The reasoning beyond that is all viewable in the category discussion thread from like the week the game came out.

The general consensus was that since true Any% involved no escape rooms (unlike any% from all the other zero escape games) and was literally just waiting for cutscenes to go by with the occasional password fill-in it was rather silly to have that be the "main" run since improvements literally consisted of having a beefier computer or filling in text boxes marginally faster and made for an incredibly boring, shallow run. And I say this as someone who ran that run just for the heck of it.

That route only has the most runs because it's really just that easy of a run. There wasn't a large incentive to argue intensively about the run layouts because no one runs this game in the first place.

Can also confirm the SkyRoll works at Syria on Xbox. This glitch seems to work with all ledges that have checkpoints mounted to them and is platform inclusive.

Trying to find a practical use for the Syria SkyRoll but since you're unable to jump, A-X pump, or use your bow after performing the trick (since you don't have it) I have a hard time believing a practical timesave will be found that saves time over just doing it normally for Syria.

Most of the people who ran this game the first month or two know about this I think. I've messed around with it a decent amount a while back and it's a fun trick to show a friend or something but it's not speedrun friendly. It teleports you insanely fast semi-randomly to the other side of the map and about half the time you are in a position where it's near impossible to get out without dying it seems. If you had perfect RNG and luck and it fit in a speedrun route then maybe but otherwise I don't think it's much else then a really neat trick unless some way of making it safter & more consistent is found. Thanks for sharing regardless! :)

Holy Shit! It's actually legit!!

Can confirm 110% this works on Xbox One Console. I'm astounded this hasn't been found until now.

It's not even that difficult of a trick and it blows open the mountain peak entirely within the first minute of character control. This is a serious find.

Would upload video but video recorder isn't setup so I just took some pics from my phone but I was messing around with this for a half hour.

http://imgur.com/gNlahDw http://imgur.com/0aBKJ2F http://imgur.com/YWB2bnC http://imgur.com/xyqCt97 http://imgur.com/B1oBeax

Considering there isn't one glitch/trick that Xbox One can do that PC seemingly can't do the same if not better I feel pretty assured this is completely doable on PC as well.

Here are my findings:

To do this

1. Start game as normal
2. Once you hit the slippery slope grab onto the ledge and the game will autosave.
3. Reload checkpoint (it doesn't matter how fast or slow this is done just don't move from that ledge)
4. While reloading checkpoint screen is displayed spam the roll button to the left and preferably slightly down (like about 8 o'clock)
5. This has about a 15% success rate with me it seems reliant on what frame after loading back the roll button executes. If you fail it really is nearly inconsequential too. The full process of dying, reloading checkpoint, and trying again takes about 8 seconds on Xbox One maybe less.
6. If it works you will begin SkyRolling in midair to the left.

Once the gltich has successfully been performed from here you can literally SkyRoll in any direction semi-indefinitely provided its not an immediate death plane. If you stop rolling for any reason like say you jump out of the roll or just stand still you will promptly fall and DIE. YOU MUST NOT STOP ROLLING.

While SkyRolling you will gradually lose height and descend regardless of what you do meaning YOUR TIME SKYROLLING IS FINITE. This isn't easily perceptible in the video posted above but if you look closely you can see that Lara is indeed getting lower and lower as she rolls. If I had to take a guess it is due to the slight delay between rolls and during this brief pause before the next roll initiates the game lowers your height a bit. In a sense this somewhat reminds of the Metroid Prime "Aether" out of bounds glitches.

Back to implementation!

From here there is seemingly two ways to go

7a. Roll to the left 3 times and then A-X pump onto the rock formation shown @ 13 seconds. (You can roll twice and jump but doing 3 rolls seems more consistent to me)

or...

