Difference between revisions of "Darksiders/any%"

Revision as of 05:39, 30 November 2017

Prologue

First Fight

The goal of this fight is to kill the Car Thrower on top of the bus. Normally, he won't jump down until the first wave of minions is killed, but damaging him directly will force him to jump at you. During the intro cutscenes, hold D and tap Alt to dash to the right and end up near a lightpost. Grab the lamppost with the Action button and strafe back to the left until you're standing on the far left crack in the asphalt. The Car Thrower will still be in a roar, wait for his hands to go back in front of him, then throw the lamppost with Q-mode.

Once he recoils, stand still and hit Block (Alt) just as he's landing to counter, then spam V to go into Chaos form. This position should get a hit as you land from the Chaos Form, after which you can do the fast combo of LMB RMB LMB to kill him. Untransform with V and dash forward to the right side of the bus in front and wait for the cutscene.

Once the cutscene is finished, dash forward and slightly towards the building on the right, then hold focus. Doing this sets you up to always target an enemy in the starting zone, otherwise you have a risk of getting a bad camera angle. Since you're facing backwards, hold S and Sword-Dash to the end of the block, then hold A to go left into the cutscene.

Golem Skip

The next section normally has a cutscene that weakens War by taking a bunch of his health tanks, but using the AirBlock you can skip over it and keep extra HP into the main game. After the cutscene, dash forward twice and grab the van on the left. Turn back toward the Golem, activate Q-mode, and throw the car below the Golem's feet and aimed within the median. The goal is that the car stops just in front of the foot, creating a platform to get onto it.

Once the angel cutscene is over, dash forward and jump onto your van. Double jump at the foot, then use the AirBlock to get on top. Double jump forward onto the Golem's hip and turn slightly left and double jump to the back. The platform here extends up pretty far, but is pretty thin, so stick towards the right side. Take note of the Golem's movement up and down as it struggles and look to the left at the JUNK poster where it's on fire. A leap of faith when the Golem's back is high and coupled with an AirBlock will get you onto an invisible platform here. Look forward again and doublejump up and AirBlock one last time to get on another invisible platform that lets you fall into the next zone.

Carglitch

Once you land, dash straight ahead to the second van and pick it up. The brick wall on the right has the vines needed to climb to the next section, but the bricks won't allow War to grab on, so you'll have to build yourself some platforms. Jump and throw the van a bit in front of the wall (similar to what you did on the Golem) then move forward to the white sedan, pick it up, and walk left into the cutscene. War will move slightly faster if he jumps while holding a car, but you don't want to try bunnyhopping, wait for him to get to normal walking speed, then jump. There's only enough space to do one jump before the cutscene, but after it's finished, you can do two more forward until you reach the brick wall. If you face it head on, you'll notice a small recessed area on the right, this is the perfect distance for performing the carglitch. Position War's body using the line where the main wall goes back to the recessed area, lining it up anywhere between War's shoulder and elbow. You also need to be pressed against the wall and have your camera perpendicular to the wall or very slightly to the right. Then, jump and throw the car. It's not necessary to throw it at the peak of your jump, about 60-80% of your jump height is ideal.

There are a few outcomes. The best outcome is that the car gets thrown forward, goes into its damaged state, then gets stuck in the wall as a stable platform. This means you did everything correctly. If War didn't throw the car, you were too far to the left or way too far to the right. If you throw it and it blows up, you weren't close enough to the wall. The other thing that can happen is that it stays, but bounces around a lot or slips out. This is a result of framerate, you'll want to lower the game resolution or textures to make sure you're maintaining a high framerate.

From here you should have the van nearby, jump on it and onto the car and look at the brick wall. There's a rather obvious ledge, but you can only stand on a small part of it next to the pillar to the right. Jump onto this and push forward and right to stand. Then double jump to the left and move into the wall, War should grab the vines and you can move up.

The next couple of sections play out normally, climb the vines, use the wire to cross the chasm, climb up the next set of vines and get to the next roof for the last skip in the prologue.

Fourth Fight Skip

Head to the far back left of the roof and look to the North. The intersection below is the next goal, but it requires using an invisible platform to get to. If you stand on the edge of the building, you'll see a big hole in the wall, our platform is near the bottom on the far side. Jumping out requires delaying your second jump until the first has nearly hit terminal velocity, then doing an AirBlock from the second to reset your falling speed.

There is a visual marker for when to do the second jump in the form of a window on the building. Two floors down, the second window out, where the hole in the building starts, the base of the window is the perfect point to double jump for distance. Then, about halfway to the other side of the hole, use AirBlock to reset your speed. You don't have to hug the wall, the platform extends out a little more than a body length to the left. If things went well, you should land next to the broken pillar and be standing midair. Jump straight forward to the intersection below and keep running forward.

Keep to the Easy half of the intersection, it contains the loading trigger for Straga, so if you wander too far West it may not load. Keep moving forward and enter the cutscene for the Prologue boss.

