The full game leaderboards has way too many categories. Could we make NG / NG+ and "all objectives" as sub-categories to make it a bit cleaner?

Also, no one ever asked if I wanted to be a DW6 moderator, but I guess I'll resign to this fate... >_>

To round out the glitch tactics, here's another way to go through some walls. But starting this glitch requires a ladder.

Ah, I see how that could change things. And I guess running NG+ tends to be the norm in most Omega Force-games, or at least that's the impression I've gotten.

I mean creating a variable NG / NG+ that is then used as a sub-category. This way both type of runs will appear in a tab under each character (i.e. main category) and the miscellaneous categories are not needed. Here's an example I just made on the Knights Contract leaderboards:

https://www.speedrun.com/Knights_Contract

I only started playing Samurai Warriors 2 today, so I'm not applying to be a mod just yet. But I did get this idea looking at the leaderboards: would it be better if NG / NG+ was a sub-category? That way there wouldn't have to be so many categories on the page overall.

I'm happy to report this game has an infinite jump now.

Promotions exploit:

In short, once you get one character to lv. 100, you can start freely promoting any characters in the game. I think in a longer speedrun category it would be worth it to even go slightly out of your way to get a lv. 100 character as fast as possible. After all, promotion means upgrade stones, and the related upgrade stone exploit lets you give max stats to characters pretty easily.

"Wallzipping":

This is a glitch that could come in handy situationally. Doing it is pretty inconsistent (except with Zhang He), but it should still help in replacing some infinite jumps in a glitched run for optimization purposes.

There are around dozen characters who are good candidates for infinite jumping.

• Ayane. Her air special gives height and is fairly fast, so she is a pretty good infinite jump partner overall.
• Hanzo Hattori. Once you get him in Chapter 3, he becomes a permanent part of the infinite jumping team. He is the best character for pure height gain that I noticed so far.
• Oichi. Her air special is useful for pure height gain. Around Ayane levels of usefulness.
• Wang Yuanji. Her air special gives great height - if your timing is perfect - but it's a bit wonky to use as it moves you backwards more than is preferable. Still a pretty good IJ character, and it helps her case that you get her very early in the game.
• Xingcai. Like a female Yukimura Sanada as far as IJ is concerned. Putting both Xingcai and Yukimura together allows doing very speedy extended IJ.
• Xu Shu. His air special gives good height and he has Thrift, which helps making longer jumps. But the animation of his attack lasts terribly long, so overall I don't really like using him.
• Yukimura Sanada. His air special gives both height and has good horizontal movement, so if you have to do an extended IJ somewhere he is a very good pick. One of my favorite IJ characters, and you also get him early in the game.

Honorable mentions: Daqiao, Jia Xu, Kai and Kanetsugu Naoe also work in a pinch, but don't seem to be super effective for gaining height. There are also some Speed-type characters I haven't played much with, like Sun Quan, Wang Yi and Yuan Shao. They might turn out very good IJ characters too, in which case I'll update this list.

While playing yesterday on the unpatched PS3 version I found a kind of break-out from riding a horse. This allows you to fly through entire maps at horse riding speed while ignoring walls (among some other things).

Here's an example skip that can be done with the glitch:

I searched a bit on Youtube but didn't see anything like it, so I presume this is a new glitch? I'll make a more thorough video & explanation about it later. (Have to research it some more first.)

EDIT: a video that explains what the glitch is in more detail. The video description also includes how it's started.

I guess linking this is relevant. I did actually do a run like this just a few days ago. It's only my second run, so it could still be improved by some minutes. I used infinite jump in 10 of the missions and only played up to Into the Fire. So, what do you say? Add this category?

...Any mods still alive on this leaderboard?

I've done some routing on the early chapters of the game. Skips are available for the majority of the missions. Here's some notes on Chapter 1 missions:

• Battle of Yiling. Can skip everything if you go straight to Kiyomori Taira. However, you're under a very strict time limit in which to do this or ally characters die, plus it's very early in the game, hence it's not practical for RTA. Perhaps with a buffed up team during Battle of Yiling - Redux in ILs or 100% runs.

• Battle of Dongkou. You can't skip everything by just going straight to Jia Xu and beating him up... he's actually invulnerable at the start of the level. Instead, what you want to do is to infinite jump over the river and then go beat up one of Jia Xu's officers to the east. This triggers the event that causes Jia Xu to leave for the other side, which in turn starts the level finale with Da Ji. All of this is super impractical to do in a RTA, though, since you don't have good IJ characters this early in the game, so it's only something for IL runs.

• Battle of Shouchun. You can end the level early by doing an infinite jump around the inner keep of the fortress to activate the trap and then beating up the new Shuten Doji that spawns to the north half of the map. This is a very trivial thing to do if you have Yukimura Sanada. The level only lasts under 2 minutes.

• Battle of Nagashino. Level ends early if you IJ to Masamune Date and beat him up. Pretty simple to do, and even possible in a RTA. Takes around 2-3 minutes.

• Battle of Odawara Castle. Like the video above shows, most of the level can be skipped by going straight to Kiyomori Taira. There's a time limit of around 3-4 minutes in which to do this before Kai dies, but it's not a big problem if you don't mess up the jumps. Estimated completion: 2-3 minutes.

