Hello, I'll make my introduction quick - new to speedrunning, about twelve days in right now and I spent about 10-20 hours of just running lab lickers and seeing if we could control this bit of chaos in the run. So going into this experiment, we know that keeping our camera angle away from the licker makes them a bit gentler, however, it provides a lot of RNG - let's eliminate this!

Obviously, it's an experiment so we'll have three control factors (time-stamped for your convenience): 7rayD's WR (52m 17s) - I'll come back to this in the end.

Orchlon's PB (52m 25s) - I'll come back to this in the end.

hazeblade's PB (53m 10s) - we'll use this as our "control" factor

Hazeblade takes 36.40 seconds running through the first part of the lab lickers, if we count in getting hit and assume he gets a clear no-hit run, let's push it to 32 seconds.

Out of the 36.4 seconds, he used the module for about 8 seconds with animations. For the sake of time on my part, I didn't grab the module (I would have to run up the stairs EACH time I wanted to try out something new) and instead, I went through the lab, activated the lickers, and turned around. This is an accurate representation of regardless of whether or not you have the module since lickers reset if you leave the room.

I had a consistent two grenade strat, however, I was getting hit-stunned by them once if not both times I tossed the grenade. While I would get both lickers consistently, my time with this instance would be around 34 seconds with both stuns, 32.5 with one, and 31.43 (best) with no hitstuns. However, this is still somewhat RNG dependent.

I then tried moving backward as I tossed my grenade - while I didn't get hitstunned, I lost time because I was creeping backward. This obviously became obsolete.

My idea was then "what if I don't fire the gun" but run into licker distance so they aggro? This was also inconsistent since both lickers would aggro at slightly different times. By the time I tossed my grenade, I would have gotten hit by the first licker, or the first licker would have already jumped at me, causing the two lickers to be too far apart for my second nade to kill them. Obsolete.

Grenade off the wall? Obsolete, since game physics dictates that if a grenade hits a wall, it bounces straight down instead of at an angle. RIP.

Running towards the right pocket of the room and aggro-ing the lickers with a bullet? Inconsistent and the grenade angle toss would sometimes separate both lickers. We want consistency. Obsolete.

So now we come back full circle to the fire once, two grenade strat. Eventually, I came down with a method.

Ideally, you want to run to that second column (black on the left), shoot the module, toss your first grenade without moving your cursor (to keep it consistent), run to the third column, turn around throw your grenade. See video.

Consistently, I found that this will blow back the second licker but not the first licker towards you, causing them to be close to each other. You will utilize that precious second of them going "AGH THIS HURTS" and run to the third column before turning around and throwing the nade at them, all the while running towards the module. Out of a lot of attempts on and off-stream, I've only gotten hit once by the "AGH I CAN'T SEE" wild slashes of the licker, but that was from a weird line.

Using Hazeblade on a constant, this put me at around 30.89 seconds (22 for labs, 8 seconds for module). Already, this is a time saver if we had tossed it into his PB of 36 seconds, 31-32 if we're being generous and saying "what if he didn't get hit?"

My licker strat - 31 seconds

Hazeblade (PB, hit twice) - 36 seconds

Orch (PB, perfect stun grenade) 8 seconds module 27.1 seconds with the perfect stun grenade

7rayD (WR, double stun grenade, got grabbed by zombie, no real hits) 7.2 second module 28second licker lab, no hits

The conclusion? If you're going for a World Record and you have big balls, you can opt out of this strat. But honestly considering how it's only 3-4 seconds slower than the world record perfect-RNG strat, it might be worth trying out since it is consistent and ideally doesn't kill runs. And let's be honest, how many of us have had runs die to this shit? Not me, because I suck at every other part of this game.

FAQs

Nade count. You will have 5 nades at this point. The save file I have doesn't show it, but you will have 4 at this point and when you pick up the last nade from the slain army dude in section 3 before G3, you will still have your ideal 3 nades for G3. Of course, this means you could have 5 nades for G3 but that's another topic of exploration. And as far as I'm concerned, you don't go out of your way for these nades.

Inventory management with two grenade slots I don't know. I'm trash at this game.

Any other questions or points, let me know. Credit goes to Hazeblade for initially pointing out whether it was a time save, CarcinogenSDA for pointing out hitstuns, and of course all you lovely people keeping this game alive.

Once I get better at the game, I intend to incorporate this into my runs as well as try other strats too. I considered the DA and did a casual run til this point (leaving/kill enemies you would normally do). Of course, having that accurate number is more beneficial, so I need to set up that DA overlay.

As much as I have to deal with RNG, I really hate it - hence the point of the post. For me, if anyone could nail down the perfect double flash strat, that seems like the most time saved. I know I would mentally flip if I was on PB / WR par runs and then suddenly, randomass licker/zombie ruins it. Like I said, maybe it's not for a WR run, but I think it's not bad for people casually going for a decent PB and don't have time for too many runs every day.

Cheers!

Following up on DA, I have my runs at around mid 7 when I am running this part, it seems that without getting hit, my DA would be 8 when I hit G3.

:(