Overall this trick is extremely difficult and precise. I would consider this the new hardest trick in the game. Rough explanation:
1. Build Gold Dash 2. Jump at the right side of the gate at an oblique angle, like shown. 3. Ammy will land but slip off within a couple frames. You have to full jump right in that window. 4. Double jump onto the gate. 5. Double jump again onto the fence. 6. Dash forward a bit (you need to keep Gold Dash up to this point) and double jump slightly to the right toward the cliff. 7. You'll land on an invisible platform which I call the "Magic Triangle" 8. Continuing to gold dash, move Ammy closer to the cliff. 9. Bank hard left and full jump (do not ground tackle) right at the edge of the Magic Triangle (you need to get the feel of where this is). 10. Hold left, rather than forward. Outside the Magic Triangle, literally everything above the cliffs is a "Jump Barrier", meaning you cannot jump while Ammy is above the cliff polygons, no matter how high. The basic concept of the trick is that we're landing on the cliffs, then we use Sliding Ground Tackles (SGT's) to get Ammy far enough out so that we're no longer above the Jump Barrier, then we ground jump and double jump back onto the cliff and repeat. 11. With a heavy delay, so that Ammy is no longer in the Jump Barrier, double jump forward and slightly left, and curve around to the green-colored patch of cliff. 12. Right as Ammy lands, ground tackle to the left. The timing on this one is very strict. You need to land just right so that Ammy gets a lot of sliding speed into the tackle. This is one of the most precise parts of the trick. 13. Jump with a bit of delay, and Double Jump back around to the rear part of this same jutting-out part of the cliffs. 14. SGT again as Ammy lands. This one is less precise in terms of positioning and timing than the previous. 15. Jump/Double Jump while staying fairly close to the cliffs on the right. You don't want to do a big curve around here, because you need to cover a lot of distance and have a lot of speed for the last landing. 16. Land in the spot shown and perform a third and final SGT. The landing to get the correct slide on this is, again, very precise. 17. With the absolute maximum amount of delay, jump and double jump for height to get on top of the fence collision for the North Ryo fence. The window for this is really tight and unintuitive, since the part we land on is deep inside the Jump Barrier. 18. Jump and air tackle to get off the fence and fall into the loading zone. You don't have to dash along it the way I do in the video.
Overall this trick is extremely difficult and precise. I would consider this the new hardest trick in the game. Rough explanation:
1. Build Gold Dash 2. Jump at the right side of the gate at an oblique angle, like shown. 3. Ammy will land but slip off within a couple frames. You have to full jump right in that window. 4. Double jump onto the gate. 5. Double jump again onto the fence. 6. Dash forward a bit (you need to keep Gold Dash up to this point) and double jump slightly to the right toward the cliff. 7. You'll land on an invisible platform which I call the "Magic Triangle" 8. Continuing to gold dash, move Ammy closer to the cliff. 9. Bank hard left and full jump (do not ground tackle) right at the edge of the Magic Triangle (you need to get the feel of where this is). 10. Hold left, rather than forward. Outside the Magic Triangle, literally everything above the cliffs is a "Jump Barrier", meaning you cannot jump while Ammy is above the cliff polygons, no matter how high. The basic concept of the trick is that we're landing on the cliffs, then we use Sliding Ground Tackles (SGT's) to get Ammy far enough out so that we're no longer above the Jump Barrier, then we ground jump and double jump back onto the cliff and repeat. 11. With a heavy delay, so that Ammy is no longer in the Jump Barrier, double jump forward and slightly left, and curve around to the green-colored patch of cliff. 12. Right as Ammy lands, ground tackle to the left. The timing on this one is very strict. You need to land just right so that Ammy gets a lot of sliding speed into the tackle. This is one of the most precise parts of the trick. 13. Jump with a bit of delay, and Double Jump back around to the rear part of this same jutting-out part of the cliffs. 14. SGT again as Ammy lands. This one is less precise in terms of positioning and timing than the previous. 15. Jump/Double Jump while staying fairly close to the cliffs on the right. You don't want to do a big curve around here, because you need to cover a lot of distance and have a lot of speed for the last landing. 16. Land in the spot shown and perform a third and final SGT. The landing to get the correct slide on this is, again, very precise. 17. With the absolute maximum amount of delay, jump and double jump for height to get on top of the fence collision for the North Ryo fence. The window for this is really tight and unintuitive, since the part we land on is deep inside the Jump Barrier. 18. Jump and air tackle to get off the fence and fall into the loading zone. You don't have to dash along it the way I do in the video.
This run just keeps getting crazier ;_;
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - DR Move Agata Bridge SkipAuride2025-02-17 | This is a new method of Agata Bridge Skip discovered yesterday by RiftyRTA. This should save time (1-2 minutes?) over the Half Blue Skip method (youtu.be/vPgBrd6I-g8 ), and is much easier than the PR Move method (youtu.be/Fkrq0Jc8pLs ), though it's still very difficult IMO.
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://auride.loveOkami HD Mod - Disable Celestial Brush MusicAuride2024-05-16 | Disables the music which plays while using the Celestial Brush in the Steam version of Ōkami. Running the executable toggles the patch on and off.
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://linktr.ee/aurideOkami - Gale Shrine windmill bridge long range spinAuride2024-03-31 | A while ago, during Lego's NG Glitchless run, after getting Galestorm and returning to the ground floor, she found that the windmill bridge had already been turned from its usual position. youtu.be/LIhHQ9epVrs?t=4085
By listening closely to the game audio, I discovered that this happened when she used Galestorm to blow out the flaming chest. This is done in order to skip the cutscene that normally plays when you approach this chest while it's burning.
I did some testing and discovered that you can actually turn the bridge from a very long range, even all the way up by the chest, so long as the camera's position and angle are correct. This video is a demonstration of that.
This isn't useful as far as I can tell, since we generally want to spin the bridge ourselves when we get to the ground floor in order to skip a cutscene that happens when you walk onto it. youtu.be/cB-ls5dyQmg?t=2180
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://auride.loveOkami Speedrunning - North Ryoshima Coast river Corner Jump spotAuride2024-02-04 | This spot is useful if you try to jump over the river on the way to the merchant, but fail and fall into the river.
Corner Jump on the wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Corner_Jump
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://auride.loveOkami - Sunken Ship Moon Turret without Double Jump with no dot treeAuride2024-02-04 | This is an alternate method of getting onto the Moon Turret without Holy Eagle (double jump). See the main wiki article here: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Single_Jump_Moon_Turret
This can also be done by tackle-bouncing off a dot tree, which is probably easier: youtu.be/3W_txOTfETg
This isn't currently useful in any major category, since it's faster to clip into the ship rather than split the sea: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Sunken_Ship_Clip
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://auride.loveOkami - Out of Bounds with Vine Climbing (tuomiis method) (useless)Auride2023-07-23 | Way back in 2009, in the old Okami thread of the SpeedDemosArchive forum, a user named "tuomii" made the following post: forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/okami_ps261.html#okami_ps261
tuomii 08 June 2009: kamui-Ezofuji: It is possible to get oob near Tsukle's house. "Vine the blossom near tsukle's house, then turn away from tsukle's house. From here you jump towards to the other blossom and vine it, jump up to the road that leads to a clover in the far end but don't run there, insted go to the left side close to the edge so you can see the blossom near tsukle's house. Now that you are in position, don't jump or dash just stand still and vine that blossom and when your half way there vine the other one behind you, note that you will gain hight four a short while evey time you vine a blossom so after you gain some hight vine yourself back to the other blossom. Keep vining yourself back and fourth untill you can only vine the blossom near tsukle's house, ps the vine and jump then vine it again to get some extra hight then ps the vine again and jump over the wall.
Hope you understand my explanation, my english sucks"
At first I thought this was a new method for Wawku Early, but reading a few more posts on the following page made me realize this was just a way to get out-of-bounds and fall to lake level. This is, of course, totally useless, but I hadn't seen it before, so I wanted to replicate it on video.
Essentially, by Vining back and forth between two blossoms, you can progressively gain height. This would normally require an Inkfinity stone, but I used the String of Beads. You can't do this infinitely, since eventually you escape the blossom activation radius, but you can get enough height to get over the invisible wall here.