Straga

To understand this fight, let me explain what normally happens and what is done to break the pattern. Normally, Straga throws cars at War, which you can grab and toss back, needing two hits to stagger Straga and make him fall forward. His impact destroys any cars still left in the area. You can then damage his face to move to the next phase. The second and third phase start with him picking up the ground and slamming it back down, then doing a couple of fist attacks before throwing more cars. In all, there's a lot of waiting involved between being able to damage Straga. However, there's a small safe spot in the far right corner where cars aren't destroyed from Straga staggering and another perk to the Golem skip is that War kept Chaos Form, which allows us to push cars without damaging them.

This exact spot

In the first phase only, Straga has multiple rounds that he'll throw cars, 9 in total. By standing near the safe area, we can stockpile cars that will last between rounds, allowing us to go straight from hitting his face to throwing the next volley of cars. You can estimate the area that's safe by drawing a straight line from the corner of the building straight out to the lava, imagining that the face of wall keeps extending out to the lava pit. The safe zone gets marginally wider as it goes to the lava, but even if the cars don't get blown up, Straga's hands can start pushing them around so it's best to think of it that way when stacking the cars. After each throw, you have about 5 seconds to rearrange the cars before he throws the next set. The best cycle is a two-cycle, so we want to push the first three cars into the safe zone and maybe off to the left a bit, then get back in position.

On the second throw, you really only need to keep 1 car safe, the other 2 can be thrown at Straga, so even if the cars don't land perfectly, it should be alright. Once you make sure that 4 will be safe, get out of Chaos Form and pick up the closest car, enter Q-mode, and throw it at his body. Using Focus or no aiming will sometimes work, but there are some animations Straga can do that will cause these throws to miss. Be careful not to throw the second car too early, wait until his left hand comes down to brace himself before throwing the second car, any earlier and he'll be immune. When he's falling down, we want to jump where his face will be as he land, this accomplishes two things; we skip getting hit and a Flipsaw (hold LMB in the air) will deal the full damage for the round. If you land but he hasn't taken enough damage, it means you used Flipsaw too early, you should be able to Sword Cancel and deal the rest of the damage.

When he gets back up, he has another brief invincibility phase. Make your way to your next car, but wait to throw it until he starts to raise his arms. It's possible to throw it when his hands are in a neutral position in front, but the window for this is small. After the first hit, repeat the same thing you did with the second car, waiting for his left hand to reach the concrete before throwing, then get in position to Flipsaw his face again. The third round should go exactly as the previous, although instead of Flipsaw, you'll want to mash the Action (E) key while near his face to trigger the ending cutscene for the Prologue. We generally split when War gets slapped or at the end of the cutscene as it goes into the Charred Council cutscene.

Charred Council

Hold D and mash Alt to make your way to the right towards your sword. Head up the stairs to take it. While in the animation, hold Focus and mash dash backwards to start going back down the stairs to the next trigger. One thing to note is that the stairs will eat your dashes, this is true with all slopes in the game when Sword Dashing. To get around it, let go of LMB for one dash cycle, which makes War smoothly move down the slope, then hold LMB again and continue as normal, whatever slope you're on will no longer stop your dashes. The bottom of the stairs has another short cutscene, hold S during this to turn around when you get control, then let go of S and start holding Focus. Once the camera pans around, hold S again and Sword Dash straight back until the escape cutscene. The reason you want to let go of S while you activate Focus is that you will move to the side a little while the camera swings around, which will break your alignment or, if you started Sword Dashing early, make you dash the wrong way.

Hotel and Crossroads

Parking Garage

During the cutscene introducing the area, move your mouse left slowly and tap dash forward. During the fade in, but before you get character control, it'll spin the camera and line you up with the vines to climb. Once you make it up, dash off to the right and toward a black SUV near the wall. This will be used for the carglitch, but needs one hit of damage to make it change models when thrown, so swing your sword and use the action button for the sword cancel. The next destination is the pillar on the right, in front of the ramp. Make your way to the right side of it, lining up right in the middle and facing south. Tap S twice to create enough space for the carglitch, then jump and throw the SUV. If you look behind War's feet, there's a tire mark texture you can try to use for spacing, put the back of War's feet barely in front of it and you should be good.

If you do the throw and it doesn't stick, you were too far away. If it explodes or doesn't throw, too close. If it bounces off unharmed, you didn't hit it with you sword. As with the first carglitch, it's best not to throw it from the full jump height since it makes getting onto it difficult. To get on top of your platform, jump back and to the right to get on the railing of the ramp. Back up until you have the necessary height, then jump onto the SUV and jump onto the second story and dash to the elevator. If your car is a little low, you'll find that the AirBlock no longer works (it requires the counter move you have in prologue), but you can do sword swings in midair to get the extra height you need.

