#herrah 14

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.

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

If you buffer a pogo out of a dash here you perfectly land on this little platform, allowing you to pick up any stray geo that might've fallen onto it during the squit arena. It's the same speed as the other ways I've seen people do movement here.
You need to be at least as far left as the image for it to work, so just don't greed the dash as hard as possible and you won't be early.

If you cancel the cdash going into petra arena as soon as you trigger the arena (the orange line in I'm next to in the pic) and stall for a brief moment, you can nearly guarantee getting all the 12 geo from the first petra, since it will move to the center of the platform as soon as it spawns.

Doing this movement saves 0.3 over the current cyclone strat if you get the wings bonk like here, a few frames less if you don't.

It consists of doing a dash into buffered pogo, buffered dash and buffered min wings jump. Then before you reach the wall start holding analog left, as soon as you wallcling press nail and let go of horizontal inputs, then you can dash anywhere after you've passed the spikes.

Left-right wallcling knocks you away from the wall you're on if you press nail, which ensures you don't hit the spikes, and that you land on the ledge under them. Getting the wallcling also stops you from hardfalling if you land.

This strat works for both 1221 and LP
3rd vid has input display for left-right nail knockback

You can ddark these two spiny husks for geo at the cost of ~1s and 3 soul. Gives 16-24 geo without chasing the geo.
Make sure you end cdash and ddark as far left as possible so the left husk's geo is more likely to bounce into you if it goes leftward.
Better than Herrah rocks if you need <20 after Petra arena (if you have more than 185 geo)

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.

Alternative to the inv drop near the start of the qg thorn drop room. They're exactly the same time-wise from my timing, but I find the pre-jump version to be a bit easier to greed.
The sedic slash makes sure you're as far left as possible before the dash.
You can do the pre-jump from the spot in the picture, almost right after you're under the part sticking down

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.

Airwalk strat for den, saves ~0.4 over normal strats, loses ~0.2 if you dash too late for ariwalk, loses a lot if you dash too early for airwalk

slightly (maybe more than slightly) cursed way to skip the first devout, complete with lineup
The devout also may not open right away, do not hit it, it needs to open into you, and if it backs up, just do the regular up and over.
If you have trouble getting the line-up (which is really tight) you can get as close as you can and dash into the devout as soon as it opens, this requires very good reaction time, but is a good backup.

To make up the geo get the bottom level in the room above king's station. This requires good RNG. If you don't get a good line-up, it's better to skip it (this is the fastest way i know how to cover the geo). If you end up skipping the geo, just kill the devout for the geo.

same strat without dashmaster. just hold direction and dash, the cooldown should line up on anything but absolute worst-case backing up rng, in that case it still dboosts you towards the dreamer in all my attempts.
never actaully timed this, but not having to wait eliminates 99.9% of possible devout rng, compared to having to wait for the cooldown.
https://clips.twitch.tv/SuspiciousHelplessStarlingPJSalt-Pd816xD1HMewW3f7

transdash into neutral dashes to refresh your shade cloak right before dashing through the devout. In my timings saves 0.2 vs getting good rng via just doing a regular movement and waiting in front of the devout for the refresh