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://linktr.ee/aurideOkami Speedrunning - Dive BoostAuride2023-06-09 | This is a new, almost useless kind of D Boost (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/D_Boost) which can be activated the frame you transition to freefall when going over the edge of out-of-bounds water. I did think this might be doable at the edge of waterfalls, but all the ones I tried had either sloped ground or an auto-jump trigger at the edge.
I demonstrate this in Sunken Ship, since this is the only place in any run (namely, NG All Brushes) where you swim along the edge of OoB water. If you like to risk your run on a 1-frame trick, you can do a Dive Boost (maybe multiple?) to move faster than normal swim speed and refresh your breath meter. I figure this could be useful in a TAS, but otherwise not so much.
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://linktr.ee/aurideOkami in 2:04:17 - NG Any% Speedrun [PB]Auride2023-05-24 | A small improvement over the last run. I saved a lot of time in places like Blockhead Clip and Fire Tablet Skip, but I also lost a lot of time: -Wawku Defrost boosts (almost 3m) -CC Skip (50s) -Awesome Skip (80s) -Wawku Cannon Room (almost 2m, though that was largely to do with using all Inkfinity stones on the defrost boosts) -Ryo Stair clip (1m) -Paper Clip into Tsuta (1m)
And just general slop overall.
Turbo start was used to skip cutscenes. Turbo jump was used primarily to swim faster and occasionally to jump immediately after landing.
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://linktr.ee/auride
0:00 Prep 0:21 Tutorial 4:11 Boulder 5:05 Bloom Hana 9:38 Bloom Shinshu 10:52 Cherry Bomb 13:21 Bloom Agata 14:51 Taka Pass 17:59 Bloom Taka 20:18 Sasa Sanctuary 23:01 Start Digging 24:02 Waterspout 24:53 Defeat Take 26:40 Kusa Village 28:09 Defeat Tei 31:54 City Checkpoint 33:33 Ryoshima 35:32 Sei'an City 39:41 Fireburst 40:52 North Ryoshima Coast 42:11 Tsuta Ruins 48:42 Leave Tsuta 53:20 Defeat Hayabusa 56:24 Gale Shrine 59:43 Galestorm 1:03:49 Galaxy 1:08:53 Out of the Dragon 1:14:36 Evil Rao 1:19:25 Oni Island 1:23:05 Enter 2D 1:26:25 Ninetails 1:30:43 Kamui 1:32:35 Wep'keer 1:35:21 Wawku Shrine 1:37:59 Blizzard 1:43:54 Birds 1:48:22 Blight 1:50:18 Orochi 1:53:11 Spider Queen 1:54:36 Crimson Helm 1:55:55 Ninetails 2 1:57:52 Yami 2:04:45 Post-run celebrationOkami in 2:04:54 - NG Any% Speedrun [Previous PB]Auride2023-05-21 | My first PB in over 2 years! I've had very little time to run in all this time, but I was finally able to practice enough to not flub the huge advantage I had over my last PB from all the new tricks and optimizations discovered since then.
There's a lot to improve from here. In terms of major time losses, those are: -Ryo Stair Clip (30s) -Blockhead Clip (2m) -Fire Tablet Skip (3m) -Shinshu Plateau Demon Boost (47s) (I actually got this really quickly... and then slipped off the plateau trying to jump up to the thunderdome -_-) -Oki Skip (I lost 70s on this split, though a big part of that was trying to figure out a way to lose negative godhood) -Wawku Cannon Room (1m)
A lot of the rest of the time loss comes down to general sloppiness: suboptimal movement, early/late cutscene skips, bad fights, slow brushing, etc.. That level of confidence will come if and when I do more and more runs.
Turbo start was used to skip cutscenes. Turbo jump was used primarily to swim faster and occasionally to jump immediately after landing.
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://linktr.ee/auride
0:00 Prep 0:08 Tutorial 3:56 Boulder 5:00 Bloom Hana 9:38 Bloom Shinshu 10:48 Cherry Bomb 13:22 Bloom Agata 14:51 Taka Pass 17:57 Bloom Taka 20:17 Sasa Sanctuary 23:01 Start Digging 24:01 Waterspout 24:53 Defeat Take 26:53 Kusa Village 28:14 Defeat Tei 32:09 City Checkpoint 33:43 Ryoshima 34:50 Sei'an City 38:27 Fireburst 39:48 North Ryoshima Coast 41:20 Tsuta Ruins 46:55 Leave Tsuta 53:22 Defeat Hayabusa 56:38 Gale Shrine 1:00:07 Galestorm 1:04:10 Galaxy 1:09:02 Out of the Dragon 1:14:56 Evil Rao 1:22:27 Oni Island 1:26:05 Enter 2D 1:28:25 Ninetails 1:32:15 Kamui 1:34:58 Wep'keer 1:38:27 Wawku Shrine 1:41:03 Blizzard 1:44:28 Birds 1:48:15 Blight 1:50:28 Orochi 1:53:37 Spider Queen 1:55:02 Crimson Helm 1:56:22 Ninetails 2 1:58:22 Yami 2:05:07 PB CelebrationOkami Speedrunning - MipmappingAuride2023-05-14 | This is a basic technique for saving a couple frames here and there when using skip turbo. Some cutscenes become skip-able the moment you lose control. By holding the overlay map button, and then holding skip turbo, you can skip them as soon as possible, without the risk of opening the fan menu from using turbo too early.Okami - HBS cancel stored cutscene with turbo skipAuride2023-05-11 | I noticed that if you activate cutscene storage during Half Blue Skip, then collect an item, then just use pause turbo, you will eventually get a scroll transition which cancels the cutscene storage.
Not sure why the item is required, but I think what's happening is that, in the brief interval where the fan closes but you don't yet have control, the game registers pause inputs as skip inputs, and if you get in 2 fast enough it "skips" the stored cutscene.
Of course, this ends the run if you haven't swum through the river yet.
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://linktr.ee/aurideOkami Speedrunning - HBS Safer BA PositionAuride2023-05-05 | This is a slightly safer way of performing the Brush Adventure (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Brush_Adventure) for Half Blue Skip, which is a method of Agata Bridge Skip for New Game (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Agata_Bridge_Skip).
The idea is that, by standing in this spot next to the bench, you can still get the down clip to do the BA, but when you progress to the second textbox of the dialog for examining the bench, the camera switches to look at Ammy's face.
In this spot, the cabbage ends up behind you, so you can see whether it's been pushed into the right position by the respawning torch. If you are fast enough, you can even see the exact moment the torch respawns, so you know exactly when to close the textbox while holding brush.Okami Speedrunning - Optimal Yami Phase 2Auride2023-02-23 | Normally, it takes 9 slips to defeat Yami in phase 2, if you don't use any unnecessary brush techniques or attacks. However, it's possible to skip using a slip by attacking Yami at least 8 times during the phase. Using a slip takes about 40-45 frames, and you lose about 3 frames to hitstop for each attack, so ideally you'd save around 25-30 frames, which is a little under a second. Unfortunately, it's kinda hard to get in hits without wasting additional time getting closer to Yami.
The best I was able to find is, you can get in around 6 hits during the phase. You might be able to get 1 or 2 more by standing under Yami during the transition from phase 1 and using preserved speed to get more attacks in before retrieving Cherry Bomb (the first technique of the phase). Getting in 10 attacks to skip 2 slips is probably not possible without burning more frames to get more attacks in, which is probably not worth it.
Another thing to note is, after getting Cherry Bomb, Yami will always turn gray after 32 frames, or a little over a second. If you use a slip before this point, it will do damage, but will not put Yami into the bouncing state that leads to receiving a technique. You'll have to use another slip to knock it out of the gray state. I'm pretty sure it's better to just wait for Yami to turn gray and then use the slip.
After retrieving Waterspout (the second technique), Yami has no recoil animation until it cloaks itself in flames and you use Waterspout on it. Thus, this is the time when it makes most sense to unload slips while you hold up to get closer. I was able to just barely get in 4 hits on this phase without delaying the brush/slip after.
Sorry for no audio.
Join the Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu My Socials: https://linktr.ee/aurideOkami - Walking While Talking via quitting Kokari Fishing 1+2Auride2022-12-26 | I don't think this was known before, so we can consider this a 2nd glitch found on Christmas day :)
As shown in the video, if you skip fishing 1 (via an Agata Bridge Skip, e.g. Half Blue Skip https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Agata_Bridge_Skip ), and then return after getting defeating Tei in Kusa Village, you'll be able to start fishing 2... sorta. The cutscenes before and after fishing behave like fishing 2, but the actual fishing you do is fishing 1 (with the Giant Salmon instead of the Whopper). This was known. What's new is that, if you just quit the fishing, you get WWT (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Walking_While_Talking). This can be repeated infinitely, as long as you don't win the fishing of course.
