bit of complication to the menu work here. Luckily it goes really well here.

Now we take a detour to Shrine of the Mother for the Map. Let's talk about this room for a bit, because boy do I hate this room. A vast majority of attempts ended right here in this room. Why? Because to get the Map, I have to awaken both statues in the upper corners (which are some of the most hyperactive shooters in the game!), and then somehow manage to get the Dias that's right in the middle of their now-intense firepower. All in all, I'm basically guaranteed to get knocked around the room a couple of times. Details:
First off, those annoying enemies are really fast and LOVE to knock me around, though to be honest, probably not as much as they should. At least I'm able to kill one of them guaranteed, so I only have to deal with two. You may ask why I didn't use the Lamp of Time in this room, and the simple answer is because of the raw numbers: those damn birds in the Twin's Labyrinth are much, much more likely to hit me than these guys (plus, if the birds hit me, it's the end of the run, as opposed to here where it just wastes a bit of time). AND the Lamp of Time doesn't even work on the statues, which both waste much more time than the dumb fast guys. So I'm forced to grin and bear it.  Anyway, here I was able to kill both of them pretty quick so they weren't much of an issue. And on that second guy, note that I can make the jump to the statue AND I can kill the guy midguy, but I usually can't do both. :) At least I made the first jump though (which the first guy almost interrupted), which I'm happy about.
Then we have the statues. I found out pretty quickly that waking them up has nothing to do with how many times you hit them - you simply have to wait in front of them for about 5 seconds. So I simply use the Mace to help me count to 5, at which point either (a) very commonly, the statue will hit me off the ledge (looks like they're wired so that they have a good chance to start shooting as soon as they can), or (b) just go ahead and try to jump off without them hitting me on the way down.
Alright, then there's hitting the Dias. Basically, if the second statue doesn't hit me, I just take a leap of faith and hope for the best. This pretty much never works because of how fast those damn things tend to shoot. So I have nothing else I can do but keep trying to jump in and hope for the best. I tried equipping Athletic Land + Cabbage Patch Kids, but I found that it simply wasn't worth it - all that time in the menus, plus the (very high!) chances of me screwing it up and having to start over, tends to be slower than just jumping in until it works. So what I did was that I said that I would accept no more than 2 failed jumps - since that's the point at which Athletic Land + Cabbage Patch Kids would have saved time. Good thing too, because that's exactly the number of jumps it took here. :)

Ok, back down to the Twin's Labyrinth. Before getting the Katana I have to take a detour to pick up the Ganbare Goemon ROM. It's a pretty tricky jump there and back, but PALES in comparison to the crap that's about to unfold.
The only other thing to mention here is the Katana room, where there's a decent chance one of the skeletons will hit me with a bone. The worst is when it happens as I'm trying to push the door open...

Alright, Dimensional Corridor. I tested a LOT of routes and different weapon + ROM combinations to see what was fastest (there's a LOT of choices). This is what I found to be fastest overall - basically, lots of Bombs and powered-up Knife. Due to all that Tower of the Goddess grinding, I have plenty of Bombs to spare, and you'll see me picking up a few more along the way.
So, let's get started. Right off the bat, the first screen is the next big run killer. Lots of tricky jumps with severe penalties if they're missed (it's a long way back up), and 3 bats right in the middle of it. Fun. Somehow it goes perfectly here, so I can't complain (that was REALLY CLOSE at the end though!)
Jumping down to the first Tiamat Child, it's VERY easy to get hit by a Satan or a bat and make you land in the water below, which ends the run. Thankfully that didn't happen here.

Alright, Child #1 (a.k.a. Trolling Mermaid) is, believe it or not, the biggest run killer of all the Children! (Even the stupid Worm, for reasons I'll explain later). This is because it's 100% random; if she jumps from the right side, there's absolutely nothing I can do - anywhere she stops, I can't hit her because she spraws water all around her, so I can't get close enough with the Knife, AND I'm guaranteed to get hit (due to the way she approaches) so I can't hit her fast enough with Bombs so that she'll die in one cycle. So, I NEED her to come from the left. Unfortunately, even then it's not a guaranteed 1-cycle finish - if she stops on the lower path I'm ok, but if she's on the higher path then I have to time my two Bomb throws VERY carefully, because she only dies if the ENTIRE Bomb explosion damages her. That's what ended up happening here - see how it close it was!
Coming back up, this is the start of dealing with Satans. Those guys are definitely well named - they have ended a LOT of attempts, particularly in this room since it's VERY easy to fall back down and kill the attempt. I have to pick up a ROM here too, so all in all, I have to get VERY lucky here. And get very luck I did.

