Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow

Techniques

Land Cancel

This works with knives, swords, rapiers, katana, punches, guns (not the RPG) and bullet souls. Jump. Right before you hit the ground, attack with one of the previously listed weapons or fire off your bullet soul. You'll notice that as soon as you hit the ground Soma's animation is cut short and there will be no lag from whatever attack you performed. By performing a series of very small jumps and land-cancelling an attack at the end of each one, you can attack much, MUCH faster than usual. Very handy.

Backdash Cancel

This works with all weapons and bullet souls. Attack or fire off your bullet soul. In the middle of the animation, hit L. Whatever Soma is doing will be cancelled. Note: You cannot back dash cancel a weapon attack that was used in the middle of a back dash. Basically what this means is that you can't back dash cancel weapon attacks over and over. Please notice I specified "weapon" attacks. That is because you can back dash cancel soul attacks any number of times. Very handy, especially with your back against a wall. Also note that you can't back dash cancel an attack performed while ducking.

You can cancel a backdash by crouching, and by only tapping crouch, you can then do another weapon attack that is backdash cancelable.

Special Cancel

Works with any weapon that has a special attack and bullet souls. Attack or fire off a bullet soul and then immediately use your special attack. Just like with the back dash, a weapon's special attack will cancel whatever Soma is doing. Especially useful with Death Scythe because it will reduce the lag after an attack and allow you to hit with a mighty special attack that much faster. Note: You can't special cancel an attack performed while ducking.

Werewolf Cancel

Works with bullet souls that either do not limit how rapidly you can use them, or bullet souls that have a very high limit on how rapidly you can fire them. Works best with Killer Clown, but also works with Slime, Slogra, Warg, Almaric Sniper and various others. For purposes of Boss Rush, you will only be using Werewolf with Killer Clown. Hold up. Hold R. While still holding both up AND R, press Y as fast as you can. Everything in front of you should die. In New Game+ runs, movement is done almost entirely with Ukoback + Werewolf.

Cutall/Cinquedia Sequence Break

There area a number of switches in the castle that open gates. Normally, these can only be activated from one side and only viewable from the other. However, because the special of the Cutall and Cinquedia moves Soma forward through objects, by doing them onto the switches, it activates the gate and lets you through. This allows one to skip Rahab, Gergoth, and Puppet Master.

Succubus Glitch

Equip the Succubus soul (Monster No. 086) and use it. You will notice a red aura around Soma while he performs the move. For a short moment after this red aura vanishes, Soma's momentum will be reset. The Succubus soul's animation can be interrupted by most weapon specials, including daggers and axes, whose specials move you forwards or upwards, respectively. The red aura, however, stays as long as it would have taken the animation to finish. This allows you to warp through walls, opening up many more sequence breaks and exploitable bugs.

Zipping without Succubus

As demonstrated in the TAS video, it's possible to reset Soma's momentum by timing it to a cutscene's activation, with the same potential effects as the Succubus glitch.

Run Types

Still up for debate, but all possible categories would be as follows

New Game - 100% (Rules and 100% specification up for debate)
New Game - any% without warping (Uses the Cutall SB, but no zipping or SG)
New Game - any% with in-bounds SG (Uses Cutall SB and SG only between rooms)
New Game - any% with out-of-bounds SG (Uses Cutall SB and SG to go outside of the map, collecting glitched souls and skipping portions of the map)
New Game - any% TAS Route (It's unclear how feasible this is for realtime play, but uses non-SG zipping to warp to the end boss and skip the fight)

New Game+ - 100% (Rules and 100% definition up for debate)
New Game+ - any% without warping (Uses the Cutall SB, but no zipping or SG)
New Game+ - any% with SG, without glitched souls (Uses SG to go straight to Menace after Flying Armor)
New Game+ - any% with SG, with glitched souls (Uses SG and glitched souls to skip Flying Armor and go straight to Menace)

New Game - Julius Mode

Boss Rush - Soma
Boss Rush - Julius

Refer to the discussion page for discussion about finalizing a list of categories.

Run Routes

New Game 100%

New Game any%

Map

Segmentation walkthrough

Segment 1: Tutorial, Yoko Cutscene. Get at least 1 Axe Armor soul, Axe if possible. Save to the right of Flying Armor. Pretty standard, but skipping the first save Satoryu did. It's probably pretty impossible to get both a soul and axe, but one can always hope I guess.

