Dropshoot (DS)

The Dropshoot (often abbreviated as DS by experienced players) is a common flying technique that allows the player to move fast and reach higher places with a boost, as they traverse the world of Journey. For a more advanced version of this technique that focuses more on the boost rather than the speed, refer to the Reverse Dropshoot (RDS) article. The dropshoot techniques are especially useful for white robe wayfarers.

Other variations exist as well, but they are not as common due to limited practical use or higher difficulty.

The Dropshoot is often and especially practiced in Pink Desert to primarily "run on the ground", over the hills of sand (and then boosting on top when done efficiently).

How to Dropshoot
Difficulty: From to  : hard to get a huge boost with it.

It should be doable with a keyboard/mouse but with more troubles at keeping the camera aimed to the ground.

Follow these steps to get a general feeling on how it should work. These steps happen pretty fast, you might want to try them one by one first (like first getting the right camera angle to dive down, for example):


 * 1) First, get into a dive.
 * 2) * If starting from the ground, face a flat area in front of you (no obstacles nearby), possibly standing on a small hill.
 * 3) * Fly straight up for 2 flaps (1 may be enough if you start on a hill).
 * 4) While not using the fly button, aim the camera down and move forward. This is to get the right diving position (the left stick on a controller should aim completely forward). You should hear wind once you get into a dive.
 * 5) The instant you hit the ground, hold down the jump button (don't pump it, hold it down) and release the camera stick (or your camera angle will level out quickly instead).
 * 6) Before the camera lifts on its own (after about 3-4 flaps or less depending on the location and topography), rise toward the camera (move towards it), and release the fly button at the same time. You can aim the camera to the ground again when boosting up for a more vertical boost.

Why it Works
Much like with charge boosting, you trick the game into letting you dive while on the ground, meaning you can gain momentum without falling. The longer you can run on the ground with a camera straight down, the higher you can boost, up to a certain point.

It is basically a Dive Boost performed against the ground rather than in the air, the same way as a charge boost is nothing more than performing a dive boost against a wall.

Common Mistakes

 * Not having the camera enough toward the ground before dropshooting, and loosing grip with the floor faster. Maybe start by diving from a higher spot, or boost a little up first so you can adjust your camera angle better before landing and start the DS. Once you get the hang of it, you can start dropshooting immediately from the ground: flap a couple of times towards the camera before turning back to dive and observe how it affects the camera.
 * Getting the timing right to "jump" is crucial to getting a proper dropshoot. Too early or too late and you won't have a proper contact with the ground. (However, you will still get a speed boost, which is okay if you just want to travel faster.)
 * If you attempt to dropshoot with an empty scarf when diving, your wayfarer will jump repetedly on contact with the floor and the DS will not be fast (very jumpy dropshoot, a little slower than normal, and no boost afterwards, or a bad one)
 * While dropshooting you better keep your camera neutral (With a controller, keeping the right stick neutral is very counter-intuitive, as you would be tempted to force the camera down). Forcing the camera to the ground will instead make it rise faster and you will loose footing faster, therefore loosing any boost you may have built up.
 * Avoid taking turns by changing direction with the left stick (or pressing right or left with the keyboard), and prefer the use of the camera (strictly right or left). You might loose contact with the ground more easily otherwise and charge badly.
 * Release jump when boosting or the boost will be reduced / annihilated rather quickly.

When diving / before landing

 * While diving toward the bottom of a hill to DS against it, sometimes the camera raises just before you touch the sand. Flick the camera left and right a few times before even landing in this situation, and you will dropshoot for longer before reaching the top: it will both slow you down and give a better boost. See below "The flicking technique".
 * The momentum is preserved while dropshooting after a dive, so the boosts can combine! Use this to obtain very powerful boosts.
 * As said above in "common mistakes", if you dive with and empty scarf you will jump in contact with the floor. However if you start dropshooting against a steep hill with an empty scarf, the DS will "work" anyway: the wayfarer won't be able to jump off the ground and their scarf will start to recharge anyway.

The flicking technique
For most Drophoot-based techniques (=quickly running on the ground), a technique has been developped by Fancy Flyers to prevent the camera from leveling out during the dropshoot, in order to get huge boosts (this isn't useful for Reverse Dropshoot).

