Deepnest_Spider_Town

do the final nail on the 2nd devout slash, faster and much more lenient hitbox

Reliable Devout skip for the final devout in Beast's Den. Saves about 1.5s on average compared to killing it with low% equipment, and also means you don't have to worry about soul in den, so it's probably closer to 2s avg timesave.

Normally, the final devout won't walk over the gap on the left side, but if it starts an attack within a certain range it lets it cross it, which lets you get over it's collision box to skip it.
You want to fireball the devout to wake it up, and then go stand in the spot in the first picture, on that grey line in the floor. You don't quite see it until the camera shifts up though, so I aim for where the black foreground half-circle in front of the knight intersects with the ground.
You then need to let the devout approach you, until it's front is at least where the green line is in the second picture. Any further right won't work, but a bit further left does, it's somewhat lenient. I mainly make sure it's covering the jagged bit of the border, on the right of the mask in the background.
Once it stops, you preferably want to walk forward a tiny bit to hit it and force an attack. It both makes it less likely to back up and is faster than a natural attack. It will sometimes start backing up immediately after getting close (3rd video is an extreme example), and you just have to cry and be patient if that happens.
Avoid the forced attack, and as soon as it ends, you want to force a second attack and walk into it to dmg tank as you do. If you get the timing right, you can cancel the dmg tank freezeframes for a bit of extra timesave.
Finally you want to jump over the devout, make sure you don't hold right as you do because if you touch the triangle it will drag you down and not let you get over. As long as you're fast enough, you can always get the cdash off after landing, it can't attack you fast enough to hit you.

After herrah, you should head left and kill the devout to set up fury and for the geo. For the first 2 slashes to be consistent you need to de the frist slash around here so you walk the nail into him. Its important that you take double dmg in the rotation to set up fury more quickly

These are imo the most reasonable strats for killing the devout with 1, 2 and 3hp respectively. Some notes for the following clips:

• You can perform the 2hp kill 2nd cycle like this https://discord.com/channels/772964112908156938/1328843639983571055/1329364752908156928, but its a lot scarier and not much faster.
• The last nail hit is the same for 1hp and for 3hp, so i chose to showcase the safe strat and the fast strat. To make the fast strat consistent you need to slash its mask from a good distance (In this image you can see its bc of how the first hitbox looks: https://discord.com/channels/772964112908156938/1328843639983571055/1353119146560196628), or the attack will have a chance to hit you.
• The 2hp kill is a fair bit faster than the 3hp one, so if you are comfortable with it you prob want to avoid getting here with 3hp
• You can miss the 3rd nail hit once in the 1hp kill and you can save it quickly by then going for the safe strat and slashing twice instead of once
• In the clip for 2hp I start with 1hp and have infinite hp turned on. The kill is the same, but this made resettig quickly much easier

backup strat for 1hp inspired by @74v13r's fury route devout kills

2nd devout 1 soul strat
saves ~.1 to normal 2 soul devout optimally, and is way easier to greed, so on avg about .15+ timesave (usually higher really)in my experience,
frameties devout airwalk
u can go neutral as soon as u pass the devout to make lantern pogo easier, its same speed

Killing the devout with wraiths + shadesoul saves 0.3 over ddark + shadesoul.
Does have a bit more risk if the devout backs up, if it backs up after 2 hits you can recover with another wraiths or ddark, but if it backs up after just 1 hit you kind of just cry. I was only getting the backup about 10% of the time though, so probably still worth.
Highly recommend vsync for this, with in game cap of 150 I was getting 2 hit wraiths (without devout backing up) 20-30% of the time, but switching to vsync I got no rng missed hits.