[ 7b? (NOT CURRENTLY POSSIBLE BUT POTENTIALLY PLAUSIBLE NECESSITATES EXPERIMENTATION) Ignore the rock formation. Find a way to SkyRoll onto a physical mountain side avoiding death planes by Sky-Rolling through the air such as @1:14 to scale the mountain. I tried this is a couple times and the areas near inbound sections are littered with insta-kill planes and by the time I've gone around the mountains I've lost too much height to scale anything. This seems plausible and perhaps there is a route for it but for now it seems far-fetched. ]

8. Climb to the top of this rock formation. You can jump back in bounds before Jonah on the inbounds snow path but doing so and trying to walk up will initiate the falling slippery slope grab the ledge cutscene again and will glitch the game out really bad. This is not desirable. At this point in time it seems you must make the somewhat challenging jump @23 seconds in. Falling short and succumbing to the slope will push you back to the ledge forcing a reload checkpoint...which is also not desirable. The best way to continue on is to do walk up the last walkable point of the rock formation then do a normal jump towards the top of the scalable rock and A-X pump on top of it as shown from @23-25 seconds.

9. Once you're at the second rock formation you are practically home free you just have to get to the top and jump back in bounds. There are some dangerous slippery slopes to the right side of the rock formation and towards the bottom (Not the scariest slippery slopes but enough to scare you pretty bad). The easiest way I saw to scale this rock was to A-X pump up the left side and wiggle a bit towards the top. You don't want to go to far left or right as both will lead to slippery slopes of demise but there is a decently sized middle area.

10. Once you're at the top of the 2nd rock formation jump back in bounds. Jonah should now be behind you on the path and not moving since he hasn't received the trigger to move up towards the ice wall to catch you. From here the sky is the limit

If you continue on through the cave with the flare and try to play the game as normal your new sense of freedom won't last long. Once you reach the point where the snow blows in your face at the end of the cave Jonah will be prompted to continue on to catch up to you as normal and the game will continue all the same it seems. So this is really isn't wanted. Doing this trick takes much longer then just scaling the ice wall after all.

The reason why this glitch is extremely valuable is because everywhere from @44-50 in the above video there are no invisible walls keeping you from going out of bounds. Nope nada...not a one. It appears the game developers didn't place IWs here since once Jonah catches you from the Ice wall (allowing you go through this section normally) you are inhibited from jumping, rolling, or practically doing anything besides walking forwards but this glitch avoids the trigger for this to happen. You can literally jump out of bounds anywhere! Even in the cave! From here you can climb the mountain or other things. There is no doubt that this could skip most of Mountain Peak provided the OOB trick linked up with the Skywalking route taken on PC that jumps back in at a later cutscene. From my time messing around out of bounds using this trick I didn't hit one death plane either it doesn't seem like there are many.

I'll do some more experimentation later and maybe make a video about it provided I have time. But I'm 100% this is going to start a new beginning route change for Console Glitched. Skywalking on PC will probably be faster for that system though unless better optimization (and consistency) for this Skyrolling is found which at this point in time is still entirely possible. Exciting stuff!

Edit: Also note! Since this is all new no one knows if this is exclusively possible to only this ledge or if this is possible with all ledges that have autosave binded to them. If the latter is true this game is even more broken then I originally thought and I already thought it was pretty broken lol

There wasn't much incentive. Game isn't very heavy in runners. Everyone on here just agreed upon standardizing the difficulty to Normal difficulty a while back.

1. I agree that no restrictions Any% shouldn't be the main category, I think having it far off to the side shows that it isn't a super serious category. Otherwise Option b from the pastebin works...whatever you guys decide. Any% (Codes) just made the most sense to me as I was writing all that up and I feel is the clearest way to do the categories that has the added benefit of avoiding comments like "This isn't true Any%" down the road.

2. I too agree with Indy. I just had concerns about the run being similar but since both other games have this category it should follow precedent.

3. I still feel like All Escapes would be nice even if it doesn't have a dedicate mode à la 999. The argument that it is artificial rings true but truth be told that is kinda true for a lot of these categories. I just find it weird that precedent for All Endings is being followed and not All Escapes since in my mind they somewhat go hand-in-hand but I've never ran 999 or VLR so I'll trust your guys judgment on this.

4. I think IEs in the state they currently reside are undeniably bad. I'm currently mixed on whether there is value in preserving them but if it had to be done doing it from a completed file seems the best way. Fragment jumping would be a legitimate concern though and a reason why going of completed save files isn't really optimal. I feel this wouldn't be an issue in the proposed All Escape Rooms however since its not a sequence of story and decisions rather than 13 defined rooms with clear starts and ends but I digress.

