Any% routes and boss strategies

On Any%, some biomes successions are more optimized/recommended than others because of their average likelihood. Here is the empirical knowledge we have so far.

Biomes 1 and 2

Village > Academy

This is the standard route I would suggest when discovering Any% speedrunning. The Village is on average the fastest route to Academy, and Academy is more consistant than Aqueduct: it lasts around 2min-2min30s and you can usually find some equipment in it (through Yellow Doors).

In Village, the way to Academy is mostly down after Azadeh (the Village Chief). You have to look to a straight down path, there are two or three different patterns. If you’re unlucky, you’ll get none of those patterns and Academy will be long to find. Note that sometimes you'll find this pattern but later in the biome, so possibly close to Aqueduct exit.

Pattern 1

Pattern 2

Hun’s Camp > Aqueduct

This is the average fastest route when you’re looking for a competitive time.

In Hun’s Camp, the way to Aqueduct is always straight to the right. The fastest way to go there is with Double Daggers: reach a high position and then with special attacks you’ll get through the biome in around 1 min. See the section about Double Daggers in Weapons guide for more informations.

Aqueduct may last only 1 min (or even a bit less) if you’re lucky, so it’s worth going through it. But since it’s less consistent than Academy you’ll need some practice to know where to look for an exit in it. Also you’re not sure to get a weapon/tool altar in your way out so you’re a bit dependent on which starting weapons you got.

Mines > Aqueduct

This is for very motivated players, or seeded runs. Mines rely a lot on RNG, but if you’re lucky you could find a very fast way to Aqueduct on top left. Looking for it will need a lot of grinding/reset so I think we would go for it only if the World Record goes quite low.

Boss 1

Altan (Baths)

Altan is in theory the fastest boss to beat at this stage, because he’s stiller than Berude. If you have saw blade in particular it’s very efficient on this boss.

Important note: fire and resin don’t work on Altan because of the water. So the Censer is useless against him: prefer Berude if you have this weapon. Also the medallion combination with Sticky Dash or Sticky Kick + Critical Resin will not work there.

There are three phases where Altan will generate a shield on himself. On Any% you play with all skills unlocked, so thanks to Verethragna Horns you can break any shield with only one hit with any tool. Don’t forget to hit Altan with your tool each time he generates it (hitting him with a rock works as well).

Berude (Outer Ramparts)

Berude is slower than Altan but not that much. Sawblade will be less efficient on her because she’s less still, but if you get a good pattern then you could get a sub 50 sec.

There’s one moment in the fight where she will generate a new shield. Note that if you kick her at that moment it will interrupt the shield from generating. But it’s not that important in Any% because you can break it with your tool.

Ideally, to kill her quickly you have to try to get to phase 2 (shield generating) after two of her attacking patterns.

Biome 3

Temple of Atar

This is by far the fastest biome 3, and since you can chose your next biome after any Boss 1 there’s no reason to go another way on Any%.

In Temple, the average route to biome 4 is either top right or bottom right. If the way you're going takes a turn to the left, go back the other way (typically if you were going top right and it's going left, then go back to bottom right). Then it’s totally random between Garden and District. If you’re lucky, it’s District…

Biome 4

Craftsmen’s District

This is by far the fastest biome 4, except if you have a bad RNG seed. Getting first Warehouse or Inner Ramparts exit is kinda random. On the way you should find Yellow Doors with some equipment in them.

Please note that the exit will always be down in a building, so as soon as you find a wooden floor which you can go through then go take a look because it might be the way to the exit.

On this example the exit was Inner Ramparts but you get the idea.

Flooded Gardens

This biome is annoying for two reasons: the Warehouse is most of the time more far away than Inner Ramparts, and the equipment is not on the way to Warehouse.

Warehouse can be found on the far right of the biome. Stay on ground floor to find it. If you have Double Daggers, the fastest way to go there is to climb up as much as possible and then dash with special attacks to the right.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find equipment on the level just below, but most of the time you need to go quite far down to find some.

Inner Ramparts exit is also down. If you feel brave enough (like if you have a very good equipment) you could try and go for a quick way to Inner Ramparts (with good RNG it can be done in around 1 min).

Boss 2

Kaali (Warehouse)

Kaali is way faster than Baatar to kill. That’s because she doesn’t have invincibility phases (or at least those are very brief). The strategy with her is very simple because she’s quite still. Note that when she goes on the side of the arena she will teleport to the other side if you reach her before she starts attacking.

Some ennemies will appear during the fight. The bombers’ explosive projectiles and the bombcrawlers deal damage to Kaali, so a good way to kill her is to have them explode on her.

Her weapon is quite good, so I suggest you never pick up its blueprint so that she will always drop her weapon while dying. That way, if you have a bad equipment you can pick it up to save your fight against Nogaï.

