Beginners Guide To Speedrunning (A Video)

I made a video about this last week so I figured I should put it here as well, I'll update this guide if I make more videos in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHSiKV0IykY

A few other tips I forget to mention in the video are
- Double tapping the acceleration button gives you a small boost
- For WR standards, any split time over 2 minutes is not fast enough
- Use the combo's sparingly, only when you have an excess of ammo or you're sure you will hit. Otherwise you may run out.
- Hot Rod Enemies always spawn with a special weapon and usually always use it as soon as they can
- Keep in mind where the High Value Targets are such as Clyde, Dusty, Sheila, Nina, Boogie, and Chase. All of these characters will either waste time or fuck with your weapons if they have their special weapon.

If you want to learn all of the combos that aren't mentioned in the above video here's a closer look at them and a better look at the base weapons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn07f1UJMz8

Character Tier List

Always wondered which characters are best? Here's a video to answer that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4smvirj718s


Collectable Items Objectives

As you most likely know, quest mode has you completing objectives in each stage. Depending on which faction you're playing as (Vigilantes, Coyotes, Drifters), you'll have slightly different objectives. However only the collectable objectives affect time spent on a stage.

This guide focuses on how the collectable objectives work and how they can affect runs (because the game doesn't explain this to the player). There are 2 kinds of collectable item objectives:

a. Collect x amount of items https://imgur.com/a/6voip

Killing all enemies will trigger a roughly 30 second countdown. I assume this was implemented to give the player time to find the collectables needed. If you have the required amount of collectables on you before killing the last enemy, the stage ends there. However if you don't have all required collectables you have two options, you can either wait out the countdown, or you can end the countdown earlier if you find all required items. A good example of this would be Utah for Coyotes, all 4 briefcases are located in a small area, and it's very easy to collect them all after killing whoever's fighting you there, which is faster than waiting out the timer there. Usually it's better to wait the timer off but always try to find them after clearing the map to save a bit of time.

b. Collect and deliver x amount of items https://imgur.com/a/jxQQb

Collect and Deliver objectives function very differently though. They also lenghten the time spent in a stage but it happens under different conditions. Whereas the first type of objective gives you an extra 30 seconds to collect all required items, in these kinds of objectives the stage WILL end as soon as you kill all enemies IF you don't have any of the collectables items on you. If you have at least 1 of the required items with you when you kill all enemies the game will give you extra time to deliver them to the specified location, otherwise the stage will just end. So for speedrun purposes it is highly recommended to completely ignore collectables if they require delivering, as it ends the stage sooner. If for whatever reason you grab one (or more) of the items deliver them ASAP, that way the stage will still end once all enemies are dead.

Hopefully this clears up any confusion with stages "hanging" for too long after killing all enemies and helps you save time on your runs.

Difficulty, Damage and You

Edit: The long and short of it is that difficulty changes Player health (33% less or more compared to 89), AI aggressiveness (how commonly they fire and how many targets seek the player) and the % of getting a special from a brown crate.
Damage changes the AI health with high damage give them 33% less than medium.
So in short its best to run high damage with your choice of 89 or 92 depending on if you're trying to skip the 30.


So you may have noticed the recent changes to the boards in how all three difficulties are now variants. And all damage settings are now allowed. But what difference does it make?

Well not that much actually, the three difficulty settings (87, 89 and 92) seem to only change the behavior of the AI.
On 87 they shoot at you a lot slower and drive like huge idiots, making them the easiest target ever or the hardest because he's across the map stuck in a ditch.
89 is the standard, enemies are competent, fire at you regularly and are fairly, well standard.
92 gives the AI actual challenge, they spam the fire button like no tomorrow and chase you to the ends of the earth.
Which one works best I'm still unsure of but I feel as all three have merit to be used.

Now I was able to find a way to express the difference in the damage modifiers. By using Molo's Special Weapon.
Below are several videos showing the difference (excuse the fuck-ups) but they end up being around:
Medium - 60 ammo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_ijfneKi60
High - 25 Ammo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj7sK_doUkc
Low - 90 Ammo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAACPnbF4Hs
Medium x2 - 45 Ammo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRi3ygIIvhM

This is of course the ammo needed to kill Nina, the almost centre of health between all characters. Which gives us an idea of what the difference is between all settings. With all this in mind, I hope you find the right combination that works for you and helps you get the fastest times possible.

El_Nacho

TheRealDownUnder

Vigilante 8: 2nd Offense

Houston

Lord Clyde

Obake

PlayStation

USA / NTSC

Medium

High

Difficulty & Damage

Sheila

John Torque

Flying All Star Trio

Convoy

Faction Run

100%

Dallas 13

Nina Loco

Molo

Astronaut Bob O.

Garbage Man

Agent R. Chase

Chassey Blue

Padre Destino

Vigilantes

Coyotes

Drifters

Difficulty

Damage

Character

Faction

It had been brought to my attention that single characters don't exactly qualify as a full game run, therefore all single character runs have been delegated to Individual Levels, meanwhile faction runs will remain as a full game run. A new any% category has been made and it requires a run of all 15 

Nome	Autore
Beginners Guide To Speedrunning (A Video)	TheRealDownUnder 4 years ago
Character Tier List	TheRealDownUnder 5 years ago
Collectable Items Objectives	El_Nacho 7 years ago
Difficulty, Damage and You	TheRealDownUnder 6 years ago