5. Agree 3DS shouldn't be separated from PC and would add clutter, I just wanted your guys thoughts since it wasn't mentioned.

Thanks for the responses

Edit @ below: Much cleaner now. Nice job.

But yea CQD:1 should probably go as you say, I also did a run of it and got like the exact same time as WR but never posted it. It's just kind of a funny gimmick category but that can be addressed later.

I'm going to jott down all my various thoughts on this (sorry for length) and I want to emphasize that I appreciate this being its own thread. Since the written public reasonings for these choices are rather small maybe this can serve as a bit more comphrehensive answer to onlookers for this game on why these choices make sense.

Before I begin I want to highlight that when I originally did my run I didn't title it simply Any% it was Any% CQD:End 2 which I feel is an important distinction. It was more so fulfilling my own curiosity about how fast the game could be beaten under optimal settings (i.e. PC) with the already known Force Quit Box codes, it was not a competitive run. I did it in literally within 4 hours from first try to a time I was satisfied with. I never really considered it an Any% run since the speedrunning scene for it was all but nonexistent and rules were consequently very up in the air. What I am saying is that if you guys choose to go with option B, which I would be seemingly on the 'losing' side of, it's fine by me. That said I still have a warrior in this fight I suppose and this all interests me so here are my thoughts:

1. [leaning strongly towards option B] Any% shouldn't require obtaining codes (Option a) or Any% should require legitimate obtainment of all Force Quit Box Codes (Option b)

From my own standpoint I feel like Any% should be the epitome of speedrunning, no restrictions, no arbitrary rules, and glitches welcome. It is the static standard that represents the absolute fastest a game can be ran without outside manipulation. That said, because the layout of this game is so alien even when comparing it to its predecessors to the fact that you can complete the game in under 11 minutes (both VLR and 999 with no restrictions takes more than 1h 50m each for comparison) with literally not playing a single escape room (the defining gameplay aspect of the entire series) this questioning is more than validated.

I feel that the question that needs to be poised is this: A speedrun SHOULD be the fastest a game can be ran, but is it even a speedrun when the entire run is literally no exaggeration (I'd know) 75% skipping cutscenes, 10% navigating the menus (includes inputting codes), 10% waiting for the 3 unskippable 10 second waiting sequences for the yellow buttons (meaning 30 seconds of the ~11 minute run is literally waiting), and 5% user inputted decision games?

I am leaning towards Option B for the simple fact that a speedrun should be the fastest a game can be ran WITH A CERTAIN DEGREE OF USER INPUT that legitimizes it as a speedrun. There is reason why people don't speedrun movies or say visual novels that are simply the occasional two choice option in dialogue there is no competitiveness, there is little enjoy to be had by both the runners and viewers (subjective I know but I feel this is plainfully clear when viewing Option A & Option B side to side), and there is little to no optimization that isn't just increasing computer specs.

I am still not fond of considering runs with the restriction that codes must be obtained as the Any% category since I feel that is somewhat disingenuous since it's not the fastest the game can be ran. I feel that the best compromise and option here is what the VLR as well as 999 speedrun.com page kinda did. It did not have Any% as the first tab designating that it wasn't the "go to" competitive run but was the true Any% nonetheless. I feel that similarly the first tab on the ZTD speedrun.com page could be "Any% Codes" and be the definitive as well as competitive ZTD run with regular Any% (No codes) off to the side. Otherwise if that is not okay option B is fine by me and still beats option A in my eyes.

2a. [Yes] Fast text (Skip text/cutscenes) should definitely be allowed for Any%.

I kinda view this as a no-brainer but nonetheless I'm really pleased this was put up for discussion for communal feedback so that the foundation of the rules are open. You don't have to beat the game to have access to this, its open at the beginning regardless if you have played through the game 0 times or 10 times so designating it as NG/NG+ seems silly. I don't see any justified reasoning for packing on what has to be more than an hour of cutscenes into a speedrun which only serves to make it artificially longer and more annoying to the runner. This in contribution with previous past precedence, as shown in the pastebin, makes this decision very clear for me.

2b. [Yes] Runners should indeed start from a New Game File

Don't have much to say this but I feel this makes things a lot cleaner. With all the branching stories and timelines I feel this simple change goes a long way to making runs easier to follow and have more well defined starts.

