Released on the launch day of the Wii in November 2006, and in December for the GameCube, Twilight Princess satiated every Zelda fan's desire for hot and sweaty Goron wrestling. Notable differences between the Wii and Gamecube versions include the controllers and the east/west flip of the game world. In the Wii version you can also perform actions never before seen in a Zelda game such as swinging your sword and throwing a boomerang.
Wii and GameCube runs of the Goat Herding category are considered equivalent.
Runs on the GameCube version:
Runs on the Wii version:
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Segmented: 3:06:00 by 'Paraxade' done in 38 segments.
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Author's comments:
I want to thank:
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Mkay, so. Twilight Princess was the game that got me to join SDA, and it was the first game where I actually had a significant hand in helping break it for once. I even made a few attempts at running it before. I was doing an any% test run at one point for TpFox, to give him some strats and some times to beat. I was also working on a 100% run for a bit. Both these attempts were years ago, and both kinda died right after the Goron Mines. Regardless, though, Twilight Princess had a huge hand in helping me become a competent speed runner and a competent sequence breaker, so it's fitting that I'd do a run of it at some point.
I started thinking about running the game a couple months after I finished my Metroid Prime 3 run. At some point, I decided to just play through the route. IIRC it took me a couple days to get through it, and I ended up saving right before the finishing blow on Ganondorf at 5:02, so it was pretty bad. A couple days after that I started working on a serious run (this one). I decided that this time I wasn't going to tell anyone about the run until it was finished. There were several reasons for this. One was that I'd had a lot of motivational issues doing my Prime 3 run, so I didn't want to feel pressured to work on Twilight Princess; if I didn't like running it or if I wanted to stop for some reason, if no one knew about the run then no one would be disappointed. Another reason is that, well... if you look at the Twilight Princess thread from around July or August 2010, there's a lot of people being whiny, selfish, and impatient jackasses demanding new TP runs. I didn't want to put up with that. <_<
So it... kinda worked, kinda didn't. The main problem was that I didn't think there'd be any issues keeping it secret, as no one was running it at the time I started. However, after I picked it up, several people started running it, including one in the same category as the one I was doing, so I ended up needing to reluctantly tell a couple people about the run just so I wouldn't end up being a dick about it. The reactions I got when it was finished and I uploaded the whole thing at once was awesome XD And doubly awesome was that, completely by chance, it ended up being my 250th video (it just happened to get finished when I almost had 250 videos). Honestly though, I don't think I'd wanna do a run like this again, for the reasons I mentioned. No more secret runs, I don't think.
Anyway, the actual running process went a lot smoother than I expected. For a pretty long time the running was fairly easy. I was getting nearly a segment a day. I was focused, motivated, and overall getting a lot done. This continued up until September, when I had a bit of a stumbling point; after 28 segments, I didn't really touch the game for about 9 months. In May I finally picked it up again, did three more segments, then got stuck on 32 for two months. After I finally finished 32 I kept going til the end. It really was a lot smoother than Prime 3 was, hopefully that means I'm improving as a runner. Most of the beginning segments were short and easy, which is why I could get them done so quick. A bit less than halfway through the game though, the segments start getting overall longer and have more difficult tricks in them, so they ended up taking quite a bit longer. In any case, I set some very high standards for myself, and I believe for the most part I met them.
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Techniques I use throughout the run:
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Time for individual segment comments. Be warned that I'm going to be complaining a lot about how speedrunning is hard. :P
[note: The times I have listed for each segment are not going to match up with the official SDA timing. TP runs are timed within the community the same way the in-game timer works; it's partly tradition, partly required in order to be able to compare with older runs without retiming them. SDA doesn't use the in-game timer because it doesn't display at the end of the game, which makes it impossible to verify what your final time is precisely. The in-game timer is actually slower than SDA's timing - it starts when the file begins loading after starting up the game, and stops when the game starts saving. SDA on the other hand starts timing when you gain control and stops when you enter the save menu. SDA timing shaves off ~9 or so seconds per segment, so a fair bit of time comes off there.]
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I think this segment does well to show what kind of run this'll end up being. We aren't even a minute in and already there's two big glitches. xP The first glitch is the gate clip. You can use a rock to clip inside the gate preventing you from going to Faron, and then roll into the center of the gate to be knocked out on the other side. Simple enough.
The next glitch I use is no doubt really confusing if you don't know how it works; it's called the Back in Time glitch (not an entirely accurate name but whatever). The way this glitch works is you jump into a void, and reset the game at EXACTLY the right time. The result is you trigger the respawn mechanic right as the game begins loading the title screen. As a result, you respawn on the title screen and can play on it. Jumping into a void again removes the Twilight Princess logo, which allows me to pause and save.
Saving will warp me to Faron Spring, because that's where the first cutscene in the game takes place. I'll also have all the equipment and flags set that the title screen save file does; in summary, this glitch will teleport me to Faron Spring with the hero's clothes, Ordon Sword, Hylian Shield, and Epona pre-tamed. The rest of the game is set the way it is on a new file, aside from a couple small glitches that come from having the sword, shield, and tamed Epona so early in the game (like the fact that Epona being tamed means I can get the Iron Boots right off the bat in segment 3).
Easiest segment in any run ever. Spent a grand total of 12 minutes recording.
Uggh. This segment is about 100% luck. First is the cage opening, which thankfully is much easier than it was in older runs thanks to the Ordon Sword, but I still had some trouble here because I suck at quickspins. Goat herding is completely random and 99% of the time you'll get a fairly smooth run, but then there's just one or two goddamn goats that run the wrong way or miss the entrance to the barn and that screws over your time. I spent probably a good 5-6 hours or so running this segment and I only got good goat herding 7 or 8 times total. Immediately after goat herding I have to do sumoing, which is even more luck-based because you pretty much just have to mash A and hope that Bo tries to slap you or stays still. If he tries to push you you lose time. If he starts moving then the run's over. And you have to do it twice. Thankfully everything went fairly smoothly this time; I got a 17.80 goat herding, and only had a few very minor hiccups during sumoing.
Speaking of sumoing, you may be very confused as to how I can even do the sumoing this early in the game. xP It's thanks to the Back in Time glitch from segment 1. One of the things that saving on the title screen gives me is pre-tamed Epona. Taming Epona is the flag that determines whether you can sumo Bo and get the Iron Boots. There's no cutscene trigger, but going into his house and talking to him repeatedly eventually gets me through all the dialogue to the point where I can sumo.
This is a pretty straightforward one. I think this is the first time anyone's gotten a sub-4 time on it on the GCN version as well, though I could be mistaken. There's three spots in the segment where you can do a quick Midna jump and save a second or two each time, but I didn't get any of them; they have a really really tiny window so I don't think they're worth the trouble. :/ I did get a new text skip that I saw logitech pointed out in the SDA Twilight Princess thread though; this run was actually the first time I ever pulled it off!
This... is perfect.
