Bastion/Basic Mechanics

2017-06-13T01:16:05Z

ValentinoIAN: /* Movement */

===Movement===
It is important to set your control style to "Mason-Style" (mouse and keyboard, not using WASD). With mouse controls, rolling while holding down your mouse button causes you to move about 30% faster than in other control styles, because the game adds the speed of walking to your roll travel distance.

The fastest movement method in Bastion is rolling (called Evade in-game, with Space being the default keybind), just because it is much faster than walking. Throughout the entire speedrun you want to roll as much as possible - and since you can't buffer the roll input (if you press roll while in the animation of your previous roll, you won't roll again), the best way to achieve that is chaining your rolls: pressing roll as soon as the animation for the previous one ends. Having a good rhythm to your rolls helps optimize your movement.

A crucial part of a Bastion speedrun is avoiding falls. In Bastion, most of the ground in every level forms up as you approach it. The problem with that is that the levels very often form more slowly than you can move through them, which might cause you to outpace the terrain and fall, wasting about 2.5 seconds. This can be avoided by slowing down your movement by walking instead of rolling. More advanced players will curve their roll paths at points where the ground forms slwoly so that they move faster, but take a less direct route - in total, you can move more quickly this way, but you must have good mouse control.

===Experience and Levels===
Killing enemies, picking up certain items(cores, mementos) or Blue/Black Tonics when you are already full on this type of a Tonic(a Blue Tonic will first heal you if your HP isn't already full) will make you gain experience. Once you fill out the experience bar, the Kid will level up, causing a couple of things to happen: Your HP and both types of Tonics will be restored fully, the Kid will do a short animation of leveling up(causing you to lose control for a while), and an explosion around the Kid will cause enemies nearby to take a lot of damage. This has [[Bastion/Melting Pot|some]] uses in All Story Levels runs and is knowledge you need to have to understand the any% experience route.

===Fragments===
Fragments are "pieces of the Old World" and they function as currency in the game to pay for Forge upgrades or recovering missed items in the Lost and Found. You can find them almost everywhere well as receive for completing some challenges.
In all current routes they are completely useless since NG+ already has everything it needs in its file and NG doesn't ever buy anything.

===Cores, Shards and Game Progression===
Cores and Shards are objects you can find in some levels that allow you to unlock building slots in the Bastion, unlock levels and are necessary to complete the game. Whenever you put one of the first six Cores into the Bastion Monument, you will unlock a building slot and every time you store one of the first six Shards, you will be allowed to upgrade one of the existing buildings.
One of the most important things to understand about the any% route is that to complete the game, you don't need to complete the last level of the game - you merely need to store 7 Shards and 7 Cores. After using the Monument for the 14th time, you will trigger a screen transition that will take you to the Heart of the Bastion, letting you select an ending and end the run.

===Buildings===
You can find some of these buildings in certain levels(most notably in the [[Bastion/Wharf District|Wharf District]] where you are forced to open the Arsenal and the Distillery) as well as build them in the Bastion to be able to access them between levels.
:*Arsenal - lets you switch out weapons and skills
:*Forge - weapon upgrades
:*Lost-and-Found - recovering missed items from the completed levels
:*Memorial - awards Fragments for Completing Vigils(challenges)
:*Shrine - allows you to enable Idols(increasing the difficulty of the game)
:*Distillery - equipping Spirits that provide passive buffs
:*The only buildings used in current speedrun routes are the Arsenal and the Distillery.

