Here are some known improvements for this run's route: (times given in run time)

• At 2:50 we can do the Athra skip as in practice we simply don't use this Athra
• Undead Prisoner only gives 50 time crystals so we can skip him if we want to
• At 9:37 we can sword hover over the gap to get the time crystals faster, and then not bother with the one at the bottom
• At 12:31 there is a gap in the wall on the left, behind which is a chest with 200 time crystals
• In the bottom-left corner of the room at 13:18, there is a chest with an additional amulet slot
• At 20:27 we can go straight and into the lower area of Upper City, then head down towards the elevator and go left (while still being in Upper City); there is a chest with 4 Royal Stars amulet, which deals extra damage for jump attacks; this seems to be worth it for Darius
• From there on we can head up and to the left in Upper City to join the route in this run; for this we need to solve a puzzle involving the Chakram, which means that we need to fly using the dimensional claw
• We can fly directly up skipping the Day Temple teleporter
• We can save at the Wak Wak tree just before Royal Corridors to deathwarp to it later
• We can teleport to the Haven from Clockwork to buy an upgrade for 4 Royal Stars, but DO NOT SAVE at the Wak Wak because we need the deathwarp at Royal Corridors
• As soon as we get to Darius, we should unalive ourselves to regain full health
• After Darius deathwarp to Royal Corridors
• If we want to we can teleport from the end of Royal Corridors to Haven to buy another upgrade, such as a potion, but we don't need to
• It is not clear whether this is faster, but at some point we can fly to the dash feather (after Jahandar) to pick up the dash ability, so that we can do Clockwork skip later

It has been discovered that my NMG WR in fact had an accidental forced wallrun, meaning that the run is not valid. Since it is still effectively a WR run when it comes to strats, I think we should still have a reference to it so that players could learn from it. (And also for my glory lol.)

This run can be found here: https://www.speedrun.com/pop_tfs/runs/ylkg73xz

I have another run with a better time, however it contains an accidental forced wallrun (different from the run above with the accidental rewind boost). Were it not for this, this run would be WR. You can find it here: https://www.speedrun.com/pop_tfs/runs/ylkg73xz

[center][big][big]Any% Tool-Assisted Speedrun[/big][/big]

Author: @GMP Final Time: 2:23:31.68

TASVideos Publication Author's Notes Raw Footage Commentary by GMP and Smathlax[/center]

Here is a document of all known PoP runs which either do not have VODs anymore or their VODs never existed:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17l8QGgZSzjdSkZ0KIfCsRW7H9J7KCcvp0qfJIBPQz5o/edit#gid=0

Hi, I'm posting regarding a game called Garshasp: Temple of the Dragon ( https://www.speedrun.com/garshasp_temple_of_the_dragon ). I submitted a run for this game over two months ago, however it has not been verified. The mod has been online since this submission, however it has been over a month since any activity from him. Moreover, although he has been somewhat active in the past, most of the recent submissions have been taking much longer than 21 days to get verified, and one run (3rd place run by GlennTheJanitor) took a whole 9 months to get approved, so this is clearly not a one-time situation. As such, I DM'd him on SRC and Twitch (the only two platforms that I could DM him on) to see what we could work out, but it has been over a week and he has not responded.

While my primary goal would be to get my own run verified, this is clearly not a long-term solution, so I would like to be a moderator for this game. I already have some experience moderating a handful of other games, plus I check SRC daily, so I could verify any runs promptly after submission. Also, there has recently been some discussion about a rule in the game's forums, so as a mod I could implement this (as well as any other future queries that the community might have) to the official game rules, which is very unlikely to get done with the current state of things.

Thank you for your response in advance, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you 🙂. Smathlax

If there were no runs of this game and I were making the rules from scratch I would personally want to allow it. You are still completing the game completely fairly, and there are likely many more smaller consequences of running on a second playthrough that we don't even notice. One that stands out for example is that the first time you start a run after booting up the game, it takes longer to load, so resetting the run after going through this once actually saves time in a very similar way, and yet it would be ridiculous to ban something like that, so perhaps the cutscene skip should be allowed too?

