Any% Route Overview
ok so the Any% speedrun for Phantom Blade Zero is honestly one of the most technical speedruns I've ever tried to learn and I've been grinding this route for like two months now, the current world record sits at around 1 hour 23 minutes but the community thinks sub-1:20 is possible with perfect execution, the route is basically Start → Iron Fortress (skip 2 mob fights) → Blade Temple (skip phase 1 of Iron Blade Chen) → Venom Marsh (out-of-bounds shortcut) → Crumbling Forge → Final Boss, and the whole thing hinges on three major skips that save about 15 minutes combined and without those skips you're looking at like 1:40 minimum so yeah they're kinda essential, the movement tech is what makes or breaks a run cause you're spending probably 60% of the run just running between areas and every frame you save adds up over a 90 minute run
Major Skips & Glitches
These are the three skips you absolutely need to learn before attempting a serious run and tbh they each took me like 50+ attempts to get consistent so don't get discouraged if you fail them a lot at first, everyone does
- Iron Fortress Wall Clip — right after entering Iron Fortress there's a section where you normally fight two waves of elite guards before the Wan Jun boss door, the wall clip lets you bypass both waves entirely by jumping onto the broken pillar to the left of the first guard spawn and doing a double-jump into the corner of the ceiling, if you mash dodge while stuck in the geometry you'll clip through the wall and land directly in front of the boss door, saves about 3 minutes 40 seconds, the setup is frame-perfect but once you get the positioning down it's like 80% consistent
- Blade Temple Door Skip — Iron Blade Chen normally has a phase 1 that's unskippable cutscene + combat but there's a door to the right of the boss arena that's supposed to be locked until phase 2, if you stand at a specific angle and use the ghoststep dodge into the doorframe while the boss is doing his opening monologue (before the health bar appears) you'll phase through the door and it triggers the phase 2 checkpoint instantly, saves about 5 minutes and also skips the hardest phase of the fight which is huge for consistency, the timing window is about 2 seconds during the monologue so you have to be fast, this is the most inconsistent skip in the whole route at like 60% success rate even for top runners
- Venom Marsh OoB Shortcut — after Snake Sovereign there's a long swamp section with poison water that slows you down and honestly it's the worst part of the run if you do it legit, the out-of-bounds shortcut involves jumping onto a specific tree root near the second checkpoint and then using the bow of silent wind's charged shot recoil to push yourself past the invisible wall, you can skip straight from the boss arena exit to the Crumbling Forge entrance in about 40 seconds which saves around 6 minutes compared to the normal path, this one is actually the most consistent skip at like 90% once you learn the setup
Boss Quick-Kill Strategies
Wan Jun Coppermaul is the first major boss and the strat is to use Dragon Fire at max range to trigger his phase 2 immediately without needing to engage in melee, his phase 1 AI is programmed to slowly walk toward you if you're at range and by the time he reaches you he'll have taken enough damage to transition to phase 2 without any melee combat, then you just repeat the same strategy for phase 2 and he goes down in under 2 minutes, for Iron Blade Chen because we skip phase 1 we only need to deal with phases 2 and 3, the phase 2 strategy is aggressive ghoststep backstabs with Ghost Razor and if your damage is optimized you can kill him before the clone phase starts, Snake Sovereign is the most RNG-dependent fight cause sometimes he spams the poison mist attack which wastes time, best strat is ghoststep build with Shadow Stinger for the poison DoT stacks while you reposition
Equipment Checklist & WR Analysis
You need exactly these items for an optimal run and you get them in this order: Ghost Razor (starting area, mandatory side path takes 20 seconds), Dragon Fire (Iron Fortress armory, grab during the wall clip section), Shadow Stinger (Blade Temple side room, 15 second detour), and White Python & Red Viper (Crumbling Forge hidden chest, 30 second detour but worth it for the final boss DPS), you don't need any armor upgrades or skill points beyond the base ones cause you're not playing the game normally at all
The current WR holder uses a route that's slightly different from what I described with some additional micro-optimizations like animation canceling every door opening and using the menu buffer during loading screens to equip items faster, the biggest time losses in runs are almost always Iron Blade Chen door skip fails and Snake Sovereign bad RNG so if you can get past those two points cleanly you're in good shape, the final boss is actually the most consistent part of the run cause at that point you have White Python & Red Viper which just melts everything