Darksiders First Dungeon Getting Back to the Main Floor

Contents

• 1 Prologue
  • 1.1 First Fight
  • 1.2 Golem Skip
  • 1.3 Carglitch
  • 1.4 Fourth Fight Skip
  • 1.5 Straga
  • 1.6 Charred Council
• 2 Hotel and Crossroads
  • 2.1 Parking Garage
  • 2.2 Pillar Jump
  • 2.3 Furniture Fight
  • 2.4 Crossroads
  • 2.5 General Fight
  • 2.6 Vulgrim
• 3 Choking Grounds
  • 3.1 Wrong Warps
  • 3.2 Choking Grounds
• 4 Broken Stair
  • 4.1 Biggest Skip
  • 4.2 Window Jump
• 5 Autoscroller
• 6 Twilight Cathedral
  • 6.1 Garden Fight
  • 6.2 Balcony Jump
  • 6.3 The Infinite Jump
  • 6.4 Tiamat
• 7 Drowned Pass
  • 7.1 Skipping Sewer Fight
  • 7.2 Blind Vulgrim
• 8 The Hollows
  • 8.1 Getting the Fist
  • 8.2 Traveling to Griever: Old Strats
  • 8.3 Griever
• 9 Gundashing
  • 9.1 Shopping Trip
  • 9.2 Dry Road
• 10 The Ashlands
  • 10.1 Outrunning the worm
  • 10.2 Horse Arena
  • 10.3 The Sunnyjams Skip
  • 10.4 The Stygian
• 11 Silitha's Dungeon
  • 11.1 Traveling There
  • 11.2 Iron Canopy
  • 11.3 Silitha
• 12 The Black Throne
  • 12.1 Getting to Straga
  • 12.2 Running from Straga
• 13 Armageddon backtracking
  • 13.1 Eden
  • 13.2 Collecting the pieces
• 14 Final Boss
  • 14.1 Dragon
  • 14.2 Not Dragon

Prologue

First Fight

Starting the game: There's no special setup before starting a new game, simply select it from the main menu. For difficulty, there's no speed difference, so you can choose what you like. Most games' difficulty will pump up enemy HP or defense, in Darksiders the only change is how much damage War takes from attacks. We have all of the damage routed, so it's not much of a concern, but I'd recommend playing on Easy while learning.

During the intro cutscenes, hold right-click to skip the cutscenes as soon as possible. You can skip cutscenes with Esc, as well, but we won't use that as often. While they're playing, hold D and tap Alt to dash to the right and end up near a streetlight. Grab it with the Action button (E) and strafe back to the left until you're standing on the far left crack in the asphalt. The goal of this fight is to kill the Car Thrower on top of the bus. Normally, he won't jump down until the first wave of minions is killed, but damaging him directly will force him to jump at you. The Car Thrower will start with a roar, wait for his hands to go back in front of him, then throw (E) the lamppost with Q-mode.

Once he recoils, stand still and hit Block (Alt) just as he's landing to counter, then spam V to go into Chaos form. This position should get a hit as you land from the Chaos Form, after which you can do the fast combo of LMB RMB LMB to kill him. Untransform with V and dash forward to the right side of the bus in front and wait for the cutscene.

Once the cutscene is finished, dash forward and slightly towards the building on the right, then hold focus. Doing this sets you up to always target an enemy in the starting zone, otherwise you have a risk of getting a bad camera angle. Since you're facing backwards, hold S and Sword-Dash to the end of the block, then hold A to go left into the cutscene.

Golem Skip

The next section normally has a cutscene that weakens War by taking a bunch of his health tanks, but using the AirBlock you can skip over it and keep extra HP into the main game. After the cutscene, dash forward twice and grab the van on the left. Turn back toward the Golem, activate Q-mode, and throw the car below the Golem's feet and aimed within the median. The goal is that the car stops just in front of the foot, creating a platform to get onto it.

Once the angel cutscene is over, dash forward and jump onto your van. Double jump at the foot, then use the AirBlock to get on top. Double jump forward onto the Golem's hip and turn slightly left and double jump to the back. The platform here extends up pretty far, but is pretty thin, so stick towards the right side. Take note of the Golem's movement up and down as it struggles and look to the left at the JUNK poster where it's on fire. A leap of faith when the Golem's back is high and coupled with an AirBlock will get you onto an invisible platform here. Look forward again and doublejump up and AirBlock one last time to get on another invisible platform that lets you fall into the next zone.

Carglitch

Once you land, dash straight ahead to the second van and pick it up. The brick wall on the right has the vines needed to climb to the next section, but the bricks won't allow War to grab on, so you'll have to build yourself some platforms. Jump and throw the van a bit in front of the wall (similar to what you did on the Golem) then move forward to the white sedan, pick it up, and walk left into the cutscene. War will move slightly faster if he jumps while holding a car, but you don't want to try bunnyhopping, wait for him to get to normal walking speed, then jump. There's only enough space to do one jump before the cutscene, but after it's finished, you can do two more forward until you reach the brick wall. If you face it head on, you'll notice a small recessed area on the right, this is the perfect distance for performing the carglitch. Position War's body using the line where the main wall goes back to the recessed area, lining it up anywhere between War's shoulder and elbow. You also need to be pressed against the wall and have your camera perpendicular to the wall or very slightly to the right. Then, jump and throw the car. It's not necessary to throw it at the peak of your jump, about 60-80% of your jump height is ideal.

There are a few outcomes. The best outcome is that the car gets thrown forward, goes into its damaged state, then gets stuck in the wall as a stable platform. This means you did everything correctly. If War didn't throw the car, you were too far to the left or way too far to the right. If you throw it and it blows up, you weren't close enough to the wall. The other thing that can happen is that it stays, but bounces around a lot or slips out. This is a result of framerate, you'll want to lower the game resolution or textures to make sure you're maintaining a high framerate.

From here you should have the van nearby, jump on it and onto the car and look at the brick wall. There's a rather obvious ledge, but you can only stand on a small part of it next to the pillar to the right. Jump onto this and push forward and right to stand. Then double jump to the left and move into the wall, War should grab the vines and you can move up.

The next couple of sections play out normally, climb the vines, use the wire to cross the chasm, climb up the next set of vines and get to the next roof for the last skip in the prologue.

Fourth Fight Skip

Head to the far back left of the roof and look to the North. The intersection below is the next goal, but it requires using an invisible platform to get to. If you stand on the edge of the building, you'll see a big hole in the wall, our platform is near the bottom on the far side. Jumping out requires delaying your second jump until the first has nearly hit terminal velocity, then doing an AirBlock from the second to reset your falling speed.

There is a visual marker for when to do the second jump in the form of a window on the building. Two floors down, the second window out, where the hole in the building starts, the base of the window is the perfect point to double jump for distance. Then, about halfway to the other side of the hole, use AirBlock to reset your speed. You don't have to hug the wall, the platform extends out a little more than a body length to the left. If things went well, you should land next to the broken pillar and be standing midair. Jump straight forward to the intersection below and keep running forward.

Keep to the Easy half of the intersection, it contains the loading trigger for Straga, so if you wander too far West it may not load. Keep moving forward and enter the cutscene for the Prologue boss.

Straga

To understand this fight, let me explain what normally happens and what is done to break the pattern. Normally, Straga throws cars at War, which you can grab and toss back, needing two hits to stagger Straga and make him fall forward. His impact destroys any cars still left in the area. You can then damage his face to move to the next phase. The second and third phase start with him picking up the ground and slamming it back down, then doing a couple of fist attacks before throwing more cars. In all, there's a lot of waiting involved between being able to damage Straga. However, there's a small safe spot in the far right corner where cars aren't destroyed from Straga staggering and another perk to the Golem skip is that War kept Chaos Form, which allows us to push cars without damaging them.

This exact spot

In the first phase only, Straga has multiple rounds that he'll throw cars, 9 in total. By standing near the safe area, we can stockpile cars that will last between rounds, allowing us to go straight from hitting his face to throwing the next volley of cars. You can estimate the area that's safe by drawing a straight line from the corner of the building straight out to the lava, imagining that the face of wall keeps extending out to the lava pit. The safe zone gets marginally wider as it goes to the lava, but even if the cars don't get blown up, Straga's hands can start pushing them around so it's best to think of it that way when stacking the cars. After each throw, you have about 5 seconds to rearrange the cars before he throws the next set. The best cycle is a two-cycle, so we want to push the first three cars into the safe zone and maybe off to the left a bit, then get back in position.

On the second throw, you really only need to keep 1 car safe, the other 2 can be thrown at Straga, so even if the cars don't land perfectly, it should be alright. Once you make sure that 4 will be safe, get out of Chaos Form and pick up the closest car, enter Q-mode, and throw it at his body. Using Focus or no aiming will sometimes work, but there are some animations Straga can do that will cause these throws to miss. Be careful not to throw the second car too early, wait until his left hand comes down to brace himself before throwing the second car, any earlier and he'll be immune. When he's falling down, we want to jump where his face will be as he land, this accomplishes two things; we skip getting hit and a Flipsaw (hold LMB in the air) will deal the full damage for the round. If you land but he hasn't taken enough damage, it means you used Flipsaw too early, you should be able to Sword Cancel and deal the rest of the damage.

When he gets back up, he has another brief invincibility phase. Make your way to your next car, but wait to throw it until he starts to raise his arms. It's possible to throw it when his hands are in a neutral position in front, but the window for this is small. After the first hit, repeat the same thing you did with the second car, waiting for his left hand to reach the concrete before throwing, then get in position to Flipsaw his face again. The third round should go exactly as the previous, although instead of Flipsaw, you'll want to mash the Action (E) key while near his face to trigger the ending cutscene for the Prologue. We generally split when War gets slapped or at the end of the cutscene as it goes into the Charred Council cutscene.

Charred Council

Hold D and mash Alt to make your way to the right towards your sword. Head up the stairs to take it. While in the animation, hold Focus and mash dash backwards to start going back down the stairs to the next trigger. One thing to note is that the stairs will eat your dashes, this is true with all slopes in the game when Sword Dashing. To get around it, let go of LMB for one dash cycle, which makes War smoothly move down the slope, then hold LMB again and continue as normal, whatever slope you're on will no longer stop your dashes. The bottom of the stairs has another short cutscene, hold S during this to turn around when you get control, then let go of S and start holding Focus. Once the camera pans around, hold S again and Sword Dash straight back until the escape cutscene. The reason you want to let go of S while you activate Focus is that you will move to the side a little while the camera swings around, which will break your alignment or, if you started Sword Dashing early, make you dash the wrong way.

