After some community discussion, we have decided to remodel the way we organize our categories based on game versions.

We have created subcategories to split runs based on their content. Here's what this means for each category:

Any% will be split in 1.0.0 and 1.0.1-1.3.2. This is because 1.0.0 only required two Slime Keys to finish the game, while every patch afterwards required five. There are other small differences throughout the patches that we have not deemed worthy of their own categories. Don't worry about playing on an unoptimal patch, as 1.3.2, which is the current patch as the time of writing this post, is the fastest version in the 1.0.1-1.3.2 group.

All Gordos has not been majorly affected by version changes throughout history. It simply has a Glitchless / Glitched split.

Slimepedia 100% has three groups of versions: 1.0.1 has no Wilds and no Mochi's Manor, 1.1.0-1.1.2 have the Wilds but no Mochi's Manor, 1.2.0 and later patches have both the Wilds and Mochi's Manor. To avoid confusion, Glitched runs have been split off into a miscellaneous category, as they are much less popular than Glitchless.

Vacpack 100% has not been majorly affected by version changes throughout history. It simply has a Glitchless / Glitched split.

Pink Gordo has been affected by some changes that have happened in version 1.3.2, and has therefore been split in 1.0.1-1.3.0 and 1.3.2.

A small thing to note: as 1.3.1 and 1.3.2 are functionally the same version as far as speedrunning is concerned, and we have been referring to runs post-1.3.0 as '1.3.2' in the community already, runs on 1.3.1 are going to be categorized as 1.3.2.

Obsolete runs are hard to keep track of and it's possible that we may have missed some or assigned an incorrect version number, so if we assigned the wrong versions to some of your old runs, please tell us - either in this thread or via Discord. Thanks!

We as a community are not keeping track of rush mode high scores. I'm sure that anyone who makes a real effort to get a high score on rush mode will upload it to youtube so I suppose you can stick to that for the time being, since speedrun.com isn't fit to host high scores as a website at all, but I suppose we could add a rush mode branch to our discord and keep a spreadsheet to keep track of the highest scores if there is enough interest

Just found this out. More on this on the two following videos, read description of the first:

Hey, I'm sharing my IL PB here mostly as a resource. The in-game boards do a great job at keeping track of times and submitting everything to SRC is a little bit of a chore, but there's a few valuable pieces of strats and info that you can find in this playlist and it's good that videos of this stuff stick around so here it is: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP89SaTDx_7AdWI_YgRCurg-pp0siSDBQ

Still working on uploading a few last vids atm but it should have vids for my best times in every level soon enough

I can't speak to whether or not a glass desert category can be made but this may help out if you're trying to learn Any% - https://www.speedrun.com/slime_rancher/guide/1mkpv

I believe you're overstating the luck factor a bit. Some runs do die to atrocious fruit spawns or atrocious plort prices but if you do everything right you'll get on a run every other attempt or so, and considering the reset point is 5 minutes in, that's really not that bad. I'd encourage you to keep at it, I have 73 hours of playtime on this game on steam and I think only 15ish of those were spent actually doing runs on the current route, it's really not too much of an obstacle.

"I mean, longest-standing or uncontested?"

...Why not both? You could have a filter to include or exclude uncontested records on the page. Some uncontested records might still be really challenging to beat, but obviously you have a point when you say that there is value in only showing records in games where there's actual competition.

And you could also have a tied/untied filter to handle the Dragster cases and have them show up only if you want them to.

And also, ILs obviously wouldn't be counted because of the sheer volume of uncontested WRs there I think. But maybe if it's not difficult to implement you could have a page for ILs too, it's not like it really hurts.

Following EZScape's recent(ish) video I figured it would be really amazing to have a proper, constantly updated 'Longest Standing WR' page in place. If given more exposure, long-standing WRs will be beaten one by one until only truly impressive runs remain standing, and then the title of "longest standing speedrun record" which is actually an incredibly cool title will actually mean something again. I feel like it could push a new kind of competition in the speedrun community with people racing to knock out all of the longest standing times, and even if it doesn't get as much attention as I'm hoping for when I write this, it would at least be a very neat statistic.

I'm not positive on how easy it is to implement, but I really do feel strongly about this feature having the potential for greatness.

I'd love to hear strategies for the Mastermind key puzzle, and maybe see if there's a way to practice it. I got lucky on my timed run and got it first try, but in practice I was routinely having to do 2, 3, or even 4 rounds to get it (essentially just having to wait until I got an easy one). This is only one of two RNG puzzles (the other being the Simon game in the Mechanics room, which good ol' paper and pencil take care of, no problem), so might be worth optimizing.

I'm a beginner at programming and one of my first few projects they made me do was figure out an AI to solve a variant of Mastermind in as few attempts as possible. I could realistically come up with a reliable method to get that one done but I'm busy with other stuff for a few days.

I'll investigate purple grapes and look over the routing for things myself as soon as I can catch a break... which is probably not soon. I have plenty of interest in this run, I just don't quite have the time.

