Hello,

I found two new tricks that might save some time at least on TAS.

1. Clipping You can levitate with the 3rd level wizard through some sharp corners and go inside blocks/walls. I haven't tested yet, but it might also be possible to clip with other classes with very precise jumps. Some people probably were aware of this clip, and I know the TAS runners are aware of some form of clipping, and I think it's this one. They did not find any time saving use for the clip.

However I also found a clip that could be used to skip the knights guild completely. The knight suit is needed to kill the flashing head on the undergrounds, but I found out that you can actually clip through the wall that is next to the wizards guild. The clip is extremely RNG, and might not be viable for non-TAS at all, but TAS should see a notable time improvement.

The clip is done by getting yourself stuck between the wall and one of those flying green head monsters. I think the monsters are not supposed to spawn on this area before passing the flashing head, but if you hug the wall next to the wizards guild they will spawn. I'm still not sure what exactly has to happen that the clip succeeds but jumping seems to raise the odds. Also it looks like the monster needs to attack you from a slight angle below you so you get pushed slightly upwards.

2. Malkil glitch I found a tiny improvement to the Malkil glitch. I played around with a debugger, but this was a long time ago so I can't remember the exact technical details.

Basicly the game keeps track of your projectiles x and y coordinates. There are four (or whatever is the max projectile count) entries. The first entry is the important one, which is the first projectile you fire when there are no projectiles on screen. When the projectile gets destroyed, the game remembers the last x and y values for the projectile, and to activate the Malkil glitch I believe the first projectile's y value needs to be in a certain range.

What this means is that you can actually fire the upwards shot after the dragon fight, which avoids the need to switch to lvl1 wizard in the Malkil fight. Firing the projectile somewhere else might not work as the y value might not land on the needed range, but firing the projectile somewhere else than after the dragon fight would negate the time improvement anyway, so it doesn't matter.

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Also probably not really any new information for the current runners, but lots of people have been asking about the beehive skip. They are usually told that you need to go far enough to the right before jumping to the upper roof (on the building southeast from the beehive), but this is not enough on it's own. You also need to do the jump to the roof very precisely, meaning that you cannot go "over" the roof at all. You have to release the jump key at the earliest point possible, and if you timed it right, the beehive despawns for whatever reason (probably it's got something to do with the camera positioning).

I'll keep you guys posted if I find any new details.

good finds, I've managed to mess around with clipping into walls with the 3rd wizard about a year ago, but couldn't really find any real use.

my question I have is when do you fire the shot after you defeat the dragon? is it after you land on the ground? or on a specific pixel like in the malkil fight.

also If I do this shot after the dragon, do I need to still go to the correct pixel at the malkil fight before i levitate, or can I just levitate immediately once the battle starts?

The Malkil glitch is kinda weird. It seems like it uses the second projectile's y value, but it can also use the first one if you have a projectile (fired by Kuros) on screen during the levitation. But we want to save time so we have to fire two projectiles after the dragon fight. The second projectile has to be fired before the first one disappears to modify the right value.

There is a 80 out of 256 pixel window (wrapping at 256 to 0) where the projectile needs to land in vertical direction. If you have a debugger then watch for the value $33E. It needs to be more or equal than 0x00 and less or equal than 0x4F. The projectiles can be fired from the platforms immediately after the dragon dies, but this is really hard to eyeball as the platforms are constantly moving. Easiest way is to fire from the platform on the ground where the gem drops. B+Up, B+Backward and B+Forward+Up shots should all work. You can also fire the projectiles from the platform on the right of the gem, but here only B+Up and B+Forward+Up works.

The levitation needs to be done at the same spot as previously. The only difference in the actual Malkil fight is that you don't have to switch to lvl1 wizard and fire the projectile before levitating.

Great job! Too bad the clip is too random too be able to perform consistently.