What I show in the video is using that WWT to get Height Lock No Clip (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Height_lock_no_clip ). After exiting fishing, I immediately talk to Kokari again and tackle him to bring up the dialog menu for starting fishing again. It's important to bring up this specific menu, because having an earlier part of the dialog on screen will usually cause the game to crash if you get too far from Kokari. I then go over and feed the Nightingales with a Seed Feedbag I bought beforehand. From there, I just hold the fast text button until I load into fishing. After quitting fishing again, I have HLNC.
This is basically useless in speedrunning, unfortunately, since HLNC is so limited in terms of losing height, which makes navigation extremely tedious.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Socials: https://linktr.ee/aurideOkami Speedrunning - Awesome Skip (NG Oni Island Floor 1/Lower Interior Skip)Auride2021-09-02 | This saves about 2 minutes in NG by skipping most of the Lower Interior map of Oni Island.
tl;dr guide: 1. After getting TS, turn around and go into the LZ you're supposed to come out of, to reach the room with the bamboo spear traps. 2. Get into the corner shown in the video on the other side of the room. You have to use the right corner. With the left one, it doesn''t work because you don't get the right kind of skew (not sure why tbh). 3. Jump and air tackle straight forward into the wall, then hold forward and to the right to keep Ammy in the corner until the moment she lands. She should sorta flicker back-and-forth prior to landing. This part is kinda inconsistent. You don't have to double jump for it to work, but I think that might help a little. Again, not sure why. 4. Tap to the left so Ammy turns without moving. If you did it right, Ammy will appear to phase into the wall, with just her head sticking out. You can't see it well, but her hind legs will be low and her body skewed upwards. 5. Hold left to make Ammy walk out of the wall. Ammy should pop out with a small arc above the ground. This is the unskew boost. 6. At the very peak of that arc, press and hold jump while continuing to hold left. Double jump for maximum height. One or both of these inputs may be frame-perfect, not sure. You should be able to learn the timing with practice. 7. At the very peak of Ammy's double jump (you can't see it well, so you have to time things again) air tackle forward into the wall. If you did everything right, Ammy will just barely clear the wall and the camera will pop into the void, showing mostly black. 8. Immediately drift to the right to land on the narrow sliver of OoB collision. 9. Tackle jump to the edge of the statue room. There's OoB collision here too. 10. Move along the edge to the corner, then tackle jump towards the end of the eye switch room. Avoid landing too far to the right, as you might hit the trigger for the cutscene of them catching you. Note that the camera will swap positions right as you reach the room, which can cause you to drift away from the edge at the last second and fall into the lava. It's possible to land inside the room without hitting the trigger, but it doesn't make much of a difference. 11. Tackle jump or dash into the lz.
Previously, after obtaining Thunderstorm, we had to go to the other loading zone into the interior, then obtain the Electric Key, travel through the sliding door maze, destroy the exploding statue, blind all the eye switches, and finally reach the loading zone to the Sidescroller map.
With this trick, we can now do in NG what has been done in NG+ for a long time. Rather than going to the intended entrance to progress through the sequence, we can go into the lz we're actually intended to come out of before getting TS (which we, of course, skip via Early Thunderstorm https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Early_Thunderstorm). We can then get out-of-bounds using a new technique, and go almost directly to the Sidescroller lz. This works because the room we get OoB from is actually located very close to that lz laterally, and a fair bit above it.
The room with the bamboo traps) has no ceiling, and the walls are fairly low, but still too high for a simple double jump. A tackle bounce could easily clear the walls, but the devs made every damn surface in that room un-bounce-able.
I knew if there was only a way to gain a little extra height, we could probably get OoB. I found out that you could get OoB via Item Bounce, but bringing one of the keys to this area is too slow to be worth it.
While messing around today, I remembered an old clip I'd seen of a way to escape from the Eastern Treasure Room interior in Sei-an Aristocratic Quarter. I'd tried in the past but could never replicate it. I realized you could sometimes get Ammy to sort-of clip half-way into a corner if you drifted right into it while falling after an air tackle/tackle bounce.
This wouldn't let you clip OoB by itself, but if the floor ends right at the corner, this sometimes lets you get Ammy's hind legs to hang off the ground. This causes Ammy to skew as though she were on a steep slope. I call this the "Corner Skew Glitch". You can then perform an Unskew Boost (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Unskew_Boost) for a small boost on otherwise flat ground.
I realized that this could have practical applications in other places, and the first thing that popped into my head was this room in Oni Island. After like an hour of attempts, and being fairly sure it wasn't possible, I successfully managed to get OoB!
""Awesome Skip" since that's the last thing Issun says before you perform it =p
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Sleep Walking Gale Shrine Origin WarpAuride2021-06-02 | Earlier today, this clip from Saunders's stream was posted in the Discord: clips.twitch.tv/RelievedSillyTortoiseJKanStyle-joN2unHSbJ1xY62_. You can see that Saunders walked for a significant distance near the end, yet still got an Origin Warp. I wanted to figure out what was going on, so I booted up Cheat Engine and the PC version.
I found that Ammy's respawn coordinates are located at ["main.dll"+00B6B2D0] + 1080 in 3 adjacent floats for X, Y, and Z. By messing around with KT's while looking at the coordinates, I was able to figure out what's going on.
As it turns out, whenever you KT sufficiently close to the ground, Ammy instantly goes into a grounded state without going through the landing animation. If you hold a direction on the analogue stick as the fan menu closes after using the KT, Ammy is given a state that causes the game to not update Ammy's respawn coordinates, similar to being in the air. I'm calling this state/glitch "Sleep Walking", because it's like Ammy is moving around without remembering where she's been =p
The Sleep Walking state can be preserved indefinitely, so long as Ammy does not enter the landing animation or stop moving. In general, you would simply avoid becoming airborne, but if you do have to jump or fall, you can simply change KT again right before hitting the ground to maintain the Sleep Walk. I'm guessing most cutscenes would also cancel it because they would cause Ammy to stop moving, but I'm not sure. Besides these restrictions, you can do whatever you want on the ground, including tackling, dashing, and barking.
Overall, this majorly reduces the difficulty of the Gale Shrine Origin Warp. Previously, we would have to:
1. Jump on the first possible frame after loading into the GS map to keep our respawn coordinates set to (0, 0, 0). 2. Air or surface KT through the tunnel (to avoid touching the ground and updating the respawn coords). 3. Air KT over the invisible wall and void out, or continue KT'ing towards the damage barrier in front of the door to take damage, die, and respawn using the Astral Pouch.
Overall, the tunnel portion was the most difficult, due to the extremely confined space. With this discovery, we still have to get the initial frame-perfect jump, but then we can simply KT as Ammy is about to land, hold right, and Sleep Walk through the tunnel. You can then either air KT to void out like normal, or Sleep Walk right into the damage barrier, which is what I did in this video. Very easy!
Technically, this is applicable anywhere. If you don't have to OW, you can set up a Sleep Walk by simply pressing jump, immediately pausing before Ammy leaves the ground, and changing KT's while holding a direction. In theory, this might be useful if you wanted to go a long distance and then respawn back where you started, but there's not really any situation like that in any run afaik, at least not without any cutscenes.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Demon Boost Watchers Cape Catwalk SkipAuride2021-05-30 | Last month, the legendary GiantCookieJar returned and found that it was possible to get onto Watcher's Cape without Catwalk in NG by doing some incredibly precise Seam Grips: twitter.com/GiantCookieJar/status/1380880359143915529?s=20. This was determined to be incredibly inconsistent and difficult. When you consider that this trick has to be done twice in the run, the latter of which is on a timer due to the 30s nightfall timer of the Oni Island sequence, it was basically not human-viable.
Today, LegoerofEggos posted this tweet: twitter.com/legoerofeggos/status/1399138093144285186?s=20, demonstrating that one could perform a D Boost (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/D_Boost) after escaping from a Demon Scroll fight, and that this would allow you to get onto Watcher's Cape without any Seam Grip shenanigans. The only downside is that they used the scroll closest to the cliffside, which only spawns at night. Obviously, the Oni Island sequence locks us to daytime, so this can't work.
