No problem! Sorry about all of the notifications.

@theeccentrician I’d be excited to hear how the routing is going on the speedrun discord.

That's a good point about Soul Tyrant. I had initially ignored fighting him for essence because I'm pretty sure that the fight can be kind of long with low equipment (in this case just vengeful spirit, shaman stone, and base nail). However, Soul Tyrant's 300 essence in combination with Lost Kin's 400 essence would be very valuable. Then, the only other dream boss that would need to be fought would be Galien on the way to Tram Pass.

If Tram Pass and Galien were routed early it might also make sense to visit Distant Village then and go through Beast's Den while you're there, as there's no reason to return to Deepnest later when you can really grab all of the benches on the first visit.

This routing unfortunately involves going through lots of Deepnest without lantern. Getting lantern wouldn't really save any time though because you can access peaks with dive, which is needed for the waterways bench anyways.

To clarify what I said yesterday here’s a possible progression for the early game. It focuses more on getting skills quickly than filling out benches in the early game.

1. Vengeful Spirit -> Mothwing Cloak -> Dream Nail -> Elder Hu(+100 essence) -> Mantis Claw -> City -> Desolate Dive -> Crystal Peaks -> Resting Grounds -> Xero(+100 essence) -> Deepnest -> Galien(+200 essence) -> Tram Pass -> Basin -> Broken Vessel -> Lost Kin(+400 essence) -> Monarch Wings -> Gorb(+100 essence) -> Dreamgate

Another quick note: People run with Chinese as the language because it has less characters and because it scrolls faster for unknown reasons

That’s true. The path to monarch wings might take a while, especially the low equipment Broken Vessel fight.

However, if you went there with the intention of also killing Lost Kin for essence that might justify the trip. If dreamgate was routed into the run it could potentially save a lot of time as save&quits aren’t going to be that viable in this category. If you were going for Dreamgate you could start the category similar to how True Ending starts which would allow for early Elder Hu and maybe other dream bosses too. If you also went for early Tram Pass in dark deepnest, Galien would be directly in the path for some more essence. Add to that the essence from Lost Kin, Xero, and maybe Gorb if you need more, and that should get you to the 900 needed for Dreamgate

I would say that the simple key in Basin on the way to wings is probably the most efficient 2nd key. I don't think wings is required at all for the run but it makes Hidden Station and the Hornet 2 bench much easier and maybe even faster, plus wings could be used for movement in other places.

Some other ideas: -Dashmaster might be worth it since you have to sit at the bench near Bretta anyway -Dash Slash could be used to access Shade Soul if the run was done on 1.2.2.1, and could potentially be routed into other places too -Descending Dark might be worthwhile if you went through Crystal Peaks to get to Resting Grounds