• Battle of Nanjun. Level can be ended early by going straight to Sun Wukong. Estimated completion: 2-3 minutes.

• Battle of Tetorigawa. You can do a skip by jumping inside the south garrison early and defeating officers there. This spawns Diamondback on the shore, defeating whom ends the level. Estimated completion: 3-5 minutes.

• Battle of Mt. Niutou. Level can be ended early by going straight to Sun Wukong. Estimated completion: 1-2 minutes.

• Rescue at Taoshui. Level can be ended early by just defeating Lianshi. However, you're under a strict time limit under which to do this before allies get killed, so it's best to go in prepared. Estimated completion: 1-2 minutes.

• Invasion of Shouchun. The scripting in this level is a bit strange, but I got the impression that defeating Cao Ren, Cao Wenji and Xiahou Ba causes the level to end. Infinite jump comes in handy in doing this quickly. Estimated completion: 2-4 minutes.

• Counterattack at Nagashino. Same skip works as in the main Nagashino level. Estimated completion: 1-2 minutes.

• Rescue at Dongkou, Retreat from Mt. Niutou, Struggle for Ueda Castle, Breakthrough at Yiling, Breakthrough at Mikatagahara, Breakthrough at Chibi: no major skips that I could find.

I was thinking about doing videos about all of the possible skips a bit later on.

I see the full-game leaderboards feature a category called "any% chapter 8". Rules haven't been defined, but I assume this means you beat the game and then you also complete the additional campaign that starts from Chapter 5?

How about a regular any% category that only requires reaching the first possible ending in Chapter 4? If I ever speedran this game, this is the category I'd start with.

Hey, I was casually glitching this game and found a way to jump infinitely high. I did a quick search on Youtube, but didn't see any videos of something like this. Could this be a whole new discovery?

Here's an example of skipping most of Battle of Odawara Castle using infinite jump:

From what I tested around a little bit in Chapter 1, you can also do skips in Battle of Yiling and Battle of Tetorigawa.

Hey. I found this fast travel-related glitch in Shadow of Mordor, but it also works in Shadow of War. It's possible to do a big "magnetic leap" across the map between any place where you can drop and a quick travel point. The leap can also be interrupted in the middle by using double jump or tactically having collision to block Talion. It might save a little time when navigating between missions? That is, if it works on PC / current patch (I've been playing on console / unpatched).

As a side note, I noticed that it's really easy to breach walls using "spectral dash", but I'm not sure if that might also be a console / unpatched thing.

Just wanted to raise a question about where any% run timing ends. Right now, it ends at the prompt at Kratos' bed. However, there is a case to be made for potentially changing it:

• according to the menu, the game is "complete" after scattering the ashes. All quest lines are closed, with no objective or indication you should even go to Kratos' house. It could be argued that going to sleep is an easter egg or a hidden ending, and that in any% the timing should be ended at an earlier point somewhere in the section when the ashes are scattered.

• there is a danger of getting a softlock right after spreading the ashes in the unpatched version of the game. The dwarves don't start their dialogue and Kratos is stuck in the Shop area forever. Although it's unknown thus far if this softlock could be prevented in any way, it's a huge deterrent to making unpatched runs with the current timing. (Like what happened to Mattmatt10111.)

I think using checkpoint retry to skip cutscenes is allowed. I don't really see a reason why it wouldn't be allowed? Perhaps the wording on the rules is just a bit unclear.

I stumbled upon a fairly universal trick to do 1.5 to 3 times higher jumps than normal. I'm wondering whether this was known already?

(To note, I'm playing on unpatched PS4-version.)

I found a trick that lets the player glitch up the current checkpoint. This usually results in the checkpoint starting without any enemies, and sometimes parts of the level may be missing too, allowing going out of bounds. Or you just get softlocked. It all depends on which checkpoint you are when you do the trick.

The bad part is that setup for this trick takes 25+ seconds, so it's not worth it in a speedrun all that often. However, there's at least one pretty decent fight skip in Chapter 1 that is possible now with this new find.

The time save is at 2:43 of this video (also contains instructions on how to do the trick):

The other checkpoint abuse that I know of:

So the revolver Shibito behavior really is different on PAL and NTSC versions? That is so strange... From what I gathered from Bonesaw's stream, doing this trick on the NTSC version might be a bit slower but overall more consistent.

One pretty consistent checkpoint abuse timesave is in Kyoya Day 2 - 20:00 M1. If you trick the sniper into reloading, go through the cafeteria and retry, you'll start with Yoriko behind the cafe. This skips having to fight enemies outside the cafe.

Another much less consistent checkpoint abuse is in Shiro Day 1 - 03:00 M1. If you fool the revolver Shibito on the bridge to strangle Shiro, you can slip past him and reach the other side of the bridge. Retry gives you weapons, thus skipping the need to go pick them up at Miyata's car. It's not all that easy to do, but could be a nice tactic to try out if a run is going poorly and the player has nothing to lose, at least.

I'll have videos up soon.

EDIT: Kyoya's Day 2 - 20:00 timesave.