The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

I was gonna ask you if you bothered reading the description.

That's pretty sweet! Probably equivalent in terms of time tho.

Are we bumping this? I am bumping this, just so I can make a note. To any of the THB people who aren't aware: there's a pretty cool world record speedrun here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8BeI4EsGC8 Doesn't take too long to watch if you skip the cutscenes. It has a very nice set up for the invisible assassination of Abu'l.
For the exit from that, I was playing around today (man, I haven't played in years!), and you can get it quite okay by doing a wall-run the two talking people, then side ejecting and holding the grab-ledge button backwards. I suspect it would be faster than throwing one or two of them outside and waiting for them to walk back.

I checked out the assassinations. He clearly studied our work at The Hidden Blade - at least aurllcooljay's. There were invisible assassinations of several targets including Maria and Robert de Sable. On the Talal assassination he had the skill to nail the back eject from the ladder to the first candelabra when climbing out of the pit.

From time to time I think about your speedrun project, Phi, and wish we could see some complete Investigation segments with double jump and bump Pickpockets.

Have I got a treat for you, Stabguy!

Routes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktT9sLl_IHg&list=PL3Q-WBoyIr2GEt5N3DrI4X...
Segments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFzvw-x_WzA&list=PL3Q-WBoyIr2HUXhYxGlDMa...

Segment 23 in particular is a doozy

Your speedrun is coming together nicely, Phi. I admire the way you incorporate maneuvers with a high degree of difficulty such as vaulting from the horse over the guard post. That one's going to be tough in Acre. Obviously the double jump and bump Pickpockets require precision, but even doing a single jump and bump both before and after an Informer is impressive.

There was something I didn't understand about the Save Citizen outside of Damascus. You grabbed and threw two guards. Did the second one cause the collapse that killed the first?

Thanks for the kind words, Stabguy The videos are a couple years old, so the project is in semi-permanent hibernation mode at the moment.

I think a fair amount of practice makes a lot of tricks easy, coupled with a good understanding of how the mechanics work. Things like tapping the analog stick sharply to the right to make a horse take a tighter turn, briefly tapping the empty hand button to sprint through a crowd, that sort of thing.
I think the most impressive (difficult) trick is the clip into the bureau after Majd's assassination. That one took a lot of work! I do understand the mechanics a bit better now after experimenting with the Abu'l clipout: the trick is to build momentum against the pole on the side. The game will detect you're up against its open corner and teleport you a couple cm forward, taking you to the other side.

Acre is well put, I use bowling rather than jumping over the guard post! Luckily you only have to do it once: once you've visited each city, you can just quit out and spawn back in the bureau the moment you enter it.

The save citizen indeed works as you anticipated. Hidden blade the first guy, throw the second one to the merchant stall, and then the third one into the merchant stall. Second one will get killed by the collapse as well.

Is there a video of this? I get the idea. Instead of Hiding to open the trap door you can clip into the bureau while still Exposed.

Well that certainly explains the Russian comments on my AC videos. Actually I was aware that some of my exploits were being showcased, such as in this video starting at 3:59 (translating to "Assassin's Creed: What you most likely did not know"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeFjlEbAQGk
If you want to understand what he's saying, turn on subtitles and auto translate it to English.

Too bad the Jubair superfast assassination failed, he would have saved at least a minute there. I vaguely remember positioning Altair so that he's standing in the middle of the doorway to make the blitz work (think I also had him moving forward while the cutscene is ending).

What perplexes me is the Maria invisible assassination at 3:06:55. Somehow the guard disappeared during the prone assassination without starting the pre assassination cutscene first. And since that was the only case where an invisible assassination was done in that way, I'm assuming it can't be replicated in the other ones.

You seem to have forgotten my setup from the previous page: https://youtu.be/jwOVREtuHOI

There's a video from AKHeon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cc4KHQxTFw

I see I switched around the video links in my earlier post. Here's segment 23 which contains the clip at around 6:15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR64dxkGvHs&list=PL3Q-WBoyIr2GEt5N3DrI4X...
The other videos are also worth watching, I believe!

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

The invisible assassination is a mystery to almost everyone. Maybe it's just a rare glitch-out?