===Weapons, Skills and Spirits===
Rather than a comprehensive description of every weapon/skill/spirit in Bastion, this will only include some info on the ones that are or were useful in speedruns:
;Weapons:
:*Cael Hammer - a weapon you can't skip. Has three attacks, a moving attack and two stationary attacks that have longer animations but deal more damage.
:*Fang Repeater - an overall pretty bad ranged weapon that we pick up because doing so doesn't waste any time at all and it is useful in some places of the [[Bastion/Wharf District|Wharf District]].
:*Brusher's Pike - found in the [[Bastion/Roathus Lagoon|Roathus Lagoon]], picked up for its higher damage output.
:*Scrap Musket - found in [[Bastion/Cinderbrick Fort|Cinderbrick Fort]], a much better ranged weapon than the Fang Repeater that you can get quite early in the game. Useful for clearing out obstacles and for executing a quick kill on [[Bastion/Burstone Quarry|Mr. Lunky]].
:*Galleon Mortar - found in [[Bastion/Mount Zand|Mount Zand]], a very slow to use ranged weapon that is useful for killing Rattletails - an enemy that has to be killed in [[Bastion/Urzendra Gate|Urzendra Gate]] that sometimes turns invulnerable to anything but Grenades and Mortar shots - and clearing out some debris in the [[Bastion/Zulten's Hollow|Zulten's Hollow]], since at the end of the game it deals much more damage than the unupgraded Scrap Musket.
;Skills:
:*Sneaky Decoy - picked up in the [[Bastion/Roathus_Lagoon|Roathus Lagoon]], lures enemies to the decoy and turns your next attack into a guaranteed critical hit.
:*Whirlwind - picked up in the [[Bastion/Wharf District|Wharf District]], helps kill the foreman in the [[Bastion/Workmen Ward|Workmen Ward]] in NG categories.
:*Trip Mine - found in the [[Bastion/Melting Pot|Melting Pot]]. Works about as you would expect a mine to work. Limited usefulness, but picked up in the NG ASL route.
:*Hand Grenade - picked up in [[Bastion/Sundown Path|Sundown Path]], a thrown weapon with an extremely high damage AoE explosion. Locking on to a target before throwing one is almost obligatory, as this way the grenade will fly in a lower arc and hit much faster.
:*Pike Vault - only used for skipping parts of levels, never for damage. [[Bastion/Pike Vault|Read more here]].
;Spirits:
:*Werewhisky - +100% Critical hit chance when below 33% Health. Critical in [[Bastion/Jawson Bog|some]] levels.
:*Cham-Pain - +25% Damage, -1 Chance to Carry on if Defeated. Only available in New Game Plus mode, used to kill some bosses faster and to save time during the [[Bastion/Burstone Quarry#Ura Invasion Skip|Ura Invasion Skip]].
:*Black Rye - +2 Black Tonic Capacity. No longer used in any category; used to be required to complete Prosper Bluff in the fastest way.

===The Battering Ram===
In the last part of the Tazal Terminals, you're forced to use a slow weapon called the Battering Ram. This prevents you from rolling and using any other weapons or skills. Your only available actions at that point become:
: Ground slam - the primary attack, lasts 63 frames, kills everything close to you.
: Forward swing - secondary attack, 56 frames long, kills enemies in a small area in front of the Kid. Notice that it's only 7 frames faster than the ground slam, therefore it's only worth using it when a ground slam wouldn't kill any extra relevant enemies.
: Shield - http://www.twitch.tv/lawyerdogsr/c/2436288
: The special attack - clears out every enemy on the screen. Very slow to do but worth using with a lot of enemies around.

===Load screens===
At the start of every level and after every screen transition that has a loading screen, the Kid's HP and Tonics will be fully restored. This is only important in [[Bastion/Jawson Bog|certain]] levels, and most of the time means that there is a rarely reason to use Tonics conservatively or worry about your health too much.

===Freeze Frames===
Every time you hit an object or an enemy with a melee weapon, the Kid remains frozen for a couple of frames for each object that you hit. This makes it important to avoid hitting anything that you don't need to kill with your melee weapons.

===Recovering===
Some effects in the game, such as Skybridges and Queen Anne, will knock the Kid up into the air. During this you can press Evade to roll mid-air, which in turn allows you to perform some minor skips and save time.

2017-06-10T06:58:56Z

ValentinoIAN:

[[Category:Games]]
[[Category:PC]]
[[Category:Xbox 360]]
{{sda run|http://speeddemosarchive.com/Bastion.html}}
[[File:Bastion.png|1024px|center|link=Bastion]]
;Overview

:Bastion is an isometric action game made by Supergiant Games (Bastion, Transistor, Pyre) and originally released on the XBLA in 2011. The game is now also available on PC, iOS, PS4, and PlayStation Vita.

;Welcome to the Bastion Speedrun Knowledge Base

:When these pages were first created several years ago, it was a different time in speedrunning and in Bastion history! It was initially intended to be a thorough and well monitored repository for all Bastion speedrunning knowledge. Now, however, with few left to maintain it, we are scaling back it's goal to simply keep an updated explanation of as many things as possible, starting with the more common categories and tricks and extending it as is reasonable.

==Community information==

;'''Leaderboards''':
:http://speedrun.com/bastion
:Make an account to submit your times! Note that submissions will have to be approved by a moderator before becoming visible.

;''' Discord server''':
:https://discord.gg/0jOLZzV5X7OtmAzD

;'''Versions'''
:Currently the fastest version of the game is PC due to availability of [[Bastion/Basic_Mechanics#Movement|mouse movement]], which is faster than other control schemes. Players typically play on the live Steam patch.

=Speedrunning Bastion=

==Learning==
One of the best things about Bastion is its great learning curve. If you're just starting out, you can learn the [[Bastion#Routes|route]] of your category and try to complete a couple of runs while following the general path; then start learning, and incorporating into your runs, more advanced techniques and strategies.

