I ran some tests on this a while back when first attempting to route, but blink is just that broken that it beats out all the other speed-up abilities by a wide margin. Blink direction is also tied to your camera, so you can dash vertically to reach any height you'd get with the double jump.

There's one niche use for it right now, but it's only relevant for 100% completion routes (which we're still a way away from seeing, I reckon). If you jump into the ruins portal and activate a power in midair, you can 'smuggle' the ability into the maze, bypassing the "no magic" restriction that's usually there on the inside. Smuggling in light/fire unicorn helps you run through a little faster, which is a good plus since you obviously can't blink in there. But yeah, there's no story/horseshoe content tied to the maze, so this tech won't show up in any runs for a while.

The dialogue spam was another casualty of the holiday update, I think. Haven't been able to do it since. Fingers crossed the devs can add it back in.

re: Crystal Collection, I've found that it's possible to actually collect multiple crystals from the same spot if you mash fast enough, but this softlocks the run later down the line since the portal disappears after you return from it. If anyone finds a way to get around that, you should be able to cut down a good chunk of time in the gathering section

Ahoy! Lovely to see some interest in the game :)

Unfortunately it seems like the sole moderator for the game isn't really active (I've actually had a better run for over a month now which still hasn't been verified), which is a shame since it means we only have 2 categories and outdated rules. I talked to Marissa a while back (who did the first run, and got to "set the rules") and she agreed that "start the time after character creation, and end on the win message" was a better way to time it, because otherwise all runs are going to be forced to use the default unicorn which is way less fun that making a colourful masterpiece to save the world with.

I'm guessing that the portal placing you in town/at bearshe is a version thing, yeah - I think it might be due to the holiday event? I remember it used to do it in the past, then it didn't, and now it does it again. I'll bring it up to the devs and see what's going on there.

And for the last point, the joy of "glitchless" categories in any speedrun comes from deciding what is and isn't a glitch (and then having people argue forever about it). For the Tozan Cutscene skip, you're just walking to where you go faster than the game expects you to - I mean, the portal spawns that early, right? You don't have to sit around and wait for a cutscene, the game wants you to go through there anyway. That's why I reckon it's fine for the glitchless category, at least. It gets messier with some of the new tech since discovered, as you can actually menu mid-cutscene as a time save, but doing so lets you break out of the cutscene and walk around. In my 9:57 run, I use the menu trick to swap my spells, but make sure not to move afterwards until the cutscene is finished, since that's definitely not glitchless.

I'm looking forward to when we get a proper any% category, because there are some wild things you can do to save time. Notably, you can break out of the first cutscene of the game, but Trixomy spends the rest of the game hunting you down and flying through walls to try and force his dialogue on you (which will give you like a 10 second time loss). 10/10, would recommend.

Let me know if you have any burning questions! I don't check here super often, but I'm trying to put together some resources to make the run more accessible and encourage more people to run the game. Gotta love the unicorns.