The first and most important thing to save yourself from a lot of disappointment and frustration while you're learning is, please please please, do not compare your time to others for a form of validation or use that as a metric of if your run is good or bad, only ever compare the timers to your own previous timers, self-improvement is the most important thing to strive for, it's a good idea to watch others runs to see how they do things, but it should never be about the comparison of your time vs there's!

#Overview

First of all the game is constantly changing since Spiritfall is still in early access - Weapons, Blessings and possibly Enhancements are still yet to be released/changed If you're looking to do your own research and be a bit proactive you can always look at any of the most recent runs posted in the category you're trying to run - Generally, if there are quite a few times posted already you can have an idea of what strategies are being used. Sometimes it's quite difficult to put into words the strategies used or the newer runner prefers to learn by watching instead of reading. If there are no runs or very few runs in a category there is always the #Speedrun channel in Discord, to ask any questions or some sort of specific strategy you don't quite understand. Once you've got an idea of how the run should go your best bet is to just jump right in and attempt it yourself - Execution in terms of runs has a very low ceiling, to begin with so getting a reasonable time isn't as hard as you might think.

#Recording / Submitting a run

Recording your run is very simple, you can use your favourite recording software (OBS is a common favourite amongst most runners) and then simply record yourself doing your runs, Rules for each category will ask you to have certain things present however

as most categories within Spiritfall will ask you to have a timer present, you should Enable the in-game time via the game settings, as well as have a programme like LiveSplit to have an overlay for verification that there are no attempts at splicing or manipulating in game times.

Once you've got the footage and a Run you're proud of and wish to submit, head over to the category appropriate to the format you're running, and simply click submit run!

#Strategies

Try to formulate a plan ahead of time, what I mean by this is, before you even attempt to start a run, have an idea in mind of the different things you MUST see within that run, an example of this would be my personal favourite category of Bow, if I do not have Solesh in my first act Blessings, I simply reset the run and go again. This helps you minimize inefficient practices and gets you in the habit of fishing for good lineups!

Once you get used to this, then it's simply a matter of practice and refining your own strategy the more you play, watching yourself play and others play, is a great tool and often overlooked as to how potent it can be to improving one's gameplay.

#Tier-Lists of your weapons Enhancements / Blessings

This is not something that currently exists publicly but is something you can still do mentally. Keep in mind what is strongest for your build, and what holds more Value in your mind over other aspects, this cuts down time spent making decisions ahead of time and can shave valuable time off and keep your momentum going!

#Room Variants

Something that is probably not known by many, but each act only has so many room variants, and each of those rooms can only spawn a particular variety of enemies, the more you play and look out for this, you can start to know where things are going to spawn before they even spawn, this helps you head in the direction of enemies and min-max your micro-movements within the rooms!

#Free Rooms

These are rooms that require you to do 0 fighting or Hidden Rifts, these are paramount to your timer, the less time you HAVE to fight something, the faster your run will be, plan your map route based around these nodes! These are currently, Shrines, Shops, Hidden Rifts! (in hidden rifts, simply enter and run off the platform behind you! this will skip the encounter and save you roughly 20 seconds per rift)

#Boss Strategies

Each boss comes with its own difficult set of mechanics to overcome, but threat not, you can overcome these with mostly practice, but also positioning, some bosses will prefer to do particular attacks based on your distance from them, a prime example of this is the first boss you will encounter, she will prefer to swipe her sword multiple times the closer you are, this means it can be a good idea to every now and then between frames, create a tiny bit of distance to get her to try and use one of her ranged abilities, and allow you to punish the extra long frames!

#Taking your time to think

The more you run, the less time you will take to make decisions as it will become muscle memory, but at moments of tough choices, it can be a good idea to tap open your index or pause the game, both of these will pause the timer and allow you a few moments to think without having to worry about the time, other places the time pauses naturally are

Interacting with blessings, Interacting with a Shrine, While Purchasing Enhancements.

#Conclusion

Of course, I can not cover absolutely every little detail about what makes a good run possible within a written guide, but hopefully, the information disclosed within this will be a good starting point for those wanting to get into the speedrun scene of the game!

The most important thing of all and that will impact your runs the most, is just to have fun with it, most of the best strategies people use were found cause they found them fun and worked on improving upon them! if you have any questions please feel free to ask in the Speedrun section of the discord, I'm almost always present and if I'm not, there are many runners in there :) Thanks for your time and good luck Omenforged!