CONTROLS: How I setup my controls.

Hey guys, Lily here. I've realized that people who watch this don't know that I use very specific controls for this game to make inputting certain actions WAY easier, mainly the Minislash and Airblock Jump (ABJ) techniques.
 
FOR MINISLASH: The technique is essentially rapid firing the first hit of your air combo twice in the air by cancelling the slash with a stomp, then canceling the stomp with a slash. This is possible on controller, it is however kind of hard. You can make it WAY WAY easier by having a key thats bound to Down+Jump+Attack. 

FOR AIRBLOCK JUMP (ABJ): The technique, when you have the Airblock memory equipped (Bought in the Rosalis Memory shop for 12k) you can block and jump on the same frame to get a double jump. You honestly *could* do this without a dedicated key, but i find it easier to not worry about consistently hitting 2 keys on the same frame. Bind Block + Jump on the same key. 

Other than that, no other technique as far as i remember needs special bindings, though Air Down Pulse Canceling is something i typically do with Pressing down+pulse > minislash key. 


Difficulties And You: What Is Different?

Difficulty is not something that's really been discussed in the context of Vernal Edge Speedruns. This post will run down what exactly is different between difficulties in this game.

**TL;DR: Easy-Hard have the same spawns, with Easy giving you 1.5x damage, Normal 1.2x and Hard 1x. Hard and Vicious have similar enemy damage, player damage, and pulse healing, but Vicious importantly has different, longer and harder arenas from Hard.**

These are the exact values of each difficulty. Screenshot of code given by Noxid, one of the devs. Thank you noxid :3

global.enemy_damage_mod: how much damage Vernal takes from enemies. Higher the number = Higher the damage taken. Scales up with difficulty

global.player_damage_mod: how much damage Vernal does to enemies. Scales down with difficulty (effectively making enemies tankier)

global.enemy_passivity_mod: seemingly affects the frequency of enemies choosing to attack. Higher the number = more aggressive the enemy is.

global.pulse_heal_mod: affects how much healing Vernal gains from Pulse attacks. Might affect how much Bloom you gain as well? Lower healing with higher difficulty.

global.spawnhardmonsters: essentially a boolean to tell the game to give you the harder spawns in arenas. only relevant in Vicious.
![](http://puu.sh/KfbIh/bc5b0aaff7.png)http://puu.sh/KfbIh/bc5b0aaff7.png

Fungal Mines Elevator Skip (Skips 2nd lever, Elevator Fight)

This is an application of Vernal Space Program, used to skip the 2nd half of Fungal Mines. Current any% route uses this skip, as it saves a significant amount of time over doing the 2nd half normally. To perform the skip:

- After obtaining stomp, return back to the room where the airship is.
- Head all the way back to the airship, and to where a slope is all the way on the left side.
- Obtain stomp landing storage, drift towards the ledge (you can use your air combo to position yourself correctly)
- jump from the ledge, dash towards the slope, hold left, press and hold jump, then turn right and ascend to the mountaintop
- Watch the cutscene, then do what you do to get back to the ship normally (I hug the wall towards the elevator, air charge forward taunt cancel and just drift until i see a visual cue to stomp down to the door to the airship and leave)
**IMPORTANT NOTICE: TO PROPERLY PERFORM THIS, YOU MUST HIT THE CUTSCENE TRIGGER. DO NOT GRAB THE PIECE OF COMPASS BEFORE THE CUTSCENE, OR ELSE THE FLAG FOR CHERVIL TO FORM THE COMPASS WILL NOT BE SET AND THE GAME WONT BE COMPLETABLE.** 


LOAD DASH: VERY IMPORTANT OPTIMIZATION

You may have noticed that everytime I enter a room, I will normally have a LOT of speed the moment the screen fully loads. This is due to a technique I call Load Dashing.


**HOW IT WORKS:** Every time that a "load" happens (basically whenever you see the screen turn blue with VE wrapped around it), by the time the loading screen starts going to the right, you are actionable. DURING THIS TIME, If you happen to be airborne and dash, the part of the dash's code that stops your momentum at the end of it does not function, for some reason. We can exploit this by jumping and dashing or dashing and jumping to gain a lot of velocity, in fact the fastest velocity obtainable in the game as far as i know (minus some REALLY early patch shit i remember seeing in the discord). 

**HOW TO DO:** As I started writing this, I was watching another person's run, and realized: loading times are different for some people! This technique is very much Trial and Error, you just have to get a feel for your own setup's load time, and go from there. It shouldn't be *that* frame tight though, theres like a half second window (NOT TESTED) where you can dash in the air and gain your momentum. REMEMBER TO TAUNT AFTER YOU DASH TOO! IT MAKES IT FASTER, DONT ASK ME WHY I JUST KNOW AIR TAUNTS DO SOMETHING TO MOMENTUM THAT MAKES ME FASTER!! 

For any and all questions about this technique (and literally everything about this run i am very autistic and this is my hyperfixation game) you can find me in the official Vernal Edge discord!!


Stomp Landing Storage, and How To Go To Space (aka Vernal Space Program)

First, we need to understand how stomp works. 
Stomping itself has two major properties (beyond being used to cancel actions and fast fall):
- When you're falling, you can break wooden platforms (only known way to get through them)
- and for the purposes of this guide, when you land the game sets a flag to see if there is a slope under vernal when she is grounded, and if there is, she starts sliding.
This flag, is able to be stored/delayed by jumping as soon as you land on a non-slope surface. The landing animation of stomping will play the next time you land on the ground, and you can initiate a slide by jumping onto a slope. This has a niche use of canceling all end lag on Vernal's Air Down attack (colloquially known as Helm Breaker) without needing to dash/pulse/block jump cancel. But the most important thing here is that you can commit various actions towards a slope that transition into a slide.
**When Vernal goes into a slope with anything that adds momentum to her (listed below), and jumps after initiating a slide, she will ascend infinitely until she stops the slide or hits a ceiling (but will not fall).** 
Applicable important actions include: 
All Air Attacks (if you hold a horizontal and do a regular air combo or air up attack you will have momentum added to you, Air Down being the easiest to setup bc of the nature of it)
Dashing
Dashing is the important one here, as we can get what I call a **Weird Slide** off of it. Weird slide exists in other contexts as being unfavorable to normal sliding, but here its extremely useful as it lets us **switch directions mid air, something not normally possible with sliding without ending the slide state**.
To obtain Weird Slide:
Obtain Stomp Landing Storage, Line yourself up with a slope in mid air, dash towards the slope and right after hold away from the slope. This causes the dash to brake, but we want that brake animation as it gives us weird slide. Jump right after (AND HOLD JUMP FOR MAX VELOCITY), and you'll be ascending. make sure you never go neutral in your horizontal inputs during this state, or you'll lose it. Holding two horizontal keys will count as neutral so avoid that as well.  


Nombre	Autor
CONTROLS: How I setup my controls.	ScornedLily 1 year ago
Difficulties And You: What Is Different?	ScornedLily 3 months ago
Fungal Mines Elevator Skip (Skips 2nd lever, Elevator Fight)	ScornedLily 1 year ago
LOAD DASH: VERY IMPORTANT OPTIMIZATION	ScornedLily 1 year ago
Stomp Landing Storage, and How To Go To Space (aka Vernal Space Program)	ScornedLily 1 year ago