Hi, is there a reason why Gundyr / Vordt / Alrdich / Yhorm / Cinder are not dropped into the void?

These void drops seem to me the most promising timesaves imaginable at the moment.

Congratulations to Finland for the new any% WR!

Can you clarify what dropping into the void means, and possibly provide video examples? That sounds like an interesting strat. Otoh, if the setup is complicated it might not be a timesave after all -- most bossfights are actually pretty fast, measured in tens of seconds.

You are correct that a fast setup for a void drop may not be possible for some of the bosses. But time is also wasted on upgrading the weapon. Weapon upgrade is not needed when we drop the bosses into the void, potentially saving tens of seconds. This is why Cinder void drop would be the biggest timesave.

By void drop I mean dropping the boss into the void instead of using a weapon to kill it. I've seen it happen on Gundyr once when the boss clipped into the rocks and passed through the floor and died. I am not a good player so I can't find a consistent setup for it.

I can't search for video examples because the search function is made useless by enshittification. When I search for dark souls void drops all I get is drake sells eyedrops. No, wait, found two examples.

Looks pretty slow and inconsistent to me, I'm sure people have looked into this before and decided it wasn't worth it as bosses at a high level are fast enough and there really isn't much time lost gathering upgrade materials in the fastest routes.

Yes, the current route is already very good, so improvements are hard to find.

Please correct me if my estimates are wrong:

Counting from the moment when Gundyr starts to move (because this is what counts for the void drop), killing Gundyr takes about 19 seconds. In the best case scenario there could be a fast void drop setup where Gundyr dies in 10 seconds, saving about 9 seconds. If we assume 1% success rate this means we should grind for nearly 2 hours to get a run going. In reality it will probably be harder than this and the timesave will be less than 9 seconds.

Assuming similar ideal void drop setup for Vordt: Total fight time about 24 seconds. With a 10-second void drop we could save 14 seconds. With 1% success rate this means we would need to grind 10000 attempts to get past both Gundyr and Vordt and be ahead by a total of 23 seconds. This also assumes that everything else goes as well as the current any% WR.

I have never seen a Vordt void drop, but that does not mean anything because pretty much everything that the expert speedrunners do is stuff that I have never seen.

Anri void drop should be possible but then you can't pick up Anri's sword.

Aldrich behavior is special, so I don't know if this boss can drop into the void even in ideal conditions?

A fast Yhorm void drop is unlikely because the boss moves slowly. Even in my wildest dream scenario I can't see Yhorm falling to his death fast enough.

With the current route the Watchers fight is so short that even a very fast void drop is unlikely to save time.

Cinder kill takes about 57 seconds. Even a slow void drop could save tens of seconds. Lets assume we can do a void drop in 30 seconds with 1% success rate, so we save about 27 seconds. Together with the previous void drops (Gundyr and Vordt) this would mean grinding for about a million attempts, and the WR would be improved by a total of 50 seconds. Maybe a weapon upgrade could be skipped to save a few seconds more?

This is the hypothetical best case scenario based on my limited understanding of the game.