The trick here is I use the Bulblin to jump over the Midna text trigger that normally prevents you from entering the twilight without the sword and shield, and land in the trigger behind it that lets me enter the twilight. This skips needing to collect the sword and shield, which is impossible anyway because I did the back in time/title screen glitch. Performing this trick perfectly requires a lot of luck because the Bulblin likes to keep attacking you while you're trying to push it into the text trigger which wastes a lot of time. On this run though it only attacked me once, when I needed it to. Incredibly lucky. There's nearly no way to do this any better.
Relatively simple one here. The only improvement as far as I know is you can get a quick Midna jump going into Coro's house, but for some reason I had to spend 4 hours on this segment already (not really a long time in my experience, but it's surprising for what seems like such a simple segment), and again it's a very very small window for a minimal amount of time saved so I didn't bother forcing myself to get it. The rest of this went very well.
This segment contains one of the most well-known sequence breaks in the game: Early Master Sword. I recorded for about 30 minutes and got a pretty good segment that came in at 1:35, then because of two really really minor things that were bugging me a little, I decided to redo. :P After a few hours I got this.
For some reason in this run I am having really bad luck with the quick Midna jumps, there's another one right at the beginning here but I didn't get it again. I also decided to deviate from what the other runs I've seen did a little and didn't kill the last two bugs in the mist room. When I come back later, I won't have to dig them up and they'll be sitting still, so they'll be easier and faster to kill later. [okay, when I do a segmented run, I write my comments as I go, so I wrote this right after I finished the segment; the point is, scratch that, it sure as hell was not easier.] EMS went pretty well.
Fairly easy one, just running through Sacred Grove and getting the Master Sword then saving.
Uggh, this ended up surprisingly difficult. The two bugs in the mist room ended up being a lot more random than I'd expected; it was very difficult to get both tears from them quickly unless their corpses randomly ended up close to each other. After that I had to kill the North Faron twilit messengers, which isn't very difficult honestly but is luck-based, and then get the last two bugs, which are by far the most difficult ones in the whole Faron twilight to kill quickly. Fortunately I managed to make everything go smoothly this time.
The first room has some of the most frustrating random shit I've ever had to run. There are so many things that can go wrong that are completely out of your control. I have to hope I don't miss any sword swings on the deku baba, then the nut might break on its own when it drops, then the Bokoblin can hit me while I'm carrying it, then sometimes the nut won't actually kill the spider despite directly hitting it, then sometimes I mess up the quickspin, then sometimes the quickspin won't actually break the cage and kill the Bokoblin, then if the Bokoblin is still alive I have to hope it uses a horizontal swing so it won't hit me, and even if ALL of that goes right, sometimes the second spider will hit me as I'm climbing up the vines. I only got a run past all that shit around once every half hour or so maybe, and I spent a good 7-8 hours on this segment. Bleh. Fortunately everything after that part isn't too bad.
Pretty good early gale boomerang execution and a lucky Ook fight, not too much else to say. The reason I keep talking to Midna during early Gale Boomerang is because it makes the wind stop, then start again after I exit the dialogue, so the bridges turn faster.
This one gave me a lot of trouble for some reason :/ Most of my runs got killed on the boss key. Most of the ones that managed to make it past there died on either the spider hanging from the ceiling in the same room or the monkey skip LJAs. This run was actually only the second one in... I'm gonna say at LEAST 10 hours of attempts, that actually made it to Diababa. Thankfully the Diababa fight is not hard to optimize at all which allowed me to focus on just getting a good run up to him. Lost maybe half a second right before the first monkey skip LJA but that's all.
Also, there's a faster strategy on Diababa that Chimpas used in his run. I didn't watch his segment til after I finished mine because I didn't think it was comparable because of the LJAs, so I didn't know about the strat when I ran this segment. Bleh.
Pretty annoying segment (there seems to be a lot of those). It's totally random where the twilit messengers are when you arrive to the fight which changes how fast you'll be able to kill them. The messenger fights I got on this run were both awesome, especially the one in Kakariko (fantastic placement and killed them very quickly). After digging under the gate to Kakariko, the reason I run off to the left along the wall instead of going straight into Kakariko is because I have the Iron Boots, so there's a big trigger immediately on the other side of the gate that sets off the King Bulblin kidnapping Colin cutscene. If I activate/skip the cutscene, it'll put me in a half-twilight Kakariko state with nothing in it. Obviously bad. The bugs in the sanctuary basement are pretty random, but I developed a strategy for them - I run off to the left, to near where the dig spot is, then back to near the front of the room is. That usually causes at least two of the bugs to be grouped together if not all three (surprisingly it's usually easier to actually kill all of them when only two are grouped together).
Also it's pretty annoying to get an awesome segment just to accidentally go slow in the menus while trying to save, but I'll be damned if I'm redoing a segment over that lol.
Short one.
I spent all day working on this and couldn't get it, so I took a break for ~30 minutes or so and came back to it, then proceeded to pull off this run on my first try. :P This went very well. I even got a very good twilit messenger fight at Death Mountain which is ironic because this is the one place where it doesn't even matter, as I'd need to wait for the geyser to stop blowing in order to do the Midna jump up. So there was some leeway to lose a few seconds on the messengers, and it still went perfectly.
I collect over half of the Eldin tears in this segment, but there were really only two bugs that gave me any trouble at all while trying to figure out my strategies. The first was the one in the guard tower on top of Kakariko - if you replicate what I did in the video then the bug will do what it did here about half the time. It requires some luck, but you can kill it very quickly this way. The second was the one in the hot spring on Death Mountain. I found if you just don't touch the control stick after jumping down, the bug won't move. Just lock on and jump attack it without moving, and then if you wait a couple seconds you'll be able to kill it pretty easily (for some reason it won't die earlier than that).
Lemme just say I really hate the gate clip here. It's random as hell whether you'll actually go through the gate or not, so pulling it off first try for a speedrun isn't easy. I managed it though.
According to logitech, warping to Kakariko Gorge instead of South Faron is 10 seconds faster. But there's a big problem with doing it that way: the Bulblins by the gate are not there if you warp to Kakariko Gorge. However, Epona acts like they are, so if you leave her there, she won't sit still. But since the Bulblins aren't actually there, you can't kill them to make her stop. This makes the gate clip incredibly difficult, if not impossible. So South Faron was still the only viable option.
The infamous rupee dive. This was the fastest method I could come up with to pull off the dive. This segment was tough mostly because the blue rupee very rarely actually shows up; I get it maybe one time in twenty, if even that (at one point I played for an hour and only got it once). After that, the dive itself has a ridiculously tiny window. But in the end, as far as how well this segment went, there's really nothing to complain about.
Segment: This went pretty smooth, LJAs in the staircase room are surprisingly easy once you get used to how to pull them off.
Route: Here's where things start to get confusing. xP The reason I went into Lakebed was purely to get Ooccoo, which I need for two reasons. The first reason is the simple fact that there's no other way to get in. With my current equipment, I can't beat the dungeon yet. However, this was the only time where I could actually make it inside; after raising the water level, it's impossible to get in on GCN without either water bombs or Zora Armor, so I need to get Ooccoo now to be able to come back later. The second reason is I need Ooccoo to get bombs, which I'll elaborate on more in my comments for segment 23.