In the Discord, Lego also wrote that they'd gotten close using the next closest Demon Scroll which is available during the day. I immediately turned on my Switch, started recording, and got this clip within like 5 minutes. Turns out it's pretty lenient, so long as you're able to get the frame perfect ground tackle input. The timing isn't totally free, though. You want to do a max height jump and double jump, but delayed such that you can do an aerial Divine Instrument attack at the peak of your jump, and it gets almost instantly cut off by the end of the battle mode. This state transition gives you a single frame to ground tackle, from which you can usually reach the plateau by a wide margin.
In keeping with the naming convention for variations of D Boost, this technique of using the end of a fight to D Boost is called a "Demon Boost".
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Faster Igloo Turtle Skip MovementAuride2021-05-30 | I spent the past few days trying to reverse engineer the mechanics of this particular Vine Flower / Konohana Blossom using Cheat Engine, and managed to discover a significantly faster movement pattern for Igloo Turtle Skip. This saves around 3s.
When I first started running Okami, we had a very poor understanding of how this trick worked. We used a method demonstrated here: youtu.be/k88UtutOe3g?t=6924. This method had a lot of inconsistency issues and nobody really knew why.
Then, around a year ago, I had a bout of serendipity and found some alternate ways to open the flower. I did some experimentation and formed a hypothesis for how I thought it worked, alongside and improved method for the trick. This is documented in the description of this video: youtu.be/6FsajWiG7tE.
Looking back, I had some good ideas, but I was wrong about a few things which made the trick slower than necessary. I realized that loading the flower was important, but not that you don't have to get nearly that close to load it. I also thought that you had to get a line-of-sight to the flower which was unobstructed by invisible walls, which was completely wrong, and lead me to do a big jump when moving backwards. This turns out to be both unnecessary and counterproductive.
A few days ago, I noticed that SaunderZ was doing a different movement pattern in their NG+ 2017 runs, which challenged some of those aforementioned ideas. They didn't jump or move as far as I thought necessary. Since I've been messing around with Cheat Engine a lot lately, I decided to apply it towards reverse engineering some of the mechanics of this flower so we could have a more accurate explanation, and potentially a faster technique.
While I still don't know 100% of how this works, here's a rough explanation: - When the flower is first loaded, it will only open when we get within a cylindrical distance of 500 units. This region is too small to reach from behind the Igloo Turtle trigger and the collision around the Guardian Sapling. - If we load, unload, and then reload the flower, it will instead open up when we get within a *spherical* distance of 800 units, which is just big enough to reach from behind the Guardian Sapling. I don't know why this happens exactly, but it's the condition we must satisfy - Loading the flower requires us to get within a spherical distance of 1100 units. - Unloading the flower requires us to get outside a spherical distance of 1200 units. - We spawn at a distance of roughly 1157 units, and a single ground tackle covers about 39 units of distance.
If we put all these pieces together, we arrive at the following optimal strategy for NG Igloo Turtle Skip, which is what's demonstrated in this video: 1. Tackle towards the flower. 2. Continue to dash forward for a split second. 3. Turn around and dash directly away from the flower for a couple seconds. 4. Turn around again and go to the guardian sapling to set up the Vine.
Ideally, we'd be able to visualize the load spheres in-game in order to show exactly what's happening, but we don't yet have that level of technology. Keep in mind that, because the flower is above Ammy's spawn point, and because the load/unload thresholds are spherical you do not want to jump when moving backwards to unload the flower. This is because jumping would bring Ammy closer in height to the flower, which would increase the distance she needs to move horizontally to get outside the unload sphere.
The reason we don't jump to reach the load sphere sooner is because this would reduce the time we spend building dash on the ground.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami - Canvas Overflow Crash GlitchAuride2021-05-20 | This is actually a pretty funny crash that I only discovered thanks to reverse engineering the PC version, but I would guess that this works on every version. This recording is of the Switch version, ofc.
Put simply, when you open the brush, the game saves the current amount of ink, minus 1 full ink pot. I call this value the "Target Ink". If you open the brush with *less than* 1 full ink pot, Target Ink is set to a negative value. Normally, the only way to end up with less than 1 ink pot without Ammy becoming inkless (and thus unable to use the brush) is to have your ink drained by a Cursed Zone (or Kusa Village).
This wouldn't be a problem, except for the way the inkwell at the top-right of the brush canvas works. When the canvas is up, Ammy's Current Ink value (the same one that represents her ink meter in general) is repurposed to help track the amount of ink in that inkwell. Current Ink decreases as you draw on the canvas, and when it's equal to or less than Target Ink, the brush is forced closed. This prevents you from drawing forever on a single canvas.
One restriction that applies to Current Ink regardless of whether the canvas is up, is that if anything *would* set it below 0, it gets set to 0 instead. This ensures that Current Ink is always non-negative.
Are you making the connection yet?
Like mentioned earlier, it's possible to have Target Ink be set to a *negative* value by opening the canvas with less than 1 ink pot. As you draw on the canvas, Current Ink decreases, but it can't fall below 0. This means that you reach a point where the level of ink in the inkwell (which is proportional to Current Ink minus Target Ink) stops decreasing. Current Ink never falls below Target Ink, because it can't fall below 0, and Target Ink is negative (less than 0).
The overall effect is that you no longer have any limit on how long you can draw a single stroke on the canvas. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Okami the video game. The shape of your brushstrokes is stored somewhere in memory, and the space allocated for it is finite. Normally, the Target Ink threshold kicks you out of the canvas before you can get close to filling up this space, but this sequence of actions prevents that from happening. As a result, you can keep drawing until the space is filled up, and the game crashes because it has no remaining safeguards for this ink overflow.
Useless, but very funny imo. Anyone can replicate it once they understand the basic principles, no speedrunning tech required =D
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami in 2:09:41 - NG Any% SpeedrunAuride2021-04-10 | This beats my previous PB (youtu.be/kn7X7I2PE-Q) by 1m 44s. It's still the 2nd place run. This run doesn't include Boulder Skip since I haven't had time to learn it properly. Based on Popp's trend, it looks like I won't be getting WR back =p
Overall this run is alright, but there were a few significant time losses. - 13s lost to Kamiki Boulder - 20s lost to Agata Bloom Camera Clip - 40s lost to Shin Warp - 20s lost to Ubume Skip - 20s lost to Tab Skip 2 - 40s lost to Tobi Skip And various other smaller errors.
IDK if I'll do more runs of this route. I do still want to submit to SGDQ, but Boulder Skip and other developments have really taken the wind out of my sails.
Timestamps: 0:00 Prep + Tutorial 3:48 Kamiki Boulder 4:51 Bloom 9:46 Bloom Shinshu 11:01 Cherry Bomb 13:36 Bloom Agata 15:22 Enter Taka 18:43 Bloom Taka 20:54 Enter Sasa 23:36 Start Digging 24:29 Waterspout 25:24 Challenge Take 26:46 Defeat Take 27:10 Enter Kusa 28:28 Challenge Tei 32:32 Defeat Tei 32:58 Enter City Checkpoint 34:27 Enter Ryoshima 35:46 Bloom Ryoshima 36:49 Learn Double Jump 38:10 Enter Sei-an 39:38 Fireburst 40:51 Begin Fire Tablet Skip 1 42:56 Meet Himiko 43:28 North Ryo Shopping 46:51 Enter Catcall 48:18 Catwalk 50:59 Challenge Ume 54:42 Defeat Ume 55:21 Enter Tsuta 55:59 Blockhead 58:13 Vine 1:01:28 Challenge Hayabusa 1:04:36 Defeat Hayabusa 1:05:21 Enter Gale Shrine 1:08:49 Galestorm 1:12:46 Ignore Crimson Helm 1:13:40 Enter Dragon Palace 1:18:01 Enter Dragon 1:19:28 Tube Foxes 1:22:24 Kill Otohime Husband 1:23:04 Begin Fire Tablet Skip 2 1:26:47 Oops Himiko is dead :( 1:27:40 Rao: "Oof" 1:28:01 Enter Oni Island 1:31:30 Thunderstorm 1:33:05 Start Side-Scroller 1:36:05 Finish Side-Scroller 1:37:21 Long Live Tobi 1:38:44 Ninetales 1:40:16 Enter Kamui 1:42:53 Bloom Kamui 1:43:45 Enter Wep'keer 1:44:57 Enter Ezofuji 1:46:20 Enter Wawku 1:47:36 Key Skip 1:48:34 Blizzard 1:50:45 Defeat Cannon 1:51:55 Lechku & Nechku 1:53:25 Blight 1:55:19 Orochi Phase 1 1:56:59 Orochi 1:58:15 Spider Queen 1:59:42 weird horse 2:01:01 Ninetales 2:03:06 Begin Yami 2:04:25 The Sun Rises 2:09:16 Yami 2:10:00 Final ResultsOkami Speedrunning - NG Shinshu Plateau Early / Catwalk/Catcall Skip via First Person Glitch (FPG)Auride2021-04-10 | **Note**: A faster, more reliable method has been discovered via Demon Boost: clips.twitch.tv/PuzzledAssiduousDragonfruitVoHiYo-ZzLZijAgsZ3TMlXg
This video demonstrates a fast, relatively consistent method of getting onto the plateau in Shinshu Field without using Catwalk. This is done by abusing the First Person Glitch (FPG), which allows us to copy the camera's facing angle to Ammy, even in situations where Ammy's angle cannot normally be changed. This allows us to perform a Tackle Bounce towards the wall we are bouncing off of, which gives us just barely enough height to make it onto the plateau.