Pillar Jump

Jump to the right after you open the elevator to grab the vines, then jump up and right to go into the next room. Dashing forward, go to the broken pillar and double jump on top of it. Swinging your camera around and looking up, you'll see a broken balcony above, to get up you'll need to jump up in place, then hold forward and double jump at the ledge, War should grab it as long as you didn't move under it. This trick isn't very difficult, but if you miss jumping onto the pillar the first time, the yellow enemy can start harassing War and knocking you off the pillar. Once you make it up, though, dash to the end of the room and jump onto the vines. Do two jumps up, two to the right, then hold up right to get enough height to jump right and make it onto the next wall. Jump up to get up and dash forward into the next fight.

Furniture Fight

This fight is broken into two parts. The first is to kill 10 zombies, at which point a big blue enemy will drop in and you have to kill it to progress. War's sword is exceptionally weak, to the point where throwing the tables and chairs in the room does vastly more damage to the big enemy. For this reason, avoid breaking any of the furniture on the right side of the room, since that's where you'll be teleported to for the second part.

Dash in toward the group at the opposite side of the room, then use sword canceling to take out all of the zombies. Which ones get up and how they move is random, so there's not a perfect strategy other than trying not to break your furniture-ammo. Once you kill 11, a cutscene starts after a few seconds, dropping in the new enemy. Dash left and mash action to pick up and throw the tables. When you make it to the left side of your area, head back slightly and throw the piano, then loop back to the right and throw the remaining tables. Chairs also do decent damage, the advantage to tables is that it's a guaranteed stagger on a direct hit and there's one attack to hope to interrupt. Once you've thrown most everything, he should either die or fall into a stunned state, at which point it's safe to kill him with your sword. After it's killed, head to the right to the barrier while you wait for it to drop.

Sword dash right once it's down, then navigate this hallway and jump up the stairs. A trick for setting up sword dashing in the next section is to hold Focus as soon as you jump up the broken stairs, walk to the right past the wall partition, then dash backwards to the far wall before dashing left. War will lock onto a ghoul, but holding left will still give you good dashes. Stay locked on and alternate to backdashes when necessary, switching between the two angles to get around the next corner and across the room to load the next cutscene.

Crossroads

Also this exact spot

This area has a long history and is the first point where strategies greatly differ based on the runner's skill level. The point of this zone is to collect 500 souls and meet with Vulgrim to get an item to progress. There's a hidden chest with 500 souls that appears when one destroys all 6 fire hydrants here, which is our goal. First start holding forward and left and dashing once you gain control, heading toward the gray sedan in the street. Pick it up and look to the right (North) while jumping. At the T-junction, the corner of the far sidewalk has a fire hydrant just out of view. Luckily, this specific car explodes when thrown and can hit it from a distance. The length of sidewalk to the left of the hydrant and up to where the shadow starts will work for destroying the hydrant. It's necessary to throw it out of a jump, not only for the angle, but so that you don't target a ghoul wandering about in front. You'll also want to pull the camera down and to the right as you go into Q-mode, this also gives you a larger area to aim for without targeting a zombie. You can't throw it directly at the hydrant or very far to the right or the car hits the other car piles and explodes.

If you see water shoot up from near your explosion, you know it worked and you can sword dash to the East side of the room off of a ghoul. There's one hydrant on your left before you cross the street, then one near the corner of the sidewalk. Head down this street for two more hydrants on either side of the street and then loop back for the last one on the start of the curb in front of the hotel. Once you've broken all of them, a short cutscene reveals the chest. Open it and head to Vulgrim to get the Horn. Once out of the cutscene, as soon as the text pops up on the screen, open your inventory and equip the horn, using it as soon as you exit. You don't need to get very close to the Golem for it to activate, so don't dash from Vulgrim or anything. Once it's gone, head through the doors and into the Library (?). Make your way left and up the stairs, you can do 4 sword dashes to the right to line up with the entrance to the next room. Drop down, jump over the water and dash to the vines. You may have to dodge the yellow enemy's attack, but go up the vines and continue through the hallways and open the two sets of double doors, revealing the Scalding Gallows.

Dash straight ahead to get down the stairs, then turn around and Sword Dash straight back (don't forget to let go of LMB for one dash if you get caught). You'll end up locking onto an enemy and needing to readjust which direction you dash, but you should be able to make it out of the building and head for the center of the map.

General Fight

When the cutscene ends, hold S until War turns around, then blow the Horn to push the General back. The General has three phases and four attacks. Phases one and three have him attacking, here's what he can do:

1. Side Swing: A quick side swing that knocks War back slightly. Short windup, but you can use the Horn to knock him out of it or double jump and do a sword flip to dodge it. Can be blocked.
2. Axe Slam: Long windup with a red glow that hits all around the General and knocks War back a long way. Can't be blocked, but you can use the horn or jump over the hitbox with the sword flip.
3. Block: He blocks all damage, signified by a white ring when you hit rather than blood pouring out. The Horn won't knock him down. Jump in the air and hold LMB to break him out of this. Instant animation, so it throws off the fight timing if he does it.
4. Spin to win: Guaranteed attack at the start of the third phase, but he can start it again if you're too far away. Immune to all damage while in the animation. Can hold block to block, just be careful of a hit at the very end of it for no reason.

