You probably already know that Launch is a pretty powerful skill but have you seen its true potential? There is a bunch of different techs you can use to access difficult pickups or simply going faster.
Launch Swap
If you unequip Launch just after using it, your launch will be faster and will go further than usual. You can equip Launch again at any time after releasing your weapon wheel once.
Weapon Launch
If you do a Launch upward and an upslash on the same frame, your Launch will go further. You can do it with both Sword and Hammer but Hammer Launch are more powerful than Sword Launch. Both can be used midair but you will need to use your Sword upslash if you want to do a Sword Launch midair. It's recommended to set up a bind to perform them more easily. You can combine it with a Launch Swap to go even further.
Terrawalk
When you use Launch on a slope, you will maintain some of Launch momentum, making you get a lot of speed.
Ceiling launch
Like Terrawalk, if you use Launch on a slope in the ceiling, you will maintain some of Launch momentum.
Double Launch
If you use Launch while you are running on a slope, you can use a second Launch midair without having to reset your aerial options. If the slope isn't steep enough, you won't get another Launch midair.
Launch Glide
After doing either a backflip, releasing a bash or doing a reverse dash, use launch and release your directional input. This will preserve some of your Launch momentum, making it faster than usual. You can combine this with Launch Swap to go even faster.
On the vanilla version of the game, performing Launch Glides while using a controller has strong limitations. You may need to adjust your settings to reduce the left stick deadzone, then very slightly move the control stick to be able to aim the launch without moving it too far for the directional input to cancel the Glide state. On Switch, the default deadzone already works for this, on PC it has to be set lower than the default.
In the randomizer, this issue is fixed and you can aim your launch normally as long as you release the directional input after launching (the same way you would do a Bashglide)
Boosted launch
When you change your direction in the air, Ori plays a little turnaround animation. If you launch during that animation, your launch will keep its initial speed a bit longer, making it go further. In order to perform it: jump in a direction, press the opposite direction, launch in the same direction as your jump and keep holding the direction you pressed before using launch. Which means:
- Boosting to the right: jump right, press left, launch towards the right, keep holding left
- Boosting to the left: jump left, press right, launch towards the left, keep holding right
On controller, Boosted Launches are very difficult to perform since you cannot simultaneously move to the left while launching to the right. Due to this, controller players prefer the other techniques on this page to get additional speed out of Launch.