In Okami speedruns, there are 3 required applications of Catwalk: getting onto Watcher's Cape (must be done twice - once to open the Whirlpool, and once to enter Oni Island), getting onto the plateau in Shinshu Field (to reach Kamui), and getting onto Floor 3 in Wawku Shrine.
We already knew of 2 existing methods of getting onto the plateau in NG. One involved an incredibly precise and inconsistent jump off of the Kabegami Statue (youtu.be/gk_XgWPVjls). This might still be faster in a TAS setting, but it would be way to unreliable for human runners. The other method involved using an item bounce off one of the Nameless Man's vases. Unfortunately, this requires clearing the Devil Gate way over by Hana Valley, then going through a Day/Night cycle. This takes a few minutes and so is not really useful in runs.
Since Shinshu Plateau Early was now the last real bottleneck to a potential Catcall Tower Skip in NG, I decided to investigate something I had previously deemed to unreliable for skips: the First Person Glitch. After about 20 minutes, I managed to do the trick as shown here. It's not easy, but I think it can be made consistent with practice. It might be possible to do this with a wall-jump instead of double jump, but I haven't managed it.
Here's a step-by-step guide:
1. Get onto this particular stump, a bit North of the Kabegami Statue and Ida if you haven't healed him yet. Switch to outer camera and angle it like shown. I'm not certain how precise this angle is, but it does seem to be lenient that you can judge it by eye with practice. The pitch does not matter, only the yaw. 2. Get onto the South edge of the stump, so that Ammy is skewed, like she's facing up a slope. You can position her more precisely by doing a tackle, then jumping before Ammy starts moving forward, as a means of moving Ammy back slightly without changing her facing angle. 3. Move to the right. Ammy should gain a small amount of height while remaining grounded. This is called an "Unskew Boost". You need a decently high boost for the trick to work, so just reset your position if you don't get a good one. 4. At the peak of the boost (which you should time by muscle memory), tackle to the left. If Ammy air-tackles, you were too late. 5. Ground jump, then double jump for maximum height, still heading left. The timing of the double jump is very tight. 6. At some point while Ammy is in the air, begin holding the camera button to buffer First Person mode. 7. At the very peak of your arc, tackle into the cliff (towards the camera). You may be blind here. Continue holding the analogue stick toward the camera. 8. Release the camera button as early as possible while still having Ammy's facing angle overwritten. I believe this is frame-perfect for the trick to work, but I'm not certain. 9. Continue holding toward the cliff. If you did everything perfectly, Ammy will just barely clear the platform walls and land on the plateau. If you do not make it onto the plateau, quickly press the camera button again to switch back to outer cam, so you don't have to set-up the angle again.
This video shows 10 successful attempts at the trick, so compare your own attempts to each of them to help understand where you might be going wrong.
After this run I stayed up till 2am trying to perform NG NRyo Early based on lego's discovery, which was successfully performed the following morning by Popp, then myself. Vid on that here: youtu.be/9WAxuZjRdiw. This new trick is insanely hard, harder than any trick in the run now, so I probably won't have time to grind it out before SGDQ submissions close next week. Not sure exactly what I want to do at this point ;_;
0:00 Tutorial 3:44 Kamiki Boulder 4:41 Bloom 9:19 Bloom Shinshu 10:31 Cherry Bomb 13:09 Bloom Agata 14:57 Enter Taka 18:18 Bloom Taka 20:31 Enter Sasa 23:22 Start Digging 24:16 Waterspout 25:12 Challenge Take 26:45 Defeat Take 27:21 Enter Kusa 28:42 Challenge Tei 32:18 Defeat Tei 32:53 Enter City Checkpoint + Enter Ryoshima 35:35 Bloom Ryoshima + Learn Double Jump 38:03 Enter Sei-an 39:09 Fireburst 40:17 Begin Fire Tablet Skip 1 42:36 Meet Himiko 43:07 North Ryo Shopping 46:26 Enter Catcall 47:50 Catwalk 50:23 Challenge Ume 54:25 Defeat Ume 54:59 Enter Tsuta 55:37 Blockhead 58:38 Vine 1:02:09 Challenge Hayabusa 1:05:27 Defeat Hayabusa 1:05:59 Enter Gale Shrine 1:09:39 Galestorm 1:13:42 Ignore Crimson Helm 1:14:37 Enter Dragon Palace 1:18:55 Enter Dragon 1:20:18 Tube Foxes 1:23:17 Kill Otohime Husband 1:24:14 Begin Fire Tablet Skip 2 1:28:14 Oops Himiko is dead :( 1:28:50 Rao: "Oof" 1:29:18 Enter Oni Island 1:32:49 Thunderstorm 1:34:15 Start Side-Scroller 1:37:28 Finish Side-Scroller 1:39:02 Long Live Tobi 1:39:46 Ninetales 1:41:29 Enter Kamui 1:43:59 Bloom Kamui 1:45:04 Enter Wep'keer 1:46:24 Enter Ezofuji 1:47:38 Enter Wawku 1:48:55 Key Skip 1:49:50 Blizzard 1:51:44 Defeat Cannon 1:52:50 Lechku & Nechku 1:54:23 Blight 1:56:57 Orochi Phase 1 1:58:41 Orochi 2:00:07 Spider Queen 2:01:31 weird horse 2:02:50 Ninetales 2:04:48 Begin Yami 2:06:07 The Sun Rises 2:10:54 YamiOkami - Weird Water ThingAuride2021-04-02 | You can get WWT off Fang after doing the setup of Half Blue Skip. This removes your ability to swim through the river, unfortunately. The upside is that it lets us do this weird thing where we can gain control during the cutscene where Ammy gets swept away, by just closing the textbox after hitting the water. Unfortunately this doesn't really achieve much, since Ammy is frozen in place, but it does look kinda funny.Okami Speedrunning - Fast Sasa Mr. Bamboo Digging Minigame with 4 Ink PotsAuride2021-03-26 | This strat may be useful in NG Any%. If we skip Sunrise in the HBS route, we're going to be very low on praise since we're missing all the praise from Kamiki. This means we can't actually get 5 ink pots by Waka 2. We could technically get 5 using the praise from Blooming the Taka Guardian Sapling, but it might be better to do a different strat in this minigame and upgrade later to avoid the extra pause. Not really sure yet. If we do this, we'll want to upgrade to 5 ink probably during the Take fight.
Okami Speedrunning Discord - discord.gg/AQNKmMuOkami Speedrunning - The Kamiki KillerAuride2021-03-24 | AKA NG Tsuta Bridge Skip. This will allow us to completely skip Sunrise in NG (the last category that required it) along with the Dialogue Boost Boulder Skip found yesterday (youtu.be/M6Kcs2okpcA).
The reason this bridge is relevant to Sunrise is because, for whatever reason, it's programmed to check for Sunrise, at least according to lEternalDarkness. If you try to use Rejuvenation on it without Sunrise, it simply won't have any effect. I suspect this is either a developer error (which wouldn't be caught by QA since you'd always have Sunrise by now) or some weird anti-cheating measure. As such, we need some other way to get to the other side in order to fully skip Sunrise. NG+ 2017 could already do this via Blockhead Skip (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Blockhead_Skip), but NG needs a different method without Slope KT's.