Also, concerning the projectiles for the Malkil glitch, you should shoot three of them and make sure they were all on-screen at the same time. This will make the fight itself much easier as it will allow you to move to the target position while levitating. It is still a good idea to move near the target position though, as moving while levitating can really glitch the game. It is also possible to revive Malkil! I don't know why you would want to but you could.

We need to find a consistent way to force the silver and gold thief bosses to lean back. Being able to do those fights without getting damaged would save a bunch of time.

I've done some work on the criteria to get the bosses to lean back. My detailed findings are in the game's thread on the TASVideos forum. In short, the hitbox for your sword has to overlap the hitbox for the boss's weapon, but the boss has to be in a resting state. I don't think it's possible to avoid taking damage because of that resting state component. I can't guarantee that I've found all of the code that leads to a leaning back state, but using the above criteria works consistently.

So I've managed to do the clip in the dungeon with the floating green enemies in order to skip the bronze knight completely a couple of times while messing around, but there doesn't really seem to be a consistant way of making them spawn (let alone in the correct place).

Also on the topic of skips...It appears that our newest runner "theLimitBreak" came across a despawn glitch 5 months ago for the flashing guard in front of the gold/silver thieves guilds. Based on other videos it seems that it was the only time it's happened for him, and I've tried replicating the movement/pathing as well, but haven't been able to produce the same result.

it seems like it would save time despite the slight extra pathing it uses. If anybody smarter than I can figure anything more out about how to make it viable that would be really cool.

Here's the video...

start watching at 0:40 seconds in.

I've also noticed that the TAS is losing a few seconds at the miniboss guarding the silver thieves statue. (and also the one guarding the gold thieves statue)

The TAS is having the enemy jump across to the left, then back to the right before they start doing the bulk of the damage. Those first two jumps by the boss are completely unnecessary. Just go all the way to the right of the room, let the boss land, then start attacking him to the left (like the TAS eventually starts to do)

The green enemies spawn on a timer as long as your distance from the spawn point is within 64 pixels. The spawn location is based some combination of RNG values, the camera's position (upper left corner of the screen), and Kuros's position. I wrote up a detailed explanation on the TASVideos forum. I've always thought of them as clouds with faces, so that's what I call them.

I was able to replicate and record theLimitBreak's skip on an emulator, so now there's an input file for analysis. It's also available at TASVideos (I'm not trying to advertise the site; it's just where I put my findings).

The latest TAS WIP improves the thief statue miniboss fight using the strategy you describe. Thanks to Ferret Warlord, the next one will probably eliminate all of its long jumps by taking damage to get around it when it's at the left side of the screen. The idea is to walk into the miniboss rather than attacking it and making it jump to the right side. It will do a shorter jump to get closer to Kuros, and you can use that time to go under it so that it's now on Kuros's right side. Then resume attacking. Time savings will come from the shorter jump. This hasn't been recorded yet, but it seems faster based on unassisted playing.

After disassembling most of the code that spawns enemies, I've figured out theLimitBreak's glitch. Three memory spots are allotted for enemy information in the Town of Piedup. The two dogs that you see at 0:55 and the guy in black at 0:58 in his video take up all of the memory, so the guard never actually spawns when it should. All you have to do is get and keep those three enemies in memory (not necessarily on screen, but not too far off) when the guard should spawn, and they will prevent it from spawning. This is pretty simple to do using the path in his video.

There is one caveat. If you kill any enemy in the outside portion of the town, that second dog from the video dies permanently. This happens regardless of whether you kill the enemy by attacking it or by pushing it off a ledge. It seems like every other enemy respawns except for the beehive, the guild guard, and that second dog.

EDIT: After replacing the current TAS input with a quick and unoptimized implementation of this glitch, it looks like it saves at least 31 frames over using a damage boost to get past the guardian.

Nice work!

took me forever to realize why I couldn't get the despawn to work, until I realized I kept killing the beehive after my first passing not really considering it as an enemy haha. Once I realized that the despawn worked 100% of the time after around 70-90 quick attempts at replicating it.

