Boss Battles and Silent Realm Time Trials

Moldarach 41:66

3 hit combos FTW!

Sword clanging off claws FTL. I have no idea how this happens half the time, when it seems like I'm swinging through the claw perfectly... ehh.

Koloktos 1:54:33

Of note, the phase 1 half-skip is really easy to do, and skips a (short) cutscene. This is probably doubly useful for those of you intending to run the whole game.

oh, nice strat, makes me want to go back to koloktos for a bit haha

I found a (just about) instant kill combo on Demise's Phase 2. It's really goddamn hard to do(EDIT: not as hard as I first thought, it thankfully works differently than I concluded earlier). Hopefully I'll at least get the combo on video, if so I'll upload no matter how bad the rest of the fight was.

EDIT no 2:

Demise 30:79

Skyward strike? who needs that garbage?

Nice demise  ;D Moldarach too but this battle looks weird, with these waitings between sword swings and shield bashes, it's not super exciting  :P

Well, with moldarach you need to delay your 2nd hit to get a 3-hit combo after a shield bash, so that's why- if you just hack away, you're hitting him only once at a time. Also, it seems really obvious in hindsight to just kill him before he submerges, I have no idea why I wasn't trying that when I fought him.

That fight was extremely clean with regard to the sword bouncing off his stuff, so great job there.

Wow that demise strat is awesome.  I thought I was done with him but now I want to go back and try for sub 30.

That's how I said that I did demise phase 2 earlier. I hit him once between every attack, and after he is done attacking, you just spam attacks on him.
That's how I did it before I knew about the skyward strike anyway.
I was not aware that it was that fast though, since I'm quite bad at demise.

Horde Battle 2:02:49

Ghirahim 3 0:51:86

Scaldera 0:20:93

I think my horde battle strategy is solid.

Ghirahim 3, under 50 is possible but you'll have to gamble in phase 3. I'll do that later, really wanted to show the strat on a good run. (on an infuriating note, based on the way he flipped his sword, if I had gambled I would have Won)

Scaldera fight is quite nice, but there's (always) some decimals to be gained there.

EDIT:

Current PR Table:

Ghirahim 1 09:03
Scaldera 20:93
Moldarach 41:66
Imprisoned 1 1:01:66
Koloktos 1:54:33
Tentalus 1:46:33
Ghirahim 2 17:89
Imprisoned 2 1:18:69
Imprisoned 3 1:01:59
Horde Battle 2:02:49
Ghirahim 3 51:86
Demise 30:79

Demise 27:59

You can collect lightning while he's prone. Awesome!

A Japanese player by the name of sirhu923 has what I believe to be the records for the Horde, Imprisoned 1, and Imprisoned 2:

The Imprisoned 1 in 59:03
The Imprisoned 2 in 1:13:16
The Horde in 2:01:79

Then, I'll get to work on those!!!

Horde shouldn't be too tough, I compared my run with his, I was about 7 seconds ahead after the 3 moblins, before my run got semi-ugly. He fought Imprisoned 1&2 differently than I did, so I guess I'll see on those ones. I'm not immediately sold on two Groosenator shots in fight no.2, but I'll mess around with it. Toes first on no. 1 is a surprisingly good idea though.

Horde Battle 1:23:93

Someone on youtube tipped me off that you can jump over the barrier in Horde Battle where 3 moblins spawn. Well, I did him one better and jumped off the edge (you land right by the Stalfos). The run is obviously not perfect, but when you're ignoring hundreds of very pissed off bokoblins, you take what you can get.

Jackimus, how the hell do you hit Scaldera's eye without stunning him with bombs? I can do it but it just doesn't work half the time and I cannot figure out why. I need to figure out a strat for my test run.

Already you need to stand at a fairly specific angle and time the overhead swing just so- in terms of distance and as he comes down for the chomp. It also might not work without the Master Sword, the much shorter Goddess blade may not reach. Try jump-attacks? overhand spin attack? Also, I'm 99% positive the eye doesn't exist until you've fed him at least one bomb.

Also,

Ghirahim (3) 44:89

Really happy with this one, although I missed a jump at the way beginning of the fight.

It works fine with the goddess sword, you can use a skyward strike instead of a direct sword hit. it just plain doesn't hit half the time :/ It hits the rock and breaks without hitting him, even if it hits right on the eye. It's really confusing.

hmm, maybe the skyward strike has a tighter window of availability that flat out swinging the sword? I'm not sure what to tell you honestly, outside of it being an admittedly tough move to pull off consistently. My boy's just about at that guy on his save file, I can try messing around with it there and see if I can find any timing trick or something to help you nail it with more frequency. Obviously, it doesn't help matters that him dousing his flames seems to happen at a randomly determined interval.

Oh, speaking of that, since I forgot to mention it last post, that may be it. You can't strike the eye while he's on fire. I hope the solution to your difficulty is this simple.

It's not, I noticed already you can't hit the eye when its on fire.

I did figure out a couple things... namely, skyward strikes seem to do way more damage than normal goddess sword swings. also, you can drop a bomb in front of him so the skyward strike hits the bomb before it hits him which stuns him again and makes him immediately try to suck on another bomb... seems like it might be helpful for the second phase

strikes doing more makes sense since you start with full strike in hero mode.

Jackimus, I worked it out and finished the scaldera segment, so don't worry about it.

Oh yeah, can't believe I haven't linked this...

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/960633-the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword/61263712

(enemy HP table and damage values)

There are some mild inaccuracies, but for the most part it's quite solid. Helpful for planning attack combos and such, I know I made use of this in several fights (in others though, number of hits is what matters, not damage so this is useless).

For example, you can see that in Hero Mode a skyward strike will do as much damage to Scaldera as attack to spin. I know you have a reasonable amount of time to get some hits in, so you probably should be able to charge skyward strikes and use those while he's stunned too. I can't confirm anything with the skyward spin, but if that gets a damage boost too, you can (in theory) kill him almost as fast as you could in the boss rush.

So according to this :

Moldarach (Fight #1, Head): 16 HP
Goddess Sword (Skyward Strike, Hero Mode): 16 damage

You could insta kill moldarach's eye with a skyward strike ?

I'm pretty sure Moldarach always takes the same number of hits regardless of the sword you're using so he's probably wrong there. can't be 100% for sure though

That's one of the inaccuracies, moldarach is hits, and not damage (5,7, and 4, every time). I COULD BE WRONG I GUESS, if they gave him different rules in the storyline fights, but it's definitely hits in the time trials, try using spins on his claws and you'll see what I mean.

Also something is seriously messed with the HP values that guy gave to Koloktos, because the Master sword absolutely does not do as much damage as a Koloktos great sword (bombs do however, though I have not made use of this in a useful fashion to date). Phase 1 number is also seemingly way off.

Imprisoned (2) 1:08:89

This is another good strat, which is probably ideal for a full run, since it skips him grabbing the ledge (cutscene) and the 1st dialog with Groose is shorter as well. Though, I imagine the timing in phase 1 will be much trickier without the clock on-screen. (Jump right after 23 secs, swing first time right after 25 secs).

Random observation: Only .x3, .x6 and .x9 seem to be possible decimals.

Here is Ghirahim 1 in 8.39 by Miles
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdlzsBbDbCY