Basic Any% Guide

New players will often wonder why the top times are under 20 minutes when their run took over an hour. The ever-changing nature of a run makes getting a good time very unpredictable, but there are some ways you can influence it.

Part 1: Relics

If you aren't using all the proper relics for an Any% run, you don't stand a chance. Here's a list of the relics you should use on your run and why:
Mercy: Mercy doubles your mana and HP. Gold doesn't matter, so this is extremely overpowered. It makes running out of mana much harder.
Courage: Courage doubles the damage you deal, which means enemies go down in fewer hits.
Empathy: This one is pretty much optional, but if you get a treasure that gives you health regen, this doubles its effect, making running out of health very difficult.
Ambition: Sure, it increases enemy levels (and therefore health and attack), but getting rarer treasure reduces the amount of times you need to land on a treasure platform which takes valuable time.
Brilliance: It doubles your mana, and since mana burn is turn-based and you'll be beating levels in two to four turns, the gain significantly outweighs the cost.
Curiosity: Treasure rooms are quick because there's no enemies to kill. Sometimes you can shoot straight onto a treasure platform.
Instinct: Instinct gives you a free shield if you shoot within two seconds, which you should be doing every turn while speedrunning.
Luck: When combined with Ambition, treasure is suddenly extremely powerful. Plus, four-fifths of the time you won't have to waste time deciding whether to equip or drop treasure.
Clarity: Extra mana is far more useful than extra health.

Part 2: Skills

There's a reason there's a specific category for runs not using Reckless Charge. It's almost like it was designed for speedrunning! Reckless Charge is 100% required for a good Any% time. It's a shame Flagon's other skills aren't particularly useful, although Spin Attack can sometimes allow you to spend less time bouncing around after winning a stage. Equipping a skill doesn't take any more time than dropping it, although I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to land on the skill treasure platform in the hopes of unlocking this. In an ideal run, you wouldn't be wasting time bouncing in the first place, so there would be no need. A truly perfect run would use no skill besides Reckless Charge, and no treasure either.

Getting the right skill when starting a run can be irritating, as it is randomly chosen. You must start a run, immediately quit, then abandon it and make a new one and hope you get the right skill. Since each character has four skills it's possible to get very unlucky and not get the right skill after 10+ tries.

Part 3: Tricks

Some paths allow you to skip rooms, but the shortest path isn't always the fastest... rooms can contain a wide range of numbers of enemies. Most enemies and elites are pushovers with all the overpowered relics you'll be using, but there are a couple that can be a scourge. The main one is the Skeleton Knight. Its ability makes it invincible and there's nothing you can do to get rid of the effect. You just have to hope he doesn't stay that way. It will only last a maximum of three turns, but even seeing one of these can totally kill a run. Because of this, avoiding skeleton rooms in Act 3 as much as possible will reduce the odds you'll see one of these foes. The other enemy you need to worry about is actually the Act 2 boss. Its eyes imbue a variety of status effects on you, one of which is Petrified. In this state, you are invincible, but you cannot use skills or deal damage, losing valuable time. It is extremely important to take out the tentacle with the grey iris first in order to avoid this.

Miscellaneous tricks:
While Reckless Charge may have reckless in the name, don't be. Reckless Charge goes after giant gold pots, and after hitting the gold pot there's a brief window in which you cannot use any skills. This loses some time, but even worse is if you have no health and the giant pot sends you to the ground. This is a run killer even when not speedrunning, so watch out!
Don't let your mana get too low. Try your best to keep a little bit on reserve. Sometimes, even if you're too far from an enemy to hit it, using Reckless Charge can save you from hitting the spikes and allow you to land on the cushion. This is especially helpful if you meet with a Skeleton Knight that's still invincible, since you can repeatedly charge at it as long as you have mana.
Don't fret if you hit a lot of polyps (the things that give you gold) during the Act 3 boss. Each one you destroy deals a tiny bit of damage so it's not a total waste of time. In fact, if you get treasure that blows up gold pots (and by extension, nodes) sometimes when coming into contact with them, you can destroy a lot of nodes quickly.
Once you've destroyed all the vents, don't bother going after the worm larvae. They just serve as a shield, and an ineffective one at that. Just shoot straight down; the worms always spawn in the same place and if you shoot immediately they won't be in your way. Just charge as quickly as possible and the boss will go down easily.

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