The Gem-Skip any% Tutorial
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The Gem-Skip any% Tutorial
Updated 3 years ago by cominixo

Edit 2021-03-10: gonengazit has edited this guide to give a more accurate overview of the easiest and best strats, thanks to discoveries from the last 2 years.

Introduction

Hey there, welcome to the gem-skip any% tutorial! Before we start I just want to give a huge shoutout to everyone who contributed to this category: Meep, justinj, and many other people, and also to everyone in the Celeste Classic community, you guys are awesome! This category is actually pretty hard, but with enough practice you can get a pretty good run and maybe even go for WR (which is pretty free right now let's be honest). So let's get started.

First of all, be sure you have enough time to actually do a first run of this, it can take about 2/1.5 hours to do it without any practice, and only a handful people have even completed a gemskip run deathless.

As I said earlier, you don't really need to go for the fastest strats or have a good pre-gem, most levels are hard enough to make you die at least a few times. The way I'd recommend starting to run this is by starting a run and learning the strats as you play.

I'll only cover the levels that actually change from regular any%, if you're running this you probably know how to do everything pre-gem.

If you want, here are links to most of the gifs used in this tutorial: https://imgur.com/a/OLsBjz4 https://imgur.com/a/CKM3Ztn

2200m

There are 2 possible approaches for 2200m- chestful, where you abuse the chest animation to get enough height to exit, or chestskip, where instead you get a boost. Chestful is generally considered easier and more beginner friendly, but chestskip is faster, and can also serve as a backup if you've opened the chest.

There are mainly two differents strats that can be done for chestful, this one is the easiest and best strat to start with:

https://i.imgur.com/4nh7bDg.gif

The one below is a faster way to do it (even faster than regular any%) and can be pretty consistent.

https://i.imgur.com/NwZ70Sb.gif

On both strats you're basically doing the same thing: dashing at the same time you open the chest. You'll know it worked when your hair is blue while the chest animation is playing. After that you just want to spam jump while the animation is playing and then dash up when you have enough height.

For chestskip there are also 2 approaches:

This one is easier to execute and also isn't based on your initial position in the level:

https://i.imgur.com/F5KGR9x.gif

You want to stand in the ditch, then jump, and dash here without wallsliding beforehand: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/496751398831259669/742664165017124924/unknown.png

Afterwards, you want to wallslide all the way down, and jump here: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/496751398831259669/742664334605418526/unknown.png

If you do it all correctly, you should regain your red hair while rising up, and then you can then jump and updash towards the exit.

The second chestskip strat is the fastest known way to complete the level:

https://i.imgur.com/Cn1kvzy.gif

Buffer an upright dash, buffer a jump, and then right dash around when madeline's center is above the edge of the chest. afterwards, buffer a left press, and walljump a frame before landing on the ground. If you do it all correctly, you should boost as before. Note that this strat is very precise, and isn't recommended except at the highest levels of play.

2300m

Now things start to get a bit more complicated, this level is one of the harder ones when you're starting to run this category so don't feel bad if you don't get it.

For this strat you can choose to do a double walljump or not. It's usually considered easier to do a single walljump which looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/J6FwHw8.gif

The double walljump strat looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/wH8P0U2.gif

The only thing you have to note when doing double walljump is that you can't do the first walljump as soon as possible, you have to grab the wall a bit more and then start spamming jump for the next one. The double walljump will give you 1 pixel (or so) of extra height so you can reach that cornerjump more easily.

The double walljump strat is a bit slower, but unless the run you want to beat is deathless and super optimized it doesn't really matter, and you should do what's more comfortable for you.

For the first diagonal dash you don't want to be too close to the border of the level or the platform you start on, somewhere in the middle should be fine. As you can see in the input display, after the up dash you spam jump, hold right and hope you get it. This is the same for both strats.

2400m

You can do this level many different ways, the way I do it is like this:

https://i.imgur.com/P15FkvL.gif If you're running this on new Celeste, you can't do the strat like this, you have to go to the left until you hit the end of the level, go back and then do the rest of the strat normally (you should be running this on regular Pico-8 though).

Here are a few different strats for the ending:

https://i.imgur.com/1hyBluH.gif

https://i.imgur.com/OCIFAEw.gif These 2 strats do basically the exact same inputs to start, and you can react to which you get for the exit. On the block, quickly turn left then dash, then buffer a jump. If you get blue hair, just spam jump and you can cornerjump out. If not, you can do a late upleft dash, and reach the left wall

https://i.imgur.com/ZNTgh8J.gif For this strat, position madeline so that her left foot is 1 pixel away from the ground, then do an empty dash. You should then be able to upleft dash, and cornerjump/walljump out.

The start can be done like this: https://i.imgur.com/rmXYxUw.gif You can do whatever beginning/ending strat you want, whatever makes you more consistent at it works. This level and the next ones aren't too bad to do, but get ready for 2700m.

2500m

This level is pretty easy, there's only one good beginner strat to do, which is this:

https://i.imgur.com/646Nnep.gif Jumping after the first dash makes it easier to do the up dash after the first spring.]

