Cuphead - Dr. Kahl in 42.60s - Version 1.1.5 - Charmless - No Nukes @Grondious

Grondious So happy after what I think has been nearly 4 years to finally my first ever 42!

DISCLAIMER: I will go over some of my strats/optimizations used in this fight. Most of this is not new but I will detail some of the things I am going for. I am also using a mod to see the hitboxes and bosses HP and an in-game timer, this video is meant to show the strategy and what's possible.

To start the fight, I quickly mini-plane straight up so I can start shooting the antenna, then I want to get close to the antenna so there isn't as much bullet travel time and I very quickly swap twice to let out a mini-bomb and get back to bullet while carefully tracking his antenna with my gun as it sways up and down. If your DPS is on point here you can reliably kill the antenna before it would laser you and then can move to the other pieces. I do use mini-plane to move quickly while having mini-bomb equipped which lets the cooldown of the mini-bomb start ticking down while moving to the lower parts.

Here I use a couple mini-bombs because the splash damage can hit both parts and I go for the "TAS EX" which is where you do a bullet EX in an extremely precise position between the 2 remaining parts of Kahl and it can sometimes get stuck in that spot and repeatedly tick on them, dealing a ton of damage. I got the true "TAS EX" in this one where it essentially stuck around until the parts were dead (along with me mini-bombing them).

This "TAS EX" is something I might not go for in real runs given that it's very hard to pull off and can be unreliable, but for the sake of breaking a new second barrier on this boss I opted to go for it here. If I didn't go for this, I would just try to do 5 mini-bombs on the chest and 5 mini-bombs on the stomach to kill those remaining parts.

Then I bullet down the heart a bit while baiting Kahl's bomb away, then I go in and finish him off with a Luigi swapped mini-bomb EX (Luigi swaps are just when you press EX and weapon swap at the exact same time to continue being able to shoot while doing an EX move).

I clear out the 2nd bomb and get in position to fire a bunch of bullets into phase 2 and make sure to have my mini-bomb cooldown refreshed as well so when he flies into me and I damage boost, I can let out that mini-bomb quickly too.

I then swap to mini-bomb for a bit of its cooldown so it's almost ready to fire, and then I go down to where Kahl will likely be and do a luigi bullet EX to hit Kahl as he comes back on screen, and since he's moving with the bullet EX it ticks a lot of times and ends the phase quick. To finish the phase I have my mini-bomb at this point almost ready so I let it out to hit him as he escapes to go start phase 3. Then I back up and mini-bomb Kahl's last bomb here to clear the way.

In phase 3 I bullet him down while closing the distance and let out a mini-bomb that I refreshed the cooldown of after destroying the last Kahl bomb and then do a Luigi mini-bomb EX for good damage before he starts shooting sparks. This part is about memorizing both the blue and red spark patterns as these are consistent assuming your PC does not lag. When you take parries does change where the sparks can end up so you need to be specific with how you time getting parries and navigate this.

I just continue on with shooting him with whatever weapon and EX move best fits the situation while getting what parries I can hoping to damage boost past the 3rd wall and continue doing that until he's dead. This phase is extremely difficult to deal with the bullet hell while optimizing your damage as much as you can and parrying everything.

There is, to my knowledge, a new optimization I implemented some here using an obscure and complicated game mechanic to gain some extra damage here. When Cupheads mini-bomb blows up, the splash damage portion of it expands a bit and then stops at a point as a full sized circle.

In Dr. Kahl's last phase he has 2 hitboxes, his person and his ship. Now normally the splash damage from mini-bombs would only damage him once even if it hit both hitboxes because they are "shared" hitboxes in this case. But if your mini-bomb splash starts off only hitting one of the hitboxes, the mini-bomb splash fully expands and then in that moment, the bosses other hitbox moves into it, that splash will actually damage the boss again (and mini-bomb splash is half of the damage of the mini-bomb so this is essentially a 50% damage increase).

So if you hit mini-bombs on his face, as he's moving up on the screen, or on the lower part of his ship as he's moving down, the other hitbox you aren't hitting will move into the splash at the right time and make use of this mechanic to gain an extra splash hit.

This is pretty precise and also really hard to do much of while managing all the other insanity in the fight, but I tried to get as many of these double splash mini-bombs in as I could to help finish him off.

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

updated 1 year ago

Cuphead - Dr. Kahl in 42.60s - Version 1.1.5 - Charmless - No Nukes

Grondious 2023-04-24 | So happy after what I think has been nearly 4 years to finally my first ever 42!

DISCLAIMER: I will go over some of my strats/optimizations used in this fight. Most of this is not new but I will detail some of the things I am going for. I am also using a mod to see the hitboxes and bosses HP and an in-game timer, this video is meant to show the strategy and what's possible.

To start the fight, I quickly mini-plane straight up so I can start shooting the antenna, then I want to get close to the antenna so there isn't as much bullet travel time and I very quickly swap twice to let out a mini-bomb and get back to bullet while carefully tracking his antenna with my gun as it sways up and down. If your DPS is on point here you can reliably kill the antenna before it would laser you and then can move to the other pieces. I do use mini-plane to move quickly while having mini-bomb equipped which lets the cooldown of the mini-bomb start ticking down while moving to the lower parts.

Here I use a couple mini-bombs because the splash damage can hit both parts and I go for the "TAS EX" which is where you do a bullet EX in an extremely precise position between the 2 remaining parts of Kahl and it can sometimes get stuck in that spot and repeatedly tick on them, dealing a ton of damage. I got the true "TAS EX" in this one where it essentially stuck around until the parts were dead (along with me mini-bombing them).

This "TAS EX" is something I might not go for in real runs given that it's very hard to pull off and can be unreliable, but for the sake of breaking a new second barrier on this boss I opted to go for it here. If I didn't go for this, I would just try to do 5 mini-bombs on the chest and 5 mini-bombs on the stomach to kill those remaining parts.

Then I bullet down the heart a bit while baiting Kahl's bomb away, then I go in and finish him off with a Luigi swapped mini-bomb EX (Luigi swaps are just when you press EX and weapon swap at the exact same time to continue being able to shoot while doing an EX move).

I clear out the 2nd bomb and get in position to fire a bunch of bullets into phase 2 and make sure to have my mini-bomb cooldown refreshed as well so when he flies into me and I damage boost, I can let out that mini-bomb quickly too.

I then swap to mini-bomb for a bit of its cooldown so it's almost ready to fire, and then I go down to where Kahl will likely be and do a luigi bullet EX to hit Kahl as he comes back on screen, and since he's moving with the bullet EX it ticks a lot of times and ends the phase quick. To finish the phase I have my mini-bomb at this point almost ready so I let it out to hit him as he escapes to go start phase 3. Then I back up and mini-bomb Kahl's last bomb here to clear the way.

In phase 3 I bullet him down while closing the distance and let out a mini-bomb that I refreshed the cooldown of after destroying the last Kahl bomb and then do a Luigi mini-bomb EX for good damage before he starts shooting sparks. This part is about memorizing both the blue and red spark patterns as these are consistent assuming your PC does not lag. When you take parries does change where the sparks can end up so you need to be specific with how you time getting parries and navigate this.

I just continue on with shooting him with whatever weapon and EX move best fits the situation while getting what parries I can hoping to damage boost past the 3rd wall and continue doing that until he's dead. This phase is extremely difficult to deal with the bullet hell while optimizing your damage as much as you can and parrying everything.

There is, to my knowledge, a new optimization I implemented some here using an obscure and complicated game mechanic to gain some extra damage here. When Cupheads mini-bomb blows up, the splash damage portion of it expands a bit and then stops at a point as a full sized circle.

