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Glitches and Tricks
Wanted to write down some of the various tricks, glitches and exploits that players have found in the game and that is useful for various sequence breaks. I've taken many of these from the speedrunning wiki here, or used it to get more details on the ones I already knew:
* https://bloodstained-speedruns.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Glitch
Ambvialence Shard Element
I've talked about this one elsewhere on the wiki as well, but here again for completion. This Whip has a very wonky mechanic where you can hold the attack button to change its element from Dark to Holy and back. Which is bugged to also change the element of some/all damage shards and a few other things as well. It even affects the spikes on Spike Armour. There isn't a full list of what shards it affects.
This works with any version of the Ambvialence weapon, so all you need is the 8bit coin to make one. And this allows you to add Holy or Dark to almost any shard in the game, making it very easy to bypass most enemies resistances. Since most enemies are weak to one or the other.
The way Resistances work is that when you hit an enemy with an attack, it checks which damage types you have, and which of them the enemy is weakest to and uses that. So if you use a fire attack, and the enemy had 50% resistance to fire, but -50% against holy, and you have the whip at holy. Then the game uses the -50% for the entire attack.
This makes Ambvialence the clear best caster weapon in the game.
Aqua Stream Crouch
How to execute: * Fire Aquastream * Spam down/crouch as fast as possible
What happens: * Aqua stream will do an extra tick of damage each time you crouch
So you can get a lot of extra damage, only limited by how fast you can spam the down button. Makes it a very good damage shard.
Gearclip
Some terrain, notably the big cogs/gears in Twin Tower, have a weird interaction when pushing a player into walls or other cogs. Clipping the player through the cog.
Most commonly used in the North-East part of the tower, where you can jump down on the left most cog, and let it push you into the wall, and then you just fall through the entire cog to the bottom of the room.
Mostly works as a way to get down certain places a bit faster or easier.
Heretical Grinder MP Glitch
How to: * Equip Heretical Grinder * Double tap quickly, and then hold on he second * The spell comes out, but cost very low MP * After 4 seconds it will reset and recast costing normal MP
If you micromanage this and double tap again every 4 seconds, this will cost little to no MP.
Iron Maiden Glitch
How to: * Equip Gale Crawler * Stand very close to the Iron Maiden * Shoot the Gale Crawler shard * If you did it correct the iron maiden will close
You can use this instead of luring or slide kicking frogs etc into Iron Maidens to move it before Craftwork. Mostly useable for the Beret in the Chariot room in Garden. (Or creative usage in the spike-run up to Oriental).
Jump Storage
How to: * Stand on a ledge * use “Flashing Air Kick” of the ledge (Can do multiple in a row) * Cancel animation with Backdash * Jump
Very niche usage, but can be used to get under some obstacle to get in a jump afterwards to reach something. Or if used with lots of Air Kicks, you can use it to reach long horizontal distances.
Samurai Slide
How to: * Equip a Katana that you can use Jinrai on (Raikiri or mastered) * Equip Directional Shield (or another hold to use shard) * Start the Jinrai (646A) * Hold Down * just as you start moving, do these rapidly: * Backdash to cancel animation * Activate and hold the Directional Shard
If doing this right, you'll quickly move forward, through several rooms if you got a clear road. Mostly useful for fun and moving through long boring sections. Supposedly even more fun if you can swap into Borealis Shoes, to use the sliding to keep momentum, but that was beyond me.
Shovel Master
How to: * Equip Shovel Armor * Equip other gear to do as much damage as possible * Equip Bunnymorphosis * Unpause/exit the menu * Unequip Bunnymorphosis
If done correctly you should be able to see that your stats have gone up a lot. Basically Shovel Armour is now using all your gear bonuses, like weapon damage, cursed/silver rings etc.
You can now run around and do silly damage with Shovel Armor. Be the best Shovel Knight!
Valkyrie Sword Special
Valkyrie sword has a own unique Tech, which I've mentioned in other places of the wiki, but will repeat it here. Once you've mastered every other Tech in the game, Valkyrie sword is able to use a own tech by pressing 22A. Big flashy teleport into the air and slam down. This has a bunch of weird interactions.
* Can be used in the air or water, and it will teleport you to the nearest ground. This allows you to use it to fake swimming in water, as you can use it to keep reaching the bottom. * Has a slowdown effect as part of its animation, similar to Jinrai. This can slow down even bosses that are immune to standstill. * Can put you out of bounds in certain places. For some this is a bonus, for others not so much. You can get out of this by using a waystone back to the village.
Personally have had a lot of fun using it in NG+ to explore all the waterways before even killing Zangetsu1.
Couple of spots that is likely to cause out of bounds: * Train Station, before Glutton Train. * Underground Waterways, second last water room before getting to desert. Every time I try to use the Valkyrie Tech to map transit at the bottom I get stuck out of bounds. Stopping me from using this to reach Alfred (Instead use this to grab Aqua Stream early before going to Desert).
Chair OoB
Directional Shard Lock
Flailing
Freeform Suspend
Invisibility
Fireball-Jump (Jumpkick)
How to: * Equip Kung-Fu-Shoes (or other that can do Flashing Air Kick) * Equip Flame Cannon (or other directional shard) * No double Jump or High Jump, or have them disabled * Jump * Do Flashing Air Kick * Quickly in order: * Backdash to animation cancel * Directional Shard * Jump
If you do it right, you'll get another jump in mid-air. You can then repeat this as many times as you have MP and can pull it off, but personal experience is that the second and later are harder to pull off than the first one.
Using this means you can effectively skip Double Jump, and if you're good enough even High-Jump (I'm not good enough for that, and I like my arms without Repetitive Strain Injury).
But even single use have a lot of uses. You can use this at the start of the Galleon to reach the Teleporter, and go get the chest with a much better gun to have a much easier time with Vepar on Clean Nightmare. If you're able to pull off 2-3 in a row you can also get the Triplet and Plunder ring at the bottom right.