I just finished playing this and probably would enjoy running a No Save and Quit category in the near future. Think you could make one? I'll fill it soon I promise.

(For more questions, feel free to add me on Discord and I'll give you an invite link to the server.)

In short, that flag allows you to make paint spawn faster than otherwise possible.

Full explanation: paint unlocks when you unlock five different 'paintable' lines. Reading all QRs and collecting all the time capsules unlock two of such lines; however, the progress on those is saved globally across your game and is not save dependant, so on a fresh file you just need to make the game check the time capsule / QR counter to make it realize the flag for unlocking the achievements is active and you will therefore get that paint line.

You need very high FPS to perform item jumps successfully. Timing is also important but you need (1) a wall with the right angle and shape, (2) proper inputs, and (3) the distance you get is proportional to your FPS (not on all item jumps, which is why some work on 60fps too just as well - but I'm not going to start explaining the entirety of the physics engine to explain why that is)

Hello and welcome. If you're here, you're probably interested in picking up this game. You're in the right place. I'll be explaining the different categories and going over the very basics of every run, but there's a lot to explain so I will not go in depth here.

Before diving in, if you have any doubts or questions, they're best asked in our Discord. The link is kept private, but you can get in by simply shooting me a PM on Discord (my name and tag are public and linked to my speedrun.com profile). I strongly recommend to get in there, as most discussion happens there, and it's the best way to get informed on new strats. It's also the best place to ask questions about speedrunning Talos in general.

I'll start by explaining the different categories. You will notice all of the main categories have an 'Unrestricted' section and a '60 FPS' section. This was a recent change that we implemented to hopefully make speedrunning Talos more friendly, even for people with weaker setups. Because of how high framerate breaks the physics of this game a lot, a good chunk of people simply can't run this game properly; 60FPS offers an even playing field to every runner.

[NOTE: A LOT OF THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS OUTDATED. WE'RE WORKING ON AN UPDATED VERSION, FOR THE TIME BEING REFER TO THE GOOD OLD "WATCH WR AND TRY TO IMITATE, ASK QUESTIONS FOR THINGS YOU CAN'T DO" METHOD]

Onto the categories themselves: if you completed this game casually, you will know it has three endings (Eternalize, Messenger, Transcendance). Eternalize is currently the fastest category, due to a recently discovered clip that enables us to finish the game with just 11 sigils. Before this clip, Messenger had been the fastest category for a long time, so you'll find a lot of old any% runs in that category.

Eternalize Any%, which is 'true Any%', as in the fastest category, unlocks Connector, leaves A, enters floor 1 to get a connector in the Nexus, and uses it to clip down behind the Eternalize gates. Resources on this run are still fairly scarce, since it's a very recently discovered trick, but you can find some tutorials/setups on Extodasher's youtube channel, as well as watching the WR run for a reference route.

Messenger Any% is simply reaching Floor 2 of the Tower, and clipping inside the Tower to reach Messenger Ending. There have been a number of different routes over the last year or so, but the best resource to learn the quickest one is Kraeft's WR. He nails every trick super quickly and you can easily figure out what you're supposed to do from his video. Azorae made a tutorial for the old route, which unlocks cube and is a bit easier to execute, but it's also over a minute slower. If you're just starting to run this game, I would recommend checking it out regardless, as it does give you good insight on how the tricks work, and you might not be confident in pulling off every trick in Kraeft's route yet. You can find Azorae's tutorial here:

As for 60FPS Any% categories, they're obviously slightly less broken. There are no tutorials (and no runs, in the case of Eternalize and Transcendence, since they were only recently added to the leaderboards), but you can find a lot of different strats that are workable and roughly equivalent for Messenger by watching the WR run and other top runs.

All Sigils is pretty self-explanatory: collect all the Sigils in the game and complete the game. Essentially, our version of 100% (true 100% would involve picking up an extra bunch of time capsules and journal entries that we don't really care about). Again, the WR by Kraeft has all of the optimal strats, and since no tutorials exist, simply trying to mimic the WR is your best way to learn. 60 FPS AS is mostly uncharted territory. I've routed it and done runs, and plan to bring the time to sub 1 hour soon enough, but there's surely relevant improvements to be made. Not the most welcoming category for newbies, but also not the most competitive, so it's an okay place to start off.

Road to Gehenna runs are quite simple: Any% frees all the robots (excluding Admin) and completes the game, while 100% collects every Sigil in the game, frees Admin, and completes the game. 60FPS just forces you to run some slower strats in a lot of places and it's not much of a difference. The Gehenna Bible is the any% tutorial playlist by apple1417: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF1JB5vHj0ksmeFIGuTIxET_aQH23I-Of If you're looking to get into these categories this is surely the place to start. Do note that the FPS required for Gehenna Any% is still a fairly big number, but it is noticeably lower than the one you need to run Any% of the main game, and some of the tricks (the barrier jumps in particular) are perhaps even easier on more average FPS numbers. Shoot for getting around 150 FPS when walking back from World 3 to the hub, and play with the settings accordingly to drop it down if your PC is more powerful than that. Of course 60FPS doesn't care about FPS limits - just look at the runs by apple1417 for those categories.

