This is by far the most consistent version of mantis pogo i've tried and i have been using it for quite a long time with great success. You need to land on either of the ledges as you fall into the main part of the room. Lately i've been using the edge of these glowing mushrooms to time my left press (i start pressing left when my feet reach the red line) to land on the first ledge, but landing on the second ledge is just as fastif performed well. As for the trick itself, you need to do a full jump relatively close to the ledge to lure the mantises properly and then you are gonna need to find whatever cues work best for you (personally i jump once im a bit past the arch in red) to consistently clear both attack patterns with a full jump (technically you can react to which one you get, but it isnt too useful). Once you've hit the lever, you are gonna hold right and fb (hopefully don't fb frame perfectly or it'll come out to the left) and then slash again to kill the mantis. If the mantis did the forward slash you should be getting a decent amount of geo, but otherwise its tought to get a meaningful amount consistently. To actually perform the mantis pogo you are gonna do a full jump once you are roughly inside that arch (again feel free to find your own cue), pogo the mantis, fb to the right of the mantis so it doesnt keep going to the right and pogo left.
I've seen many ppl struggle with this epogo, when in reality its very lenient and can become very consistent with some practice. In this post I'll be explaining what goes into making the skip works in the hopes that ppl can improve at it. First of all, here's a vid of me doing the skip many times in a row to show what kind of variance can be expected and still have the trick work.
In order to perform the skip you want to hardfall and do a full jump shortly after regaining control (this isn't super tight, so its best to not greed it too much, as you can't buffer the jump out of the hardfall). You want to stop holding left a fair bit before the left wall (to ensure you don't go on top of it) and then start holding left again once you are safely past the ledge. I find that slashing when i reach this mushroom in the foreground to start heading right setps up the spore pretty well (the spore bounces on the wall and then follows you left quite well past the wall, its very important that this is the case). You then want to pogo at mid height (too low or too high can make the trick a little more akward, but its not too tight) and start holding left inmediatly. After this point you want to focus on not bonking the ceiling after the pogo, so you want to use your fbs to gain as much distance as possible (also not very tight, but imagine it as some sort of fb skip). Once you are past the right wall (assuming you didn't bonk on the ceiling) you can start holding right for a bit to ensure you dmg tank. Nearly any dmg tank at this point will allow you to clear the gap (in the vid im at 300fps and i have no problem clearing the gap), so you really just want to make sure you don't dodge the explosion.
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).
You can slash to the left before bouncing on the shroom to make bouncing to the right consistent (instead of it being a 50/50 depending purely on rng). The spacing is very forgiving, so you dont really need to greed it at all
damageless cheart gauntlet cycle for low%, that saves 0.2 and is easier to greed. You want to jump at the foreground spike in the image and then full jump immediately when you land, to get over the laser. You then need to delay a little to get past the next laser, and also to make sure you don't hit the laser after the first conveyor. As long as you don't greed it too hard by landing really far left on the conveyor, you should be fine. For the second conveyor, the movement in the third vid is very helpful in making timings more consistent there. Do two minihops as soon as you land on the conveyor and then walk until the laser in front of you disappears, do a third minihop and you'll be a few frames from the edge. If you went into the cheart gauntlet with full soul and find the final conveyor walljump scary, you can instead do a fireball skip from the second conveyor at the cost of 0.1 (second vid).
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.
Shooting the fireball after buying the stag without reentering an extra time saves up to 0.6s. Just hold right as the buy menu closes and then do a short wiggle as soon as you see your character turn right, before starting the cdash. Very easy to save time with, even if poorly greeded.
In case you miss epogo while being full soul, this is a pretty good back up. I pretty much jump slightly after hearing the sporg fire and then for the big jump you can slash at the same time/slightly after pressing jump.
If you have 2 soul after failing epogo, you can full jump right away after reaching the platform, upslash the sporg and drop off the platform asap, then continue as shown here. Its a bit tighter ime, but def possible
Cdashing into the transition after Trinomi drop room allows you to to this pretty consistent cdash off the small platform, which saves about 1.1s on avg in the room itself (exact times vary depending on how many freezeframes you get from hitting uomas on the way). The main way you can get screwed is by cdash glitch, but that already happened with the old strat and I couldn't really feel a difference in how often it happened. Occasionally the first ooma is high enough that you don't hit it on the way in, if you cdash from the platform it will have a small chance the core chases you down and hits you. The cdash in the previous room loses 0.4 so the avg timesave is about 0.7
Alternate movement for aspid mother climb. Saves a little bit, I found it way easier to greed, and it avoids all enemy rng. If you struggle making it up to the after the infection blob pogo you can do the 2nd video movement at the cost of 0.2
A set of strats to make the big darkroom in deepnest consistent and fast for 1221 low%.
All the walking spiders spawn in the same spot facing left or right, and activate when you enter a certain radius (The first 2 activate upon room entry). This means that consistent movement between activation and encountering a spider leaves you with 2 possible positions for each.
You want to make sure you walljump twice on the right side in the beginning, to activate the 3rd spider as late as possible. Walljumping off of the left wall activates it early and gives worse positions, if you jump too high even one jump on the left can activate it.
The first set of 2 spiders has two easy ways to deal with them, shown in video 2 and 3. The way to tell which to do is whether you see a spider as you do your 2nd walljump or not. After them I upslash in case the weaverling spawned quickly.
Spider 3 can be dealt with as shown in video 2 and 3. It's possible to not get hit by the rng in video 3, but it's precise and hard to do in the dark.
