May the Advanced Shitpsoting commence
ASWaH Any% Speedrun
"A Sword Without a Hilt" is an enormous open-world game, that takes up to 62 hours to complete in a glitchless speedrun.
Thanks to the efforts of the community, a multitude of shortcuts and unintended interactions have been found, shortening the current record to 07.43.21 hours by "The Greedyboi", although it is expected that by perfecting the RNG manipulation and the routes at least 05.32 more minutes could be saved.
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Character Creation
The "Viserys route" is generally considered the one most exploitable by the community, due to the largest number of scripted recruitable characters, and the best "magic" start - allowing applying certain engine-level glitches far earlier than the Westeros-based characters, due to the starting social status of the character.
Picking a Viper as the familiar is necessary for later RNG-manipulation, as well as having the "Charm" spell.
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Act 1: Relor's Crew Quickstart:
After completing the intro quest into The Crew, play bones with Relor: the ASWaH cycles RNG every frame, so by doing frame-perfect dice rolls (frames 12, 24) it is possible to quickly make the necessary starting capital.
Use "Charm" spell to decrease suspicion, and leave after winning 7 Iron Marks -- enough to buy 13.6 lb of [Rock Salt], a flask of [Holy Water] from the Shady Dealer who appears on the market on 14.09.289, as well as to hire Len Lightfingers as the teacher for Dany.
The chance of Dany picking up [Sleight of Hand] off-class skill from Len is decided by RNG and PC actions, but as with most unlawful skills, it can be manipulated by consistently allowing her Chaotic Acts - playing with a dangerous familiar counts as one.
5 to 7 rounds of playing with a Viper guarantees her picking up the skill even though she doesn't technically have an Alignment scale yet as a non-PC character.
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The Physics Engine
The Physics engine of the game is notoriously broken. Falling rocks are known to be one of the worst occupational hazards.
By accelerating off a broken wooden plank near the One-Eyed Rat tavern, and several other locations over Braavos, it is possible to launch the character to any spot in the city, using the canals as the way to land without taking damage.
By using the momentum-retaining element of the physics engine, it is also possible to snipe certain pre-spawned characters by throwing objects during the accelerated state - the physics damage increasing exponentially with the acceleration.
This is the chosen method of handling the early objectives given by Relor's Crew, saving 11.34 minutes total over the span of four starting quests.
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Act 1: The Dany Ark
After recruiting Sir Richard, it is recommended to leave him at Relor's and go with Dany to coordinates 17.09.50 on the local Braavos Map.
A scripted sequence will play out, showcasing a fight between two mercenaries. By carefully positioning oneself, the player can force a crit by a passing crossbow bolt to Viserys, immediately causing him to enter [Dying] state.
Due to the scripted event, any time Viserys suffers a death-like state near Dany for the first time, she becomes a controllable character and is offered a deal with Tiamat.
Take the deal. Immediately after the scripted sequence, strafe near the invisible wall on the left corner of the vision and wallclip by save-load - triggering a normally unreachable flag for the "Breaking the Chains"-event of Dany's story ark.
The chance of breaking Tiamat's influence is decided by a multitude of rolls and actions taken by Dany throughout the ark, but the only relevant roll at this point in the run is having Sleight of Hand, guaranteeing the maximum possible bonus to the roll.
By timing frames before selecting the dialogue option to make ideal RNG rolls, Dany succeeds in stealing Tiamat's lore (10/100 chance in a perfect no-glitch run) and checks the flags necessary for the "Wrath of the Dragon-Queen"-questline, allowing an Avatar of Tiamat to spawn in Essaria when the location is approached by the player party.
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Act 1: Dragon Dream Sequence
After gaining the first level, and going to sleep, Viserys will have a Dragon Dream. All of the Dragon Dreams share the same cell space, separated by natural borders and invisible walls.
First Dragon Dream is started in a body of a Red Dragon - fly to the north-east, reaching the invisible border near the 13th Fire of Valyria.