Woooow. Had no idea this was going to be so frustratingly difficult. I basically ran through this and on my first decent completion of the segment, I got 6:11, so from then on I decided I wouldn't take anything worse than 6:11. I got several more completions, including a 6:15, a 6:14, and a 6:12, all of which I had to throw out, then finally got a high 6:11 (this one) and decided it was good enough for me. The entire segment hinges on the Kargaroc fight at the beginning. It's completely random. Sometimes it'll start flying around sooner than other times, and after that it'll usually be flying around for an hour before going in to attack you. Even if it decides to cooperate for once and go in for the attack quickly, if it manages to grab you in the water then the game freezes. I've had several ridiculously fast fights but those happen once in a blue moon. The rest isn't too difficult fortunately, there's a little more randomness in the Zora's Domain twilit messengers and the rock at Death Mountain but it's not as bad as the Kargaroc.
On this particular run, I got an acceptable Kargaroc fight. The rest of the segment actually went very well. No real mistakes, and the twilit messenger fight was very good aside from a bump in the wall that didn't cost more than about half a second. The rock showed up quickly at Death Mountain, and this is probably the fastest I've executed the Rutela cutscene skip. I know for sure that the Kargaroc fight can be done faster than this and you can save a few more seconds, but I'm frankly completely out of patience on this segment and I'd like to move on.
On a slightly amusing note this is segment 19 out of 38 total. That means that segmentation-wise the run is halfway finished, but time-wise I'm only just past the 1 hour mark and this is a 3 hour run. Heh. On average the segments get a lot longer in the latter half of the run.
In retrospect, this could have been a bit better. Everything's easy in this one except for the bug in Zora's Domain that just about never cooperates. I had a run that would've been better than this one where the bug was perfect, then the Z button decided not to work right as I wanted to press it. Oh well. :/ I'd rather not spend 2+ years on the run this time... there are segments coming up that are a lot harder than this one so I don't think I want to stress over the easy stuff. The reason I turn into a human and go back under the grating is to skip the Rutela cutscene again, like I did in segment 19. Saving after I get back to the Zora's River basin savewarps me back onto land so I don't have to waste a ton of time using the iron boots to get out of the water.
Another really short and simple one, this was pretty much a waiting game of getting lucky on the two bugs in the water. Saving as soon as I get into Upper Zora's River warps me next to Iza.
Pretty long segment for a change. This segment clears the rest of the Lanayru twilight. I had a surprising number of runs get killed in Castle Town, with everything else in the segment being pretty simple. Having to run through Hyrule Field on every attempt was pretty annoying but eh. Thankfully most of the bugs are consistent, as were the twilit messengers. The only problems came from the townspeople in Castle Town (who seem to be in random spots, so sometimes they'd be blocking my path and sometimes they wouldn't), the bug in Castle Town and the bug behind Fyer's cannon (both of which have a pretty high rate of doing what I want them to anyway).
Ehhh. I was on the fence about whether to keep this run or not. The main thing that bugs me is after I warp back in after getting the second bomb bag, I accidentally put a bomb down on the ground because I didn't get under the waterfall right. There's also random really minor things that bug me a little. Aside from that it mostly went pretty well really... I ended up keeping because I'd been stuck on this for over a week and wanna move on dammit! >< I'll go into more detail on the bomb stuff in the next couple paragraphs; aside from that, there's several tricks and glitches featured in this segment. In the room before Deku Toad in Lakebed, there's a way to throw a water bomb over the railing as soon as you get into the room, so it'll blow up while you're making your way over so you don't have to wait for it to explode. I decided not to do it because the cutscene that triggers after the rock explodes usually ended up triggering while I was about to do the LJA to get onto the railing. This screwed up the camera angle and made it a -lot- more difficult to pull off that trick; this was while I'd already never even gotten a run up to there, in a week of attempts. Needless to say I didn't want this to be more difficult than it had to. Deku Toad was pretty awesome; I use a new strategy I found that lets you 2-cycle it without the ball & chain (the B&C will 1-cycle it).
Soo bomb strategies. This segment is primarily where the route is really confusing. The problem is I need bombs to finish the game (they're necessary for Lakebed and Zant... yes, those are the only places). So to get bombs, I have three options, as there are three bomb bags in the game. The first one, which is the one you're supposed to get first, is the one Barnes starts selling after you finish the Goron Mines. Since I'm not going to finish the Goron Mines, Barnes will never sell it so this is out of the question right off the bat. There's another one in Zora's Domain, but the problem there is getting that bomb bag requires already having bombs. So that leaves us with the bomb bag Iza gives you. You normally need the bow (which is in the Goron Mines, which I'm not going to go to) in order to keep the bag, but Iza gives it to you as soon as you talk to her; you just need to finish the sidequest in order to actually keep it. The game removes the bag from your inventory if you try to leave through the door or if you save/deathwarp out. If you leave by any other means though - by warping out as a wolf, or by using Ooccoo - you can hold onto the bag until either you finish Lakebed or your next save + quit, either of which end up removing the bag from your inventory again. While it IS possible to trigger the sequence as a wolf and then warp out to keep the bomb bag, it seems to be a completely random glitch that few people have triggered, so it's not much of an option; that's why we use Ooccoo (and Ooccoo is probably faster anyway). Completing all of Lakebed with just this bomb bag to avoid needing to get a second one is not feasible because I'm going to need it again later - without Zora Armor I need water bombs to kill Zant - and Lakebed is the only place where I can get water bombs.
So if I use Ooccoo I can get a bomb bag - that's one problem down. The next is that I can't actually keep her bomb bag. This means I have to go get a different one - the one from the Goron in Zora's Domain. Since that bag requires having water bombs, I need to get water bombs. There's two places in the game where you can get them, aside from a bomb shop - either a grotto near the Eldin Bridge, which is waaaay out of the way and also requires the Fishing Rod which I don't have, or any bomb chest in Lakebed. Bomb chests will normally give you whatever type of bomb you already have, but what happens when you don't have any? The answer is that certain chests will default to certain types of bombs, so if you run out of bombs and open a chest you will get the default type. In Lakebed, every bomb chest defaults to water bombs. This means if I completely empty the bomb bag then open a bomb chest, I'll get water bombs. That way I can warp back out, go to Zora's Domain and get a second bomb bag, which I'll actually be able to keep. I have to completely empty this bomb bag too, because I need more water bombs in the next segment. I can empty the majority of the bag without losing time on the way to Deku Toad and during the fight.
