Before we begin

Xaerock, Legless, thanks for volunteering, accepting the commentary for my run.
I'm very thankful for your guys help.

Preliminaries

We should stick and try to talk about the scoring and basic knowledge with general shmup terminology without using certain words, because no one would understand it and would make it confusing to understand.

I think it's acceptable to use these following words, only if the explanation is given with it.

• Segment == Stage
• SOL == Shot power
• LUNA == Rapid shot speed
• Discharge == Bomb (Only available w/ SOL level 3 or more)
• FINELINE == grazing needle bullets
• NUTCRACK == destroying destructable bullets
• UNCHAIN == killing the master while the master-slave chained enemy has a slave

etc....

Timeline overview

Timelines for this run. Time stamp can and will differ. Just for general overview.

• [02:05 ~ 02:06] Introduction. Introduce of each of us.
• [02:06 ~ 02:10] Game explanation, run explanation, and Movement explanation of DEADLIAR by twilightex, because I think that no one would understand what I am doing from the start lol.
  • Explain the goal for this run.
  • Explain the game's core.
    • 8 stages + 1 bonus stage
    • 4 Playable characters
  • Explain mainshot, subweapon, and bomb using Free training mode.
• [02:10 ~ 03:15] Start game
  • Xaerock and Legless
    • Explain core game play
      • Items
      • Extend system
      • TERRA & Shrine
      • Spirit scoring
      • etc...
    • Explain some history for this game, maybe some history of spirit scoring is good for game explanation.
      • previous WR and such
    • Commentate details for scoring along the way.
  • Twilightex
    • Play game
    • Try to talk if necessary
• [03:15 ~ 03:20] Outro, run overview, shout-outs.
• [03:20 ~ 03:25] Buffer

I will basically stride through the game because I don't have much time.
(Most likely will not stop during segment breaks and Intermissions. Maybe I'll take some sip of water.)

Goals for this run

1. Try and go for 1.5B (150,000 on screen display)
2. Get the viewers to be interested in Hellsinker., and gain more popularity in the shmup community.

Spirit Goals

Personal Notes for commentary

Under this section is my take on some stuffs, and mostly for when you forget about something, you can look here for some references.

About me and Hellsinker.

I have started playing this game since the BOOTH release (2019 Jan.).
So it has been about 1 and a half years since I became obsessed with this game.
I have never heard or seen Hellsinker. before the BOOTH release, and I'm kind of glad I didn't, since it would've ruined the experience I had.

I used to play Touhou and CAVE games before this, so I knew most of the shmup strategy or what was going on, but it was a totally different and unique game system, and it really made me immersed of how different it was.
I became so obsessed with this game, and seeing that no one cared about this game scoring wise, I started to think that I should be the one to dissect about Spirit scoring and take this game to the limit.

After beating the previous WR of 1.33 Billion in March 2020, I actually started to try and discover how this game works with some help from srosro (current Fossil Maiden WR holder) and generate new routes with the new knowledge I gained along the way.
(I actually didn't understand how this game fully worked when I got the WR of 1.35B)

Current record is 1.59 Billion (159,731).
I think the theoretical value would be around 1.62 Billion ~ 1.65 Billion (162,000 ~ 165,000) for my current routes if executed perfectly.

My take on Hellsinker.

Game wise

"Auto scrolling shmup like adventure game" would be my impression for this game.
Segment 3, 5, and TLB's health system is very strange for a shmup.

Game takes 45 minutes for survival, 1 hour long if you're going for scoring.
Pretty long for a single loop game, and you have to be concentrating most of the time so it's a very tiring experience if you were to score this game.

The bullet patterns are pretty mild overall, but the bullet speed is fast compared to other shmups. It's easy to get run over by a bullet if not careful.
Once you get used to it, surviving is not that difficult.
But as for scoring, it's safe to say that it's pretty difficult among as with other shmup titles, not just from survival point of view, but from the sheer complexity of combining every single scoring elements into an applicable run.

Ridiculously cryptic and terrible first impression on the menu screen and game play (especially the recent addition of the "Tutorial") draws the curious away, which is very sad since this game offers every aspect of shmup you can get in your lifetime.

That's why I volunteered for this run. I want more people to try this game out.

