Intro
The speedrun requires you to acquire a few items throughout the world in order to upgrade your boat. Really only the first boat upgrade is absolutely necessary, but it is known to be faster to upgrade twice.
The first upgrade requires 1 Iron Plate and 1 Iron Pipe. The second upgrade requires 1 Iron Plate, 1 Iron Pipe, and 1 Plate Glass.
For a total of 5 items: 2 Iron Plates, 2 Iron Pipes, and 1 Plate Glass for both upgrades.
Why Do Both Upgrades?
Upgrading twice will speed up entry to the ancestral cave and Pirate Ship, while also making it possible to get the picture of the stone marker early. All of these save time, while it loses only a few seconds to acquire the extra materials.
It is also very easy to get 2 plates and 2 pipes in quick succession. The only major difference is the RNG dependence of getting the plate glass. So it is a trade off of faster but less reliable, or slower and completing more runs.
Iron Plates
Iron plates are simple. They are all over the place on the first 2 dives. Run some tests and you will surely find a few on the way to the Beautiful Coral or Ferry. The 2 fastest are very reliable (about 75% based on my made up statistics) and already on the way.
- Directly on the route - Just to the left of the white coral at the end of the path, before the "beautiful coral"
Beautiful Coral is directly after the sand- Directly on the route - Going to Ferry immediately turn SW. Just past the first "Lily Pad" coral
Iron Pipes
Before we talk about Iron pipes we should talk about how items spawn in the first place. Items do not spawn randomly. The locations do not change. Each location has different items that can spawn in a particular location.
For example, Iron pipes share spawns with steel girders and chips. However, it will appear that nothing is there if your bag is not large enough to carry it. So if you go to a known iron pipe spawn point with the medium bag, and a steel girder has spawned there, your radar will not respond because the steel girder is too heavy to be picked up.
Finally, the specific item is determined on entering the water. So it is possible to sit on a spawn location and continuously dive and ascend on top of it to get as many of any item you wish.
We can use this info to find a reliable location where a bunch of iron pipes can spawn - enter the ftsh point.
Located between the "l" and "e" in Isle, here:
Discovered by ftsh, this location has 4 possible Iron pipes within a very small area
The 4th spawn location is found by going straight from the image toward a larger "lily pad" coral.
There is mild RNG here, but this is a very reliable way of acquiring 2 iron pipes within a few seconds.
Plate Glass
Plate glass is the RNG run killer, but it is less than 10 mins into the run. It shares a spawn with the glass shard and pretty marble, and you only have 1 chance to get it without going out of your way. The only backup is continuously diving on the spawn until you get the plate glass. The location is very close to the Acetic Acid spawn, in a dark patch:
Back when we still did the salvage race, this was known as "Early Plate Glass", since it could also be acquired in the race. But since the salvage race has been routed out due to extreme RNG, this has become the only option for consistent runs.
Conclusion
I hope new runners find this helpful. I chose to write this guide because it is likely the largest barrier to entry in running the game, since this info can be hard to interpret when only watching the runs.
