Overview
Most of the Strats/skips for Khimera Speedrunning, include all of the known miniboss skips and transition skip. Will help you get speedrunning achievements and also go fast.
Intro
Hi, my name is Nujumkey and I started running Khimera September 6th in 2016. Since I started running, I become a moderator for the game’s speedrun.com board and I moderate the discord (which is pretty easy since we’re all really chill on the server). Shout out to the Khimera speedrunning community, and the Suits and Sandals community which I’ve really enjoyed being apart of.
Khimera’s speedrunning community has been going for a good while and we’ve found a ton of skips/ strats to help save time. To help newer runners, I’m going to compile them. This guide is going to consist of some movement strats, all the known miniboss skips, and transition skip. There are some more skips than
Basic Movement
Dash Jump:
This is one of those techniques that really catches people off guard when they first see it. I’ve never seen a casual playthrough of the game that includes the dash jump, probably because the dash is already really effective.
The Dash jump is your primary means of movement; You’re going to want to use it as much as possible. Dash Jump gives you a ton of horizontal momentum, it’s way faster than dash-spamming and gives you some vertical height. Combine this with your double jump to maximize your speed when moving around levels.
Mimi’s chest/ Harpie Boost:
Both of these abilities are unlocked by defeating bosses, and they help you go fast. Mimi’s chest not only makes you fall a lot faster, it deals 1.5 hearts of damage when it comes in contact with an enemy. You’re going to want to spam Mimi’s chest on bosses (and mix in Pizza Shot where you can) for maximum damage output.
Harpie boost is less good for fighting but using it effectively is vital if you want to move through vertical sections of the game. Most notably the beginning Ice section in Mt. Afrokupa and EX: Tower of Power benefit hugely from using harpie boost to skip platforms. When running, you should find a lot of areas where you need to go straight up or straight down and you’ll want these two abilities to go fast.
Delayed Harpie Boost:
This abuses a pretty common mechanic in platforming games, when you fall off an edge in chimera the game gives you a small window to input your jump and have it act as if you were on the ground. This means we can slightly fall off a ledge and then harpie boost, which is very situationally useful.
Bouncing:
No video because I’m bad at bouncing effectively, but if you watch other runners you’ll see a lot of the top runners will get insane speed using Chelshia’s down attack to bounce off enemies and get a ton of momentum.
Miniboss Skips
Sky Fortress Miniboss Skip:
Really exciting skip that I don’t think actually saves time but also I’m not good at it so I can’t tell ¯_ツ_/¯. Two screens before the miniboss, at the top of the two moving platforms, there is an area on metal platforms above the pirates. It looks like the left is made entirely of a metal wall, but the top of the wall doesn’t actually have collision on it. Harpie Boost, dash into the wall, and when you get knocked upwards a little from the dash use you’re double jump to get on top of the level. It’s pretty tricky to pull off, and it’s hard to tell if it actually saves time, so I don’t recommend using it. Shout out to Nyanpi who found the skip.
Mt. Afrokupa Miniboss Skip:
Really easy skip that you could probably find on accident. Maybe it was. I’m not sure, it was found before we had a discord server. Shout out to Dualshock, who was the first person I saw do this skip (and a lot of the other early ones).
On Mt. Afrokupa instead of falling off a cliff to unite with Estylla, we’re going to jump straight over her head and a miniboss standing right behind her. Simply dash jump of the cliff, and then chain your double jump into a dash into a double jump until you hit the transition for the next screen. It will help you to have your sound effects volume. You won’t be able to see what you’re doing, but there aren’t any obstacles in your way so as long as you get over the first transition you’ll be fine as long as you’re moving right. If you have trouble getting over the first transition, you can harpie boost before you dash-jump-dash to get more height and make the skip a lot easier.
Oil Rig Miniboss Skip:
This skip was made possible when Harpie boost was put into the game. It’s also very easy to do, on the screen where you fight the miniboss stand on the cliff right before the trigger where the boss spawns. Harpie boost from the cliff above the screen, then dash past the spiky platform.
Pumpkin Valley Miniboss Skip:
This skip and the Mount Afrokupa one are very similar (in fact they were discovered around the save time). On the screen before the drawbridge with the miniboss on it, you can dash jump over where the camera lets you see. Get enough height, then chain your dashes and jumps until you go over the transition to the drawbridge section of the game. Now make your way to the right and enter the castle, the camera won’t follow you but there isn’t much in your way. It will help you to have your sound effects volume. If you go through the screen normally, the drawbridge is drawn and it looks like there is a hole you can fall in, but when we’re not on screen we seem to be able to walk over it just fine (I guess syax just didn’t bother making a hole there to add collision too when the drawbridge dropped).
This one is a bit harder than the Mt. Afrokupa skip as you have to jump a lot higher. I would recommend using Harpie boost before dash-jump-dashing over the transition to make it a lot easier. The only other tricky part of this skip is that if you go too far with your dash-jump-dash, you can actually get stuck on top of the castle above the drawbridge. If you get stuck, just move a little bit to the left to fall down and then move right to enter the castle.
Windy Way Miniboss Skip:
This is a really clever skip that come out when Harpie boost was first added to the game.
At the end of windy way, the final room has a miniboss with a pretty creative skip. The trigger for the miniboss is a little bit into the rom past a wall climbing enemy. Let the wall climber come down a little bit, then harpie above to where the enemy. Input your down attack to then bounce off the enemy. If you get enough height to be above the screen shown by the camera, you should be able to just dash over the trigger.
Ship 1 Miniboss Skip:
This was the first skip the speedrunning community shared in the discord. That was almost two years ago. Damn.
As you can see, this is probably the easiest miniboss skip in the game. In the room before the miniboss room, fall into the hole using the chest attack. This will skip the entirety of the encounter. We asked Syaxamaphone why it works and he had no idea (possibly we just move so fast we move past the trigger for the miniboss), but he never fixed it so we’ve just never had to fight this boss.
Transition Skip
This is easily my favorite of all the strats we discovered. Whenever you Use any ground shake attack as you hit a screen transition, you skip the camera scroll animation. Realistically this is only usable with Mimi’s chest attack, Morph into the chest and then quickly pop out of it and dash into the transition before the screen stops shaking. Every time you pull it off you save about a third of a second.
The first time I learned about transition skip I jumped into Ragazza plains and practiced it for about 20 minutes before I got it. I then tried do the whole level and failed to do it on every transition in the game. IMO the hardest part about doing this skip is adapting it to every transition in the game. Some transitions are a lot harder to skip than others, notably there are some doors that have very low ceilings. If you want to implement it well, you’re going to have to put in a lot of time practicing on the individual levels (and maybe submit some times to the leaderboard 😉)
Good news is, it’s a pretty minor skip so missing it isn’t an issue, but when you get it your run looks way better than it is.
Outro
These are more than half the skips that are currently in the game. If I manage to put together part two, I’ll bring up some skips that go way more OOB that what is in this guide. When you do finish your speedruns, record them and submit it to [link] so we can compare videos and times. Also check out the Khimera Speedrunning discord, where we occasionally have races and stuff [link].
There’s also an official S&S server that’s a lot more meme heavy if you’re interested. [link]
Thanks for reading, and good luck with your runs ~Nujumkey