Scoring for spirits (In general)

Spirit increases with

• milking / leeching and killing the enemy
• automatically gain spirits upon Mid stage (I call it Running Spirit but I don't know the correct term)
  • The gain speed is based on current Spirit value and Stella value. Easily noticeable in Stage 6 and 8. The more Spirit you have, the more Running Spirit you gain.
  • This is like always playing in Kakusei mode in Espgaluda.
    • Reference:

      へるしんかのリトライバグ続き
      走行SPに関する部分もリトライで持ち越しちゃうのか、30億ぐらいの段階だと常に針かすってるかのようにSPが入る
      SLUGLADY登場でSPメーターがピタっと止まるのが印象的 pic.twitter.com/14eBm2Qc7V

      — すろ (@srosro) May 26, 2020

      https://twitter.com/srosro/status/1265204659951505408

• killing certain master/slave (or, parent/child) type enemy (UNCHAINED)
• grazing linear bullets (FINELINE)
• destroying certain bullets (NUTCRACK)
• extending (Immortality Bonus)
  • base of 80 spirits, and additional 40 spirits is added every time.
  • so it goes up like 80, 120, 160, 200...etc. The highest i've seen is 1640 == 16M400k Spirits
  • Dying once before segment 7 is nearly 2400 net loss of spirits.

Every 1 Spirit you see on the screen is actually worth 10k spirits,
because the bottom 4 digit is actually hidden from the screen. (You can see the bottom digits in the stage end results.)

Scoring with SOLIDSTATE Deadliar

Increasing the enemy's inner spirit with the mainshot's aura ("Milking", "Leeching") is the main source for spirits.
This requires constant mashathon of the mainshot and point blanking the enemy, which is a highly risky move considering that you have to avoid being hit at all times.

Whilst milking the enemy, you need to constantly move ahead of time to properly position yourself, or position the subweapon for incoming enemies or items such as lifechips, which sometimes results in ridiculous amount of inputs in a short time.

Balancing the routes between "the risk of point blanking" and "survival (Immortality bonus)" is the main key for Deadliar, but I would mostly take the risk for higher scores.

I am using SOLIDSTATE (auto bomb ON) for the following merits.

Pros

1. death protection (Most important)
2. automatic suppression radius deployment

Downside of using SOLIDSTATE (auto bomb)

1. You can only gain grazing score only if you are deploying the suppression radius. You will only gain around 20% of what you could have gotten if suppression field is not deployed.
   For this reason, you'll need to use subweapon to efficiently damage enemies, which is quite hard to control.

2. TERRA (bonus stage trigger) value drop is higher upon stage clear, compared to ADEPT (no auto bomb).

3. Random STELLA drops upon stage clear.
   If you play a stage perfectly without using an auto bomb, you will lose more STELLA upon stage clear, but using an auto bomb on some stages will reduce the STELLA drop on some stages, which is a VERY strange feature.
   Very inconsistent, since the precise conditions are still unknown.

Reference:

4. Automatic suppression radius can be a problem upon certain points. This is especially noticeable in the Final boss.

I used to keep track of the spirits I gained in the past runs.
You can use this as reference if you need to.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1H06QL-DIbxZP_0xAJ8BdLKTxdtAIypMJL9pgeTypLgE/edit?usp=sharing

Routing and such

Most of the routing is the same in this video, but there are some new strategy not included in this vid.

General routing explanation for this run

• Using routes to milk every single enemies possible
• Strategic positioning of subweapon for lifechip gains
• A bit safer route compared to my other World Record runs
  • Especially grazing in Segment 2
  • Keeping my auto bombs during RUSTED DRAGON
  • Safer execution in Shrine of Farewell especially Al4th.. depending on my cockiness on that day lol. If confident enough, I'll try to loop the inner spirit gain.
• Intentional hit on Segment 7, if necessary
  • If over 24 NECESSARY, I will auto bomb, then get hit.
  • If over 22 NECESSARY, I will get hit without auto bomb.
• Using 60 blade charge in GARLAND and 771

New strats

1. No 60 second blade charge in Segment 5. This was hindering my spirit gains in segment 5 mid stage, due to less milking opportunity.
2. I will not go into LUNA side in Segment 5. Getting more spirits by killing more golden enemies has proven to be much more important than getting extra life chips.
3. I will drop every life chips from OLD ROSE upon destruction. This is to deliberately extend in the start of Segment 6, which will give me much more running spirit (automatic spirit gains during mid stage).

Stage Notes

If you forget anything, see here for references.

Segment 1

Story

You are moving along the abandoned battle ruins.

Scoring / Notes

Mid Stage

• [Timer 54 ~ 70] This grazing is the most hardest part for scoring in Stage 1. I might restart here.
• [Timer 116] Throwing the subweapon on static objects increases Spirits. This method is used in Stage 1 boss's tentacles, Stage 2 ammo milking and Stage 5 wall attacking as well. More spirits can be gained using Tobari Lv.2 (Orange aura) rather than Lv.1 (Blue aura)

Boss

• Destroying the bosses right hand then left hand will give out Ingots. (If killed from left then right, it will not give out ingots.)
  • Ingots act as fraction of a Lifechip and spirit.

