New hard route: New route based on richterfan's 26:39 run. First he goes straight from getting crushing stone to Shadow by fighting Legion, skipping getting the save near Dracula. Then after Maxim's Ring, he save-warps back to Skeleton Cave A and takes a sequence through Chapel A and the Sky Walkway A OoB to warp to near Dracula. Doing this will be faster, I overlooked that way of getting to Dracula. This makes both Legion and Dracula kill you in one hit, but it also routes out some other hard things, so I think they're about even in difficulty as long as you're good at the boss fights.
If both routes are done perfectly then they come out to about the same, but in the old route there was a hard candle zip to skip the first elevator in Treasury B to save 25 seconds that was unlikely, and it also had other more inconsistent zips than the ones replacing them. I timed it and the new route should tend to be about 20-40 seconds faster at the same high level of play and luck.
I'm not going to run this new route any time soon but whatever.
New beginner-friendly route: richterfans also gets a lot of level ups from jumping bone pillars early in the run. This loses time, but it makes the rest of the run much easier without losing that much time to do it. I recommend this as the best beginner-friendly route, just his whole 26:39 run without much change.
For extra friendliness, instead of doing the airlaunch to get from lowering the crushing stone to the crushing stone immediately, you can try walking to a room in Aqueduct B (the second from the exit to Sky Walkway) and zipping to the right, then from there zipping to the right in the harpy room, then sliding out of the wall to the pendulum room in Clock Tower B. This makes the first candle zip the only airlaunch in the whole run, but it's not good in any other way. There's also another big mana prism to the right of the crushing stone which helps as a backup if you're doing the fairy damage glitch.
Some other things that might make Any% faster: -Finding a consistent enough zip to Dracula from after getting Maxim's Ring. It would be good as long as it's faster than 1:30-1:45. It's better if it glitches into the room since the cutscene-glitch can be cut short about 15 seconds to skip Maxim without opening the door to Dracula. -Killing Death fast and consistently enough without the crushing stone. The griffin wing allows much more warps, but it's not good enough for any% if it can only be gotten that late in the run. The griffin wing also gives an easy warp to Dracula after Maxim's Ring. -Floating boots, but I gave up on that a long time ago. It took me 6 hours of farming it to just be able to test the route. -Cutscene glitch to credits-warp. -Subpixel manipulation. -Becoming Maxim to do most of the run and then becoming Juste again right before the end.