The first phase can be cheesed by immediately knocking him down at the start of the fight, then dashing to him and Sword Canceling. 14 attacks deals enough damage to go to phase 2, so keep an eye on your combo meter since you can stunlock him forever if you want. Phase 2 consists of 2 rounds of summoned minions, we want to group them up and use Blade Geyser to kill each wave in one hit. There's a lot of patterns and factors for which one he uses, it basically ends up being random. While they are summoning, use Sword Canceling to push them together (at least 3) and wait to see if the 4th approaches. If it does, hit all of them with a Blade Geyser and see what the next pattern is. If it runs or stays, hit your 3 and chase down the last one. Same idea for the second wave, with the additional goals of not being too near the wall and being somewhat near the General. The barrier counts as a hittable object and your Sword canceling will be much slower if you're hitting it along with the General in phase 3.

The start of phase 3 is holding block until the General stops spinning (if you're far he'll do multiple spins), at which point you Sword Cancel him to death. You should see 2 of the first 3 attacks listed above. Basically, when you see him start something, just double jump and time your sword flip to keep attacking. After the second attack, he should get the prompt to be killed and you won't need to dodge anymore attacks. It's faster to kill him normally than use the prompt.

Once the cutscene is over, dash forward and start the puzzle. Sword Dash to the right and complete it with the second statue to make Samael appear.

Vulgrim

After the cutscene, dash forward to the corner of Samael's platform and double jump out to Vulgrim's house. You'll get a couple of popups during the flight, remember to keep holding Spacebar until you're done with the flight. Once you land, jump to Vulgrim and activate his cutscene. Hit shift to go to the second page, scroll down once, and purchase the Meteor Strike, which is War's midair dash. If you got unlucky with double 3-minion spawns in the General fight, you'll need to open the chest in the house to get the 250 required souls. Once you've bought the item, exit the shop and quickly enter the menu to do a manual save, this will be the first savewarp.

Choking Grounds

Wrong Warps

Load your manual save file, you'll get teleported to the start of the room and trigger a cutscene. From there dash forward and jump at the blue orb. You can delay the wings coming out by releasing space after the double jump. If you use your wings as you enter the blue orb, you fly up really high, costing time from slower movement speed and the crater you make from landing. Delaying the wings until you're nearly past the orb will reduce the boost you get, putting you very neatly onto the platform with no big landing. Dash forward and do the same on the second blue orb. Once you cross, dash past the ghoul, then turn and backdash off of it 6 times, then to the right into the cave. As you make your way down via the minimap, remember to release LMB if your dash is getting eaten. The smoothing effect lasts until you change directions, so optimizing your angle is something to practice.

When you get to the bottom, jump up the blue orb and onto the rocks on the left of the next platform. Jump from those onto the next set of rocks, then jump left onto an invisible platform against the wall. Run left to go up the slope, then press space and D at the same time to jump with full side momentum to make it onto the rock outcrop next to you. This lets you turn the corner and jump to the next platform. Dash forward here until the glowing crystals and spire. Single jump on to the crystals, then double jump onto the spire and look out toward the lava. Double jump forward and slightly to the right, rubbing on the ceiling before falling into the lava. The flag for being in the Choking Grounds extends through the ground here. When you respawn, you should appear above the cave in the next zone, The Choking Grounds. If not, try adjusting your angle or using a sword swing to extend how long you're near the ceiling, for some reason the Warmastered Edition can take longer to register flags like respawn points.

• When you hit the lava, make sure to hit Caps Lock and use your life potion with 2. War only has one bottle during this run and we need to empty it so we can use it for Chaos Form later. In a normal run, this will be the only place you take damage (only guaranteed place, at least).

Choking Grounds

This area is the first place where people start getting stuck on the speedrun route. There are a couple of minutes of precise jumping that force a reload if messed up. When you fade in keep dashing forward until you hit a cutscene showing spooky skeleton warriors. Hold shift, W, and A so that, when the cutscene ends, you'll lock onto a nearby bat for Sword Dashing. You'll want to watch the minimap here, switch from W to S when you're lined up between the bat and the yellow quest marker to start going backwards. You want to head just to the right of the fountain and through the big gate, letting go of A as you pass through. The targeting can jump depending on the bat's movement, further adjustment might be necessary to keep heading toward the marker. As you head downhill, look for a spot of some rubble on the right side of the minimap, this is the trigger for the autosave and is the point where you want to let go of focus to turn around and blow the Horn at the Golem. The angle isn't very important, as long as you're close enough it'll work. Hold RMB and mash Esc during the cutscene to pause and reload your save. The reload will load the next section of the level that we'll access OoB.