Wall-clip using the save-load mechanic, and go straight to the north, reaching the hidden cell with the Bloodraven - talking with him allows to jumpstart the "Queen-Mother" questline and skip the need to go through 6 more Dragon Dreams, saving 06.32 minutes total.
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Act 1: The Bright One ark
"The Bright One Glitch" is an infamous one - being literally the easiest one in the whole game to achieve to date, even after multiple patches.
Due to the quest triggers overlaying themselves after taking the objective, simply go inside the Uthero mansion, leave it, and enter it again - the Bright One will enter the state of "compromised" on his disguise and attack the player group openly.
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Act 1: The Undead Ark
Starting the "Undead Ark" of Braavos and Lys in the 1st Act checks a specific flag for all Faceless NPCs - causing them to share 2x [Flask of Holy Water] with the player on demand.
NPC Faceless could be forced to overspawn by bodyblocking a "Lyseni Woman"-NPC scripted to leave their temple at 27.02.290 - every NPC following her being a Faceless until she drinks the water from the "death pool", and NPC spawn continuing as usual.
117x Flasks is the amount strictly required for the run, with ~10x additional flasks being taken in case of bad RNG.
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Dario is an extremely dangerous opponent to the player party at the level it arrives to him in the speedrun. The community's accepted method is dropping a bottle of holy water at the Fleshforge's entrance, causing his escape pathing to glitch out, and stunlocking him in "feared" state with blessed water previously procured from the Faceless.
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Act 1: Item-duplication Glitch
There are several item-duplication mechanics in the game world, some intentionally left by the developers as parts of "The Broken Inevitability" and "Jabberclocky"-events.
The community's preferred method is using the artifact "Dark Mirror of Llolth" - the cell shown in the reflection being connected with the open-world version, but reaching inside instead teleporting the player to the open-world version of the cell.
By wall-clipping through the Dark Mirror, as such evading the teleport-marker, and placing an item inside the cell, a duplicate of the item will be created in the open-world version.
Through repeated use of the event-granted "Greater Teleport" during the "Children of the Great Serpent"-questline, the Dark Mirror is used to copy a total 3.150.160 HD worth of petrified Demonic Spiders -- necessary for the later part of the run and the "
The Great Sacrifice to [God]"-events unique to Viserys storyline.
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Act 1: Plane of Fire RNG
Off-plane encounters are some of the hardest to manipulate and are unavoidable during the first visits to Elemental Planes.
"Aberi's Crew", in particular, was used to be considered a run-killer since it is factually impossible to deal with them quickly - the NPCs programmed to be as frustrating to take down as possible.
Thankfully, due to a weird interaction between the Elemental Immunities and the crafting ingredients, regular [Rock Salt] is considered a physical obstacle when placed off-plane.
Due to the "Falling Rocks"-clause of the physics engine, NPCs flee rapidly approaching objects - and a bagful of salt is calculated as if all of the space between the salt was a solid object.
5.1 pounds of Salt is enough to cause critical Morale damage to the crew and force Aberi to permanently flee, ticking the group off the table of possible random encounters.
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Act 2: Force-Duplication Exploit
The 2nd Act of the game mechanically revolves mostly around building up a massive Empire and an army - vehicles are some of the most costly and difficult things to research and create, requiring most of the player's time to amass in a regular run.
However, due to not being considered either NPCs or PCs, the vehicles have some unique interactions:
By moving a Planeshift-capable vehicle partially into a natural Gate and then trying to Planeshift to one of the planes it is on right now, it is duplicated in its entirety, including the current crew members and non-unique items on-board.
While this exploit could be used with the Efretti Turtle Ships by Gate'ing between the PoF and Dis early on to generate infinite materials, it's more efficient to dupe Moonchasers by doing this in the much safer PoA - PoW gate.
The exploit also allows to auto-resolve any standard battle of the 2nd Act by bringing an "overwhelming" force to a fight.
Overall, using the exploit saves approximately 02.12.21 hours between the "Reconquest", "The City of Madness" and the "City of Molten Brass"-essential storyline events.
Tbc..?
This autism was supported by @Azel
