PRCLore:Rat Skip

Rat Skip is an alleged glitch in which a Rat can successfully be used to Boost Jump. Many have claimed it to be pseudoscientific in nature, likening it to the ongoing search for UFOs and cryptids, while others perpetuate the legend through repeated claims of evidence.

Etymology

Rat Skip is vaguely worded, often resulting in it being mistakenly interpreted to mean that a Rat is being skipped. In fact, Rat Skip refers to a Rat being utilized to skip another part of the game.

History

Origin

Rat Skip's origins can be traced back to Version 2 of the Oblivion 100% Completion Speedrun. During the Map Exploration split, Ben was attempting to navigate the Ayleid Ruin Wenyandawik in order to get one of the 10 required Ayleid Statues. In the second zone, which requires a tricky Boost Jump off of a bad slope along the edge of the wall, a decent amount of time was being lost due to repeatedly failing the jump. A Rat had spawned nearby and was killed during this process, which resulted in Max insisting that a Rat corpse would allow Ben to perform the jump with ease. An argument ensued about the validity of the claim, with Ben showing Max that the Rat corpse had no collision and just happened to be on top of a sloped part of the ground. Max refused to back down, going as far as to say "We call this Rat Skip." to socially pressure Ben into attempting the glitch to fulfill the implication of the gameplay commentary. "We call this Rat Skip." is a parody of Speedrunner culture's tendency to uniquely name every little optimization that gets discovered for runs, in addition to sardonically imitating the dry and awkward tone of speedrun commentary that is commonly seen at family-friendly livestream events such as Awesome Games Done Quick.

Pseudo Rat Skip

On January 23rd, 2021, MeemawHustlin discovered a new Saddle location that saved approximately four seconds in every official speedrun category for Oblivion, most notably providing one the few significant improvements to Any% in months. This new Saddle location was the stool by the fire pit in the goblin cave area of the Tutorial. When Saddling this stool save into the final sewer cell, the player is placed out of bounds near the end of the tunnel. By swimming SE and slightly downward, the player is Void Warped directly to the final sewer grate at the end of the Tutorial, skipping the entire walk to the end of the sewer. Within three hours MeemawHustlin posted a [video https://www.twitch.tv/videos/884702527] about the new strategy, speedrunner sandyX achieved a [new world record https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHAIsKAE7MQ] in the Any% category.

MeemawHustlin quickly realized that the save file thumbnail for this stool save had a Rat corpse in it, leading him to dub the new strategy "Rat Skip" and insist that the community start calling it that as well. He excitedly reported his findings to Max, claiming to have finally solved Rat Skip. While Max was initially amused by the events that had transpired, he quickly doubled down and said "That isn't Rat Skip."