Forgive me if this is silly to mention. I am new to Noita speedrunning. This thread is interesting to me especially as a lifelong programmer because there is no way to guarantee the mod is what you say it is when you show the mod list at the end of the game. You can also say the same for the currently approved mods (seed changer), unless there is a detection method you guys are using that I'm not aware of? You'd need to show the mod folder itself and hash the mods if you really want perfect detection, but that doesn't seem to be in anyone's best interest and doesn't seem necessary now.

Anyway, my (maybe dumb) thought was to have a new category for acceleration-less? Similar to the current teleportless and low%. What was the reasoning for not going that direction with this decision?

I personally have 0 interest in resetting over and over for acceleration or any other flask. I'm more interested in speedrunning this game because of the quick decision-making in the dungeon itself. Having a category purely for reacting to the dungeon can be interesting but you'd run into the same situation eventually where you'd be resetting until you get black hole angry ghost. I think it would take a really long time for random seeds + no acceleration to get to that point, but that's just a guess from me...