Overview

Bastion is an isometric action game made by Supergiant Games(Bastion, Transistor) and originally released on the XBLA in 2011. The game is now also available on PC, iOS and will be ported to the PS4 and PS Vita in 2015.

Community information

Leaderboards

http://speedrun.com/bastion

Make an account to submit your times! Note that submissions will have to be approved by Cereth or Vulajin before becoming visible.

The IRC channel and the SDA thread are great places to ask questions:

IRC channel

irc.speedrunslive.com - #bastion

SDA Bastion thread

https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/bastion.html

Versions

Currently the fastest version of the game is the PC one due to availability of mouse movement, which is faster than other control schemes. No patch is faster or slower, and all techniques used in the speedrun work in all of them.

Speedrunning the game

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. If the Kid in your game gets up automatically for whatever reason, you need to set your timer to start at -18.4 for NG and -20.0 for NG+.

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

Load times and cutscenes are included in the timing.

An important thing is making sure that your game is running at full speed. The way you can test if it does is time how fast can you pick up the Cael Hammer after gaining control of the Kid; if that time is around 13.5 seconds, then you're fine. If it takes longer than that, you need to play with your display options(VSync, Fullscreen mode, Resolution).

One solution to the game running too slowly that ISN'T 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 broken physics.

Categories

There exist four different categories of Bastion, differentiated by NG/NG+ and ASL/any%.

• NG ASL - Complete all story levels (Proving Grounds not required) on New Game mode.
• NG+ ASL - Complete all story levels (Proving Grounds not required) on New Game Plus mode.
• NG Any% - Complete New Game mode as quickly as possible.
• NG+ Any% - Complete New Game Plus mode as quickly as possible.

(NG = New Game, NG+ = New Game Plus, ASL = All Story Levels)

Any% categories include duplicating cores. All Story Levels forbid that, as it would prevent you from accessing(and thus completing) Tazal Terminals.

Routes

NG and NG+ Any% Routes

NG and NG+ ASL Routes

Learning

One of the best things about Bastion runs is how easy they are to learn at first, and how optimized they can get. If you're just starting out, the best thing to do is to only learn the very basics of your category and try to complete a couple of runs while following the general route; then start learning, and incorporating into your runs, more advanced techniques and strategies.

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

Basic Gameplay Mechanics

Movement

It is important to set your control style to "Mason-Style" (mouse and keyboard). The reason for that being that rolling while holding down your mouse button causes you to move about 30% faster than in other control styles.

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, that input is going to get eaten), 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 and save a lot of time.

A crucial part of a Bastion speedrun is not falling. In Bastion, most parts of the ground in every level forms up as you approach it. The problem with that is the fact that the levels very often form slower than you can move through them, which might cause you to outpace the terrain and fall, wasting 3 seconds. The only way to avoid that is to slow down your movement by walking instead of walking until the ground forms up.

Experience and Levels

Killing enemies, picking up certain items(cores, mementos) or Blue/Black Tonics when you are already full on this type of 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 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 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 Wharf District.
• Brusher's Pike - found in the Roathus Lagoon, picked up for its higher damage output.
• Scrap Musket - found in 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 Mr. Lunky.
• Galleon Mortar - found in Mount Zand, a very slow to use ranged weapon that is useful for killing Rattletails - an enemy that has to be killed in Urzendra Gate that sometimes turns invulnerable to anything but Grenades and Mortar shots - and clearing out some debris in the Zulten's Hollow, since at the end of the game it deals much more damage than the unupgraded Scrap Musket.

Skills

• Whirlwind - picked up in the Wharf District, helps kill the foreman in the Workmen Ward in NG categories.
• Trip Mine - found in the 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 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. Read more here.

Spirits

• Werewhisky - +100% Critical hit chance when below 33% Health. Critical in 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.
• Black Rye - +2 Black Tonic Capacity. No longer used in any category; used to be required to complete Prosper Bluff in the fastest way.

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 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.

Techniques

Item Duplication

The biggest glitch in the any% categories, makes it possible to sequence break the game and skip 2/3rds of it. To execute it you need to interact twice with an item you can pick up(Core, Shard, Upgrade Material) within a very short time window, which will cause it to get picked up twice(also giving you the experience for collecting that item twice). The only way to consistently achieve this effect is to bind the "Use\Interact" key to the mouse wheel and quickly scroll it while standing next to the item. The result is that if you duplicate a core or a shard, while in the Bastion you will have to interact with the Monument twice, and more levels than usual will get unlocked.

After picking up 14 cores/shards(so duping 7 of them - duping a core will give you a shard) the end of the game will be triggered, even though you didn't finish the Tazal Terminals.

Clips

Sometimes, with clever application of rolls, it is possible to get through or around some of Bastion's walls in a reasonably speedy fashion. In fact, nearly all walls and gates in the game can be clipped through, often skipping certain fights, switches or letting you take a shorter route through the level. There is no specific technique to get through every single "nearly-solid" obstacle(even though it always includes rolling), therefore each specific clip will be explained in the individual level pages.

Text Skips

When after collecting certain numbers of shards/cores you use the Skyway for the first time in the Bastion to open the map, Rucks will start saying something and as long as he's speaking, even though you can select the next level on the map, you won't be able to Fly to it. Fortunately, there is a mechanic in the game that prevents Rucks from talking over himself; if he's already speaking, he can't start another narration line. If you get Rucks to talk while you access the Skyway, he won't start his Skyway narration(hence the "text skip") and you'll be able to immediately Fly to a level, thus saving time. Since there is a lot of differences in what happens in the Bastion in any% and ASL, the methods to perform specific text skips are explained on the route pages.

Camera Glitch

Let's just say that the pipe is magical and leave it at that

[coming soon]

Pike Vaulting

[coming soon]

Other Glitches

Jaunting

[coming soon]

Black Screen Glitch

[coming soon]

Softlocks

[coming soon]

Individual Levels Pages

This will be a category of pages that will form a knowledge base on completing each Bastion level in a speedrun, in all categories.

Wharf District

Workmen Ward

...

Other Resources

Remember that no tutorial is ever fully up to date - Always watch a couple of the most current runs at the top of the leaderboards to gain a better understanding of the speedrun.

LawyerDog's NG ASL tutorial

The most out of date tutorial, but in general it's still a great resource that every runner should watch at some point, even if you're only running any% categories.

Vulajin's Tutorials

NG any%

NG+ any%

Out of date routes, but lots of detail about individual level strats that are still relevant.

NG ASL

Up to date as of September 2014, intended to be a companion to LawyerDog's tutorial.

SnowySnowWolf's NG any% tutorial

Up to date as of October 2014, good overview of the current NG any% route.

Red_Buddha's NG+ File

Convenient if you want to run NG+ categories.

"Ok here is my ng+ file it only has the hammer, repeater, pike, and musket so if you use the mortar you would have to go get that yourself.

same thing as vulajin said just change the number to be whatever profile you want it to be."