Hello friends! Let me start by saying I was not here during the leaderboard's inception (I joined the speedrunning community in June 2024). Had I played a role in shaping things back then, maybe I would've made an effort to call for a simplification of the difficulty layout, which is what I decided on doing. I spent a bunch of time thinking about how to reorganize the leaderboard, and what we have now was a combined effort from so many folks! Thank you to BigSid and Daravae for the inspiration via their work on the Kingdom Hearts 2 and Elden Ring leaderboards, respectively. Those 2 boards really influenced the layout, as I wanted the objective of the run to be clear and up top PLUS I heavily valued the clean nature of dropdown menus. Thank you also to Datastream, BlueMetal, JMC, and anyone else who helped funnel relevant information to me which played a part in how I ultimately laid everything out.

Here's exactly what I've done:

1. The timing method got defaulted to LRT at some point. I didn't even know this happened! You might ask, "but how, aren't you a super moderator?" In all honesty, I've been very inactive due to life; I got engaged, laid off from my job, watched my Yankees get eliminated from the playoffs, and found employment again in the past few months. I sincerely thank you for your patience. The point is, because everything was in LRT, the times for the ENTIRE console board got shifted from RTA to LRT (disastrous). I manually fixed every single time on every single run, including those obsoleted. I also corrected the Version (patch) numbers for every run, so the board is more historically accurate.

2. I consolidated the New Game & Difficulty selections. Instead of selecting NG and then separately clicking on Story for example, you just click on one dropdown and have your choice of all 6 variations (NG Story, NG Normal, NG Hard, NG+ Story, NG+ Normal, NG+ Hard)

3. I've combined the PC boards with the console boards. I'm not sure why we didn't do this to begin with, there might've been concern over the timing methods? Thankfully, by simply making sure all Console runs only utilize RTA, the column for LRT will not pop up. PC and Console can live together under 1 category, and should there be a Switch 2 version of Stellar Blade, it can easily be added under this layout.

4. No OOB has been renamed to Glitchless. This is how the rulesets used to be last year, and I was a large part of the process in changing to No OOB in the first place. Back then, it made a lot of sense. My thinking was that No Out-of-Bounds should not be ambiguous, and until the game got cracked open with the PC release, there really was no ambiguity. Around the time I was pushing for No OOB, I created the Speedrun Tech Compendium (my big spreadsheet under the Guides section here). The goal was to have a ruleset that was pretty self-explanatory, so that in case I fell behind with updating the Compendium, the community could answer for themselves if something were OOB or not. Evidently, there's been much discussion over what constitutes something going out of bounds. Which brings us to the next point:

5. I'm going to create a NEW spreadsheet, one that anybody who asks me for access to, can access. The goal with this one will be for you guys, who are currently more active than I am, to add entries to it with video links. Even a simple timestamp link to a YouTube video for example, would also work. Think of it like a "Nightly" release, whereas the main spreadsheet will be the "Stable" release that I'll more slowly add to from your guys' efforts. This way, we can eventually build up EVERYTHING that's ever been doable in the game, and check off the legality per ruleset (like I have in the current Speedrun Tech Compendium).

6. I think the goal for Stellar Blade is to have a core THREE types of runs available: a mostly glitchless (reliable) run, a somewhat broken run, and a completely busted run. These are our Glitchless, Restricted, and Any% runs. Ideally, the glitchless (reliable) run should be stable, and remain playable on patched PC builds or on Console for long periods of time.

With Any%, there's no debate to be had, you can just do whatever--simple! With the Glitchless and Restricted rulesets (under Main Bosses), here's the CURRENT (TEMPORARY) GUIDELINES:

Glitchless: No map deloading, no exploitative death warping or respawn manipulation, no air swimming, no utilization of invisible or broken geometry/collision, no fusion cell skips or duplication, no Adam & Lily glitch.

Restricted: No map deloading, no air swimming.

Any%: this category is its own ruleset. As stated above, there are no restrictions. In the future, if the category gains popularity, there could be a split required.

These are subject to change and open to discussion. We are still working on making a relevant survey asking specific questions about these rulesets and the leaderboard in general. So, if you'd like to get started working on a run immediately, just know that for the next ~2 weeks, the rulesets are under a probationary period. We aim to have things sorted by November 2nd. At that point, some of the former No OOB runs, which are now listed as Glitchless, may have to get shifted over to Restricted.

7. There's the possibility we'll need to add some kind of distinction for runs @ different FPS values. This is still a discussion, but just for now I've added an Annotation so you can enter the highest FPS you reached during your run. At this time, it isn't even a required value, but this could change. The survey should help to inform how we move forward.

8. Finally, for anybody interested in doing Training Room runs on disc (1.000), I've written up some rules for it since it's very involved to get started. I could easily add it to the current Any% category right now, so if you did wanna run it ASAP just shoot me a DM and I can implement that change. Depending on how the survey goes, maybe it will get its own category. The boards are much cleaner now so it wouldn't really take up much space.

OK that's it for now! Stay tuned for when we share both the public contribution spreadsheet + the survey. They'll be under #announcements on the Discord, and I'll add them here as well. If you notice some glaring issue with the new leaderboard, please DM me here on SRC or on Discord.

Cheers~

Edit, survey link below:

https://forms.gle/PzwmzkX1PFE532KMA

For access to the Community Contribution spreadsheet, please DM me.

🕒 Load Time Removed (LTR) Becomes Default Timing Method for Full Game PC Categories

Starting August 2nd, 2025, all submissions to the Stellar Blade leaderboard in Full Game PC categories must include the Load Time Removed (LTR) timing method.

🆕 What’s Changing?

• LTR will be the default timing method for Full Game PC runs.
• Runs submitted on or after August 2nd must display the LTR timer during gameplay.
• This change ensures fairer comparisons across different hardware setups by removing load time variance.
• RTA is still expected to be submitted as part of the run.

🛠️ How to Set It Up

To use LTR:

1. Download and install LiveSplit from livesplit.org.
2. Right-click on the LiveSplit window and select Edit Splits.
3. In the Game Name field, select Stellar Blade from the dropdown.
4. Click on Activate to enable the load time remover.
5. Ensure the timer shows Load Time Removed during your run.
6. You can find additional resources and support on the Resources page or via the GitHub repository.

🙌 Special Thanks

We’d like to recognize the following community members for their contributions to the development of the LTR tool. Without their hard work none of this would be possible!

• Flufferdoodles
• desa
• Daravae
• Vojtas131
• alice

🧪 Need Help?

If you're unsure how to set up LiveSplit or the autosplitter:

• Ask in the Stellar Blade Discord.
• Refer to the pinned messages and guides shared by the community.
• Reach out to moderators for assistance.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible. We’re excited to see even more precise and competitive runs going forward!

— Stellar Blade Speedrun.com Moderation Team