Hotel and Crossroads

Parking Garage

During the cutscene introducing the area, move your mouse left slowly and tap dash forward. During the fade in, but before you get character control, it'll spin the camera and line you up with the vines to climb. Once you make it up, dash off to the right and toward a black SUV near the wall. This will be used for the carglitch, but needs one hit of damage to make it change models when thrown, so swing your sword and use the action button for the sword cancel. The next destination is the pillar on the right, in front of the ramp. Make your way to the right side of it, lining up right in the middle and facing south. Tap S twice to create enough space for the carglitch, then jump and throw the SUV. If you look behind War's feet, there's a tire mark texture you can try to use for spacing, put the back of War's feet barely in front of it and you should be good.

If you do the throw and it doesn't stick, you were too far away. If it explodes or doesn't throw, too close. If it bounces off unharmed, you didn't hit it with you sword. As with the first carglitch, it's best not to throw it from the full jump height since it makes getting onto it difficult. To get on top of your platform, jump back and to the right to get on the railing of the ramp. Back up until you have the necessary height, then jump onto the SUV and jump onto the second story and dash to the elevator. If your car is a little low, you'll find that the AirBlock no longer works (it requires the counter move you have in prologue), but you can do sword swings in midair to get the extra height you need.

Pillar Jump

Jump to the right after you open the elevator to grab the vines, then jump up and right to go into the next room. Dashing forward, go to the broken pillar and double jump on top of it. Swinging your camera around and looking up, you'll see a broken balcony above, to get up you'll need to jump up in place, then hold forward and double jump at the ledge, War should grab it as long as you didn't move under it. This trick isn't very difficult, but if you miss jumping onto the pillar the first time, the yellow enemy can start harassing War and knocking you off the pillar. Once you make it up, though, dash to the end of the room and jump onto the vines. Do two jumps up, two to the right, then hold up right to get enough height to jump right and make it onto the next wall. Jump up to get up and dash forward into the next fight.

Furniture Fight

This fight is broken into two parts. The first is to kill 10 zombies, at which point a big blue enemy will drop in and you have to kill it to progress. War's sword is exceptionally weak, to the point where throwing the tables and chairs in the room does vastly more damage to the big enemy. For this reason, avoid breaking any of the furniture on the right side of the room, since that's where you'll be teleported to for the second part.

Dash in toward the group at the opposite side of the room, then use sword canceling to take out all of the zombies. Which ones get up and how they move is random, so there's not a perfect strategy other than trying not to break your furniture-ammo. Once you kill 11, a cutscene starts after a few seconds, dropping in the new enemy. Dash left and mash action to pick up and throw the tables. When you make it to the left side of your area, head back slightly and throw the piano, then loop back to the right and throw the remaining tables. Chairs also do decent damage, the advantage to tables is that it's a guaranteed stagger on a direct hit and there's one attack to hope to interrupt. If you see him stop and reach both his hands down, he's charging up the flame attack, it goes in a straight line destroying all of the furniture in its way and sends you into the air, with a small chance to instantly kill for some reason. If you see him start this and can't interrupt it, at least dodge the attack so you're not immobilized for a few seconds. Once you've thrown most everything, he should either die or fall into a stunned state, at which point it's safe to kill him with your sword. After it's killed, head to the right to the barrier while you wait for it to drop.

Sword dash right once it's down, then navigate this hallway and jump up the stairs. A trick for setting up sword dashing in the next section is to hold Focus as soon as you jump up the broken stairs, walk to the right past the wall partition, then dash backwards to the far wall before dashing left. War will lock onto a ghoul, but holding left will still give you good dashes. Stay locked on and alternate to backdashes when necessary, switching between the two angles to get around the next corner and across the room to load the next cutscene.

Crossroads

Also this exact spot

This area has a long history and is the first point where strategies greatly differ based on the runner's skill level. The point of this zone is to collect 500 souls and meet with Vulgrim to get an item to progress. There's a hidden chest with 500 souls that appears when one destroys all 6 fire hydrants here, which is our goal. First start holding forward and left and dashing once you gain control, heading toward the gray sedan in the street. Pick it up and look to the right (North) while jumping. At the T-junction, the corner of the far sidewalk has a fire hydrant just out of view. Luckily, this specific car explodes when thrown and can hit it from a distance. The length of sidewalk to the left of the hydrant and up to where the shadow starts will work for destroying the hydrant. It's necessary to throw it out of a jump, not only for the angle, but so that you don't target a ghoul wandering about in front. You'll also want to pull the camera down and to the right as you go into Q-mode, this also gives you a larger area to aim for without targeting a zombie. You can't throw it directly at the hydrant or very far to the right or the car hits the other car piles and explodes.

If you see water shoot up from near your explosion, you know it worked and you can sword dash to the East side of the room off of a ghoul. There's one hydrant on your left before you cross the street, then one near the corner of the sidewalk. Head down this street for two more hydrants on either side of the street and then loop back for the last one on the start of the curb in front of the hotel. Once you've broken all of them, a short cutscene reveals the chest. Open it and head to Vulgrim to get the Horn. Once out of the cutscene, as soon as the text pops up on the screen, open your inventory and equip the horn, using it as soon as you exit. You don't need to get very close to the Golem for it to activate, so don't dash from Vulgrim or anything. Once it's gone, head through the doors and into the Library (?). Make your way left and up the stairs, you can do 4 sword dashes to the right to line up with the entrance to the next room. Drop down, jump over the water and dash to the vines. You may have to dodge the yellow enemy's attack, but go up the vines and continue through the hallways and open the two sets of double doors, revealing the Scalding Gallows.

Dash straight ahead to get down the stairs, then turn around and Sword Dash straight back (don't forget to let go of LMB for one dash if you get caught). You'll end up locking onto an enemy and needing to readjust which direction you dash, but you should be able to make it out of the building and head for the center of the map.

General Fight

When the cutscene ends, hold S until War turns around, then blow the Horn to push the General back. The General has three phases and four attacks. Phases one and three have him attacking, here's what he can do:

1. Side Swing: A quick side swing that knocks War back slightly. Short windup, but you can use the Horn to knock him out of it or double jump and do a sword flip to dodge it. Can be blocked.
2. Axe Slam: Long windup with a red glow that hits all around the General and knocks War back a long way. Can't be blocked, but you can use the horn or jump over the hitbox with the sword flip.
3. Block: He blocks all damage, signified by a white ring when you hit rather than blood pouring out. The Horn won't knock him down. Jump in the air and hold LMB to break him out of this. Instant animation, so it throws off the fight timing if he does it.
4. Spin to win: Guaranteed attack at the start of the third phase, but he can start it again if you're too far away. Immune to all damage while in the animation. Can hold block to block, just be careful of a hit at the very end of it for no reason.

The first phase can be cheesed by immediately knocking him down at the start of the fight, then dashing to him and Sword Canceling. 14 attacks deals enough damage to go to phase 2, so keep an eye on your combo meter since you can stunlock him forever if you want. Phase 2 consists of 2 rounds of summoned minions, we want to group them up and use Blade Geyser to kill each wave in one hit. There's a lot of patterns and factors for which one he uses, it basically ends up being random. While they are summoning, use Sword Canceling to push them together (at least 3) and wait to see if the 4th approaches. If it does, hit all of them with a Blade Geyser and see what the next pattern is. If it runs or stays, hit your 3 and chase down the last one. Same idea for the second wave, with the additional goals of not being too near the wall and being somewhat near the General. The barrier counts as a hittable object and your Sword canceling will be much slower if you're hitting it along with the General in phase 3.

The start of phase 3 is holding block until the General stops spinning (if you're far he'll do multiple spins), at which point you Sword Cancel him to death. You should see 2 of the first 3 attacks listed above. Basically, when you see him start something, just double jump and time your sword flip to keep attacking. After the second attack, he should get the prompt to be killed and you won't need to dodge anymore attacks. It's faster to kill him normally than use the prompt.

Once the cutscene is over, dash forward and start the puzzle. Sword Dash to the right and complete it with the second statue to make Samael appear.

Vulgrim

After the cutscene, dash forward to the corner of Samael's platform and double jump out to Vulgrim's house. You'll get a couple of popups during the flight, remember to keep holding Spacebar until you're done with the flight. Once you land, jump to Vulgrim and activate his cutscene. Hit shift to go to the second page, scroll down once, and purchase the Meteor Strike, which is War's midair dash. If you got unlucky with double 3-minion spawns in the General fight, you'll need to open the chest in the house to get the 250 required souls. Once you've bought the item, exit the shop and quickly enter the menu to do a manual save, this will be the first savewarp.

Choking Grounds

Wrong Warps

Load your manual save file, you'll get teleported to the start of the room and trigger a cutscene. From there dash forward and jump at the blue orb. You can delay the wings coming out by releasing space after the double jump. If you use your wings as you enter the blue orb, you fly up really high, costing time from slower movement speed and the crater you make from landing. Delaying the wings until you're nearly past the orb will reduce the boost you get, putting you very neatly onto the platform with no big landing. Dash forward and do the same on the second blue orb. Once you cross, dash past the ghoul, then turn and backdash off of it 6 times, then to the right into the cave. As you make your way down via the minimap, remember to release LMB if your dash is getting eaten. The smoothing effect lasts until you change directions, so optimizing your angle is something to practice.

When you get to the bottom, jump up the blue orb and onto the rocks on the left of the next platform. Jump from those onto the next set of rocks, then jump left onto an invisible platform against the wall. Run left to go up the slope, then press space and D at the same time to jump with full side momentum to make it onto the rock outcrop next to you. This lets you turn the corner and jump to the next platform. Dash forward here until the glowing crystals and spire. Single jump on to the crystals, then double jump onto the spire and look out toward the lava. Double jump forward and slightly to the right, rubbing on the ceiling before falling into the lava. The flag for being in the Choking Grounds extends through the ground here. When you respawn, you should appear above the cave in the next zone, The Choking Grounds. If not, try adjusting your angle or using a sword swing to extend how long you're near the ceiling, for some reason the Warmastered Edition can take longer to register flags like respawn points.

• When you hit the lava, make sure to hit Caps Lock and use your life potion with 2. War only has one bottle during this run and we need to empty it so we can use it for Chaos Form later. In a normal run, this will be the only place you take damage (only guaranteed place, at least).

Choking Grounds

This area is the first place where people start getting stuck on the speedrun route. There are a couple of minutes of precise jumping that force a reload if messed up. When you fade in keep dashing forward until you hit a cutscene showing spooky skeleton warriors. Hold shift, W, and A so that, when the cutscene ends, you'll lock onto a nearby bat for Sword Dashing. You'll want to watch the minimap here, switch from W to S when you're lined up between the bat and the yellow quest marker to start going backwards. You want to head just to the right of the fountain and through the big gate, letting go of A as you pass through. The targeting can jump depending on the bat's movement, further adjustment might be necessary to keep heading toward the marker. As you head downhill, look for a spot of some rubble on the right side of the minimap, this is the trigger for the autosave and is the point where you want to let go of focus to turn around and blow the Horn at the Golem. The angle isn't very important, as long as you're close enough it'll work. Hold RMB and mash Esc during the cutscene to pause and reload your save. The reload will load the next section of the level that we'll access OoB.