In Dr. Kahl's last phase he has 2 hitboxes, his person and his ship. Now normally the splash damage from mini-bombs would only damage him once even if it hit both hitboxes because they are "shared" hitboxes in this case. But if your mini-bomb splash starts off only hitting one of the hitboxes, the mini-bomb splash fully expands and then in that moment, the bosses other hitbox moves into it, that splash will actually damage the boss again (and mini-bomb splash is half of the damage of the mini-bomb so this is essentially a 50% damage increase).

So if you hit mini-bombs on his face, as he's moving up on the screen, or on the lower part of his ship as he's moving down, the other hitbox you aren't hitting will move into the splash at the right time and make use of this mechanic to gain an extra splash hit.

This is pretty precise and also really hard to do much of while managing all the other insanity in the fight, but I tried to get as many of these double splash mini-bombs in as I could to help finish him off.

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Wally Warbles in 46s - Version 1.1.5 - Charmless - No Nukes

Grondious 2024-10-11 | Music is Meridian Dance from the Secret of Mana OST

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - King Dice in 1:46 - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2024-10-06 | SBDWolf made some new RNG controls recently that I got to test out, giving more options on what boss patterns we can get for the sake of IL grinding and practice. Given that King Dice is arguably the 2nd or 3rd most RNG heavy fight in the game this was a big help in getting this time.

Song is - Dark Messenger of the Funk by Pete Frogs and GameChops

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

[WR] Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcades Revenge Any% Speedrun in 26:29

Grondious 2024-09-09 | Here's a really tough Super Nintendo game from my childhood. When I remembered this game and looked up the speedrun I saw it actually looked quite fun and interesting and so I decided to learn the run myself and give it a go.

While this game has its jank and in general has very punishing difficulty, there is some very fun parts about this run. The main thing is getting to play as 5 different characters throughout the run each with their own abilities and physics. It adds a lot of variety to the run, and while Spider-Man is easily the most fun/interesting in the speedrun imo, the variety from everyone else definitely adds to the run and Gambit in particular feels great to play too.

This run was quite solid, with the only two bigger time losses over what I'd hope for is the Gambit 1 stage and the last phase of the final boss. I might come back to this game someday to try and improve my time to a 26:1x but I am happy with this for now and I hope you all enjoy the run!

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - The Devil in 38.79s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2024-07-19 | This fight was done using extreme RNG control tailor made to get this exact kill on the last hop of the spider and was purely for this showcase and not at all something that is realistic for full runs.

Even with this RNG this was really hard to do as especially during the spider attack you need all your lobbers and EX's to land as planned, and in this attempt I even got two 5X damage EX's which made helped make up for missing a couple regular lobber shots in the pre-spider phase and with this strategy this is the earliest point I could kill him anyways (even if I had a better pre-spider). There does exist other strategies or RNG variations that could make even a 37 possible but that is very hard and just getting this 38 second time and killing Devil while he was still in Spider Form was my goal.

With this time now I either have or have tied all the bosses best times for the V1.1.5 Any% IL board which also does allow this extreme RNG manipulation and debug mod to display health bars or optionally hitboxes. I think this is the first time anyone's ever had all 19 IL times since lobber/spread was invented so I am definitely happy to have done this :)

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Song - Castlevania III - Beginning cover by Retro Remix Revue

[WR] Dragons Lair SNES Speedrun in 8:44

Grondious 2024-05-11 | I finally achieved my goal in this game of beating the Expert difficulty TAS [Tool-assisted speedrun] in real-time!

The expert difficulty gives you less HP so you lose time to not damage boosting as much, so while it's not a fair comparison to the easy difficulty me and so far all real-time runners have ran on, performing the fastest ever speedrun of this game even including the TAS become a cool goal to strive towards and it definitely had me push this speedrun a lot further than I would have.

Check out the TAS here as well if you're interested, I learned so much from it and it's a great showcase of the game on Expert difficulty - youtube.com/watch?v=5V4uhh7gZBs

For people who haven't seen this game before, it's a bit of a silly jank game from the SNES that I played and enjoyed as a kid. I revisited it to speedrun it and found out that it's actually a very fun speedrun with tons of optimizations and interesting tech to move Dirk through the stages as quick as possible, using your health as a massively useful resource to damage boost and skip large portions of levels. Sometimes even damage boosting off your own windmill shuriken, because yes it boomerangs back and hits you lol.

I hope you all enjoy this run that I somehow got on exactly my 1,000th attempt!

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

The Messenger - AH-02 in 19.983

Grondious 2024-04-24 | My most grinded and current best room time in The Messenger. I honestly was doubtful in the past if sub 20 would ever be possible as the TAS (tool-assisted speedrun) itself was barely able to achieve it.

But after coming up with the idea to keybind an extra dpad-left input to my B-button so I could use a piano grip (having my right hand hovering over the controller to press the buttons sort of like pressing keys on a piano) and relearn the room using this new grip and keybindall for the sake of hopefully saving about 1/60th of a second per turtle boost.

This over the years, has been my most grinded room in the game for sure and to actually achieve the sub 20 and be only a few frames slower than the TAS on a room this difficult is something I'm very happy with.

I'm not planning on returning to The Messenger for full runs or anything for the time being, I just really wanted to finally give this new keybind and hand grip idea a real fighting chance and was feeling pretty inspired by SortofAlpha's continued pushing of the game (who recently got Laser Climb, a previously TAS only strat) and also Kyleberry's incredible grind and time in this room.

I hope you all enjoy!

Song is Rude Buster by VGR

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

We Blind Raced Cyber Shadow In Under 4 Hours

Grondious 2024-04-14 | Me and my buddy SortofAlpha, both top speedrunners of The Messenger, decided to do our first playthrough of Cyber Shadow as a race where neither of us have played or watched the game prior outside of trailers and such.

This was both our first time ever blind racing a game like this but it turned out to be a lot of fun and so I hope you all enjoy watching!

Watch me live here - twitch.tv/grondious

Check out SortofAlpha here - twitch.tv/sortofalpha

Belial_13 hosted this event and he's also another top Messenger speedrunner so if you're interested in that as well check that out here - twitch.tv/belial_13

Cuphead - The Devil in 43.88s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2024-03-16 | Snake is back on top as the fastest! (for now lol)

Music - BFG Division from the Doom 2016 OST
Thumbnail Art - Raf Grassetti

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Advanced Speedrunning Tutorial for V1.1+ Any% | Final Part - Inkwell Hell

Grondious 2024-01-20 | (Timestamps included further down below)

EDIT: It was brought to my attention that I somehow forgot to talk at all about King Dice himself lol, but thankfully this part of the fight is pretty straight forward, but in case you want some footage about it you can reference my old advanced tutorial here twitch.tv/videos/350636399?t=03h00m51s as the strategies have not changed for this final phase since then.

Here's a link to the entire Advanced tutorial playlist - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMy8-rUdcLNSXo04JPzk_iIiylEtIiCvV&si=VW_UEsS-2pPZBFdg

If you're not an experienced Cuphead speedrunner I recommend checking out my Beginner/Intermediate Tutorial first! It can be found here - youtu.be/AV1DOVWb8YI

Here's a link to The Devil strategy compilation mentioned in the Tutorial, it contains my personal best times on all the main Devil patterns! - youtu.be/q-YK13GdZRU

Also, here's Holrre's Spider's Kiss best time where he adds in a couple extra lobber shots right before the spider attack begins - youtube.com/watch?v=5StRGyUTCO4

This tutorial has been a long time coming as there has been many new strategies since my last advanced tutorial from several years ago. This ended up being a ton more work than I thought it would be but I am really glad to finally put this out as a fully updated guide for the existing Cuphead speedrunning community and all future players that might join so you all can use this as a resource to assist in working up to getting awesome Cuphead times!