Personal thoughts

It's a rather difficult scoring for stage 1 since you need too graze aggressively and use your discharge correctly.
Failing one small thing reduces your total Spirit to near 3800, which slows down your Spirit Breakthrough is pretty scary.

Notable things

• The background scrolling during the boss battle gets faster along with the rocket boost from the boss.
• When clearing the stage, the rank(STELLA) will be reset to a certain amount (Most likely "4" if you clear the stage with Stella "A"), but when you are using SOLIDSTATE (autobomb setting ON), if you use the autobomb in certain segments you can prevent some loss of rank upon entering the next stage.
  I will most likely use 1 autobomb during segment 1, 1 autobomb in segment 2, 2 autobomb in segment 3.

e.g.)

• No hit in Segment 1 == [Stella A => Stella 3]
• 1 or 2 autobomb in Segment 1 == [Stella A => Stella 4]

segment 2

Story

You are still moving along the abandoned battle ruins.
There was once a castle here. Maybe the boss (Scarlet-Queen) was living in there.

Scoring / Notes

Mid Stage

• [Timer 57 - 63] Milking each of the enemy will result in 35 to 50 Spirits. This movement is risky because the sword like objects has an hitbox, and I will be using an discharge before this attack, which means that I have no autobomb.
• [Timer 70] Destroying every single wing requires precise shooting and hit stop methods. Very hard to do, I sometimes mess this up.
• [Around Timer 75] Spirit Breakthrough should occur here.
  • Gives you an instant bonus life along with bonus spirits.
  • Breakthrough resets your NECESSARY value to 20 == Extend faster == More Immortality Bonus.
• [Timer 95 - 105] Milking the bullet like object will give out around 180 Spirits in total.
• [Timer 108 - 128] The most hardest part of grazing in this game. Requires certain precision of movement and good use of subweapon.

Boss

Destuction of the feet (front arm?) is the first priority, but destroying it too fast or too slow will interfere with the pattern to graze optimally. I will time the destruction in a certain timing to enable maximum grazing.

After grazing the full pattern, I will milk the wings until LIMIT 14.
The final form will throw out all ranged thorn bullets, which will be converted to ingots after destroying the boss.

Defeating the boss with stella 8 or more will start a extra boss fight.
Spirit form of Scarlet-Queen is easy with deadliar.

Personal thoughts

2nd stage is even harder to score, maybe the hardest since there are MANY kinds of scoring techniques used just for this stage.
It takes weeks, even months to get the scoring straight.

• Unchain & Grazing for beginning and last
• Precise health management for enemies that doesn't show their health bar
• Milking and point blanking enemies with hit boxes
• Precise aim for the wings and core

segment 3

Story

You are flying across the sea where Cardinal Shaft (Tower) is present.
You can see the Tower closing in. (Especially after the stage result screen)

Scoring / Notes

• I will be milking the mother ships constantly for maximum spirit gain.

• [Timer 60] There is a hidden mechanic where you can manipulate the next enemy spawn location. Staying on the right half of the screen will make the enemy spawn on the left, and vice versa. I will stay on the right side for easier milking on the right mother ship.

• [Timer 148] This mid boss like enemy has a hidden mechanic. You need to destroy both tip of the arms first, or each joint will worth like 10~ spirits rather than 30~.

• [Timer 192] If you destroy the mother ship before the last few frames of the stage ending, the bullets coming out of the mother ship can be converted to ingots. (worth only 5 spirits but it's better than nothing.)

Personal thoughts

3rd stage is a simple stage for scoring.
Milking the mother ship is sufficient enough to get around 2000 spirits just from them. Knowing some of the hidden mechanics, and knowing that unchaining the flock of enemies is bad for scoring will get you enough spirits for Spirit Breaks if you are having trouble surviving.

segment 4

Story

You've reached the Cardinal Shaft, but instead of going in from the front door, you are going from the underground sewage system to avoid direct contact with the enemies.
But this sewage is guarded by a very strong enemy, the RUSTED-DRAGON (boss).

Scoring / Notes

Mid Stage

So much going on, its hard to talk about everything.
Focusing on each aspect is difficult, so you can talk about whatever you feel like is fine.

Boss

I might take a hit here.
I will go for a safer strat than usual and keep the SOL (wont use discharge) at the final phase.

