For folks that run without in-game music on, here are some setups for dashing through the gate as it opens. The first is for a kill with VS and the second is with a nail (since this will affect nail cooldown). This takes some practice to get used to the freezeframes; using the WK flipping back animation gave me a better feel for it. For the second setup, I wouldn't recommend buffering a jump out of the dash since it can come up just a little short if timed perfectly.
Timing from the kill rather than the death animation is necessary to be fully consistent since, like Gruzmother, WK count as dead as soon as you land the final hit (which is what the gate timing is based on), but their death animation depends on how exactly they're killed (e.g. having to fall if killed midair, or not doing the flip back if the last hit is a pogo).
Saves somewhere between .14 and .24 to just walking through depending on how well it's greeded.
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If you're super low on soul just before entering watchers you can do this silly strat to pretty consistently get +6 hits pretty quickly :) If you aren't to the left of the red line shown you risk getting hit, there's a couple handy background objects right there you can use as visual cues (right side of the table or left side of the spiky thing)
Here's a collection of the fastest ways i could find to get 1, 2, 3 and 4 hits on the rava on the way to wks. Keep in mind that you want to have 8 soul after this point. I'm pretty sure all of these are known, but i wanted to put them together in a single post. I've seen a variation of the 3 hit route where you walljump twice (https://discord.com/channels/772964112908156938/1139978112847839242/1140525674516467762), but that version is a bit slower.
here's the best movement i could find for breaking the ceiling without using a fb (which is a good option depending on your soul situation), which loses around 0.6s to the fb version (also shown in the vid as a reference).
The idea is that you want to break the ceiling with a side slash (need to make sure you dont wj too early so your slash can actually come up before you bonk) and you also want to hold neutral for the last wj so you are looking right once you clear the ceiling. This will ensure your slash hits the right wall and lets you turn around left without without getting fantad. After that the movement is the exact same in both cases (going right early as we dont have dash).
If you reach the last room with 2hp still, this dmg tank is very good for ~0.3s of timeloss. Its easier if you release jump a bit before the wall so you do the 2nd wj lower
setup for a dash exit from the watcher knights arena if you play without in-game music. neutral jump off the right wall -> wait for the last wk to disintegrate -> 1 minimum height hop -> buffer 3 full height jumps -> land -> turnaround -> dash.
easily saves 0.2s over walking out. can use both the crumbling audio cue from the dying wk, or screenshake if you have it set to for example x0.1 (both lower and higher probably work well).
videos: on-screen wk death, off-screen wk death, and walking jump for comparison.
After 8 years we finally have a timing setup for the first nail on the watcher. Walk all the way right to the gate then walk back. If someone has anything better/for the pairs please lmk lol
If you dash slash the lever at the top here to bring the elevator up you can start moving right while falling, which lets you skip a dash. The hardest part is greeding the last dash slash, I use the cue of touching the left bit of the foreground object you can see in the last vid. Saves up to 0.3 Even without cancelling the first inv drop in the vid early (Strats post for that here: https://discord.com/channels/772964112908156938/822611544231772170/1158759101958983712) it saves about the same
Some WCS strats for the elevator below WK arena on the way to rafters.
First clip is the baseline strat without WCS
Second clip is WCS with a failed chain, which saves 0.0s-0.1s
Third clip is WCS with a successful chain, which saves 0.3s-0.4s
Fourth clip is WCS with no attempted chain, but instead a prejump dash, which saves 0.2s-0.3s. This strat was found by Stratus but doesn't appear to have been posted The variance in each of the WCS strats comes down to how well you greed the prejump + first dash for the elevator WCS.
TLDR; you should do elevator WCS here regardless, even if you miss the chain it's even/saves time. Whether it's better to go for the chain or the prejump is up to how often you hit the chain, but IMO the prejump dash strat is the best on average due to the inconsistency of chains in general.
Closing the inv drop early here rather than landing saves up to 0.2, and there's a super easy visual cue for when to do it. You just have to close your inv as soon as you've passed the window in the background on the way down. You can hold left during the inv to start moving as soon as you regain control, and you then have a fairly lenient window to dash at the bottom, but the earlier the better. The dashes line up perfectly to let you do a min height pre-jump out of the last dash towards the left as well.
idk who needs this, here are fireball ranges in the wk arena, for when you need to be sure you're hitting the offscreen guy, use the central background pillar to orient yourself and stick close to it
I don't really have a good visual cue yet but saves time without a chain and the big thing is that going for a chain doesn't really lose time so usually saves about .05 without chain to normal strat and when chain happens, (which in this room feels pretty easy) saves about .3 or so
This is a strat for people who use socd cleaner and thus cant do the fast sliding down mechanic.
In case you didnt already know, you can tap down while sliding down a wall to uncling. You want to do that while sliding on the lower collider (marked red in the screenshot) to avoid a weird hard fall, as shown first in the video. This only looses minimal time to the fastest strat and saves time to just not doing the squeeze at all.
0.5s faster than normal strat. You can tell that you got the wcs if your dash is slightly above the ground after the transition. If it's on the ground, then just do the normal strat. If you get the wcs, then hold left until you get passed the wall and then hold right to cling and do the dashes. When you are getting the chest make sure that you wait a tiny bit to fall down, otherwise you'll just pogo off the breakable object and miss the chest
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