I just can't anymore

[thebiomage]

I had 100% the game before the DLC, and started playing chapter 9 now (after a 10 month break from the game). It was a little rough in some rooms, but kept making steady progress until I hit this room (looks like Steam screwed up the time stamp, it's at 22:08):

https://youtu.be/v416cmnPAvw?t=1328

I just can't do that first part with the wave dash + wall dash. The wall dashing was always problematic for me, so chapter 5C in the original was by far the hardest part of the game (think it took something like 5 hours straight to clear that).

This room alone has taken me 3+ hours already and I think I've cleared the first part 2 times. The wave dash + wall dash combo in quick succession is pretty hard to pull off as it is (at least with a keyboard), but throw in the moving block and my brain just can't handle it anymore. If I focus on performing the combo, I can't focus on the timing. If I focus on the timing, I can't perform the combo. I've tried to just somehow ignore the block but the sound it makes screws my concentration. When I sometimes actually manage to pull off the wall dash, it lacks upward momentum and I can't get over the spikes.

This one little part is giving me more trouble than 5C or 7C which is pretty sad. I'd hate to pull out AutoHotkey and just make a script to perform the wave dash to make this whole thing easier, but this is getting pretty damn tiring.

[orian34]

you could simply use assist mode

[thebiomage]

Originally posted by orian34:

you could simply use assist mode

If you're gonna cheat, might as well cheat without getting caught (AutoHotkey).

[orian34]

Why does it matter?

[Mawdesty]

Getting caught by who? You'd be the only one to know you used assist so unless you outed yourself about using it no one would have known. Even if the devs acknowledged it was cheating, which I'm pretty sure they never did, why wouldn't you use the "cheats" already in the game if you we're willing to use any at all? Isn't it somehow worse to spend the extra effort to get aid that isn't even in game in the first place? Stillfeelsbadpeoplecallassistcheating

Either way, not to discount the difficulty of that bit but I do have to say just use a controller. I am fairly certain I'd never have beaten chapter 9, nor even probably 8, if I had used keyboard.

[orian34]

Originally posted by junkbarrage:

Either way, not to discount the difficulty of that bit but I do have to say just use a controller. I am fairly certain I'd never have beaten chapter 9, nor even probably 8, if I had used keyboard.

Really? I always felt like it was easier on a keyboard, but thinking about it now, maybe it's the opposite, less inputs for directions

[mango]

You can skip it, it’s hardley used after

[Mawdesty]

Originally posted by orian34:

Originally posted by junkbarrage:

Either way, not to discount the difficulty of that bit but I do have to say just use a controller. I am fairly certain I'd never have beaten chapter 9, nor even probably 8, if I had used keyboard.

Really? I always felt like it was easier on a keyboard, but thinking about it now, maybe it's the opposite, less inputs for directions

Even if it's something usually easier on keyboard I do lack certain dexterity. But yeah, with how many wasd combinations need pushing for precision movements with additional inputs of jump and dash thrown in I have to assume it is more tedious. If the game has a comfortable mapping, or allows the player to remap keybindings, that does go a long way in a platformer but I still prefer controller.

[dripkidd]

Don't wavedash, so you don't have to jump up.

Just activate the block (dash up, press grab briefly, let go, drop down). Then stand before the little rectangle sign on the ground, press down and right, wait until the block gets to the third column, now dash and press jump. The timing is similar to the wavedash, but it's easier to get consistently, b/c you are stationary. The flight path is a bit different, apparently, here it makes no difference. If you don't get your jump back, you jumped too early.

wallboost:

1. don't press directions, left or right, only dash up and press jump, that's it - after you got it, you can steer yourself, but not until then.

2. you need to get your dash full length, if you jump too early you don't get the max boost, press jump at the end of the dash

If the sound effects bother you, turn them off for this room, I hate a lot of noise in this game, including this block whirring

Stick to the keyboard, it is more precise (if it's a good kb).

Take brakes, accept that it will take a while, there are some stupid rooms in this chapter. This one is top 5 for sure.

[arejang]

I've looked around some various chats and for sure this room was the one that really put a lot of people off. I've seen more people ask for help on this specific room or express frustration here than any other room in this chapter, and there are a lot of difficult rooms throughout chapter 9. I think for this room you have to train your brain to clump a series of actions as a single thing. So wave dash (or do the grounded-wave dash that dripkidd suggested, since the timing is way easier to control that way), dash up, then jump. All of that is one thing instead of each key press a separate item in your mind. Once you begin execution, don't even look at the moving platform. Follow through on all presses into the end of the sequence like it were one single movement. This way, you can focus on getting the timing down, then do the single "move", and it's a little less taxing on the mind. This is, by the way, what pianists rely on to execute key presses that are faster than what the brain can normally react to. They clump a series of actions into single blocks and they play, block by block, instead of considering individual key press a separate item in their mind.

I think possibly the reason people struggle with this room specifically is due to the fact that this is one of those few rooms where the flow of play is interrupted by a waiting time that isn't measured out for you with a metronome, which is what typically accompanies these pauses in cassette rooms with those puzzle blocks that pop in and out. So the game almost trains you to have some sort of stimulus that guides you in one contiguous movement from start to finish, but in this room, there's no metronome and there's minimal guides on when you should jump and where to keep things consistent. The instinct is to start the moving platform, and immediately wave dash into a vertical jump, and the level would usually have been designed so the timing matches up almost magically. But in here it isn't. So you have to manually measure the timing through other visual cues, which is difficult in a fast paced environment like this.

