Everest had one of the biggest updates so far with Everest Core becoming the "Stable" version. Here is what you need to know as a player and what rule changes are happening:

What does this all even mean?

To put it in layman's terms, they're updating the game to use a newer framework. Which should mean faster loading times, utilizing more RAM, better performance, etc. But most importantly Everest will always run on FNA, even with an XNA Celeste install (Steam default), but even if you were running on FNA (Epic default) before there are some gameplay relevant changes for all players using a Windows PC.

What are those changes that Everest Core brings?

Before Core:

• XNA: low latency, 61FPS if vsync is off OR you are on a high refresh rate monitor (so this should affect most speedrunners)

• Computer performance can affect the quirk on lower end machines

• FNA: higher compositor latency

After Core:

• Everest always is FNA, restart into vanilla stays on FNA/XNA depending on what you selected in e.g. Steam

• launching Vanilla through Olympus counts the same as holding right on the titlescreen!

• Core patches both Everest's and (if applicable) vanilla's FNA to have less latency, when restarting into vanilla.

• Added Compatibility modes:

• Legacy FNA: Negates the lower latency for both, Everest and Vanilla

• Legacy XNA: Forces Everest to run at 61fps

• Note that when enabled, the 61fps quirk is forced to always occurs, even when vsync is on

• For XNA users on Steam, they can enable the FPS counter in the steam overlay by opening it with "Shift+"TAB" while in-game and navigating to "Settings"->"In-Game" to see if they're affected by the 61fps quirk.

If you want to more about latency, please refer to this Everest wiki page: https://github.com/EverestAPI/Resources/wiki/Everest-Core-Latency-Guide

How do I check if I'm running on XNA or FNA?

Per default, Steam is on XNA, Epic is on FNA, and itch depends on how you downloaded it. The Epic version can't be changed to XNA, but Steam gives you the option to download the FNA version. To make extra sure on what version you're running Everest will tell you in the compatibility option which legacy option is not compatible with your vanilla install.

What changes for the speedrun leaderboards?

Honestly not much. Everest will still not be allowed for Vanilla boards, the updated framework for FNA installs that you get when restarting into Vanilla is however allowed.

Modded boards will require latest "Stable" version or additionally latest legacy "Stable" non-core version, which is 4449. As a note, the legacy version will very likely not be supported by Helpers in the near future, so maps that require helpers will very likely stop working properly on 4449, so it's recommended to update to Core when possible.

All current mods and the autosplitter should work after this update. There is only a niche Speedrun Tool and autosplitter interaction that is not working yet but should be working soon again. If you have any issues or bugs with this new Everest Version, please report them to the Everest Team.

Also take this as reminder that verifier applications close soon in a bit over 5 hours. Please get those last minute applications in if you forget them!

While verifier applications are still ongoing, we have a few board changes that I would like to announce:

• Welcome back 202 berries on the main leaderboards! You will find it under miscellaneous categories. As we had to manually move the runs, you might get a notification for a run that already happened. Please pay no attention to it.
• Now for a slightly controversial change: Farewell leaderboards will not be completely separated anymore via the DTS variable. You still will be able to see which runs used Dash Trigger Skip and which ones didn't, but the leaderboard will now show them both on the same board. If you have a DTS and a no-DTS run submitted, the faster one will be shown.
• Like yesterday announce, Archie Collab boards are open now! We only accept runs starting from map version 1.0.3, any run on an older version will be rejected!

Hi all,

We've had a few verifiers/moderators step down in recent months: thanks to amber, viv, profnyan, Norah, and talia for all they did on the team! With that in mind, we've made some promotions and re-opened verifier applications:

• exorax, bree12am, and TrevABC have been promoted to moderator on all boards

• Verifier applications are open until 23:59 UTC on Saturday, Dec 16. You can find the application form here: https://forms.gle/ZhFMvh6Scom5AK9u9. As always, we'll be adding a couple people now and then pull from responses in the coming months as needed.

And as an aside, the leaderboard for Archie Collab is up now and will begin accepting submissions tomorrow, you can find it at https://www.speedrun.com/Archie_Collab. Here's a news post with more information: https://www.speedrun.com/modded_celeste/news/nx9ozmx9

Thanks for reading, and happy speedrunning!

With the recent discovery of a viable method to skip the cassette in the Core A-Side, we are announcing some changes to the 8A boards:

• "Full Clear" will be renamed to "All Red Berries"

• a "Cassette" and "Full Clear" variable will be added to the "Clear" and "All Red Berries" boards respectively

With the difficulty of the trick and it only affecting the last 20 seconds of the run, we thought it wouldn't make sense to split the leaderboards. This does only affect the IL leaderboard, we won't add a variable for fullgame categories.

That's all, have fun skipping the cassette!