So I've been curious about a potential route change, and was wondering if this is something that the TAS had ever tested, but would it be faster or slower to let's say after getting the silver thief statue you go up and get the bronze knight/jewel, and then drop down to the silver thief like you would in a typical play through?

it would obviously involve buying a few more keys after getting the bronze thief but that takes extremely minimal time. and a slight route change in the upper palace as you can't use the window to get outside, so you would just use the big central door instead.

Since you have to jump off of the tower after getting the jewel anyways, instead of falling through the transition, you drop to the door and go to the silver thief. it seems like it would be about the same time to go in the door to drop down and get to the silver thief as it would just damage boosting/despawning the flashing guard.

Would it be faster to get the palace section done as quick as possible despite not having the gold thief so that you can go straight to the dungeons after getting the gold thief for a more linear pathing? I.E working from top to bottom rather than the typical middle>top>bottom Or is getting the gold thief before the palace just too much of a time advantage?

Sorry if I made hell of all sense, but it's something I've thought about for at the very least a year now. And doesn't seem like it would be something too terribly difficult to figure out.

I think it would be slower. The bronze thief moves at a max horizontal speed of 2.25 pixels per frame, whereas the gold thief has a max horizontal speed of 3 pixels per frame. This means that you lose slightly over 28 frames for each screen (256 pixels) that you're moving horizontally with the bronze thief instead of the gold. Horizontal speed while jumping is only 75% of what it would be while moving on the ground, so you lose even more time if you're jumping horizontally without ascending.

The largest time loss would probably occur as you get the knight statue and then go to the guild. There are about 847 pixels between the door of the guild and the statue room, so you lose about 1.5 seconds just traveling between those two points. You won't always be moving at maximum speed, of course, and much of the movement in the palace is vertical, but I think you'll end up losing a few seconds over the entire area with the bronze thief versus the gold. The knight costumes are worse, since their maximum horizontal speed is only 2 pixels per frame. The difficult thing is estimating how much time might be saved with the route change in other places.

By the way, you can use the next higher window to get outside the palace even without a thief costume. The vertical distance is the same both inside and outside between the two windows.

Also, I've done further analysis of the attack pattern of the bronze thief boss. There's actually no randomness involved once you get within 45 pixels of it. Its behavior is determined upon Kuros's state when the counter for its resting state reaches 0. First, it checks if Kuros is attacking. If not, it checks if he's crouching. If not, it will do the forward stab that I believe can't miss at that distance. If crouching, it will do the downward stab that will miss unless you're too close. If you're attacking, it will do either a forward stab, downward stab, or lean back based on what other buttons are pressed. It leans back if you're pressing forward or up + foward. It does a downward stab if you're pressing down or down + forward. It does a forward stab otherwise. When you let go of down or B, Kuros temporarily moves into a state that may cause the boss to do the forward stab that will hit you. You can prevent it from attacking at all by alternating between attacking forward and up + forward.

You want to be as close as possible to the boss when defeating it so that you don't waste time walking over to pick up the statue; this applies to all of the bosses. With optimal positioning, the forward/up + forward attack method is only 6 frames slower than the crouch attacks that all of the runs have used to date. Getting hit costs you about 80 frames each time before you regain control of Kuros, however. I can make some videos to explain this stuff, if you guys want.

I figured it probably would've been slower but figured I would bring it up though.

I am intrigued by your findings with the bronze thief boss, in particular when he leans back when you press forward or up/forward. My question now is although the silver and gold thieves have different attack patterns than the bronze thief, they do have the lean back mechanic. Is pressing the right buttons to make the bronze thief lean back consistent every time you perform it, and do the silver and gold thieves lean back under the same circumstances? If they do, would it make pure stun-lock kills a thing? And if so, would it make the fights faster?

And I'd be down for some knowledgeable videos for a game I really enjoy. it's great how many things are being found lately for this game. from learning that you can shoot fireballs after the dragon rather than in the throne room, to an accidental despawn find for the flashing guard, to even a trick (granted TAS only) to bypass the flashing dungeon mob.