*TIMESTAMPS*

0:00:00 - King Dice
0:41:16 - The Devil - Overall Strategy
1:30:53 - The Devil - Freeze things
2:02:10 - The Devil - Advanced Spider stuff
2:37:11 - Outro

*USEFUL LINKS*

1. Guide to starting Cuphead Speedrunning including how to down patch and submit your runs - speedrun.com/cuphead/guides/va3cf
2. Cuphead V1.1.5 Debug Mod - github.com/DemoJameson/Cuphead.DebugMod/releases/tag/v1.2.0
3. Playlist of my fastest Individual boss fight videos - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMy8-rUdcLNQkXiS7PMByi3SvqzSHYb_v
4. Playlist of Clipboards best Individual levels videos - youtube.com/watch?v=a0G4GsgI04c&list=PLh4wMwwqQpQKnhF19MzSUtlTxcQ4qCC1-&pp=iAQB
5. Holrre's 32s Fast Parry Skip Follies - youtu.be/9v5SjrAwVqw?si=7KeHIegfoMRjl48o
6. Cuphead Speedrunning Discord - discord.gg/2BcMwEd
7. My Personal Community Discord - discord.gg/74zmGhpEGS

Watch me live over at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead V1.1+ Any% The Devil Strategy Compilation

Grondious 2024-01-19 | These were notes, fights and times I recorded just for my personal use that I decided to compile and share with you all in combination with the Advanced Tutorial I am releasing so you'll have references for all of The Devil's main patterns!

I am sure all these times could be improved but I did at least put some effort in figuring out a good way to play each RNG that I practiced which is all of the main RNG you'll see outside of worrying about all 20 of the spider offsets.

Speaking of spider offsets just to explain what those are briefly, when the spider drops on/near you, where he appears is based on your position +/- his given offset. He has 20 different offset patterns that he can choose at random alongside 0.3-0.7 second delays in-between each one and also a random amount of total hops between 3 and 5. So your results on the spider can vary massively and also there is a ton of patterns to memorize if you wanna be good at all of them, so much so that you can also read the patterns quickly in the moment.

I personally only learned a few offsets and just applied what I learned to all the main surrounding RNG in the fight and I included what I learned in this video for anyone else curious and brave enough to start into more spider optimizations.

One other note I should mention, some of these clips I was not yet aware you could hit The Devil with some spread very reliable when you fall into the hole, so I instead was going for some jank setup that sometimes hits a regular lobber instead but was very inconsistent. In the few snake bonus clips at the end I made sure to optimize it all more properly and got some better times that way but I left my original bests in the vid too for more reference material.

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Advanced Speedrunning Tutorial for V1.1+ Any% | Part 4 - Inkwell Isle 3

Grondious 2024-01-18 | (Timestamps included further down below)

Here's a link to the entire Advanced tutorial playlist - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMy8-rUdcLNSXo04JPzk_iIiylEtIiCvV&si=VW_UEsS-2pPZBFdg

If you're not an experienced Cuphead speedrunner I recommend checking out my Beginner/Intermediate Tutorial first! It can be found here - youtu.be/AV1DOVWb8YI

This tutorial has been a long time coming as there has been many new strategies since my last advanced tutorial from several years ago. This ended up being a ton more work than I thought it would be but I am really glad to finally put this out as a fully updated guide for the existing Cuphead speedrunning community and all future players that might join so you all can use this as a resource to assist in working up to getting awesome Cuphead times!

*TIMESTAMPS*

0:00:00 - Rumor Honeybottoms
0:27:51 - Dr. Kahl
0:57:08 - Sally Stageplay
1:06:55 - Werner Werman
1:23:27 - Captain Brineybeard
1:47:02 - Cala Maria
2:02:34 - Phantom Express

*USEFUL LINKS*

1. Guide to starting Cuphead Speedrunning including how to down patch and submit your runs - speedrun.com/cuphead/guides/va3cf
2. Cuphead V1.1.5 Debug Mod - github.com/DemoJameson/Cuphead.DebugMod/releases/tag/v1.2.0
3. Playlist of my fastest Individual boss fight videos - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMy8-rUdcLNQkXiS7PMByi3SvqzSHYb_v
4. Playlist of Clipboards best Individual levels videos - youtube.com/watch?v=a0G4GsgI04c&list=PLh4wMwwqQpQKnhF19MzSUtlTxcQ4qCC1-&pp=iAQB
5. Holrre's 32s Fast Parry Skip Follies - youtu.be/9v5SjrAwVqw?si=7KeHIegfoMRjl48o
6. Cuphead Speedrunning Discord - discord.gg/2BcMwEd
7. My Personal Community Discord - discord.gg/74zmGhpEGS

Watch me live over at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Advanced Speedrunning Tutorial for V1.1+ Any% | Part 3 - Inkwell Isle 2

Grondious 2024-01-17 | (Timestamps included further down below)

Here's a link to the entire Advanced tutorial playlist - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMy8-rUdcLNSXo04JPzk_iIiylEtIiCvV&si=VW_UEsS-2pPZBFdg

If you're not an experienced Cuphead speedrunner I recommend checking out my Beginner/Intermediate Tutorial first! It can be found here - youtu.be/AV1DOVWb8YI

This tutorial has been a long time coming as there has been many new strategies since my last advanced tutorial from several years ago. This ended up being a ton more work than I thought it would be but I am really glad to finally put this out as a fully updated guide for the existing Cuphead speedrunning community and all future players that might join so you all can use this as a resource to assist in working up to getting awesome Cuphead times!

*TIMESTAMPS*

0:00:00 - Baroness Von Bon Bon
0:14:34 - Wally Warbles
0:27:38 - Djimmi The Great
0:42:25 - Beppi The Clown
1:05:29 - Grim Matchstick

*USEFUL LINKS*

1. Guide to starting Cuphead Speedrunning including how to down patch and submit your runs - speedrun.com/cuphead/guides/va3cf
2. Cuphead V1.1.5 Debug Mod - github.com/DemoJameson/Cuphead.DebugMod/releases/tag/v1.2.0
3. Playlist of my fastest Individual boss fight videos - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMy8-rUdcLNQkXiS7PMByi3SvqzSHYb_v
4. Playlist of Clipboards best Individual levels videos - youtube.com/watch?v=a0G4GsgI04c&list=PLh4wMwwqQpQKnhF19MzSUtlTxcQ4qCC1-&pp=iAQB
5. Holrre's 32s Fast Parry Skip Follies - youtu.be/9v5SjrAwVqw?si=7KeHIegfoMRjl48o
6. Cuphead Speedrunning Discord - discord.gg/2BcMwEd
7. My Personal Community Discord - discord.gg/74zmGhpEGS

Watch me live over at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Advanced Speedrunning Tutorial for V1.1+ Any% | Part 2 - Inkwell Isle 1

Grondious 2024-01-17 | (Timestamps included further down below)

Here's a link to the entire Advanced tutorial playlist - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMy8-rUdcLNSXo04JPzk_iIiylEtIiCvV&si=VW_UEsS-2pPZBFdg

If you're not an experienced Cuphead speedrunner I recommend checking out my Beginner/Intermediate Tutorial first! It can be found here - youtu.be/AV1DOVWb8YI

This tutorial has been a long time coming as there has been many new strategies since my last advanced tutorial from several years ago. This ended up being a ton more work than I thought it would be but I am really glad to finally put this out as a fully updated guide for the existing Cuphead speedrunning community and all future players that might join so you all can use this as a resource to assist in working up to getting awesome Cuphead times!