Starting with a '''NG+''' category is not recommended, as these are mostly more challenging and require the ability to perform some difficult tricks.

==Timing a Bastion speedrun==

The time starts when you gain control of the Kid; you can set up your split program to start at -1.1 seconds and start it at the same time as you press to make the Kid get up, or use the [[https://github.com/Synthian/LiveSplit.Bastion autosplitter for LiveSplit]]!

Time ends when you select an ending in the Heart of the Bastion.

Load times and cutscenes are included in the timing. Loading screens are nearly the same length for almost everyone (about ~4.4 seconds) and have insignificant variance of up to 7 frames.

Timing issues can be a result of your game running slowly. Test this by seeing how quickly you can reach the Cael Hammer after gaining control of the Kid; if that time is around 13.5 seconds, then your game is running properly. If it takes significantly longer than that, you need to play with your display options (VSync, Fullscreen mode, Resolution).

One solution to the game running too slowly that '''IS NOT''' recommended is using the -nofixedstep launch option. This might help you run the game at full speed, but most likely will in some way break your game - causing lag, freezing or unacceptably breaking your game physics. Using -nofixedstep may invalidate your run.

==Categories==
;There exist four primary categories of Bastion:

:*NG Any% - Complete the game from a new save file (New Game) as quickly as possible. This is the most popular category, and probably the easiest.
:*NG ASL - Complete all '''story''' levels (Proving grounds not required) from a new game. This category is the more completionist category, where you are not allowed to skip any of the game's core levels.
:*NG+ Any% - Complete the game from an existing save file (New Game Plus) as quickly as possible.
:*NG+ ASL - Complete all '''story''' levels from an existing save file (New Game Plus).

;There is also one alternate category, which was created to be intentionally challenging:
:*All Weapons - Complete the game from a new save file (New Game) with every arsenal weapon collected.

::''(NG = New Game, NG+ = New Game Plus, ASL = All Story Levels)''
::''Any% categories are around 13 - 14 minutes long, while ASL categories are around 50 minutes long.''

Any% categories include [[Bastion/Techniques#Item_Duplication|duplicating cores]]. All Story Levels forbid that, as it would prevent you from accessing (and thus completing) Tazal Terminals.

==Routes==

'''[[Bastion/Any% Routes|NG and NG+ Any% Routes]]'''

'''[[Bastion/ASL Routes|NG and NG+ ASL Routes]]'''

==[[Bastion/Basic Mechanics|Basic Gameplay Mechanics]]==

==[[Bastion/Game Data|Game Data]] (Weapon Damage, Enemy Health, XP etc.)==

==[[Bastion/Techniques|Techniques]]==

=Individual Levels Pages=

This is a list of pages that will form a knowledge base on completing each Bastion level in a speedrun. They assume that you mostly know your way through the level, and focus on explaining speedrun level strategies.

[[Bastion/Wharf District|Wharf District]]

[[Bastion/Workmen Ward|Workmen Ward]]

[[Bastion/Melting Pot|Melting Pot]]

[[Bastion/Sundown Path|Sundown Path]]

[[Bastion/Hanging Gardens|Hanging Gardens]]

[[Bastion/Cinderbrick Fort|Cinderbrick Fort]]

[[Bastion/Pyth Orchard|Pyth Orchard]]

[[Bastion/Langston River|Langston River]]

[[Bastion/Prosper Bluff|Prosper Bluff]]

[[Bastion/Wild Outskirts|Wild Outskirts]]

[[Bastion/Jawson Bog|Jawson Bog]]

[[Bastion/Roathus Lagoon|Roathus Lagoon]]

[[Bastion/Point Lemaign|Point Lemaign]]

[[Bastion/Colford Cauldron|Colford Cauldron]]

[[Bastion/Mount Zand|Mount Zand]]

[[Bastion/Burstone Quarry|Burstone Quarry]]

[[Bastion/Urzendra Gate|Urzendra Gate]]

[[Bastion/Zulten's Hollow|Zulten's Hollow]]

[[Bastion/Tazal Terminals|Tazal Terminals]]

=Other Resources=

===''[http://www.speedrun.com/bastion/guides Speedrun.com Guide List]''===
No tutorial videos or guides are fully up to date, but this is a great place to start!

===''[https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/attachment/plwicG%2FBIrfcDRHn7C0QR%2Fnymoc Red_Buddha's NG+ File]''===
Very convenient if you want to run NG+ categories. Has full upgrades on the Scrap Musket, Brusher's Pike, Cael Hammer and the Fang Repeater.