Going back to my opening sentence though, there are runs of this game and I'm not making the rules from scratch. Runs without this cutscene skip exist already, and in the event that runners knew about it but chose not to do it (the alternative would be that no one knew this could be done), I think it would be fair to continue to honour that line of thought and just prohibit it, but this also doesn't mean that people can't change their minds and introduce it as a new thing now. Personally I have only submitted one run of this game (though it hasn't been verified yet) and as such I would be biased towards allowing it as I have not invested all that much time into this run and wouldn't mind knowing that my run did not use a huge timesave. I understand though that this is very much not the case for some other people so again we reach somewhat of an impasse.

I guess for now the most sensible thing to do would be to refrain from using this cutscene skip in new runs, unless someone from this forum or any other runner has some other thoughts that haven't been covered yet.

[center][big][big]Major Glitches Explained[/big][/big][/center]

This post explains the major glitches which are currently prohibited in NMG runs. The purpose of this is to define each of the major glitches and also to serve as a guide for how to avoid them in NMG. A video demonstrating each of these glitches is also linked.

Note that this is not a tutorial for how to perform any of the glitches.

[big]Drop Glitch:[/big] The drop glitch occurs when you are walking towards a ledge and are about to start grinding, but during the transition between walking and grinding you jump in some direction. This is considered a major glitch, even if you jump directly away from the wall. If in doubt, do not hold any directional inputs before jumping as this will make it impossible to perform the glitch.

[big]Corner Clip:[/big] The corner clip occurs when you are about to start grinding from a ledge while walking almost parallel to it, and during the transition between walking and grinding the Prince clips into a wall which is perpendicular or almost perpendicular to the ledge. While although technically at this point you have already clipped into the wall, if you do nothing your run will not be invalidated because as soon as the Prince starts grinding he will be back inbounds. The major glitch occurs when during the short period of time the Prince is out of bounds, you do a drop glitch to jump in some direction, landing you permanently out of bounds.

[big]Ledgewarp:[/big] The ledgewarp occurs when you jump in the direction of a beam, and the Prince lands on the very end of this beam with some forward momentum, then due to this momentum partially walks off the beam, at which point if you hang from it you will warp to a location where you have ledge storage. Ledge storage is gained by simply hanging from a ledge, or is at (0, 0, 0) when you first launch the game (i.e. you always have ledge storage somewhere). Note that if you try to ledgewarp from a beam where it is not possible to do so, the Prince will get pushed forward slightly, allowing you to stand in the air. Using this as a way to extend your jump from a beam will invalidate your run.

[big]Ledgefall:[/big] The ledgefall occurs when you hang partially off a beam, as if about to ledgewarp, but just before the ledgewarp actually occurs, you either drop off or jump back from the beam, causing you to fall to the height of your ledge storage plus the normal falling distance. If your ledge storage is above you by an amount greater than the normal falling distance, you will die as soon as you perform the ledgefall.

[big]Airwalk:[/big] The airwalk is done the same way as the ledgewarp, but occurs when your ledge storage is in some specific location on the same beam you are warping from. Instead of ledgewarping, the Prince then stays still and you can walk away from the beam.

[big]Airstep:[/big] The airstep is a state during which the Prince is in the air, such that you can jump in any direction and failure to do so will cause him to fall downwards. This glitch has many variants, some of which are very easy to do without even realising that one did a glitch, so to avoid doubt make sure you watch the video which goes over some of the different variants of it. Note that if you get an airstep and do nothing (i.e. fall downwards) this is not considered a major glitch. Similarly jumping directly up from an airstep and then falling downwards is also not a major glitch. It is specifically jumping from an airstep that is prohibited in NMG. That said, there is some leniency here. For example, if you accidentally do the airstep on a fence, then jump back and land on the platform that you stood on initially, if it is clear that no light seed or any other advantage is gained, your run will likely still be accepted, however this is still a major glitch so you should try to avoid doing this actively.

