To start off, this guide is intended to supplement watching a run. It explains some of the things that are harder to get just from watching gameplay. We run on current patch using the Traditional Chinese language option.

[big]General Tech:[/big] Skipping text: Holding the skip cutscene button (f by default on keyboard) instantly skips text boxes as they appear. Frame perfect rolling: Only on keyboard and mouse, if you rebind roll off of space, holding the new roll button will roll as soon as possible and continue rolling. Note rolling is significantly faster with full health so try to avoid taking damage. Health refills: If you take damage, watch for the saving icon in the upper right corner and reload. Cheat mode: This is banned during runs, but is extremely useful for practice. Pressing c, h, and e at the same time turns on cheat mode. You can load saves by pressing f8, make your own saves with f7, and refill health with f4.

[big]The Run[/big] Asio text storage: Only saves about 2 seconds in this route. Just after you leave your house, you watch a cutscene and then fly up to talk to Asio on top of your house. Text storage here allows you to move during the cutscene where Asio is talking to you. To perform it, talk to Asio on the frame that you land on the platform. I do this by just spamming right click, but some people try to time it too. Here's what it looks like: If you get it, 4 rolls while holding left, then dropping, will put you into place and lined up with the food for the zip.

Basic Food Zips: This is one of the most important tricks used throughout a run, and is done a lot. To perform them, hold down the buttons for grab and eat, and then while in the air above a piece of food release both buttons on the same frame. With no other input, this will zip you off to a position high up and behind where you started the zip. Right click twice after the eating sound effect to re center the camera and move again. If you have not pressed any other inputs during the zip, this is a basic food zip. Facing left or right will change where you end up.

Advanced Food Zips: Facing left or right is not the only way to manipulate food zips. Early Cancel: Double right click before the zip is over. This will cause you to "let go" of the zip and stop moving early. When you right click the second time changes how early you end the zip. Turnaround: Press the opposite direction you started the zip facing. When the zip is over, you will be high up and forward from where you started. This puts you further in the direction you were facing than simply facing the other direction would have. Up Cancel: Press up very briefly during the zip. This ends the zip lower than it would have ended, but still in the same place left or right. Low Angle: Essentially an up cancel immediately as the zip starts. Hold up while triggering the zip, and then let go immediately after the zip starts. Combinations: Turnarounds, up inputs, and early cancels can all be combined, with turnarounds combined with up cancel or low angle being the most common, but note that you can't input a turnaround while the up cancel animation is playing. Either input the turnaround before the up cancel, or in the case of low angles, spam turnaround during the zip to make sure you get it. You could time it as well but spamming turnaround doesn't hurt you in any way.

What can go wrong with zips, and why it happened: A crash / error screen that forces you to reload. If you press up, and that up input would pull the food out of the ground after the zip is done and Otus has eaten the food, you will get this crash / error screen. You end the zip holding onto an invisible piece of food that you can't let go of. If you hold up too long and you pull the food out of the ground before the zip is finished, or try to do an up cancel or low angle on a piece of food that has already been pulled on (or any of the food in Molten) you will be stuck in this state. You can continue on in some cases, but this often ruins the zip completely.

All of these can be used at points during the run to save time over basic zips.

First Food Zip: This is done with the food left and below Otus' house. The easiest version is a full right facing zip, but this is significantly slower. Much harder is a right facing up canceled zip with precise timing. The timing of the up input is just about when Otus leaves the top of the screen after triggering the zip. This will take some getting used to, and can force you to reload. Here is what that one looks like: You can fly straight down and to the right unlike the video.

First stack of barrels in Vellie cave: You can get through these by breaking just the top one, but note that if you press anything other than left or right while going through the space that is left, you have the possibility of softlocking.

Cutscenes in Vellie Cave: Vellie cave is quite strict about the order you go through cutscenes, needing to hit the required ones in order to progress through the cave and trigger the teleporter cutscene at the end. In a recent version, the actual cutscenes attached to some of these triggers were actually removed, but the triggers are still required. Here's a video explaining them all, and I'll get to the zips to get through Vellie Cave in the next section.

