In a standard Any% run of CSToK, only one portion of the game is driven by RNG: the initial configuration of the Three Rings Puzzle at the end of Mission 1. That one bit of RNG alone makes Mission 1 take anywhere from a theoretical 12 seconds to nearly 40 seconds to complete, entirely due to the half a second a single puzzle piece takes to move. It would therefore be ideal to remove the RNG involved therein to level the playing field for runners - this guide documents just how to do that.

The RNG responsible for the initial state generated for the Three Rings Puzzle is driven by two factors: the system timestamp at which the game is started and the number of scene changes performed before arriving at the puzzle door (i.e. the number of times Jules and Hawkins change position). With sufficiently ingrained speedrunning muscle memory, the second factor is practically constant (16, counting both the change into the initial Río state and the change into the puzzle door itself). The first factor is therefore the target of our concern herein.

Fortunately, there are tools available which allow for mocking the system timestamp for a single application such that nothing else outside that executable will experience the potential detrimental effects of manual timestamp manipulation:

• Windows systems: RunAsDate
• *NIX systems (including macOS): libfaketime

With the appropriate tool, the Carmen executable can be launched with a fake system timestamp injected to guarantee a certain Three Rings Puzzle initial state (provided the runner doesn't mistakenly perform an erroneous scene change). Crucially, both indicated tools allow for freezing the fake timestamp rather than advancing from a given timestamp, which further guarantees the timestamp used for seeding the game's RNG is always the same between executions.

NOTE: the Steam install of CSToK is not protected by Steam DRM, which means the executable for the game can be launched without having Steam running, so runners won't need to worry about contending with fake timestamps for Steam.

As of this writing, the latest record runs use the following timestamp: 1970-01-01 00:03:36

The above timestamp provides a Three Rings Puzzle which only requires eight moves to complete. The search is currently on to find the mythical timestamp which generates a Three Rings Puzzle which only requires four moves to complete - in the meantime, runners are encouraged to inject the above timestamp for runs as a means of leveling the playing field.