In regards to @Kartini and the food concern, all of the high quality meats are available on a NG save, none of them seem restricted to NG+. The enemies that drop the rare foods spawn in very specific places, and theres enough spare food between killing the animal spawns and the food in the stronghold side area(where you fight the axe guy, i can't remember the exact name) to complete them all in a single run. Its just a matter of them saving between runs that would be the problem.

I don't know if this is common knowledge, but my friend and i discovered that you can skip most ladders if you walk at them from a 90 degree angle or steeper(I've tried at a 45ish degree angle and it's inconsistent, 90 degrees sideways or walking backwards was extremely consistent), even if they're in tight spaces. At least going down them.

You can't skip the one during Angie and Donna's doll house going into the well, and i think theres one or two in the factory segmant that cannot be skipped, but everything else seems to work. Ethan does not take fall damage when doing this as well, so health at the time is not an issue. Figured i'd share it in case people didn't know. If i find the exact locations for the unskippable ladders, i'll update this or add a comment, but i figured i'd post it here since it seems like a very easy small timesaver.

Edit: Thanks @Aqua_Cheetah, the other ladder is right after pulling the B3 lever and bringing dukes elevator up in Factory. Every other one can be bypassed by this, or sprinting at it

Being basically brand new to speed-running(RE8 will be my first attempt at this whole thing) i don't really know how much of a say i'll get in this, or how much my opinion matters, but i feel like RTA W/O loads is a solid way to time this. The timer also pauses when pausing to skip cut scenes IGT, and even if it's fractions of a second, if you're constantly fumbling you could theoretically be on pace with someone else IGT despite being further behind RTA. I don't know how much the timer moves while mashing pause and constantly pausing and unpausing, but it feels like it adds up fast.