How To Train Your Lilac -- Video Tutorial Series

For detailed information on each stage's strategy, here is a YouTube playlist made by johannhowitzer:

• How To Train Your Lilac

Air Drag

If you move upward, you lose horizontal speed. There are only a few exceptions to this rule. Moving downward will never cause you to lose speed.

Slope Jumps

The result of a jump depends greatly on which way you're moving, and the angle of the surface you're jumping from. Generally, jumping while moving up a slope will give you extra height, while jumping from a downslope will give extra forward speed - assuming the slope is steep enough to keep the jump from moving you upward.

Kicks

Lilac has many moves that deal damage, and they all deal damage in ticks - that is, they deal an amount of damage several times, usually every five frames, as long as the enemy is still in range of the move. Her basic kick is very often her best way to deal damage, as it deals four damage per tick, tying with her Dragon Boost and Rising Slash for best damage per tick. A standing kick will strike three times, while a moving or airborne kick will strike twice.

Dragon Boost

The Dragon Boost is usually Lilac's best option, but using it requires a full meter. A Dragon Boost can be aimed in six directions - left, right, and the four diagonals, and it can ricochet off walls. If you boost diagonally down and hit the ground, Lilac's boost will level out and travel along the ground, rather than ricocheting. During a Dragon Boost, and for a short time after it ends, Lilac will be invincible to almost everything.

Hitting an enemy with a Dragon Boost deals four damage every five frames, making it the fastest way to deal damage, especially if you can line it up to travel with an enemy as the enemy moves, hitting constantly until the boost ends.

• Wall Ram Cancel
  If you boost in the air horizontally and strike a vertical wall, the boost will end upon ricocheting.
  If you are close to the wall when doing this, you can boost while spending very little meter.

• Air Boost
  Lilac has to charge before the boost fires. If she's airborne when you press C, she'll stop moving completely while charging up.
  Because of this, sometimes a Dragon Boost is not the fastest strategy.

• Ground Boost / Roll Boost
  If Lilac is moving along a surface when you press C, she will continue moving while charging the boost.
  If she happens to roll to the edge of a platform, she'll stop moving there.

• Extending upward boost height
  If you hold A as an upward boost ends, Lilac will emerge from the boost with extra air.

• Wall Climb
  If you perform a wall ram cancel near a wall and continue holding forward + A + C, Lilac will continually ram the wall, gaining a little height each time.

Dragon Cyclone

Lilac's Dragon Cyclone also spends meter, but very slowly, and can be used even if she has an empty meter. It can only be used once before landing, cannot be used after a Dragon Boost until landing (unless you ram a vertical wall), and can be used again if Lilac takes damage before landing. The Dragon Cyclone functions as a double jump at first glance, but it works by altering Lilac's vertical speed, and has many more uses. It is a surprisingly flexible move.

The Cyclone is one of Lilac's worst options for damaging enemies, dealing only two damage every seven frames. When used during boss fights, it is usually used only briefly to gain a little height and stay next to the boss's weakpoint, although it does have a very large hitbox that extends out from both sides of Lilac, making it useful for hitting multiple targets for small damage.

• Cyclone Cancelling
  A cyclone won't end just because you landed, and if it's still going when you try to jump again, Lilac won't get much height.
  It also prevents using most other moves, and consumes meter. To stop a cyclone early, use a basic kick attack or a divekick.

• Ground Cyclone
  Most of the time, Lilac's cyclone will be used in the air, but it's also possible to start a cyclone on the ground by holding down and pressing B while moving.

• Down Cyclone
  Normally, an air cyclone will always cause Lilac to start ascending instantly.
  If you hold down when pressing A, the cyclone won't move upward at all, but will instead reset your falling speed.

• Steering
  When performing an air cyclone, Lilac's vertical speed can be steered a little by pressing up or down.

• Spring Cyclone
  If you start a cyclone at the same time you hit a spring, you'll get a lot of extra bounce from the spring.