*TIMESTAMPS*

0:00:00 - Forest Follies
0:11:08 - The Root Pack
0:28:53 - Ribby & Croaks
1:03:05 - Goopy Le Grande
1:21:24 - Hilda Berg
1:34:10 - Cagney Carnation

*USEFUL LINKS*

1. Guide to starting Cuphead Speedrunning including how to down patch and submit your runs - speedrun.com/cuphead/guides/va3cf
2. Cuphead V1.1.5 Debug Mod - github.com/DemoJameson/Cuphead.DebugMod/releases/tag/v1.2.0
3. Playlist of my fastest Individual boss fight videos - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMy8-rUdcLNQkXiS7PMByi3SvqzSHYb_v
4. Playlist of Clipboards best Individual levels videos - youtube.com/watch?v=a0G4GsgI04c&list=PLh4wMwwqQpQKnhF19MzSUtlTxcQ4qCC1-&pp=iAQB
5. Holrre's 32s Fast Parry Skip Follies - youtu.be/9v5SjrAwVqw?si=7KeHIegfoMRjl48o
6. Cuphead Speedrunning Discord - discord.gg/2BcMwEd
7. My Personal Community Discord - discord.gg/74zmGhpEGS

Watch me live over at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Advanced Speedrunning Tutorial for V1.1+ Any% | Part 1 - The Tech

Grondious 2024-01-15 | (Timestamps included further down below)

Here's a link to the entire Advanced tutorial playlist - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMy8-rUdcLNSXo04JPzk_iIiylEtIiCvV&si=VW_UEsS-2pPZBFdg

If you're not an experienced Cuphead speedrunner I recommend checking out my Beginner/Intermediate Tutorial first! It can be found here - youtu.be/AV1DOVWb8YI

This tutorial has been a long time coming as there has been many new strategies since my last advanced tutorial from several years ago. This ended up being a ton more work than I thought it would be but I am really glad to finally put this out as a fully updated guide for the existing Cuphead speedrunning community and all future players that might join so you all can use this as a resource to assist in working up to getting awesome Cuphead times!

*TIMESTAMPS*

• 0:00 - Introduction and overview
• 2:08 - Lobber Traps
• 5:18 - Flick Lobbers
• 7:18 - Triple Damage Lobber EX's and tiny steps
• 9:12 - Kaleva Swaps
• 15:38 - G-Swaps
• 17:54 - Kaleva Swaps "no delay" variant
• 18:22 - Kaleva Swaps "half delay" variant
• 19:55 - Kaleva Swaps "full delay" variant
• 22:00 - Kaleva Swaps "extended delay" variant
• 22:56 - Same Weapon Kaleva Swaps
• 30:28 - Luigi Swaps
• 36:27 - Plane DPS Optimizations
• 40:00 - General weapon cooldown management
• 41:52 - EX without falling off the side of ledges
• 42:38 - Bullet displacement
• 43:35 - Jump dashes
• 45:10 - Damage boosting
• 47:34 - Cupheads frame perfect mistakes
• 49:56 - Scoreboard optimizations
• 51:16 - Star skips
• 54:05 - Grandpa Kettle
• 54:21 - Outro

*USEFUL LINKS*

1. Guide to starting Cuphead Speedrunning including how to down patch and submit your runs - speedrun.com/cuphead/guides/va3cf
2. Cuphead V1.1.5 Debug Mod - github.com/DemoJameson/Cuphead.DebugMod/releases/tag/v1.2.0
3. Playlist of my fastest Individual boss fight videos - youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMy8-rUdcLNQkXiS7PMByi3SvqzSHYb_v
4. Playlist of Clipboards best Individual levels videos - youtube.com/watch?v=a0G4GsgI04c&list=PLh4wMwwqQpQKnhF19MzSUtlTxcQ4qCC1-&pp=iAQB
5. Holrre's 32s Fast Parry Skip Follies - youtu.be/9v5SjrAwVqw?si=7KeHIegfoMRjl48o
6. Cuphead Speedrunning Discord - discord.gg/2BcMwEd
7. My Personal Community Discord - discord.gg/74zmGhpEGS

Watch me live over at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Phantom Express in 57.9s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2024-01-09 | Really happy to get the first 57! I was working on the Cuphead advanced tutorial and had this idea for a fight, ended up exploring it for a couple hours and got this time so I was excited to share it with you all :D

This strat does not seem run viable as is, but maybe you could have a million very specific backups or get good enough at it to justify the high risk for this time save. Either way, it was also cool getting a 3 EX 1-cycle skeleton which I am not sure has even been done on this patch before or not with this loadout, but that makes this kill ultra tight and just adds to the big absence of consistency lol.

Also here's a link to the best fight I've gotten with my full run consistency strats if you all would like to see that - youtu.be/3ZQJ-0k2H8A

Song is "Full Force Forward" from the Payday 2 Remastered OST.

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - The Devil in 44.65s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2024-01-06 | Shoutouts to the legendary Sublime for coming up with this insane "Spider's Kiss" strat to kill Devil in phase 1 even in V1.1.5. I learned this strat and performed the kill in this video a good while ago but never got around to uploading it but here it is and I hope you enjoy!

This kill unfortunately requires some exceptionally rare luck as of making this (0.01% kind of RNG) and is also very difficult and will soft lock your game if you barely miss it or get very slightly sub-optimal RNG during the spider attack.

For context, as of now, you need exactly this RNG of Clap-Bubbles-Clap-Spider which is already a 1 in 42 odds (this doesn't give the full picture either because around 10% of the time the bubbles attack will either make you miss a parry or the entire sequence will be too rushed due to attack timing variance to get enough DPS/setup in), then you need 5 spider hops (the other options, 3 or 4 hops won't cut it), putting it into 1 in 126 odds, then as of now this kill has only been performed on one "spider off-set" which determines its positioning as it falls on Cuphead and since there are 20 different offsets that makes this a 1 in 2,520 odds.

Although to be fair this part here is one piece of the puzzle that could be improved upon (although it's extremely hard), there is very likely a few other offsets that are possible if someone figures out and grinds the setup but for now this is the best we got. Then within each spider hop there is a random delay of 0.3-0.7 seconds, if you get too many short delays, or any of these things cause it to line up in a way that makes you lose damage during the sequence due to when the imp times in with the whole thing, then the attempt is dead. I would say 3 in 4 attempts just automatically fail due to unlucky spider delays.

Combine this with the fact that you need to be able to read the spider offsets in the heat of the moment, which is very difficult to do while perfectly optimizing the sequence which you need to do since this kill is so tight, and also with the fact that if you get the roughly 1 in 10,000 RNG and decide to risk the soft lock Yolo style to try this kill, the smallest mistake on this means you will fall short on damage and The Devil will soft lock you before you can kill him.

Also you have to consider how hard Cuphead is of a run at the level where this kill would matter and so if you choose to practice this kill constantly (which you would likely need to do to be able to clutch this out on a great pace with nerves, although even typing this I doubt if it's even something someone could be expected to perform), then it means you're spending your time on this 1 in 10,000 miracle RNG instead of practicing bosses where you can actually gain consistency or learn how to save time on more boss patterns, so I think this kill could serve as a bit of a bait time sink for full run purposes.

I have been running Cuphead for around 5 years and V1.1.5 Any% has been my most run category. I don't believe I have even gotten a relevant run to The Devil 100 times in total because you need so much to go right to even reach this boss on a good pace, and comparing against my current World Record of 27:33, I have only had exactly that one run and maybe 1 other pace going into Devil where this kill would have helped me improve my time. So a 1 in 10,000 extremely hard pattern, that after over 2,000 hours in the game, I have had 2 chances of rolling this luck and it actually mattering at all even if I did roll it and performed it flawlessly (which I've never gotten this RNG in a run that I know of so it's purely hypothetical).