Personal thoughts

Mid stage isn't much of a hassle, you just need to know what to do for each sectors. Most of it is just milking enemies so it's not that fun anyways.

The boss, however is the most exciting in the game IMO, since it introduces you to speed kill the mini enemies (CLAMMBONs) and the final form introduces a pure bullet hell experience & an unchaining mini-game. Makes you feel like a badass.

segment 5

Story

From the underground sewers, you enter the Cardinal Shafts most important part of the system, the Huge archive.
The Archive is built as a huge maze to confuse the intruders.

The core of the archive lies the boss (PERPETUAL-CALENDAR), in which where the enemies gets revived and sent back to where they guard (or full fill their will).
The "Archive" as the name suggests, holds every data of enemies in history.
Your mission here is to destroy the PERPETUAL-CALENDAR to stop it from reincarnating the enemies, before going to "the HELLSINKER".

Scoring / Notes

Mid stage

I will not go into LUNA side (which means no 60-sec blade here :P )
This is actually a new strat with regards to srosro, we had a chat a while ago that it's more optimal to gain spirits from the GOLDEN-ARM (the gold enemy), rather than maximizing the life chip gains. This route grants 150 ~ 200 more spirits than the luna route.

Boss

It's gonna be a long battle. 7 Minutes of intense boss fights (Yatta!)
Most of the time, its going to be "milk, kill, get ingots. Repeat".
WISH SLAUGHTER strat is the same too, but I will not take the Lifechip from OLD ROSE.
This is another new strat, if I skip the extend to happen in Segment 6, I will gain much more running spirit in segment 6. (around 100 ~ 200 spirit gain)

Pure random attack dodging and milking is constantly happening, so I might take a hit or two. (Especially the tracing Red fire thing.)

Notable things

• The UNNAMED 597 (round blue enemy) will always spawn from the opposite direction when the stage takes a turn. (For example, if the stage turned upwards, the 597 will spawn from the bottom side of the stage. If the stage turned right, it will spawn from the left.)

• Timing the kill on the last enemy for the maze (mid-boss) can manipulate the movement for the PERPETUAL-CALENDAR. This is especially noticeable for the homing fire tentacles.
  (If done correctly, it will spawn from the left side of the screen, which I am accustomed to.)

Personal thoughts

Stage 5 took a very long time to master, around 1 month to perfectly balance the scoring and survival routes.
The maze is just a simple memory-game so not much fun there.
The boss is quite fun since each enemy has its own share of uniqueness to them.
The homing fire thing can suck my D.

segment 6

Story

After destroying the PERPETUAL-CALENDAR, there are no more fear for the prayers to come back against you.

You head up the Cardinal-shaft, but it is swarmed with enemies. It's purpose, solely to keep you away from the HELLSINKER.

The route to the HELLSINKER requires a KEY to progress.
The key is guarded by the boss, "Apostle of the seeds".

Scoring / Notes

Mid Stage

[Timer 0 ~ 10] The reason why I throw out Tobari, is not only to damage the enemy, but because I can use this as an guideline to understand where I need to be at a certain time frame. It's very useful.

[Timer 60] Optimal grazing route has been found, and it is possible to constantly get around 870 ~ 900 Spirits by grazing.

[Timer 140] Kill Breakthrough should occur around here.

[Timer 206 ~ 220] The needles don't target you straight. Very difficult to handle, I might take a hit here.

Boss

The music is phenomenal but the boss attacks are ridiculous.
I might take a hit here. The strat is the same from the video.

1. Milk the first phase
2. Reduce DAWN's HP to 4,5 % before team attack phase
3. Destroy DAWN in the self destruct phase
4. Kill DUSK when most bullets are out

Personal thoughts

Very scary stage even for survival let alone scoring, since the stage is composed to kill you just for simple positioning mistakes.
The difficulty ramp up is definitely there, but scoring technique wise, stage 2 is much harder since most of the score from stage 6 is grazing from the 1000 KNIGHTS or the mistargeting needles from the DEAD-LEAF.

The boss is simply a run killer most of the time.
The infamous DAWN's beam explosion pattern is worth mentioning for it's insanely fast and ridiculous range of attack from the wind up.
(reaction time is around 30F, so 0.5 sec)

segment 7

Story

With the KEY from stage 6, you go through a one-way hallway.
The door shuts behind you, only to trap you further inside.

Scoring / Notes

Mid Stage

Gaining lifechips and grazing would be the most notable part, but not much going on. It's short too, so it's much more fun to talk about the stage background rather than commenting the movements lol.