Baatar (Inner Ramparts)

So you were unlucky and got Inner Ramparts exit? I’m so sorry.

Baatar is slow to kill because he moves a lot, generates a shield on a regular basis but mostly because he has several invincibility phases. There’s a pattern which you could avoid if you’re lucky, where he will generate a horizontal laser while standing far away: you can only dodge the attacks and don’t deal any damage to him.

There are also two phases where he’s invincible and generate a corrupted fire that moves up, forcing you to climb up to the next arena. You want to deal as much damage as possible so that he goes to those phases as soon as possible.

Sometimes he will generate a shield and call some flying bombs. Note that if you kick them they will fly back to him and deal a lot of damage (breaking the shield as well). You need to kick before they reach you (it looks like the prince’s leg is longer than you would expect).

Besieged Palace

There you will always have a shop with one health boost, two diamond weapons and two medallions. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a game breaking medallion (like Puncturing Tool), which would carry you against Nogaï.

Don’t waste time with the Palace rooms: once you’re done shopping, go through the main gate to meet your destiny.

Throne Room

Nogaï 1 (aka King Nogaï, the Indomitable)

If you’re lucky, you’ll mostly get static phases where Nogaï hits the floor and waits while blocks are falling from the ceiling. If you have saw blade it’s your time to shine.

If you have Kaali’s Scythe, you’ll be a bit annoyed at the end of this static phase because Nogaï will turn to face you (he’s the only boss who does that).

During his laser phase, when he’s up in the air, you can try to put saw blades on him (it’s a bit tricky but doable).

There’s not much more to say about this boss, it’s quite straightforward.

Nogaï 2 (aka Nogaï, the Broken)

Against this boss you have to optimize your moves to avoid wasting time. The favoured way to do it is to always stay on the left of the screen (if you prefer you can stay to the right, it won’t change anything). If you change from one side to the other during the fight you’ll lose time, and the climbing is a bit different from one side to the other so it’s better if you’re used to one of them.

Two piece of equipment are very powerful against this boss:

• saw blade, because he doesn’t move at all ;
• Slicing Flames (with the mace), because he has multiple hit boxes.

If you have saw blade, keep your energy to place it on the head (except if you generate enough energy, like with Corrupted Tonic: in that case use it also on the hands).

If you have Slicing Flames and the mace, use special attacks as much as possible. In particular, if you get the pattern where Nogaï hits the ground with his fists, do special attacks around you: even if the attacks won’t hit anyone, the slicing flames will reach the boss’s head.

Note that you can kick back the tridents that Nogaï sometimes generates, dealing a lot of damage to the boss. The easiest way to do it is to climb on the middle level and face right (or face left if you’re on the right of the arena), then wait for the middle trident to reach you and kick it. You could also jump and kick the trident above, it should deal damage to the head. You'll be able to know when tridents are coming because Nogaï will wave his hands up then down while generating the platforms.

If you have a very strong equipment, like for instance saw blade + Corrupted Tonic + Puncturing Tool, don’t waste time waiting for the trident because you’ll deal more damage putting saw blades on the head.

Any% run setup

Before running Any%, you need to set up your save. I strongly suggest using GMP’s sandbox save, which you can find in Resources tab: there’s really no point in building your own save from scratch.

Also take a look at my other guide about equipment if you haven’t already.

Weapons

There are two ways I suggest there:

• don’t unlock any weapon. You’ll get only the five basis weapons (iron mace, double daggers, censer, tabar and royal sword). Only the first three are viable (and iron mace and censer are clearly easier to use than double daggers), but that way you have more chances to loot them ;
• unlock Plague Bearer. You’ll have less chances to drop iron mace, censer or double daggers, but Plague Bearer can be game-breaking with two corrupted medallions in your possession.

Kaali’s Scythe is another strong weapon, but as said earlier I suggest to not loot its blueprint: that way you’re sure to at least drop a gold Scythe on Kaali’s corpse.

I didn’t spend a lot of time testing the other locked weapons, so if you find something interesting about them feel free to tell us and I’ll update this guide.

Tools

There again I see two possibilities:

• don’t unlock any tool, so you’ll get more chance to get saw blade;
• unlock bladed cyclone, as it’s a good tool but not as good as saw blade (it’s up to you).

As for the weapons, I didn’t look closely on other locked tools but they seemed weak to me against bosses.

Medallions

I strongly suggest to unlock Legendary Pack: it will add one useless and one game-breaking medallion (Puncturing Tool), so it’s worth it in my opinion.

If you unlocked Plague Bearer, it might be worth it to unlock Corrupted Pack as well, so that you’ll have more chances to get two corrupted medallions. The drawback is that there’s one useless, one average and one good medallion in it (I haven’t tested them thoroughly though):

• Corrupted Slasher is probably your best friend with Corrupted Sharpener if you picked up Plague Bearer, because then you’ll do only critical hits;
• Corrupted Puncture Technique could be interesting with Iron Mace or Double Daggers (as we use special attack all the time with them), but I’m afraid you would die before killing the boss;
• Corrupted Leech is useless and even removes 50 HP. Not as bad as Corrupted Blocker, just useless.

