My learning progression of the second Lara Croft skywalking trick is scarily bordering the path I took in Shantytown.

Which is to say, in Shantytown, I finally got the trick. Then got it again about 57 minutes later.

Then I spent the next day’s session failing horribly. I didn’t get the trick again. It was miserable. And that ended up being the last horrible day in Shantytown.

Well, this time around, with learning this trick, things bordered quite closely to that progression, though it was a bit different.

So, I got the research base skywalking trick once. Then got it twice more in that practice session.

But here’s where it’s different. The next day, on the second freaking try, I got the trick again (success #4 if you’re keeping score).

The problem? I didn’t have the upgraded bow that I needed to be able to make it to where I would need to practice the cage puzzle skip (the skip that becomes mandatory because you skipped the part where you get the rope ascender).

I spent the next three freaking hours failing miserably at getting the trick again. Sheer stubborness kept me going.

When I finally got the trick again (with the appropriately upgraded bow), I said f*ck a whole bunch because I was that upset. Those three hours had basically been a steady descent into madness.

And for a quick aside, I say f*ck all the time in real life, but I’m trying to avoid cursing on the stream for several reasons, one of which is just trying to keep things a tad more professional. I say “tad” because the polyglot cursing is quite rampant in my stream. I just don’t want to be known as a streamer whose every fourth word is f*ck.

the light at the end of the tunnel

Though I’m basically trying to keep all of my initial trick learning on the stream, once I reach a certain level of comfort with something, I allow myself to practice things randomly.

Well, earlier today (technically yesterday if you’re looking at this post’s time), I had a few spare minutes and I decided to practice the trick a few times.

I ended up stumbling on something that would make a huge difference in how I did the trick. And spoiler alert, it wasn’t the only thing.

See, I had had this sensation that sometimes Lara was jumping without my asking. But I had no reason to pursue it further at the time.

I frankly have no idea how it started nor progressed, but I somehow accidentally got the jump again during my quick practice session.

This time I decided to pursue it and play with it.

I walked away with something absolutely huge: a consistent method of getting on the upper rock.

Basically, I just used a slightly modified aim point to what I had already using. I jump forward, I do nothing other than adjust the camera angles somewhat with the mouse and Lara will magically jump at a certain point. And I land on the rock.

No longer was I failing to get to the rock because I was jumping too early or too late or whatever it was that was occurring. Lara was magically doing the jump in the same exact spot which made it pretty easy for me to develop a consistent camera manipulation routine.

Next, the heartache. Of sorts.

The hilariously tragic thing was that, once upon a time, once I had made it to that upper rock, I had like a 95% success rate on getting from there into the upper lane. But no more. Whatever beginner’s luck I had was gone.

Still though, I got to spend all of my practice session “tonight” with my newly discovered magic-Lara-jump so things went much more smoothly in general.

But let’s jump ahead shall we?

I found another magic method.

As of this writing, I haven’t made it public because I discovered it super late (of course, in the time it’s taken me to write up to this point, I could’ve easily just started a quick stream to document it, but I digress).

Remember that thing that had been 95% consistent once I got on the upper rock (but then I lost the muscle memory apparently and was probably failing more than succeeding)? Well, I’ve made it 100% consistent.

Well, technically I shouldn’t declare victory until I’ve slept on it and proved that I still can recreate it later. But anyways.

In the same way, that I was trying to strip the first part of the trick down to its bare essentials (such as eliminating the need to actually properly time the jump, since you can get Lara to do your dirty work for you), I started playing around with stripping things down until I landed on the new consistent method.

Previously, it was something like this:

  • stand on the left edge of upper rock
  • scramble jump into the notch, curving into it somewhat by holding forward and right
  • end up in notch and franctically try to get the appropriate key sequence to start the skywalking
  • move the mouse to manipulate the camera angle to keep Lara in the upper lane

This was the method that I had magically made 95% consistent at one point and then just lost the plot altogether.

But here’s the new improved method:

  • stand on the left edge of the upper rock, pointing toward the notch (obviously I’ll be making a video later on to demonstrate)
  • jump forward
  • double tap back once you land

That’s freaking it. There’s no need to learn the timing of a scramble jump. Nor do you need to lose hope if you accidentally don’t scramble before your jump.

There’s no need to immediately mash down, down, right, up/left franctically once you land (I find a simple down, down 1,000 times easier to hit correctly than the above sequence).

There’s no manipulating of camera angles with the mouse to prevent your death.

Assuming all goes according to plan “tomorrow”, I’ve basically figured out what is, to me, the two most absolutely maddening parts of the trick.

See, in a normal run (when you’re starting from the appropriate checkpoint), it takes you about 30 seconds or so to get from the checkpoint to the place where you start the trick. To then fail in literally the first 5 seconds of the trick is enough to make you want to throw something. Or someone. Whatever’s available.

We’ll see how things pan out “tomorrow”, but I have high hopes. Skywalking is actually kind of fun. Failing at even getting the skywalking started is pure torture though. I have hopefully fixed that part.

And I’m not sure what to make of the fact that my biggest breakthroughs today came when I wasn’t streaming (I was however recording locally with OBS). It could be coincidence. Or it could be related to how I’ve blogged about this added pressure I feel when I’m streaming my learning. I think I’ve tended to be more experimental when trying things off-stream.

The question now is, am I ready to use this in a run? I’m thinking yes. My biggest concern is not time wasted necessarily, but in frustration levels going through the roof and the run just coming to a screeching halt because I simply cannot get the trick to save my life. I mean, imagine if my 3 hour drought yesterday had happened in a run. I would be crushed.

Since I wouldn’t actually mind playing larger parts of the game, what I might do is just set a cap, like say 5 tries. Basically, if I can’t get the trick in 5 tries, I just play that part of the game normally.

Then there’s the cage puzzle skip. Tonight I got the trick a grand total of once before I burned myself out and decided to work on other things. I guess I’ll be perfecting that one on the fly, during a run.

And to sum up, if I remember correctly, with the skywalker skip comfortable enough, that leaves:

  • cage puzzle skip
  • airboat skip on mouse/keyboard (I’m like 90% success on a controller and maybe 2% on K/M)
  • monastery skip
  • intro out of bounds

Past that, I’m pretty sure it will just be refining major tricks and then looking for the tiny time savers that really add up during a run.

Oh yeah, and I’ll have to learn how to actually shoot.

Thank goodness though, speedrunning is mostly about skipping all of those major battles. Ya know, those battles that really show off how much I such at shooting right now.