Hold S after reloading, then Focus and Sword Dash up the slope and head left into the small nook. There's a large slab of cement leaning against the cliff, walk up and stand near the right edge of it. A bit farther to the right is a group of pipes extending out of the cliff, you can use these to line up for the next jump. Find the spot that the pipes come out of the cliff and move the camera so that it's lined up between War's right shoulder and his head, then press against the cliff to make sure War is facing where the camera is. Hold Focus, then hit Space and D at the same time, getting a side jump with full momentum like we did in the cave earlier. Delay your second jump until you're at your starting height, then use the midair dash sideways to make it onto the rocks on your right. If you miss, take note of whether you were too far forward or back, the two big rocks that extend lower than all of the others was our goal. Most of the time, a short jump is caused by misalignment, so correct it based on that and try again. The other common mistake is to mistime Space or D and either walk down the cliff or not have momentum at the start of your jump.

Not this exact spot, but your angle is important.

If you're able to make it up, walk around the tree and dash to the orange orb. Use it to reach the upper level and dash to the first Armageddon Blade shard. From there walk to the left and forward, jumping onto the very edge of the house, turn and look at the lamppost on the sidewalk. There's a big platform to our left, but a big invisible wall extends from our position out toward the lamppost, we'll need to jump and wing around it, but will need to delay the wings so that they last long enough. Jump out, do a late double jump and delayed wings, making sure you still have a good amount of height, and face very slightly into the invisible wall. At some point you should see War start to move left, quickly spin your camera and float straight onto the edge. You're rather safe here to dash forward along the house and up to the next cement slab.

This next jump justifies Choking Ground's name, you need to line up on the end of a vague edge, use Focus and time your jumps into a dash to make it onto an invisible platform that lets you traverse out of bounds. The upside is that the cement gives us lines to align ourselves and there's a small trick to find the edge of platforms. It's easiest to go backwards, so line up along one of the middle lines facing off of the platform and turn around with S, then hold Focus. When you get near the edge, if you dash backwards, then let go of all movement keys during the dash, you'll be on the very last pixel of ground without falling off. Walk forward a couple of taps and you should be in a spot that won't make you walk off the cliff and also gives enough distance for the jump. Your destination is basically the same height as this platform, so you'll want to jump back and do a delayed second jump, with basically the same timing as the earlier jump into the house, and then dash a little after the peak of that. After landing in midair, walk backwards and look to your immediate right at the cliff, there are a couple of distinct rocks and the invisible platforms slope up into them. Walk forward into the cliff until you see the back of War's foot disappear past the texture, this is pretty near the edge of the platform, so rotate your camera into the cliff to see the bridge to the right. You should be able to double jump out and use the wings to make it. Aim somewhat left, there's an invisible wall at the far right of the guardrail.

Dash to the right and look off the bridge directly behind the Golem to see the tunnels we'll be traversing. If you fall off going to the bridge or any section after this it requires a reload of the Golem save, so be prepared to spend some time in this section. Ultimately, it's very beneficial beyond learning the route, since it teaches you a lot about how out of bounds works in Darksiders. The walls are only visible from the front and often rooms won't show up until the camera is rotated in a certain way, since an invisible wall might be blocking your view of the room. The minimap is very accurate and you can always trust it when navigating, but also keep in mind the dash trick we used earlier to find most edges. You'll also get your first introduction to loading zones. The game uses tunnels to mask loading rooms in the background and has triggers you walk through, which extend out of bounds. As you walk OoB, pay attention not only to the rooms you can see load, but also to the background of the game, there will often be dramatic lighting changes when going from one area to the next which can tip you off about whether you hit or missed the triggers you want.

Jump off to the center of the tunnel, onto the pipes, and dash forward a couple of times until you get stopped by a wall. Double jump forward to land on a large flat platform and look to the right, where you can see some brick textures for the next room. If you don't see them, you didn't reload the game after the Golem, so do that. Look at the minimap for the Green line showing where the door to the next room is. You can't run across this, but it's the safest place to jump across, so move forward and jump across the gap. You still won't be able to see the room when you land most likely, so watch the minimap and move left across the ceiling toward the next pipe. You'll want to jump from the roof here onto the next pipe since you'll slide off of the sides and it's somewhat hard to judge where the edges of these rooms are. Dash forward along this next pipe until you get to the door section. Cross to the next pipe, jumping over the door section, and stand in the middle of the 3 small pipes on top. The joining connectors are a good visual indicator on these. Hold Focus and sword dash 4 times to the right, ending up near another group of smaller connectors and to the left of a support strut sticking out of the tunnel. You should see the background change from the Shadow Realm to a grayish-blue background as War passed a loading trigger. The support strut has a second loading trigger we want to avoid, so double jump up and dash to the right over it. If you see the background go black, you either didn't jump high enough or went too far while dashing on the pipe. If this happens, dash back to the left until you see the background go back to the gray.

Once you've made it to the other side of the support, keep dashing to the right until you see the pipes start to get bent apart and the roof starts to slope down. It's safe to dash, but once you start losing height, walk back up since the platform ends really abruptly here. The movement we just did avoided loading the entire next section of the level, leaving the normal exit completely open for us to jump through to get back in-bounds. To get in, we need to double jump off of the end of this tunnel, using delayed wings to make it to an invisible platform in the middle of a group of spires, then jump and wing into the hallway. To start, look at the minimap to see the door we'll be jumping toward. To line up, stand on the small pipes and point War parallel to the big room you see on the East side of the minimap, which should also point at a glowing orange spot on a spire in front of you. Jump out and wait to double jump until you're passing through the spire texture, you can start the wings immediately. When your camera passes through, you should see a clump of 3 spires. Make it past the middle one that's closest to you and land a bit before the base of the one on the right. The safe area to land is pretty large, but it'll most likely take a few attempts. From there, look towards the hallway and jump into the center of the doorway. The right side has a little bit of an invisible wall, so it's best to take a wide turn into the opening. Dash forward once inside to hit a loading zone, then turn around and go through the door into the Broken Stair.

Broken Stair

Biggest Skip

After you open the door, point the camera to the North and strafe right with War. Hold Focus and start Sword Dashing back once you pass the white car. As you exit the tunnel, War locks onto a bat that can mess up your angle if you're not lined up correctly. Use the minimap to navigate across a broken section of asphalt and look for stairs descending to Vulgrim. Let go of focus and dash down the stairs and to Vulgrim to get the warp point. Exit this tunnel area afterward and use Ghouls to sword dash into the house behind the Vulgrim entrance. Head upstairs and jump out of the window, using the orbs to make it to the highway bridge. Dash to the right and take the first blue orb over, then dash and head to the second blue orb. The section after this orb has a cutscene and a miniboss fight we'll be trying to avoid, the trigger for it is a few steps onto the last part of the highway. It extends all the way across, but the left side can be jumped around easily, skipping the whole thing.

Take the blue orb and aim for the left side of the bridge, taking care not to land too far onto the highway. Walk to the sidewalk and carefully jump onto the railing of the bridge. Facing the next blue orb, we'll be jumping diagonally forward and left, double jumping forward, then using wings to make it back onto the bridge right where the break in the railing is. When jumping from a railing like this, it's important to hit the direction key and jump at the same time, otherwise War can either walk off with no jump or not have enough speed to go where you want. For that reason, it's going to be easiest to hit W and Space at the same time and use the camera to direct War rather than the A|D movement keys. After jumping around the cutscene trigger, take the blue orb over to the next roof and the blue orb after that into the building.

Window Jump

Aiming here and timing your jumps properly will succeed.

Ordinarily, this building requires a key to open a door at the end of this floor, but there's a bit of platforming we can do to make it past. Dash to the end of the building, going to the left of the door to find a broken wall and windows. The leftmost window frames are what we're interested in. You can jump onto the window that's completely ripped out, getting the half-intact divider and window grate on your left. Jump onto this part and look to the Northwest. There are two big spires sticking out of the ground, to the left of them is some cracked pavement in 3 rough layers. Line up your camera where the middle layer's shadows meet the top layer and enter Q-mode. From where we'll be double jumping up and dashing at the peak of our jump, landing on an even higher section of wall if you were aimed correctly. Turn off Q-mode and spin the camera to see the stairwell behind the keydoor. Make the trivial jump and dash up the stairs to get into the autoscroller.

If you didn't land on the last section of wall, there's a few things to check. The first is that you're not hitting S and Space at the same time for this jump, since you'll overshoot by a lot. Jump straight up, then hold S a bit before you double jump. If you're falling off to the inside of the building, aim your camera further left before going into Q-mode. Do the opposite if you're falling off to the outside and have the jump/movement timing correct. The window jump is somewhat tricky, so you may end up finding your own visual cues.

Autoscroller

This is normally a pretty boring section, but with the use of a PC-only turbo fire trick, it's... still pretty boring. We do need to kill some of the bigger enemies, so the upside is that at least you won't have to struggle to kill everything. The rapidfire is done by holding the Use Gear button, then tapping shoot once to activate it. As long as you keep holding MMB it'll keep firing. The early enemies don't matter too much, the angels and bats only give regular souls here. We do buy a couple of items during the run, but currency isn't much of an issue. The concern is to gather as many yellow Wrath Souls as possible, the next fight goes much faster with 2 uses of the Blade Geyser.

Keep killing everything that shows up as you make your way into the city and transition into the cave. Small green and red bugs will start spawning along the path, it'd be best to watch the WR video to see where to aim. After enough times through here, it'll be second nature. I use back and forth or circular motions on the crosshair so that the autoaim doesn't continually pull shots into the wrong direction on fast enemies. The laser spread will basically clean all of those as long as you've aimed in the general vicinity of them.

The other part to watch out for is the Golem at the start of the cave, he obstructs 4 angels that give Wrath Souls. As long as you hit these with the laser or use a lock-on attack, they'll give you souls when they die. So once you pick out the red bugs from the 2 spawns at the start of the cave, switch your focus to damaging the angels. After 7.5 minutes, you'll exit the autoscroller and be ready to take on the first dungeon of the game.

Twilight Cathedral

After landing, just dash forward to the main double doors. Sword Dashing isn't effective here due to the random movements of the bats. Once inside, head forward and to the right for the first and only puzzle we solve. Grab the sword, then dash back to the center and go forward to replace the sword in the statue at the end of the hall on the right. Opening the next set of double doors will give a cutscene, you can hold forward-right and mash dash while it's going to dash as the cutscene is ending. Then go forward and cross the lava and dash straight ahead into the next cutscene. When this ends, dash right to the door at the end and walk through. Again, the bats' positions don't allow for consistent sword dashing.

