I am starting to burn out of this game, I have a 6:27, but I IL, have a 458.9. I just can't seem to pull of jack squat in runs, and I'm only going for sub 5:03!

"To not burnt out is to be patient" - Ezra T. Brown aka xxezrabxxx

@a_xxEzraBxxx_b But I got burnt out of playing Minecraft casually and in creative, and survival, and competitively too.

Badlion approved!

@TwitchName but, doing ILs, and in practice I am very capable of sub 5, and I thought there was a generous amount of time to post for sub 5:03

@TwitchName as a friend on twitch and discord. you have some wise words. go for what is optimal instead of capable

I feel like I make one of these posts from time to time. I've watched a lot of players over the years deal with this issue and here's my take on it. I'm encouraging you to reevaluate your approach to this game. I'm not trying bring you down or be offensive or anything like that, I'm just telling you straight up how I see it.

I've watched a bit of one of your YouTube broadcasts where you're doing some practice and attempts earlier today. You're focusing on the wrong things. You seem to be stuck on fast 1-2, 4-2 wrong warp, 200 8-1, pipe jumps, etc. You aren't there yet in terms of skill level. My suggestion would be to drop a lot of that and focus on getting cleaner execution on the basics of this game. You can learn all the fancy tricks you want, but without good basic execution, you're not going to get very far before you throw up your hands and have the mindset of "okay, I'm done, this is impossible."

I did not do the wrong warp at all until my time got to 5:09. I probably got sub 5:30 before I started doing pipe jumps. Work on getting better times in smaller chunks. Getting a PB (usually) feels pretty good. Go for a sub 6, then 5:45, then 5:30 and so forth. Also according to your splits, you've only put in about 300 attempts which is not many at all. This is a process that takes time and you have to put the time in as well.

Complete more runs, use safer strats in the places you're having trouble. Set goals that are not out of your reach. Going from 6:27 to 5:00 in one huge chunk is not reasonable at all in my opinion. Don't be embarrassed to submit every small PB you get. Some people seem ashamed by submitting a time that's not an upper tier time and I don't understand why. This is a difficult game that takes time and effort to become skilled at it for nearly everyone.

Also, if you're feeling burnt out still, take some time off or explore a new game until you're ready to come back to this one. There's a reason I run multiple Mario games, and that reason is I move on to another game for a while when I get burnt out on one and come back to it later.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope it sheds an alternate light on your situation and anyone else who is in the same rut.

One other thing.

Races, if you can find people to do races with that can help you complete runs. That's how I got started in speedrunning. I didn't do RTAs very often, I did mostly races.

For sure - (first off, take what I say with a grain of salt, because I haven't been running SMB1 that long) when I feel like I'm not enjoying the game anymore (for example after a multi-hour session) I take a break. It's all about enjoyment of the game. If you're not enjoying it anymore, stop, at least for a little bit. Focus on having fun, as cheesy as that sounds. 80-90% of this game in the low to sub-5 is playing 1-1 a bajillion times. If you can Buddha your mind into relaxing and enjoying the "grind" of it, then you're winning, so to speak. If it starts to feel like homework, you really do need to reevaluate why you're running it.

I also coach cross country. You have kids that love to run and kids that hate it. There are kids that love improving their times, and kids that don't care - and kids that are the 3rd fastest on varsity and think they're "not good" kids at the back of the team that are having the time of their life, and vise-versa.

^ "time" is all relative. Even the fastest kid on the cross country team is flat out SLOW compared to an olympic athlete. But even the kids on the slower end of the team are faster than most of the kids in the high school. The same goes for SMB (or really anything in life for that matter) - Be proud of a time that's in the mid-5's. Currently, there are 540 runs submitted - so the "average" run is at 270th place, and it's a 5:29. And those are people that worked hard enough and cared enough about their times to submit it to the WORLD RECORD leaderboards. That's pretty dang good imo.

If I were you I'd totally go for a sub-6, and be pumped when you get it. I was super happy to get my first completed run (5:35). Kosmic (former world record holder) is a GOD at this game, it's amazing to see him play - but if the ONLY thing that fueled his mind was getting the WR back, I doubt he'd still be playing. I'm a relatively "bad" runner, or an "amazing" runner depending on what perspective you're taking.