Boss

He has so many parts that restores every time, and each of them will worth 10 ~ 30, so milking them for how ever long as you can is important.
He changes his attack patters with your current STELLA value, so it's vital to keep more than 7 stella, even if you suicide.
There are many places that you are prone to get hit, since you will be using your discharge to destroy the body parts.
You need to be super careful for the 6th attack pattern.

This boss fight offers 18 ~ 19 life chips worth of life, and give out an extra life if the core is destroyed.
Due to this, I will intentionally suicide if I have more than 22 NECESSARY upon facing REX CAVALIER.
If I have more than 24 NECESSARY, I will use my auto bomb then suicide to gain 4 necessary.

This will give me an extra extend before the shrine (960 points), which equals to 2000 spirits after the shrine.

Notable things

The stage background is phenomenal.
First half of the stage shows that you are entering the doors, but once you reach the boss, the perspective reverses and you can see that the door actually closes behind you.

Personal thoughts

I love the atmosphere for this stage.
Scoring wise, there is not much to say.First half is just grazing and getting life chips. The boss looks tricky at first glance, but once you get used to the restoring parts, its not that hard to understand where you have to hit.
I had trouble the first time fighting him, but after the 3rd or 4th try I could defeat him without a sweat.

Shrine

Story

??????????

Scoring / Notes

• Speed killing non milkable enemies is important, due to grazing in Temperament-Nil and raising inner spirits for Al4th takes up most of the time for shrine.

• I might take a hit on Al4th's 2nd, 3rd attack. If I get hit, I will stop scoring to minimize the damage to the score.

  • If you take a hit during any of the boss, you will lose around 4 ~ 10 crystals permanently. The penalty is higher if you are getting hit constantly.
    • Taking a hit during Kaname stones will not affect anything to crystal values, but if Stella is lower than A, it will affect the crystal values. So it is important to recover the stella as quickly as possible by going near the kaname stone after dying. (The stream of Terra token after destroying the kaname stone restores your stella so fast that you can restore your stella to A before the crystal calculation timing.)

• Bombing during kaname stones will result in 0 crystals.

I'm sure you guys will talk about how shrine works in general (like spirit x2 and no auto bombs, etc.), so I'll leave that up to you.

Personal thoughts

The Shrine is all fun and games until you start scoring for spirits.

Terrible scoring design TBH, "all or nothing" scoring mechanics is a very heartbreaking experience because you will lose all of your 45 minutes progress here just by taking a single hit. In paper, the concept for this scoring design is cool, but in reality it's a pain in the neck.

The biggest problem I have for this stage, is that there are character difference for this stage (LIMIT difference, item collection disadvantage for Minogame and Kagura) is kind of a let down for those trying to score with their favorite character.

It should've been a fair game for any character.

segment 8

Story

It is dawn now, and you reached near the top of the tower.
The final step to "the Hellsinker" is guarded with an ominous looking enemies that we have never seen during the past stages.

Scoring / Notes

Mid Stage

Numerous amount of grazing is required from the beginning.
It was very hard to create this grazing route for a SOLIDSTATE deadliar, because SOLIDSTATE completely negates grazing if you shoot the enemy.

Boss

• Using 60 blade charge in GARLAND and 771.

  • This actually took a lot of time to route correctly. Especially the QUASAR grazing pattern was hard to figure out.
    • Discharging during the final attack lowers the satisfaction level to near 0. But using the LV.2 Tobari will raise the satisfaction to 3 just in time. Very scary to execute, since if I fail this everything will go in shambles.

• Precise deployment of Tobari LV.2 for the 771 fight will allow the following

  • Token retrieval with regards to more extends
  • Misteltoe sealing (The damage to QUADRUPLE ONE will effectively cancel the bullets.)

• The screen will most likely freak out in the 771 fight due to low bitrate for streaming. Bear with me for this one..

Personal thoughts

This is the only stage that I created a perfect pattern from scratch. So I have some emotional attachment to this stage.
I believe I single-handedly raised this stage's potential for SOLIDSTATE DEADLIAR for around 0.15 Billion points (150,000 on screen).

Playing with SOLIDSTATE for this stage is a nightmare.
Grazing from the beginning and misteltoe sealing for the final boss cannot be triggered by yourself, so I had to make a pattern to compensate that disadvantage.
It took around 2 month to create a sealing pattern and a grazing pattern.

The moment of truth kind of boss fight gives you anxiety, nervousness, and shaking hands every time.

Simply the best and the most rewarding stage ever created for a shmup IMO.