Bastion
From SDA Knowledge Base
This game has a run page on SDA!
- 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.
- Welcome to the Bastion Speedrun Knowledge Base
- The aim of these wiki pages is to store up-to-date information on Bastion speedrunning - techniques, strategies, routes and glitches for all categories.
- It is not meant to be replace existing tutorials - but will hopefully be more up-to-date and contain more in-depth explanations to facilitate gaining better understanding of the game's mechanics by existing and future runners. It is, however, still recommended to start out with a video tutorial to quickly grasp the basics of the speedrun, and then come back here to learn the most current strategies and expand your knowledge.
Contents
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.
The IRC channel and the SDA thread are both great places to ask questions, also feel free to provide feedback on this knowledge base there:
- IRC channel
- irc.speedrunslive.com - #bastion
- Discord server
- https://discord.gg/0jOLZzV5X7OtmAzD
- 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.
Recent updates on the wiki
[11/12/2015] - Added a link to the full NG Any% guide.
[12/01/2015] - Added a video on the new Lunky Drop setup
[10/01/2015] - Added the History Books setup to the NG+ Any% route
Speedrunning the game
Learning
One of the best things about Bastion runs is their great learning curve. If you're just starting out, you can learn the basics of your category(the first thing you will need to memorize is the route) 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 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. 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. Loading screens are nearly the same length for almost everyone(about ~4.4 seconds) and have insignificant variance of up to 7 frames.
An important thing to do 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 much 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)
- Currently Any% categories are usually 13-15 minutes long, and ASL runs are around 3 times longer at 45-50 minutes
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
Basic Gameplay Mechanics
Techniques
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. They assume that you mostly know your way through the level(check the Individual Level videos if you don't), and focus on explaining speedrun level strategies.
Each of these will eventually be accompanied by a recording of the level being done in both NG and NG+. These videos will not necessarily have perfectly optimized movement, but should correctly execute all of the current strategies and techniques. If anyone wishes to contribute recordings that are higher quality, are better played, or contain updated strategies, they are welcome to.
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 see if you are following the current strategies.
Official developer Steam support thread for Bastion: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2061171
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
Out of date routes, but lots of detail about individual level strats that are still relevant.
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 NG any% route.
Haosedge's and Snowy's Full NG Any% Guide
A combination of Snowy's old tutorial, and a video on every new strategy by Haosedge.
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.
"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."