Hold S after reloading, then Focus and Sword Dash up the slope and head left into the small nook. There's a large slab of cement leaning against the cliff, walk up and stand near the right edge of it. A bit farther to the right is a group of pipes extending out of the cliff, you can use these to line up for the next jump. Find the spot that the pipes come out of the cliff and move the camera so that it's lined up between War's right shoulder and his head, then press against the cliff to make sure War is facing where the camera is. Hold Focus, then hit Space and D at the same time, getting a side jump with full momentum like we did in the cave earlier. Delay your second jump until you're at your starting height, then use the midair dash sideways to make it onto the rocks on your right. If you miss, take note of whether you were too far forward or back, the two big rocks that extend lower than all of the others was our goal. Most of the time, a short jump is caused by misalignment, so correct it based on that and try again. The other common mistake is to mistime Space or D and either walk down the cliff or not have momentum at the start of your jump.

If you're able to make it up, walk around the tree and dash to the orange orb. Use it to reach the upper level and dash to the first Armageddon Blade shard. From there walk to the left and forward, jumping onto the very edge of the house, turn and look at the lamppost on the sidewalk. There's a big platform to our left, but a big invisible wall extends from our position out toward the lamppost, we'll need to jump and wing around it, but will need to delay the wings so that they last long enough. Jump out, do a late double jump and delayed wings, making sure you still have a good amount of height, and face very slightly into the invisible wall. At some point you should see War start to move left, quickly spin your camera and float straight onto the edge. You're rather safe here to dash forward along the house and up to the next cement slab.

This next jump justifies Choking Ground's name, you need to line up on the end of a vague edge, use Focus and time your jumps into a dash to make it onto an invisible platform that lets you traverse out of bounds. The upside is that the cement gives us lines to align ourselves and there's a small trick to find the edge of platforms. It's easiest to go backwards, so line up along one of the middle lines facing off of the platform and turn around with S, then hold Focus. When you get near the edge, if you dash backwards, then let go of all movement keys during the dash, you'll be on the very last pixel of ground without falling off. Walk forward a couple of taps and you should be in a spot that won't make you walk off the cliff and also gives enough distance for the jump. Your destination is basically the same height as this platform, so you'll want to jump back and do a delayed second jump, with basically the same timing as the earlier jump into the house, and then dash a little after the peak of that. After landing in midair, walk backwards and look to your immediate right at the cliff, there are a couple of distinct rocks and the invisible platforms slope up into them. Walk forward into the cliff until you see the back of War's foot disappear past the texture, this is pretty near the edge of the platform, so rotate your camera into the cliff to see the bridge to the right. You should be able to double jump out and use the wings to make it. Aim somewhat left, there's an invisible wall at the far right of the guardrail.

Dash to the right and look off the bridge directly behind the Golem to see the tunnels we'll be traversing. If you fall off going to the bridge or any section after this it requires a reload of the Golem save, so be prepared to spend some time in this section. Ultimately, it's very beneficial beyond learning the route, since it teaches you a lot about how out of bounds works in Darksiders. The walls are only visible from the front and often rooms won't show up until the camera is rotated in a certain way, since an invisible wall might be blocking your view of the room. The minimap is very accurate and you can always trust it when navigating, but also keep in mind the dash trick we used earlier to find most edges. You'll also get your first introduction to loading zones. The game uses tunnels to mask loading rooms in the background and has triggers you walk through, which extend out of bounds. As you walk OoB, pay attention not only to the rooms you can see load, but also to the background of the game, there will often be dramatic lighting changes when going from one area to the next which can tip you off about whether you hit or missed the triggers you want.

Jump off to the center of the tunnel, onto the pipes, and dash forward a couple of times until you get stopped by a wall. Double jump forward to land on a large flat platform and look to the right, where you can see some brick textures for the next room. If you don't see them, you didn't reload the game after the Golem, so do that. Look at the minimap for the Green line showing where the door to the next room is. You can't run across this, but it's the safest place to jump across, so move forward and jump across the gap. You still won't be able to see the room when you land most likely, so watch the minimap and move left across the ceiling toward the next pipe. You'll want to jump from the roof here onto the next pipe since you'll slide off of the sides and it's somewhat hard to judge where the edges of these rooms are. Dash forward along this next pipe until you get to the door section. Cross to the next pipe, jumping over the door section, and stand in the middle of the 3 small pipes on top. The joining connectors are a good visual indicator on these. Hold Focus and sword dash 4 times to the right, ending up near another group of smaller connectors and to the left of a support strut sticking out of the tunnel. You should see the background change from the Shadow Realm to a grayish-blue background as War passed a loading trigger. The support strut has a second loading trigger we want to avoid, so double jump up and dash to the right over it. If you see the background go black, you either didn't jump high enough or went too far while dashing on the pipe. If this happens, dash back to the left until you see the background go back to the gray.