The camera in Journey doesn't seem to "like" the idea of staring at the ground when the wayfarer is close to it, this is why it raises by itself after a few seconds. This is a problem when Fancy Flying in general, because a camera aiming completely to the ground usually gives stronger boosts. Especially if you can maintain it long enough while dropshooting.

The way to avoid this is to  flick the camera stick from a controller left and right regularly. (This flicking technique is also mentioned in the boosting-mistakes video, fancy flying article)

This can be done with various flicking speed, and you don't have to push the right stick all the way to the right and to the left everytime (just a bit can be enough depending on what you prefer).

It's also possible to hold this stick strictly left or right for a little moment to turn the camera.

However, be sure to avoid aiming even a little up or down with the right stick or the camera will level up.

With this technique you will be able to dropshoot on very long distances. You can also get a more powerful boost out of it but it requires practice, to maintain contact with the sand on irregular surfaces (big chirps can help), know when to stop pressing jump while dropping off a hill and when to press is again to continue on dropshooting,... You can easily go beyond the top of the last bridge section of BB with it for example when mastered, starting from the ground.

With experience you will recognise when it's needed to flick or not. For a very short dropshoot it may be useless.

Also, there are places in the game where it's harder to maintain the camera to the ground than others, and some where it will be required to flick in the air before even landing on the ground!

The more a camera is facing to the ground during a DS, the harder it will be to keep it this way, and the faster you may have to flick it (see videos in the Super Boost article).

Also know that the higher your FPS are in-game, the harder it is to maintain a camera to the ground! This is why the PS3 with its 30fps has an advantage concerning Fancy Flying.

Finally, if you want to get a more concrete idea on how to flick the camera stick, it is a good idea to watch a few glitched speedruns (those with a controller shown in the corner), and focus on how different players flick their right stick in different places upon dropshooting: the dropshoot is the most used technique in speedruns, especially in Pink Desert and Underground levels. Speedrunners will often dropshoot and boost with flatter camera angles for speed purposes, but you shouldn't try to mimic this and maybe focus on getting nice boosts first.

PC-SMALL-75x43.gif PC advices
It seems impossible on PC to efficiently keep a camera enough to the ground during dropshoots, in order to get nice boosts upon using a mouse + keyboard (You may have to constantly push the mouse forward in vain when playing this way). This is where playing with a controller comes in handy.

Note using a keyboard only (arrow keys for the camera) allows you to try the flicking technique, and it seems to work rather well.

Maybe it still can't be 100% as effective as doing it with a controller?

In case you do use a controller for it (or keyboard only), know that PC players who have a framerate above 60 fps may start getting troubles at keeping the camera down compared to PS4 players and most other PC players.

It will still be possible to control it with flicking but may require a bit more work on the right stick/arrow keys. If you're in this situation and your monitor has a very high max framerate setting available (120, 144, 200 or even more), you may want to consider giving a try to capping the max framerate of the game with the Nvidia control panel (or similar for an AMD GPU). You should disable the V-sync in the game settings in this situation as well. Reducing the max FPS to around 60 can also help avoiding the common undesired effect of the wayfarer's cloak and other cloth creatures being way too agitated.

Otherwise, in case you simply don't want to use the V-sync to cap the max framerate on your 60Hz monitor because it can cause visual bugs, you can cap the max framerate of the game to 60 with your GPU software instead, which may be an interresting alternative. This is just a suggestion, feel free to continue playing with high fps if you enjoy it and manage nice boosts anyway! It mostly comes down to practice after all.

While dropshooting

 * If you feel like you are about to loose grip with the floor soon because of the camera, or that you made the camera level out too much to get a proper boost out of it, it is best to make a short boost and dive again into Dropshoot position quickly, depending on what you search to accomplish.


 * You can do big chirps to slow down and charge for longer against a hill before boosting on top of it.
 * You can try to save a "bunny hopping" dropshoot (when jumping each time you make contact with the ground because your scarf was empty when making contact with the floor). For this, stop pressing jump a short moment to allow your scarf to recharge a little (you will slide on the ground hopefully), then jump once and hold jump when making contact with the floor again. If you don't have enough forward speed when doing this, you will probably not slide and start walking. It can be tricky to do.
 * With a controller you won't be able to make short turns easily with the camera only, unless you slow dropshoot at this precise moment (less pressure forward on the left stick).

