Useless, but if you use ESW to DIM to lose Tricky, then return to Ocean Force Point Temple exterior, you can do a "zombie hover"

It is not possible to control Fox's direction significantly, no matter what starting direction you choose.

Spliced:

Full video:

With godmode:

Has anyone ever tried to skip this puzzle with TAS?

It seems very close. Just need to save while the gate is moving upwards.

As shown at the end, we can still return after placing SS4 because the gate automatically opens from behind.

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Or another route, if you step on the switch 3 times -- the last time step on the switch on the same frame the gate is fully opened:

It seems if Tricky brings back the ball 10 times, a cutscene plays. This is tracked at address 0x803A3F22 in v1.1

We can stack this with other cutscenes, and also use it to glitch out the camera in some cases:

This trick needs some exploring to see if it can be used to cancel/interfere with other cutscenes in the game.

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Normally, you cannot pause after hitting the final HighTop switch -- The Tricky cutscene seems to have allowed it (I think? I could be wrong).

Doesn't matter though, doesn't do anything here.

It seems that we can do even more stuff while dead:

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Rena from Discord for why the crash happens when spamming Y with an item (Abilities/Tricky menu does not crash)

The crash when you spam an item while dying? it happens in a debug print seems to be that it tries to send a message to the player object to tell it to use the item, but the object doesn't respond because it's busy doing the death animation so after doing it a few times, it tries to print an error that the message queue is full sending a message from object X to Y. but Y doesn't exist. in fact it will crash any time you try to use an item while the queue is full, but I don't know any other way to do that

I mentioned this earlier, but now I have a video

Most triggers you can walk into, if you perfectly time a pause, you can queue the trigger cutscene:

Does not work:

• TTH egg event -- trigger causes a change in "low-flags"
• Queen Earthwalker WC cutscene, I'm not sure why
• CRF Scales intro cutscene -- trigger causes a change outside of flags

It is possible to cutscene overlap feeding GrubTubs, just need to Roll + Feed on the same frame

Might be able to use this to save a couple seconds in TAS

If you spam Y to feed Tricky while dying, you can soft-lock the game

Edit: This works anywhere in the game while dying. No need to be near an interactable object. This does not work unless an item is hotkeyed, it doesn't matter which one

Only a few frames of the cutscene allow you to press input, so you have to spam it a lot to get a frame that works.

It is possible to collect all 3 power gems in CRF in one trip, but it is 50 seconds slower.

This works by hitting a save trigger after pressing all 3 switches. This copies the "active memory" with gates open into "savable memory". Now when we reload the file after save/quit or dying, it refreshes the gate timers.

=================

This would also probably work with the gauntlet at the beginning of CRF, but the problem is that the only save trigger is the Arwing, which is too far.

This probably works in Walled City with the river gauntlet and the SGQ timer events, if we can run back to the Arwing fast enough.

Useless probably. We can keep tricky temporarily unloaded, and load Tricky as a box (no camera OOB used)

1. Enter/exit the upper mana shrine in TTH. This temporarily unloads Tricky.
2. Start a waterfall swim without hitting ANY triggers. Most triggers will load Tricky (but not all)
3. Perform CCE. Eventually Tricky will load, but he will be a box.

Does not seem to work if we do Rocket Boost Early and leave Tricky with the Queen

But it does work before unlocking Walled City, if you do a low-swim setup. We can cause strange glitches during this cutscene by loading Tricky while the cutscene voids.

This one is boring, but I want to include it here to make sure we catalog everything.

We can queue many cutscenes in the game to play when we return to the area. Skip to 1:10 for the trick

Scenarios where we can queue a cutscene:

• Die on the same frame as trigger based cutscenes
• Save/quit on same frame as FireBlast based cutscenes
• Save/quit on last frame before enemy death based cutscenes (Unconfirmed)
• Save/quit after feeding Garunde Te
• Unload Blue Mammoth before starting SnowHorn Trial, then return when the trial is finished
• Flip the Sewer switch to flow towards SHW before Tricky leaves to find his mother

Scenarios where we CANNOT queue a cutscene (as far as I know):

• Interaction based cutscenes, where A press is required

Cutscenes that do not warp Fox should cancel swim. I think they also might cancel mount state (or maybe just crash if mount is unloaded? unconfirmed)

Seems to have nothing to do with approaching the shrine from behind, but instead the triggers on the way there.

Incredibly confusing.

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From Rena in Discord (v1.0):

okay it is a sequence of the MagicCaveTop object that's moving you it's because of the ObjGroups flags for the Hollow. 0800056D=top, 08000671=bottom

if you go to the bottom cave, manually set them to the top value, and enter, it'll send you back to the top cave

I think this is because those flags are telling it to load the top cave entrance and not the bottom, and the cave exit tells it to run the exit animation, which warps you to the entrance object

which is the top one, because it's the one that's loaded if I manually set that value to 0, the cave entrance abruptly disappears when you step on it. if you do it while in the cave, and exit, you don't wrong warp, there's no animation, and you just appear in front of it after a long fade

so it seems like this glitch can only work if there are two magic caves in one map bit 23 is top cave, 31 is bottom (and it looks like there are separate bits for the black spots but they don't actually do anything)

so it would be possible to track down exactly which trigger you need to skip, but sounds like it's not useful

I discovered a Wrong Warp that can be done with the Fire Blast magic cave, by avoiding the entrance.