Vellie Cave Zips First one: There are several ways you can do this, as with many zips in this game.

1. Face right and hit w briefly right after leaving the top of the screen.
2. Face left and double right click with the right timing.
3. Hardest but fastest is to face left and hit right, then up with the correct timing, saving a few seconds over the easier versions. After getting out of bounds, go trigger the cutscene where Twig laughs at you, then on to the cave in cutscene.

Second one: Early canceled and facing right is the quickest but can leave you stuck inbounds and unable to reload back to try again. Canceled early it looks like this: Note that this is an old version of the game and that cutscene will no longer play. Done normally you’ll have to fly down a long way to get back to this cutscene trigger.

Menu Skip: Pausing on the right frame before the menu card showing your items and partners will skip the menu card. This is used when we get the teleporter, as well as any time we pick up a partner. The teleporter menu skip is the easiest. Watch the teleporter bob up and down after Otus picks it up. At the top of the fifth upwards bob, quickly double tap pause. If you timed it right, it will skip the menu.

Teleport Clip Break the bottom box and use teleport clipping. I use this method: Note that before the clip, flying down as far as you can while holding Geddy puts you at the perfect height to fly straight left against the box to set up the clip.

After this, fly left and then down. If you fly right before you fly as far down as you can, it is possible to miss the save point that lets us reload back in bounds, and be forced to watch a cutscene, so I like to fly straight down and then right.

Vellie Pirate Zip: Just above the cave there is some food in the ground. Easy version: Perform a full length zip facing right, then fly up left to get around some walls, then up right to the loading zone. Slightly harder and faster, fly up to the food above Otus’ house, and do a turnaround zip. Harder and faster version: Left facing, early up “low angle” zip, followed by a left facing turnaround zip, then fly up right to the loading zone.

Owl Temple Entrance Zip: Again, you have several options. East is doing a full right facing zip on the first food you come across in the zone. After the zip, reload from checkpoint and fly up to the entrance. Another option is flying to a higher piece of food and doing a full left facing zip, then after the zip, ONLY hold left. You also must use the left piece of food for this one, as in this video:

If you did the first option you will run into the cutscene with Solus. You can skip this cutscene, but if you do you will be left with a black screen. Skip it early enough and you can just roll straight up into the loading zone. Don't skip it early enough, and you'll have to start flying again first. You'll see this cutscene again when we leave if you skip it.

Owl Temple opening cutscene skip: As you fly upward into Owl Temple, as soon as you hit the save point, pause and load from last checkpoint to skip the cutscene. Press left before roll as the map loads. If you press roll first sometimes you just hit the cutscene again.

Owl Temple Teleport Clip To set this up, fly against the side of the taller green pillar, fly straight up until you hit the ceiling, spawn Geddy, fly straight down until Geddy's feet hit the pillar, throw Geddy and spawn him in again. Then fly up and to the right to a save point and reload.

Owl Temple Zip(s) Here you have several options, although one of them is significantly harder and faster. For the fast version, do a right facing turnaround into late up cancel. Ideally, you end up inbounds just above some food in the ground. More realistically, you end up out of bounds and under them. If you are out of bounds, fly under the food to pick up the save point, and reload in bounds. From here, do a right facing low angle turnaround zip. If you did it right, you'll be back inbounds in the hallway before the room you press a button in. Here is what that looks like:

The easier version is the same up to the first zip, but on that zip, instead do a right facing turnaround zip. When you input the turnaround is very lenient, then follow the path in this video: From there, fly left down the hallway into the same room the other ends in.

Geddy Toss Here the objective is to throw Geddy at the button, and before he hits the button fly over the door in the ground and press drop. This way, you will drop into the next cutscene while the first cutscene is playing. Here's the setup I used at first, but now I fly over to the left wall and aim slightly lower. https://imgur.com/a/hRIjA

After you get Alphonse, you HAVE to reload in order to use him. From there, you have two options. One is a zip out, and the other is a partner clip. I find the fast version of the zip easier than the fast partner clip, so that is the one I do. They are equivalent in time.

