SOTN/Shop Glitch
Contents
Shop Glitch
The Shop Glitch gives Alucard access to effectively infinite money. Allowing us to buy the Duplicator and other useful items.
Mechanics
- When we activate the Librarian's shop menu the game sets a flag that doesn't allow us to enter our menu.
- For some reason Familiar speeches also trigger that flag.
- Overlapping a speech over the start of the shop flag results in it being turned off.
- When we are at the shop screen to sell gems and have a quantity of one for a type of gem, after disabling the menu lock we can enter our menu and equip said gem. Selling the one gem that is still shown in the shop causes the game to subtract 1 from 0, which causes an underflow in the unsigned byte, resulting in us having 255 of that gem in our inventory.
Execution
As with Death Skip, there is more than one method of executing the Shop Glitch. The Standard method of executing it uses the Faerie Card acquired in the Library, and it and the other methods are detailed below.
Faerie Card Shop Glitch
Executing the Faerie Card Shop Glitch requires a high-value Gem (preferably a Garnet), and a Faerie Card Relic which has not yet been activated. It also requires that you have not yet visited the Shop in your run.
- Stand just outside of the doorway to the Shop
- While standing still, enable the Fearie Card Relic, and wait a few seconds for the Faerie to speak
- Once the Faerie begins to speak, quickly enter the Shop while she is still talking
- Once in the shop, open the Sell Gem menu
- While the Sell Gem menu is still open, open your Equipment menu (without the Faerie glitch, you would ordinarily be prevented from accessing your Equipment menu while in the Shop)
- Equip the Garnet (or other Gem) you collected earlier
- Leave your Equipment menu and return to the Sell Gem menu (note that your equipped Gem can still be sold)
- Sell the gem you just equipped
At this point, you should have 255 of the Gem you sold (thanks to an integer underflow that occurred when you sold the Gem you had equipped), which you can freely sell for enough money to buy the Duplicator and other shop items.
The developers did think of preventing this situation by disabling the fairy speech by activating inside the Librarian's room. Fortunately for us when we first visit him both the cutscene and the trigger occur immediately upon entering the room, so we can activate the fairy speech just outside the room, then enter when she starts speaking.
- Alucard has to stand still from before activating the fairy relic until she starts speaking.
- When executed correctly, Garnet mashing is faster than just holding right, but any mishaps of going up/down or stuttering can cause it to lose time.
Sword Card Shop Glitch
The sound clip of the sword brothers spell is not prevented from occurring inside the shop room, so we can do it even after our first visit.
History
Brazilian glitch hunter jackobones discovered Fairy Card for shop glitch in 2013.
Video Tutorials
Turbo Tutorials: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Any% (7.1.1 The Long Library to Bat Relic)
