I would be on board with this. 25 separate chapters means 25 separate categories to compete in.

Will have to see what the Mod says.

Discovered on Transcended difficulty.

This glitch is repeatable and also accidentally discovered. Found that my health was randomly healing throughout the run. Finally figured out why by the end.

As far as I can tell. The way this works is due to a strange behaviour of Rapture since the last update. At the end of the finishing move animation, there are a few frames where you're still in the Rapture state. You can prove this by mashing attack fast enough and seeing a rapture attack being performed despite no longer "being" in Rapture.

If you trigger Saber pretty much as soon as you regain control after the animation, Rapture's Tier 3 passive healing is now permanent. It persists throughout the rest of the chapter. And even stacks with the passive healing of another rapture use. (2x the effect for every time you use Rapture for the rest of the chapter)

This is pretty much the perfect glitch to discover on Transcended difficulty. Because it certainly kept me alive.

As for allowing this in future runs. I guess we'll have to. It's a glitch that is tied to a core mechanic of combat. Accidentally triggering it is apparently rather simple. Because that's how I found it.

Finally got the game stable enough for a full run. Still stutters like a slide show in the heavier scenes but no crashes. Uploading a new PB now.

Looks like the game is very unstable after the new update.

Had several crashes in chapters 1, 3, 7 and now 14

9 crashes today. Tried everything to fix them. This last one ruined a potential sub 4H run

I've reinstalled the game Disabled all overclocks on my CPU and GPU Uninstalled and reinstalled GPU drivers Verified the integrity of the game files Run every conceivable test on my SSD for sanity

And the game still crashes.

Yeah. Just read through them myself.

The ones that seam most important are

Increased I-Frames - seems interesting. Improved attack cancelling Air attacks have increased mobility The option to tweak camera distance and FOV - A godsend for certain encounters. No more having your attack bounce off a possessed enemy when attacking a wraith... THANKYOU Reduced damage from certain attacks on Colossus A change to a combat encounter in mission 17 - Gonna have to investigate that The option to auto advance dialogue - could be helpful so long as it's not slower than mashing the button yourself

Less helpful ones

Piercing lunge prioritizes locked on enemies first - It's not a great DPS attack but it does move you quite far on activation. Could be useful for times saves in some encounters. Enemy lock on will now transfer to the Wraiths that spawn when you defeat a possessed.

Possibly aggravating ones

Void crystals don't spawn outside of combat - Could mean that they only appear once the encounter starts. Which may slow down the end game. Additional tutorials - If those appear as extra pop up messages in the run, that's a few seconds lost right there.

All things considered, it looks like a step in the right direction. I'll try a few runs this weekend and see if there's any noticeable change

Hey. Thanks for joining in.

I've tried and failed to find a way around any of the fights beyond what's already been discovered. OOB seems impossible almost everywhere. And I can't find any jump glitches to gain infinite height or distance.

This game seems really solid. We might just have to wait for an update to break it.

As for my PB... I've not had much luck recently. Plenty of runs came close. Nothing good enough though. I'm trying but without skips, this comes down to pure skill and luck. Both of which I seem to be lacking.

Any and all assistance is welcome.

Right. Just beat my PB by a cool 13 minutes. Submitting this to the leader board as I doubt I'll beat it any time soon. Will be grinding for the sub 4H mark next. But right now, I'm gonna play around with the early chapters. Chapter 2 and 6 specifically. I feel there's some potential there.

Just a warning. It'll take a good 3 - 9 hours to process because "youtube"

Shame it wasn't in the later rooms where there are more doors to use. At least we're finally finding stuff.

Okay. That Chapter 13 skip is exceptional. Massive Time Save. Nice find.

Actually. Now that I think about it. There are a lot of early game fights that only activate once you hit the ground. Using this method, you may be able to fly over them. But this would only work for NG+ sadly. Not much use to me right now. But I'll spend a few days playing around in the longer chapters to see if I can find any applicable skips.

Well. First Fight Skip. Nice. Gonna have to give that some practice. Should shave 2 minutes off the run.