Once you've made it to the other side of the support, keep dashing to the right until you see the pipes start to get bent apart and the roof starts to slope down. It's safe to dash, but once you start losing height, walk back up since the platform ends really abruptly here. The movement we just did avoided loading the entire next section of the level, leaving the normal exit completely open for us to jump through to get back in-bounds. To get in, we need to double jump off of the end of this tunnel, using delayed wings to make it to an invisible platform in the middle of a group of spires, then jump and wing into the hallway. To start, look at the minimap to see the door we'll be jumping toward. To line up, stand on the small pipes and point War parallel to the big room you see on the East side of the minimap, which should also point at a glowing orange spot on a spire in front of you. Jump out and wait to double jump until you're passing through the spire texture, you can start the wings immediately. When your camera passes through, you should see a clump of 3 spires. Make it past the middle one that's closest to you and land a bit before the base of the one on the right. The safe area to land is pretty large, but it'll most likely take a few attempts. From there, look towards the hallway and jump into the center of the doorway. The right side has a little bit of an invisible wall, so it's best to take a wide turn into the opening. Dash forward once inside to hit a loading zone, then turn around and go through the door into the Broken Stair.

Broken Stair

Biggest Skip

After you open the door, point the camera to the North and strafe right with War. Hold Focus and start Sword Dashing back once you pass the white car. As you exit the tunnel, War locks onto a bat that can mess up your angle if you're not lined up correctly. Use the minimap to navigate across a broken section of asphalt and look for stairs descending to Vulgrim. Let go of focus and dash down the stairs and to Vulgrim to get the warp point. Exit this tunnel area afterward and use Ghouls to sword dash into the house behind the Vulgrim entrance. Head upstairs and jump out of the window, using the orbs to make it to the highway bridge. Dash to the right and take the first blue orb over, then dash and head to the second blue orb. The section after this orb has a cutscene and a miniboss fight we'll be trying to avoid, the trigger for it is a few steps onto the last part of the highway. It extends all the way across, but the left side can be jumped around easily, skipping the whole thing.

Take the blue orb and aim for the left side of the bridge, taking care not to land too far onto the highway. Walk to the sidewalk and carefully jump onto the railing of the bridge. Facing the next blue orb, we'll be jumping diagonally forward and left, double jumping forward, then using wings to make it back onto the bridge right where the break in the railing is. When jumping from a railing like this, it's important to hit the direction key and jump at the same time, otherwise War can either walk off with no jump or not have enough speed to go where you want. For that reason, it's going to be easiest to hit W and Space at the same time and use the camera to direct War rather than the A|D movement keys. After jumping around the cutscene trigger, take the blue orb over to the next roof and the blue orb after that into the building.

Window Jump

Ordinarily, this building requires a key to open a door at the end of this floor, but there's a bit of platforming we can do to make it past. Dash to the end of the building, going to the left of the door to find a broken wall and windows. The leftmost window frames are what we're interested in. You can jump onto the window that's completely ripped out, getting the half-intact divider and window grate on your left. Jump onto this part and look to the Northwest. There are two big spires sticking out of the ground, to the left of them is some cracked pavement in 3 rough layers. Line up your camera where the middle layer's shadows meet the top layer and enter Q-mode. From where we'll be double jumping up and dashing at the peak of our jump, landing on an even higher section of wall if you were aimed correctly. Turn off Q-mode and spin the camera to see the stairwell behind the keydoor. Make the trivial jump and dash up the stairs to get into the autoscroller.

If you didn't land on the last section of wall, there's a few things to check. The first is that you're not hitting S and Space at the same time for this jump, since you'll overshoot by a lot. Jump straight up, then hold S a bit before you double jump. If you're falling off to the inside of the building, aim your camera further left before going into Q-mode. Do the opposite if you're falling off to the outside and have the jump/movement timing correct. The window jump is somewhat tricky, so you may end up finding your own visual cues.

Autoscroller

This is normally a pretty boring section, but with the use of a PC-only turbo fire trick, it's... still pretty boring. We do need to kill some of the bigger enemies, so the upside is that at least you won't have to struggle to kill everything. The rapidfire is done by holding the Use Gear button, then tapping shoot once to activate it. As long as you keep holding MMB it'll keep firing. The early enemies don't matter too much, the angels and bats only give regular souls here. We do buy a couple of items during the run, but currency isn't much of an issue. The concern is to gather as many yellow Wrath Souls as possible, the next fight goes much faster with 2 uses of the Blade Geyser.

Keep killing everything that shows up as you make your way into the city and transition into the cave. Small green and red bugs will start spawning along the path, it'd be best to watch the WR video to see where to aim. After enough times through here, it'll be second nature. I use back and forth or circular motions on the crosshair so that the autoaim doesn't continually pull shots into the wrong direction on fast enemies. The laser spread will basically clean all of those as long as you've aimed in the general vicinity of them.

The other part to watch out for is the Golem at the start of the cave, he obstructs 4 angels that give Wrath Souls. As long as you hit these with the laser or use a lock-on attack, they'll give you souls when they die. So once you pick out the red bugs from the 2 spawns at the start of the cave, switch your focus to damaging the angels. After 7.5 minutes, you'll exit the autoscroller and be ready to take on the first dungeon of the game.

