Hello and welcome. If you're here, you're probably interested in picking up this game. You're in the right place. I'll be explaining the different categories and going over the very basics of every run, but there's a lot to explain so I will not go in depth here.
Before diving in, if you have any doubts or questions, they're best asked in our Discord. The link is kept private, but you can get in by simply shooting me a PM on Discord (my name and tag are public and linked to my speedrun.com profile). I strongly recommend to get in there, as most discussion happens there, and it's the best way to get informed on new strats. It's also the best place to ask questions about speedrunning Talos in general.
I'll start by explaining the different categories. You will notice all of the main categories have an 'Unrestricted' section and a '60 FPS' section. This was a recent change that we implemented to hopefully make speedrunning Talos more friendly, even for people with weaker setups. Because of how high framerate breaks the physics of this game a lot, a good chunk of people simply can't run this game properly; 60FPS offers an even playing field to every runner.
[NOTE: A LOT OF THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS OUTDATED. WE'RE WORKING ON AN UPDATED VERSION, FOR THE TIME BEING REFER TO THE GOOD OLD "WATCH WR AND TRY TO IMITATE, ASK QUESTIONS FOR THINGS YOU CAN'T DO" METHOD]
Onto the categories themselves: if you completed this game casually, you will know it has three endings (Eternalize, Messenger, Transcendance). Eternalize is currently the fastest category, due to a recently discovered clip that enables us to finish the game with just 11 sigils. Before this clip, Messenger had been the fastest category for a long time, so you'll find a lot of old any% runs in that category.
Eternalize Any%, which is 'true Any%', as in the fastest category, unlocks Connector, leaves A, enters floor 1 to get a connector in the Nexus, and uses it to clip down behind the Eternalize gates. Resources on this run are still fairly scarce, since it's a very recently discovered trick, but you can find some tutorials/setups on Extodasher's youtube channel, as well as watching the WR run for a reference route.
Messenger Any% is simply reaching Floor 2 of the Tower, and clipping inside the Tower to reach Messenger Ending. There have been a number of different routes over the last year or so, but the best resource to learn the quickest one is Kraeft's WR. He nails every trick super quickly and you can easily figure out what you're supposed to do from his video. Azorae made a tutorial for the old route, which unlocks cube and is a bit easier to execute, but it's also over a minute slower. If you're just starting to run this game, I would recommend checking it out regardless, as it does give you good insight on how the tricks work, and you might not be confident in pulling off every trick in Kraeft's route yet. You can find Azorae's tutorial here:
As for 60FPS Any% categories, they're obviously slightly less broken. There are no tutorials (and no runs, in the case of Eternalize and Transcendence, since they were only recently added to the leaderboards), but you can find a lot of different strats that are workable and roughly equivalent for Messenger by watching the WR run and other top runs.
All Sigils is pretty self-explanatory: collect all the Sigils in the game and complete the game. Essentially, our version of 100% (true 100% would involve picking up an extra bunch of time capsules and journal entries that we don't really care about). Again, the WR by Kraeft has all of the optimal strats, and since no tutorials exist, simply trying to mimic the WR is your best way to learn. 60 FPS AS is mostly uncharted territory. I've routed it and done runs, and plan to bring the time to sub 1 hour soon enough, but there's surely relevant improvements to be made. Not the most welcoming category for newbies, but also not the most competitive, so it's an okay place to start off.
Road to Gehenna runs are quite simple: Any% frees all the robots (excluding Admin) and completes the game, while 100% collects every Sigil in the game, frees Admin, and completes the game. 60FPS just forces you to run some slower strats in a lot of places and it's not much of a difference. The Gehenna Bible is the any% tutorial playlist by apple1417: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF1JB5vHj0ksmeFIGuTIxET_aQH23I-Of If you're looking to get into these categories this is surely the place to start. Do note that the FPS required for Gehenna Any% is still a fairly big number, but it is noticeably lower than the one you need to run Any% of the main game, and some of the tricks (the barrier jumps in particular) are perhaps even easier on more average FPS numbers. Shoot for getting around 150 FPS when walking back from World 3 to the hub, and play with the settings accordingly to drop it down if your PC is more powerful than that. Of course 60FPS doesn't care about FPS limits - just look at the runs by apple1417 for those categories.
Miscellaneous categories are self explanatory if you just read the rules of the category, and they're not exactly the best place to get good at the game anyway, so you can ignore those for the time being.
Finally, some resources are useful across multiple categories, and they're just important general knowledge to have. These are the optimal sigil solutions and the paint spawn guide by darkid - both are linked in the Resources page on speedrun.com. Check them out and do your best to memorize them (at least the parts that concern the run you're choosing to start with) as they'll come in useful.
Once again, I invite you to join the Discord if you're interested in running. Resources are few and far between, but there's a lot of people with a lot of knowledge hanging out in the Discord ready to help you out. Best of luck if you choose to run this game!
Hi! Thanks for approving my run earlier today! :)
I'd love to join the Discord server - I have tons of questions about tricks and setups and stuff, and I'll definitively keep running the game for a good while. I can't figure out how to DM you though - you say your name and tag are public, but I just can't find it. (That's how much of a noob I am, haha.)