I equipped Gale Boomerang to Y and Bombs to X at the end of the last segment thinking that, yknow, they were going to stay there. Guess not. :/ My guess is it's something to do with the lent bomb bag (the items it stuck on the buttons instead are the same ones I had equipped before I got the LBB) but eh. It's really not a big deal, I just thought I should mention it so nobody would think it was an inconsistency. Anyway, kicking Morpheel's ass without Zora Armor this segment. I actually enjoyed doing this segment; was a nice change of pace after the incredible bore that was segment 23, and this particular run went fantastic. Got all the LJAs, quick vine glitch, and nailed the Morpheel fight. Between the vine glitch to skip the boss key, which likes to pick and choose when it wants to work, and Morpheel, which itself can be pretty random, you'd be surprised to learn that by far I lost most of my runs on the LJAs in the second room. Yeah, I suck. >_>
Simple segment, just taking Midna to see Zelda because story. The trickiest thing in this segment was the shortcut in the bar. It seems like randomly the Goron sees you and kicks you out of the bar half the time. I think it's something to do with how quickly you pull it off but I really have no idea. :/ The rest was pretty good.
In order to get to Snowpeak early, I utilize the map glitch; check the techniques part of my comment for a description of how it's done. Once I reach the top, I'd end up stuck, since, of course, the map glitch disabled the loading zones, so the game will just lock up if I try to dig into the cave. So to avoid this, I howl at the howling stone - loading zones that are triggered by cutscenes still work - and then go back, which reloads the area without the effects of the map glitch.
Had a little trouble getting on the snowboard which cost like a second <_< But aside from that this went very well. When that happened, I decided I was just going to recklessly go as fast as I could on the snowboarding, and I'd only keep it if I managed to pick up the red rupee. To my surprise, I actually did it. :P
On another note, TpFox's run did Snowpeak before finishing Lakebed. Doing Lakebed first instead, on this segment I save a significant amount of time over him (24 seconds) in large part thanks to the Clawshot.
This was kinda fun! This segment goes up until the ball & chain. It's not required to finish Snowpeak for the same reason it's not required to finish the Temple of Time, but Snowpeak is different in that the ball & chain is absolutely required to kill Zant, which necessitates a visit there, even though I don't have to actually finish the dungeon. Anyway, I actually had a decent amount of the segment consistent for once, which is what made it fun. I used a new method for the double LJA that is way, way easier (logitech originally did it by making it go behind the wall once then making it go over the chest for the second one, which was ridiculously difficult; I just made it go behind the wall twice). I jumped in a void on the way back over from the key, but I think it would've been faster to do another double LJA back over.
Also on the attempt immediately before this one, I lost the run because the orange rupee went through the wall lol. <_< I'm not sure how I managed to get another run to the end again so quickly but I'm not complaining. xP
I'm going from Snowpeak to Arbiter's Grounds now, so most of it is just running around all over the place as a wolf, with a little action towards the end. There are several methods to skip the small key at the Bulblin camp. The first one is Kazooie's LJA method (which most runners found to be too difficult to use), and logitech found an easier but slower method using the map glitch to cut under the level, since the trigger for the King Bulblin fight stretches infinitely high/low. After practicing up on the LJA method for a bit I ended up deciding that doing it in a run was realistic, because the bulblin archers end up not really being a big problem if you pull off the trick quickly enough, which I'd need to do anyway since it's a speed run. It's still a very difficult LJA though, especially with all the enemies alive, and I had a lot of runs killed on it. Got very very nervous when I actually pulled it off and made it onto the roof.
Miscallaneous stuff: On King Bulblin, using the jump + spin combo stuns him for a short amount of time. It's not much, but it's enough that if you can pull off three quickspins you can immediately kill him. Also, one small thing I wanna mention, because I like it but I bet no one'll notice it. Approaching Auru's tower, I turned right slightly right before triggering Midna to turn into a human. I do this to ensure that the camera ends up turning in the direction I want it to (toward the wall). If the camera turns to face Lake Hylia, then the game ends up lagging and the transform animation takes longer to finish.
Also typical complaining: God damn this segment took a while. 10 days (8 if you don't count the two days I put it off, but for the rest of them I was constantly working on it). Fortunately I think the result was well worth the time and effort :D When I finally finished it, it was well past my bedtime, and I probably should've gone to sleep, but I decided to stay up to keep attempting, and I actually managed to finish it. So needless to say, staying up a little late this time? TOTALLY worth it. :P
Okay, this segment goes through almost all of Arbiter's Grounds up until the Spinner. It takes a really really long time to get back to the main room from the Spinner room, which is why I savewarp to skip all of that. And thank God, because Stallord is notorious for being amazingly random. Anyway, let me start off by saying THIS SEGMENT IS AWFUL. There's sooo many little things that love to go wrong. Random sandworms in the first room. Missing the torch in the second room. Random Bubble in the room before the second Poe. Difficult Clawshot target in the same room. Random Bubbles (again) while I'm fighting the second Poe. Random rat in the room before the second Poe again on the way back that isn't in the same place every time. Annoying LJA that killed tons of runs before I managed to figure it out. Random Bubbles (AGAIN) after the LJA. Red rupees from Redeads that like to jump the wrong way so I miss them. Really hard-to-run Redead room where I can get frozen by the Redead, get pushed into quicksand while holding the ball & chain (instant sink), miss the throw at the second Redead, or several other things. Ghost rat room where I can get covered in rats before clearing the gap. And... that's it, because thankfully the second half is easy (this run was actually the first time I ever made it past the ghost rat room), but the first half would be worthy of a segment all on its own. There's more things that killed runs, of course, but those are all the big ones. I was playing this segment for two and a half weeks straight before I finally got it done.
Anyway. This is a really good run. Everything up until I go through the Poe door in the main room is absolutely perfect, aside from dashing into a wall once. The fourth Poe is completely random and I wasn't going to bother optimizing it too much, and it still went perfectly. In the second half, I messed up the early Boss Key trick a little bit, but it wasn't too bad. And last, in the huge spinner tracks room, I missed a jump and had to run on the quicksand a little longer than I wanted to - there was some standable ground, so I think I barely lost any time. The room before Death Sword was perfect, including an absolutely godly 11-minutes-in clawshot. Death Sword was perfect, and rewatching the segment, it looks like I just BARELY managed to stun him before he would've hit me and ruined the run on the second cycle. I'm very, very happy with this.
I did find a couple of new things. Most notably, on the second and third Poes, I found out if you attack them right after targeting them, they'll skip the little animation they usually do. This speeds things up a lot, and it's incredibly helpful on the second Poe because it means you can, 100% of the time, get in the dark energy field attack before the Bubbles can get near you. I also did a lot of things small things that didn't cost time for consistency, like stunning the Bubbles before the clawshot to the second Poe and before the first LJA, that I don't think previous runs used.