Segment 2: Get 2nd Axe Armor soul, defeat Flying Armor. Save in Wizard's Lab. The TAS fight against Flying Armor is amazing, although a little unreasonable. Also, doing the jump in the room after him without the flying armor soul should mandatory.

Segment 3: Get Manticore Soul, buy Axe and recovery items, Synthesize Bhuj, save before Balore. Again, removing a segment from Satoryu's run. Seeing as how Bat company was the only reason to get the Bomber Armor soul, and it's better to use Ukoback on it (who knew this was such a good soul?), there's no reason to get it or save in The Lost Village.

Segment 4: Defeat Balore, save in entrance of Garden of Madness. No changes. The only thing of note is to not use Mind Ups.

Segment 5: Activate Garden of Madness warp, get Yorick, save in Dark Chapel entrance. Pretty terrible segment. I tried saving in the second save point as groobo did, but it's definitely further out of the way. It's also more prone to error obviously, and when getting Yoricks it's easier to just let it slide. I got ghost'd off of the platform in the room with the witch and had to wait for it to go all the way up and come back down again. Easily lost about 5-7 seconds just on that.

Segment 6: Defeat Dmitrii (7 Yorick, 2 axe hits), defeat Malphas. Warp to Garden of Madness, save before Dario. A long segment, but the bosses are super easy. If you count the Yoricks on Dario, then you don't have to Mind Up between battles, and you'll have enough for the 3 Yoricks you can do at the start of the Malphas fight. If he lands during the fight, Soma will have enough MP for another 2-3 Yoricks. I usually take the time penalty to collect the orb thing after the fight, just to conserve on items and make sure I don't die because it's better to skip the Dark Chapel save point (saves about 11-13 seconds). The other note is that I skip the Ninja Suit since I pick up Olrox's Suit at Paranoia.

Segment 7: Dario, get Cutall from puzzle. Save in Demonic Dollhouse on the way back. Strategy is Bhuj -> backdash -> Yorick. Get at least 2 kick hits for 6 total damage, then you need 6 sets of Bhuj/Yorick, and then a last Axe hit to finish him off. I got a really good fight doing this, took 17 seconds.

Segment 8: Get Lilith, climb the tower, and save to the right of zephyr. Long segment with a lot of running through rooms with spikes, Medusa Heads, and Imps, but I'll see if I can keep it as one segment.

Segment 9: Defeat Zephyr, warp to Wizard's Lab, go to Subterranean Hell, get Ukoback, save to the right of the waterfall. If I'm going to get Dead Pirate, I'll have to split this segment into two. If that soul doesn't prove necessary, then this segment will be a run all the way to Silent Ruins.

Segment 10: Get Dead Pirate and save before Bat Company.

Segment 11: Defeat Bat Company, warp to The Clocktower, run to The Pinnacle and save.

Segment 12: Get Killer Clown, defeat Paranoia (Ukoback spam first form, 1 round kill; Ukoback/Bhuj 2nd form, 2-3 rounds dependent on level, 1-2 Mind Ups dependent on level), run toward Aguni and save near there. It's a little dangerous to do this, but even if you take the time to get the replenishing orb, and take a little extra time in the riskier rooms, it'd still be faster than adding another save.

Segment 13: Break the secret entrance above Aguni's place and get the Fragarach and Satan's Ring, defeat Aguni? Save back at the first place in Pinnacle. I really don't know how to approach this fight very well. It looks like I might just be doing mostly Bhuj attacks and however many Axes I can throw. With the HP he has, it'll be about a 2 minute fight.

Segment 14: Get Erynis, watch the cutscene, don't die or mess up and make it to the save at the bottom of the mine and save so you don't waste the Erynis drop. Probably going to be a really frustrating segment. One thing would be to use the warp to go to The Lost Village and restock on items. I won't be able to judge until I know how many Mind Ups I have and just how many Erynii Death will take (or even what the strategy will have to be). It might be the right thing to do anyway since between Paranoia, Aguni, Death, and Abaddon the 5 Mind Ups and 1 Mana Prism won't hold out. Blah, that's so far out of the way...

Segment 14: DEATH. SAVE.

Segment 16: Abyss up to Abaddon. By using jump kicks you can slide past the fire geysers before they actually go off, which saves 3 potions.

Segment 17: Abaddon and the rest of the Abyss. Get Black Panther, use Abyss warp to go to Hammer's Shop and restock on recovery items.

Segment 18: Menace.

New Game any% with in-bounds SG

Map

Segmentation Walkthough