As soon as I got off work today, I basically loaded up my save with DJ in Tsuta. I already knew that you can clear some of the invisible walls around the bridge with double jump, but unfortunately the two sides are far enough apart that you can't just go straight over the gap. Luckily, there's a VERY tiny ledge on this side of the bridge, and from there we can tackle jump over the invisible wall on the other side to get across. This is actually pretty lenient, though falling down loses a ton of time, since you have to climb up the Blockhead room again.
Named the "Kamiki Killer" because this finally lets us abandon the villagers in Kamiki without ever freeing them from their petrified state.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Dialogue Boost Kamiki Boulder SkipAuride2021-03-24 | LegoerofEggos discovered that the same basic principle of Damage Boosting (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Damage_Boost) applied to dialogue as well. This means that we can get an extra jump if there's dialogue we can trigger in the air. It happens to be that we can get a very short Issun dialogue by tackling into the Kamiki Boulder, effectively giving us the equivalent of a full-height KT jump, which is just enough to clear the invisible wall in front of the boulder.
This will save a few minutes in NG and NG+ 2017. Without doing the Gale Shrine Origin Warp, we'll need to return to Kamiki later to challenge Hayabusa. If the boulder is still in the way, we can get through it using the clips shown in this video: youtu.be/wyMdFWMfjmM. Furthermore, since doing this trick enables us to skip actually obtaining the Sunrise brush technique, we need to be able to skip it in the rest of the run.
As it turns out, the game is programmed in a way where almost none of the things you would think check for Sunrise actually do. Stuff like the tablet and ball in Hana Valley, or Orca in NRyo will respond to drawing a circle, even if you don't have Sunrise. We can't turn it to day time, but this is never a hard requirement. The only real check for Sunrise that stands in our way is, counterintuitively, the Rejuvenate-able bridge in Tsuta Ruins. You normally have to repair the bridge to get to the triple gate room. For whatever reason, the game checks whether you have Sunrise for this, and if you don't, doesn't let you Rejuv the bridge. As such, we need either Sunrise or a way around the bridge. In NG+ 2017, we can do Blockhead Skip to avoid the bridge completely (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Blockhead_Skip). For NG, I found a bridge skip shown here: youtu.be/i_edKOP87-M, though it requires Double Jump. As such, we need to do Half Blue Skip (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Agata_Bridge_Skip) in order to obtain DJ before Tsuta. In routes which don't do HBS, you can still benefit from Boulder Skip after obtaining Sunrise, because it lets you skip messing around with Kushi and Susano.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Wawku Early with 1 VineAuride2021-03-16 | Previously, to enter Wawku Early, we used this method using 2 Vines: youtu.be/_e5v-Zv632U?t=7080. This video shows that we can actually clear the invisible wall with only 1 Vine, though it's more precise in terms of timing and initial position.
I think the correct position is close to the corner that we get stuck on with the Vine. This makes it so that it's pulling us up against the wall for longer before it breaks. You basically have to jump the moment that you're able, and you can't mash because you need almost max height for this.
I figure this saves around 2-3s based on how long it takes to draw and snap a Vine. This optimization is relevant to all NG Any%, All Brushes, and NG+ 2017.
This should save a couple minutes in NG+ 2017 by finally allowing us to skip Catcall Tower.
Overall, in the route, there are 3 nominally required uses of Catwalk: 1. Getting onto Watcher's Cape (once to open the Whirlpool, once to enter Oni Island). 2. Getting onto Shinshu Plateau to reach the tunnel to Kamui 3. Getting onto the 3rd floor in Wawku Shrine
We already had methods of skipping 1 (youtu.be/By-jT-BamOs) and 2 (still have to make a video of the Slope KT method), but 3 eluded us. As such, we still had to do Catcall, just with some more flexibility in routing.
Earlier today, Okami Speedrunning Discord member LegoerofEggos discovered that you can perform a Damage Boost (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Damage_Boost) off the icicles if (and only if) Fireburst is active when jumping into it. I had tried getting Damage Boost off these before, but never managed it, so props to Eggo.
I also tried doing something similar with Power Slash to break the ice instead of Fireburst, but it didn't seem to work. It seems the instant-melt from FB is somehow necessary for this.
The tackle input for the Damage Boost is still frame perfect, but it's relatively quick to retry this, so it's not a big deal. The rest of the trick doesn't seem that hard, but the camera can mess with you since you can't switch it to outer-mode in this area.
At the start, we have to use an Item Bounce off the key in order to just barely reach the upper icicle. Getting this key requires completing the whole scale room puzzle, then doing the Wawku Key Skip (https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Wawku_Key_Skip) anyways. You basically just throw the key as you approach the Lockjaw and do the trick normally. I did also try clipping the camera through the ground from the platform closer to the scale room, but this didn't seem to work because there's an invisible wall underground.
It might be possible to skip getting the key (saving around 1m) by instead doing a Damage Boost from the lower icicle first, but this seems really difficult and I'm not sure it's worth going for. You have to time two separate Firebursts to make it work, which makes retrying the trick slower even with NG+ infinite ink.
Hopefully this will see more development as actual NG+ 2017 runners look into it.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Crimson Helm with 2 ExS (Snarling Beast)Auride2021-02-01 | This is similar to what I found for Divine Retribution (youtu.be/yGmoX6xhGg4), but easier overall. This strat is mostly targeted toward NG Any% Beginner's route, and possibly NG All Major Bosses.
The strat goes as follows: 1. After skipping the final cutscene before the fight, hold up on the left stick to walk toward Crimson Helm. 2. Mash or time a Start input to bring up the fan menu. Keep in mind that you get control of Ammy about 1 second before you can actually open the menu, which is why we start walking toward Crimson Helm first. 3. Immediately use 1 ExS. 4. Pause again and use an SFS. Do NOT use the other ExS yet. 5. Galestorm in any direction. 6. Do a 3x DI ground combo. Cancel the third hit with a jump and do a full air DI combo. 7. When Ammy lands, immediately jump and do another full air combo. 8. When Ammy lands again, Crimson Helm's armor will have started re-assembling. Pause and use your 2nd ExS. This will cause his armor to break before his flame armor can activate again, allowing you to finish him off more quickly. 9. Do another ground combo into air combo to finish him off.
If you fail to use the 2nd ExS in time, and his flame armor comes up, you should still be okay; simply wait until you have at least 2 ink pots, use GS, and finish him off with DI's like normal. The only danger is from using ExS before his armor assembles, which will not have the re-breaking effect and cause you to miss the cycle. I recommend practicing this a couple times before doing it in runs, since messing up Crimson Helm is so slow.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Crimson Helm with 2 ExS (Divine Retribution)Auride2021-02-01 | This is a pretty good strat I found for defeating Crimson Helm using only 2 ExS, 1 SFS, with Divine Retribution equipped, and with only 5 ink pots. This strat is mainly designed to be used in NG All Brushes, were Half Blue Skip is used to skip the Spider Queen, which leaves us without Snarling Beast.
The strat goes as follows: 1. After skipping the final cutscene before the fight, hold up on the left stick to walk toward Crimson Helm. 2. Mash or time a Start input to bring up the fan menu. Keep in mind that you get control of Ammy about 1 second before you can actually open the menu, which is why we start walking toward Crimson Helm first. 3. Immediately use 1 ExS. 4. Pause again and use an SFS. Do NOT use the other ExS yet. 5. Galestorm in any direction. 6. Hold brush and draw a Cherry Bomb to the right of Crimson Helm so that it will roll into him. As it turns out, if you draw a CB after using GS, the CB will always be pushed to the South, regardless of the direction of the wind. Not sure why this is. 7. Wait a fraction of a second for Crimson Helm's i-frames from CB to wear out, and draw a 2nd CB. This one should be positioned closer to Crimson Helm, since the wind will have stopped blowing by now. 8. Repeat step 7 with a 3rd CB. 9. Start doing a ground DI combo on Crimson Helm. The first couple hits will probably miss due to CB i-frames, but this is okay. Do NOT start doing an air combo, as doing so will prevent you from bringing up the menu in time. 10. When Crimson Helm's armor starts assembling again, pause and use your 2nd ExS. This will cause his armor to break before his flame armor can activate again, allowing you to finish him off more quickly. 11. Finish your grounded combo, then cancel the last hit with jump and mash for an air combo, just like with Ark Blight. This should finish him off with time to spare, but you might need to do a 2nd air combo if some hits missed.