Now, some more information on what I did for consistency. On the first LJA, I find that the most consistent way to pull it off is to climb up onto the railing, then pull out the boomerang and hit straight right on the stick. Then press L and edge to the right, aim at the marking on the wall, and throw it. If you know where to aim and you manage to sidestep without falling off, it should work 100%. The main stumbling point is not falling off. For the Redead room, I run through all the Stalkin then throw the boomerang at the first Redead. Then I stand next to it and pull out the ball & chain (most of the time I get hit and need to use the damage invulnerability as an opportunity to pull it out, but not this time). I hold it still for a little bit to kill the first Redead and a lot of the surrounding Stalkin, as well as aim at the second one. Then the throw kills off the second one, leaving me to finish off the rest of the Stalkin with a quick spin attack before turning into a wolf, collecting the Rupees and killing the third Poe. That room was very, very difficult to come up with a strategy for, but the one I came up with is very quick and fairly easy. And last, in the ghost rat room, after opening the chest I do a quick jump attack - the point is just to hit L so I can see where I'm going, but the jump attack lets me keep moving while I'm doing that. I'm not sure on this, but I'm pretty sure the reason I ended up getting covered in rats before being able to jump half the time is because a huge group of rats spawns right on the ledge right as you get there. I think hugging the wall makes it more consistent, but this was the only time I managed to get past the ghost rat room, so I can't say for sure it's consistent (though it was the first time after I decided to hug the wall).
Oh, and one more thing - I found a faster strat for Death Sword. You can actually hit him with the sword to stun him so you can start hitting him much faster than you can with the B&C. I thought this might be a better strat for a little bit, since it's both faster, plus the B&C doesn't manage to hit him 100% of the time, but it turns out it's just too inconsistent; not only can you not guarantee you can hit him fast enough with the sword, but you can't guarantee he's gonna be facing the right way, either. And if you can't manage to pull out the B&C fast enough, then you won't be able to get 5 hits in, which means he'll take 3 cycles instead of 2. So it's faster, but just too hard, even for a segmented run.
Anyway. Damn that was long. That should about sum it up. Hope it's informative to both viewers and other runners.
This was a pretty easy segment ('specially compared to the last one). Only remotely hard part is Stallord's first phase, which isn't even difficult so much as luck-based. On this run I definitely got a great phase 1. Phase 2 kinda bothers me a little because I messed up the jump + spin combo which cost me like half a second, but it's really trivial, so. I decided not to get on the spinner immediately when I entered Stallord's room because there's a glitch where you'll latch onto the spinner track even though the pathway leading down to Stallord's skull is blocking it, and the spinner kinda gets stuck in it. It's possible to get out and go the right way, but it's also possible to jump off and start going backwards, so I just didn't wanna deal with it. :/ Nothing much else to say about this segment.
Another easy one. This one involves two sequence breaks, one minor and the other massive. The first one is the Mirror Chamber skip. This is a rather simple one. Midna usually won't let you warp away until you've raised the mirror However, for some reason if you zoom in all the way on the map, then you can turn on portals and warp out. Saves a decent amount of time; the downside is that Midna won't let me warp for the rest of the game so I'll need to zoom in for every warp from now on. But considering there's only three warps left in the run, that's not a big deal.
The second one is a huge sequence break. By standing in front of the statue in the Kakariko sanctuary basement and turning into a wolf, you can clip through and get to the Sky Cannon early. It can be rather picky about the angle (see Jiano's run), but overall it's not terrible. After that, Midna won't let you warp the cannon directly, because she thinks Shad is in the room and watching you (which he's not). However, if you talk to her so that she goes on the cannon and then map warp out, then she'll warp the cannon. This, combined with the fact that the game only checks for the last mirror shard (and the fact that the Dominion Rod is completely useless), lets you skip about an hour of stuff - including the latter half of Snowpeak, ALL of the Temple of Time, and all the little mandatory mini-quests that are normally between ToT and CitS.
As for the run itself - very good. Messenger fight went well, statue clip was great, and the only other thing that could mess me up after that is turning back into a human at Lake Hylia, which went perfectly.
OMG THIS SEGMENT WAS ANNOYING. So much clawshotting, coupled with a few annoying glitches. There are two big skips used in this segment: the Argorok cutscene skip, and the Aeralfos skip. The Argorok cutscene skip is right after the small key. Normally, after you get the small key, when you try to go back inside the main building, a cutscene plays where Argarok destroys the bridge behind you (the game changes your savewarp location to the small key room so you can't savewarp past the cutscene). However, if you jump on the railing, then go inside through the hole in the mesh, then you can get back in without triggering the cutscene. This is HUGE, because on top of not having to watch the cutscene, which would already make this worth doing, this trick makes it so the game never unsets your savewarp location from the small key room. This means after I get double clawshots I can warp across the entire dungeon to get to where I'm going next.
The second big trick is the Aeralfos skip. This is actually a new trick that I found while practicing, and it saves nearly a minute. Normally after you kill Aeralfos, a gate opens to reveal an alcove containing a chest, which you can clawshot up to to get to the Double Clawshots. However, as it turns out, if you stand in exactly the right place, it's actually possible to clawshot behind the gate to hit the target during the fight. This lets you skip the miniboss. It's close to a pixel-perfect shot though, so it wasn't easy to speedrun.
Now, if I'm being completely honest, I don't like my run of this segment, and I kind of wished I'd kept trying to do a better one. There's just a lot of little things that went wrong. A couple missed clawshots, the Deku Baba on the east wing took an extra sword slash than it should've, I got unlucky wind on two of the three bridges, I messed up the jump in the second-to-last room and lost a second or two, and I didn't manage to put on the Iron Boots in the one frame before the cutscene in Aeralfos's room. I ended up keeping the segment anyway because I'd been on it for two months and was sick of it, plus the Aeralfos skip was actually really good, for being a pixel-perfect trick right at the end of an already tough segment.
Okay... this was hell. Granted, it was one of those segments that I was deathly afraid of the entire time I was working up to it, then it ended up being not quite as bad as I was expected (because it turned out that Argorok is really easy)... but don't get me wrong, it was still bad. This segment has really precise tricks and clawshots every two seconds. The first two rooms are the worst parts as they have about a million clawshots each (and one LJA each) and have a hundred different ways they can go wrong so the vast majority of my attempts died in those rooms. The rest isn't exactly a walk in the park either. However, aside from a couple missed clawshots on Argorok, I managed to make it all go pretty much perfectly, which is no small feat (I spent a solid week and a half playing this segment non-stop).
There's a ton of minor tricks here and a few significant ones. First, the fifth room has a tricky clawshot and an LJA that together let me skip basically the entire room. Second, on the way to the boss, there's a trick where if you go up higher than one of the fans and then clawshot right at the top of the grate, you can climb on top of the fans. I use this, plus a double LJA, to cross the room without turning on the fans, which saves a lot of time. And third - this trick is significant, not because of how much time it saves, but because of how difficult it is. Right before the boss door I clawshot on top of one of the moving fans, walk to the edge, and then from there I can clawshot to the target over the boss door. This is a really really difficult shot because the height of the shot has to be pretty much perfect, or else it'll be either too low or too high. Combine that with being on a moving platform and having a limited timeframe where the shot is possible, plus the fact that it's basically the last (difficult) thing in the segment, and... yeah. Blame logitech for that one, he loves to make my life hell. x.x Maybe I should go get rid of the part of my comments where I thanked him.