Garden Fight

This fight is comprised of two rounds. In the first, three keleton enemies spawn immediately, followed by two more once the first two have died. When that's clear, four skeleton enemies and two bats spawn after a cutscene. Defeating these will open the door to leave. Since we have at least one Blade Geyser, the first round can be cleared quickly. In killing the first round skeletons, we may get enough wrath for a second sword Geyser in the second phase. Here's the general strategy to kill the skeletons:

• Use the Action prompt on low HP Skeletons. This is faster than sword canceling and gives additional wrath versus a normal death.
• One Blade Geyser and one sword hit will bring their HP low enough for the Action prompt.
• 14 sword hits will trigger the Action Prompt.

Start the fight dashing forward and left. You'll see a spawning circle for the first enemy, walk around to the left and start sword canceling to bring him toward the fountain. The far back skeleton should be starting to run toward you after 5 or 6 hits. Walk to the right skeleton and land one sword hit, then Blade Geyser when the far skeleton is close. The AI will always make him run toward you, so this is consistent. The first skeleton should die outright, the second will have the Action prompt but be sent to the right, and the last one needs one more sword swing for the prompt. Dash forward and get the last hit in, then stand near the end of this path and face Southeast to be in a good position for the skeleton spawn. You can start hitting it as soon as the circle pops up, pushing the skeleton toward the final enemy spawn of this phase. Once you get the kill, it's up to you whether to start on the last skeleton, or go for the Action kill on the other skeleton. Either way, you want to stand near the end of the South path for the start of the next phase.

After the cutscene, start sword canceling against the skeleton and try to group up as many enemies as you can for your last Blade Geyser. If things aren't in a good place by the time the bats swoop in, it's a good idea to jump and attack them out of the air. The skeletons take longer to kill and should be a priority for the Wrath skill. If you don't have a second wrath, just keep sword canceling to get the prompt kills on everything. If a skeleton starts blocking, jumping up and holding left click to do the sword slam will break the block. When everything is cleared, go to the South door and wait for the cutscene to open it.

Dash forward until you're somewhat near the bomb, then use a sword swing canceled with Action to hit and grab the bomb, quickly spin left with Q-mode and throw it at the red crystals. The fast bomb strat can be finicky, it depends on your distance from the bomb and how well you time the grab. If you can't get it, normally throwing the bomb is fine too. Head forward and scale this room normally. On the topmost rail, you can hold back to jump off once you pass the broken spot, any earlier and you won't have air control of War for some reason. Once you jump off, hold jump so you get the wings and grab the platform. Then head over to open the door. The cutscene will line you up nicely to turn around and start sword dashing around the balcony to the next door.

Balcony Jump

Head in the double doors to return to the large entrance room of the cathedral, you'll be dashing up the stairs and to the right, coming to a dead end with a large gap. The goal for the early section of this dungeon is to throw a bomb on the opposite side of this balcony and have the tentacle thing drop the statue through the floor. War can use the Focused air dash to just barely clear the gap and sequence break the dungeon.

You'll be lining up on the broken railing section on the edge of the balcony. It's easiest to look directly at the wall in front of you, using the white section you're standing on to check your angle. Once you're lined up, enter Q-mode and then hold Focus. Q-mode is necessary so that War doesn't target any of the bats nearby in the room. However, you want to make sure your angle is correct before activating Q-mode, since War doesn't change direction as you'd expect with it on. The timing on this jump is similar to the two jumps at the start of Choking Grounds, you'll want to delay the second jump and the dash to maximize your distance, since height isn't a large concern. It's really, really easy to walk off the edge, so making use of the dash trick to find the edge is highly recommended. Work on timing the movement and jump keys at the same time to prevent walking off, as well.

As long as you have the setup down, the actual jump isn't awful. If you find that you're hitting a wall at the end of the jump, make sure that you're angled to go straight across, there's a section with railing if you're too far to the front of the balcony.

Once you make it across safely, pick up and throw the bomb at the statue. It's really risky to go for the fast bomb strategy here, but if you position yourself safely between the wall and the backside of the bomb, even if you mess it up, you won't go flying off of the balcony. It should still save time to move to the safe spot, so it's worth going for at some point. After the cutscene of the statue plays, jump off to the right and go down the hole. This next section is easy, just follow the tunnel down and into the Boomerang room.

The Infinite Jump

Four sword swings will break the chest to empower War with the Crossblade. We don't use this intentionally at all in the run, but it's necessary to make the infinite jump work. Read the trick section to see how to set up your keybindings and perform the infinite jump, although if you have a wireless keyboard or something really cheap, it may not work since you have to hit multiple keys at the same time. Once the cutscene fades, there are a couple of bat enemies, but you have an autosave from right before you broke the chest, so it's worth taking some time to try to get used to infinite jumping and see what keybindings work best for you.

When you're ready to move on, dash back to the tunnel where you dropped in and do 2-3 IJs to go back in. Dash along the left wall to the corner, then jump around to the next part of the hall. It's necessary to jump, you may see some of another room sticking through the floor, which seems to make a hole there. If you walk, you'll fall in and unload the room you were in (or fall forever). There's a semi-visible wall to jump over in front of the stairs, this is the ceiling of the room below. Dash up to the end of this tunnel and jump back up into the main room. If you look up, there's a giant hole in the ceiling of the room. As we learned in the Choking Grounds, if a ceiling is solid from one side, it's solid on both sides and we can safely stand on or traverse across it. You'll need to do a lot of infinite jumps in a row to make it outside, at which point you can go forward a bit and land on basically any part of the ceiling. If we look to the North, you should be able to see Tiamat's room, on the minimap it'll be the room behind the locked red door. Use moving infinite jumps to make your way over to the room and around the outside edge. At some point part of Tiamat's spire will load in. Be careful with using forward dashes, you might bounce off walls you can't see. You should be able to recover in this area and you have a recent autosave, so it's definitely worth exploring and getting comfortable with OoB exploration and movement in Darksiders.

We need to get to the backside of Tiamat's door, it'll load the boss room and get us back in-bounds. There's a big invisible wall around the front of the tower, but it ends about a quarter of the way around either side. Make your way along the roof and to the backside of the spire. Nothing will be loaded, so you can descend down to Tiamat's door. Immediately behind and extending back a short distance from her boss door is standable ground, so make use of this and look at the minimap when you land. It shows the spiraling staircase and is shaded for height gain. Use jumping/infinite jumping to mimic going up the stairs to trick the game into showing the entrance cutscene. This loads the stairs around you, so you can sword dash up and enter Tiamat's arena.

Tiamat

Go to the right bomb after the cutscene and throw it at Tiamat. The game intends for you to use the boomerang to lock-on to the fire and the bomb to blow up Tiamat. If you aim well, however, you can throw the bomb through the fire, saving some time and getting some speedrun cred at the same time. If it's too swag or War is throwing strangely (happens), use Focus and Q-mode to lock onto the fire, then the bomb, then throw the boomerang to make Tiamat fall. Hit her with some sword canceling here, then back away when she starts to get up. She does 3 slow charges in a row at you before being vulnerable to the fire-bomb combo again. Try to position yourself so that the last charge from her puts her near a bomb and a fire. If you're lucky, you should be able to do the quick strat, otherwise use the boomerang again to make her come down. Now the main part of the fight begins.

There are 3 damage phases to go through, this first one is pretty free, just use sword canceling until she starts to get up. When she flies in the air after each damage phase, she'll do a body slam that knocks you back really far if you get hit. The key to this fight is timing block to avoid all hits. You'll see when she stalls near the top that her wings tighten and she rotates up slightly. The timing of Alt to block is pretty lenient, you want to hit it as soon as she's near the end of the animation. Assuming it worked, you can start sword canceling against her for a number of hits. Make sure to stay mostly in front of her, at least not going back past her claws, the attacks she does are based on your position and you want to bait out claw swipes. She should start one a few seconds after standing up from the slam, you want to hold Block a bit before she does it so that you don't get hit/knocked back. After blocking, go right back to sword canceling. You should be able to make her kneel before she does another claw, if not, just repeat the same pattern. After she kneels, unload more sword swings into her and repeat the whole process over again.

If you end up getting hit, try to dash back to melee range right in front of her to bait more claw swipes. If you see her doing back to back body slams, try delaying when you start sword canceling after the slam. It seems like dealing too much damage between rounds or before the first claw swipe can force two slams in a row.

Once you stagger her for the third time, you should get the kill cutscene. Hold right click and start moving left. When the cutscene is over, resist the urge to dash, the teleport out is close on your left and a little bit in front of you. This will give you another cutscene, hold forward and dash to trigger Vulgrim as soon as it's over. We won't be buying anything, so just use right click to enter the warp selection. Select Scalding Gallows and wait for the loading screen. When you're in the Serpent Path, turn to your left or 180 so that you can set up sword dashing. Remember that you'll have to momentarily let go of left click to go down the stairs smoothly. When you hit the right angle corner at the end of the path, turn back and start infinite jump dashing to the exit portal.

Once you load back into Vulgrim's house, double jump left to hit the cutscene trigger for Samael. He gives you Chaos Form back, which we'll use in some specific fights to speed them up.

Drowned Pass

Skipping Sewer Fight

While holding RMB to skip the cutscene, mash dash forward and right, doing two dashes to get near the edge of Samael's platform. There should be a spire behind you and a chain off to the West, we want to Infinite Jump under the chain out to the road. The chains in this area all have huge walls extending above them, but the underside is clear. Dash West when you make it, until the Autosave pops up, it's a good indicator for having the next section loaded. Then jump up to the very top of the door and over the rocks, rotating slightly North once past them.

Keep IJing and moving forward, you'll see the large fan room load in along with a few other passages. It's often hard to tell your ground position while OoB or high up, so drop down near the ceiling of the relic room here to fill in the minimap information. When we have to drop onto a tunnel later, this will help us line up. Keep moving forward, our goal is the tunnel still to our west, it has 3 fans on each side of the walls. The loading trigger is on the ceiling near the middle of the room, so keep IJing until you're above it and then drop down. You want to stay high and drop in from above, if you head to the tunnel from near its height, the loading zone will activate while you're still over the void and it can be difficult not to lose your IJ, especially when starting out.

Blind Vulgrim

If you look South, you should see the entirety of Drowned Pass loaded in. Run down the tunnel towards it until you get near the door. From here we want to jump off to the left and start swimming under the level. The water doesn't extend as far as it looks, so once you jump down, you'll want to IJ out a few times until War actually gets in the water. Then we'll be looking at the minimap and swimming South. You'll pass one cave early on, then keep going until you see the upper path narrow to another door and a weird section that's almost a loop, but has a break in the path. This is a wall separating Vulgrim from the main path, so we want to go to the backside of it and jump on the cave. You should be able to look up through the floor and see part of Vulgrim's platform. Infinite Jump up to it to get the Autosave and activate his Warp point. After that, run off your cave to the South and dive under the water with Ctrl. You want to dive and swim to the Southeast, going under the main part of the room, then holding space to come back up a little. The water is pretty deep, but it gives out at some point, feel free to experiment.

