A continuation of stuff I talked about on my stream and also the discord. But basically, on the PC if you lower your graphic settings, you end up saving a decent bit of time through faster loading and other things (for example, seems like tutorial text boxes go by quicker, as do cutscenes).

Unfortunately, at least in Any%, this causes you to softlock a lot in South Trial when you roll through the log. Like 9/10 times probably. Realizing this I figured it wouldn't be viable to do this for runs, at least not until the WR became more optimal.

That said, I was fiddling around and discovered that a simple bit of pause buffering, and rolling a good distance from the log eliminates this issue. So that's no longer an issue. I don't know what other low graphic problems arise in other categories (yet) but I can at least say this eliminates the issue with Any%

Related, given that this can give PC users an even larger advantage over console users than previously, I'm personally a bit of a stronger advocate for us separating console and PC on the leaderboards. The loading differences are just pretty big at this point so I'd be for it if everyone else feels the same.

An update on this: I've not had any issues with the All Bosses route with the graphics on fast. The only thing I've noticed is when upgrading Steven's shield, it sometimes softlocks the game. Though, saving and quitting still gives you the upgrade and unlocks The Great North, so it's not really an issue.

Still don't know if anything inside Bismuth's Forge will be affected, nor how it will affect 101%.

I'll see how it affects 101% soon (I haven't had much time to play recently, but when I do I've been almost exclusively practicing that).

So you're saying you still get the shield upgrade if you save+quit while it's softlocked, as long as you submit the chroma/schematic first? If so that could be pretty useful in 101%...!

Yeah. Like when the shield is floating above the forge, and Steven's eyes are shimmering, the cutscene doesn't continue. But saving and quitting will get you out of it with the shield still upgraded. I had wondered if this might cause problems in 101% since I haven't tried upgrading things on fast graphics. Hopefully it's just a thing that happens with your first upgrade, otherwise I figure this could cause problems in 101% if you want to upgrade multiple weapons at once. (Though, the time save overall from fast graphics would probably negate this if it's a problem)

And now that I can kinda see the differences in SOB between myself and polarbear, I'm still highly in favor of separating the leaderboard into Console and PC. (I don't think each individual console is needed). Polar has a 1:27:28 SOB, and I have a 1:22:11. And I feel fairly confident with a few places I still have a big gold on (like Team Leftovers should still be like another minute, Familiar Grounds I should have like another 15-30 seconds). No clue where Polar still has significant gold potentials, but it looks like my estimate was right and that fast graphics PC vs. Console probably comes down to like an innate five minute difference for All Bosses.