Anyway, I was afraid Argorok was going to be really random or difficult, but after I learned the strat I found out that he is actually really really easy, since he basically does the exact same thing every time, and for the most part you really don't have to be precise at all, since there's a lot of downtime. So my strat was basically:
First phase: Right as the fight starts, I clawshot up onto one of the pillars and stay up there for a little while before jumping back off and rolling to the center. The reason I do this is because if you're on the ground, a lot of the time Argorok will do an attack where he scrapes the ground with his claws and then flies around some more, which costs a LOT of time. If you go up on the pillar though, then he will never do that attack. For the second hit, I found out that for some reason, if you clawshot up onto the pillar quickly enough, you can clawshot him immediately, instead of having to wait for him to fly around; this saves a good 20 seconds or so.
Second phase: First hit is very straightforward. Second hit is kinda random, because sometimes he'll initiate the flame attack right as you clawshot up to the peahat, and other times he won't and you'll have to wait a few extra seconds, which is annoying. Luckily on this run he started the attack sooner. The third hit is the most interesting. Normally Argorok will chase you with a flame attack, then turn around and try to trick you with a second attack in the opposite direction, so you have to sit through two flames instead of one. logitech found out that for some reason, sometimes when you put the Iron Boots on, the second flame attack will stop almost immediately, saving 10 seconds or so. My strategy is to clawshot up onto the pillar with the boots on, then wait for him to initiate the attack. Partway through the animation, I clawshot up to the peahats, then clawshot 5 peahats (including the first one), turn around, and clawshot in the other direction right before he starts the second flame. I found that doing it this way, he would skip the flame pretty much every single time.
Soo yeah, that's about it. I skip the save prompt and go to Lake Hylia to save instead because that savewarps me onto solid ground, which lets me skip falling from the sky and swimming to land.
Nice and easy one. The only not-easy thing about this segment was the Phantom Zant fight, and that wasn't even hard so much as it was random. He basically has 7 different places in the room he can teleport to, and you have to pick one of those spots and hope he randomly teleports next to you two times fast. The fight in this run was pretty decent, he teleported away from me 5 times; it could've definitely been better, but if you've ever tried to speedrun this fight then you also know it can easily be far, far worse, so this was fairly quick. On a couple random notes, I felt like I got good fights more often when I stood next to the wall rather than in the center which is where I was going initially, but it could have just been me. Also, I got an absurdly good fight when I was practicing; he teleported to the center of the room immediately at the start (so right next to me), then teleported away once, then back to the center two times in a row. Never got anything like that again (well, on this segment, anyway). :s
Two more things. First is that it's technically faster to turn into a wolf right before you enter the dungeon, and stay a wolf up until the first small key. However, the difference is only about one second, and Wolf Link is more difficult because when the Midna texts trigger, if you're a wolf the camera zooms in on Midna's face, which makes it difficult to keep running the right way, so I decided to stay human. Second, it's possible to save after placing the Sol but before the cutscene/Midna text triggers, but if I do that the cutscene will trigger anyway immediately at the start of the next segment. I decided to watch it now so I don't have to watch it every single time I do an attempt on the next one.
WAAAAY harder than the first PoT segment.
First off, the second room in the segment has a Zant Mask that can teleport to five different locations. It's possible to get a good run with any of the five, but obviously a couple of them are easier than others. Third room is pretty annoying. Most of it's not too bad if the twilit messengers go well, but getting from the key to the door is a major pain in the ass. I'd end up missing the jump to the little wall more often than not, and sometimes even if you do manage to land on the wall the game turns you into a wolf for some reason. I experimented with a lot of different strategies to get from the key to the door. Jumping down to that wall and doing an LJA takes roughly the same amount of time as just simply clawshotting back, and the clawshot is very difficult, so I went with this.
Phantom Zant is basically the same as the last segment, except this time, he can teleport to 9 different locations instead of 7, making him EVEN MORE random!!! Lucky me!!! Ugggh. Surpisingly, if you remember the almost-perfect fight I described in my comments for segment 34 - pretty much that exact fight happened during actual attempts. Twice. Both of which I managed to screw up before I could even get out of the Sol room. (though to be fair, the second time wasn't really my fault - the twilit messenger ended up standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE SOL so I couldn't clawshot it, which had never happened before. Talk about shitty luck. I wish I'd kept the video for the blooper reel. Also, for the record, the epic fights I got were 12 seconds long, while the one in this run is 18 seconds, and the one in segment 34 was 17 seconds; so that's 5-6 seconds you can take off right there per fight if you're crazy or just ridiculously lucky.)
Backtracking out of the Sol room can be a little tricky, mostly clawshotting the Sol; the cutscene of the hand activating triggers once the Sol touches a trigger, so there's no way around having to clawshot it twice. After that though, the return trip is pretty easy. The only other thing that can really mess you up is the first room after you leave the Sol room. The main problem is the Keese; they can attack you while you're trying to clawshot up the Sol, which is why I try to kill them. On a related note, I was originally planning to sword drop the Sol into the slot and then run to the corner, which would have been faster than doing it the way I did in the run, but it turns out if you do it that way then there's still a bit of dark fog in the corner, so you end up getting turned into a wolf. :/
Funny story with this one. This run was actually the first one where I managed to get to Zant. I got a largely pretty decent fight, but I was unhappy with a couple things (namely, the clawshot to the boss key and the Goron Mines phase on Zant; the last LJA was slightly slow as well). Was going to delete it and keep trying, but Miles and Gale told me to hang onto it just in case. Two days later, I'd gotten good runs to Zant 20 times total and none of them were anywhere near as good as that first fight. Plus, I rewatched it and ended up deciding it was not anywhere near as bad as I thought it was (I'll blame the fact that at the time I hadn't gotten to Zant 20 times yet; I didn't realize how easily Forest 1 can fuck up yet). I ended up deciding to keep it, so thank you guys! :P
So, lots to say about this one. There's a few LJAs, all of which were found by logitech (though the last one uses a new method that I found). This dungeon is kinda designed in a way so that there's not very many high places to throw the boomerang at, to the only real way to get an LJA in most places is to get it over a void by having it go through the wall. Thankfully it's pretty easy. As for actually running it, second room is a bit of a bitch. The rest is fairly easy, but the third room can be annoying because the first clawshot up to the boss key is pretty difficult to pull off (it was a bit slow in this run, but nothing major). After the boss key, it's faster to just run out immediately and do a running swipe, but I ended up losing a LOT of runs there because I'd get through the twilight fall and land on the ground and then get turned into a wolf, so I changed strategies to spin attack it instead. Was much much more consistent. Fourth and fifth rooms are very easy.
Then we finish with Zant. Easily the most interesting part of the segment, and there's a lot of things to say about this fight, so I'll split it up by phase:
So, that's that.
