Hey everyone, my name’s tomatoanus, also
known as Needlepeen, and this is an Unrestricted
Shura Ending speedrun of Sekiro: Shadows Die
Twice.
This run is actually performed by LilAggy,
the current world record holder for this category,
who also worked with me on writing this script
to make sure that everything is correct and
is as accurate as possible.
If you’d prefer to watch this run without
commentary, or Aggy’s world record, there
are links in the description below.
Also with this being in the ‘Unrestricted’
category, glitches are allowed, including
a pretty major one called airswimming.
If you would prefer to watch a no airswim
run or a glitchless run, I’ve linked the
current world records for both in the description,
respectively ran by Mitchriz and E1uM4y.
This run is also performed on version 1.02,
which is the version from the day-one patch
of the game’s release.
This is because there are several glitches
and tricks that we’re going to use that
were patched out, but because version 1.02
is an official release for the game, it’s
still considered kosher.
Also, this game is being ran on PC.
When the game begins, our immediate goal is
to make it to the Moon-view Tower to meet
with Kuro, the Divine Heir.
This is normally where the game introduces
its stealth mechanics to you as you sneak
unarmed past a handful of enemies but sneaking
is slow.
Instead we want to head straight to the tower
with reckless abandon.
During this segment we don’t have the ability
to run yet, so we spam jump the whole way
because it not only makes us harder to hit
for the enemies as we move past them, but
it’s actually the fastest way to move if
you can’t run.
Similar to sneaking, hanging from ledges and
hugging walls is typically slow as well, so
we skip it where we can by just double-jumping
off of nearby walls.
Once we finish roleplaying as an action movie
star that can slowly move around and not get
shot, we arrive at the Moon-view Tower and
immediately skip a cutscene.
After we skipped the cutscene, we received
our sword, and I’ll be honest, I'm awful
at Japanese pronunciations so I’m going
to let text-to-speech handle any names that
I find tough.
When we received [Kusabimaru], we took a knee
and talked with Kuro who gave us a Healing
Gourd, and also said that we must escape Ashina
Castle.
Our rendezvous spot is a secret passage under
a moat bridge.
We have to get there first and then signal
to Kuro with a reed whistle.
With [Kusabimaru] in hand, we have the ability
to sprint and can sprint past all the enemies
who have now forgotten about the shinobi who
jumped by moments ago.
While we sprint, we grabbed some ash and then
make a huge leap down to the secret passage
where we signal to Kuro.
This triggers another cutscene that we skip,
after which we concuss ourselves by hitting
our head on the ceiling a few times in the
name of moving slightly faster in this area
where we can’t sprint.
At the end of the tunnel, we emerge into a
silver grass field and trigger another cutscene,
leading to a fight against Genichiro.
This fight has the same outcome whether you
win or lose, so for the sake of speed we just
take the L immediately, and skip the cutscene.
We awake with a shinobi prosthetic arm installed
in place of our left arm, so we must’ve
gotten really messed up in the cutscene we
skipped.
The prosthetic gives us the Spider-Man ability,
letting us traverse most the map and enter
the first real area of the game, Ashina Outskirts.
In the outskirts, we’re going to run by
an item that we pick up which gives us some more ash.
As I said earlier, this is a speedrun to complete
the game with the Shura Ending, which is one
of four possible endings, and is also the
earliest ending in the game.
In order to complete the Shura Ending, we
need to obtain three key items: the Shelter
Stone, the Lotus of the Palace, and the Mortal
Blade.
Once we get those three key items, we’re
able to obey the Iron Code to face the final bosses.
Of the three key items we need, we’re first
going to go for the Shelter Stone.
Once we beat the boss guarding the stone,
we get the Mibu Breathing Technique, which
lets us perform the glitch I mentioned earlier
called airswimming.
To get there though, we have to go through
several areas which contain bosses that are
normally not optional.
The first of those bosses is the Chained Ogre
right here, but we’re able to make the ogre
optional with a trick called ‘Ogre Skip.’
Watch how Aggy is able to jump here after
he falls off the ledge.
This is often referred to as a ‘delayed
jump,’ and it allows us to jump around the
corner of the building, and then double-jump
off a wall to ledge grab and bypass the ogre fight.
Like in real life, in Sekiro you normally
have to be in contact with something to be
able to jump, you know, like something to
push off of with your legs.
However, if you drop off a ledge and jump
with incredibly precise timing, you’ll jump
as you’re falling off the ledge, allowing
you to get extra distance on your jump.