• Cyclone Jumping
  If a ground cyclone is in motion when you do a slope jump, the extra height or forward speed you get will be multiplied tremendously. Because a cyclone is required, meter will be consumed, so it's not always practical to cyclone jump from every slope. The cyclone in a cyclone jump is done while still on the ground, so there will be an air cyclone available to Lilac when it ends, without her touching the ground again.

Divekick

Holding down and pressing B while in the air will produce a divekick, which will usually put Lilac at her maximum falling speed instantly. Lilac winds up before the kick happens, and this windup completely freezes her inertia - it causes her to travel in exactly the same direction with the same speed as when the windup started, until it ends. This ignores gravity and air drag.

Divekicks can be used to deal three damage to an enemy every five frames, making them a fairly decent way to damage an enemy from above, but there are faster ways to deal damage, which makes this tactic very situational.

• Slope Dive
  Landing on a downslope will normally cause you to accelerate instantly; because a divekick puts you at maximum falling speed, divekicking onto a downslope gives you much more speed. There is a quirk of the physics engine, however, in which sometimes when you divekick onto a shallow enough downslope, you won't get any speed. This happens when landing on certain spots on the slope that the game thinks are a flat surface instead of a slope, and this is something that takes a good deal of experience to avoid consistently.

• Jumpdive
  By following a jump with a divekick immediately, Lilac can completely avoid air drag while jumping. Sometimes it is beneficial to delay the divekick slightly, to change the arc of the jump. This also allows retaining most of the speed of an upward Dragon Boost, although the divekick must happen slightly after the boost ends, not immediately, so the game can first establish Lilac's speed outside of the boost.

• Double Dive
  By performing a second jumpdive motion on the way down, Lilac can extend a jumpdive horizontally. This happens because the second "jump" input is a downward air cyclone, which takes Lilac out of the divekick state and resets falling speed until the second divekick goes off.

• Diveglide
  Try a double dive, but don't do the second divekick; instead, steer the air cyclone up.
  The result is a very level glide that can cross large gaps without the help of a slope, and loses no speed.

Rising Slash / Uppercut

Lilac's uppercut move gives about the same height as a jump, and can be done while standing or moving, but not in the air. If you start this move as you're about to run off a platform, the uppercut will still happen when it normally would. It has a different ascent pattern than a jump, and causes air drag in a different way; in some limited places, this can be useful.

The Rising Slash deals four damage every five frames. Its use is rather situational, since this damage is the same as a boost or basic kick, and usually if you could use an uppercut, kicks or boosts are also an option.

• High Uppercut
  Lilac can combine a jump with an uppercut by pressing A and B at the same time. This can't be done while moving; in fact, Lilac must appear to be looking up for this to work at all, so you must hold up for a few frames first. The A and B inputs must be very close together - we think they might need to be within a frame of each other. The uppercut produced when the A and B inputs land on exactly the same frame is slightly higher than if they are one frame apart, as well. This is a difficult move to execute consistently, but represents Lilac's highest jump without the aid of a boost or a slope, giving it a lot of use.

Enemy Hitstun

When one of Lilac's moves strikes an enemy or other obstacle, whether it's immune or not, Lilac will stop moving and filling her meter briefly, most enemies will stop moving as well, but the ingame timer will continue running. The move you used will also continue, so for example if you use a Dragon Boost and it travels through an enemy, Lilac will freeze briefly each time the enemy is hit, but the boost will continue to drain, and it will end at a different position than if you didn't hit anything. This also makes it much easier to cause a move to spend its entire duration on top of an boss weakpoint, and land all of its possible hits.

Parrying

Some enemy attacks can be parried with a kick or cyclone. When a parry happens, you'll hear a metallic clang, and neither Lilac nor the enemy will take any damage - though if you used a cyclone, it will continue after the parry and cause some damage.

Ceiling Mount

A quirk of the game's physics engine allows mounting a sloped ceiling without running up a wall. To do this, collide with the sloped part of the ceiling while moving and pressing in the direction that the ceiling slopes downward. For example, if the left end of the slope is high, and the right end is low, you would need to be moving right, and holding the right directional button. This would cause you to start running along the ceiling, moving left.