Uploaded July 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Just a fun shower thought I had yesterday. I swear I'm not obsessed...
Recently I've been going through a lot of different numbers to find the best places to stand rta to get as close to the dragon/tickle spot as possible, which is necessary to insta-kill it. If you're unfamiliar with the insta-kill, it's a trick involving accelerating an arrow to extreme speeds using an odd quirk of dragon knockback. And since arrows deal damage proportional to their speed, this can be used to kill the dragon instantly. If you want more information on how it works/how I make it work, I'd suggest these:
Original Dragon Knockback Exploration: (youtu.be/DBYgB2sESmM)
Initial TAS Insta-Kill Test: (youtu.be/ON8c6IhE7-E)
Lamer Insta-Kill Test with Misc Info: (youtu.be/OaIesw4T7YE)
RTA tests (youtu.be/czgSR9Z6U3M and youtu.be/MhQ3tQ5Av7I)
Crazy doc in the video( docs.google.com/document/d/11qCI-BhZftr7tA1qvEp3VScY3ki2aVsC52eJy2Psp4Q ).
But! Throughout all that, something that I hadn't considered was simply forcing the dragon get close to me instead. And it turns out that's pretty easy.
The idea is rather simple. By default the dragon tries its best to fly straight towards its target. But it takes so long for it to adjust its velocity/angle that it just ends up looping back and forth a lot, missing the target by like 1m each time. So to get as close as possible, you need to adapt to each of the possible ways it can miss. However, by standing directly on the target and shooting the dragon as it's approaching you, you can adjust its velocity manually, forcing it to correct its path. This takes about 3 shots, and after that it'll pass over its target(and you) almost perfectly. I measured the paths(not points) a few times and they all came within like .005m. Which is pretty good, considering naturally they can vary up to like .1m iirc.
This works because of a few things. Mainly, damage knockback actually halves all of an entity's velocity, and then adds like .4m/t in its opposite direction from you. This means that if you stand directly on the dragon's target(28.0x, -29.0z for front 7/8), every shot you do will not only reduce the dragon's velocity(which means it has less adjusting to do), but also add velocity in exactly the direction you want it to go(just opposite, but that doesn't matter). Note that this doesn't have anything to do with the arrow you shoot or its position/velocity, just where you're standing. So there's no rng there.
I'm not sure if this is particularly helpful yet, but I do think it's neat. It works exactly the same for every seed, dragon height, node, node height, target height, or dragon angle. So it's a reaaally simple setup at least. It also forces the paths to converge much nicer than they ever would naturally, which is cool. The only big issue is that it messes with the exact positions of the dragon, which makes them harder to predict. Normally many different dragon angles/paths bunch together, creating hot-spots along the common paths where a random dragon is more likely to be. You can look at the heatmaps in the crazy doc above to see them better. Now these probably still exist here, although admittedly I've only tested this empirically, but its much harder to predict them since you'll probably shoot the dragon slightly differently each time. It also requires more time to setup, but actually getting into position is so much easier/simpler.
Regardless, maybe if looked into more it could help create more consistent setups, even if it doesn't stay "completely universal" as a trade for better odds. It lets you knockback the dragon without worrying about messing up its path, which could help slow it down and make hits more likely. Or maybe you could position things so the dragon decelerates on its own because of target placement. Who knows!
This whole video is kind of ?? embarrassing but oh well I'm not going to dwell on it. Nothing is real anyway
Just a fun shower thought I had yesterday. I swear I'm not obsessed...
Recently I've been going through a lot of different numbers to find the best places to stand rta to get as close to the dragon/tickle spot as possible, which is necessary to insta-kill it. If you're unfamiliar with the insta-kill, it's a trick involving accelerating an arrow to extreme speeds using an odd quirk of dragon knockback. And since arrows deal damage proportional to their speed, this can be used to kill the dragon instantly. If you want more information on how it works/how I make it work, I'd suggest these:
Original Dragon Knockback Exploration: (youtu.be/DBYgB2sESmM)
Initial TAS Insta-Kill Test: (youtu.be/ON8c6IhE7-E)
Lamer Insta-Kill Test with Misc Info: (youtu.be/OaIesw4T7YE)
RTA tests (youtu.be/czgSR9Z6U3M and youtu.be/MhQ3tQ5Av7I)
Crazy doc in the video( docs.google.com/document/d/11qCI-BhZftr7tA1qvEp3VScY3ki2aVsC52eJy2Psp4Q ).
But! Throughout all that, something that I hadn't considered was simply forcing the dragon get close to me instead. And it turns out that's pretty easy.
The idea is rather simple. By default the dragon tries its best to fly straight towards its target. But it takes so long for it to adjust its velocity/angle that it just ends up looping back and forth a lot, missing the target by like 1m each time. So to get as close as possible, you need to adapt to each of the possible ways it can miss. However, by standing directly on the target and shooting the dragon as it's approaching you, you can adjust its velocity manually, forcing it to correct its path. This takes about 3 shots, and after that it'll pass over its target(and you) almost perfectly. I measured the paths(not points) a few times and they all came within like .005m. Which is pretty good, considering naturally they can vary up to like .1m iirc.
This works because of a few things. Mainly, damage knockback actually halves all of an entity's velocity, and then adds like .4m/t in its opposite direction from you. This means that if you stand directly on the dragon's target(28.0x, -29.0z for front 7/8), every shot you do will not only reduce the dragon's velocity(which means it has less adjusting to do), but also add velocity in exactly the direction you want it to go(just opposite, but that doesn't matter). Note that this doesn't have anything to do with the arrow you shoot or its position/velocity, just where you're standing. So there's no rng there.
I'm not sure if this is particularly helpful yet, but I do think it's neat. It works exactly the same for every seed, dragon height, node, node height, target height, or dragon angle. So it's a reaaally simple setup at least. It also forces the paths to converge much nicer than they ever would naturally, which is cool. The only big issue is that it messes with the exact positions of the dragon, which makes them harder to predict. Normally many different dragon angles/paths bunch together, creating hot-spots along the common paths where a random dragon is more likely to be. You can look at the heatmaps in the crazy doc above to see them better. Now these probably still exist here, although admittedly I've only tested this empirically, but its much harder to predict them since you'll probably shoot the dragon slightly differently each time. It also requires more time to setup, but actually getting into position is so much easier/simpler.
Regardless, maybe if looked into more it could help create more consistent setups, even if it doesn't stay "completely universal" as a trade for better odds. It lets you knockback the dragon without worrying about messing up its path, which could help slow it down and make hits more likely. Or maybe you could position things so the dragon decelerates on its own because of target placement. Who knows!
This whole video is kind of ?? embarrassing but oh well I'm not going to dwell on it. Nothing is real anyway