Despite looking relatively simple, ogre skip
is actually the hardest part of the entire run.
With the ogre out of the way, we head towards
a large canyon, where you normally encounter
the Great Serpent.
If you’re unfamiliar, the Great Serpent
is a set piece boss that focuses on stealth.
But sneaking is slow, so Aggy is going to
just sprint through the whole thing.
At one point, we perform another really hard
and precise trick called Canyon Skip, wherein
we skip having to go through a slow wall-hugging
section by double-jumping off of some icicles.
After Canyon Skip, the snake tries to attack
us, but by that point our escape is pretty much secured.
When we emerge from the canyon, we arrive
at Ashina Castle, where we grab a [Gachiin’s]
Sugar that we save for later.
We then head over to the arena for the boss
fight against [Gyoubu Masataka Oniwa] where
we run around a specific bonfire to spawn
the boss with a specific pattern, and then
hear him loudly proclaim his name in Spanish.
We then perform a skip for this boss called
‘Horse Skip,’ where we climb a tower and
perform a delayed jump off of it to ledge
grab on a perimeter wall to be able to exit the arena.
Aggy then stands on top of the gate rooftop
to for sure bait [Gyoubu] off of the cliff.
This counts as beating the boss and gives
us the Shinobi Execution message, which also
gives us the memory for [Gyoubu] and also
the Mechanical Barrel, the latter of which
we won’t be using during this run.
Shortly after that boss skip we begin the
next boss skip, which is called ‘Bull Skip,’
because of the fact it skips the Blazing Bull
fight, which is another fight you’re normally
not able to skip.
By climbing on top of this tower, we can then
double-jump off of a tree to land on top of
some perimeter walls, that technically are
out of the playable area.
This jump to out-of-bounds is one of the things
that got patched out, which is why we play
on version 1.02.
Aggy can then just run past the Blazing Bull
arena and jump down, Spider-Man-ing up to
a bridge where we’ll discover a Sculptor’s
Idol.
Here we confront the memory of [Gyoubu] to
increase our attack power, which makes future
boss fights that we don’t skip faster.
Leaving the idol, Aggy is going to run across
a bridge, and then make a huge leap, where
he’ll then double-jump off of a cliff face,
and Spider-Man up to Ashina Reservoir.
This is the area where we started the game,
but now that we have the Shinobi Prosthetic,
we can enter a new area from here.
First though, we have to actually fight and
defeat our first enemy of the game, a mini-boss
named Lone Shadow Longswordsman.
If you’re unfamiliar with how combat works
in Sekiro, the quickest way to explain it
is that enemies have a health bar and a posture
bar, with the health bar in the top left corner
and posture being in the top middle of the
screen.
As you attack and hit an enemy, it depletes
their health and also builds up a little bit of posture.
As you block an enemy’s attacks with perfect
timing, it deflects their attack and builds
up their posture bar as well.
Either bring an enemies health bar to zero,
or build up an enemies posture bar to the
max, and you can perform a deathblow.
Normally enemies take one deathblow to kill,
however bosses and mini-bosses can take multiple,
as indicated by the number of circles in the
top left corner above their health bar.
Deathblows can also be performed by attacking
an unsuspecting enemy from either above or
behind, like we did to start the Lone Shadow
fight and immediately remove one of their health icons.
You may have noticed that when we killed Lone
Shadow, that Aggy held the ‘X’ button
on his Xbox controller to absorb the Sen from
their body so that we can spend it later.
Aggy then makes the enormous drop down towards
the Ashina Depths where he will then grab
another bag of ash.
Now you may be wondering, “Why do we need
to get so much ash?”
To that I say, “stop asking questions, we’ll
get there when we get there.”
Right now, Aggy needs to take out a sniper
with a deathblow from above, because we’re
about to fight Snake Eyes [Shirahagi].
For this fight, we’re going to deathblow
once from behind, get Snake Eyes into a corner,
and then perform what’s called ‘dead angling.’
This is where you don’t necessarily face
the enemy while you attack, but your sword
still hits them even though they’re to your
side.
When you do this, your enemy is unable to
block your attacks, allowing you to get a
ton of free posture build-up on them.
Snake Eyes will still occasionally try to
hook us with their weapon, so we still have
to block those on occasion, but other than
that this boss fight is pretty straight forward.
The reason why we killed that sniper moments
ago was to ensure that we wouldn’t get shot
while doing this, which would slow down or
mess up the fight.