Twilight Cathedral

After landing, just dash forward to the main double doors. Sword Dashing isn't effective here due to the random movements of the bats. Once inside, head forward and to the right for the first and only puzzle we solve. Grab the sword, then dash back to the center and go forward to replace the sword in the statue at the end of the hall on the right. Opening the next set of double doors will give a cutscene, you can hold forward-right and mash dash while it's going to dash as the cutscene is ending. Then go forward and cross the lava and dash straight ahead into the next cutscene. When this ends, dash right to the door at the end and walk through. Again, the bats' positions don't allow for consistent sword dashing.

Garden Fight

This fight is comprised of two rounds. In the first, three keleton enemies spawn immediately, followed by two more once the first two have died. When that's clear, four skeleton enemies and two bats spawn after a cutscene. Defeating these will open the door to leave. Since we have at least one Blade Geyser, the first round can be cleared quickly. In killing the first round skeletons, we may get enough wrath for a second sword Geyser in the second phase. Here's the general strategy to kill the skeletons:

• Use the Action prompt on low HP Skeletons. This is faster than sword canceling and gives additional wrath versus a normal death.
• One Blade Geyser and one sword hit will bring their HP low enough for the Action prompt.
• 14 sword hits will trigger the Action Prompt.

Start the fight dashing forward and left. You'll see a spawning circle for the first enemy, walk around to the left and start sword canceling to bring him toward the fountain. The far back skeleton should be starting to run toward you after 5 or 6 hits. Walk to the right skeleton and land one sword hit, then Blade Geyser when the far skeleton is close. The AI will always make him run toward you, so this is consistent. The first skeleton should die outright, the second will have the Action prompt but be sent to the right, and the last one needs one more sword swing for the prompt. Dash forward and get the last hit in, then stand near the end of this path and face Southeast to be in a good position for the skeleton spawn. You can start hitting it as soon as the circle pops up, pushing the skeleton toward the final enemy spawn of this phase. Once you get the kill, it's up to you whether to start on the last skeleton, or go for the Action kill on the other skeleton. Either way, you want to stand near the end of the South path for the start of the next phase.

After the cutscene, start sword canceling against the skeleton and try to group up as many enemies as you can for your last Blade Geyser. If things aren't in a good place by the time the bats swoop in, it's a good idea to jump and attack them out of the air. The skeletons take longer to kill and should be a priority for the Wrath skill. If you don't have a second wrath, just keep sword canceling to get the prompt kills on everything. If a skeleton starts blocking, jumping up and holding left click to do the sword slam will break the block. When everything is cleared, go to the South door and wait for the cutscene to open it.

Dash forward until you're somewhat near the bomb, then use a sword swing canceled with Action to hit and grab the bomb, quickly spin left with Q-mode and throw it at the red crystals. The fast bomb strat can be finicky, it depends on your distance from the bomb and how well you time the grab. If you can't get it, normally throwing the bomb is fine too. Head forward and scale this room normally. On the topmost rail, you can hold back to jump off once you pass the broken spot, any earlier and you won't have air control of War for some reason. Once you jump off, hold jump so you get the wings and grab the platform. Then head over to open the door. The cutscene will line you up nicely to turn around and start sword dashing around the balcony to the next door.

Balcony Jump

Head in the double doors to return to the large entrance room of the cathedral, you'll be dashing up the stairs and to the right, coming to a dead end with a large gap. The goal for the early section of this dungeon is to throw a bomb on the opposite side of this balcony and have the tentacle thing drop the statue through the floor. War can use the Focused air dash to just barely clear the gap and sequence break the dungeon.

You'll be lining up on the broken railing section on the edge of the balcony. It's easiest to look directly at the wall in front of you, using the white section you're standing on to check your angle. Once you're lined up, enter Q-mode and then hold Focus. Q-mode is necessary so that War doesn't target any of the bats nearby in the room. However, you want to make sure your angle is correct before activating Q-mode, since War doesn't change direction as you'd expect with it on. The timing on this jump is similar to the two jumps at the start of Choking Grounds, you'll want to delay the second jump and the dash to maximize your distance, since height isn't a large concern. It's really, really easy to walk off the edge, so making use of the dash trick to find the edge is highly recommended. Work on timing the movement and jump keys at the same time to prevent walking off, as well.

As long as you have the setup down, the actual jump isn't awful. If you find that you're hitting a wall at the end of the jump, make sure that you're angled to go straight across, there's a section with railing if you're too far to the front of the balcony.

Once you make it across safely, pick up and throw the bomb at the statue. It's really risky to go for the fast bomb strategy here, but if you position yourself safely between the wall and the backside of the bomb, even if you mess it up, you won't go flying off of the balcony. It should still save time to move to the safe spot, so it's worth going for at some point. After the cutscene of the statue plays, jump off to the right and go down the hole. This next section is easy, just follow the tunnel down and into the Boomerang room.