Turn slightly South and keep low to make it under the first side cave that comes up. The underside of it sticks out much further than you'd think due to the one-way visibility on walls. Start holding space to go back up and skirt around the right of the second cave you run into. Our destination isn't too far away, so we'll be wanting to surface soon. You can find your own visual markers to look for while underwater, but once you pop up, the ground level minimap loads and we can see the exit tunnel. The loading trigger for the next section is at the entrance to here, just behind where the Golem would normally be. Swim up to the left side of the tunnel, right where it starts to flare out on the map, there's an obvious group of rocks sticking out here that you can aim for as well. Infinite Jump up twice and look to the right to see the next room and ice crystals load in, or if you're looking forward, you'll see the Vulgrim shop stuff load in the distance.

• If the Golem is there, it means that when we initially jumped down into the water, you either walked too far on top of the tunnel before going down or stayed too close to the tunnel when heading to the water. If you're really quick, you can IJ without activating the Golem, but it takes some practice. One option is to activate the Golem, then reload the autosave to get put out in front of it. From there, you can head left, jump on the cliff behind him, then run back to it and follow the sewer pipe on the minimap until the cliff floor ends and you fall on the pipe. Then just run back toward the main room to pass over the load trigger and continue on to the next step.

From the water under the loading point, locate the cliff texture to the Southeast and swim to the right edge of it. There's one big square that is basically facing us, this is what we want to use, rather than the smaller part on the far right that's facing away from us. As you swim, you'll end up underwater again and see a few new cave tunnels. Surface with space and keep swimming, targeting the far left of the normal room that's on the right. When you swing around the backside of it, we'll be heading due East to follow the normal path of the level, but there's a gap in the water, so be prepared to do 2-3 infinite jump dashes to make it across. I normally start the IJ before the water gives out so that if I mess up the first couple, I'm not falling a huge distance.

Continue swimming when you cross the gap, but look in-bounds on your left for where the waterfall is, the water will end here. It's a little after the water visually disappears, so that's a safe marker. You'll want to IJ out of the water and continue forward onto the next big sewer tunnel in front of you. If you stick close to the wall, it avoids the loading freeze, but if you're too close too early you can grab the vines through the wall and end up in-bounds. Once you make it on the sewer pipe, walk forward on it until you see the background go black, this lets you know that all of the previous stuff unloaded. Then IJ out East, we'll skip the long autoscroller section with Ulthane by jumping to the ending area of that. Eventually you should see the room load in, our goal is near the front of the dungeon door. The game will load as soon as you get near the front of the door, but takes a few seconds, so dip down to trigger the loading, then jump back up so you don't get stuck in the floor. If you do end up in the floor, you can use the Open Door prompt to pull yourself back up.

Once the entrance is loaded, we'll be jumping over the front of the door, which is much taller than it seems, and landing on the small connecting hallway leading to the crystals. This spot loads the underground section. After that, make you way south and down to the underground area. We have to hit the loading trigger for the next section, it's safest to IJ forward without dashes to get to the tunnel, then run along the side OoB to make sure you get it. If you check the minimap before it disappears, you can use the room with stairs as a guide, the very middle of the stairs will be in line with where the loading trigger is. Once you pass that part, you can jump away from the tunnel in order to dash without worry. You'll see a subway corridor load in eventually, it doesn't matter if you go over or under the first section, but we have to stand on the second part of the corridor up ahead, so I generally get height beforehand. The loading trigger on this second, higher section is pretty lenient, I always land near the stairs to be sure that I get it. Once you land on the square tunnel, walk toward the dungeon until you see a whole bunch of doors load in, this will be the start of the second dungeon.

The Hollows

Getting the Fist

Standing on the Southeast corner of the passage, you'll see about 5 doors floating in the sky. We want to look at the second from the left, which is one of the higher up and closer ones. This won't be our destination, but it's the right angle we need and traveling under it will load the minimap info, so it's quite useful.

Start to jump out toward it and make sure to go a bit under it so the map shows up. You'll see that it loads a room with a big hole in the center and a small offshoot to the south. Keep going to the small room sticking out and look at the tunnel leading South. There are two loading zones in it and it's very important to only hit the second one. Continue South, but keep your distance until you're about halfway down, then cut in and intersect the tunnel. You should get an orange loading circle, then see the next corridor and room load in front you. If you pass by and get no loading circle, there's two options; you're too high or your passed it.

For the first, turn and look at the door we used as our guide post. To measure the height, put your camera flat, similar to how it is when in Focus mode, and check if you're above/below the bottom of the door. We want to be somewhere around a body below the door, so if your height is good, then distance is the issue. Just maintain your height and head North along the minimap until you get the loading.

If you cut in early, you'll see two loads happen and generally have the tunnel load around you, putting you in-bounds. If you're really unlucky, you can get stuck in a crystal, but usually it's nothing more than a small time loss. Just run in-bounds forward and things will be the same, other than getting a cutscene. If you're still out of bounds, you need to jump over the tall walls of the arena to get back in-bounds.

Assuming the loading went smoothly, jump into the opening of the corridor and sword dash around the corner. This big room has our next piece of equipment, so jump down and break it open.

Traveling to Griever: Old Strats

Over the years, this dungeon has had the most route revisions as we got better at the infinite jump and OoB exploration. There's probably 3 distinct routes, one that goes mostly in-bounds and only requires the infinite jump in a few spots. The second follows the same route, but entirely OoB and cuts off a lot of time, but is dependent on solid IJ skills. The third uses sideways infinite dashing to hit a small loading zone on the other side of the dungeon, then swaps direction and uses Q-mode to redirect yourself. I was considering detailing the first since it's easier, but with the state of the other dungeons now, it won't do much good to shy away from copious amounts of IJing, so we'll take the second route.

After the fist cutscene, just hold S and spam dash, there's a second cutscene to trigger. This one tries to lock us into a fight, but we can jump out of it, so start IJing and 180 the camera. We'll basically be going to where we dropped in, but instead of going back in the tunnel, jump on the rocks on top. We'll be retracing our steps for getting here and will take one of the doors to force rooms to load in.

So, jump to the Northeast, staying above the tunnel (to avoid triggering the cutscene) and once you pass through an invisible screen, you'll see a whole mess of doors. These are the ones leading from the main room of the dungeon and we'll want to focus on the group of four in the middle. As you approach, focus on the one that's closest, when the map loads in, you'll see that it's the exit on the second floor on the Southwest of the room.

Jump near it and open it with the Action key and make sure to hold W once the loading is over. If you don't, you'll just fall since there's no floor on your side of the door. We don't want to fully run in, once you have a moment, jump back out and get on the ceiling, following the room. Where it turns left back to a door, you can jump through the scenery and make it onto the next part of the path. As you run on top of this one toward the key door, you should see the opposite side pop into existence, continue and jump onto it.

We'll run onto the top of the cave section and jump in the middle of the horseshoe section to load the next large room. Keep jumping so you can run on the outer rim of the room. When you get to the other side, drop down to the left of the bridge, but turn 90 degrees to the right and IJ along the room passing through both of the grey bridge supports. Right after the second one, you should see a square connecting hallway, land on that, then spin your camera around.

You can run on top of the tunnel or IJ out, but we want to head South until we see another big room pop in. We want to jump on top of the highway section along the right, but to the left of the median. Once on top, drop down to the starting platform for the room. You'll notice the lighting change and some bats and crystals load in. While this spot isn't necessary to load the boss room, it won't have the crystals, so we can't do the boss strategy.

Griever

After seeing the bats, we want to head East, jump above the room, then adjust to go Northeast. The boss room will come into view soon. There's a few ways to drop in-bounds, but the best spot is going to be on the very top, near the right side of the room. There's a huge ventilation fan on the right, giving the room its shape, and metal supports along the roof on the left. If you start on the side of the supports and run to the fan, you'll fall into the room. Once you start falling down, reverse your direction so that you don't land in a spot that triggers the boss.

You should end up in the room with the crystals, but no boss. Take the chance to break all of the crystals along the train track. For the fist, jump and right click to get the fastest breaking move. It's best to start near the cart, then work your way back to the 3 other groups of crystals. Once you clear them all, dash on the open rail toward the back of the cart to activate the boss.

When you get control back, keep dashing to the back of the cart and break the crystal on it. Grab the cart and hold Right click to punch it into the Griever. It will push the car back, but we can use the railroad ties to space ourselves. Looking at the edge of the wall on the left, stand 4 ties back and wait. The car will slide slightly more than 3 ties back, so when it's nearly there, walk forward a bit and hit R to regrab it, then punch again with right click.

The second hit staggers Griever and we have to break its center crystal to continue. It has a pushback we really want to skip, so we'll spacing ourselves again, this time using the shadows on the ground. Dash around the right side of the cart, it should take 4 to get where we need. Just in front of the cart, the shadows from a hole in the ceiling end. We want to stand on the dark edge of them and hold Right click to charge and AoE punch. Once you let go, hold S and dash back as fast as you can. The Griever won't do its next scripted hit if we're far enough away.

The plan is to dash back two or three times, then grab the cart before the cutscene starts. DO NOT hold right click, it's very tempting and you'll lose several quick kills from not thinking about it. Once you see the cutscene start, you can hold right click. Near the end of it, we'll get control back and you'll hear the punch charging up. After the first hit, wait until the cart hits War, then regrab it and punch it again. If you don't wait to get hit, War will get staggered and you'll get hit away.

Once the fourth and final hit is delivered, dash up to the Griever and transform into Chaos mode. The quick Left Right Left combo will finish it off. Now you get to wait around for the item popups. Once the second one is done, dash forward to make it into the portal and meet up with Ulthane.

Gundashing

Shopping Trip

After skipping Ulthane's cutscene, you'll get Mercy, War's gun. Exit the notification and enter the menu by spamming Esc, then reload your autosave to get taken out of Ulthane's house. From here, all ground movement will be done with Gundashing, so take some time here to practice. I'll be explaining the route with backwards gundashing, since it's easier to use, but the progression once you get used to the zones and navigating with the minimap will be to go sideways since it's slightly faster. It'll also flow much better into infinite side dashing once you start implementing that.

We want to line up with the tunnel ahead, then turn around and gundash backwards. We'll pull up Q-mode everytime we gundash, it negates the enemy targeting of Focus and lets us turn while moving. From here on out we'll be focusing on the minimap to navigate. Change direction with the pipe, using the movement keys or Q-mode, and line up to get into Vulgrim's passage. Keep the elevation change in mind when coming out of the pipe and delay your rhythm as needed.

