Knights Contract - skip first half of Episode 14
2I present to you: the most difficult skip in the game so far. It's also the only one that doesn't use Gretchen's abilities at all!
(Mainly because Gretchen is not available in Episode 14).
0:16 - it varies how fast Minukelsus climbs this climbing wall. In the best case scenario he climbs it at the same time with Heinrich, but this is pretty rare. You usually have to wait around 8 seconds for him to catch up.
0:28 - two knight enemies spawn. The optimal number of knights to have around for doing the following skip is 1, so I use Minukelsus' power stab to quickly weaken the other knight and throw him off the ledge.
0:37 - then it's just a matter of luring the other knight closer to the key barrier area. Minukelsus' power stab also has time to recharge while luring.
0:49 - after getting rid of the shield of the 2nd knight, it can be grabbed and taken to a correct position near the key barrier for the most critical part of the skip.
Heinrich must position the knight in a correct spot in a correct angle and then order Minukelsus to throw an exploding potion at it just as the grab animation is ending. If you do all this right, Heinrich himself is knocked back and he flies through an invisible wall on a bit of OoB floor.
(Note: you have only two chances to do this damage boost on Easy-mode. After that, the enemy dies from getting too much damage from explosive potions. A very desperate back-up plan is to manipulate Minukelsus into throwing an explosive potion near the correct area even without an enemy around, but it's RNG-hell, and you have a better chance of success by just retrying from start instead.)
1:02 - sadly, the problems posed by this skip are not over yet. While you're now OoB, you have to clip through two walls to get to the other side of the key barrier. The outer wall is simply clipped by running at it at a correct angle and hoping you get lucky. Rolling here is inadvisable, because it can push Heinrich deeper OoB and drop him into chasm.
1:05 - the inner wall has to be rolled past. Try to line up Heinrich so that his rolls are perfectly aligned with the stairs. If you steer too much to left, you can't pass through. If you steer too much to right, you get insta-killed by some death collision. The skip can fail miserably even at this late stage...
1:15 - afterwards, there's a fight you have to fight with Heinrich alone. Heinrich is surprisingly weak for a hack 'n' slash main character, so this can be a very frustrating situation...
I recommend doing a lift-up and taking care of at least one of the fire wraiths first. If Heinrich catches on fire at any point, he can't do effective combos and dealing with the shield knight is almost impossible.
1:33 - as for dealing with the shield knight. All of Heinrich's attacks are deflected off the shield automatically, and the game really expects you to beat him using your allies' abilities. However, I found an exploit to deal with shields with Heinrich alone: if you do the combo square, triangle, back+triangle, Heinrich does an air leap which cannot be deflected and does full damage. Using exclusively this attack on the shield, it can be broken in a reasonable amount of time even when solo.
My setup for doing the combo without accidentally hitting the knight is to do square, triangle to opposite direction from knight, then holding L1 to lock-on during the smash of the triangle attack, then pressing forward+triangle to do leap attack. Yeah, the controls are reversed for a moment if you do it this way...
It seems the parry also damages the knight, but those probably can't be counted on in a run.
1:48 - once the shield is gone, this knight too can just be grabbed and tossed off the side. You get a checkpoint after the fight, so the skip is a success after this point even if you get a game over at the falling meteors set piece up ahead.
2:14 - at the top, Minukelsus returns to Heinrich's side and everything is as if nothing weird had ever happened.
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Normally this part of the level takes around 5 minutes to complete, so this skip should save over 2 minutes even if you have bad RNG. I think it's doable in a RTA... but it won't be fun to perform at all.
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