If you choose the zip: Grab Alphonse and fly to the right then along the hallways until you find the food in the ground with an enemy standing on it. You don't need to kill the enemy, but until you are very confident in your zips it will be much easier to. The fastest zip here is a left facing turnaround up cancel, probably followed by just a left facing turnaround. Almost any zip here will work to get you out of bounds though. Here's the route to the zip and out of Owl Temple:

If you choose the partner clip: Fly back up to the room with the button in it, break the bottom of the green pillar, and do a partner clip with Alphonse. The technique is similar to the previous partner clips, with the only difference being needing to use Alphonse. The fast version is to ignore the gawks, but this is quite difficult. Then follow the same route out of Owl Temple as in the zip route.

Leaving Owl Temple: If you either skipped the cutscene with Solus, or didn't trigger it the first time, the cutscene will still be there, and skipping it will leave you with a black screen. We blind navigate down to the next save point at the bottom of this open room and reload to get out of the black screen. If you hold a partner you can just fly directly down through all of the platforms until you hit the save point. The yellow enemies here are on a cycle that resets when you reload so you can practice the pattern and always know where they are going to be.

Early Twig / Advent Skip: Next is a left facing zip, or the slightly more advanced (but still easy) right facing turnaround zip. Just follow the route from whatever run you are watching.

Chest Room Teleport Clip: Fly or run against the side of the lower part of the chest for the setup for this clip. Flying against the side of the button won't work.

If you softlock before getting to Twig’s house you have flown too close to the side of the map. Fly into the top of the middle right gawk. There’s a loading zone there.

Twig Talk: Entering Mesos from this direction breaks Twig. When you spawn him in you can't use him, and if you are standing on the ground when you spawn him in, he will just want to talk to you. Stand against a right side wall and talk to Twig to go out of bounds.

Inside Mothership: In first corridor, if you pull the grate in the ceiling as the cutscene starts, the game softlocks, so be careful there. Grabbing it before the cutscene saves time. I try to grab it and throw Twig before it gets pulled. Doing a spin attack with the right timing gets you through the bombs safely. Roll can cancel your spin attack hitbox and cause you to get hit by the bomb if your timing isn't perfect, so I let go of roll to attack the bombs.

New Explosives Skip:

Note that if you push down before completely letting go of the hook, you can just end up pulling on the hook and staying inbounds with a broken Twig. You can reset this by just waiting for the hook to reset and (without spawning Twig again) grappling to the hook. Controller may be unable to do this reset. I'm not certain.

In part of this skip, you’re required to fly over to a cutscene trigger to get Alphonse back. The trigger is located in the range shown in this image: If you’re holding F, the the cutscene that gives you Alphonse back is VERY quick and you can miss it if you blink. You’ll notice the screen scroll strangely and his reload bar in the upper left though. Don’t fly higher or lower than shown or you’ll fly around the trigger. (A few pixels is probably okay. I didn’t get that precise in my testing, but it’s not hard to aim for this range) Don’t worry if you’re using Twig’s grapple and go past the trigger. As long as you passed through the zone you’ll have gotten him. (Again, look for his reload bar if you’re not sure)

Back in Vellie Zip: If you are confident in your zips you can do a left facing zip on the leftmost food in the ground up and slightly to the right of Otus’s house. Use the leftmost one next to the scarecrow or you will end up out of bounds and have to reload to get back in. More advanced and a few seconds faster is a right facing low angle turnaround zip. Start the zip holding up, release up immediately and spam left. If you aren’t confident in first try zips it’s probably faster to use twig to get over to the professor’s lab.

Library Skip Skip: Spin the elevator and ride through the ceiling into the spikes. Input after getting damaged here is up, drop, up, drop, etc. (On keyboard this is normally w, right click, w, right click, and controller it is up, jump, up, jump) When you need to go left and right only do so after letting the white flash play.

Autoscroller skip: Zic's video explains this as well as I could.

Solus fight: Geddy does more damage than Twig in the third phase. You can damage Solus in the 3rd phase when he flies horizontally across the screen with the purple trails if you aim for the head of the trails as Solus flies across the screen.

Time ends when you lose control at gate before talking to Asio.