We'll be entering the shop to buy the Possession potion at the bottom of the list. Now exit the shop and get into your menu. We need to equip the gun, it'll replace the Horn on 1 and be our main subweapon for infinite jumping. Put the horn back on 3, it's now mostly there for helping with recovering dropped IJs. Then set the Possession potion on 2, replacing the health potion from the beginning. For the subweapon assignments, you could theoretically have Gun on 3 and it would work out the same, but we already have the habit of mashing 1 before IJing to set up for it and the most common way to mess up an IJ is to only tap Next Gear twice. If Gun were on 3, you'd end up on the boomerang and probably drop your IJ pretty quickly. This comes into play in a couple of cutscenes where we IJ without us being in view.

Anyway, as you exit the menu, spam 1 to swap to the gun and then hit right click to get into the Warp menu. Choose Scalding Gallows again.

Warp zones will end up being the same, except that we don't have to worry about getting stuck on the stairs. One additional concern if you go too fast is that the rising serpent stone tiles won't be up in time, so just remember to slow down a bit if that starts happening. When you hit the end, just turn and start jumping to the portal. The infinite jump will work the same as before, but you may notice that the gun feels less stilted since it doesn't freeze you in midair like the horn does. Because of this change, you can spam the IJ faster with the gun for gaining height than you could with the horn.

Dry Road

Once we come out, we'll turn left and jump out of Vulgrim's house, taking a wide left to get to the road. As you approach, watch for the autosave icon, again letting us know that the area behind the door has loaded. The upper section has an invisible wall on the right, I push into it at an angle so that I know when I'm past.

After getting on top, there's not a perfect way to line up the next gundash section, but if you look at the left spire in front, which is aligned with a 2d streetlight, it will work well. The first few gundashes are downhill, so we have to be careful with timing, but it starts to head uphill after a few cycles. The incline flattens off eventually, which means we've gone far enough. If we look off the cliff to the right, there's a big sewer pipe below us, which we'll be dropping onto. Eventually, we'll want to start our line aimed further left, so we naturally drop off of the cliff near the pipe, but it can be difficult to transition from gundashing to infinite jumping when learning.

Once on top of the sewer, look behind War for a small room with a chest and run under it. If you jump right below the chest, you'll get an action prompt that puts you back in-bounds and gives a new enchantment. It's actually one of the end-game ones, so pause after the message and equip it to your sword. It's easy to forget doing this, you can always double check that your sword has a purple glow to make sure you have it equipped.

Now we drop down and gundash along the tunnel wall. Using Q-mode for slight adjustments is really helpful here. There's a black car a few dashes away, so try to get near the wall early to avoid that. At the last pillar is a white car, but you should be able to do a normal gundash to jump over it pretty easily. When you get to the stairs, start infinite jumping up the wall and make your way into the broken pipe. Using the minimap, alternate between backwards and sideways gundashing to make it through and into the Dry Road. There's a lot of downhill here, so watch for War to land before starting another dash.

At the bottom of this canyon part we want to turn and head down the main street to hit a cutscene trigger. If you take the turn tight, you'll end up on some uneven ground, while a wide turn will get you stuck on an SUV, so try to find the middle ground. After the cutscene, we'll dash down this ramp and jump out to Vulgrim. This one in particular is really easy to forget, so make this detour a habit even in practice. There's not a particularly elegant way to jump in and quickly grab the spawn, I usually try to gundash in, 180 when I see the autosave come up, and dash out, IJing over the gap.

When you land back in the main area, turn sideways and gundash back up the ramp and turn left. The minimap is good here, but there are random objects which we'll also have to memorize in order to move unimpeded. As you move out of the Dry Road, you can use the boundary between road and sand to line yourself up in the middle of the road, which is a clear path. It's also safe to stay in the middle of the road for most of the tunnel, with a couple of considerations. As you go around the corner, between the two sets of stairs, is a big line of cars. If you hug the wall, War generally clears it without getting stuck. However, if you you're on the wall earlier, there's sand that's uneven that might interrupt your gundashing. If you stick to the middle, you can stop and double jump over the cars when you run into them. There's a big blue enemy, but you can ignore it completely, the explosion shouldn't hit you either.

When you get to the edge of the asphalt, jump out over the pit and aim for the pipe on the left. When we get in, turn and continue gundashing. Try to stay in the middle, since there's some weird spots on the wall that can catch you, especially around the corners. After the second turn, you'll see a plant that eats War if you move under it. The best option is to dash forward, shoot it with the gun, cancel Q-mode and jump out for the other side. Use dashing to make it underneath before it recovers. There's sometimes a nasty loading zone right here, but you can use the freeze to check your animation and set up for the next infinite jump or dash.

When you make it through, we'll just be gundashing up and around to pick up another Vulgrim location. The railings here are easy to get caught on, so aim for the center of the sandpile on the minimap. The trigger activates as soon as you enter his little cave, although he won't pop up for a second or two. Continue on after Vulgrim and trigger the Ashlands cutscene.

The Ashlands

Outrunning the worm

This area has sand/ash that slows War's walk to a crawl and giant worms that will eat us if they catch us in it. Luckily, the gun animation overrides it, meaning we can gundash as long as we don't mess up. While we can't indefinitely outrun the worm, we can use our speed to make it to the end of this area and skip the bulk of this third dungeon.

When the cutscene is over, we'll be aiming at the obvious next safe spot and gundashing back to it. Now, look to the left and we can see a wooden fort a bit behind the rocks. Immediately to the left of the rocks, there's a safe pit we can jump into, so we'll turn and gundashing into it. The Watcher will be talking here, so you'll need to turn on Q-mode and estimate your direction. As you head back, there are a few map markers we can use to keep us on course. The clumps of rock will show up in the sand as dark grey obstacles, there are two in-line with where we're going, so adjust your angle to slide past it and go toward the second, smaller one. As you pass the second dark spot, you should see the outline of a pit with a bunch of platforms inside, we want to turn and fall into it. Keep in mind that if your gundashing gets interrupted for any reason, there's usually not a way to recover and you'll get eaten, making you reload the last autosave.

When you drop down, turn around and look for the blue orb up to the next level. As you get the boost, shoot the gun to keep your upward momentum and save a couple of IJs onto the top platform. This cancels the deceleration animation from the orbs as well as preserves the velocity, giving you quite a lot of extra height. Do a couple more jumps to make it to the inner platform at the top of the vines. The next stop is the cliff in front of us, so jump off from the left side of this platform, being careful of bonking with forward dashes on the chains or the rocks. You'll also find that most sides of this pit have tall invisible walls, but our current height should clear them.

When you get up, line up parallel with the left side of the cliff. Our eventual goal is a line of platforms we can see in the rocks in the distance, the fastest way there is to gundash, but standing in the sand gets us eaten. Luckily, under the rockface is a small hidden room we can use as a safe zone, and it's right in line with where we're facing. So, turn around and start gundashing back. The minimap comes into view as we hit the sand, we want to end up riding the left side boundary as we head back. Watch for the upper platforms in white, you can see our destination underneath on the left. When you make it in, starting jumping back out and get on the platforms above. It's really important to get out of the sand, the worm can eat you even if you're 1000 feet in the air if you haven't touched safe ground.

The next few load zones are a little tricky. We first want to cross the last wooden bridge to our left. The interior cave section won't load unless we hit the start of it. As we come back across it, start jumping left into the cliff, it'll have a nice spot War can wedge into. When you clear the invisible wall, dash North about 5 times and drop down a little. There's a group of rocks that should be on your right and as you drop onto the cave you'll trigger an autosave. Once you get that, spin to the Northwest and jump forward a couple times, keeping the same height.

This area can have some delay since the rooms to load/unload are so big, but the background will turn black and some of the cliff partitions will go away. When that happens, turn right until you're heading mostly East and after a few seconds the next room will load in. You won't want to be forward dashing here for a while, there are a number of walls from the different clumps of rock. Just keep gaining height until you can see that you're in the clear. The right side has slightly lower walls than the left, so I aim for that area.

As you pass through the cliffs, just dash forward through the room and keep an eye out for the exit on the opposite side. To the left of it, there should be this multi-tierd rockface with a pointy boulder in the middle of the top of it, that's where we'll land next. Try to get more height than necessary, the front is a little higher than it looks. After getting on top, just dash up the hill a few times until you fall off, then keep dashing forward. We'll change direction to the Northeast now and head to the end of this room. You don't have to maintain much height, so it shouldn't take too long to dash across. Drop onto the exit platform to trigger a cutscene. Then dash forward to enter into the Horse Arena.

Horse Arena

This little bit of weirdness is the most iconic part of the Darksiders speedrun. We've loaded the arena fight, but in skipping over loadzones, the arena itself didn't load. Enemies die from falling too far, but War has no restriction, so we'll be falling through several waves, clearing them much faster than fighting could be. After a few rounds, we'll see some horses drop down, this is the cue to start paying attention again. When these disappear, the car throwers appear and a bit of RNG comes into play. To clear this round, both of the car throwers have to fall, but the second one isn't guaranteed. To check for this, infinite jump up and look to the North, where both should fall into view if it's going to work. What determines whether or not they fall has long been a topic of debate, with each runner having superstitions about the preceding cave section affecting it in one way or another (I still harbor my own). However, after a lot of playing, I'm mostly convinced it's just randomness on what attack the car thrower does and the timing of it. I don't think the matter is fully settled though.

If you do see the second car thrower falling, jump towards it to make it target you, then start falling back down. They fall faster when targeting an object. You may have noticed some gate debris at the start, this is the kill plane where they'll disappear, so just wait for that. There's a car thrower on the left and right. The one on the right is guaranteed, the left is the iffy one, but sometimes you'll see it fall straight down with the last small enemy. In that case, you've gotten "fast horse arena" and should be able to jump to the right car thrower and get it to target you.

When both are dead, we'll pause and do a manual save. Reloading this save forces the arena to come back and places us at the last round. This last round requires an Action prompt, so wouldn't work out of bounds.

Dash at the horse and start attacking, 4 or 5 hits should stagger it. Keep attacking until it gets ready to stomp. Double jumping will dodge the hitbox, so use that to stay next to the horse and keep attacking. After the second stomp, an action prompt comes up, take it immediately. During this cutscene, we'll want to use our Possession potion, since reloading the save depleted our energy. When the fight starts, dash forward and transform, attacking until the miniboss dies. You should still have some Chaos left, so attack the horse to despawn it and stand in the middle of the arena.

Normally the horse runs around a bunch, but this skips that and gives you the horse directly. Hold S as soon as you skip the cutscene to turn toward the exit gate, then jump off the horse and get over the gate. Once you clear it, hop back onto the horse and navigate through the cave section. It should be pretty straight forward, it has a small left, then a hairpin right hand turn leading out. When riding, the boost lasts longer than the visual effect would indicate, so you won't need to spam carrots that often. I count the hooves hitting the ground after the effect goes away, the dash speed lasts slightly more than 5 hoof cycles, so I dash on the 5th.

