Death Chamber

Death Chamber is the 12th stage in the Hero story on Sonic Adventure 2. Knuckles is used to play this stage.

Speed Tips

Mission 1

This is a treasure-hunting stage. The general hunting tips apply. The best locations are:

Key 3: "Bugs on patrol" In the starting room, look to the wall surrounding the lower alcove at the top. The correct key location moves back and forth across that wall, on a 10-second cycle. It's very difficult to get quickly, but what you want to do is jump and glide forward-right from start. Land on the right sloped edge of the ledge in front of you, then immediately spin the control stick for a Spiral Upper. That move can reach out to grab nearby objects (this is in fact true for both systems; Dreamcast gets a system-exclusive reach radius that extends much wider, but only for the first frame of the attack, and that doesn't come into play here). If you did it right, you'll shoot up just as the key passes overhead, and the reaching power from the very top is just enough to grab the key, even though it looks like you're not touching it. When you get it (probably in close to 2 seconds), you can breathe a sigh of relief and move on.

Key 2: "Roasted keys" This key is at the top of the fire pit, just behind start. To get it quickly, you'll do a Spiral Upper immediately upon starting, then glide at the peak of the move and you can go straight back through the key. You need to take a straight line to get the key instead of hitting fire, and the camera tends to shift on you; you can counteract this by holding L+R the whole time.

Key 1: "Three container brothers" The radar starts out green for this one. Head forward to the hallway, and to the somewhat wider room ahead. There are three boxes just to the right of that doorway; stand next to the stack of boxes and do a Spiral Upper to get it without breaking them, again thanks to reaching power.

Record video: 0:08.67 by SadisticMystic

Mission 2

TODO

Record video: 0:54.34 by yoshifan

Mission 3

If you're taking the traditional path here, forget almost everything you know about this mission. That path can only get you down to about 1:03 or 1:04, or down to 0:53 if you use the underwater glide technique. Another technique exists that can get under 35 seconds, but there are two routes that can shave a further 10 off of that. They'll be labeled the "easy" path and the "hard" path, with the hard one estimated to be faster by about 1 second when done optimally.

Easy path

Jump forward and hit the hourglass, but then don't continue ahead. Go left instead, punching out the boxes and continuing through the door. Hug the inside of the curved room, avoiding the E-1000. Right as you pass through the doorway, hold A and left.

This room has a flame in the near left corner. If you can hold yourself directly into the corner and jump at its underside, you'll be pushed through the wall in grab pose. Double-tap A to get out of wall grab, and now you're gliding through open space. The camera is difficult here, but I've found that if you guide yourself barely around the next room (you have to go around it, not through it or else you're stuck back in bounds) the camera will break out as well and follow behind you for a better view. When you can safely do so without reentering walls, you'll want to steer yourself right a total of about 110 degrees.

Keep going, and eventually you'll see the walls of the large circular room. After you pass the hallway that leads from the center room to the green room, which you don't want to shoot up into, try to get as close as you can to the wall without going through it (which would confine you within the walls again), and sometimes you'll be considered underwater. Press A when this happens to go up to the surface, and keep going roughly straight. You should see the underwater hallway below you. You want to stay directly above it, following the path to the Chao room but staying above the surface of the water (since gliding is faster than swimming).

When you see a Chao mural in front of you, keep going forward to pass through it. Now you're back within the level bounds. Go past the "proper" opening below you that takes the form of a small pool, and climb one of the pillars into the lowest alcove. Run behind it, then jump toward the screen in such a way that you bounce off the top of the hourglass. This takes you through the roof of the alcove. At this point you're considered out of bounds once again, but you're not going to stay that way for long. Glide toward the screen and you'll pass through the wall of the next alcove up and tag the Chao right away.

Best video using this method: 0:23:25 by SadisticMystic

Hard path

For this method, after hitting the hourglass, you do want to continue straight ahead, as though you were taking the traditional path. Continue through the first two hourglass doors, then navigate the double step up. You can either jump into the enemy and gain some upward momentum upon destroying it, giving you enough height to clear both steps in a single jump, or you can make two not-quite-full jumps in rapid succession while running at full speed. The latter is faster by a very small amount.

Once you're high enough, start a glide and hold it through to the hourglass, registering a hit on it, then power through the boxes with punches with a triple B tap (the third punch isn't for destroying boxes, but rather bringing your forward momentum back up once the way is clear). Jump once you boost forward after the boxes, and try to land on the wall with a quick climb. Climb up a short way, and ledge jump through the opening into the pyramid core.

Now that you're here, you want to turn 45 degrees left, toward the door to the green room. You can dive to save time on your trip down, as long as you cancel it with a glide before hitting ground and initiating a dig. Get up to the door, jump up into the right corner, and glide into it--with any luck, you clip the corner here, and you either go right through the door and into the green hallway (bad) or you veer right and into the open blackness (good). You need to slip through the corner on the first try in order to save any time over the easy path, and it's much less consistent to clip out of bounds here than it is at the corner light.

Now that you're out, the path is the same as the easy method, so go claim your Chao.

Record video: 0:22:05 by SadisticMystic

Mission 5

A version difference here gives an advantage of about 5 seconds to Dreamcast players. On either system, the fastest path involves collecting all three keys in the same life.

Start this mission out just like you would the easy path on mission 3, keeping in mind the added enemies. Do not try to get out of bounds at the corner light; it doesn't help (you can easily see the room you need to aim for, but it's a bit too high to reach from here). Instead, drop down a level, punch out the hourglass, and dig into the mural on the right side of the next room. After you dig through the mural, you're in the room with the first key. On Dreamcast, you can just stand over the middle of the hourglass floor and do a Spiral Upper to pull the key out directly. On GameCube, you'll have to hit the hourglass, go left or right to stand on the platform that appears, punch out boxes, hit the next hourglass, and dig into the middle of the now-opened ground to get this key.

Now dive through the corner into free space again, and continue to the center room and follow the walls around to the underwater hallway. You don't need to rise all the way to the top this time. Stay under the walls of the underwater mirror of the Chao room, and swim until you're under the center of the lower alcove. The next key is inside a closed hourglass door, but you can shoot up through it to get back in bounds and collect the key. From here it's a short trip to the last key by heading out into the main room, going up, and diving down behind the chest in this room.

Record video: 0:36.89 by SadisticMystic