All of the weapons and tools in Starbound possess properties that permit insane things to occur, and the Grappling Hook is no exception.

First discovered and showcased by Oktopoda in January 22th, 2018, this trick thrusts the player forward at near impossible speeds outside of the modding community. When coupled with the speed and jump boosts, this exploit takes records to places they have never even been before. What makes this powerful tech so useful to the speedrunning meta we currently have? Allow me to explain.

At maximum potential, you can travel twice as fast than you can on foot with no tech; this effectively means that it beats out the air dash tech, the Drill Rocket strategy in some instances, and yes, even the trail dash broadsword. With such an overpowered method, is it too hard to use in a competitive setting? If you've been following the records, than you'll know that the answer is obviously no. This begs the question, "how can I use this?"

1. Obtain the Grappling Hook item. Of course, this will be the essential item for this exploit to work.
2. This is more of a recommendation, but you will want to obtain a mobility augment, ultimate juice, and green and blue stims so you can at least understand how it feels to use this in a typical speedrun setting.
3. Once you've gotten yourself all set up, find a section of flat land. I recommend the Ark as a good starting place, particularly the top is perfect (although you may want fullbright on).
4. Launch the Grappling Hook about 10-15 blocks away from you.
5. Moving towards the hook, pull yourself in towards it while jumping you you should briefly gain intense speed.
6. Complete number 5, but this time, release at the apex of your jump. The result is you maintaining all of the acceleration you obtained in the jump. By itself, this already helps us a lot, but we're going to take it one step further.
7. Equip the multi-jump tech on your character. If you already did this, awesome!
8. Do step 6 again, but this time, use multi-jump to extend the time that you maintain all your momentum.

Successfully completing step 8 will result in the fastest possible setup for this trick. It takes practice, but if you like speedrunning Starbound, keep at it!

If you had any trouble with these steps, a video guide has been prepared for the sole purpose of showing how effective this bug truly is.