DECosmic It seems possible to me to get all skills and abilities in a single playthrough if you're going for 100%. It'll be tight though. You may need to also break every crystal. At least the blue ones you'll certainly need due to the cost of tier unlocks. But the final boss does have a nice pay out, so perhaps going to the shop would be the end of the run rather than the fight itself.

Regardless of that though. I feel the 100% NG+ would simplify that. Since with a NG+ file, you'd already have every unlock and upgrade item. The only thing you'd need to do is repeat the challenges and finish every fight in every chapter.

Also need to ask what the stance is gonna be on costume mods. Obviously wouldn't change the gameplay or the run in any way. And there's only 1 out there right now. But the community is undoubtably going to make more.

(At the very least, runs using the eventual nude mods should be invalid.)

The rules seem perfectly fair. The only Gameplay Assists I touched were disabling having to hold the button to interact in menus and the shop and having to mash B. It only happens a handful of times in the entire game anyway.

I feel removing loading screens manually is gonna be a pain. Just because of how many there are. Perhaps we could invalidate older runs once a load screen remover is sorted? At least then we can simplify getting on the leaderboard.

For gamebreaking... I've gotta say, this is a very stable game. I can't really find anything that can be abused. Out of bounds is almost impossible right now. And beyond that, I haven't found any way to skip past combat walls. Seems like, for now anyway, the only runs we can do would have to be legit.

For Any% NG at least, we should stipulate that you are allowed to use consumables. Not just the healing items. I haven't tested how much time they can save just yet but having the ability to instantly use Rapture or momentarily make yourself invincible would be a massive help in certain fights. Taking those off the table could just make the game take longer to finish for no real reason.

Additionally. I had an idea about Any% NG that I wanted some feedback on myself. Since the Intro isn't tracked and is an RNG mess due to the random weapons you can use and combos, perhaps starting each run using a save file at the very start of Chapter 1 would be better. It would make runs more consistent anyway.

Also. Thanks for considering my run. I realise that even if this IS approved, it won't stay in 1st place for long. Even I've managed to shave 54 seconds off that time already. A few more runs and a bit more experimentation and I should be able to get that time down massively.

And a note about the trick I used half way through (which was because I thought of it half way through). Strong attack, dodge, strong attack, dodge. It works on almost any large ground enemy. Bosses and regular mobs. I can't be sure the DPS is any better but if you get into the right rhythm with it, you can charge rapture maybe 20% faster than with a regular chain.

Thanks man. There are quite a few fights where I can save a lot of time still. The fury's especially. A bit more practice and I should be able to get another 10 minutes off my time.

I take back what I said before. Sub 4H is more than possible. My new Sum of Best is 4:01:56

Looks like this could get very interesting.

Right. Still running standard NG for now.

Just got a 4:29:39 RTA. Sub 4:20 is certainly possible. My Sum of Best shows 4:15. But to go any faster than 4h, we'll need more than efficient combat and movement. We'll need a way around the memories and the intro. Perhaps the ability to skip a fight or two but this game has invisible walls everywhere so out of bounds skips seem unlikely.

Oh and a note on the Nemesis fight. When the clones show up, pressing lock-on right as they spawn always targets the real one. Not sure why. But it's useful.

That's my method right now. Hopefully we can get something simpler, such as save slots or direct save file management in the future.

Deleting the save file seems to be the only way to do it right now. Perhaps a mod can address this in the future, (resetting progression I mean) or maybe the devs will implement it at some point. I just finished a 4:46:39 run and will be uploading it to YT as my current PB. I feel sub 4h is more than possible in a standard NG run. Perhaps another 40 minutes could be shaved off in NG+

Regardless. I won't be submitting any runs here until we have a clear definition of the rules.

Hey. Been practicing a few runs and have a pretty solid idea of how to play the game reliably. Just wanted to clear up a few things before I tried to submit a run to get things started. For Any%, are we playing on human or Initiate?

Beyond that, since the game is solely chapter select once you finish it, I presume we're resetting our saves for every run? Otherwise this would be a NG+ category right?