Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Items used: Cling Grip, Drifter's Cloak, Swift Step, Reaper Crest, Plasmium Phial, Flea Brew, 2 Tool Pouch Upgrades
I used savestates and other debug mod tools to make my experience less painful, so this run isn't totally legitimate, but it does prove everything possible at least.
Do not try this at home (the room at 4:56 is actual hell). It's kind of insane that this is possible without any cocoon skips (which if you've seen any other Act 1 Mount Fay climb before, you know how strong cocoons are), but I wanted to give thanks to stichman34 who was the person who proved that it was actually possible to do the hell room at 4:56 (although that was done in slow motion as seen here youtu.be/1RfJ_2vhzJE , so this is the first real-time clear of the room). Unfortunately, skipping Needolin just doesn't work anymore and can only be done on older patches, but doing this without Sharpdart is pretty cool too.
Items used: Cling Grip, Drifter's Cloak, Swift Step, Reaper Crest, Plasmium Phial, Flea Brew, 2 Tool Pouch Upgrades
I used savestates and other debug mod tools to make my experience less painful, so this run isn't totally legitimate, but it does prove everything possible at least.
Do not try this at home (the room at 4:56 is actual hell). It's kind of insane that this is possible without any cocoon skips (which if you've seen any other Act 1 Mount Fay climb before, you know how strong cocoons are), but I wanted to give thanks to stichman34 who was the person who proved that it was actually possible to do the hell room at 4:56 (although that was done in slow motion as seen here youtu.be/1RfJ_2vhzJE , so this is the first real-time clear of the room). Unfortunately, skipping Needolin just doesn't work anymore and can only be done on older patches, but doing this without Sharpdart is pretty cool too.
![[TAS] Spelunky 2 - Sunken City% (Glitched) in 48.883](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uRagKFs-EBY/mqdefault.jpg "[TAS] Spelunky 2 - Sunken City% (Glitched) in 48.883
This is a TAS, or tool-assisted speedrun. It was made using tools such as slowdown, frame advance, and savestates, and is not meant to compete with real runs but is solely for entertainment. About 2 days ago, there was a pretty cool glitch discovered by ToastGhost with this particular application of it originally found by Remy, but the 1-1 warp specifically was found by Hectique. Normally, you only have 4 different pets as the pet style (0 being Monty, 1 being Percy, 2 being Poochi, and 3 being random). However, if you manually edit the settings.cfg file, you can set the pet style to any number (only 0 - 255 are relevant). For example, here I have it set to 29, so whenever a pet would normally spawn, it spawns an Olmec Ship instead. While also being incredibly funny looking, you can use it to warp to Sunken City from the first level of the game! Im not entirely sure on the details of how it works (and to be honest, I dont think anyone currently knows). For some reason, the game spawns multiple pets, and by entering an Olmec Ship in the front layer it can warp you to one in the backlayer if there is one, and then the 6-4 cutscene proceeds. It also warps you to the top left of the backlayer, so if you get a seed with terrain there you will die upon entering 7-1. Its a pretty fun glitch to mess around with, though be warned, if you replace the pet with an item that cant normally be sold, encountering a shop that sells that item will crash the game (unless you are using Overlunky or Playlunky without speedrun mode enabled). This includes Tun Shops, the Black Market, and Caveman Shops, the first two of which the crash can be avoided by having aggro with Tun / Shopkeepers, but the Caveman Shopkeeper crash cannot be avoided.
Category rules: Beat the game through the Hundun ending by any means (without shortcuts).
Seed: 6C1679A9
TAS tool used (made by Cosine256): https://spelunky.fyi/mods/m/tas-wizard/
General Spelunky Leaderboard: https://mossranking.com/
The Leaderboard for this category can be found on MemeRanking (use ctrl f): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hCyPGO8Y4bmHGyZOmuhqD3FP-lR-NFjEE14RRANOI0s/edit?gid=774556320#gid=774556320
There is now a TAS leaderboard to keep track of all the modern TASes! This can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-fEITRpwkfkbBesV1jAQbjmlJWV_MRdTwEpOHjfaIkc/edit?usp=sharing
dumb meme, yes i forgot to zoom the camera out, yes the damage on hundun was intentional (i thought it was funny)")
![[READ DESC] Silksong - Act 1 Mount Fay Climb (No Needolin, No Plasmium Phial)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vlZSUeOgIRM/mqdefault.jpg "[READ DESC] Silksong - Act 1 Mount Fay Climb (No Needolin, No Plasmium Phial)
As of version 1.0.28891, you are no longer able to get Faydown Cloak without Needolin. Everything else in this video is still accurate, but Im incredibly disappointed that the game is no longer beatable without Needolin.
NEW VIDEO (this but also without Nail Art or Dash): https://youtu.be/Z6NxwRC67lo
EVEN NEWER VIDEO (above but with ppasmium phial instead of flea brew and threadstorm): https://youtu.be/AM_Cqvc2ZzI?si=DYZV4dO10ix7aRaG
Turns out, getting Faydown Cloak is possible in Act 1. There was already a way to do this without Needolin, but this is a different (and in my opinion) easier method of the climb.
The first Act 1 climb discovered used the Sharpdart and was found by Cofy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC9LS9KuCJo
Then, Rose found a way to do it without Needolin (Sharpdart requires Needolin to get) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr0UL70gASQ
And now, I have done the same thing but with a different crest (Beast Crest) and without using Plasmium Phials, one of the most important tools that Rose used. Now, this does require a Beastboost (a minor glitch) in order for it to work, but I only have to use it once in the first cocoon skip room. It is also worth noting that the first cocoon skip is skippable if you use a Beastboost instead.
The without Needolin part is significant because (as seen at the end of the video), whenever the game prompts you to use Needolin, you can use it without having the item in your inventory. With wings, you can get into Wisp Thicket and enter Act 2 and beat the game from there, bypassing Last Judge (requires Needolin to summon) and The Mist (Mist rooms have no correct exit if you dont have Needolin)
I cut out parts where I needed to grind for silk or when I messed up, in reality this took me around 19 minutes from start to end. It can definitely be much faster with a clean run. My execution in a successful attempt was a little sloppy at times, the room at 2:40 can be done with 2 masks left at the end and at 4:03 youre supposed to delay the pogo after the first guy respawns and I had to do a weird improvised backup as a result (you can end get to the warmth spot with 4 masks left and I think 5 is possible too, but Im not 100% sure).")