Aggy then runs through the disappearing fog
wall, collecting the Sen from Snake Eye’s
body in the process.
We then run through a boss arena where we
normally would fight the second iteration
of a certain boss, however because we haven’t
fought that certain boss yet, the second iteration
doesn’t spawn, leaving this place pretty
empty, save for a few spots where we can Spider-Man
up to bring us to the Hidden Forest.
Here, we’re going to run along some trees,
avoiding a large black rooster that can really
mess you up if it hits you, and then we’ll
drop down to grab a [Yashariku’s] Sugar.
This sugar halves our max vitality and posture
while giving us a sizable boost to attack
power, but we’re gonna save it for later.
We also then run over to another item that
we pick up which are snap seeds.
The primary use of snap seeds are to break
the effect of an enemy’s illusion technique,
and they come in handy in an upcoming boss
fight, but we’ll get there shortly.
Normally in this area, you have to go through
a minor detour to face off against [Tokujiro] the Glutton.
This would lead us to an elevated section,
allowing us to enter this temple to fight the Mist Noble.
Instead, with some precise movement, Aggy
is able to double-jump off of a tree, land
on a specific branch, and then jump straight
to the temple to body the heck out of the noble.
This boss is so easy that on most websites
that lay out strategies for bosses and mini-bosses
just say to hit him and that’s it.
With the Mist Noble defeated and the fog clearing,
we run to the now cleared area and make a
huge leap down towards the Mibu Village,
Spider-Man-ing a branch at the last second to not take fall damage.
Mibu Village proper is a pretty straightforward
section that consists of mainly just running
past all the enemies.
We’ll eventually make it to a river that
we’ll swim up, and from there we’ll Spider-Man
up onto a bridge.
This all is leading up to the boss from whom
we receive the Mibu Breathing Technique.
The boss in question is the Corrupted Monk,
and what we’re about to do to it is illegal
according to the Eighth Amendment, because
it’s going to be cruel and unusual.
We’re going to be using some items in this
fight, meaning we have to menu a bit to equip
them, so to minimize menuing, we’re going
to not only equip the two items used in this
fight, but all four items that we’ll be
using for the remainder of the run.
The boss doesn’t spawn until we enter the
center of the arena, so we’re going to initially
skirt along the perimeter to get behind the
boss when it spawns, so that it doesn’t
know we’re there since we’re not in its
line of sight.
When we eventually spawn the boss and the
fight begins, we’re going to then use snap
seed three times, and throw ash on the monk
five times.
Each time we use one of these items on the
boss, it’ll get stunned for a moment and
stagger slightly backwards.
After the final use of our pocket ash, we
will still be undetected, and the monk will
have staggered far enough backwards to be
within range of us to jump onto it from above
by double-jumping off of a stone pillar.
We can then do a stealth deathblow on the
monk from above, instantly killing it.
After killing the boss and as soon as the
Shinobi Execution message pops up, Aggy quits
to the main menu and reloads his game, which
causes for the stone door to instantly open.
We then get pop-ups notifying us that we’ve
received the Mibu Breathing Technique, as
well as a memory for the Corrupted Monk which
we’ll confront in a bit.
Once we grab the Shelter Stone, we choose
to get sent back to our last communed idol
to return to Ashina Castle, and it’s now
time to break the game wide open.
When we arrive at the castle, we’re going
to head over to a bridge, where we’ll jump
on top of a wall, followed by jumping towards
the castle, and double-jumping into a
big hole in the collision of the wall.
This puts us out-of-bounds, where we then
jump down into some water that exists in the void.
We now pretty much have free reign over the
game world, being able to just swim to wherever
we want, regardless of if there is water normally
in a place we’re at.
This is why it’s called airswimming, because
by diving underwater in this out-of-bounds
area, we can pretty much just swim in the
air.
The main issue with this glitch though is
that you still have to access areas in the
order that you would normally go through them
while in-bounds.
If you don’t then there’s a good chance
the game will crash or kill you via deathplanes,
which is obviously bad.
To make sure the game loads the areas in the
correct order, we have to go near the surface
in some spots and also surface in the Abandoned
Dungeon.
This is then followed up by quitting to the
main menu to ensure everything loads properly,
but once we do that, we can airswim to and
through [Senpou] Temple.
At one point coming up we’re going to cancel
our airswim by swimming into some actual water
and then resurfacing, which breaks the airswim
and allows us to move and interact with things
normally, which is required since we’re
heading towards an idol.
