Any% does take a while to master. The luck factor with money and fruit needed can be a struggle. I reckon an easier, yet still decently challenging category should be reaching the infamous glass desert. It is a shorter run, and it doesn't require too much luck in most areas. It still has some areas to master and potential for faster ways. I want to propose this category and If it is, the first run for it when I'm able to.

I can't speak to whether or not a glass desert category can be made but this may help out if you're trying to learn Any% - https://www.speedrun.com/slime_rancher/guide/1mkpv

I believe you're overstating the luck factor a bit. Some runs do die to atrocious fruit spawns or atrocious plort prices but if you do everything right you'll get on a run every other attempt or so, and considering the reset point is 5 minutes in, that's really not that bad. I'd encourage you to keep at it, I have 73 hours of playtime on this game on steam and I think only 15ish of those were spent actually doing runs on the current route, it's really not too much of an obstacle.

There's lots of ways to avoid luck with cash and fruit, mostly involving sleeping for extra time. Especially when initially learning the run, the time lost is less valuable than the experience of doing the run. You can certainly do a run attempting to get to the Glass Desert as quick as possible if you'd like, regardless of if there's a category for it on the leaderboards, and I would love to see what you come up with in terms of the route! This would still require luck for cash and fruit however from the way I see it, but maybe you could put together a more consistent route doing that.

It took me around a week of putting an hour or two towards learning the run and practicing the route for me to be comfortable with Any% and understand why we do each of the things we do. If you have any questions, or are getting frustrated by the luck elements, feel free to hop into the Discord server and we'll do our best to help you out :)

I'd be down for a Glass Desert category. Not having to get 5 slime keys opens up opportunities for as of yet unused skips and tricks.

I wanna add some points. 1, half of the current categories don't even have a run on them. 2. It takes a long time to master any% as my best is 17:25 on Xbox one after 4 or 5 hours of trying it for the first time (I have previous speedrunning experience so it's much easier). 3. Any% can take a while to complete and has much more money needed than a glass desert run which I've done in 9:35 and only need to buy the jetpack. 4. You only need 2 slime keys (1 at least but it's slower) 5. It doesn't require sleeping, and therefore less rng on food is going to happen.

for the record, 17:25 would be the fastest recorded run on xbone