If you fail to use the 2nd ExS in time, and his flame armor comes up, you should still be okay; simply wait until you have at least 2 ink pots, use GS, and finish him off with DI's like normal. The only danger is from using ExS before his armor assembles, which will not have the re-breaking effect and cause you to miss the cycle. I recommend practicing this a couple times before doing it in runs, since messing up Crimson Helm is so slow.
Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Half Blue Skip Timing and ExplanationAuride2021-01-01 | 00:00 Intro 01:05 Timing 13:45 Explanation
This video is meant to demonstrate the overall time-save of Half Blue Skip (roughly 2m 48s in total), the optimal route using it (as far as I've been able to find), and to explain the execution of the trick itself and the tricks/strategies it enables. It turns out that's quite involved, so this video ended up being (and taking) a lot longer than expected!
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - (Not optimal) Half Blue Skip Brush Adventure Setup (No Waka Skip)Auride2020-12-27 | Uploading this mainly for Popprocks. This is the best setup I found for doing the BA for HBS if you don't do Waka Skip. The non-Waka Skip route is around 30s slower, but this setup for the trick may be easier for those who just want to explore with the trick and aren't interested in running the optimal route.
I promise I'll have the actual timing vid with the optimal strats out soon. I just want it to be flawless ;_;
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Fast Chrono SkipAuride2020-12-12 | Chrono Skip is the name for skipping the Tsuta Intro Cutscene trigger when leaving Tsuta Ruins. This is normally unnecessary, as defeating Spider Queen places you outside Tsuta, but since Half Blue Skip makes the Agata bridge unnecessary, we can skip the Spider Queen. As a result, it's fastest to just leave the dungeon immediately after getting Vine. This video demonstrates a fast way to double jump over the trigger relatively consistently.
This probably saves just a couple seconds over the existing method of KT'less Chrono Skip, where you do a Sliding Ground Tackle off one of the Vines on the left.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Pot SkipAuride2020-12-12 | I've known for a long time that the poison pots in the triple gate room actually exist even before you use Sunrise to grow the mushrooms, but are invisible and immune to Power Slash. Interestingly, they can still be destroyed by other sources of damage such as Cherry Bomb and (in this case) Fireburst. By doing a short Brush Adventure, we can place a single small Fireburst to hit all 5 invisible pots at once, so they are destroyed before being loaded.
If you do this, when you use Sunrise to grow the mushrooms, the cutscenes that play after destroying the pots will start simultaneously with the mushroom growing cutscenes, which makes it possible to skip all of them quickly. Moreover, you can get Ammy to spawn near the mushrooms rather than near the pots, which saves time when leaving the room on the way to Vine. This doesn't work every time though, and I'm still not sure why Ammy sometimes spawns by the mushrooms and sometimes by the pots.
Overall, compared with slashing the Pots normally (using double jump to set it up faster), this strategy saves roughly 17s, though it is riskier due to the somewhat precise placement required for the Fireburst.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Statue Pan SkipAuride2020-12-12 | This is exclusively useful in NG+ 2017. This skips a roughly 16s unskippable cutscene where the camera pans around the statue. This cutscene is normally triggered when you exit the upper door after getting Vine. In NG+ 2017, we can use Slope KT's to get to this ledge early, but previously we would just fall into the cutscene trigger and have to watch it.
Fortunately, the very right edge of the ledge is not inside the cutscene trigger, and from there we can tackle jump, double jump, and air tackle back onto the ledge to get around the trigger volume. It might be possible to take a cleaner path in the air (and possibly skip the air tackle), but that's a minor optimization.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Single SkipAuride2020-12-12 | Yet another precise fight skip. The precision here mostly comes from the narrow range of angles for the air tackle. If done first try, this trick saves roughly 24s. Each try only takes a couple seconds, so fortunately you can get many tries in before you start losing times. Unfortunately, it probably will take many tries unless an easier method is found or a lot of practice is put in.
Named as the counterpart to Double Skip, since this trick skips the fight with 1 Bud Ogre, and Double Skip skips the fight with 2 Bud Ogres.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Double Skip and Sneeze SkipAuride2020-12-10 | The first round of videos on discoveries pertaining to Double Jump in Tsuta Ruins, which is a result of Half Blue Skip (NG Agata Bridge Skip) allowing us to do this dungeon much later in the game.
Double Skip = Skipping the double Bud Ogre fight, saving around 25s vs the optimal strat fighting them (Immediately Fireburst, attack both once, and PS twice) Sneeze Skip = Skipping the cutscene where Issun sneezes, causing the bridge to collapse, saving around 2s
Sneeze Skip is pretty inconsequential, but Double Skip is a substantial timesaver. Unfortunately, it's quite precise and you only get one chance, so it'll require a lot of practice for runs. The Mushroom Skip equivalent is not too bad -- just don't do the tackle bounce too close to the acute corner, since that is where Ammy is more likely to bonk without gaining height.
Probably the last NG Any% run I will do without Half Blue Skip (youtu.be/j_G0lkWGFLI). Overall, this run was really good except for the ending, but there were a few mistakes.
-Slow Shin Warp (~10s) -Ryo Stair Clip (10-15s) -Fireburst Early (10s) -Rao Skip (10s) -Tab Skip 1 (15s to losing dash) -Boneless (15-20s to getting Fireburst and needing to upgrade health) -Tab Skip 2 (25s, losing dash again) -Evil Rao (10s, bad fight pattern) -Wawku Key Skip (15s) -Nechku Skip (30s, missed the final ledge) -Orochi Phase 2 (25s, had to re-WS Lightning head)
Oh, and I missed sub 2:14 cuz I forgot to mash skip after Yami ;_;
Considering that there were no individual mistakes worse than 30s, I would say this is good, and it had a very good early-mid game on the whole. This could certainly be pushed lower, but when there's a free minute-plus time saver available, I see little reason to.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Half Blue Skip (NG Agata Bridge Skip)Auride2020-11-27 | This is literally the first clip where I got this so it's not great execution and is kinda jank. IDK how much time this saves but it's probably around 1-2 minutes. Could be more, but this does take quite a lot of time to set up, compared to the NG+ version (via Liquid KT).
I thought up this method late last night (11/26/2020) while on stream after a run (which wasn't PB). You can see a highlight of my investigations here: twitch.tv/videos/817420639
Unfortunately, I couldn't successfully execute it on-stream. Despite this, I was sure the concept was sound, so I immediately started attempting it again this morning while local recording, and was able to get it within a half-hour or so. That said, this trick is very inconsistent (mostly due to the ball physics and precise initial setup with the torch), and you have to fully commit to it first try, which means that this will be a massive reset point about 20 minutes into the run.
**Here's the method** 1. Before going to Agata, make sure you have an herb feedbag (probably bought from the merchant. 2. After blooming the Agata guardian sapling, fight Waka (unfortunately I think we can no longer do Waka skip with this particular setup, as we need quick access to one of the buds shown in the video) 3. Immediately go to the cabbage (maybe go to the mermaid spring first?) and push it to Sleepy the bear (this is the hard part). 4. CAREFULLY push the cabbage into position with the torch. 5. PS The torch and carefully (but quickly) push the cabbage forward so that it rests against the small rock behind the torch, but doesn't get pushed into Sleepy's trigger. This is very precise and is the main source of inconsistency in the trick, so it would be nice to find an alternative alignment. 6. As soon as the cabbage is in place, jump down and examine the bud shown. You have to get here within ~10s of PS'ing the torch, otherwise Sleepy's cutscene will start normally. The closer bud would also work, but would only make the Brush Adventure harder. In theory, literally any overworld textbox should work for this, but most of them are either out of 10s range or make the BA too hard or impossible to pull off. Ammy moves faster than the brush, so we want to make the BA as short as possible. 7. Keep the textbox on-screen until at least ~10s have passed in total since PS'ing the torch. In this particular video, I got to the bud just in time, which means I could've skipped through the textbox almost immediately, but kept it up to be safe. 8. Hold the brush button and close the textbox. DO NOT release the brush, as Sleepy's cutscene will start instantly. 9. Somehow BA over to the cursed patch without rebrushing. The method shown in the video is v sloppy. I'm sure we'll find a faster and more reliable setup, but the conditions are less than ideal. 10. Bloom the cursed patch. 11. Sleepy's cutscene will appear to start, then be interrupted by the cursed patch being restored. 12. *Skip the cursed patch cutscene.* If you don't do this, you will be unable to feed the rabbits. 13. Ammy will be outside the cutscene, but won't move in response to button inputs. Attract the rabbits to you with a dot tree or something, then feed them herbs. 14. Skip the feeding. Ammy will now be controllable. 15. At this point, you have a cutscene storage effect which makes the game think that Ammy is waiting to start a cutscene. Because of this, it won't allow other cutscenes to trigger normally, including the cutscene of Ammy getting swept away by the river rapids. This means we can just swim across the river as though it were normal water.