A few other things I've just thought about as well, and then I'll actually get some sleep....

1. Is the archer that comes out of the window of the tower (the one you then use as a platform) random? or are there ways to make him show up consistently by positioning yourself on certain pixels?

2. What is the hitbox for the crowbar? because fighting the guardian before the gold thief statue seems inconsistent. which usually results in taking more hits and losing time.

Getting the bronze thief boss to lean back is very easy once you get the positioning down. This is because it returns to the resting state after any other state, such as leaning back or attacking. So you can get it to keep alternating between the resting and the leaning back states.

The silver and gold thief bosses don't do that. They have a fixed attack pattern that loops from the time they spawn until either you defeat them or they defeat you. The values below indicate how many frames each state lasts. First, they do this sequence twice, moving toward the left side of the room during the second time:

08, rest 16, stab forward 16, stab downward 16, stab forward 16, stab downward 16, stab forward 16, stab downward 16, stab forward 16, stab downward

Then they do this sequence twice while near the left side of the room:

04, rest 08, lean back 04, rest 24, stab forward

Then they do this sequence once while moving back to the right side of the room:

04, rest 08, lean back 16, stab downward 16, stab forward 16, stab downward 60, rest 16, rest

They can be forced to lean back during the resting states, but you can see that the timing is very tight. Furthermore, all of these criteria have to be met during the resting state for them to lean back:

Kuros_left < Enemy_right Kuros_right >= Enemy_left Kuros_top < Enemy_bottom Kuros_bottom >= Enemy_top

Kuros_left and so forth refer to the edges of the hitbox for Kuros's weapon. Enemy_right and so forth refer to the edges of the hitbox for the boss's weapon. Values increase from left to right and from top to bottom across the screen. If you do get them to lean back, they do that for 80 frames, then go into the next state in the sequence.

The crowbar's hitbox is weird. For the forward and crouching attacks, it is only one pixel tall and one pixel wide. That one pixel is located at the hilt where Kuros grips it. The hitbox for the other standing attacks, such as up + forward, is more consistent with the actual crowbar graphic.

Here's a tutorial video about how to defeat the bronze thief boss by making it lean back:

pretty easy to pull off it seems, did a few quick tries at it and didn't have any issues

I've looked into the archer spawn, and it does appear to be based on the RNG rather than positioning.

It turns out that the bronze knight boss has a fixed attack pattern. First, it does 82 frames of stab up. Then it loops the following:

rest stab up stab down far (the tip of the sword is far away from the boss) stab up stab down far stab down far stab down far stab up rest stab down far stab down far stab up stab down far stab down near (the tip of the sword is near to the boss) stab down far stab down far rest stab up stab down far stab down near stab down near stab down near rest stab up stab down far stab down near stab down far stab up stab down far stab up

Each rest lasts for 128 frames. The duration of the other states decreases as its health decreases, starting at 82 frames when it has 8 HP and ending at 8 frames when it has 1 HP.

It's possible to position yourself so that the staff never hits you during the wizard boss fights, so the only potential damage comes from projectiles. I'll list their attack patterns here for completeness, though. The bronze wizard does this loop:

staff up x4 staff down staff middle staff down x2 rest

Each staff state lasts for 16 frames. The resting state lasts for 32-62 frames, which depends on the RNG. When it's taking damage and the invincibility counter reaches the value 8, it skips to the staff middle state and continues from there.

The silver and gold wizards do this:

08, rest

16, staff down 12, staff middle

14, staff up 16, staff down 22, staff up 12, staff down 26, staff middle

08, rest

16, staff down 12, staff middle

56, rest

Each group of staff states is done three times. In the staff up state, any of the three bosses can randomly spawn that green (fish? flame?) thing. In the staff middle state, the gold boss will spawn those little white balls every time the frame counter at RAM address $0010 reaches a multiple of 16, as long as there is room in RAM to do so.