Wharf District is the first area of the game; it's impossible to skip or do it out of order.

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Wharf District completed in New Game mode

Overview

The level is divided into three individual parts: The Rippling Walls, The Sole Regret and The Wharf District.

The Rippling Walls

This is where the game starts, and where the timing starts in a speedrun - at the same time as you gain control of the Kid. The first thing you have to do here is walk up to the Cael Hammer and pick it up in order to gain the ability to attack and Evade. Shortly after, there is a short cutscene that shows the first enemy in the game, a Gasfella that can be ignored. After rolling up-right, you will see a Fang Repeater, some debris blocking up the way, up the stairs a fountain and the entrance to the Sole Regret.

In order to progress, you will have to drink from the fountain, and kill a group of Squirts that spawn about 10 seconds afterwards. The Fang Repeater is optional.

The fastest way to complete this part, in every category, is to firstly ignore the Fang Repeater, destroy the debris blocking the stairs with a stationary Cael Hammer attack, roll up to the fountain, and drink from it. This will start the timer that will soon cause the Squirts to spawn. In the meantime, you must go back to pick up the Fang Repeater, return in time to kill the Squirts(which usually spawn on the 38-39 second if the level was done correctly so far), and finally enter the Sole Regret.

NG+ - thanks to the Hammer damage upgrades, the obstacles on the stairs can be cleared out with a single moving attack.

Sometimes if you interacted with the fountain too early after approaching it, the camera will get locked on the fountain(preventing you from going back and picking up the Repeater). You can wait it out, but a faster way to get rid of the camera lock is to fall down by rolling of the stairs. This camera lock can waste time in NG+ as you might not have enough time later to come back and clean out the railing around the fountain, thus making it harder to quickly kill the Squirts with the Repeater.

the Fountain Squirts

This fight will look different in NG and NG+. I recommend watching speedrun videos on the leaderboards to understand how to do it, as due to some RNG in the Squirts behaviour, many people have different styles of performing it.

In NG, the usual way to execute the Squirts fight is to first kill the top left and top right squirts, then walk up to manipulate every remaining Squirt into following you and finish them with one or two moving Hammer attacks.

NG+ categories will always shoot the Repeater with the homing upgrade from the left side of the entrance to the Sole Regret to kill all the Squirts in one sweep. Again, watch completed runs to see how this is done.

The Sole Regret

Part 2 of the Wharf District. Your objective is to go through a bunch of triggers to be able to leave this room as fast as possible. The first thing you have to do is roll once towards Rondy(the corpse of the bartender), and shoot it with your repeater until it's destroyed(try to avoid hitting the box that's next to him). This will cause the Bull Shield to fall down sooner. Pick it up immediately.

NG+ - If your repeater is upgraded with the homing fangs, try to move up slightly closer to Rondy before shooting him, as the Homing shots are random when there are no enemies around, and getting closer will make sure you don't waste time trying to hit him.

After this, three groups of enemies spawn: The first is a single turret behind the bar. As it spawns, in NG+ hit it once with a Hammer. In NG, there are two ways to destroy it: The fastest is to do an overhand attack, one Fang Repeater shot, and to immediately do a moving attack(Fang Repeater shots can be canceled very early). If you can't execute that consistently quickly, do one overhand and one underhand attack(both stationary attacks), that will also kill the turret, although it will be slightly slower.

After the turret is gone, two waves of boxes with small Gasfellas with them will start falling down. The fastest way to kill each is to roll into it and do two moving attacks, so after killing each of them roll into the next one and destroy it. You will easily deal with all of them before the Gasfellas come out, but if any do, two moving attacks are enough to kill them. There is more than one possible order of attacking the boxes, so look it up in tutorials and speedruns.

The last wave of enemies is a swarm of Squirts and one big Gasfella. To leave the Sole Regret you have to kill all but two of these Squirts. Killing the Gasfella is optional, but if you don't do it, you will waste time due to getting freeze frames while accidentally hitting him trying to hit the Squirts, he will make it harder to move around and might actually kill you if you let him hit you two or three times. The best way to go about this fight is to Counter the Gasfella on his attempt to hit you(this will leave him at 1 hp) and kill every Squirt necessary with moving attacks. Leave two Squirts alive and leave through the window in the right side of the room.

The Wharf District

Right after landing get up and roll towards the tree on the bottom of the screen. This should let you get past the brick wall that will soon fall without having to destroy it. Roll carefully through the planks and, if you're on New Game mode, pick up Whirlwind. Keep moving until you find yourself between a pair of turrets and in front of a gate. Shoot the left turret with your Repeater and counter the upcoming shot from the right side turret to kill it. This will open the gate. If the Squirts are making it hard for you to counter, you can stand close enough to the bottom turret to destroy it with two hammer attacks.

The gate that opens here can be clipped through, but it takes so much time that it's faster to just destroy the turrets.

NG+ - don't bother countering the other turret, you will kill it much faster with your upgraded Fang Repeater.

Open the Distillery and the Arsenal, then immediately close them(in the Distillery, position you cursor at the bottom of the screen and hit escape, then select Accept).

NG+ - New Game Plus has to equip the Cham-pain in the Distillery and a Brusher's Pike, a Scrap Musket, and the Pike Vault Skill in the Arsenal.

This is absolutely crucial to the route of both NG+ categories.

Keep moving through the level until you reach a switch. Activate it immediately to get the barge you're standing on moving towards the end of the Wharf District. The way to complete it diverges between NG and NG+:

NG+ - In NG+, you will now execute the Barge Pike Vault and a Pike Vault over the last gate.

The position and angle to execute the WD gate clip

NG - As soon as the barge reaches the stairs, move into the big platform and roll straight up towards the gate that you can see. Perform a clip through this gate.

Stand on the right side of the gate, in the corner of the invisible walls(red lines in the image), and roll as much as you can in one of the directions indicated by the blue line in the image. The angle that seems to work best is rolling towards the intersection of the blue and the second green line.

After getting through the gate pick up the Core, roll once up-right, then roll off the level to fall. If you didn't try rolling of the level too early, you should trigger a loading screen and be transported to the Bastion for the first time.