I take a bit of time to setup on Child #2 (a.k.a Big Orbs Bull), because starting the fight like this puts you in a good position to beat him quickly. You can actually go fast enough so that the orb doesn't spawn, but your timing has to be perfect - too fast and you won't keep up with him, too slow and you'll run right into him. It's not much slower, but the problem is that the orb is huge and ridiculously fast, so you're basically guaranteed to get knocked around by it. Miraculously this didn't happen here.
Ah yes, another Sage with loads of text. Luckily this is the last one.
The next room involves pushing against the wall for quite a while - and if a bat hits you while this is happening, you won't have time to finish before the "moon" dias thing goes away, which is a run ender. So an SS obviously kills the bats first, but I don't have that luxury. So that's why I did my best to get rid of the ones I could, even though one trolled me a bit (but I got him, so it's all good). That last bat started making me VERY nervous but luckily he kept his distance.

Child #3 (a.k.a. Resurrecting Griffin) is a bit tricky. He has a LOT of health, enough so that even 2 Bomb volleys isn't enough to kill it. I tried a whole bunch of different strats and finally decided on what you see here - throw 2 Bombs (which is tricky, by the way - you have to throw them a bit higher than you'd think, so that you can hit his head no matter how he moves it) and then stand underneath him and Flare him for the rest. The reason this is tricky though (besides the Bomb throws) is that, because I'm purposely throwing the Bombs high, it doesn't stop his projectiles, so I'm essentially guaranteed to get hit. So the best thing I found to do is purposely walk off the platform, into the spikes (which knock me into said platform, so it doesn't waste too much time), which gives me the invincibility to jump on the ledge underneath him (which is ALSO tricky, since you have to try to avoid his head + Bomb explosions above, and you have to get quite close to him to ensure all the Flares hit him when he raises his head high). So yeah, even with this fairly consistent strat, you can imagine it it doesn't always go so smoothly. This is actually the best time I've had with him out of all the attempts I did.
The Angel Shield room has a couple of time saving tricks to it, which all change depending on my visit number. This first visit is the most straightforward - just stab them all. They're not too bad, but they will randomly choose to shoot their fire at the worst possible time. This ended up working out pretty well.

Child #4 (a.k.a. Snakes on a Ball) is interesting in that he can either go really fast or take forever. It's ALL on the first attack - the position from where you spawn him to where he appears is VERY precise, so you have to land it perfectly, AND then hope he doesn't roll left. This went perfectly here. By the way, this was the point at which I started to realize this segment may be the one (I had made very very few mistakes up to this point, which is very rare).
Then the second Angel Shield trip, this is where I use Bombs to speed things up. That first throw is VERY tricky but saves the most time, and went perfect here. The second throw could have gone better (ideally it doesn't hit me), but it killed the upper one so no biggie.
I totally got trolled by that bat on the landing, darn it. You can even see that I tried to stab it and missed somehow!

Child #5 (a.k.a. Parentheses Pony) also ended a whole bunch of attempts. He has to spawn at a somewhat decent place. I would have LOVED to use the Lamp of Time here like the SS, but unfortunately this would make not recharge in time for the Life Jewel room, so it's out of the question here... Anyway, it went well here, but obviously I'd prefer it if he spawned on the left. Oh well, it was a 1-cycle so I'm not complaining!

Child #6 (a.k.a. lol wut) is the best child ever.
Between the next two, I have to do quite a bit of menu work to equip the Glyph Reader (and then the Keyblade + Hand Scanner), read the Glyph (which I'll need to keep coming back to the Sage to make more medicines for Hell Temple), then switch to Atheletic Land + Cabbage Patch Kids for the worm. And then AFTER the worm, there's the switch back to Video Hustler + Break Shot. Obviously, at about 5 minutes into the segment this can be a bit nerve-wracking. But somehow I pulled these off pretty well.

