Greetings, I'm a few weeks into running the game and I've been slowly getting most of it down by studying kmac's and furiouspaul's most recent WR's. I know Komrade mentioned putting a sub 12:30 guide together. This would definitely be helpful. In the meantime I have a few questions that I would love an explanation to. Any help is greatly appreciated :)

A.) To start... The Count fight... what in the world is going on here?? I've watched DKGenius' guide a few times now

Several things are still unclear to me. I know of the glitch to get a critical hit when you take damage. But what about the multipliers? Do you need to enter the fight without dying in order to get the multipliers to drop? I usually kill myself on purpose to refill my health after the clocktower, I assume that's why I never see them. This is the section I'm losing a ridiculous amount of time to every run so I'd love a detailed explanation.

B.) The sewer skip. Whats the best setup for getting hit by the bat? How necessary is the stopwatch? I've had a very hard time getting this jump with and without the stopwatch.

C.) Critical hit on first boss. How strict is the timing? How difficult is this to master? Should it be attempted every time? I've been using this as an alternative:

Thank you for the quick response! That clears up a lot for the final fight. I'm stoked to start saving whole minutes on one section. Now that I'm in the low 15's, practicing everything else seems to matter so much less than learning the final battle in terms of time saved.

Those were some great explanations. I just got sub 12 a couple of days ago and you're right that the time save on the final boss fight is huge but you do save a lot of time on the way by executing smaller things better.

I'm going to try to put together a video guide/tutorial for the game this week which is aimed at beginners such as myself with a goal of 12 minutes in mind. I will not go into details about the more advanced strats you need for WR but 12 minutes is something I thing is within reach of most runners.

Worth noting on the Dracula fight is that if you want to get the same 2 possible Dracula patterns you see in every top-run of the game you can not take an intentional Death at the bottom of the Clock Tower. The pattern is dependent on if you from the bottom Clocktower screen keep moving left all the time until you trigger the boss-fight without loosing any frames. Then depending on if you get the slow or fast bulletpattern from Dracula you can determine if he will try to spawn on top of you or away from you thus making the fight go the way you want and no matter what initial pattern you get you will Always be able to hit him with multiple crosses + whip when he on the third cycle spawns in the left corner.

Thank you Endy. That clears up my confusion for getting the right pattern consistently. You guys have been loads of help!

Glad we could help :)

To clarify, you CAN make a practice savestate -inside- the bossroom once the screen comes to a stop but to make sure you get it correct make a savestate just -outside- the screen on the bottom of the clocktower then just walk in, hold up+left on the stairs and make sure to jump at the 2 tile fall so you don't loose any frames in the fall walking off.

If you're having consistent trouble with health I recommend skipping one of the skeleton-damageboosts (the 1st one prerferably) and learn the strat for picking up the wallmeat without taking damage.

edit: also be careful when jumpwhipping the Candles for hearts that you don't whip late so you get recovery-frames when you land, even 1 frame difference alters the pattern. It's actually not as scary as it sounds not loosing any frames but the importance can't be stressed enough :)