When boosting

 * The basic way of boosting is moving toward the camera, however, to boost forward you have 2 solutions:
 * Aim the camera up while continuing on pressing forward (you should hold jump a little longer after starting to aim the camera to the sky, and make sure you lift properly off the ground). This is easier done on the top of a hill after running againts its slope, but it can also be done on a flat surface easily. The camera can be harder to raise depending on nearby platforms, companion's presence,...
 * Before you boost, start moving the camera to the side, and a short moment later compensate by adjusting your direction along with it (example for a controller: aim to the right with your camera and start moving left with the left stick a little bit after). Don't try to mess with the camera's inclination during this transition and boost towards it at the end (move towards the camera). The tricky part can be to know when to move toward the camera, but experience will help you understand. This is oftentimes a better solution, because:
 * It is less subject to camera fails due to nearby platforms/companion's presence
 * You will see the floor while boosting and know where to dive to next
 * Taking off the floor is more reactive this way with no loss of boost in the process. Especially if you don't push the camera to the ground straight away: when boosting this way with a camera already fully to the ground, if you don't wait for about 2 seconds before pushing the camera stick to the ground you can observe a camera flattening effect that can make you loose a little bit of height (nothing really significant).
 * It is faster to retrieve a diving position after a boost towards the camera: especially if you are not boosting anymore when trying to dive again ! (The camera and wayfarer move faster when boosting, so when boosting with a camera to the sky you should always try to dive again before the end of your current boost, which can be hard to estimate)
 * If you don't take off when trying to boost, jump once to trigger it.

Miscellaneous information

 * You can dropshoot in the Snow level while frozen. However it may be slightly harder to perform and it can help to drop from a higher place to initiate it nicely. You will run on the ground instead of rolling in it, a little slower than for a normal dropshoot, and you can't have a great boost afterwards. To keep running on the ground for more than a few meters it's very important to move the camera right and left fast. Because of the slow speed it is actually easier to DS on hills without loosing foot, and doing short turns without loosing contact to the ground either !


 * Often when dropshooting you will roll in the sand and slide in it, but sometimes you can get a different animation where you just run on the ground very fast (same running animation as the frozen dropshoot mentionned just above). This animation can be triggered on purpose but is harder to do and doesn't seem to serve a better purpose: the boost looks the same.

Showing the dropshoot with controller (Domes)
dropshoot instructions start at 0:35 seconds

How to fly higher and further / Mechanism of dropshooting (Aten)
Turn on subtitles/translation!!

'''PART 1. At 08:00 the fingers on controller are shown (further hints to improve dropshoot and also DSFPJ)'''

'''PART 2. More in depth, challenges and showing controller. Starting with diveboost.'''

Dropshoot special: red cloak
This video shows one player playing with 2 controllers. At the drop part the other reddie is touched, thus longer charging on ground is possible (since a red cloaks scarf would go empty).

In the video description it says: "But 2 red: better than 1 white. We can go much higher."

How to obtain a powerful boost with pure dropshoot
This video shows how by flicking the camera right and left you can keep it to the ground and obtain a powerful boost.

(Note it might work with less frequent camera moves)

Variations
The following variations are also recognised, though even more light variations can exist (articles will be added as more information gets collected):


 * Circle Dropshoot (CDS) Ancestor-SMALL-45x45.gif
 * Slow Dropshoot (SDS) Ancestor-SMALL-45x45.gif
 * Slow Circle Dropshoot (SCDS) Ancestor-SMALL-45x45.gif (Is there a point in distiguishing SDS and SCDS? NeedsToBeChecked-SMALL-75x43.gif)

Apno, giving advice on advanced drophoot methods such as Slow Circle Drophoot on discord 2020-06-05:

"You get different results depending on how you approach the ground when you initiate the ds. You might want to practice that on solid ground rather than the sand, the platforms are narrow but it forces you to control your movements and it's much more stable than the sand."

Here is a video showing circle dropshoot in the tower:

Slow circle dropshoot, similarly to RDS can give very powerful boosts. Here is a video tutorial about slow dropshoot/slow circle dropshoot:

((videos/images for the above are stored here temporarily.))

Trivia
A player with a red robe can only dropshoot very shortly because of their scarf that doesn't recharge upon touching the ground, and they need to boost before emptying the scarf.