Hi friends, I've been following the Skelattack speedrun efforts since the game launched. I worked on the game as its creator, lead artist and first programmer (before allowing greater minds than mine to handle the code).
I love doing IL runs of this game and have discovered a few cool things I've not seen anyone else doing. I'll link to videos for proof and will give clarification as needed.
Sewer Boss - Dash Tutorial Skip
Up first is pretty simple, and a small time save. After defeating the Sewer Boss, we receive the Dash ability and are forced to use it to cross a small gap of insta-kill blocks.
With careful timing, you can actually double jump across this gap. The hitbox for the spikes (glass, or shards, whatever you want to call them) is slightly shorter than the surrounding terrain. Run off, very quickly use your first jump, and follow it up with your double jump to clear the gap. No video here as it's pretty easy to do.
Interior Lava Forge - Lava Pots Skip
This one is very hard for me to do consistently. It's risky but essentially skips the entire room if done correctly. Skully latches onto the climbable area of the wall on the left, and sets up his wall jump / double jump, just barely avoiding the spikes.
Grand Halls (Collapse) - Imberless
I love that little bat, but she's so slow! This is a great section where we intended the player to fly with Imber, but it's possible to go on foot if you set it up correctly.
These are all great Ill be putting everything together into a guide if anyone has other strats you have discovered drop them here
Grand Halls - Pendulum Navigation
This strat applies to any room in the game that has traps like these. Skelattack uses a lot of RNG, except for moving sawblades and pendulums. That means whenever you enter a room, these obstacles will be in the exact same starting position. It removes the guesswork from insane rooms like this in the Grand Halls. You just have to remember the path and be ready to run when the area loads.
Crypt - Easy Key Duplication Exploit
This one really excites me, but it's bittersweet as it's near the end of the game. Grab the key, leave the room, and go back in. I have not seen this happening with any other keys, so I think it was a simple coding oversight that allows this particular key to spawn again. I discovered it while practicing a first cycle in this room.
I have an annoying room in mind that we could bypass using this extra key...
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Grand Halls - Key Dupe could be used here
This room has all sorts of hazards lurking in the winding path down below: hot steam, spikes, alligators, geysers) and at the end of a run I've watched people die in here and lose time due to nerves. With the free key from Crypt, this room is no longer an issue as you run right across and unlock the door. I've not compared the times to see if doing key dupe is much faster than just doing this room the intended way, but I think it's a time save.
Bard and Paladin Bossfight (AI Broken)
I was a little bummed out that I couldn't yet find anything really helpful in the prison. Accepting defeat, I went into the bossfight to play around and discovered this.
Immediately go into the corner. You need to duck so that the Bard's sound waves don't push you out of the corner. The paladin should walk up and bash you with her shield (it needs to be a shield bash and not her giant leap/ground pound). For some reason, once she does this the AI gets confused and she will stop attacking/following. Now you can attack her freely, while making sure to avoid the Bard's sound waves. If the sound waves push you into the Paladin while she is locked up, sometimes she will become active again and the fight will resume as intended.
Once she's dead, go into the corner again while the Bard targets you with the flying blades. The first round will hit you, but after this their targeting gets messed up if you stay in the corner. Tap the opposite direction quickly to face the Bard, and take him out with some boom-a-ribs to the face. At this distance, his green sound wave attacks won't hit you.
Play with it and see how you can optimize this! I was so excited I haven't done more testing.
Fast Sewer Boss
If you have the Cure Magic, stay in the left corner and damage boost your way through Phase 1.
Do the same for Phase 2, and when he throws out the small hammers they will despawn immediately upon hitting the wall above your head.
Just tried Key dupe in a run and it felt good, still struggling to get lava forge skip consistently. The key dupe makes me wonder what else can possibly be duplicated would love to try and see if somehow this could work for collecting the bones to get the bone-m-rang power.
That lava forge skip is scary and really precise 😳 The bone collection part is probably my least favorite section, it’s just tedious and easy to die lol. If a strat could be found for that I’d be so happy. When I play again I’ll go mess around with it
FAST GREENERY BOSS
This strategy isn't reliable without the Cure magic.
When the fight starts, run and jump between the boss and the bouncy mushrooms. Slice at him as fast as you can, using your Cure spell as needed to soak up damage and force him into Phase 2 quickly. My phase 2 here could be much cleaner, but you should be able to clean up this fight in 30 seconds or less pretty consistently.
I found this little trick near the end of the Greenery to gain a bit of extra time, to do this i lined myself to be exactly in between the 2 stalactites in the background
Whoa :o
Regaining control during this cutscene is something I didn't know was possible! I see that you are moving to the left just after destroying the rock, to hit the conversation trigger. That's really clever.
Not a timesave at all but found a glitch that if replicated may be able to be used at a different spot but not sure where.
Hahahaha that's incredible :P This is something one of our teammates found near the end of development but we had to make the choice to squash other bugs that were coming in from QA instead due to time constraints. Something weird is going on with the collision there, and I wonder if it could ever be used. When leaving the Greenery, you can do the same trick on the right side of the Greenery stone door to phase through without opening it and waiting for it to rise, but it also teleports you to the same door trigger for the Sewer.
The most consistent way that I found to do the clip is to just jump while standing as close to the door as possible, then when you reach the apex of your jump and barely start to descend, activate the double jump. I'm very curious to see if it's possible on any of these doors in the rest of the game...so far I haven't been able to clip anywhere else but you may have better luck :D
Yeah thats how I got it to be consistent also but haven't found another use for it yet.
I did find you can clip through the wall on the greenery side but only from greenery into the hub area so no benefit there either since the switch is right there lol.
Ok so after watching derpydragon's gdq hotfix run (congrats on that by the way! It was really cool) i thought of how the dash is severely under-utilized, the first thing i thought to try is this, however it doesn't seem to have any practical use yet since the jump is ever so slightly too tall to make
P.s. Don't mind the menu my controller drifts a lot