Miscellaneous categories are self explanatory if you just read the rules of the category, and they're not exactly the best place to get good at the game anyway, so you can ignore those for the time being.

Finally, some resources are useful across multiple categories, and they're just important general knowledge to have. These are the optimal sigil solutions and the paint spawn guide by darkid - both are linked in the Resources page on speedrun.com. Check them out and do your best to memorize them (at least the parts that concern the run you're choosing to start with) as they'll come in useful.

Once again, I invite you to join the Discord if you're interested in running. Resources are few and far between, but there's a lot of people with a lot of knowledge hanging out in the Discord ready to help you out. Best of luck if you choose to run this game!

There is a way to unlock cube without connector but you can't finish the game that way either (you need to actually access the cubes in B4 some way to collect the two Ts, and there's no way to do that without connector). So yeah, true low%=any%.

Cube+connector is all sigils, but I meant just collect as much as you can itemless. Just give up on the sigils we cannot collect and go for the rest.

Fair point, I do get significant advantages/disadvantages because I cap at 64 so enforcing VSync might make sense.

Talk about low% - community% 60FPS is clearly not a thing in the traditional sense of it, but it could be fun to just go around and collect as much as we can without unlocking any items. Regular community% doesn't finish the game either, soooo...

60 FPS has been added as a side leaderboard to all categories.

After bringing the issue up in the Talos Discord and receiving no objections, I have decided to make 60FPS Any% a main category on the leaderboards, instead of a Miscellaneous one.

The main pros are:

• The barrier of entry is much lower for new players, and especially with Talos being ran at SGDQ 2017, some new runners will check the game out. The FPS requirements are scary for people without the technology to run the main categories, but having 60 FPS recognized as one of the main categories helps with attracting interest and bringing new runners here.

• Runners who already run any% might want to catch a break from resetting over paint. In general, 60 FPS categories - not only Any%, but possibly All Sigils and Gehenna categories in the near future - can be a new challenge for older players as well.

• Any%, All Sigils, and Gehenna Any% all have very optimized times as World Records, and it's my and many others' belief that our current strategies are close to maximum optimization. With Talos 2 apparently having still a bunch more time until release, expanding into 60 FPS is the best way to expand Talos's lifespan as a speedgame, as strategies for those categories are not quite as optimized and researched yet.

This thread will also serve as a discussion thread for any and all 60 FPS categories for the time being. I'll be planning out basic routes and recording some runs for 60 FPS All Sigils and Gehenna Any% and 100% in a couple weeks - that's probably the next you'll hear from me on this issue.

Best of luck to anyone who will attempt running the category! :D

Oh yeah, it's definitely FPS dependant, but it's manageable. Unstucking yourself is just a matter of pausing and unpausing in the worst cases. I don't get the FPS to make the final paint jump clip, and I can do the RPS climb just fine.

WAtC's tree climb looks even more FPS intensive.

Short explanation: this makes bad paint viable, removing the need to reset 50% of runs to paint.

Long explanation: This makes bad paint only a couple seconds slower than good paint. Compare good paint vs new bad paint route: Good paint goes Wrap Around the Corner, Redundant Power Supply, The Right Angle. Bad paint goes Redundant Power Supply, The Right Angle, A Box Up High. Notice how Wrap Around the Corner and A Box Up High are both red L sigils, so they're interchangeable, and you can pick up whichever is fastest. Back to the comparison - both routes are essentially the same speed in going Redundant Power Supply into The Right Angle, so we can remove that from the equation. The comparison is Wrap Around the Corner on good paint vs A Box Up High on bad paint. Obviously WAtC is still a bit faster because of walking time to ABUH, but the difference is actually not run-killing now. Implications for the rest of the paint route are pretty interesting too. Set 3 in A6 is noticeably faster than any other, so you're making up some of the time you lose in B4 there. Set 2 is still not great, but it's runnable now. This, at the very least, makes Set 3 viable for the most competitive times, and that's 25% less resets due to paint. 50% if you take Set 2 as well.

Add-on: MousseMoose has found a tree climb, similar to the one in The Right Angle, for Wrap Around the Corner. However no one can seem to replicate it, and he is moving so he can't record easily. It looks very FPS intensive, and I can't replicate it, but maybe people with better machines can.

As for how to perform the trick themselves, simply hold the direction against the wall and spam jump while looking completely down, and you should have an easy time getting them.

370-390 FPS is just baaarely enough to hit it even with the correct inputs. He's probably not doing things wrong. You want around 430ish to do it comfortably in runs from my experience (that said, my experience is limited because I don't get that kind of FPS)