Hi, quiet a new player here, so I'm sorry if the following question is a bit dumb. I read in the rules that savestates aren't allowed, is it true even for savestates used to reset a run? I'll make an example, if I'm doing a run and I screw up, can I reload a save state that brings me to the "name entry" or "file select" starting screen? Or is it not allowed? If so, how can I reset a run without doing a soft/hard console reset? (playing on the latest version of bizhawk)

Plus: is there an official discord server? The link on the main sotn speedrun.com page doesen't seem to work for me.

Thank you very much

The link on SRC has not been updated, but there is a new invite link here: https://discord.gg/pcdDEpK292.

As far as save states, I would still recommend issuing a soft/hard console reset after using a save state, especially if you do offline runs. This is only strictly required for offline emulator attempts, but it's still a good habit to get into even for streamed attempts.

Thank you very much, I'll join the server asap. And thanks for the tip too, I didn't know that a soft/hard reset was mandatory if offline, I'll keep that in mind. Much appreciated.

Just to be sure, I imagine that using the speed up 400% feature of Biz isn't allowed too right? I know it's just maybe 30 second of ps1 loading screen but I find it very annoying. Thanks in advance for the help!

If you are doing back-to-back runs, one thing you can do is use the in-game reset (hold SELECT+START for about 4-5 seconds), and it will immediately take you to the SOTN title screen. That is a faster way to start a new run than a console soft/hard reset and has been deemed acceptable when submitting a run by mods before, as I recall.

Unless you're doing Richter runs, probably should reset anyways unless you don't mind dealing with prologue spawn nonsense.