After the discussion that prompted the split of the Any% NMG ComSoB sheet, I started talking to CC about the last devout's FSM and theoretically optimal variations of the quick kill. In CC's words, the FSM briefly is:

1. Devout wakes up
2. Devout waits for up to 1s randomly for the knight to enter melee range before deciding to go forward; otherwise it'll start walking forward until it reaches melee range
3. If it walked forward it'll wait up to 0.5s to attack or walk backwards; if it didn't its up to 1.5s (attack/walk backwards is 50/50)
   So a VERY important thing is that you NEVER cross the melee part of the devout on your own, ALWAYS wait for it to walk forward

So from this we want a setup that:

1. Wakes the devout up as soon as possible
2. Encourages the devout to walk into you as soon as possible
3. Keeps you actionable when the devout does walk into you so you can chase it if needed to stay in its melee range and prevent a reroll

CC's suggestion is Fireball -> Dash -> Fireball -> Dash -> Fireball, with a bit of walking forward before the last fireball to get a bit closer to the devout's melee range (first clip). You'll then want to walk toward the devout if its either currently moving at you or has moved far enough to get you in its melee range, indicated by it stopping in front of you after walking at you (second clip). If it walks up to you then backs up, as mentioned above, do NOT walk toward it until it starts moving toward you again.

The last thing is that the devout can attack too early for you to fit four nail slashes while it's open. If this does happen, you'll wanna do a slight variation that saves the last slash for a second open, which you can force with a slash (third clip). Conveniently the extra damage from this cancels the freeze frames, making the strat lose about 0.6s-0.7s to an optimal quick kill. If you're low though you can just back up before slashing.

Consistent low% version of devout skip.
You wanna cdash into it, upslash a little after you gain back control, then delay a little and jump right before you pogo. (jumping too early will result in bonking and falling back down)
The pogo should be buffered after the upslash for the standard rng.
Early opens are hard to deal with, but since you cdash into it, they are pretty rare. The best way I've found to deal with them is to train yourself to do the jump + pogo as a reaction the moment the devout is in the same position as the image (Arm raised behind it) rather than pure muscle memory timing.

A devout skip strat modified from Zaliant's align strat. Uses a 2-frame align to get into position for the damage tank. Entirely consistent regardless of RNG, and somewhat easier than upslash devout skip. Video contains backup RNG, open RNG, and a full run-through from the beginning of den. Attached is an image of the 2 frames to look for.
Does not work on 1.5 patches.

fast strat for this movement. The jump after the first downdash isn't precise, getting it from the corner works. Saves ~.4s over previous strat here
https://clips.twitch.tv/AmericanTrappedOkapiOptimizePrime-kGr-t_i377GQUQxE

These have been floating around recently so I thought I'd put them in one spot in the hopes they get some more visibility. Individually they're pretty situational but combined they show up all the time, so it's good to have them under your belt. These all assume that the first spider is "dealt with", meaning it's behind you and is either running away from you or is far enough away that it won't hit you when you cdash. I gave 'em lil names just to distinguish.

• Calli Slash: if the spider is running away from you and you're to the left of it, forward slash and instantly cdash. The combined damage of the nail hit and the cdash will kill the spider. Found by calligraphiti
• GOAT Slash: if the spider is running toward you and you're to the left of it, up slash and instantly cdash. Same idea as Calli Slash with the bonus of the up slash turning the spider around. I'm not a 1432+ runner but I've been told this is worth with those spider patterns. Found by JaGOAT
• Reverse GOAT Slash: if the spider is running toward you and you're to the right of it, up slash and instantly cdash (helps to go neutral just before the up slash to line it up). Uses the same turnaround tech as GOAT Slash but from the other side, so you don't go through the spider. Found by me :3

Keep in mind that if the spider is far enough right to turn around on its own these are generally not advised.

3 Dashes instead of 4 here is actually .2 faster, but you need to make sure you have a good jump if the spider is low, because you don't get the free 1000 coyote frames that you get with 4 dashes.

consistent setup for devout skip
you still need to make up the geo with either the bottom of spire or the bottom row of room above king's station (only if you get good rng) superseded with moss knights now

If you need to nail nail cancel a devout (in any% that's 8 soul 1 hp), make sure your second nail is an upslash so the fb spawns closer to the devout