The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Until recently it was thought greaves were the one piece of armor that had to be carried around. Here is how to remove them.

This was inspired by the same concept of removing armor by MAGLX n ACB.

Setup

The trick is Skipping, discovered by Hit468 which as far as we know only works on Xbox 360.
http://thehiddenblade.com/assassins-creed-2-temporarily-skip-far-game
How Skipping works is you replay a memory on a save file, then sign out of your Xbox account and back in. This gets you out of the game. If you go on to a different save, when you start the game up you are in the replay of the same memory. What's more is when you are in that replay the game thinks you are as far in the game as the other save file. Replaying a memory from a save early in the game removes armor because the game knows you shouldn't have any armor at that time. Here are a few things to keep in mind to make it work right.

1. Equip a different pair of greaves other than the leather ones. This is because if you have the leather ones equipped you still see them after the replayed memory, even though the game says you have none equipped.
2. The memory you replay from has to be early in the game, before you have to buy the greaves, but also after you get the assassin outfit. This is because if you do a replay from before you get the outfit, after the replay it will reequip the assassin outfit along with anything else you had equipped beforehand, including the greaves.
3. The save from which you choose to remove the greaves can't be too far in the game. I think the reason for this is some of the upgrades might change your appearance, such as the second hidden blade. Therefore when you leave the replay it will change your appearance back to how it was, reequipping anything you had beforehand. The save I used in this video for replaying is sometime after getting the assassin outfit; and the save I removed the greaves from is right after assassinating Vieri.

You also have to complete the replayed memory. Exiting the replay won't remove the greaves.

Another thing to keep in mind is this also removes throwing knives from the weapon wheel permanently. I'm not sure if there is a way to get them back (perhaps removing the greaves before getting throwing knives from Mario might do the trick).

Playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAAB3xSA3bP2vX0QIHv8KMajQGQHyrkek

Part 01: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFiws9_Vq_I
Part 02: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YonPLCLC-TY
Part 03: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7-ca2IGzFY
Part 04: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXorJrWuXpw
Part 05: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2BzkCs0JDM
Part 06: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ylt6Oikhsg
Part 07: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXVDnEKbYBk
Part 08: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8pqtAP8yVQ
Part 09: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuqlaDuZfj4
Part 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9gf7wVcfRU
Part 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-3vGf3gyYs
Part 12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXeCQsTG1H0
Part 13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSkYhz_VXKk
Part 14: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOdRynLsBgg

Welcome to my speedrun of Assassin's Creed II 100% sync in 7 hours, 9 minutes and 51 seconds. The completion rate taken into account is the one shown in stats/overall; which means all side memories have to be done additionally to the main sequences (beat-ups, races, assassinations, courier missions, tombs and lairs). This run features save warping, and it is tagged new game +, so that 25 knives are available.

I started the project in summer 2013, began to record in january 2014 and finished on 2014-04-05. I wish to thank everyone from TheHiddenBlade for their continuous support (they will recognize themselves), and people from SDA for their awesome work, as well as verifiers.

This run was done on PC with every possible DLC and extra. I used a Logitech controller to play, and Fraps software to record. There is a total of 157 segments, finishing either with a save ("quit") or assuming the save from the previous checkpoint ("exit to windows").

Timing note: what is shown is the in-game time (from the stats menu), but it doesn't take into account all the time you can not press start and see the stats. Which means all loading times and outside animus events (including Altaïr's memory in Acre) don't add anything to the final time. Nevertheless, creating a segment adds about 3 seconds to the in-game time, so I did it only when the warp saves more than 5 seconds, or when the difficulty/randomness/length was high enough.

A particular thing to mention about the assassinations: there are several places from where you can start one, but for each there is a default pigeon cage assigned; if you reload the checkpoint you will spawn there, and this is used in the run of course. Before moving on to the details, I would like to mention the planning was pretty hard, but I believe the run is now quite optimized from every point of view . This is actually the main point of the commentary, especially when comparing to my any% warpless run.

Hey everyone, I am actually preparing a 100% synch (stats) speedrun of AC2. Here's the advancement status. By the way, an estimate of the final in-game time is 7:45:00.

- listing and mapping everything: done
- routing memories as individual levels: done
- order all the memories and mandatory events: done
- routing paths between memories: done
- planning notoriety and ammo management: done
- segmenting: done
- trying the whole thing: done
- recording: done
- encoding: done
- commenting: done
- submitting: done

How to get into Palazzo Medici:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNYzklM--U8

How to get out of here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLZ9u8L7JT8

This "Edge Jump" method from video "Infiltrating Palazzo della Seta" by Stabguy. I use it to jump to rooftop from a nearby tower. The second part shows a way to escape.

It's clear that size of the space inside is completely different with DLC.