So yeah, I wanted to break this down to a degree to maybe help some understand just how unlikely this is and how not worth it is to waste time on this unless your goal is just for the fun of it but I am speaking for optimal use of someone's time for a high-level grind or more reasonably your goal is to improve the setup and hope to figure out ways to make it work on more RNG so it's not so extremely rare because I think with the current debugger which has RNG control options, can make this insane kill seem way more viable than it actually is.

This makes me believe at least in its current state that this strategy is simply more of an IL spectacle rather than something viable for full runs. That being said, because its difficulty is so high and the complexity of optimizing it combined with the extremely large amount of spider patterns does make me think someday Cuphead runners might find a way to make this actually somewhat viable. Definitely no guarantees when you just talk about the unknown like that but I do think there's potential in here, it's just a ton of work to attempt to seek out and I would love to see it happen as this would be a truly epic way to end a Cuphead Speedrun.

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Djimmi The Great in 1:16.82 - Version 1.1.5 - Charmless - No Nukes

Grondious 2023-12-16 | I forgot to upload this along with a few of my other personal best boss times (that I had gotten in the past couple months) so as I am working on an Advanced Tutorial currently I wanted to get my best fights out there as references for that, but outside of that I hope you enjoy my first 1:16 Djimmi!

Music is Stone Tower Temple from Majora's Mask (cover by NewGamePlus/GameChops)

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead Current World Record Speedrun in 27:33.47 | Any% - V1.1.5 - Regular Difficulty

Grondious 2023-12-06 | This run was something truly special.

After spending around 2,200 hours playing Cuphead with likely 1,500 of those hours being on specifically this category, after 7 months on this specific grind spent doing tons of practice and strategy hunting, losing run after run to bad luck or often easy to make mistakes, all I wanted was a 27:39 to quit this category and somehow instead my efforts were rewarded with a run better than what I even had hoped for, one 6 seconds better than my end goal!

I couldn't be happier with this time and the quality of this run, starting off with the fastest Isle 1 of all time by around 3 seconds and actually maintaining the community best pace of all time on every individual split past that outside of Grim. Devil as well cooperated at the end and gave me a solid pattern to let me close out this insane run.

I have nothing more at this time that I feel I still need to give to the progression of this categories record and so I'll be retiring from it for the far foreseeable future. I do hope to make some kind of advanced tutorial to share my knowledge of the game with people in hopes it helps them on their own Cuphead speedrunning journeys.

Cuphead Speedrunning is very near and dear to my heart, something that has been a catalyst for me to really get into more speedrunning and its many great communities.

I've made a lot of friends through this and had some awesome opportunities and even made some personal growth through it all. I couldn't be more thankful towards this little hobby of trying to go fast in random games and I couldn't be more thankful towards Cuphead and its community for really being the main gateway for me to really get seriously involved in all of this.

Thank you to everyone that watched me on this journey or just to you all watching this run now, and I do hope you enjoy it!

I'll likely do more Cuphead speedrunning things at some point (maybe even all flags in the near future!).

If you're interested in that or other speedrunning/fun things I'll be messing around with in the future you could consider following my Twitch or subscribing to my YouTube for more of this content if you want, either way, thank you and have a good one :D

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Grim Matchstick in 47.42s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2023-12-02 | My first 47 was a good one! Had a pretty average phase 1 but the last phase set me up with some awesome clouds which allowed me to finish the fight off very aggressively.

Music - Tires on Fire - Coda

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - King Dice in 1:48 - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2023-12-02 | Got the first 1:48 in this category out of nowhere during a run.

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Goopy Le Grande in 22.3s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2023-11-28 | My first 22 Goopy wasn't far off a 21 somehow lol. Really solid fight, only missing 1 triple but having some great weapon cooldown management.

Song is - Koume and Kotake (From Zelda: Ocarina of Time) - Cover by Qumu

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Captain Brineybeard in 37.01s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2023-11-26 | This fight was so close to a sub 37 but it was already such a good fight I haven't been able to get a faster one.

Main highlights of this fight was getting so many parries from the 3 gun patterns, getting massive over damage with a lobber EX before Briney turned invulnerable to prepare for the last phase and then getting a good sideways lobber trap to hit the boat right when it became vulnerable.

Song is - "Any Coin On Ya" - Ruined King OST

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Cala Maria in 51.71s - Version 1.1.5 - Charmless - No Nukes

Grondious 2023-11-20 | This is the RNG dreams are made of! Really happy with this fight :D

Song is Wood Man - Mega Man (Cover by GaMetal)

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead [Former WR] Speedrun in 27:45.33 | Any% - V1.1.5 - Regular Difficulty

Grondious 2023-11-19 | This run was done 1-day after the 27:47 lol. Had some awesome Devil luck to help clutch out the PB.

Watch live at - twitch.tv/Grondious

Cuphead [Former WR] Speedrun in 27:47 | Any% - V1.1.5 - Regular Difficulty

Grondious 2023-11-06 | What a journey it's been since coming back to the game just with the goal of a sub 28 and ending up taking it all the way down to a 27:4x. This grind in particular has been very mentally draining for me and it was a massive relief to get this goal out of the way that had been kind of haunting me.

This is instantly a "Former WR" because while this was played on Thursday, I did some more runs Friday to see how the RNG was and got a 27:45 which I'll upload later. Still though, this was the first 27:4x run and meant a lot to me personally, so I wanted to share it with you all and I hope you enjoy!

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Dr. Kahl in 42.38s - Version 1.1.5 - Charmless - No Nukes (No TAS EX)

Grondious 2023-10-23 | Really happy to get this kind of time without the more volatile "TAS" EX at the start. If you're wondering what that is you can check out my 42.60 fight that includes it and a lot of details about the fight - youtu.be/Fil0zVtQLTs?si=Y__YLKtcIdqdHO5U

Song - "Step It" by Shirobon

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead Former [WR] Speedrun in 27:50 | Any% - V1.1.5 - Regular Difficulty

Grondious 2023-10-21 | Solid run but got yet another slow spider at the end lol. Just mixed the 27:4x goal but I am gonna keep at it and see what I can do!

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead Former [WR] Speedrun in 27:54 | Any% - V1.1.5 - Regular Difficulty

Grondious 2023-09-16 | Another 4x pace run that got bumped up to a 5x by the slow spider RNG on Devil again lol.

Gonna keep at the runs though, surely not all devil fights will end in spider... right?

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - The Root Pack in 34.92s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2023-08-25 | This boss can be easily overlooked due to its simplicity, but the fact the fight itself is simple and has little RNG means you can focus on optimizing your DPS as much as possible.

I love this fight for that because it really highlights just how complex of a weapon combo Lobber/Spread is that there's this much time to be saved by knowing the mechanics in detail and cutting your inputs tightly and accurately.

I hope you all enjoy!

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Beppi The Clown in 40.69s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2023-08-22 | Finally managed to get a very slightly faster fight than Yuka's crazy 2-Cycle Skip using the currently more run viable 3-Cycle Skip.

For people that have not seen this, the reason Beppi never advances beyond phase 2 is because of a glitch called Beppi Skip.

This glitch is performed by doing so much damage on Beppi in phase 1 of the fight while he's still in the car that you over-damaged past his phase 2 as well before phase 1 is even done. This glitches out the game and keeps him permanently in this exploding phase 2 and saves a lot of time since you don't have to wait on the phase 3 or phase 4 transitions and can focus purely on just damaging him.

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead Former [WR] Speedrun in 27:57 | Any% - V1.1.5 - Regular Difficulty (World First Sub 28!)

Grondious 2023-08-16 | Very happy to get the first sub 28 minute time in the first category/speedrun I ever got a full game World Record in years ago.