On our way to the idol, we’re going to perform
something called ‘aggro chain.’
This begins by swimming near an enemy, which
puts us in combat.
Whenever we enter combat, the game makes a
checkpoint to the exact location where we
were upon entering combat.
As long as we stay in combat, the game will
retain that original location as our checkpoint spot.
By remaining in combat, when we eventually
quit to the main menu and load the game, we
will be back at the exact checkpoint location
from before aggro-ing any enemies.
This is abused by continuing to swim near
more and more enemies on our way to discover
an idol so that we stay in combat, meaning
that our checkpoint never gets updated.
When we then finally discover the idol, we
quit to the main menu and continue the game,
and we’ll be back at the checkpoint, but
the idol will still be discovered so we can
travel back to it later.
Because we’re also airswimming when we originally
hit the checkpoint, we’ll be airswimming
again when we load the game.
We then airswim down towards the Sunken Valley
Passage, which is where what is probably the
most iconic boss in the game is located, the
Guardian Ape.
The ape guards the Lotus of the Palace, which
is one of the three items we need to complete
the Shura Ending, the other two being the
Mortal Blade and the Shelter Stone, the latter
of which we already have.
Instead of fighting the ape though, Aggy is
going to perform some precise out-of-bounds
that begins with a really scary jump to get
back in-bounds.
This jump is actually so tough that Aggy switches
to a mouse and keyboard to perform the directional
movements with increased precision.
This whole section though is filled with difficult
and risky movement, accentuated by the fact
that the ape can throw its literal poo at
us which is not very ideal.
After a difficult battle with not only the
tough movement, but with the camera as well,
we’re able to interact with and grab the
lotus, and then use the Homeward Idol to go
back to the idol we discovered at [Senpou]
Temple.
From one primate to another, we’re now going
to perform a skip to get to the Folding Screen
Monkeys fight, which is required to unlock
the Inner Sanctum location which is where
we get the Mortal Blade.
The Folding Screen Monkeys arena is actually
loaded underneath the map we’re on, so after
using a [Gachiin’s] Sugar to make us harder
to detect, Aggy performs a double-jump off
of a tree to clip into some rocks and drop
underneath the map.
As we fall, we’ll eventually be prompted
with the ability to Spider-Man, which puts
us into the actual boss arena.
This fight consists of four different enemies,
and is usually a test of your ability to problem
solve and stealth around.
Three of the monkeys represent the three wise
monkeys who embody the proverb ‘see no evil,
hear no evil, speak no evil,’ with there
being a fourth monkey representing the ‘do
no evil’ monkey from the Analects of Confucius.
The monkey wearing green has really good hearing
and will hear you from far away, but has poor vision.
The monkey wearing orange has both poor hearing
and vision, but is very loud and will alert
the other monkeys to your presence if it detects
you.
The monkey wearing purple has really good
vision and will see you from far away, but
has poor hearing.
The fourth monkey is invisible, as it’s
often forgotten today when the proverb is referenced.
Because we used the [Gachiin’s] Sugar, none
of the monkeys were able to detect us in time
as Aggy takes out the ‘hear no evil’ monkey,
followed by the ‘speak no evil’ monkey,
then the ‘do no evil’ monkey, and lastly
the ‘see no evil’ monkey.
With the monkeys taken care of, we’re then
brought to the Inner Sanctum.
As I said earlier, this is where we get the
Mortal Blade, and we can actually get it now.
However, there’s currently a boss waiting
to fight us in the same arena where we fight
the final boss, which is normally required
to be defeated first in order to access the
Folding Screen Monkeys fight.
Grabbing the Mortal Blade now without evicting
the first boss who’s waiting for us makes
everything get crossed up and softlocks the
game.
While we were at the sanctum, we bought some
Spirit Emblem’s with the Sen we’ve been
picking up, and we confronted the memories
of the monk and monkeys to increase our attack
power before we travelled back to Ashina Castle.
We now have to climb up the castle to get
to the very top where a familiar foe will
be waiting for us.
Rather than climbing though, we’re just
going to airswim all the way back up to the
top to trigger the cutscene, which removes
our airswim and begins our rematch against
Genichiro, the guy who gave us a battlefield
amputation earlier.
This fight will go down similarly to our fight
against Snake Eyes earlier.
Right away, Aggy will bait him into a corner
by jumping over him when he’s trying to attack us.
Aggy then is going to dead angle Genichiro
and attack with a specific cadence to get
the same attack animation over and over, ensuring
that our blade actually connects with him.