Since there was confusion about this, to clarify, the "extended jump" that can be seen here is not a variant of an airstep and consequently not a major glitch.

[big]Ultimate Glitch:[/big] Ultimate Glitch is technically a variant of the airstep, however it stands out in particular from the others and as such is considered its own glitch. It occurs when you go out of bounds under the floor and gain an airstep. When you jump from this airstep you will get another airstep, and so on. Again, if you do not jump from your initial airstep your run will not be invalidated, provided you got out of bounds without abusing any major glitches.

[big]Combat Airstep:[/big] As one might expect, the combat airstep is very similar to the airstep, with the difference that it occurs in combat. The only place it is currently known to be possible is during the final Warrior fight, and occurs when you dash away from the centre of the arena at the same time as the ground falls apart, causing the Prince to be stuck midair. At this point, if you dash in any direction you will get another combat airstep from which you can dash again. As with the regular airstep, the major glitch occurs when you dash from a combat airstep, so if you get a combat airstep and do nothing (i.e. fall to your death), this is not a major glitch. However unlike the airstep, once you have dashed, you cannot die to prevent your run from being invalidated, as during your time out of bounds the Warrior's health will be going down, hence you gain an advantage from it even if you die. Once you've gotten into the state of combat airstep, you must fall to your death immediately in order to not have your run invalidated, alternatively save and reload your save. Again though there is some leniency; if you (for example) accidentally dash once or twice and it is clear that the Warrior is not anywhere near you (and as such could not have hit you had you been inbounds), your run will once again likely be accepted.

[big]Elika Clip:[/big] The Elika clip occurs when you wallrun towards a ceiling and double jump away from the wall, causing the Prince to clip through this ceiling.

[big]Airsink:[/big] The airsink occurs when you jump and land on a ledge in such a way that the Prince is close enough to the ground to not grab the ledge, but far enough from the ground to not actually be on it, causing him to "sink" downwards without dying, regardless of how far down he goes. This glitch is incredibly precise and has only ever been done a few times, so it is highly unlikely that one will do it by accident in an NMG run.

[big]AI Break / Death Storage:[/big] AI break (referring to Elika's AI) occurs any time Elika's AI breaks and she stops doing her normal activities (e.g. following the Prince, or running away from him). In itself, AI break is not a glitch and happens all the time in casual play. However, abusing it to achieve some unintended consequences is considered a major glitch.

One example of AI break is during the Elika chasing sequence at the very start of the game. To perform it, you must be sufficiently close to Elika before entering the first fight. If you've done AI break, Elika will either freeze in place or get into an infinite airwalk. This can then be abused as the first fight will not trigger while Elika is in this state. Performing this abuse will invalidate your NMG run, however if you do break Elika's AI by accident, your run will not be invalidated if you walk backwards to fix it. Note that, should you do AI break this way and not fix it by walking backwards, your run will be invalidated even if you do the NMG variant of the first fight skip (i.e. jump over the fight trigger).

Another consequence of AI break is that you gain death storage, meaning that the game stops keeping track of whether you are standing on solid ground, and upon death, you can always warp back to where AI break first occurred, as shown in the death storage video above. Again, in itself, this is not a major glitch, as it can occur in casual gameplay (for example when the Concubine captures Elika during the Coronation Hall fight). However, abusing this in places where it is clearly not intended is a major glitch and will lead to your run being invalidated.

At the end of the day, what constitutes abuse of AI break / death storage will be judged on a case-by-case basis, and if you are unsure, you should consult a moderator.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/197mgEYzNGysUbTDckqd951rYiExvGGWo0f09B8hACzA/edit#gid=0

Since the levels in this game do not have official names, for the purposes of the IL runs, the level names will be considered as follows: