Freedom Planet/Mechanics and Bugs/Lilac
From SDA Knowledge Base
Contents
Basic Mechanics
Lilac's mechanics, on the whole, give her an incredible amount of control over her aerial movement and a wide array of combat options. Her running speed is also the highest. Together, this makes Lilac by far the fastest character in the game. While fast, however, she cannot simply run to her top speed, therefore much of her playstyle revolves around using her abilities and the environment to gain and maintain momentum. For the sake of keeping this page readable, it will be assumed that you have at least knowledge on the basics of how these moves work. Also, controls will be simplified to A = Jump, B = Attack, C = Special(dragon boost).
Dragon Boost
(C) Your primary way of gaining speed; Note that it doesn't bring you to top speed, just adds a large amount to your current speed. A large portion of Lilac's routing involves squeezing in as many boosts as you can, but reckless use can screw you over if your meter doesn't recharge by the time you get to an area where you really need it. If you boost upwards, you'll be subject to air-friction when you come out of it. You can mitigate that by dive-kicking as soon as the boost ends. In some places it's beneficial to press the button early and let Lilac slide into place while charging the boost.
Dive-kick
(↓+B while in air) You'll spend about 75% of your airtime divekicking, mostly because it negates air-friction(i.e. if you're divekicking while you do it, you can jump without losing speed). In other cases, you're just falling and want to fall faster. Can do counter-intuitive things to your jump arc(see: Float-Kick, below).
Cyclone
(A while in air) Cyclone is great; You can gain extra height on your jump anywhere, and you can manipulate its arc by holding ↑ or ↓. Worth noting, that while using cyclone consumes your meter, it does not actually require meter to use. Basically, it will take meter if it can, but it'll work just fine even if the boost meter is completely empty. If you want to cancel your cyclone early(and in 90% of cases you do), kicking works for that. Cancelling your cyclones lets you get to the ground faster, preserve your meter, and due to the speed your meter recharges, it lets you actually boost right after using a cyclone to extend your jump.
Ground Cyclone
(↓+B while running) They work exactly like normal cyclones, except it's easier to ignore air friction with it; Basically, if you're cycloning at an angle higher than flat horizontal, you'll slow down. And since you can just 'run' off the edge of something while cycloning, not going higher than horizontal is easy. Ironically, if you're actually using this to travel across the ground, you're doing it wrong. Unconfirmed, but slopes seem to have a bigger impact on your speed if you cyclone up/down them.
Uppercut
(↑+B while grounded) Mainly used as an alternative to jumping in certain places, because it has a weird arc and a delay. If you press ↑B and run off a ledge during the delay, you'll fall, but then the uppercut will go off anyway and still give you a lot of lift, which is great if you need to duck under a low ceiling for a moment. Does odd things if you're running on a wall or ceiling when you use it, but to put it simply it always tries to push you straight up, even if you're upside-down or sideways. It just has problems doing that sometimes if the ceiling is in the way.
Damage
Lilac's damage output is very simple: Cyclone is bad, everything else is good. The reason being cyclone may hit more often, but only does half the damage per tick as anything else, so literally anything else will get you more damage output. It's not useless though; it still hits all around you, and it's still a good way to increase height so you can get more attacks in during a single jump. Dragon Boost will do the most damage by far, if you can place it right. So if you can find a good opportunity to use it, do so, but don't bother if it'll only damage them for a few frames. Otherwise, all your attacks do basically the same damage, so it's up to where the target is in relation to you. Most of the time, that means kick them a lot.
Techniques
- Long Dragon Boost
- Stuck-Boost
- Bend-Boost
- Brain Damage/Wall-Climb
- Superswim
- Superswim-climb
- Slope-Kick
- Float-Kick
- Dive-Kick Slide
- Long Uppercut
- Stopclone
- Cyclone Slope-Jump
- Spring Cyclone
Major Tricks
- Stairs Zip(Relic Maze)
- Barrel Zip(Thermal Base)
- Box Zip(Thermal Base)
- Water Skip(Thermal Base)
- Lift Zip(FD2)
- Blocks Zip(FD4)
- The Most Bad-Ass Damage-Boost(FD4)