3. [Yes] Should the All Endings Category thing be a thing?

I see little legitimate reason to abandon the All Endings Category so for now I think it would be best to keep it. Although I do fear that it is just going to be Any% (codes) with a little bit more time and clicking and it may clash too much with that category. The justification that those cutscenes are fun and are good material that would otherwise not be viewed in either Any% classification is true but with the Skip Text Rule it's just going to be a blurb of flashing cutscenes all the same lol. Considering both 999 and VLR have these same categories, best stay with precedent.

4. [Get rid of them] What to do with the Individual Ending Runs?

These are just obsolete with the layout of this game honestly. It was a great category for like 999 where depending on your choices from the beginning to end you were a guaranteed a unique ending bar the Safe Ending and True ending if I call correctly. But there is a reason that none of them besides the CQD ones have literally never been done despite the game being out for more than a month. There is little incentive to doing them as well as there is just so much annoying fluff that is in all those categories that makes them eerily similar. For all of them except CQD1 you have to do the 'kill which team' decisions for all three teams at the beginning for each single one which takes forever even with skipping text. When this is added with the fact that certain endings will end right before being genuinely completed because you haven't done other things first makes these kind of annoying truth be told and considering the length of these you may as well do the genuine Any% with codes. Not the best arguments I guess but I just see little reason to have these with the layout of this game although it would do no harm to keep them I guess, it's just if kept most are going to remain empty from what I can tell and I don't see the purpose of keeping empty categories no one is interested in.

5. [Yea] Anything else?

I presume that the 3DS and PC versions are going to be mixed as they are now since there is no mention of this and they aren't separated, this is usually a big discussion in regard to tiering categories for multi-release games so I was just wondering what are your guys thoughts on this. I played VLR on 3DS obviously but besides Rebcart I think all runs have been PC for ZTD and there has been little if any pull for 3DS being tiered differently. I have no say I was just curious.

Also I think a good substitute in lieu of the individual endings that no one is doing is an "All Escapes" category exactly like 999 and VLR does which is mysteriously absent here. A category that is done from a completed save and you jump from room to room completing them via the completed timeline. I think this would be rather fun honestly, where you have to do all 13 escape rooms and the timer ends on the "You found it" completion animation of the 13th room.

So yea my optimal setup would be.

1. Any% (Codes) 2. All Escapes 3. Any% 4. All Endings

Here is a crude example I made in like a minute and a half using the 999 page as a base http://imgur.com/a/xbCb3

Hopefully this helps I was writing this post longer then I liked to admit lol also shoutout to Golden Sun

I don't mean to rush the mods to a decision but everyone seems pretty much aligned on this issue at this point.

Like literally everyone who comments on these RoTR forums or actively speedruns this game has commented at this point bar Ragleyy. Who has seemingly given up on Glitchless and moved to PC Any% so this decision doesn't even affect him now its solely just me. I am seemingly the last console Glitchless runner.

So yea this looks pretty finalized.

Also its going to be hilarious for the 1 day after the leaderboards are wiped were the record for Console Glitchless is 11 hours that guy is going to be so happy.

I deleted and retract my previous comment in favor of Adventurer

Just make it Tomb Raider difficulty across the board.

Truljin just got I believe 1:58:34 or something for PC Any% on TR Difficulty, the Console Any% runs are all ran on that TR difficulty, and even the PC Glitchless guys run it on TR difficulty. Console glitchless appears to be the only category not currently following this unspoken rule which isn't fair so just make it TR difficulty.

It will invalidate almost all of the runs but it seems the most logical conclusion here. I'll adjust. If there was a more balanced discussion and more runners here who were on the fence or arguing for the easier difficulty that would be one thing but it seems console Glitchless is literally the only odd man out in this situation and there aren't many runners for this category to begin with.

And now that I've thought about it some more, if the Glitched guys are dead set on staying with Tomb Raider I am not ethically a fan of glitchless being an easier difficulty than their respected glitched runs. The whole point should be that if you take the exact same game with the same conditions and you run it with or without glitches seeing the speedrun records for each category should essentially give you an idea of the time difference glitches has on time but by introducing changes in difficulty we are adding other influencing variables.