Child #7 (a.k.a. Trolling Worm) has the potential to easily be the worst Child here, because he's only weak to the Keyblade (the worst weapon you have), and he's 100% random in the path he takes - some paths make him much harder to hit than other paths, and keep in mind you're taking damage pretty much the entire time. The reason I say it isn't so bad, though, is because I quickly realized that killing him optimally is, quite simply, impossible - there's TOO many "good" choices he has to take in his path, so it's just not going to happen. Because of that, I didn't have to worry about getting a good run here - no matter what, it's going to go horribly wrong and take forever. So I don't have to stress about this guy, because having a good run elsewhere far outweighs whatever time this guy wastes. It's sad, but at least it's one less thing to worry about.
So anyway, here he gives me pretty much one of the worst routes (where you can't see his head so you have no idea where to aim). But I somehow was able to keep getting hits on him, and at the end he gave me a fairly decent route that let me kill him before he got too far away. So in the end I got a 22 second worm kill, which is of course far from optimal but actually pretty damn good (to give you some perspective, I was willing to allow under 30 seconds, easily).
I got REALLY lucky with that Satan's bullet on the next screen! :)

Child #8 (a.k.a. Some-Assembly-Required Knight) is really interesting because even though he's pretty easy in an SS, here I have to grab the Gradius 2 ROM in the water, and obviously the best time to do it is while he's assembling himself. BUT, the best place to assemble him in at the upper-right, where he's easiest to kill. So, I had two choices: (1) Go to the upper right until he starts spawning, then run down to the ROM, come back up to the ledge below him, and Flare him, OR (2) Get the ROM, spawn him on the lower right, then get above him and Spear him. I chose the latter because (a) it's actually faster (you can leave much earlier after killing him), and (b) I'm a little low on Flares anyway - too many other Children to kill with them.
On the way back to the Grail Glyph room, it's basically just hoping the Satans don't troll you. It went surprisngly well here - the first one wasn't an issue (though I had to wait a bit on the stairs there - not too bad), the second one did cause me to get hit by that turtle thing, and then I realized he was out of range for the Knife. But then he DID damage-boost me the right way, so I forgive him. Cuz yeah - it normally goes much worse than this.

Child #9 (a.k.a. Leaping Lion) can jump all over the place and be really annoying. But this actually went extremely well - I jumped into him at the end hoping that he was on his last Knifeing, but sadly he wasn't, which cost a little time. Oh well, I got him on the next one, so it was still faster than usual.

Child #10 (a.k.a. Tornado Mutalisk) is pretty easy with this strat. It takes some careful timing to do it as fast as possible, and luckily I did just that here.
Holy crap did I get lucky jumping on Child #11 to go up to the Life Jewel! That could have been pretty run ending. It was at this point that I realized just how lucky I had been getting on this run!
So, the Life Jewel room. This is one of the few things in the segment that is 100% skill, but it's quite tricky to do. Of course, when you're me at this point - realizing that this segment is by far the best after MONTHS of attempts - this quickly becomes very scary to do. Somehow, I pulled through, although it should be obvious I was being VERY careful with every jump. Of course, I miss a jump, but that jump is actually quite tricky, so given how nervous I was here it was bound to happen. I'm glad I didn't waste more time like at the end of Segment 10!

Child #11 (a.k.a. Platform Demon) is a joke after all this.

Ah yes, then comes Tiamat. Honestly, beating her in 2 cycles is not terribly difficult (having those be optimal, though...), but keep in mind at this point my heart was pounding because I knew that a 2-cycle Tiamat was all that was keeping me from finally having my segment. So after staring with the obligatory 1-2-3-4, I start the fight. The first, easier cycle goes well, even though I missed that last figure-8 but no biggie (again, nerves). Note that I start the second cycle by shooting Shurikens at her face because I've found that this sometimes "resets" her timing and she doesn't do a tail whip as I'm ascending on the left. It's really rare though and didn't work here, shucks. Then of course I run into that glowing orb like an idiot - I really shouldn't have missed that (this is probably the ONLY mistake in the whole segment that really makes me flinch) but, again, nerves. Oh well, in the end I got a fast 2-cycle finish (my stabs were perfect, somehow), so I have no regrets.

Now all I have to do before leaving is pick up the Angel Shield on my third visit. I very commonly miss that Bomb throw after Tiamat but somehow pulled it off here, and then I even got the perfect strat on the last guy (jump, stab him 3 times in midair, and land on the ledge on that same jump), so I'm quite happy I was able to pull this off so late in the segment.
Then it's just avoiding random enemies to the exit. Of course I lose some time getting stuck on the elevator and waiting for it to go back down, but this ALWAYS happens to me for some reason so I don't worry about it, go save, and finally bid farewell to this horrible segment.

So yeah, overall, I'm extremely happy with this segment - it's obviously far from optimal, but I actually made very few mistakes (and none of them were big time wasters either), so it honestly couldn't be much faster than this aside from better luck in the Shrine of the Mother Map room and the stupid worm. This, coupled with the fact that this segment literally brought the run to a screeching halt for almost 6 months, makes me very happy to accept this as the best it's going to get, and move on to the rest of the run!
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So that's that.