Anyway, I think you do need to associate a sequence of moves as a single item in your mind to help simplify this problem for you.

[Mallix]

Originally posted by thebiomage:

Originally posted by orian34:

you could simply use assist mode

If you're gonna cheat, might as well cheat without getting caught (AutoHotkey).

How exactly would you be getting "caught"??? If you are worried about the Assist Stamp on your profile, you can simply disable it and it will remove the Assist Mode Stamp from your profile, leaving no traces behind... so I'm not sure what you mean, but installing 3rd party software to cheat would be an actual cheat and also completely unnecessary, considering you can just turn on invincibilty + infinite dashing to cheese the parts you have trouble with.

[Alexiel アレクシエル]

@OP

too be honest i feel the same. and its a shame. i completed the game before the dlc to 100%.
over the course of the dlc i started to like the game less and less because of frustration. its one thing to not be gud enough to get everything. another if u already had 100% and are now forced to endure this.
i beat the dlc with a third of my deaths i had before. which is a lot. all i need to do now for the 100% is to beat the last freaking room. and i jsut decded to jsut active the assist mode and grab that damn berry. the frustration isnt worth it, nor is my hand :^)

i struggled the most your room aswell, what helped me was changing from analog stick to digipad. after this personally think it gets easier, this room is jsut annoying with the timing.. also realising that the walldash timing is pretty forgiving and you dont wanna press jump as soon as you are next to the wall.

now the moonberry room is just. idk i can get to halfpoint consistently but its so long and stupidly precise at some points. again i get the point of getting gud to get it, but if you had 100% it jsut feels kinda... frustrating. and makes for a bad/salty time if i would ever look bad at the game. which i didnt do before.

[orian34]

Originally posted by Alexiel アレクシエル:

@OP

too be honest i feel the same. and its a shame. i completed the game before the dlc to 100%.
over the course of the dlc i started to like the game less and less because of frustration. its one thing to not be gud enough to get everything. another if u already had 100% and are now forced to endure this.
i beat the dlc with a third of my deaths i had before. which is a lot. all i need to do now for the 100% is to beat the last freaking room. and i jsut decded to jsut active the assist mode and grab that damn berry. the frustration isnt worth it, nor is my hand :^)

i struggled the most your room aswell, what helped me was changing from analog stick to digipad. after this personally think it gets easier, this room is jsut annoying with the timing.. also realising that the walldash timing is pretty forgiving and you dont wanna press jump as soon as you are next to the wall.

now the moonberry room is just. idk i can get to halfpoint consistently but its so long and stupidly precise at some points. again i get the point of getting gud to get it, but if you had 100% it jsut feels kinda... frustrating. and makes for a bad/salty time if i would ever look bad at the game. which i didnt do before.

That reminds me of when Binding of Isaac gets updates...

[Mawdesty]

Originally posted by dripkidd:

Stick to the keyboard, it is more precise (if it's a good kb).

This is probably true over joystick but I still feel like Dpad can offer better results. I did use a controller with joystick sadly as my old cont was broken and the xbone replacement has a far and away dpad. If I had dpad I maybe could have shaved a hundred deaths off my chapter 9.

[thebiomage]

Originally posted by dripkidd:

Don't wavedash, so you don't have to jump up.

Just activate the block (dash up, press grab briefly, let go, drop down). Then stand before the little rectangle sign on the ground, press down and right, wait until the block gets to the third column, now dash and press jump. The timing is similar to the wavedash, but it's easier to get consistently, b/c you are stationary. The flight path is a bit different, apparently, here it makes no difference. If you don't get your jump back, you jumped too early.

wallboost:
...
2. you need to get your dash full length, if you jump too early you don't get the max boost, press jump at the end of the dash

Thanks for these tips, I don't think I would have been able to clear it with the wave dash. Only took me like 3 more hours, for a total of around 6 hours to clear this one room. I don't even want to know how many deaths. I can see the room was not supposed to be this hard, but it just played on all my weaknesses in Celeste.

Never realized you can regain your jump by just doing the grounded dash jump. Has it always been like this, or was it changed for the DLC? I just remember doing the dash jumps in 8C where they were required.

With the grounded dash jump I was able to focus on the moving block alone, and wait for it to reach the 3rd spike before executing the much simpler combo. Also looking back at it I realize a lot of the times I probably pressed jump too quickly after the wall dash, thus not having enough height to clear the spikes. Even with all of this knowledge toward the end I would probably clear the initial jump once every 20 attempts.

Now to just see this through so I never have to think of this game again.

[thebiomage]

Originally posted by Mallix:

Originally posted by thebiomage:

If you're gonna cheat, might as well cheat without getting caught (AutoHotkey).

How exactly would you be getting "caught"??? If you are worried about the Assist Stamp on your profile, you can simply disable it and it will remove the Assist Mode Stamp from your profile, leaving no traces behind... so I'm not sure what you mean, but installing 3rd party software to cheat would be an actual cheat and also completely unnecessary, considering you can just turn on invincibilty + infinite dashing to cheese the parts you have trouble with.

I would have considered using a script that does the wave dash with a single key press less cheating than activating assist mode invincibility and dashing through the room. Also I simply find the idea of the assist mode pandering, if I'm forced to cheat I would do it my own way. But it doesn't matter since it never had to come to that.