The deathless fights at the end will be a more of a pain and the run will be longer, but we gain consistency with other run layouts, the past game, and remove auto aim :/.

Sorry for my indecisiveness.

Votes as put forward by BrassMaster Console glitched - Tomb Raider Console Glitchless - Tomb Raider PC Glitched - Tomb Raider PC Glitchless - Tomb Raider

Thank you for convincing me I am not crazy.

Yea so the approaching storm section is much more sensitive you have to either go around a different way to avoid both of them or silently take out both guys in the aforementioned sections or you are guaranteed to be spotted. Also Soviet Gulag is 100% changed as well the guy who walks down the road towards you spots you much easier. You can still take the same route but you have to be really fast and roll a bit to avoid getting the yellow indicator for suspicion.

As far the definitive Skill management for glitchless this what I believe it to be

1st Campsite Stop-Lightfoot http://imgur.com/y6gOOPD At your 1st visit to a campsite in the Siberian Wilderness where they give you the tutorial for upgrading the bow get lightfoot as soon as possible. Lightfoot is essential for moving as fast as possible.

2nd Campsite Visit-Thick Skinned http://imgur.com/1jHazFA I believe its the 4th or 5th campsite but the one above the cliffside that leads to the soviet installation get thick skinned here it helps ensure that when running through the upcoming section you won't die and the game forces you into this particular campsite anyways after the cutscene with the red headed archer.

3rd Campsite Visit-Iron Hide & Ammo Retrieval http://imgur.com/Y6QJyzl The campsite after getting the assault rifle but before going through the metal gate into the combat section grab these. Ammo retrieval is more important as being low on ammo during combat sections can put the player in a really bad situation. Iron Hide is nice for the section at the end of the copper mill with the burning building, random molotovs, and the fight with the flamethrower guy.

4th Campsite Visit-Dodge Counter, Efficient Killer, Breath Control, Rapid Crafting. Field Medic, Demolitions Expert, Naturalist/Survivalist/Dead Eye/DragonFire Shells http://imgur.com/UDVEOfY The final campsite visit is the one before the flooded archives fights before you get the Atlas and spends 7 skill points. At this point 4 more skills are needed to unlock tier 2 so most of these are just chosen to unlock tier 2. The final tier 1 skills Efficient Killer, Breath Control, and Dodge counter generally aren't that useful but they are better unlocks than useless XP bonuses. Rapid crafting is actually kinda useful though with molotovs. After this 8 points have been spent in Tier 1 so Tier 2 unlocks. Field medic is a must for speeding up bandaging and preventing deaths, Demolitions Expert is a must for increasing the radius of molotovs which is extremely valuable for the flooded archives. The last one doesn't matter much and mostly preference. Naturalist gives double healing herbs, Survivalist gives double of the ores needed to craft explosive arrows, Dead Eye can be somewhat useful for aiming for headshots, and dragon fire shells are kinda nice late game for shredding through deathless armor.

When you get to the gates of kitezh you actually have another like 5 skill points you can spend but they are generally not worth spending, you won't unlock tier 3 and the rest of the tier 2 skills are pretty useless.

Wow yea I will definitely give that a try thanks. Considering that also cuts out the box jump it seems much more consistent. I'd be interested in hearing about some of the differences on PC and maybe some of the RNG you are talking about. Here on console every npc and enemy AI follows pretty much the exact same route every single time you load an area with no changes. The only major RNG sections are combat but even then spawns are always the same etc.

Oh and congrats on the PC world record :D

Don't really have that much of a say in all this but whatever conclusion regarding the run layouts and respective difficulties needs to be set in stone at this point, we are approaching a point of no return with the multi-platform release where making severe changes to layouts is going to be really difficult and likely have major push-back so this needs to be decided.

Honestly I am pretty mixed on all this but I want to talk about difficulties a little bit. Originally I was leaning towards Adventurer being the standard because a speedrun should be the fastest a game can be performed and the difficulty should reflect that. However, now I am pretty much 40/60 slightly leaning in favor of the default being"Tomb Raider" difficulty.

