Favorite exploits/ glitches/ ways to cheese - Favorite way to break games/ exploits in games

Elder Scrolls cheese is so powerful and useful it is literally built into the universe of the setting. Canonically people in that universe have gotten access to the console and used it to change shit (Tiber Septim / Talos used it to turn Cyrodil into generic fantasy from a jungle and fully unite his empire, Vivec used it to savescum and the Tribunal 3 to obtain massive skill levels while they had the Tools of Kragnac, the Dwemer got deleted because they fucked up the scripting messing with shit they didn't fully understand like me trying to install a complicated mod without fully reading the readme.txt)
 
All of the physics engine glitches in OG STALKER trilogy like the elevator glitch, stamina recovering jumps and gun prop boosts. Unlike the very recent entry, the original games are buggy in a fun way.
 
I'm not sure if what I'm about to write is considered cheating (hehe) or not, but I've always loved when developers intentionally allowed you to cheese their games with skips or busted items if you did something that looks contrived in-game.

One of my favorite examples has been in Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, where you can skip the boss in 3-8 by throwing an egg at it before the battle even starts. I always felt so smart pulling this off as a kid and thinking that I beat the game's rules.


I also learned while searching for this video that they also made a reference of this skip in "Yoshi's Woolly World", but sadly, you aren't allowed to skip the boss anymore. I guess Kamek just got smarter from game to game.


EDIT: Oooo, wait, I also wanna mention one of the funniest actual glitches that can be found in the same game. Where you can eat Baby Mario and become invicible for the rest of the stage.


Sadly, it's kinda useless exploit since you can't beat the stage without the baby. But the fact that you can literally kill a baby version of Mario in an official licensed Mario game will never not be funny to me.
 
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Any weird acceleration glitches are always my favorites, they usually involve exploiting the geometry to build up speed and/or launch yourself way farther than you usually would.(Think BLJ from Mario 64, or Box/ledge jumping in Quake) but sometimes just involve the devs over looking a part of their of their code that can cause some crazy speed (think strafe-jumping in Source Games, or infinite reverse speed in Big Rigs)
One of my favorite examples I spoke about briefly in the buggy games thread, but in Onirism there was a big one where if you died while falling, if you held forward while you were falling the momentum would build as you were falling so that when you respawned it would shoot you crazy fast in whatever direction you were facing when you loaded in.
 
Baldur's gate 1 & 2 had a few i adored
-A thief that gets blinded can hide or set down traps in the middle of the fight because the game is checking if he can see anything to determine if he's out of sight or not
-The Kensai fighter is supposed to be limited to Melee weapons only but gets to still use throwing weapons for ranged, letting you have a solid option to play through as an axe chucker
-There's a cloak in the second game that would let you transform into an ooze and a sewer rat. the ooze form came with magic immunity and the rat came with 90% resistances to basic physical attacks and could be pumped up to 100% with a spell, both giving you a shitload of breathing room against some tough enemies
-Monks can put some weapons in their off hand and still count as fighting unarmed
-Skipping a whole questline against an invulnerable boss by turning into a mindflayer and sucking his brains out during your first fight with him

The original Two Worlds had a fucking funny one where you could beat the game in 2-3 minutes tops by pulling the main antagonist over to a shitload of peasants who would surround and beat the shit out of him.
 
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Original FIFA Soccer, you could stand in front of the keeper when he was taking a goal kick, so the ball lands straight at your feet and you could just tap it in. There was also a sweet spot at the corner of the penalty box where you'd score almost every time.

Most Final Fantasy games - using life on an undead boss to instantly kill them

Left 4 Dead had a number of places where the AI couldn't reach you

Soul Calibur 2 - forward, forward, vertical with Nightmare would obliterate the CPU even on the hardest difficulty
 
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I don't know if it has an official name but there's this glitch with Ghostrunner 1 that's also the best way to play the game.
There's this weird interaction when dash-sliding off a ledge where you still retain the momentum you get from dashing, in Ghostrunner 1 your speed is very heavily regulated so doing this gets you like a ~400% speed boost. You can then also utilize coyote time(this is when a game lets you go off a ledge but still have a small window to actually jump to avoid the player walking off ledges) to still jump in mid air which lets you go super fast and clear a large distance, very helpful in a lot of levels when you're replaying them for time.
 
One of my favorite glitches came in Driver 2 on the PS1. If you drive a car to where a drawbridge splits and balance yourself on the edge as it continues to rise, you'll start to clip down into the bridge itself. Before falling through, either floor it (or reverse depending on orientation) to save yourself falling in the river. When you reach an intersection, npc cars will begin to clip through the floor and fall. At some point, the cars positions are reset above the player and they maintain their momentum falling down. I don't believe there are any uses for the glitch but it's hilarious watching the ground swallow vehicles and then watching them rain down from the sky.
 
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In Dark Souls 1 I love throwing fire bombs over the fog gate and killing the Capra demon without having to actually fight him. It's such a dogshit encounter I never feel bad about skipping it. And it costs a bunch of fire bombs so it's not like it's strictly cheating
 
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OG Diablo where you kite The Butcher to a wall with windows, shut the door behind you and pelt him with arrows. He won’t open the door to come at you
 
In Kenshi, one of my favorite money making tricks is attacking wild animals that wander into an NPC settlement as a low-level wretch. Immediately, the heavily armed guards start butchering them for crimes of being an animal and I get easy food and money for selling their hides.

Another is getting the Manhunters to commit crime. The guys are bastards towards your party so I feel no remorse when they get jumped by the guards and banned throughout the United Cities for being an asshole. Can be done by knocking one out, pickup not kidnap, wait till their unconscious timer runs out and stuffing them in a shop about to close. They wake up, try to break down the door and a crime alarm is sounded. Best part? You can loot them when jailed. Easy money and the satisfaction of watching Manhunters suffer.

As for other games, I only start cheesing when there's bullshit mechanics or the game is badly done.
 
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The item duplication glitch in Wild Arms. You can even dupe key items. Useless. But I did it anyway. Infinite apples and goat dolls. You are God.
 
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The betting shop exploit in GTA: San Andreas. From the start of the game, locate and kill 6 or so of the rando drug dealers that you find on the sidewalks. You now have circa $12,000. Go buy the "Jefferson" safehouse in Glen Park for $10k. Make a save. Go to the betting shop under the underpass, stick the remaining $2k on a 12/1 horse. If you lose, reload the save, if you win take your loot, go make a save, rinse and repeat. Depending on your patience, you can be an in-game millionaire before doing a single mission.
 
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There's a level skip glitch in the World at War mission, Vendetta. The goal of the mission is to assassinate a Nazi general under the sound of thunder after narrowing surviving a shallow grave.


You can bypass the majority of the level through an out of bounds boundary exploit and even KILL the general when he spawns in. If you kill him with a pistol, you get an achievement. This helped on the Veteran difficulty after a few tries.
 
In FF7, W-item glitch to dupe items, using a pheonix down on that ghost boss, running to negate back attacks, killing 2 of your party members before fighting ruby weapon and a non-exploit glitch, Aeris ghost in the church.
 
Star Wars Battlefront 2 had some fun glitches, with the rancor. Health and ammo would spew out from anyone killed, you could also crawl under it and fall through its shadow out the map if another player or teammate is being eaten.
Count Dooku was pretty good too with his jump, I recall you could get a top most buildings in Mos Eisley. I do remember the screen going black and white like it did in the video, something to do with it never thought you'd be that high and the ground pound moves visuals increasing with height(?)
You could also walk outside the ship and shoot at people during space battles if you edged your ship out the bay door taking off and landing.
Pleased I was able to find clips of these
 
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