The Sunnyjams Skip

When we come out of this cutscene, just spam dash forward. After the second, jump off the horse and start infinite jumping straight up, you should be in the shadows still and somewhere near a sand waterfall. The cutscene showing this worm is a little weird and we actually still have full control, so when it's over we should be pretty high in the air. We want to go on top of this right cliff and hop back on our horse.

Dash uphill, squeezing between the two rocks at the top. We fall through the cliff at some point and want to quickly turn toward the big water room on the left and hop off the horse when you're about the same height as the ceiling, dashing to land on top.

The loading zone here is a little finicky, you'll want to land near the middle of the room, then walk along the ceiling to the right until you see the background go completely black and return to normal a few seconds later. The big rocks on top will work well in the future for knowing where the loading triggers are. We should be able to see the outline of the boss room if we look out to the left, so dash toward it. At the end of the rocky "spine" of this ceiling is a window we can jump in. The geometry is kind of weird, so make sure you're lined up in advance. Otherwise, there's a section near one of the wooden bridges earlier that also has a hole in the ceiling.

Now we just rotate and gundash into the boss room. When you hit the sand, turn back and hop on the horse and dash into the cutscene trigger.

This is another part that doesn't really have a perfect strategy, you'll basically try to ride in big circles and hit as many enemies as you can. It takes two hits to kill and we need to clear out quite a few. There's a limit either on number or distance for enemies targeting you, which complicates grouping more than usual.

The Stygian

Once those are rounded up and the Stygian is introduced, just stand still at the start. This whole boss fight is incredibly scripted, the worm will come up to the sand to charge at us twice before it comes up to let us break its mask. After that, it wanders around a bit, then summons small worms that swarm us. Once those are cleared, it chases us to try to eat us, coming above the sand to let us shoot it. Once we deal damage for that round, it goes back under, then does a "surprise" attack from below 3 times in a row (which do no damage), and finally chases us again and we shoot it to death.

By manipulating the position on the first two charges, we can make where it comes up from breaking the mask the same every time. After it does the first charge at where we were standing, move the camera around and get on the horse. In front is a spot of dark-textured sand, run to the very left of it, this is where the Stygian charges next. After that, it'll start a set semi-circle loop before coming up, so we just want to cut it off where it pops up and start attacking. Generally, you won't want to dash since you'll quickly pass the worm, just stay on its face and try to get pushed along by the side of the mask. Once it's broken, we want to go to the structure in the center and jump on the right deck. The closest corner has a tiny standable area we'll use.

The worm will continue on its script and small worms will get summoned, but they have an odd property. You're supposed to run and shoot to destroy them, but they also get destroyed when they run into you. They don't actually have to hit, though, as long as their X and Y coordinates overlap yours, they die.

By standing up here, it's killing each wave faster than anything else we could do. Keep an eye on your hidden HP bar in the top left, when the Stygian comes back it'll appear again and let you know to jump down. Hop on your horse and hold the shoot button to hit the Worm. Ride in big circles and manage your distance with dash to finish the first round. Holding focus will let you shoot further, so hold that down or toggle it on. Use the minimap to watch for the walls of the area or the platform in the middle.

The Stygian will then come at you for 3 attacks. Ride onto him to take the hit, hop back on the horse and turn to take the next. After the 3rd, ride off and start shooting again to deal the last bit of damage. After it goes slow-mo, ride cautiously in front of the Stygian and wait for the action prompt. It doesn't appear immediately, so there's no need to dash at the Stygian once you kill it.

And just like that, we've cleared the 3rd dungeon. We'll want to hold S and hop on the horse after the cutscene, dashing into the door. When we get to Vulgrim, enter the shop and buy another Possession potion from the bottom. Then warp to The Ashlands.

This warp zone is a little strange. As soon as you have control, pause and do a manual save. By reloading, it teleports us straight to the end. There's not a particularly good reason this works, a few of the warpzones have this savewarp property, though.

Silitha's Dungeon

Traveling There

Exit Vulgrim's shop and gundash back out to the main part of the Ashlands. We'll be hopping on the horse and heading left, which is Northwest. After rounding the first rocks, adjust to the left again to be going West. You'll need to stretch out your dashes here, we want to go on the open sandy area and run until the very end of the ground. On the right is a walkway, so when you hit the edge, jump off the horse and do a couple of IJs to make it on the path. Then gte back on the horse and run to the edge of that.

Normally you need a powerup for the horse to run across, but we can just jump off the horse and IJ forward. The death zone on the opposite side is shallow, so make sure you have enough height as you approach.

From here, jump back on the horse and dash, trying to conserve your dashes. When you run out, you'll want to dismount the horse into a cliff, this will let you instantly resummon another and keep running. By the time you start running low on your second set of dashes, you should enter a cutscene that transports you into the fourth dungeon.

Iron Canopy

From the very first speedrun strategy here, this dungeon has always been a straight line. The powerup and the boss are right in front, but the ways to get around the doors has changed quite a few times. It's now settled on the easiest strat so far, which is not only the fastest, but got rid of some luck that plagued the whole area for a couple of years.

To start, just break out of the webbing with the action key, then dash to the edge of the platform. Straight ahead is a broken building with a web bridge going across, start jumping to it. The broken section has an invisible wall extending down until about the level of the bridge, so take care not to dash into it.

Jump to the upper part of the web bridge to get a short cutscene, then turn and open the door. The floor on our right will collapse and lead us to the new item for this dungeon. You can gundash down the stairs and into the door if you want to go faster.

Once you break the chest, you'll get the customary cutscene and popup, during which you'll want to spam 1 to select the gun and dash forward and right. Jump up quickly after the notification to dodge the attack from the spider and get to the Northeast corner of the room. If you keep jumping straight up, you should be able to slide your way through a hole in the ceiling, at which point you'll want to go North for a couple dashes, then East, using the minimap to navigate to go around the walls of the building on your right.

Up until now, we've ignored the Yellow quest tracker on our minimap, but it's useful in this case. Rotate your camera until you're heading straight at it, then keep infinite dashing forward. After things flicker a few times, you should be able to see a door floating in the air. This leads to the Silitha fight, so we're going to jump out to it and open in midair, the same as what we did in the second dungeon.

When you get there, just hold W to make sure you make it inside, and spam 2 to swap to the grapple for the fight.

Silitha

This fight is pretty straightforward, but we don't have it as controlled as the others. Each round, you'll grapple into Silitha, do an air combo, then two hits on the ground to stagger her. She'll then warp and attack you, the first round is one attack, the second is two, and the last is three attacks. Before each attack, she can appear on the wall up to four times in a row instead. There seems to be some manipulation possible, but it varies from runner to runner.

I think of the room as having 4 quadrants, split up by bisecting the skull horizontally and vertically. She spawns on the right side of the skull, sitting just inside the bottom section. After each damage round, standing on the opposide side as her position seems to lower the number of warps. Each attack will need some movement as well, which isn't clearly understood.

I toggle focus on for this whole fight, since it extends the range you're able to use the grapple. You'll also need to use Q-mode to aim it, though. At the start, dash in once, then turn on focus and Q-mode and grapple into her. This first round has lower HP and she should stagger quickly. Once she does, back up to the opposite side of the skull, she shouldn't do a warp this first time. When the attack is done, she'll warp to be exactly opposite you and wait to take damage. I stand in the top left diagonal to force her position.

Grapple in and do the attack pattern to end that round, then dash back again. I stand in the left eye socket on the skull to bait the attack. After she comes in to attack, dash right into the bottom quadrant, then strafe back into the left eye socket. This usually makes her attack again immediately. Then stand slightly into the bottom quadrant so that her position is similar to where she was at the start.

When you stagger her again, dash back and walk through the left eye socket, then rotate down under the left cheekbone. Silitha will do one teleport before attacking. From here, I'm not sure how to force single warps, it seems to vary from fight to fight. Walking in a circle around Silitha seems to help. I think it has something to do with timing your position interrupting the walls as valid teleport targets, since she likes to appear on the spots farthest away.

Anyway, after the last attack, she'll appear again and let you attack her. This time, she warps up to the ceiling and starts a cutscene. While she's doing that, swap back to the Gun and wait for the cutscene to start, then infinite jump up a few times. When the cutscene is over, hit 2 to equip the chain, then use it to activate the kill cutscene.

Once you've waited that out, exit to the left and use the horse to dash back to the main part of the Ashlands. Keep in mind that the death zone on this side is short when you're jumping over, if you drop the first infinite jump, you'll generally die and get placed back in the sand. When you make it across, use the horse to dash up the path, then run it into the rocks and dismount, moving over the sand to the right. You'll be able to pull the horse up again immediately, so do that and ration out your dashes while running back to Vulgrim.

When you get back to the road, dismount and gundash into Vulgrim's cave. Open the warp menu and select Scalding Gallows. We'll be returning 3 hearts at once to Samael, so gundash through and take the portal. When you appear in Vulgrim's house, you can gundash back and right to quickly leave the house and get on the horse faster. Take the horse the normal way around the map and up to Samael. Since we have three hearts to turn in, we'll have to get each of the cutscene for it, so hold S after the first and dash back to get the second, then hold forward and dash to go into the third. After that, you'll be teleported to the start of The Black Throne.

If you try to shortcut onto Samael's platform, you'll get one of two results that I've seen. The first is that Samael won't be loaded at all, which is when you try to jump straight from Vulgrim's house. The second is if you cut in before the normal path leading up, everything will be loaded and seem to work correctly, but you won't get teleported. Your screen just stays black and you get stuck in Scalding Gallows until you reload.

The Black Throne

Getting to Straga

If you've played this game before, you'll remember this dungeon as an hours-long grind full of puzzles on the way up the tower and on the way back down the tower. Not only can we avoid them, we don't even enter the dungeon now. This warp zone has the entire dungeon loaded already, but out of view where we wouldn't normally see it, hidden behind one of those invisible screens we've jumped through in a lot of dungeons. Funnily enough, though, look up and slightly to the right and you'll see a strange dot in the air: this is the boss room.

So, as you may have guessed, we're going to jump up there. It's a long way to go, but just keep jumping in the direction of the door. As you progress upwards, the background will change to black and the main dungeon will load in. The bottommost section should be some stairs leading down to an unloaded elevator, jump under the top of the stairs to get the elevator to load, then move down the stairs and stop to check the elevator.

There should be a lot of rings separating the different "floors" that we can use to judge distance. Elevators and their loading zones work just like tunnels, if we fall while pushing against the wall, we'll activate whatever trigger was there and get the room to load. Let's go ahead and do that, jump forward and hug the wall, then start falling and count 2 of the rings, then turn back around and jump up. It can take several seconds, but the boss room should load below you. Drop on top of the entry section and run forward to find a hole you can enter through.