First off, a special shout out to Solairflaire for unconsciously giving me the will to finish this weekend with that sweet SS run!

Other than that, any thoughts? I'm hoping the segment, even though sub-optimal, was still impressive and entertaining! I've explained my reasons for why this segment is what it is, and hopefully you agree. Otherwise let me know! Because if there's no issues, then MAN am I happy to move on, and hopefully start bringing you segments with some regularity again!

Jeez... just realized that after the next one, this run is 3/4ths done!

Finally, a thanks to everyone who has stuck with me this far; sorry to have kept you waiting, and hopefully I can get this run back on track now! I'm hoping the segments up until Hell Temple are going to be straightforward enough that I won't hit another snag, but as always we'll see how it goes!

Anonymous52555

2013-02-25 07:17:26 am

Metroidvanias are God Tier

I love your use of bombs during this segment.

Exo

2013-02-25 10:21:38 am

Sandbagging

Finally a new segment Smiley

I'll watch this later (but I'm already sure it'll be good)

BlueGlass

2013-02-25 03:12:42 pm

Yep yep yep!

Crazy awesome, Maxican! I can't imagine how much of a relief it must have been to finally finisih this. Congratulations! I was on the edge of my seat multiple times with those near-trolls from the bats and satans. And the way you just leapt straight at Tiamat with no hesitation whatsoever... crazy.

Again, congrats on finally getting past this nightmare!

DeliciousPi

2013-02-25 10:56:58 pm

Well deserved congrats, Maxican. Glad you were able to find the time to bust it out. Looking forward to the thrilling conclusion now that that segment's out of the way!

Patashu

2013-02-26 02:46:35 am

That segment was amazing, so many trolly elements and enemies and you get through unscathed Smiley

TheMaxican

2013-02-27 12:24:37 am

Break through the final confusion

I think I say this too much, but whatever: many thanks to everyone for the kind words! I'm happy you all enjoyed it, and I can't wait for the next one!

So anyway, random thought I had yesterday and I was curious what you all thought. So this next segment is the start of Mantra typing, right? Which is annoying because I can never seem to type them carefully but quickly so that the game takes them the first time.
So what I was THINKING is: what if for every segment, I remap the keys? Nothing too fancy, just move the MARDUK letters over to the QWERTY ones (or something like that) so that I can type the password as optimally as possible.
It sounded genius and then I was really happy, but THEN I thought... is this even SDA legal? Are you allowed to remap the keys of games outside of the game's abilities? Keep in mind this would be a one-to-one mapping of keys using the usual Windows XP registry stuff, none of this "press one key to do multiple things" stuff.
Anyway, I was just curious if (a) anyone knew off the top of their head of an existing run that did this (or if it's not allowed for sure), and (b) what you all think. It's obviously not a big deal if I have to type out the chants normally (would just be a couple of seconds tops for the whole run), I just figured I'd try to remove a variable that I know would cost me some attempts! Smiley

I think I say this too much, but whatever: many thanks to everyone for the kind words! I'm happy you all enjoyed it, and I can't wait for the next one!

So anyway, random thought I had yesterday and I was curious what you all thought. So this next segment is the start of Mantra typing, right? Which is annoying because I can never seem to type them carefully but quickly so that the game takes them the first time.
So what I was THINKING is: what if for every segment, I remap the keys? Nothing too fancy, just move the MARDUK letters over to the QWERTY ones (or something like that) so that I can type the password as optimally as possible.
It sounded genius and then I was really happy, but THEN I thought... is this even SDA legal? Are you allowed to remap the keys of games outside of the game's abilities? Keep in mind this would be a one-to-one mapping of keys using the usual Windows XP registry stuff, none of this "press one key to do multiple things" stuff.
Anyway, I was just curious if (a) anyone knew off the top of their head of an existing run that did this (or if it's not allowed for sure), and (b) what you all think. It's obviously not a big deal if I have to type out the chants normally (would just be a couple of seconds tops for the whole run), I just figured I'd try to remove a variable that I know would cost me some attempts! :)

Solairflaire

2013-02-27 12:50:42 am

That's an awesome segment. It's too bad the worm didn't cooperate all that well, but you handled it excellently. I can honestly say I wish I had more bombs so I could've done some of what you did with them.

About remapping the keys. It's been asked a lot and, iirc, it's allowed. There are several different types of keyboard styles, not just the standard QWERTY and AZERTY styles. There's also no way to know if you changed your keyboard around for better convenience anyway.

About my run. I'm working on comments. They're turning into a novel though, or so it feels like.