Because this cutscene storage can also be converted into WWT by just talking to an NPC, there may be other useful applications here, but I'm not yet sure. I expect that this trick will be quite toxic due to the one-try inconsistent nature of it, but at least it's really early in the route. Hopefully we can improve things beyond this now that we know it's possible.
If you're curious about how the rest of the route would go, it would be quite similar to NG+ 2017 (even more than it was before, go figure). The game is scripted to give us the Tsuta key after fishing with Kokari, which means that we'll actually get the key automatically when we fish to get Crescent and fight Ume. As a result, this trick skips the first round of fishing, along with the bridge minigame and Spider Queen.
I've named this trick "Half Blue Skip" after Half Blue in the discord, who originally discovered this cutscene storage bridge skip (youtube.com/watch?v=OZpGgCDeCj8) and has been one of the pioneers of WWT glitches since before I ran the game.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami in 2:15:30 - NG Any% SpeedrunAuride2020-11-21 | This run had a lot of big mistakes, but was still a PB, so it's going up. This run was actually quite close to sub 30m spider queen, but I messed up Cookie Clip ;_;
Notable time saves include: - Cookie Clip (approx. 30s) - CC Skip (15s) - Ryo Stair Clip (25s) - Sei-an Bridge Skip (20s) - Both Tab Skips (1m+ total) - Escape Water Dragon (10s) - Wawku Cannon Room (30s)
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Orochi Phase 1 without GalestormAuride2020-11-17 | Normally, we use Galestorm to blow away Poison's clouds so that we don't get stuck taking damage, which blocks us from moving and using items. We realized that whether or not the clouds are blown away has no effect on when Poison actually roars. Because Poison is generally the last head to roar in each cycle, this means that it's actually slightly faster to not use Galestorm, so that we avoid wasting time using the brush.
As a result, I labbed out some movement that can (relatively) consistently avoid most or all of the poison clouds, as shown in the video. This saves about 1 second overall, since each use of Galestorm wastes about 1/2 second.
This is kinda risky in the sense that it's easier to take damage if you mess up the movement, but it also reduces ink usage and makes executing the phase simpler and smoother. As a result, I think this is worth going for in runs, with practice.
When you consider I had a basically free 24s time saver from Waka 1 Skip, it's not ideal, but there are lots of good parts. This was tight, but I'm sure it can be pushed a lot lower. Hopefully I have time to do more runs soon, but irl stuff may get in the way.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Waka 1 Skip via Brush Warp to Mermaid SpringAuride2020-11-13 | EDIT: Please see Popprocks's timing video: youtu.be/GiPfnF-QXow. This turns out to save more than 24s, which is a lot better than I'd hoped for!
A long time ago, I posted a video showing that you could skip the first encounter with Waka in Agata Forest by performing a Brush Adventure to Bloom the cursed patch near Kokari. This was about 15s slower than just fighting Waka, so I considered it useless at the time.
Today I realized that we might be able to save time with this trick after all, with some changes. Instead of using the cursed patch near Kokari, I use the cursed patch in the hollow tree by the mermaid spring. Doing this means we can skip activating the mermaid spring after Tsuta, saving like 18s.
Because we spawn farther from Kokari, this loses around 20s compared to fighting Waka, but we can also save like 12s by skipping the merchant in Shinshu, since we can collect an SFS on the way to Kokari. Overall, my VERY rough estimate is that this saves like 10s+.
This doesn't change the Yen route, thankfully, since we lose 4k from Waka, but save 4k from not buying the 2 SFS in Shinshu. We might also be able to skip collecting the SFS here if we can find a fast way to do double bud ogre with no SFS.
Popprocks volunteered to do precise timing on this, so I'll link that video here once he makes it.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami - Reverse Wepkeer Gate SkipAuride2020-11-11 | This isn't useful in any major category, but might have use in misc. runs. Also, this isn't new, and has been known about for a while. I think 27_kan had a video on it, but I couldn't find it, so I'm posting this for reference. As shown, we can easily get onto some out-of-bounds geometry here and go around the gate on the left.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Potentially Faster Fireburst Wawku Key SkipAuride2020-11-05 | My timing puts this at about 1-2s faster than the current standard method of skipping the floor 1 Lockjaw key in Wawku Shrine using Fireburst. The current method can be seen here: youtu.be/VcpbculRaes.
Overall I'm not sure this is worth learning since it's probably harder and less consistent for relatively little gain, but it would be a good strat for TAS or the segmented run.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Motion Controls Wawku Key SkipAuride2020-10-24 | Astral/Straybeads in the Okami Speedrunning Discord was having trouble with brush adventures due to motion controls tending to throw them off, so I decided to experiment with some alternate setups that could make it easier. Technically the existing strat can be done with motion controls too, but this is an overall simpler method with less space for errors.
You start by setting up your position as shown in the video. Make sure you're in outer camera mode, then angle the camera all the way up. Align your camera so that the horizontal lines of the wall are parallel with the bottom of the screen. Then, using either motion or the left stick, bring the brush to the top of the screen while holding the fast brush button (jump or bark by default). Don't change the camera angle during this time (i.e. don't touch the right stick).
Avoid dragging the brush into either the top left or top right corners, as this can cause the brush camera to get stuck, forcing you to start over. If the camera does get stuck (or slows down), first try bringing the brush down a bit, then back up at the top center of the screen. If the camera doesn't continue moving after this, start over.
You want to drag up until you reach roughly the point shown in the video, then draw a Fireburst at roughly the same position. I didn't fully lab out exactly when and where you can get Fireburst to register here, so it might be possible to save a few seconds by doing it earlier, but I'll leave that to others to figure out. The position does matter, though, since if you under- or over-shoot it, it won't connect with the ice.
The reason this works is because Fireburst actually seems to do a raycast straight down to the ground to place its hitbox, so you can melt the ice by drawing it high in the air above the ice. Unfortunately, since we're pointing the camera up, we can't see exactly where the Fireburst "lands", so we need to use other visual indicators to judge it.
Overall this loses around 5-10s compared with the previous method, but has fewer moving parts so may be preferred by beginners, or those using awkward control setups (like shown).
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveaurideOkami Speedrunning - Tobi Skip Keyless (Not faster)Auride2020-10-09 | I've theorized for a while that it might be possible to get onto the electric chest platform without the electric key, and from there you could do Tobi Skip like normal (see this video for the explanation on the normal method: youtube.com/watch?v=4EVdgMi_iCo). Today I figured out this method, but unfortunately it doesn't seem any faster. I would estimate this is around 0.5s slower, but it's hard to say exactly without executing both methods optimally and checking. It might be worth looking into for a TAS, but not for humans, I think.
The fact that this isn't at least a few seconds faster means it's probably not worth the effort to learn if you already know the other method. This method does avoid running past the Guardian fight trigger, but the downside is that it's much slower to reset the trick if you fail anything past the second Vine, so I wouldn't recommend it even as an alternative strat.
Okami Speedrunning Discord: discord.gg/AQNKmMu Okami Speedrunning Wiki: https://okami.speedruns.wiki/Main_Page Leaderboard: speedrun.com/Okami My Twitter: twitter.com/LoveAuride My Twitch: twitch.tv/loveauride[Post Commentary] Okami Speedrun Explained - NG Any% in 2:19:56Auride2020-10-05 | This is a post-commentary of my most recent, though not actually WR/PB run, for which the live-commentated version can be seen here: youtu.be/Ypl9VTTpQrI. You can also see my previous post-commentary here: youtu.be/_e5v-Zv632U