The way I judge it is as far as benefits go is that: Adventurer: -Is the easiest and fastest difficulty setting for a run and thus is indicative of speedrunning (really can't be overstated enough honestly) -Would not reset the leaderboards (also pretty big, although considering the little amount of dedicated runners this isn't detrimental considering most would have records posted again within a week)

Tomb Raider: -Increases the skill gap a bit (opens further room for optimization) -Removes the god awful aim assist on adventurer difficulty (The amount of times I've randomly locked onto rats and birds is ridiculous, also increases skill gap slightly) -Follows the precedent of 2013 Tomb Raider where Normal difficulty was the standard (considering this is the direct sequel it makes sense it would follow suit)

What I really don't understand however, and this is coming from someone who played through Tomb Raider 2013 but never ran it, is why was the default not set to normal from the start for this game considering it was already that way for the last? If it was initially defaulted to 'Tomb Raider' and people argued that Any% should allow "Adventurer" all the previous records would still work. This whole debacle could have been so easily avoided if it had just followed the precedent of the last game.

Glitched and Glitchless should have always been separate categories (Thanks for splitting those up). Different platforms should be judged differently since there is already a ton of evidence of it affecting times I don't know the best way of organizing that though. Timing should remain from hitting the button to start new game to the double doors at the end that is fine as is.

If there is enough people running or whatever we can discuss the validity of other runs such as 100% or whatever but the difficulty thing needs to be finalized first.

So I am not 100% certain (maybe someone can back me up) but I am fairly sure some areas of the game have been tweaked regarding enemy AI/Range to make it harder to just run past.

Not the best example but it showcases it a bit.

This area used to be pretty simple you could just run along the right side and silently take down the guy in the destroyed house and the guy walking towards you in the middle of the road would never see you unless you were horribly slow getting there. But now he seems to detect you almost everytime and the area seems several times harder now. Notice how in the 2nd clip despite him being way farther away to me and I take him out behind cover (kinda) I am detected despite the opposite being the case in the 1st clip where no one even was suspicious.

I've repeated this like 25 times today because I don't remember there being a patch or update but it definitely seems harder. I am having a similar experience at the soviet gulag, people who never used to give me issues now seem to detect me consistently.

Oh and this speaking on my experience on Xbox One btw so idk about other platforms

Since non-glitched runs don't really have a resource at the moment I thought I would go ahead and start one. :)

This can serve as a general resource for this run layout and for general questions if people have them. This also isn't platform specific (most platform specific time saves are in the glitched department anyways so it doesn't really matter)

So if you have any: -Time saving strategies -Questions about certain parts of the non-glitched runs -Issues with certain areas -Questions about skills management -Etc This is a good place to ask.

That said questions like best way to record and more technical stuff such as that should really be brought up elsewhere.

I think a good way to start would be listing off some basic FAQ/Facts about the game. If you have any other things you think should be listed here I can add them. But here are some basic stuff to know:

Jumping and rolling (requires lightfoot) is the fastest way to move, especially traversing snow or up slopes. Jumping and scrambling (without lightfoot) is slower and seems about the same speed as running except it is still faster on snow and up slopes. The pistol is the worst weapon of the four you receive. The assault rifle and shotgun are the fastest and most reliably ways to kill sections of enemies and the bow still retains use for ranged stealth kills. The pistol has bad damage output non-upgraded and takes forever to rechamber rounds, outside of some particular areas or sections where you are low on ammo avoid using it. Fire arrows are next to worthless. Poison arrows and blast arrows are very potent however and managing their ammo throughout the run can lead to some big time saves. Expedition mode is a great tool for practicing sections, seriously definitely use it. Just be mindful that you may not have the same resources or skills in that area you would normally have playing through a run. The only incentive for playing non-adventurer level difficulty is not having aim assist which isn't enough to sacrifice easier combat sections and easier times skipping some areas. Jumping and regrabbing onto climbable walls with the pickaxe is much faster than regular climbing. It should be avoided during curved sections of climbable walld since it is really easy to fly off but for vertical or horizontal flat sections it saves a lot of time. Doesn't have a dedicated name but I normally call it cliff hopping.

There are not many runners of this game but I expect that will change a bit now that the game has had a multi-platform release. Hope this helps.