Hey all, new here and just playing with learning speedrunning for fun, have got everything set up and am currently practicing on the portal practice map. I'm old and decrepit so I know I'll never be a contender but thought it'd just be fun to give it a shot :D

Am having issues with the lava pool portals I'm having that SEEM like some glitches or lags (despite being single player) or unavoidable RNG and can kill my portal building attempts sometimes, which is pretty frustrating when also having to learn all the muscle memory for doing all the other stuff fast. I'm assuming its not a glitch though, and is something wrong in my timing or aiming placement or something because otherwise it feels way too random and inconsistent for anyone to rely on, I'm unable to pinpoint exactly what it is I'm doing to cause it, and all tutorials I've found just explain the process in the way I'm doing and seems to work 100%, so am curious what am doing wrong.

1) Sometimes I'll destroy the first cobblestone after placing the water, and get a cobblestone being regenerated over the destroyed block instead of the water flowing into it to create the other obsidian block for the portal side, I'll have to destroy this at least once, and then yet another cobblestone may be generated or not. It's never more than 2. I've not watched a ton of speedrun attempts on streams etc, and my interest in playing with this myself has been sparked mainly through watching world records or exposes on cheated runs on YT, so have never seen this happen, is it just something speedrunners have to deal with in the moment and lose time, or is it something I'm doing wrong?

2) Sometimes when picking up the water after constructing the portal, I'm not getting a source block and causing the water to subside but still filling my bucket, I'm assuming I'm inaccurately clicking in this case similar to the infinite water trick i've used in survival in the past, but I aim for the same place each time so it's not clear what I'm doing wrong when this occurs.

3) Other times it feels like my bucket action doesn't take and since I'm in the moment I don't notice until its too late, as I'll hear sound effects that suggest it has happened but the bucket state is out of sync with my expectations due to this. Say I'm filling a lava bucket and i'll hear the sfx, then go to place it and the bucket is empty, or other weird things where it feels like behaviour on a server where my action is undone after checking with the server, but its already played the audio locally. I can't give specific examples just sometimes in general it feels the audio of the bucket lies to me and my expectation doesn't fit the bucket state and I can't understand why.

4) Other rarer stuff like when I place the cobblestone then place the water, the water will just disappear with a fizz. Again I'm not clear what I'm doing that causes this to happen in these cases.

Sorry if any of these are annoying questions, I've searched around and not found any obvious answers, but if this stuff is covered anywhere I've missed if you could point me at good resources to watch or read that'd be appreciated!

you can delete the entire thread instead of just deletling the comment you know

Lava pool portal 'RNG' issues that are likely dumb newbie mistakes?

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