The Infinite Jump

Four sword swings will break the chest to empower War with the Crossblade. We don't use this intentionally at all in the run, but it's necessary to make the infinite jump work. Read the trick section to see how to set up your keybindings and perform the infinite jump, although if you have a wireless keyboard or something really cheap, it may not work since you have to hit multiple keys at the same time. Once the cutscene fades, there are a couple of bat enemies, but you have an autosave from right before you broke the chest, so it's worth taking some time to try to get used to infinite jumping and see what keybindings work best for you.

When you're ready to move on, dash back to the tunnel where you dropped in and do 2-3 IJs to go back in. Dash along the left wall to the corner, then jump around to the next part of the hall. It's necessary to jump, you may see some of another room sticking through the floor, which seems to make a hole there. If you walk, you'll fall in and unload the room you were in (or fall forever). There's a semi-visible wall to jump over in front of the stairs, this is the ceiling of the room below. Dash up to the end of this tunnel and jump back up into the main room. If you look up, there's a giant hole in the ceiling of the room. As we learned in the Choking Grounds, if a ceiling is solid from one side, it's solid on both sides and we can safely stand on or traverse across it. You'll need to do a lot of infinite jumps in a row to make it outside, at which point you can go forward a bit and land on basically any part of the ceiling. If we look to the North, you should be able to see Tiamat's room, on the minimap it'll be the room behind the locked red door. Use moving infinite jumps to make your way over to the room and around the outside edge. At some point part of Tiamat's spire will load in. Be careful with using forward dashes, you might bounce off walls you can't see. You should be able to recover in this area and you have a recent autosave, so it's definitely worth exploring and getting comfortable with OoB exploration and movement in Darksiders.

We need to get to the backside of Tiamat's door, it'll load the boss room and get us back in-bounds. There's a big invisible wall around the front of the tower, but it ends about a quarter of the way around either side. Make your way along the roof and to the backside of the spire. Nothing will be loaded, so you can descend down to Tiamat's door. Immediately behind and extending back a short distance from her boss door is standable ground, so make use of this and look at the minimap when you land. It shows the spiraling staircase and is shaded for height gain. Use jumping/infinite jumping to mimic going up the stairs to trick the game into showing the entrance cutscene. This loads the stairs around you, so you can sword dash up and enter Tiamat's arena.

Tiamat

Go to the right bomb after the cutscene and throw it at Tiamat. The game intends for you to use the boomerang to lock-on to the fire and the bomb to blow up Tiamat. If you aim well, however, you can throw the bomb through the fire, saving some time and getting some speedrun cred at the same time. If it's too swag or War is throwing strangely (happens), use Focus and Q-mode to lock onto the fire, then the bomb, then throw the boomerang to make Tiamat fall. Hit her with some sword canceling here, then back away when she starts to get up. She does 3 slow charges in a row at you before being vulnerable to the fire-bomb combo again. Try to position yourself so that the last charge from her puts her near a bomb and a fire. If you're lucky, you should be able to do the quick strat, otherwise use the boomerang again to make her come down. Now the main part of the fight begins.

There are 3 damage phases to go through, this first one is pretty free, just use sword canceling until she starts to get up. When she flies in the air after each damage phase, she'll do a body slam that knocks you back really far if you get hit. The key to this fight is timing block to avoid all hits. You'll see when she stalls near the top that her wings tighten and she rotates up slightly. The timing of Alt to block is pretty lenient, you want to hit it as soon as she's near the end of the animation. Assuming it worked, you can start sword canceling against her for a number of hits. Make sure to stay mostly in front of her, at least not going back past her claws, the attacks she does are based on your position and you want to bait out claw swipes. She should start one a few seconds after standing up from the slam, you want to hold Block a bit before she does it so that you don't get hit/knocked back. After blocking, go right back to sword canceling. You should be able to make her kneel before she does another claw, if not, just repeat the same pattern. After she kneels, unload more sword swings into her and repeat the whole process over again.

If you end up getting hit, try to dash back to melee range right in front of her to bait more claw swipes. If you see her doing back to back body slams, try delaying when you start sword canceling after the slam. It seems like dealing too much damage between rounds or before the first claw swipe can force two slams in a row.

Once you stagger her for the third time, you should get the kill cutscene. Hold right click and start moving left. When the cutscene is over, resist the urge to dash, the teleport out is close on your left and a little bit in front of you. This will give you another cutscene, hold forward and dash to trigger Vulgrim as soon as it's over. We won't be buying anything, so just use right click to enter the warp selection. Select Scalding Gallows and wait for the loading screen. When you're in the Serpent Path, turn to your left or 180 so that you can set up sword dashing. Remember that you'll have to momentarily let go of left click to go down the stairs smoothly. When you hit the right angle corner at the end of the path, turn back and start infinite jump dashing to the exit portal.

Once you load back into Vulgrim's house, double jump left to hit the cutscene trigger for Samael. He gives you Chaos Form back, which we'll use in some specific fights to speed them up.

Drowned Pass