This is for the most part a really easy segment. I found a couple new tricks here that save a lot of time: I figured out a way to skip ALL THREE of the normally required enemy mob fights in this dungeon. The first one can be skipped by LJAing over the hedge from the staircase, and the second can be skipped by skipping the cutscene quickly enough and then rolling outside the barrier before it appears. (The third skip is in segment 38.) The second way is really really easy, but the first is actually very difficult. It took a lot of messing around to figure out this method of doing it - I use the hedge to get an LJA. This requires you to be very precise, because you have to be lower than the hedge to be able to LJA off of it, but if you're too low then you won't be able to make it over; so basically, your height needs to be near perfect. Thankfully, everything else in the segment is really really easy. Oh, and that cutscene sucks.
Was easier than expected, because the final bosses are all really easy. The rest of the segment is fairly hard, but not too bad; the difficulty is largely due to the enemies being kinda random and liking to screw you over a lot. First things first - the third mob skip. The mob you normally have to fight as soon as you enter the castle can be skipped if you enter the cutscene trigger the right way and skip it fast enough. I use a jumpslash, which makes it very easy and fast; it can be done by rolling into the trigger, but as far as I can tell this requires going in at a bizarre angle and it's overall much more difficult. The Darknut in the third room is really annoying and killed a lot of runs. It's also fairly hard to throw the boomerang at the torch, but I ended up finding a pretty easy way to do it. The Armored Lizalfos are also frustrating because most of the time one of them won't get killed by the bomb and I'll have to reset.
The Aeralfos is random. After I clawshot it down to the ground, it'll either pull its arm back for a second before swinging, or it'll do a really fast stab. I want it to pull its arm back because as soon as it starts doing that, I can start hitting it again. If it does the fast stab, then I can't hit him (well, I can, but usually when that happens I get hit too, so it doesn't work). After I get the small key, I turn into a wolf to run to the other side of the room. Surprisingly, it's actually about a second faster to stay human, but this far into the segment, it's a lot easier to just mash A as a wolf than to actually time rolls as a human, especially going up slopes, so I decided to sacrifice the one second. The last room is fairly straightforward. I kinda messed up one of the clawshots, which is the only mistake in the segment; it cost a few seconds, but everything else went very well, so I'm willing to overlook that. And now we're at the final bosses...
FINAL TIME: 3:09:54
Well, I don't have much else to say now other than enjoy the run! I'm writing this in late October, so Skyward Sword's coming out in about a month. Hopefully it doesn't suck! I'm really enjoying the Sonic Generations demo too. Might do an SS of the full game (it's coming out tomorrow!). We'll see.
Single-segment: 3:56:00 by Daniel 'Jiano' Hart
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Author's comments:
This is the result of a month of playing no game but Twilight Princess, and while I'm not entirely happy with the run, you can only play a game so much before it starts to feel like a job, and I hit that point. I really wanted to get 3:55 or better, mostly because of the ridiculous amount of time I waste trying to get City in the Sky early, but every person has their limits. After achieving my 3:56, I was in route to get a 3:55 run but choked during Hyrule Castle, which basically murdered any motivation I had left. I'm hoping we can find a few minutes more of time savers and then I'll have a good reason to play again, but this is it for now. Twilight Princess is a pretty good game, but things like collecting tears are probably worse than watching long cut scenes you can't skip. I'm sure that 3:51 is as good as a human could possibly get, so I am perfectly ok with 5 minutes of mistakes in a 4 hour run(2%!). The amount of luck required to get a good time is ridiculous.
The overall play quality in this SS over my old 4:47 is noticeably better. Although the run is 50 minutes shorter, there are much harder sequence breaks and glitches that I had to perform this time around. The first 2 hours went amazing, my best by far, but once I hit Morpheel, there are some pretty nasty mistakes. When you're 2 hours into a run, it's hard to hit restart and go again, which is why I'm ok with how the last 2 hours went. You have to understand that there is a huge amount of luck involved in a lot of this game. It could take me hours to get a good enough run passed the gate glitch, and that's only 7 minutes into the run.
Anyway, I hope anyone who watches this understands how hard it is for everything to go right, and even the easiest tricks that I pull off 99% of the time in practice(CitS early), can go wrong after 3 hours straight of playing(which doesn't even include how many resets I had before it). Onto more specific comments about the run.
I get the blue rupee, which saves me 6-7 seconds during day 2, since I don't need to get the blue from under the rock. The first goat herding went almost perfect. Glitching through the gate worked first try, even though I wasted a second or two trying to roll into the pole, it's perfectly acceptable. Cage opening is always a pain and didn't go too well here, but it's near impossible for everything in the first 10 minutes to go perfectly. The 2nd goats went terrible, and I was supposed to restart, but since no attempt that day made it passed 2nd goats I wanted to at least end the day with a run that made it somewhere.
This part is about as easy as it gets. I miss the midna text skip but that only costs a second or two, so no big deal there.
This part is also easy, the only difficult part is the jump to the roof to skip the midna jump, and I had no trouble with it here.
Tears went well, which is unusual. If the messengers swing too fast, you can't get the correct super jump to get onto the hill, which is why I purposely take the hit from him, then get it the next swing. Early master sword has killed many, many speed run attempts.
Another easy section, lots of running around and a long unskippable cut scene. All good here.
Getting through the purple fog can be done a bit faster, but for some reason whenever I get this far it screws me over, so I'm extremely careful going through it. Everything else went fine.
Early gale boomerang has always gave me trouble, even though it's a fairly easy trick. Thankfully I pull it off first try, which doesn't happen too often for me. Ook was not nice on this day and jumps around probably 6 or 7 times, but there's nothing I can do to prevent that from happening. I have a little trouble climbing the tree before Diababa, but it only took a couple seconds. Diababa himself likes to waste my time whenever I have a good run going, but luckily for me both bombs hit and I get to proceed onwards.
This part really sucks, it's 10 minutes of boringness. Tears are extremely tedious. I have a really good time going at this point, about a minute ahead of my 2nd best run. I have no idea where I gained so much time, but it's ok with me.
Sumoing is not cool. He has a high chance of doing a slap, but he still has a chance to sidestep, which is a pain in the ass if he keeps doing it. I almost never get good sumoing, but this time it went wonderfully.
Early Lanayru has ruined many, many attempts, and usually takes at least few rolls to pull off. Somehow I manage to get it in one roll which is badass, and now I'm completely destroying all of my other speed run times up to this point. There is a trick to kill the Kargaroc that involved jumping into the water as human Link and sinking to the bottom with the iron boots, and when the Kargaroc tries to grab you he dies because he touches the water. This trick is very risky, because if you screw it up, and the Kargaroc grabs you as Link, then the game freezes. Since my run is so good up to this point there was no way I was going to risk it, and opt with the original way you're supposed to kill him. Nothing noteable happens during tears, pretty normal.
All the way to Snowpeak went well, I get the rupees during snowboarding which doesn't always happen. Nothing else to say really.
I get Ooccoo and use her so I can steal the bomb bag from Iza. I don't have any problems with that. I somehow don't jump my first try at the bomb boost which costs me some time, but it's not too much. I get the freezard skip first try. I kill the ball and chain lizard pretty quickly, and I'm done with the temple.
