True pacifist% entails digging to the end room/going back up to the altar - neither of which look too interesting as speedrunning options. This can work with the "Almost a pacifist" achievement/trophy which demands you to kill nobody but kolmi. This way it'd be more clear and straightforward but still share the spirit of a pacifist category but also be easy to validate as killing anything would not make that trophy appear in the end room - parallel to hitless with the beard statue
I mean, when it comes to true pacifist%, WR will end up with 'Ice Charge x Black Hole combination.
(Note that the pacifist achievement must requires that you reach The Work, so the sky Altar isn't valid.)
On the other hand, the 'almost a pacifist' run is not much different from the common run: "Any% - Circle of Displacement".
And I think the former is much interesting, category diversity wisely.
Going a little further, No gold run is even more interesting in terms of gameplay of speedrunning.
Unlike traditional speedruns where the shop is very important, you have to clear the game solely by finding the good teleporters and boss killers from wands in the dungeon... and ofc avoiding invisible single gold pixels!
Sure, bosskiller in the no gold category will become more difficult to find but the hard cold truth is that the meta will still be cut any% - teleportitis without exceptions as the movement option, at least for WR. Nothing even comes close to the speed of it counting in the no gold factor.
As for the Pacifist, going away from any% similarities to freeze + BH seems fairly fine, that plus some kind of angry ghost BH + freeze field looks viable... On second thought he category seems promising
I "accidentally" did a pacifist speedrun some time ago and it was a lot of fun (though not a very good time), so I'd also be stoked for this category to arise :)
I don't think that there is a point of adding categories which is not requiring new items, conditions, perks and movement. No gold% will become blackhole on the 1st loc farming and angry ghost in the 1st HM, just like in any%. True pacifist is pretty interesting, because you need way to dig dense materials+freezing or lava to blood, but wait. If there will not be a rule that you HAVE TO see the true pacifist in the ending room, you can just take notes and summon the portal.
I actually love Hardpossesion's idea about True low%.
"True low% - finish the game with your starting loadout, no perks, no wand editing, can't pick up items/wands/flasks.
You must kill kolmi with your pee shooter. Hardcore, challenging, and can be done even by slow players if they are patient enough (and good at dodging). You may get bad wands, but if you are skillful with kicks, you can just defeat enemies with it, people have done no wands challenge before, although perks was carrying those runs."
By pacifist I meant true pacifist with the statue in the end room and all. I think the BH angry ghost farming will still be the same setup, only with a slight diversion of angle if it was Any%, which is not that exciting. Only variation I could think of that would be fun to run and unique, is True Pacifist (but not Any%), similar to the Hitless where you cannot skip levels.
Also - the TrueLow% sounds really fun.
I think skipless and teleportless are almost required for something like NoGold% or Pacifist% to be truly unique categories, just like True Hitless is, and personally I think both are really cool challenges. However, I think the bigger problem to address is the lack of players and interest.