While I did get a very unlucky Devil fight that lost me a lot of time over what it could have been, the rest of the run was very good with only Briney being pretty scuffed, but just the fact I kept it together and didn't die and was able to clutch it out and reach my sub 28 goal definitely makes me feel good about things :D

The 27:4x is for sure possible and this run further proved that and while I may or may not go for it, either way, I am just going to enjoy the moment of reaching this new milestone and hope you all also enjoy the run!

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead Former WR Speedrun in 28:02! Any% - V1.1.5 - Regular Difficulty

Grondious 2023-07-24 | Happy to be back and getting to implement new strats found in the past few years since my last time grinding this category :)

This run came so close to taking a death on multiple bosses, like Briney and on King Dice as examples, but I was glad to have survived the nerves and clutch out a solid run. While getting the spider RNG kept this run from being the sub 28 that I have been wanting, I am gonna keep grinding until I do reach that goal time :D

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Werner Werman in 37.89s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2023-04-29 | I did not think I would be getting even a 38 but thanks to a new discovery and some grinding here is somehow the 37 lol

DISCLAIMER: I will go over the newest discovery and strategy that helped make this time possible. I am also using a mod to see the hitboxes and bosses HP and an in-game timer, this video is meant to show the strategy and what's possible.

If you want to know more optimizations about this boss outside of this big new one that helped me take the fight from a 39 to a 37 then I recommend checking out this video and the YouTube description - youtu.be/3MIFfoayprY

AssasinNarga had seen my 39 and was watching the hitboxes and had an idea to try and sneak an extra quad Lobber EX in at the start of phase 2. Normally you use his ledge to line up the quad but the idea was to manually line myself up to that maybe-quad spot and just time the EX to try and get it to blow up on the ground. It turns out if you position yourself precisely and time it did indeed give me a quad (4x) damage EX so I started grinding to see if I could maybe get a 38 with this new EX.

But when grinding it one time I noticed the boss died before I felt he should have so I watched the footage back and in that clip the EX actually hit for sextuple (6x) damage! Which to my knowledge is the first ever 6x damage lobber EX. This of course is a massive amount of damage to be able to add in to the fight and so that combined with amazing RNG and a clean fight lead to 2 more second barriers being broken on this boss :D

Why does that 6x work? I am not 100% sure, but from what I can tell, the lobber EX sometimes will actually blow up on the ground and on his little platform, since in this patch lobber EX's colliding with ground like this does double, that does a quad, and also Werman has his phase 2 hitbox stored off-screen and there is a sprite swap at this moment where he springs up.

It appears one of those double damage lobber EX collisions can also hit his swapped in sprite for an additional 2x damage. I did check and sometimes even at the same pixel and exact same frame timing the 6x might or might not work (similar to how triples normally work) so even with perfect precision there is a sort of RNG element to this working or not. Thankfully good timing and positioning at least gives you a 4x damage EX so it's still a great strat to go for.

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Werner Werman in 39.78s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2023-04-26 | The first sub 40 for lobber/spread/charmless!

DISCLAIMER: I will go over some of my strats/optimizations used in this fight. Most of this is not new but I will detail some of the things I am going for. I am also using a mod to see the hitboxes and bosses HP and an in-game timer, this video is meant to show the strategy and what's possible.

For Werman the biggest thing of phase 1 is trying not to get hit while doing as much spread shot as you can which means getting close to him, but when Werman comes back I use the tech "Flick Lobbers" where I try to only move away from the boss when lobber is equipped and cooling down, and then when a lobber is ready to fire I can sort of flick it into the boss. This just keeps your DPS up strong even when you have to this sort of back and forth with Werman.

Then I damage boost through his charge move and manage my weapons in a way to get as much spreadshot as I can and end on the left side of him. Being on the left side is important for a strat in phase 2.

I try to line up for a down+right lobber EX close up against him in hopes that the lobber EX hits both the ground and the boss at the same time since a lobber EX on this patch of the game (pre 1.2 patches) does double damage and then hitting the boss would do single damage so in this scenario it can do upwards of triple damage but it's very precise and has a sort of RNG element to whether it works as double damage or triple damage. Being too close means it will hit the boss before hitting the ground so in that case it would only do single damage so that's the worst case scenario but thankfully in this clip I at least got the double damage EX (it collided just with the ground for that to happen).

Then I chase him up and damage boost through the flame guns when he does them to keep up spreadshot and not have to spend any of my EX cards hovering over it or anything.

This next part is really important, so if you rub up against the left side specifically of Werners platform while it's momentarily stationary and do a down+right lobber EX before he moves again, the lobber EX perfectly lines up and will hit both Wermans platform and the regular ground, causing 2 double damage lobber EX explosions which adds up to a 4x damage lobber EX.

The goal is to get 5 of these quads off which can be tricky especially earlier when he's moving side to side a bit, and also it can be very tricky to try and get good DPS in with your regular bullets in-between the EX quads.

That's the biggest update to this fight for me was trying to optimize my damage in-between these EX's and it's probably best to let the video do the talking on that sequence. I have done this slightly better in some other attempts, sneaking in a little more spread and such between EX's but overall this was still really clean and helped pile on the damage quick.

Because I had time I also jumped up top before the cat ate the mouse as for a brief moment, the cat and the mouses hitboxes are overlapped so bullets fired in that spot will deal double damage. This helps me get a little extra burst of damage and then I can just clean up the fight with some EX's on the cat.

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Wally Warbles in 47.17s - Version 1.1.5 - Charmless

Grondious 2023-04-17 | Was so happy to finally get the first ever 47 (in this patch/charmless) and while a few hours before getting this I was able to get a 47.9, I felt I could do slightly better but did not expect this low of a 47 so feeling really good about it :D

DISCLAIMER: Some of this is not new but I will detail some of the things I am going for during this fight. Also I want to say before that, that I am using a mod to see the hitboxes and bosses HP and an accurate In-game timer, this video is meant to show the strategy and what's possible as a human player (the input display does not work because for plane levels I play on keyboard and haven't set up a keyboard input display), and not meant to be a serious IL submission to speedrun.com or anything of the sort.

So right off the bat, I keep myself far away from Wally while shooting bullets to get as many bullets on screen as I can, ready to hit him as soon as the fight truly starts and he becomes vulnerable, then Wally can do several things but for this specific pattern, he goes low and does a gun which leads me to some new strategy I implemented for this RNG.

After doing a mini-bomb (and letting the mini-bomb cooldown very slightly refresh itself before switching back to bullet for some later dps optimizations which I'll explain in a second) and after the finger gun attack is done, I actually do a Luigi swapped mini-bomb EX. A Luigi swap allows you to continually shoot the equipped weapon even while in the startup animation to use an EX move and is performed by pressing weapon swap and the EX button at the exact same time.

Now while this lets you continue shooting, the EX actually coming out counts in the games code as shooting a bullet, so it sets that weapon to full cooldown, so ideally I want to have it timed so my mini-bomb cooldown is refreshed just barely enough that a mini-bomb comes out right before my EX does, so that I essentially waste as little cooldown time as possible since the EX is gonna set the cooldown (or delay until next bullet) to the max.

Doing this optimal mini-bomb Luigi Swap at this timing on this RNG actually does enough damage to progress Wally into his second sub phase where his patterns can be a little different. In this clip I get the best outcome of luck where he spits 1 more egg and then does another set of finger guns, lining up the positioning of the boss in a very advantageous way for me so I can do more Luigi Swapped mini-bomb EX's without the little birds getting in the way while still parrying birds for EX cards without losing DPS.