Skills

I would suggest avoiding any skill that gives Soul Cinders, Experience Points or Zurvan’s Seals (you shouldn’t be needing those).

Here I wrote in bold the skills I select in my runs, tree by tree:

Anahita

• Anahita’s Reserve: useless but mandatory to unlock the other skills.
• Sukhra’s Khoresh: increases HP, allows us to tank the bosses more often.
• Zeal of the Warrior: increases energy, good for the bow and the saw blade.
• Zurvan’s Seal: useless. We shouldn’t be down to 0 HP anyway, we have enough potions.
• Anahita’s Radiance: useless. We never use the dive attack against bosses, and even if we did we have other options to break shields anyway (see below).

Atar

• Spark of Atar: mandatory to unlock the other skills, and it’s always useful to have some coins.
• Atar’s Favor: always useful to get one extra medallion slot.
• Gift of Atar: a potentially game-breaking skill because you can get any available medallion at the start of your run, including Corrupted Tonic for instance. Pick up the medallion even if it’s a useless one (except Corrupted Blocker), because it might be useful if you find Sharpening Medallions later on.
• Haoma’s Potion: one extra potion, can save your run.
• Emanation of Atar: useless, we don’t need Soul Cinders at this point.

Tiri

This whole tree is useless when speedrunning (we’re already at maximum experience and we don’t need Soul Cinders). Note that if you want Soul Cinders then select Fruitful Gamble and break any Soul Altar on your way, it’s very efficient.

Haoma

• Haoma’s Miracle: increasing invincibility frames seems not much but it gives you time to deal more damage when tanking a boss, so it’s a must have.
• Haoma’s Potion: it’s a yes.
• Sukhra’s Khoresh: as above.
• Haoma’s Blessing: increases your HP by 80 HP by the end of your run, so it’s quite useful.
• Zurvan’s Seal: no.

Vayu

• Vayu’s Wrath: not that useful, but mandatory to unlock other skills.
• Mask of Daeva: useless.
• Vayu’s Lightness: it doesn’t seem much but it will save quite some time in biomes as soon as you trigger Vayu’s Breath, either with Vayu’s Effigy or killing ennemies (see Awakening runes below).
• Vayu’s Vitality: this one is situational. If you have Vayu’s Effigy then it will help you refill your energy so it’s not useless. If you trigger Vayu’s Breath in a biome you will refill your energy before the next boss.
• Vayu’s Protection: too situational, and we might not have enough skill points for this (but give it a go if you want).

Verethragna

• Verethragna Vitality: reducing energy cost: we want that for saw blade and bow.
• Zeal of the warrior: as above.
• Verethragna’s Stamina: useless but mandatory to unlock the final skill.
• Verethragna Horns: very useful. That way you can break Altan’s shield with only one tool hit, whatever your tool.

Mithra

• Mithra the Gilded: not too useless (because bosses also drop coins), and mandatory for the other skills.
• Summer sales: useful, you can get powerful items in this shop.
• Astara the Tinkerer: there again, useful because you might want to update your weapon occasionally.
• Mithra’s Pact: reroll coins are super useful to get what you want on altars. It’s a big yes.
• Pact of Mithra: this one is a bit trickier. The 5% is not true, it’s just a way to make people understand they’ll get better loot on Blood and Medallions Altars. The blood altar works that way (thanks GMP for the probabilities):
  • Item 1 - Common Medallion 60%, Rare Medallion 40%
  • Item 2 - Tier+1 Weapon 26.3%, Rare Medallion 52.6%, Legendary Medallion 21.1%
  • Item 3 - Tier+1 Weapon 18.9%, Tier+2 Weapon 5.7%, Rare Medallion 47.2%, Legendary Medallion 28.3%
  • Item 4 - Tier+2 Weapon 6.25%, Rare Medallion 41.7%, Legendary Medallion 52.1%
• By selecting Pact of Mithra, you’ll get directly to item 2. So you’ll be able to loot at most three items on Blood Altars, without the less interesting first pick. I don’t have the statistics on Medallions Altars, but those were often disappointing in my experience. In any case, the skill also gets you to the next medallion “tier”, if that makes any sense. If you never use those altars, you might consider selecting Vayu’s Protection instead.

Awakening runes

If you’re running Any Awakening, you might want to select one rune: Awakening of the Hive. While this rune is very annoying on casual gameplay, it might prove useful on Any% speedrunning because if you kill the scarabs in one swing it will activate Vayu’s Breath, thus giving a speed boost for a limited time.