Found by: "Retro" The Binary Stork

This strat has been worked on for a majority of this year as I was wanting to find the best spots to use an already commonly known strat known as pause stunning where you open your map and when you close it as an enemy is chasing you, enemies will freeze in place for a moment and then resume their chase command.

However, in doing this I had unintentionally discovered a full fledged strat that I have put together with maps and will eventually be making a stream displaying this strat in action on a model 1 unmodified USA Dreamcast with my USA copy of Illbleed.

Please note that this strat will only work on the following: Enemies that chase you triggering an encounter.

This applies to:

Banballow Worms Woodcutters and Mary

So in other words this strat can be used in the following levels:

Home Run of Death Revenge of The Queen Worm Woodpuppets Killer Department Store

Here are the maps. Pause areas are marked in yellow and were made August 25th 2022 so please note these are out of date with addendum notes that I will be adding.

Home Run of Death

Additional despawn found unintentionally by streamer if you want to see this in action:

Revenge of the Queen Worm

Addendum: Got a consistent place to do it. The hassy girl sign. Open the map on the first quarter lined up with the first white pole it stands with

November 17th 2022 updates: There are 4 new despawn areas I've found.

Location one: past the open area where you can find the escape ladder. On the sidewalk, pause on the right hand side past the lights beside the tree almost immediately after (note this is inconsistent) it should deapawn the worm coming up on the dirt coming up if done correctly.

Area 2: past that worm and the car, turning right, pausing at the first tree to the right will despawn the worm that normally spawns to the left hand side when you run into the zone/area.

Area 3: taking the left that normally has the worm, avoiding the worm that comes around past it, when going up, pause in the middle of the space between the two sets of lampposts, specifically at the bushes as a visual guide. The worm that spawns fo the left of the sign should not spawn if done correctly

Woodpuppets

NOTE: THESE ARE MORE DIFFICULT TO PULL OFF. THEY REQUIRE SPECIFIC MOVEMENTS SOMETIMES TO GET RIGHT. FIND WHAT WORKS FOR YOU

Killer Department Store

Note: The area that I circled will at the very least keep Marie in a small more manageable area, but not despawn her. It will just make it easier to get around her and to manage the section of the maze

To conclude, please note there are definitely more despawn areas for this game. And these are just the ones I have been able to find in my practice runs, and this will certainly become a larger list of points to find in the future.

However, it is within my professional opinion as a top runner that we should not ban this strat but perhaps make a different category for this strat being used. As this removes a large portion of difficulty removing an enemy spawning around you outright, saving not just seconds but minutes of time if executed correctly. This has allowed me to accomplish the Home Run of Death without Banballow appearing on my screen with many despawns and precise movements to ensure that no issue happens with a bad encounter.

This removes woodcutters chasing you outright if done correctly in all of the map aside from the small corridor near the goal and makes the Mary Maze less a pain to handle.

THIS. STRAT. IS. BROKEN.

Discord: https://discord.gg/y9qde24fjv

further explanation for how this works (potentially)

According to my friend and discord admin Souzooka. Apparently there is only one monster piece that chases you throughout levels that have a chase command sequence and there are small triggers that just simply moves the piece to a specific area to chase you. Hence why when you're running through a level you never see more than one monster chase you at a time, and if you have an enemy chasing you nearby and you hit another load trigger, another enemy doesn't pop up going after you. Likely for balance purposes too.

Enemies that chase have a small command checkbox that is usually on obviously to chase the player piece. But when you open the map or the pause menu, the guess is, yes I said guess. Is that enemies have that box unchecked for a second or so allowing the player some breathing room before the monster starts to chase again.

My guess is that for a trigger to be viable and active you need to hit the trigger zone and have the chase box checked out for an enemy to spawn in the regular location. But seeing as the pause stuns the enemy turning off the box for a brief moment, a spawn just doesn't happen. Though that's just a theory based on the limited understanding that we have on the game thus far.