Uploaded December 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago

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Not clickbait, I promise! I got 48 levels worth of exp out of 4 actual bars spent using this trick. For the completionists out there who don't wanna stuff Sonic's face with Big G-Steaks or Hero Sandwiches for 2 hours, this might help ya out.

To perform this trick, load up A Promise Made, the mission Jari-Pekka gives you after you exorcise him and beat Dark Moray (a different mission might work, but I had no luck on any others). Kill 9 enemies, then kill the 10th near the ledge. As it's about to fall and despawn, jump off and spam aerial attacks. The timing can be tricky. You'll know you got it if the kill count and timer in the top left disappear a solid second or more before "Mission Failed" comes up.
Press A to retry. As soon as you gain control, jump. You'll pull up the victory animation. Mash A to get to the levelup part. Enemies will walk into Jari-Pekka, causing the mission to fail, but the levelup screen stays. Now you can spend exp on levelups, and the next time you'll activate a new levelup screen, almost all of your spent exp will be back, but your increased level(s) SHOULD be there.

I say should, because at this point, there's some very strange things happening. A tiny bit of exp is lost. I'm unsure when this is spent. I found that spending exp DURING the mission is pretty much safe, and it works. If you go full levelups at a time, it seems to work best. That being said, one attempt I got up to combat level 24 or so, then pulled up another levelup screen, which suddenly showed level 9 combat (my level for that previous attempt). Upon exiting the stage, I really was back down to level 9, not the 24 I saw before. I'm unsure why it went back down, so I guess try not to push it too far?

You can also move the cursor down to other options, and level up multiple stats at a time. Again there's a lot of weirdness going on when you do that. My initial attempt at this netted me 30 levels of exp for 14 bars spent. Not great results. But I'm sure that, once we understand exactly when to spend the exp and when to hold off, you can get way better efficiency.

I also made sure to exit the level manually via the levelup screen, while being inside of the level, still seeing the high combat level. Unsure if that matters.

Hope it helps people, I can definitely see this being implemented in 100% speedruns of this game once it's figured out. Doubt it'll see any use in other categories though.

Credits to DsS for finding the glitch that this one builds on top of youtube.com/watch?v=tRJ9G6a2OzM

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