We are happy to announce the Strawberry Jam Collab leaderboards have been opened on speedrun.com! Check them out over at https://www.speedrun.com/sj_collab

If you don't know what Strawberry Jam is, it's a big collaboration between different mappers, artists, coders, etc. to release the biggest mod pack to date for Celeste. You need to play Celeste on PC (no Microsoft Store version) to be able to play this mod pack. Also rules are slightly different for modded Celeste runs compared to vanilla Celeste runs, so if you never did a modded run before, please check out the rule page again on the site. That said, a couple of reminders...

**- 1.0.5 is the first patch we are accepting runs for - any runs completed on patches before this one will not be accepted for the leaderboards.

• Keep in mind you still run some risks by submitting runs - if a level is significantly changed in a patch to the point your submitted run is no longer a fair comparison, we may have to wipe the leaderboard for the affected level(s).**

Have fun with the mod pack!

In an effort to disambiguate and standardize our team's verification procedures, we have instated a session recording requirement for certain top placing submissions. We've frequently asked this of high level submissions in the past, but until now we had no official rule stating we would do so, and inconsistently enforced the procedure. Now, for the following runs to be verified, you must provide a session recording with unedited audio featuring audible, original game sounds:

• Top 3 Any%
• Top 3 1A, 2A, and 5B Clear
• World Record in any full game/IL category on the main board
• World Record for 202 Berries and Prologue on Category Extensions

We understand and apologize that this will add some overhead to submitting top level runs. However, we determined it a necessary step in maintaining the integrity of our leaderboards and wanted to be as up-front with the policy as we could be. As a team, we ensure that we will be patient during the process of obtaining additional proof for runs, and will work with you if any problems occur. In general, we encourage recording as many of your sessions or practice as possible in preparation for this, even if you feel like you’re “not quite at” the level of play where these rule changes matter. As a general note, if you have any suggestions for improving this process or even any frustrations, we’ll hear you out on them. Thanks!

For more information, read our FAQ: https://tinyurl.com/celesteProofcall

Couple announcements with regards to the Celeste SRC team:

amberlovesarchie has been promoted to Super Mod, and Hydrei has stepped down from the team. Thanks for your time helping out on the boards Hydrei!

Second, we are reopening verifier applications. While we are looking to add a couple verifiers as soon as the form is closed, the primary intent with this form is to gather candidates to add over the coming months. If you aren't available immediately but would be in a few months, let us know in DMs or your form response!

Verifier Application Form: https://forms.gle/ZhFMvh6Scom5AK9u9 Form closes 23:59 UTC+0 on Thursday, May 5

We decided to do a bit more leaderboard shifting this week! For starters, All Chapters has been moved to a miscellaneous category on the main leaderboards. This was done largely due to it sharing so much in common with 100%, but 100% had over double the unique runners... despite being all of an All Chapters run and more. If you’re committing to playing over an hour and a half of Celeste, it seems people understandably decided they might as well "do everything" and run 100%. To make room for other main categories, we decided it was best to put it to misc. As well, it fits in nicely with All A/B/C-sides in misc!

Speaking of main categories, Bny% has now been moved from category extensions to a main category on the main leaderboards! If you’re unfamiliar, Bny% is unlocking Epilogue from a new file similar to any%, but with the restriction of not being allowed to complete any A-sides. Instead, you must progress in every chapter by grabbing the cassette and completing the B-side.

Bny% has always been the most popular non-assist category extension, and we agreed that it has legitimate uses as a main leaderboard category - it’s a good branching off point from any% in terms of gameplay length which the leaderboard was a bit lacking in. As well, most categories that contain all of the B-sides require a large learning commitment on top of knowing B-sides (A-side hearts, Core A, C-sides, etc), which has made categories like All Hearts difficult to get in to. Hope to see more people picking up or revisiting the category in the coming weeks!

In addition to the board changes, we have a few other things to mention from the last few weeks:

• The Save and Quit rule has received an addendum that bans using them to "beneficially alter cycles" in ILs. this is only relevant for cassette block rooms.

• We have standardized how we handle overlays covering the top-left of the game feed. We now explicitly allow covering the in-game timer with a simple livesplit timer showing hundredths of a second, but only if the berry counter directly below that is visible. If at all possible, it is still encouraged to put livesplit elsewhere on your overlay.

Some staff changes: @Sickly stepped down from the SRC Team, and @frozenflygone will only be verifying for Modded Content boards going forward. Thank you both for your time on the main boards!

And finally: The "All Chapters" IL category has been renamed to "Heart+Cassette".

