Item Loss Skip
| Rooms Traversed In This Wallcrawl |
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| Hive Chamber A (start) Hive Access Tunnel Hive Transport Area Industrial Site Collapsed Tunnel (end) |
Item Loss Skip or ILS is a major sequence break in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes which allows Samus to keep all the items she started the game with, completely breaking open the early game. It involves performing a Secret World in Hive Chamber A and wallcrawling past the rest of the Splinter Hive portion of the area. This saves several minutes in any% speedruns and allows Samus to keep the following 5 items, which would be lost without doing it normally.
Despite that the Item Loss sequence tells you that you've lost your Power Bomb and Grapple Beam, the game never actually gives you those items at the start of the game to begin with. Additionally, the Item Loss sequence makes no mention of Spider Ball, but the game does give it to you at the beginning, which you retain with ILS.
Due to the fact that this requires a SW in Hive Chamber A, and there is no other known way to get out of bounds in the Splinter Hive before the sequence in Hive Chamber B, this means that Item Loss Skip is currently impossible under 100% conditions with current knowledge. This is because the missile expansion in Hive Chamber B does not exist until after the sequence is completed. There may be a way to get this missile expansion if there is some way to get out of bounds in Hive Chamber B, or otherwise reload the room.
ILS can be performed on any version of the game, including the Trilogy version of the game.
Room by Room Guide
It is worth noting that there are two different variants of this wallcrawl, and they are both identical until they reach the room Collapsed Tunnel. The main difference between the two variants is that one of them ends the wallcrawl inside Collapsed Tunnel by having the room load around Samus, while the other variant continues to stay out of bounds in Collapsed Tunnel and moves more directly to the Power Bomb expansion. Additionally, it is possible to go directly to Transport to Agon Wastes once out of bounds. However, this isn't currently done in speedruns because the expansion in Dynamo Chamber is considered to be the fastest one for humans with current knowledge.
The current method to get out of bounds before item loss was found in 2016 by EDragon. On top of being hilariously simple, its is 50 seconds faster and has no risk of crashing the game, making it extremely convenient for Any% and Low% speedruns. You literally just jump through a hole in the ceiling in Hive Chamber A. From here, you can Scan Dash out into the Aether, get to the skywalk, then touch the top of the tunnel and immediately move back to transition to Hive Access Tunnel. You can also try a one-time Aether Jump while walking towards the tunnel, as shown in the video. While being slightly faster, this is significantly riskier.
Hive Chamber A
Hive Access Tunnel
Hive Transport Area
Industrial Site
Collapsed Tunnel
Energy Tank Comparison
The video below compares the two different variations of the wallcrawl from the point where they diverge. Skipping the energy tank in Storage Cavern B saves roughly 18 seconds.
Old Method
The first method to skip item loss was found in 2010 and used a trick called Infinite Speed. Essentially, you used Infinite Speed in Hive Chamber A to hit the cutscene trigger where you fall down the tunnel in Hive Access Tunnel. However, since you weren't actually in Hive Access Tunnel while hitting this trigger, the game just warped you Out of Bounds in Hive Access Tunnel at the point of the trigger, and you were then free to wallcrawl and skip item loss. This method is 50 seconds slower than the new method and also has a 50% chance of crashing the game.