I'm sounding preachy now - TL/DR is (1) Proactively focus on relaxing your mind and enjoying yourself, and when you're not enjoying yourself, take a break (2) Like Roopert said, I would start with smaller goals, like sub-6... or shoot, even 5:30. Either way, it's going to be much less frustrating than going for 5 or sub-5 to start.

Good luck figuring it all out =)

Ok, I guess following in my footsteps is a bad idea The reason I could get sub 5 first run ever is because I was happy just practicing the same thing over and over and over, 1-2 pipe jumps, pipe jumps, whatever, I was happy to practice it, I didn't mind practicing it. Basically I'm just saying make sure you don't hate it, enjoy it a little, and be very patient, because setting the bar very high like I was requires a lot of patience, or just not minding practicing anything. You just have to be extremely patient, if you wanted to do what I did.

As ezra said, "go for what is optimal instead of capable" this is true. But, I kind of didn't really follow this, I went for what I was capable of doing, but capable of doing somewhat consistently.

The difference between "individual level" and "real time" is bigger than you'd think, because it's multiplicative - I'm going to pull some #s out of the air for this example, don't burn me on exactness pretty please, but these are probably my average #s

1-1 "380" ~ 35% of the time 1-2 ~ 35% of the time 4-1 ~ 85% of the time (because I kill Lakatu, and even though he ends my runs sometimes, Lakatu just has to die #worthit) 4-2 "374" or "375" - 40% of the time 8-1 Good or Bad judges - 40% of the time 8-2 "slow" - 40% of the time 8-3 fast (372 with flaggrab) - 60% of the time 8-4 WITH the wall jump and no deaths or bad timesinks - 35% of the time

Now - multiply those #s (none of which are THAT difficult on their own by the way) 0.35 x 0.35 x 0.85 x 0.4 x 0.4 x 0.4 x 0.6 x 0.35 and you get... 0.0014 or... or 0.14% or 1.4 in 1000 - which means I should expect to successfully make my "sub-5" goal with these percentages about every 714 runs or so - but there's a HUGE amount of fluctuation and luck in that obviously, so it could take me 100 runs, or it could take me 2500 runs.

That, of course, also varies with skill level. BUT you could even create your own likelihood #s by running each level 20 times, and getting a percentage for each level, then multiply it out like that. Just make sure you don't cherry-pick the #s you use.

@roopert83 Those splits are off by roughly 800, because unless I make a change, I often forget to save my splits. I've tried shaving off smaller, but for me, it's just not satisfying. I got a 5:59 off stream, which was recorded, but that I didn't submit because I wasn't proud.

@Darpey that wasn't my point.

You can either use the following:

• Burn Heal
• Yago Berry
• Rawst Berry
• Lum Berry
• Full Heal
• Full Restore
• Rage Candy Bar
• Lava Cookie
• Old Gateau
• Casteliacone
• Lumiose Galette
• Shalour Sable
• Big Malasada
• Heal Powder
• Sacred Ash

You can also start a single battle and use:

• Heal Bell
• Aromatherapy

Or else, you can start a battle and use:

• Rest
• Refresh
• Psycho Shift

You might get lucky if the opponent uses Haze.

Finally, if you have Hydration and it's raining, you will be cured. If you have Shed Skin, you have 30% chance of being cured every turn. In a double battle, the natural cure Healer have 30% chance of healing you.

You can also go for TAS strats, it will remove the burn and give you poison so it's not really worth it.

I just started running this game over a month ago. I don't have an emulator/save states and I've gone from my 1st completed run of 6:40 to now a 5:15. It's nothing special but I keep adding something new every time I PB. Hell I don't even do the wrong warp, never attempted a 200 8-1, BBG, or thought about the pipe jump in 8-4. The guys who run around the 5 min mark or lower are insane. Just like anything in life you don't get "good" without putting the time in. Look at the world record holder Darbian....24,474 times before he pulled off what he did.

27,474 attemps, get it rite Kappa "Just like anything in life you don't get 'good' without putting the time in." This is absolutely 100% true, I support this 100%, the difference between those with sub 5 and those without, are just simply they are willing and enjoy putting in more time. But, if you want a little secret, that will take less time to get better, it's to focus very hard on practicing, realize and fix all your mistakes, you basically just practice, and you put a lot of focus for 25 min, then take a 5 min break, and repeat. I just learned that on the internet.