Spider 4 is fireballed for 15 geo, as long as you aren't too slow from the activation range you shouldn't miss any.
Spider 5 can be dealt with easily by doing two full jumps from the darkest pole in the background.
Spider 6 will be in the corner where you wanna go up half the time, so walking off and pogoing twice gets you up to the wall without having to worry if it's there (the 2nd pogo is hitting the spikes under the breakable floor). This is the only strat that can be a little bit sketchy, since you only have a few frames to pogo before you fall into the spikes and get reset to the start of the room.
The movement shown in the first video showcases all of put together. The image shows which spider I'm referring to with each number, and the line of the same color is their approximate activation range.
Strat to guarantee the soul hit from the shrumeling so you can always save 0.4 on the second ogre due to soul breakpoints. Just jump and do your first fireball above the shrumeling as the ogre is waking up, your first nail hit will hit it and the ogre.
This saves 0.5s over well greeded current movement, while being really easy. As long as you don't do a big prejump you won't hardfall, and if you need soul you can turnaround slash the soul totem as you're landing.
you can walk to the edge of the tram and back to setup the interact timing, better than anything else since the left inputs buffered, if you interact late with the tram you can just turn earlier (careful every 2 frames late you interact is only 1 frame earlier you turn)
since the setups a bit wonky its not quite as much time saved as for other things but still worth doing imo
Sub-pixel alignment setup for itemless sporg seal to make it more consistent. Hug the right wall above the platform when jumping up, then make sure not to brush any walls on the climb up. Shoutouts to a_Press for the setup.
Found a neat pogaxe setup. Alternate down and right to ungrab/regrab the conveyor to stall yourself around the right position. Even if you pressed down and are falling you can still walljump, so you just need to react to the throw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPz0oTEOSzI
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.
Consistent set up for mantis pogo, you have to enter with 3 hits of soul. You need to land on one of the platforms instead of falling all the way through to avoid the hardfall (but it also works if you hardfall, its just slower), hold left and fb at around this height or a bit lower (see image)(you can use the lower skull as reference). If the mantis on the left attacks and pushes the other mantis backwards, you are doing it correctly, if the other mantis goes above the one attacking, you need to fb earlier. Keep holding left and upslash the mantis, jump and hit the lever as soon as possible and return. One of the mantises should be considerably behind the other and should be quite low once you reach it; it will attack as soon as you go near it. The next step is to do a full jump once you are past it, pogo once the mantis starts to return after its attack so it doesnt receive knockback and pogo again as soon as possible to make it up. The rest is just optimal movement through the room.
An update to this post. It turns out that you can make the set up easier if you stand still against the wall, nail slash twice without holding any direction, press and hold left and, one frame after the left input, press and hold jump. The rest is the same as before. To do this consistantly you just have to press the left key and the jump key one after the other as fast as possible (if you go for this keep in mind that this feels almost the same as pressing them at the same time, but if both inputs are on the same frame, the trick wont work) and check for the weird landing sound before commiting to the fb. Here is an example of a successful and a non successful attempt, the trick with hitboxes for better understanding of it and a slow motion segment of the set up change.
So this is a set up for the low% stallball that has been used for a while, but I dont think anyone has published it yet on strats. With this set up you have 2 frames to shoot the fb at the end instead of just 1, which helps a lot.
In terms of the set up itself, you have to stand (dont hold any directions) against the wall, hold left and jump once you reach the highlighted part of the grass (see image), if you hear some kind of landing sound, continue with the trick and fb around there (see image), if you dont hear anything strange, turn right, stand still against the wall and repeat the set up. This works on both 1.5 and 1.4, the window when you can jump is pretty tight (1 frame), but it makes the trick easier overall.
Preparation of a file hardsaved at the kp door with bench storage. Basic idea: benchwarp a file saved at the start of kp anywhere, then mms noclip to the kp door hardsave and quit out
New dupe route past gruz mom to city for low% ag on 1211. File 1 is hardsaved at dirtmouth, file 3 is a special file hardsaved at the kp door with bench storage (see below for how to prepare such a file)
so you said that the fungal skip is trash, here is a more reliable strat with 2 fbs, the best i got was a few 3 out of 4 attempts in 10 minutes. Just jump roughly where the post is and fb just above the slope, fb again in the slope and pogo to end it. The closer you are to the spot with the 1st fb the easier it is and if you see that you are already too low with the first fb dont even try to shoot another one. You will know if the first fb is too low if it hits the wall later than usual.
the skip saves a ton of time, you would probably have to reroute a bit for geo though its actually pretty hard to do with just one fb, but you can fb stall to get the correct hight easier, its really precise
Small timesave for 1028 any% AG (or low% AG), room dupe to skip walking across RG grimmkin room (apparently inoki already has this strat, but leaving this here for reference)
Fastest elevator climb I've been able to manage over the last few days, incorporates all new strats. The last enemy has some RNG on position but the most consistent setup I find is to just ignore him and fireball skip. If you're not comfortable with a fireball jump there's ways to lure that enemy lower (cling the side of the wall for one jump) and then pogo it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzJsEwcLK2I
Fastest drop I could find through the room right before Queen's Station Skip. If you're low on soul you can hit a few of these jellyfish on the way down without losing much time.
Also to note - you can pogo the jellyfish I took damage on but
a.) their positions are slightly rng so it can be hard to react b.) it actually seemed to be optimal to just take the hit and keep falling
Modified trinomi drop for low-percent. I didn't feel like recording more but if your fireball turnaround is really clean you can land on top of that ledge without needing to wall grab.
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