With All Chapters finding a new home in the Misc tab, this change was made so that it is clear from a glance what this category of ILs means.

the following rule has been added to the IL Rules on all Celeste speedrun.com leaderboards:

"Save and Quits to replace retries or screen transition badeline throws are banned."

no changes have been made to fullgame rules.

this ban was made specifically to prevent high level ILs from turning into s+q spam (notably in summit and arb ILs), and is therefore not a blanket s+q ban. while many All Chapters/Full Clear ILs will still have two optimal save and quits (heart+cassette), this was deemed to be not as intrusive as doing a save and quit on most badeline throws in 7a.

since far fewer s+q's save time in fullgame, the issues mentioned above do not apply there. for example, a 100% run doing every noteworthy save and quit would only be doing approximately 5. as such, we chose to leave fullgame alone. this allows runners more freedom to s+q for nerves, tilt, or IRL RNG as needed.

references to s+q's saving chapter time or file time were avoided in making this ban because exhaustively defining which save and quits are faster by each of those metrics is very difficult, and subject to change with strat developments. (see: )

instead, we categorized them by function, and elected to not ban wakeup, blue heart, and cassette save and quits. these save and quits are being allowed because of similar reasoning to the lack of a fullgame ban: the frequency with which they show up is low, and therefore not as intrusive to high level IL attempts.

We've made a bunch of changes to the Category Extensions boards, here's the changes that are relevant to Celeste's Main leaderboard:

1. All Cassettes has been moved to the main boards! All Cassettes features similar routing choices to All Hearts, where the player returns to map out of certain levels after obtaining specific collectibles. Additionally, the journal tracks Cassettes in much the same way as Hearts, so this category was deemed fundamental enough to earn a position on the primary boards. Moving Bny% was also proposed due to its popularity, but since its rules are a direct extension of Any%, it will remain on CE.

2. 202 Berries has been moved to Category Extensions. While fairly unobtrusive in its previous Misc placement, it was deemed to fit the content of CE more closely and was moved accordingly.

3. This doesn't pertain to this board but I'll mention it here still for visibility: we have made a permanent submission form to suggest new Category Extensions, with a spreadsheet of approved and denied submissions. Please be sure to read all info on the form before submitting.

Form: https://forms.gle/PLvRLd7VxLqajn528 Accepted/Rejected Submissions: https://bit.ly/34uFnXC

1. We have added a DTS variable to True Ending, All Chapters, and 100% Leaderboards so that it is easier to discern which runs do the skip without opening each run individually. Value has been set to "No" for all current runs, except for based god @Isaac#9258's 100% run. "Game Version" variable was renamed to "Version" for formatting purposes.

2. Game Rules have been updated on all boards to include some guidelines that we've been enforcing on high level submissions for quite some time now. These rules replace the previous audio recommendation, and then add an additional rule about gamefeed freezes. Full text:

[quote]Submission Recommendations:

The following two bullet points are not mandatory for most submissions, but high level runs that fail to adhere to one or both of them will likely require the runner to provide additional proof measures to moderators. If this cannot be done, the run may be rejected. Repeat instances will be treated more harshly.

• Have clearly audible game sounds and music in your video proof.*
• Unless you are on the chapter select screen, avoid tabbing out of the game while playing in Fullscreen mode, as this freezes the game feed during sections that are relevant for verification.[/quote]

3. From the initial wave of mod/map form responses, "Cat Isle" has been added to the Modded Celeste Board, which you can find here: https://www.speedrun.com/modded_celeste#Cat_Isle . enjoy petting all the kitties!

Run comments have been disabled on all Celeste leaderboards. As we are not able to suitably moderate them at this time, this seemed like a prudent measure to take. When more adequate tools are released to moderate comments, they will be reinstated for users with a verified Celeste run on the main board, and users with any verified run on subsidiary boards.

Recently, a glitch was found in Farewell that allows the player to keep two dashes from Start until the end of Determination. Here's a video showing both parts of the skip, as performed by Zkad:

With the discovery of this skip, some changes have been made to the Celeste SRC leaderboards. IL speedruns of Farewell (both Clear and Moon Berry categories) are now split into two sub-categories: Unrestricted and No DTS.

The reasoning for making this split is that this skip fundamentally changes how much of the level is played, so we wanted to provide leaderboards for each way you can play the level. That being said, we will revisit this change in 3-6 months to see if one or both of these two splits can be undone due to inactivity of any of the four sub-categories.

Fullgame categories that play farewell allow the use of the glitch and their leaderboards were not split. Some reasoning contributing to that decision is that the skip affects a much smaller portion of the run. Because the scope of the skip is narrower in the context of a fullgame speedrun, it's more comparable to a routing choice that a player makes when learning the category, instead of running a largely different category—much like the options in Temple and Reflection for Any%.

One final note: the Unrestricted sub-categories are currently only for runs that successfully perform the second part of the skip, meaning any runs completed with the infinite height glitch which fail to preserve 2 dashes will be put on the No DTS board. This is an edgecase reserved mostly for IL PB's in fullgame runs that fail the skip and elect to continue, so it's open to change, but this was chosen because it seemed silly to punish the use of a glitch that amounts to timeloss.