When reaching the main phase 2 (feather hell) I am able to damage boost and get off some more Luigi Swapped mini-bomb EX's. It is worth noting I am opting for mini-bomb EX's because Wally's hitbox is very thin and so bullet EX's do not get many ticks and thus don't do much damage. However, there is rare cases where you can get pretty good ticks in this phase 2 with Bullet EX's, but it is incredibly finnicky and so mini-bomb EX's that land in full are just way more DPS on average if you are willing to take this damage boost (don't damage boost here if you've already taken a hit).

The really good positioning I was able to set up from earlier, allows me to not have the little birds get in my way at all, fully hit the boss, and have the parry bird after phase 2 dies be in a nice spot. Then I distance myself from the boss while shooting bullets so as soon as the main phase 3 starts (baby bird) then I have a bunch of bullets already on screen ready to hit him, I also make sure to refresh my mini-bomb when going to parry the bird before the phase starts to have it ready and to have made use of the downtime while I wait for main phase 3 to start.

The baby bird phase I just get in there let out a mini-bomb and hover on it a little bit to set up for more luigi swaps and go for 2 Luigi Swap mini-bomb EX's, careful as with all of them to be close enough so that all the particles from the EX hit.

I then damage boost once the eggs get in close, stay in there shooting him with all the bullets, grabbing the parry then I finish the phase. Instantly after that I pause because pausing/unpausing here causes the last phase to spawn sooner, then when I unpause I shoot the lingering hitbox of the baby bird a tiny bit but quickly switch to mini-bombs to get a little more damage on the final phase as I get into position in the bottom left.

Here you can abuse Wally's wide hitbox by blowing him up with Luigi Swapped bullet EX's (especially with this optimal RNG that I had here), then as I unload all my EX's and he's almost dead, I let out my last mini-bomb that had been prepped from having to swap briefly to mini-bomb to set up the Luigi swap for the bullet EX's and that finished the fight off.

In theory a high 46 is barely possible which is pretty crazy to me because a 47 seemed so out of reach in the past, but I am very happy with this time for now and hope you enjoy!

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead - Cagney Carnation in 33.97s - Version 1.1.5 - Lobber/Spread Route

Grondious 2023-04-13 | I have been practicing Cuphead again for when I return to V1.1+ Any% and wanted to share this new best time I got with the first 33 second Cagney in this category!

Last time I ran this category I didn't even think a 34 was possible, but Clipboard proved that wrong by getting that time in a real full run. I studied his fight and took some inspiration from it and ended up with my own variation of it. (You can see that video here if you are interested in his strategy youtu.be/mr0CdVsS9PU )

Some of this is not new but I will detail some of the things I am going for during this fight. Also I want to say before that, that I am using a mod to see the hitboxes and bosses HP and an accurate In-game timer, this video is meant to show the strategy and what's possible as a human player (since I performed it with input display at the bottom), and not meant to be a serious IL submission to speedrun.com or anything of the sort.

One of the main things you'll see me doing is when Cagney is bobbing back and forth, I try my best to jump and get a little bit of spreadshot off on him when he bobs forward since most or all of the bullets can hit there and spread does more damage than lobber. I also set up some lobber traps (up and down bouncing lobbers) while waiting on him to lunge so he lunges into him and I miss no bullets that way.

My main goal is to not use any EX's early so I don't progress his subphases (he has different attack patterns depending on his HP) too quickly to increase my odds of a favorable pattern for consistency in real run purposes. Although once he starts up the "pods" attack where he can shoot the spinning thing or fire the acorns at you, then I use two lobber EX's to help me dodge things and get some more damage on him (using a technique called kaleva swaps where you weapon swap after pressing EX to allow yourself to shoot bullets even during an EX animation).

Then for the final phase, after sneaking some spread in during the hitbox changes, I also want to use one more lobber EX. I wait to see if there will be a vine under the right most platform that I am standing on, that way I can use my EX card to jump to the right and use the EX to hover in the air and damage the boss, but in this attempt he did the vines on the platforms I wasn't on which is great RNG so I just walked forward a bit and used the EX directly in his face to get some more spread bullets in during it using those Kaleva swaps I mentioned.

Now comes the interesting part, I jump in and damage boost into Cagney, aim at him the best I can and get as far to the right as possible, then from that position I use the lock button and get off a lobber EX facing down left, this can make the lobber EX blow up on the ground which in this patch does double damage, and because of some weird hitbox collision thing with Cagneys vine there is even a chance the lobber EX glitches further and will blow up for triple damage.

After doing that EX I shoot some spread straight up to hit Cagney until I get hit a 2nd time, then during the invincibility, I shoot 2 more down left lobber EX's (also letting out a regular lobber straight up in-between each EX to maximize damage), and all these double/triple damage lobber EX's and final bullets just blow him up!

I am not sure if I will go into these detailed explanations on all the fights I upload or how many bosses I will upload new vids for, but since this was the first sub 34 Cagney, I had to share it and the strat that made it happen in case some of you find it interesting or helpful.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy and consider subscribing if you want to see more Cuphead content coming in the future or other speedrunning content and such :D

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Moonlaw Any% World Record Speedrun in 4:43.300

Grondious 2023-02-09 | Didn't think I would run this game anymore for a long while but decided to clean up some of the mistakes from my previous run. This took a bit to grind for but I'm happy with this time!

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Copying this below info from my previous run for those of you that may be new to this game, there's all the important stuff and links down there!
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This speedrun is surprisingly fun and easy to pick up so I definitely recommend checking out the game if you just want something short, sweet and with a bunch of silly jank involved, because casually and as a speedrun I had fun with this.

The games free here for those interested! - store.steampowered.com/app/1839590/Moonlaw

There's also an active Discord community for the game that can be found here - discord.gg/khU2BhTVsE

And a speedrun.com board that has the rules and other runners which can be found here - speedrun.com/moonlaw?h=Any&x=xd1qvlw2

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Moonlaw Any% Former World Record Speedrun in 4:44.71

Grondious 2023-02-07 | A really solid run very close to my Sum of Bests! (This run was done for an event so it included no commentary but there's more about that down below if you want to see the event with commentary and where it took place)

This speedrun is surprisingly fun and easy to pick up so I definitely recommend checking out the game if you just want something short, sweet and with a bunch of silly jank involved, because casually and as a speedrun I had fun with this.

The games free here for those interested! - store.steampowered.com/app/1839590/Moonlaw

There's also an active Discord community for the game that can be found here - discord.gg/khU2BhTVsE

And a speedrun.com board that has the rules and other runners which can be found here - speedrun.com/moonlaw?h=Any&x=xd1qvlw2

This run was done live during the Shred the Record event which can be seen here - youtu.be/H9uhyOMd05A?t=11366 (I time-stamped it to when the run took place, it was several hours deep into the event but Nufakas and MrDino the host of the event were commentating! I am the screen in the top-left in that video)

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

The Messenger - Quillshroom Marsh in 2:52.84 [Community Best]

Grondious 2023-01-31 | Solid Quillshroom I had in round 2 Vs Halfling in the GG_Speedruns tournament! Since my live video was being restreamed to the tournament, I had no mic audio on.

The Messenger - Autumn Hills in 3:59.27 [Community Best]

Grondious 2023-01-31 | Remembered to upload this Autumn I had from a week or two ago during the sub 29 grind!

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

The Messenger | Former World Record Speedrun in 28:56 | New Game - 8-Bit (No Out of Bounds)

Grondious 2023-01-18 | The first ever sub 29 minute run! :D

As much as I love this game, the grind to get the speedrun to this point was absolutely brutal. The level of play required, in typical speedrunning fashion, has gone up and up, so many difficult strategies and optimizations have started being required and some even small mistakes can kill a run instantly. Also at this level some RNG was required (even tying all my non-RNG best segments together would not be a sub 29 minute time if I don't have some good luck in there).