(You can re-enter the shrine in egg room)

Somehow bypassing the main entrance also bypasses saving the exit location for the cave. This needs investigation to see if this can be used to save time.

I tried warping to GQ and Mana #3, but both of these warped me to Portal Device instead.

It is possible to wrong warp to the egg room right before finishing the egg event, but then the portal disappears. So Portal Device early is not possible.

Can be used to get Garunde Te Fuel Cell, before we save/quit.

One of these Fuel Cells is fake though, it shares an ID with a Fuel Cell near the blue mammoth. I still think this could be an option to get this Fuel Cell in TAS.

Also it's worth looking for triggers that can be hit while in this state. For example, you can void out near the end of the DIM Lava -- but nowhere else! This is quite strange.

We'll also want to run a memory viewer to carefully watch game flags for changes while moving around the world while void-traveling. Maybe something useful can be set.

Known hittable triggers:

• DIM lava death trigger
• Orbit zone trigger (also counts as a save check-point)
• Warp map zone trigger (crashes if mount unloaded)
• Scale's Galleon zone trigger
• Great Fox zone trigger (soft-lock)
• Red-Eye zone trigger (crash)
• Maze Map Save Trigger (just entering the maze map is equivalent to hitting a save checkpoint -- useless because this stores x/y/z far below the map)
• TTH/DIM/CRF Arwing triggers*

None of these triggers fix mount state (except for flying after orbit map)

• Arwing cutscenes crash if mount is unloaded. These work from DIM if using the "never-deallocated" bike. These do not actually set a save point though. WC/DR arwings cannot be triggered, since the Arwings are not loaded.

I wonder if this strat can be used in Dragon Rock to make Tricky come faster before flaming the CloudRunner cage

Confirmed that this is possible in Ice Mountain.

Can also be used to get to K5 early, but game crashes due to dismount state:

I confirmed with hacks that if we can bypass the crash, we can solve the puzzle and collect K5. But we will cutscene void in WC due to not having Tricky. Can hit the Sun Temple save trigger, and void out in the Moon Temple first room to recover from this cutscene void.

Cannot interact with ESW triggers or save triggers still.

============

Steps:

• Approach bike without watching cutscene. Approaching the bike sets address 0x803A4492 to a value of 4 in v1.1
• Leave through the door. Cutscene is a one-way trigger, so we can avoid it.
• Hit the save trigger near entrance. This copies the value from 0x803A4492 (active data) to 0x8112578A (save data)
• Start the race, then save/quit/reload.
• Now address 0x803A4492 still has a value of 4. The game is expecting 0 here, so the bike is glitched.
• Fuel Cell dismount.
• The gate is still closed, and the cannon is non-functional, so we cannot cannon clip. However, we can zoom to unload the zone, and when the zone is reloading we can use the lag-frames to walk through the fence easily.
• Navigate OOB to hotspring water
• The next zone you swim to will glitch-load. This only works for the next zone you visit.

Unlike the DIM version, with the IM version we can hotkey anything. Maybe there is a save trigger we can activate using FireBlast?

There is a secret 24th ESW checkpoint, but unfortunately it only exists during a short cutscene.

The ESW checkpoint is from getting captured in jail. But when we gain control of Fox, a normal save checkpoint is triggered, clearing the ESW checkpoint.

v1.1 ESW data pointer is [0x803DE114] (offset is 0)

By performing an ESW to DR on a file without Tricky, the Arwing cutscene voids and we can void walk passed the gate. We then can use an OOB FireFly to recover from the void, and save/quit.

This gets us passed the gate, but now we lack Tricky, and normal ESW techniques seem to be failing in this area.

If we can find a way to make this work, up to 9m can be saved (minus setup costs). Also, 3-file run might become viable.

EarthWalker Skip: Cannot be done alone. ESW trigger in HighTop room is too high.

EartherWalker+HighTop Skip: Also has problems. After reviving by gate, we cannot move forward without hitting the save trigger again. This means we cannot die on this file.

If using a 3rd file to die, for some reason DR save location is not stored. Even if you open DR file, and immediately save/quit.

==================

Other ideas I want to try:

• (Edit: Nope. Tricky not required, duh). Barrel cutscene void in MM Pass. Fuel Cell Recover. Go OOB up the left-hand side, resulting in an MM Pass Key skip.
• (Edit: Nope. Triggers impossible to hit without falling far). Walled City Arwing void. See if we can hit loading triggers for Moon/Sun Stone. Then hit ESW trigger. Then void out in pit.
• Ocean Point link map water block puzzle void (hit switch). Recover from electrocution trigger. Doesn't really skip that much if it works.

I found a fast strat for getting Tricky into the cage

Steps:

1. Walk forward, hotkey Call when it is available
2. Flip camera around
3. Use Call once
4. When Tricky gets nearby, L-Target and walk forward a few steps (but do not get on top of shrine). Can release it intermittently to check if he is inside.
5. Press Call a few times on the way (unconfirmed how many are needed, but 3 works well for me)

Having your back turned to the cage is critical. I think when objects are out of view, they partially unload, allowing Tricky to enter easily. L-Target helps with this a bit.

When Void Traveling, it seems moving into the Maze map while on a bike causes a respawn change for X/Z coordinates, but not Y. (1:10 to skip setup)

This gave me a respawn position of 7046.49414, -90522.0859, 31275.082