There's another strat that I won't go in much detail which involves the ceiling spike clip done in any%, it's pretty hard and you probably shouldn't do it unless you have a deathless run and are going for some pretty fast times. If you want to, though you can do something like this: https://i.imgur.com/uqdcJyq.gif

2600m

For 2600m the only strat I know of is this: https://i.imgur.com/ZT2Td2A.gif The beginning is pretty simple, after you do that and get to the platform next to the spikes, you want to jump, dash up and try to walljump at the right time so you can get the cornerjump, this is the same ending used in the faster strat of any%.

2700m

Oh boy. Now this is the hardest level in the run (and maybe in any category of this game), this is the "safe" strat: https://i.imgur.com/PPHZRmp.gif

Now let's break this down. For the beginning done in the gif you want to start the level by holding jump and right, then upright dash when madeline is here: https://i.imgur.com/hN3JZ9r.jpg

After that, hold left, and updash in the same height as the gif, then hold right. If you timed everything correctly, you should clip the spikes, and be able to reach the other side.

There are a few variations for the beginning and the end of this strat. You could start with an empty dash and do a spikejump like so: https://i.imgur.com/FMNoLs9.gif you can check out a detailed overview for cues for this strat here

You can also start with a regular right dash and and just dash up to get the balloon without doing the spike walljump, which would look like this: https://i.imgur.com/GD9tiLV.gif

With these variations you might have to jump right after you spike clip, or you'll die like I did in the 3rd gif. After you get past this, you have to start going towards the left wall, walljump at the right time and then up dash. You can't wait too long to do the walljump or you'll be too low on the wall with the balloon and might not be able to reach the exit. After you get the balloon, spam jump and hold left, you want to stay on that wall and try not to lose too much height, you'll want to wait for the balloon to respawn and then when you're coming back from a walljump do an up dash, go left, walljump then another up dash to leave the room. At the wall with the balloon, some people also prefer to do the up dash right after they do the walljump instead of doing it on their way back, do whatever you feel more comfortable with.

So let's say the strat above is way too easy for you and you want to take your torture to the next level, well you're in luck. https://i.imgur.com/fhbe2kG.gif

In theory you could do this with any beginning, but I highly recommend doing the first one if you go for this, becuase it gives you the most consistent subpixels. The main hard part of the strat is the ending. You have to walljump at the perfect height so you can reach that cornerjump without dying to the spikes or simply not making it at all. This is a very hard strat, and I only recommend you do it once you've got a deathless run and are trying to get a very good time. After you do this, the next levels aren't so bad.

2800m

This strat is probably the best one to do on this level: https://i.imgur.com/lvqJdzx.gif The only tricky part about this level is getting the double cornerjump at the balloon, for this you need to check the height of the balloon at the start of the level: if it's going down then you'll probably have to wait a bit until you go for the cornerjump, otherwise you can (probably) make it without any problems. When you're dashing from the crumble blocks to the balloon you don't want to be too much to the right or you'll not get your dash back. After grabbing the balloon go a bit left and dash up, then go full left until you hit the other crumble, your parity should be right so you can just spike walljump off the wall to the right, then hold left and spam jump to exit. instead of dashing off, you can try walking off and jumping late. I personally prefer dashing off, but you should mess around and do the one you're more comfortable with.

2900m

This strat is almost the same as the one in any%, and goes like this: https://i.imgur.com/YuAFDDJ.gif The only thing that changes is the way you exit, you don't have the two dashes so you have to go right to get the balloon, walljump and then dash diagonally to finally exit. I don't really have much to say about this strat, it's the same start as the any% one so you just have to get the timing right.

You can also do it like this: https://i.imgur.com/tAFAKYF.gif

There's also a harder, but faster strat that you can do: https://imgur.com/jRQyZDk.gif

the basic idea is: buffer a jump off the spikeclip, then at the correct time walljump and 1 frame later upright dash, and if done correctly, you'll clip the spikes.

3000m

You're almost there! This level is not so bad too. There's one main way to do it: https://i.imgur.com/I6hxdtJ.gif

You want to walk off the crumble block, then upright dash in between the spikes. After the dash you want to release all directional input, and walljump off the block. If you did this correctly, you should clip the spikes, and be able to exit. Instead of the ending shown in the gif, you can veer left and upright dash, which could be a bit easier: https://i.imgur.com/9p517ty.gif

If you don't want to do that strat for some reason, there's a different one you can do (though this strat is slower and a bit harder, so not very recommended). There are two different ways to start it, I'll start with the one I do, which is this: https://i.imgur.com/YmZlIRU.gif This start is more rythm based, you want to start holding dash + down + right and you'll line up with the balloon so you can dash up to do the spike clip. I try to do the dash after getting the balloon at the same height as the first spike on the right wall. The other strat looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/CRtnssr.gif It's basically the same but without the dash at the start, in my opinion it's way harder to line up than the first one, but some people think it's better like this.

End

So, if you followed the tutorial, you reached the summit with a nice red hair! Congratulations! Be sure to check out our Discord to get that gem-skip role as a reward for all your suffering, and submit your run to the leaderboards. See ya!

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