As you fall, just start infinite jumping once you're about to land and cross the gap, then dash into the cutscene.

Running from Straga

This fight normally requires the Portal gun to activate the weak spot on Straga's back, but we can mimic the movement and timing of that animation to trick the game into giving us the trigger. At the start of the fight, Straga will try to attack right away, but we can cancel the attack.

Jump up quickly, to around the height of the base of Straga's neck, and wait for him to raise his club. Once he does, fall back down to around the middle of his chest, which should make him lower the club. After that, jump back up and over Straga and land on his back platform. There's a simple way to get the prompt for his weak spot, run into the Northeast corner of his platform, which will be on the left side of the eye. Hold W and wiggle with A and D to make the eye glow when he starts the next attack, then hit Action to finish the phase.

You'll get dropped back down in front, attack him 9 times, then get ready for the first spawn of enemies. There are 4 skeletons that pop up, followed by 2 more once two from the first wave are dead. As they get up, find a good spot and transform into Chaos form, then use the full combo on the skeletons to kill them. There's some luck required to kill all of them in one round, but you should be able to weaken all of them and should only have a couple left when you run out of Chaos. Use Sword Geyser and normal attacks to get the action prompt, which you should take to finish them off faster.

Finishing the wave will start the second phase of Straga, where he does two side sweeps with his mace before becoming vulnerable like before. Hover over his head for the side swipes, then land on the back platform and do the same thing we did in the first round. While you stab the eye, use the Chaos potion in preparation for the next enemies. Hit him 9 more times and get to a good spot for enemies.

This time it's angels, which have less HP than the skeletons. Try to transform before the angels charge, it's best to have them close after that than to get the initial hit, but have to chase them down. A combo of Left-Right-Left will kill an angel from full HP, so do your best to clear them out. Use Sword Geyser if you have one remaining, combined with sword cancels to take them out. You won't want to do the action prompt, but you'll find that the angels start to get hit up too high for normal sword canceling. When that happens, jump up and swordflip to get them back down. As long as you hit them in chaos form, they should die pretty quickly.

Once the angel wave is over, Straga will do the same attack pattern as last time, so we'll stick to the same thing as well. Hover over his head while he does the sweeps, then land on the back platform and push into the front left corner of the platform while wiggling with A and D. The eye should activate for the last time and your 9th hit will start another cutscene taking you to Eden.

Armageddon backtracking

Eden

Hold back and left once you're out of the second cutscene and dash through the pillars to talk to Azrael. He gives you the Mask of Shadows and you'd normally fight Dark Link at this point. We'll be jumping over the barrier and dashing to the main land instead. Watch out for the item notification, it might throw a wrench in your infinite jump.

Once you make it to the bottom of the stairs, try to gundash sideways up to the top using the minimap. If you face backwards, the stairs will eat your dash a lot. Keep going to the back of the room at the top of the stairs in order to hit a cutscene trigger. When the screen starts to fade out, spam the 2 key and Use Gear while holding RMB to skip the cutscene. You can immediately skip an extended sequence by using the mask to pull you back to the start of Eden, where you'll summon Dark War. After he's up, jump out of the fight again and dash to the end of the bridge. This makes the game think you're returning from the tree and it'll summon the portal out of Eden.

In the warp zone, dash along the straight path, then infinite jump around the pillar and across the zone to the portal.

Collecting the pieces

Azrael will now task us with collecting the 7 fragments of the Armageddon Blade, which are scattered across the game world, conveniently one to a map. We already collected one early from the Choking Grounds, so there's 6 left for us to get. Backtracking is always a tedious affair, but given our unintended movement options, it'll only take us about 7 minutes.

Once Azrael's conversation is over, activate the shadow realm, then gundash backwards across the bridge and grab the first of the pieces. If you're slow, you might have to activate the shadow realm again.

From here, it's going to be a tour of every area to grab each piece. We'll start by jumping off of the cliff and getting on the horse. Dash over to Vulgrim and enter the warp menu. The order that we collect the pieces doesn't matter at all. I go in a mostly counter-clockwise order, so I'll start with the selecting The Ashlands.

We want to use the same save and reload trick as last time to get through this serpent path. So once you have control, pause, make a manual save, and reload it. We'll just gundash out of Vulgrims area to the left just like last time, too. Get on the horse and head left again. Instead of going out in the open sand, we'll hug the left cliff and ride toward the paths cut into the rock. At the top of this is our Armageddon Blade piece. Dismount the horse a bit away from the cliff and infinite jump up on top and grab it.

For each of the pieces, the game will autosave, updating our status to say that we collected the piece, but because War can't respawn in this location, it'll keep whatever the previous autosave's location was. Long story short, we can immediately reload our autosave to appear very close to Vulgrim and teleport to the next area. Since it saves your status at the moment you grab the shard, remember to switch back to gun when you're loading your autosave.

You'll find that Vulgrim doesn't always pop up when we go to his shop, it seems to be some weirdness when you've already unlocked his location. To get around this, run up to the platform to get the autosave, then run away from it to make him appear, and finally run back and interact with him.

So, reload and gundash into Vulgrim's area and select The Dry Road. We have to clear this warp zone semi-legitimately, luckily it's a straight shot to the portal, so it should be pretty easy. When you are leaving Vulgrim's area, don't cross the gap immediately. There's a room-wide cutscene and fight trigger between us and the piece that we want to avoid. Jump out of Vulgrim's room and keep jumping up until you're a bit below the top of the surrounding cliffs of the room, this will get us over the cutscene trigger, so now you can use the minimap to fall down on top of the Blade piece. Once you do, reload your autosave and warp to Drowned Pass.

We have to navigate this warp zone manually, as well. When you get out, dash forward once to be able to summon your horse, then dash forward on it until you hit the edge of the path. The piece is right in front, so dismount and IJ forward a couple of times to get the piece. After this, just reload and select The Crossroads.

The portal here is pretty high up on the right, be careful not to dash into the side of the walkway when you're approaching. Once you're in the Crossroads, we'll be turning 90 degrees to the left and summoning the horse. Dash to the east-southeast and jump off the horse before you hit the building. The top corridor has the Armageddon Blade piece for this area. Reload again and warp to the last piece in The Broken Stair.

This warp zone has the portal right next to you, but the savewarp works, so we always make a manual save and reload it. The Broken Stair works a little differently than the others. The piece is actually located pretty far away and there's a location-overwriting autosave on the way, so we'll be taking a route that bypasses it. When you load in, gundash out of Vulgrim's cave and head to the right of the stairs.

If you look up, you'll see the broken bridges that we took to the Autoscroller at the start of the game, the piece is in that last building. So, jump up and go under the bridges toward the other two buildings. There's a death zone under the bridges, it's best to play it safe by scraping along the bottom of the middle bridge. The triangle-shaped building has an autosave on top, so we'll be going on the left. Our height doesn't matter too much, I think as long as you're not on the building's wall you won't get the autosave. As we pass the building, you can use the wings and the gun trick to get a big height boost that takes us right to the Armageddon Blade piece.

With that boost, do the last few dashes, activate the shadow mask, and pick it up. This one is special for whatever reason, we can pause as soon as War finishes the animation, instead of needing to wait for the notification. So reload your auto save and warp to Anvil's Ford.

The portal for this is on the right, so turn and jump behind the pillar from the starting platform to reach it. We'll be gundashing through the pipes out to where we first got the gun. You should be able to line up with the door on the opposite side. Go through and do some downhill gundashes to get to Ulthane and start the cutscene. We'll have to wait for the message about the Armageddon Blade, then we'll just reload out autosave and be in the pipe across from Vulgrim. Gundash back to his shop and take the warp to Leviathan's Drift. The savewarping works here, so use that to skip the final serpent path.

Final Boss

Dragon

This segment should always end up being about the same, similar to the Stygian fight, but you'll need to make sure to execute properly. We'll dash out of Vulgrim's shop and head into the sand, getting on the horse when it's available. Dash all the way to the back of the room and look for the shadow flight orb. The cliff to the left has a spot we can do a Horse Boost. If you run into the second indented area along the cliff, going left from the orb, you can unsummon and resummon your horse to get boosted all the way to the top of the cliff. If you don't get quite enough height, you're at the wrong spot and need to move left slightly.

Once on top, pull up the Shadow Realm to gundash across the bridge and talk to Azrael. When we appear in the boss fight, we want to dash forward and start hitting the boss as he starts moving. The way this fight normally works is that the dragon will start to charge at you and prepare a claw attack, you go to the opposite leg and hit that to make him fall down. The better strategy is to hit him as he starts to move, which makes him fall immediately. There's no need to attack him while he's down, knocking him down is what dealt the damage. When he gets up after this first one, attack him again as he starts to run to knock him down.

After he gets up now, he'll do divebombs before beginning his run. The number after each knockdown is the same every time, 2 1 1 3. The best way to avoid the divebomb is to infinite jump above the hitbox, so we'll jump up a safe distance and wait for his first 2 divebombs. On the second, fall back down and attack him again as he sets off. This now moves him to the 1 divebomb round. Complete the same sequence to avoid his dive, then force him down again. He'll do 1 divebomb again, which we react to in the same way. On this last one, we'll get on the horse and casually dash away to avoid each of the hits. A good cue for dashing is when he makes his shrieking sound before falling. After the third slam, we want to get a pretty healthy distance between us and wait.

When he charges, he'll have an action prompt cutscene, so we just want to be tapping that as we wait. This takes him into the sky and has us tap Action some more before plummeting back down and starting the second phase of the boss.

Not Dragon

This phase is similar to the other fights we've done, helped out by the fact that his pattern is the same each time. We want to sword cancel as quickly as we can before his first attack, which we'll need to block. Keep attacking afterward, then jump and swordflip to avoid his slam. Attack some more to get the button mashing contest with him, after which he teleports into the sky. You can just run to the edge where he is and wait, the boulders he throws will bounce off of the pillars.

When he finishes throwing those, he'll do a charging slash at you, but if you back up slightly, it's trivial to sidestep his attack and start sword canceling again. His first attack needs jumped over and if he does the second, it can be blocked. Button mash him to pass the round again, then wait for him to throw the boulders.

The third round is a little different, you can't attack him until he starts his attack or he'll get staggered and warp away, wasting a lot of time. So what you'll want to do is to sidestep his attack, but wait to start your attacks until you see him reach for his sword with his right hand. This gives him the defense effect so he won't get staggered. As long as you block, he'll keep doing the same attack, so it's just a game of patience and timing to get his health down for the last button mashing contest.

When that's done, the run is over! Wait out the credits until the skip button appears, then click on Load Game to check your autosave for the in-game time to see how fast you were.

Darksiders First Dungeon Getting Back to the Main Floor

Source: https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Darksiders/any%25

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