Leading up to this run I had a week of horrendous luck, mostly on the boss Ruxxtin. Ruxxtin being the spooky boss of Catacombs and he has a 50% chance to go high or to go low. Him going high saves about 8 seconds, and in the previous week leading up to the day I got this run, I had gotten 21 low patterns out of 25 fights. The likelihood of getting luck this bad was in the bottom 0.14% of RNG.

So after resetting countless runs to the very challenging, run killing early game that is Autumn Hills and Catacombs, the majority of the runs just died to RNG instantly at Ruxxtin. But then once I finally got a good early game with the right Ruxxtin RNG, I was only about a third of the way through the run, with many challenging levels and tricks and bosses and even more impactful RNG.

Many runs that had potential either died to horrible luck or to a single costly mistake, one run in particular I remember pressing the jump button late by 1/60th of a second in 3 different rooms in Searing Crags which caused mistakes that instantly took a great paced run to being too slow now to have a chance of a sub 29.

Another great paced run I lost to some very janky sequence that caused my ninja to clip through a floor also in Searing Crags which would invalidate the run (or cause a major time penalty) since this is a no out of bounds category.

Some runs got to the late game and got bad RNG on Queen of Quills and on Colossuses or in Tower of Time and just could not survive these major time losses through luck including one run where I played within 13 seconds of my best segments outside of the RNG related things that did indeed go very poorly and kill that run too.

What it took for me to get sub 29 was starting to make me hate this game that I normally have loved, and if not for my stubbornness to achieve this goal and for the community that supported my journey, it definitely would have never happened as this had very painful moments that left me just wanting free from this grind.

Honestly going into late game on this absolutely insane pace (the best pace ever as of uploading this run) and knowing my personal best of 29:01 that I was up against had my best Tower of Time ever in it that also had a fairly rare 4 second RNG time save in it from getting a health drop from some eyeballs about half-way through the Tower almost broke me.

After all these years of speedrunning this was probably the hardest nerves have ever hit me during an attempt to get a new best time. I made a small error early in the Tower, as I was jumping off the wall in an attempt to go for the "Hail Mary" strategy, right before my ninja cleared over the corner I slashed which stood the ninja up and made him sort of bonk into the wall, even though I survived the room and backed up the situation about as good as I could have, this still lost me a few seconds.

Another mistake happened in the 3-eyeball 4-block room a little further in, I was going for a very fast way of clearing out the boxes but barely miss timed turning my slash towards the right and failed to destroy a block that I really needed to so that I could hit the crystal on the left to remove the laser at the bottom of the screen, this mistake cost me a couple more seconds. I also did not get the lucky HP drop from these eyes so I lost 4 more seconds to RNG.

Despite losing 9 seconds in Tower of Time over my PB's insane gold Tower, this was not enough to kill this run, because it was absolutely the best run I have ever had in this game.

I lost less than 10 seconds to actual mistakes or missed optimizations throughout the entire run leading into Tower even though I go for most of the hardest strategies and that is the main reason I am proud of this run and so happy to leave it behind. It broke what is probably the last minute barrier to break in this category with a run where I played at my absolute best.

And with that, I will be retiring grinding this category for the far foreseeable future, this run is one I am happy to leave behind and I wish the best of luck to anyone that wants to beat it or just feels inspired to try this game/run themselves. The Messenger is a true masterpiece of a speedrun imo, one that is easy to learn but hard to master with an incredible depth and great community.

I hope you all enjoy the run, and I'll see you in my next speedrunning adventures either in other games or in different categories of The Messenger!

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

The Messenger | New Game - 8-Bit | Former World Record Speedrun in 29:01 (No OoB)

Grondious 2023-01-17 | This was a very solid run with an insane Tower that was world record as of 12-28-22, but I had not gotten around uploading it until now, which I now have gotten the sub 29 run and will be uploading it after this one! Wanted to get this run up here though for the WR progression so I hope you all enjoy :D

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

The Messenger - Autumn Hills in 3:59.49

Grondious 2023-01-11 | Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

The Messenger - Emerald Golem in 1:04.12 [Community Best]

Grondious 2023-01-11 | A new community best for this boss! Had a really fast phase 1 and a very low drop on phase 2, 1:03.xx is for sure possible but it was cool to get this time :)

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious

The Messenger | New Game - 8-Bit | Former World Record Speedrun in 29:03 (No OoB)

Grondious 2022-12-22 | The sub 29 dream just got a little bit closer to reality!

Watch me grind for the sub 29 live at - twitch.tv/grondious

The Messenger - Quillshroom Marsh in 2:53.09 | (New Game, No OoB)

Grondious 2022-12-17 | I've been back to grinding The Messenger and managed to get a very clean level nailing all the strats I go for, with the only room for improvement just cutting the movement slightly tighter, but really happy with this one :)

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead DLC & Base Game Any% Former World Record Speedrun in 38:47!

Grondious 2022-10-26 | First run with this slightly new route of doing Ribby then going to the DLC isle, and also this was my first run back to this category after a long DLC only grind lol.

Biggest mistake in this run was missing Beppi skip which cost me about 20 seconds but it had some solid moments in the run as well. I could see this category eventually being dropped to sub 38 someday but we'll see how it all develops over time.

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead DLC Any% Former World Record Speedrun in 10:45!

Grondious 2022-10-18 | This is possibly the best record I've set in this game so far outside of maybe my V1.1.5 Any% (All Bosses) run :D

Lobber/Spread started off as a massive underdog early in the DLC's life with most players opting for a much more consistent Charge/Spread route that still remains pretty strong to this day. But after a lot of development and work into the category it is now hands down the fastest way to get through the DLC as of now!

One of the biggest discoveries was by Fabix531 who found a spot in the Chef fight during phase 3 where you can deal triple damage with lobber EX's. With some help from TheMexicanRunner who had the idea to use the saw to time the lobber EX's and help from AssasinNarga to figure out how over-damaging with the shakers in phase 2 worked and me spending around 100 hours practicing the fight and working on inventing the strats to tie it all together, it made an advanced technique known as "Saltimate Jutsu" possible to skip the last phase of Chef and save a tremendous amount of time.

With hundreds of attempts in this category since the Saltimate Jutsu was found, I only got it in 3 runs ever, so to get it in a run with this great of a pace was a massive victory for me and spells the end of my DLC Any% journey (for now at least :P).

Funny enough, the first level, Forest Follies was the level I made the most mistakes in that cost me about a second over the time I usually get but outside of those small mistakes this run was near perfect by my standards with really only super lucky RNG allowing better boss times.

DLC had me return to Cuphead after a couple of years of not really playing any and I really wanted to bring everything I learned as a speedrunner over the past couple years into this so I feel I improved a lot of small optimizations and consistency that I used to not have to this level.

The Cuphead community has been super supportive of this journey, sticking around with the many resets that it took to grind this time down so I have massive appreciation for all of you!

This isn't the last Speedrun I'll do, as I absolutely love doing this stuff so whether it be Cuphead or many of the other games I enjoy running or even new ones, feel free to sub on YouTube or follow my Twitch for more content like this and maybe some other funny or educational stuff :D

Watch me live at - twitch.tv/grondious

Cuphead | Former World Record Chef Saltbaker in 53s! [Lobber/Spread/Chalice]

Grondious 2022-10-14 | Featuring the Saltimate Jutsu! (Last phase skip)

This time really caught me off-guard because while it was good I was expecting more like a 54/55 but looking back now it really was a pretty nuts fight so I could see this time standing for a long time potentially at least with this loadout which for now is the only loadout this last phase skip has been done on.

Thumbnail Art is by Cloud8DoesStuff deviantart.com/cloud8doesstuff/art/A-Dish-To-Die-For-923786476

Watch live at - twitch.tv/grondious