Anyone planning on giving this a go soon/have a route planned out?

Yeah it does suck unfortunately.

Thanks mate, appreciate it!

No need to worry for the late response. Check out my channel for some new skips I've discovered, I hope they help mate! :)

Oh and for the save and quit scenario; I tried saving and quitting (I believe) and had no success in my results. I can attempt to try it again with different save points or find a way to deliberately die after I complete the challenge to see if it updates the in game flags.

Alright, time to use my knowledge to explain things.

Firstly the invisible ledge in the Whomping Willow; StarrlightSims is right, you're too low unfortunately for it to be viable. There is a similar invisible ledge in the Forbidden Forest, but once again Harry is too low and in this instance, the ledge has no viable use. There is also a particular spot at the last spider web trigger whereby if Harry jumps off and hugs the angled surface, he will clip back into the cave underneath. Unfortunately this does not have any practical use as there is no necessity to back track in this area.

For the end sequences of the Avifors and Incendio challenges, there are flags that need to be triggered in order to continue progression in the game. In the Incendio challenge, you have to collect the Incendio Spellbook in order to trigger the flag to complete the challenge, however if you get the spellbook but don't complete the final puzzle, you will become softlocked as Ron will be waiting outside Flitwick's classroom saying, "Let's go into charms Harry" and won't be waiting at the bottom of the entrance hall as he should be. Another key indicator that your game is soft locked, is if Oliver Wood isn't waiting outside the Quidditch stadium, both of these occurred within my attempt in a run, you can go to my Twitch and look for the video titled "When a softlock ruins a good pace" to see what I'm talking about.

Now for the Avifors challenge. I attempted to use the Out of Bounds glitch on the Avifors Spellbook room to run both underneath and around the perimeter of the first room to reach the end door to potentially trigger the end cutscene and continue on with the game, I believe this was on one of my streams but I don't believe it was saved. Regardless, this unfortunately did not work as there has to be a flag associated with defeating the Gargoyle, because only then will the cutscene trigger if you have defeated the Gargoyle. I have not gone back to the Out of Bounds spot to see if you can complete the challenge going Out of Bounds once the Gargoyle is defeated. If this does in fact work, then we could attempt to find an Out of Bounds location in the first room of the Avifors Challenge to save at least 20-30 seconds as we won't have to wall sneak and won't get hurt by the ghosts which can potentially increase your time.

Yeah what he said^, it's really unfortunate that my skip doesn't have any practical use in the run.

In a segmented run the skip could be used, but that category does not exist yet. It may also be used in a TAS run if there were a way around the flag. Speaking of, if there is a way to activate the flag AND utilise the skip at the end of the challenge with time save, then this skip would be viable. However I have never been able to make this happen.

I attempted using the stair clip glitch to reach the Incendio Spell Book early without the necessity of defeating the two required Gargoyles, however Harry's height is too low from clipping into the stairs to reach the spell book, so you fall straight into the abyss. If there was a way to elevate Harry out of bounds using some sort of glitch, then this would be a viable path.

I also attempted skipping straight past the first Gargoyle and moving onto the second one using the stair clip glitch. Unfortunately this was not successful as the second Gargoyle would not initiate the battle, which I'm guessing is because there's a flag that triggers after defeating the first Gargoyle.

Finally, I tried initiating the first Gargoyle fight in the hallway behind the Gargoyle using the stair clip glitch and then running to the second Gargoyle, however this did not trigger the second Gargoyle, which means that you must defeat the first Gargoyle to trigger the second Gargoyle fight.

There is massive potential time save if this glitch had practical use, such as; skipping the Gargoyle fights, getting straight to the spell book and skipping the final puzzle, but we are limited by the in game flags and Harry's height out of bounds.

Do you guys reckon it's possible to trigger these flags alternatively? Or does this glitch have no practical use in a run due to my findings? Let me know, cheers. :)

Cheers mate, I appreciate the info!

So it looks like I'll just have to homebrew my Wii and purchase an NTSC copy of the game which is a little annoying but not too much of a problem.

Another Update!

Unless you guys were aware of this already, the Xbox has significantly faster load times than the GameCube counterpart. I stumbled upon a HP2 comparison video which detailed this finding, but also viewing JAsh15's run it became apparent to me that the load times are undoubtedly faster.

So as a verdict, the fastest run comes down to two factors: NTSC version and Xbox.

• NTSC as mentioned above, is undoubtedly faster to run than the PAL version of the game.
• Xbox has significantly faster load times, which has the potential to reduce the WR time by a fair margin.

So assuming that the NTSC vs PAL scenario carries over to the Xbox platform, then we can deduce that playing on the Xbox using the NTSC version will be the fastest way to run this game.

So if the load times aren't affected by the USB vs Disk scenario, then I would be all good to run NTSC on my PAL Wii console?

Considering I now own 2 copies of the game (due to the first being heavily scratched) it feels redundant to purchase another copy. A theoretical way around this would be to transfer an iso of the game onto a bootable USB or other bootable device. Would this be considered legitimate in terms of running this game? To explain, I'm not playing on a disk, but rather the USB which may affect the load times of the game in addition to the regional differences in load times. Would this be allowed for submitting a run?

Cheers.

Also JAsh15 I'm not sure if you're still around, but yeah that softlock happened to me TWICE during two different runs, one of which was on really really good pace (at the time) and it was really annoying. I don't know what caused it to occur but I hope it never happens again. If anyone knows how it can potentially happen, let us know!

After doing some research, I've found out that the NTSC version of the game on Xbox and GCN allow up to 60fps whereas the PAL version of both these platforms only supports up to 50fps. I'm no scientist, but I'm guessing that this has a significant impact on both the flow and speed of the game overall (I noticed it felt slower watching my stream from last night than my previous streams).

Thank you StarrlightSims for your help, I really appreciate it!

However does this mean I'm gonna have to play on an NTSC copy of the game in order to achieve the best possible time? If so that would require an additional international Wii and copy of the game (in the instance that an emulated version is illegitimate).

Any thoughts on what I should do for my next run? Or how I should go about continuing these runs?

Hey everyone, last night I made the transition from an emulated version of this game, to a legitimate disk using my Nintendo Wii. I made this transition because I got a replacement disk and component cables for enhanced video quality.

More importantly, during my attempted/completed runs last night, I felt as if my load times were slightly increased than what I was previously used to. There are three factors to consider:

• The first being that an emulator may speed up load times.
• The second is that I was using the NTSC (US) version on my emulator, whereas now I'm playing the PAL version which may also affect the load times slightly.
• The third factor could be that I'm using a Nintendo Wii, which essentially emulates the GameCube platform.

Any additional info/help from the HP2 console community would be greatly appreciated to help identify whether or not there are any load time differences considering these factors.

Let me know what platform you guys use (Wii/GCN), because it would be very useful!

Cheers.

Sounds good mate! I'll showcase the new skip I discovered in the Incendio challenge within my next stream which will hopefully beat WR time due to the massive time save for my skip :)