Darksiders
From SDA Knowledge Base
General Information
This guide will cover the Warmastered Edition of the game on PC, using the most current version. Keyboard and mouse are the preferred method for speedrunning, as it allows for more precision and extra keybinds that make the run much faster. The spec requirements are not demanding, but if you notice excess loading hiccups while playing, lowering the Texture Quality in the advanced options settings should alleviate them. Framerate is incredibly important, however, it affects things like attack speed and the physics glitches, so if you're getting under 60-100 it's recommended to play in a lower resolution window so that the tricks work properly.
For faster resetting/launching of the game, it's recommended to rename the startup video files. You can find these in the game's install folder under \media\videos, you want to rename 7 files: AMD_Logo_movie, Kaiko_logo, main_menu_intro, start_screen_intro, THQ_LOGO1280x720, THQNORDIC_LOGO_Color_white, and Vigil_Logo1280x720. This skips the long series of movies on starting the game, and about 5 seconds each time you quit out to the menu. Renaming any other files affects scenes during gameplay, so we don't encourage that.
Timing is done with the in-game timer. It's active anytime the game world is running, meaning in-game cutscenes count toward your time, but menus, Vulgrim's shop, and movie cutscenes do not. All movie cutscenes can be skipped by holding RMB. The game's difficulty settings don't have an impact on the time, so everyone plays on Apocalyptic. The only difference is that enemies deal more damage to War, so while learning it's advised to play on Easy for the couple of fights that might be tough. Be sure to disable subtitles in the game options, when they're present it hides the minimap, which you'll use through a lot of the run to keep track of where you're going.
Glossary
- Focus: This game's version of Z-targeting, activated by holding Shift or toggled with F. Locks onto the closest enemy and generally behaves as a Zelda Z-target would.
- Q-mode: Aim mode. Gets canceled with weapon attacks, but not Gear usage.
- Gear: Sub-weapon.