Genichiro is pretty much helpless, although
on occasion he can attack us with his bow.
This causes us to lose a little bit of time
but is no issue because we can just pick right
back up with our attacks.
Once we’ve deathblown Genichiro twice, he
goes into his third phase where he can attack
us with lightning.
Right away we use a [Yashariku’s] Sugar
to increase our posture damage and half our
health, and then begin our fight against Genichiro.
In this fight, we pretty much just attack
non-stop, and deflect Genichiro’s lightning
attacks back at him whenever he uses them.
With perfect RNG, he’ll use it twice right
away, letting us kill him quickly.
After we defeat our nemesis, we then use the
newly spawned idol to confront the memory
we just received, and then return to the sanctum
where we’ll finally receive the Mortal Blade.
The Mortal Blade isn’t purely aesthetic
though, we also receive the Mortal Draw Combat
Art with it, which we will then equip.
This Combat Art is why we bought Spirit Emblems
a bit ago, as we’re going to be using it
in the final boss fight.
The emblems aren’t required to actually
perform the attack, but if we don’t have
any then the attack will do less damage.
Having received the Mortal Blade, the game
world enters a new state as the story is progressing,
meaning that we can only fast travel back
to one select idol in Ashina Castle, even
if we never actually got that idol earlier.
Luckily though, this idol is near to the spot
where we trigger airswim, so we can just run
by some enemies to set that up and swim back
up to the top of the castle.
There we’re going to be reunited with our
surprisingly alive adoptive father, Owl.
I know it’s a little late into the run,
but here’s a super brief lore rundown.
The main goal of the game is to collect all
three items from earlier, which are required
to perform the Immortal Severance ritual so
that we can remove Kuro’s Dragon Heritage
so no one will fight over him anymore to gain
immortality.
As a shinobi, we serve two people: our father,
Owl, and our master, Kuro.
According to the Iron Code, the ‘parent
is absolute,’ and we must obey them over
all else, despite the fact that our father
is trying to obtain the Dragon Heritage from
Kuro to become immortal.
If we choose to obey the Iron Code, that leads
to the Shura Ending, where we fight the two
people who protect Kuro from our betrayal.
This being a Shura ending run, we obviously
choose to betray Kuro and obey the Iron Code
which leads to two final boss fights.
The first is against Emma, the Gentle Blade,
but don’t let her name fool you, Emma is spooky.
Right away in our fight with her, we use a
[Yashariku’s] Sugar.
For the most part, this fight consists of
mostly alternating attacks and deflections,
which keeps Emma in a rhythm and typically
prevents her from going from spooky to super spooky.
Sometimes though the rhythm will be broken
and Aggy will have to wait for her to attack
again, losing us precious seconds, however
that didn’t happen here.
Once we’ve finally built up her posture
all the way, we can deliver her a deathblow
where she spits an insult in our face with
her dying breath.
This leads into the final fight of the game,
and we pop another [Yashariku’s] Sugar right
before the cutscene before it.
This fight is against Isshin Ashina, and is
more of an actual fight than any of the other ones.
Aggy will keep up the pressure whenever possible
to build up Isshin’s posture, and have to
dodge some attacks, like the one you’re
supposed to normally use the Mikiri Counter
for, which we never attained the skill book
of.
Sometimes Isshin will charge up a super strong
move, which is when we use the Mortal Draw
combat art to interrupt him, after which we
go right back to attacking.
He only does this attack during his second
health bar though, and it will always be the
first attack he uses in that phase.
Once we’re able to fully build up and break
his posture twice and deliver the final deathblow,
the fight is over.
The run officially ends when the credits begin
playing.
If you made it to the end of this video, I’d
like to say thank you on both Aggy’s and my own behalf.
Aggy is an awesome dude who I got to spend
a fair amount of time with at AGDQ, and he
helped me a ton with making this video.
I can’t recommend enough that you guys go
and subscribe to his YouTube channel.
Also thank you to those of you who have chosen
to support the channel on Patreon.
It makes a world of difference, and while
it’s completely unnecessary, you all choose
to support anyways, and that means a lot.
I hope you all, Patron or not, enjoyed this
run, and if you have any feedback on it or
recommendations for other runs to cover or
videos to make, I recommend you join my Discord
and head over to the video discussion and
recommendation channels, link is in the description.
This was a Shura Ending speedrun of Sekiro:
Shadows Die Twice, I’ve been tomatoanus,
and I hope you have an above average day.
