Hello! This guide is created in order to provide an easy way to setup a similar situation that the top runners use to start their runs. Essentially what is being done here, is a certain "save" point is being simulated; we are loading from files that are saved after two runs. The runs end up encountering all the bosses that are not "ideal"; the game then, on your next run, will give you the 3 "ideal" bosses. Since this situation is perfectly achievable normally, and is simply using intended game mechanics, it has been deemed allowed for this run. This guide details how to use a script that is located in the Resources tab to load the game using these saves without having to worry about manual replacing of files between every run.

A couple notes first:

• Between every run you do still need to close out of the game, and relaunch the file that will be detailed later.
• This does run the game "offline" and your scores will not be uploaded to the leaderboard. This is something that is achievable, but that will not be detailed in this guide.

Alright, to start off this setup you will simply need to download the rar file from https://www.speedrun.com/tools/StS_Preferences_Setup_1.1_x74s5.zip It includes 4 files: - preferences.saved/ - run_speedrun_sts.bat - game_directory.txt - troubleshoot.bat

Extract this zip file wherever you want you want to be running this from. Note that this should be anywhere BUT directly in the game folder for SlayTheSpire. Also note that if steam is installed in a non-default location, or you are using steam 32 bit, you will need to edit the file "game_directory.txt". This needs to be the location of the SlayTheSpire game (this is the FOLDER of the game, not the exe/jar itself); by default it is "C:\Program Files\ (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SlayTheSpire", and this is what's in the txt file by default.

Once that's done, that should be it! You can now run the .bat file if you are on Windows. This will be the file that will be ran every time that you want to run the game

To outline exactly what the script does:

• Checks if the directory has the jar file that's used to run the game
  • If not it copies it, the preferences folder, and the video settings into the directory
  • If it is in the directory, it checks to see if there is a difference between the local version and steams
    • If there is, it will ask if you want to update, and do so if you answer yes
• It then removes the saves folder
• Then overwrites the information in preferences with our premade one
• Then runs the game

If you have any questions, you can ask me directly on Discord (Phantom#0004) or join the official Slay the Spire Speedrunning discord via this link: https://discord.gg/bJURpdk Note: You can run the "troubleshoot.bat" and it will provide output that you can give me, that will help me figure out what's going wrong.