Now that I'm finally able to play AC1 on PC, can finally get focused on speedrun improvements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmr0WLZu0TM

Originally the speedrun route for Jubair involved glitching into the building and assassinating the target the moment the scene ended (as shown in the video Jubair al Hakim Superfast Blitz), but speedrunners were having trouble pulling that off. This video details a faster more effective speedrun strat.

What you need to do is first get a guard inside the building where the target is located for the pre assassination scene. This allows you to get inside by performing a counter move (referred to as "counter to breach"). You need to be locked on in combat to do this, so there has to be a guard outside since you can't lock on through walls.

The problem presented is that other guards around the area may detect you. Later in this video I show a solution using two throwing knives. You only want low level guards after you because if you aren't anonymous the scene won't play.

Once inside you'll come across Jubair and the scholars. The most effective method for knocking out the target is using fists, because even though the sword is faster you'll become detected and have to kill nearly all the scholars to become anonymous again, plus assassinating them with the hidden blade is risky because you might accidentally prone assassinate Jubair who is lying on the ground.
Once the scene has started Altair will automatically assassinate the target, skipping the scene
entirely.

So how much time is saved in this strat? Using the superfast blitz strat, the pre assassination scene is barely over two minutes, not including the setup which adds at least ten seconds off climbing. The speedrun method using throwing knives and fists takes roughly 1:13 plus 0:26 to escape the building. So by skipping the cutscene you'll save over half a minute.

One last thing I forgot to mention. There is a Templar on one of the roofs near the building. He had died before I recorded the full strat, so I loaded up a previous save to make sure he wouldn't interfere with the run. Before the assassination I wasn't spotted, but while escaping he saw me during the 4:17 mark. To prevent that, instead of climbing the boxes to get up the roof, instead veer to the left and climb up the ladder.

Saw it on the discord, and as noted there, very nice improvement! Maybe we can experiment with a back-grab clip technique to prevent having to get exposed? Probably only useful in segmented but still...

A clipping technique is certainly worth looking into. Just hoping there is a spot that works.

Tested it out a little, and so far there doesn't seem to be any good clipping spots. I'm able to get Altair hung up for a second on either wall to the side of the front door, but haven't managed to clip inside.

Yeah I recall doing some testing on the front door as well, but to no avail. Potentially an eagle-strike-ish thing could work, where you hop in from the top and catch ledge?

Ubisoft anticipated that. You are unable to scale the viewpoint tower from the outer wall, and trying it from the roof will start the scene.

Nope it's possible to do this.
I'll elaborate more in a bit when I'm free.
Expect an answer in ~30 mins.

I'm back.
It's a bit finicky to do but I've been able to get onto the platform without triggering the cutscene and was able to climb up onto the viewpoint, but here's the catch, I did it only once. You climb up onto the roof using from the side and make Altair hang. Being right on the edge does not trigger the scene afaik but again, it's finicky.

I can attest to that. Even so I wonder how much faster it would be than countering your way into the building.

It'd be feasible for entering without triggering if a method is found to do it reliably, and also if countering rng doesn't go your way.

First you make it possible, then you make it consistent, then you make it fast. Only after the last step do you really know if it's worth it.

The countering method is possible and reliable (afaik) but is it fast?

This eagle strike method I mention may not be feasible for a speedrun (wrong thread) but it may be interesting for other purposes like simply getting an eagle strike on Jubair.

Should I reinstall AC1 to try this out?

That would be the way to do it so that if the exploit gets botched you can restart the memory from the bureau instead of the start of the memory block. Ideally you'll want to back up saves. If you play on PC or Xbox 360, videos for backing up saves can be found here. For PS3 here.If you play on Xbox One there are a few possible methods for backing up saves on that platform mentioned here.

I've already played and finished the game, so couldn't I just replay the mission?

You can but then you'll have to start from the beginning of the memory block. If any mistakes are made and you can't desynch you'll have to restart the memory from the beginning.

I thought I could just choose the mission?
Maybe it's been too long since I've played.

On an unrelated note, I may have something mildly funny for AC2 s6.

In AC1 the replay feature is limited to memory blocks. Some of the later games have individual memories to replay, but in AC2 you can't replay the story though, just side missions.

Oh