Some objects are removed by the punch dagger

Demonstration of the player removing the inquisitor with a single punch.

In Strife, some objects can be removed from the playsim by a single punch from the player's punch dagger. Objects that are affected by this problem share two traits in common:

• They have a 0 or S_NULL value for their pain animation state.
• They were not given an internal bitflag (called NODIALOG in Chocolate Strife) which prevents objects from talking. This bitflag is checked by a routine which is called by the punch dagger and is responsible for causing acolytes and templars to awaken if nearby Order troops or peasants are punched by the player. This routine will always set any enemy that it is called on into its pain state. However, for things that do not have a pain state, setting them to the "null" state tells the game engine to remove them from the level and free their associated memory.

The only enemy known to be affected is the inquisitor. This only happens if the inquisitor flies toward the player immediately after awakening, and without ever walking on the ground for even one frame before the punch is landed. The move must be executed before the inquisitor has walked due to the fact that walking monsters constantly set the NODIALOG flag on themselves as they chase the player. Thus this move can only be done on inquisitors who immediately fly toward the player, or ones that can be sneaked up on from behind (this includes none of the inquisitors in the stock game's level set, all of which are positioned so as to see the player immediately when their area is entered).

The other object for which this has been observed is the Oracle, a non-player character who is critical to the progression of the game's plot on either possible major branch. If and only if the player's punch dagger lands a blow that does zero damage, the Oracle will be removed from the level without dying normally, in the same way as for inquisitors. The reason a zero-damage blow is required in this case is due to the fact that the Oracle only has a single hit point. Note that if this happens, the game can still be continued, so long as the Oracle doesn't have to be spoken to again - simply aim upward to hit the Oracle's Spectre with the Sigil to start the battle that would ordinarily begin when killing the Oracle.

Note that in addition to other restrictions, in all these cases the player must not have made any sounds in the area that would alert enemies. Once any noise has been made, the offending punch alert routine is no longer executed by the game since it assumes most enemies will have already awakened to chase the player.

Trivia

The rumor caused by this glitch that the punch dagger was capable of destroying inquisitors in a single blow was a direct inspiration for the power of the berserk status granted by the talismans in the 2014 Strife: Veteran Edition re-release.