I have to go here since it's the only way I can get water bombs. I empty as many bombs as I can while I'm riding to the grotto where I have to fish. The thing with the fishing grotto is there's 3 skull fish, and they will always bite before the bomb fish do, so you have to kill them before you can catch the bomb fish. This part is completely luck based, usually you can see 1-2 skull fish swimming and you can just kill them without fishing them out, but if you're unlucky then none of them will be visible and you have to waste a ton of time with fishing. Luckily for me all 3 were visible and I can swim through, letting them latch onto me, then get out and kill them with a single slash. I catch 2 water bomb fish, then I Ooccoo back to Snowpeak and grab the 5 water bomb chest there, which is much faster than fishing out 5.
The goron bomb bag is necessary since the bag I stole from Iza will disappear once I beat Lakebed Temple, and I still need water bombs later on for Zant. The swim out to Lakebed Temple is pretty long and boring, I miss the Zora suit.
There is a glitch, when you go to the save screen, that turns any water bombs in Iza's bomb bag, into normal bombs. I need to do this so when I open the water bomb chest the bombs go into my goron bomb bag. I found out after I did this run that you don't need to save to do the glitch, but it only takes a couple seconds to save, so no big deal. I waste a few seconds setting up the staircase LJA, but that's ok because I really don't want to screw that up. I guess I threw the water bomb over the railing too far or something because it didn't hit the rock, which wastes one of my water bombs and some time. No problems with the Deku Toad fight, the ball and chain makes short work of him. The vine glitch is random, there is no guaranteed way to glitch through the vines. I'd say you have about a 50% chance to glitch through, which sucks. I manage to get it 2nd try and then it was time to fight Morpheel. Morpheel can be a real pain sometimes. Right off the bat he can go low or high, if he goes high, you can't latch on right away, and also ruins any chances of a fast boss battle. Morpheel just did not cooperate at all this fight, everytime I went up so did he, and he wouldn't even do his damn suction attack which makes it much easier to latch onto him. The fight was pretty sloppy but it was also just bad luck since he goes in random directions.
I. hate. this. part. Just let me do more temples. I somehow manage to make mistakes in this rather simple section. I knew I shouldn't have tried that fancy sidehop to the window.
There's a ~15 second time saver when getting into the Gerudo Ruins that is incredibly easy that I didn't find out until a few hours after I did this run. Everything went smoothly, though.
This dungeon was kinda sloppy, it's either this or CitS that I screw up on, and in this instance it was definitely AG. In the 2nd room I miss lighting the torch and take a bunch of hits from the stalfos, wasting a good 10 seconds or so. I waste some more time on the 2nd poe, the damn skull heads, or bubbles, whatever they're called, kept hitting me and I had some trouble recovering from it. I actually get down to 3/4 a heart here which is ridiculous and shouldn't have happened. Killing the 2 Redeads and the army of stalfos was a bit slow. The ghost rat room is always annoying, I get incredibly unlucky and my momentum stops completely as I'm jumping over the gap. I kill the dumb ghost rats then I somehow manage to grab a blue rupee which wastes more time. You can actually 2 cycle Death Sword, but it's a lot riskier trying to stop him with the ball and chain, so I use the much safer method using a spin attack. Stallord you can always assume is going to be rough. I think I get a good Stallord maybe 1/30 runs. It's that bad. The damn stalfos come up in completely random locations, when you touch them or Stallord you bounce in a random direction(I think you can actually control where you go but I sure as hell can't), and if you're really unlucky, which I was, you can get stuck under Stallord's arm, and it sucks ass because you have to get off the spinner and run all the way back up through the sand. There's not a whole lot you can do if you just get unlucky in the fight.
Ok, this is the reason I wanted to improve my run right here. This trick I can get almost every attempt when I'm practicing. I had actually practiced this a ton the day before to make sure I wouldn't screw it up. It takes a grand total of 12 attempts(2 minutes worth!) to finally get through the damn statue. I hope this part at least provides some laughs at my expense, it's still more entertaining than watching tear collecting, right?
Hopefully my best City in the Sky run I've ever done makes up for the previous atrocious mistake. I need to grab the water bombs at the start since I don't want to fight Zant with less than 5, and it took a lot to beat Morpheel. The entire temple went great. I had some minor mistakes here and there, but that is to be expected.
This temple takes an extremely long time and is also about as frustrating as it gets. So many places to make mistakes, and there aren't even many short cuts or tricks that I have to do. It's simple stuff like killing the Zant heads that can really mess me up. The Zant head in the first room of the east wing was definitely the last big mistake of the run. This guy can spawn in 5 different spots, and they're random as far as I know. So he starts out wasting my time by spawning across the room, and then when he spawns closer I miss 2 quick spins, letting him live on. He spawns across the room again, then spawns right where I want him. I go to jump slash and for some stupid reason I'm holding right so I sidehop into the darkness, and wonder what just happened. I backtrack to him and finally bring this epic battle to a close, and proceed to the next room. I get screwed by the damn game in the 2nd room. About 3 or 4 times the cursor for my clawshot was yellow but I couldn't reach them. I hate it when it feels like the game is trying to prevent me from finishing. The rest of the temple goes just as planned and I make it to Zant. This boss fight is normally very easy, but without the Zora suit it can be tricky. I do not believe it's possible to beat him with 2 water bombs. If it is, then it's definitely not something I want to try in a SS. I do beat him with 3 water bombs which was excellent. The rest of the boss fight went well.
I'm happy with how this dungeon went. All of the barrier fights can be a pain because of the dark energy attack. You can randomly jump into the walls which slows the killing down immensly, and it only happened to me a couple times. I use the slingshot on the armored lizards because it always stuns them and I don't know of a better way to fight them. Puppet Zelda was nice and gave me the minimum 7 cycles. Beast Ganon was also nice and made sure to knock me the right way both times I hit him with the ball and chain. I get knocked off right at the start of the horseback fight but I recover quickly and still get a decent time on him. The Final Ganondorf strategy never works correctly, at least for me. Whenever I go for the jumpslash when hes getting up I either miss or he hits me right when I hit him. It was an ok fight, but could've been better.
I recorded until right when the credits start. Not only do I not have enough DVD space at that point, but also the credits are 15 minutes long. If you want to watch the credits go watch them on youtube or something, because this is a speed run, not a let's watch the credits run.
Thanks to everyone who I bothered asking questions and for giving me feedback. Thanks to the SDA staff for running the site. Thanks to anyone who can forgive me for the CitS early fiasco.
Ordon Ranch goat herding, Single-segment: 0:00:15.40 by 'Habreno'
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Author's comments:
Very good time. Better can be achieved (TAS is down to a 14.05 at this point), but anything remotely close to this is incredibly difficult to do. There is little to be said about this that has not been said already. The goats need to cooperate and one errant move or false step can ruin the attempt. That it took nine and a half years for humans to improve by one frame is a testement to the execution level of the previous time.