This is the route I used for my 4:53 run. It's considerably different from the route I used for the 5:00 run. This route has a lot more talking to your pardner, chooses Doc Alice instead of Susie Cochrane, goes to Fort Alldead, and skips Fort Memoriam. I believe it's faster overall and a tiny bit more consistent in getting runs to advance beyond wandering in Region A. It seems like even a bad run of this will pretty consistently get a 5:20 or so, while decent runs of it can get 5 minutes and below.

INTRO -Press Esc after confirming class to get out of bed faster. -Leave house. -Mash 1 through dialogue for mom. -Press 2, mash 1 for dad. -Grab a needle from the haystack. -Don't talk to your brother. -Press 1,1, 3, enter, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1 to get out of the prologue as fast as possible. This should give you the correct pardner and horse (Doc Alice and Pale Horse), as well as Goblintongue and manual XP spending.

DIRTWATER -Talk to your pardner. -Go to the jail. -Mash 2, then 1 to get out of the conversation -Walk to the back and press E on the second poster. -Mash 1. -Go to the map -Head to Cavern Canyon.

CAVERN CANYON -Back to the map, wander. --Hope to god you get the Silversmith. --Failing that, hope to god you get Stearn's Ranch or Buttonwillow's Shop. --After getting one of those two, hope to god it's followed by the Silversmith. ---When both of those fail, curse at god and restart the run. --Alright, you're back with us? Finally got a run with those? Okay, cool. -Go into Cavern Canyon's first cave, grab the wine, leave. -Go to the boards and pry them off. -Enter the second cave and pry the boards off the left door. -Leave cave 2, enter the far right cave. Press 1 when asked. -Walk over to the cocoons. Mash 1.

DIRTWATER JAIL -Mash through the dialogue, travel to the Silversmith from the map.

SILVERSMITH -Get Moxie to 3, Hornswogglin' to 2. -Drink the decent wine, use the lockpicking book. -Enter house. -Ignore spittoon. -Go to bookshelf, unlock Silver Plater. -Go to map.

BUTTONWILLOW'S STORE/STEARN'S RANCH -Head to whichever of Buttonwillow's Store or Stearn's Ranch you've unlocked. Get two needles. --If Buttonwillow has only one needle, restart. --If your pardner has an exclamation point above their head, talk to them. -Go to map. -Head to the railroad.

RAILROAD 1 -Talk to the guy at the far left of the screen. -Talk to the guy with the bowler hat and glasses. Unlock Gustavson's Gulch. -Go to Gustavson's Gulch.

GUSTAVSON'S GULCH -Hornswoggle the mayor. -Head to the first building on the bottom. --Press 1, 2, 2. -Go to the third building on the bottom from the left. -Mash 1. -Go one building to the left along the bottom. -Press 1, 1, 2. -Go to the building that's up and two over. It should be the theater. Press 2, then mash 1. -Go to the far building on the bottom side. Mash 1. -Go to the cave at the far side of the map. Press E twice to enter. -Three goblins. Press 2, then 1 for each of their dialogs. -Open the two chests at the top on the far side of the cave for meat. Hope you got lucky with meat RNG. -Open the chest in the middle for dynamite. -Head back to the railroad.

RAILROAD 1 -Upgrade Hornswogglin' to 3. -Talk to the guy with bowler hat and glasses again. -Press E on the switch. -Walk to the golem that shows up. Press 3, then 1 when the dialog window shows up. -Walk back to the bowler hat glasses guy. Talk to him. -Open the map. -Head to railroad 2.

RAILROAD 2 -Talk to your pardner. Should unlock Reboot Hill. -Talk to the guy with the bowler hat and glasses, unlock Breadwood. -Head to Breadwood.

BREADWOOD -Talk to your pardner. You should unlock the Military Cemetery. -Enter the barracks. Talk to the guy to the right of the fireplace. Unlock the Petting Cemetery. ! Note: You'll probably have gotten the meateor event by this point. If you're under 5005 meat, sell a few items to the trading post here to get up to that point. ! --If you have 5005 meat, head to the Silver Plater, otherwise ignore this until you do.

SILVER PLATER -Talk to your pardner if they have an exclamation point. You should unlock Fort Alldead. -Get the turnip plated. --If you screw up by accidentally pressing 1 too many times, restart the run. -Head to Fort Alldead.

FORT ALLDEAD -Enter the fort. -Walk over to the backpack at the far end just before the skeleton pit. -Get the Nex-Mex book from it. -Head to the Military Cemetery.

MILITARY CEMETERY -Walk up to the graves. -Press 1, 666, enter, 2. -Head to the Petting Cemetery.

PETTING CEMETERY -Talk to your pardner. You should unlock Buffalo Pile. -Head to Buffalo Pile.

BUFFALO PILE -Enter the pile. -Go one room to the right. -Grab a glass beaker, head to the milk container. Press E twice. -Go to the blood container, press E. -Go to the ichor container, press E. -Mash 1. -Head to the next room. -Grab the key from the coat to the right of the ritual table. It's a bit hard to see, but it's between the table and the cell door. -Head to the next room. -Head to the next room. -Grab the Nex-Mex book from the table, then unlock the footlocker straight below the door. -Walk through the rooms until you get back to the room with the table and the cell door. -Grab the soldier bones from the cabinets on the right side of the screen. -Go to the ritual table. Mash 1. -When Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Bill's finished his speech, head back to the second railroad stop.

RAILROAD 2 -Use all 4 of the Nex-Mex books you've gotten. (the fourth one will have happened as an encounter on the world map by now) -Reopen your inventory after Doc Alice rudely interrupts your necromantic studies. -Finish learning dark magic. -Go over to the binoculars on the left side of the screen. Use them. Mash 1. -Talk to the bowler hat glasses guy. Unlock Frisco. -Go to Frisco.

FRISCO -Talk to Emperor Norton. -Give him the crown. -Go to the movie theater. -Win the game.

END

Below this point are my thoughts for why a lot of decisions were made the way they were in this route. You can ignore them if you like, but it might help the route to make a little bit more sense.

PARDNERS: -Suzie made sense in runs that needed to complete Breadwood's quests. The current route's going for necromancy, so Suzie makes no sense. -Doc Alice is very good for finding Nex-Mex stuff. -Suzie is very bad for finding Nex-Mex stuff. -Pick Doc Alice.

HORSES: -Dark Horse made a lot more sense in the older runs. -Pale Horse gives a free Nex-Mex book. -There's no reason to not choose Pale Horse.

WANDERING: -I'm looking for three things while wandering at the start: Silversmith, Buttonwillow's Shop, and Stearn's Ranch. -I need two extra needles to get through the locks in Gustavson's Gulch. Buttonwillow's Shop seems to have a 50% chance of carrying two needles, while Stearn's Ranch guarantees at least two needles. -Stearn's Ranch is optimal, but Buttonwillow's Shop can keep a run alive. -If I get Silversmith first try, I'll complete the canyon and unlock Buttonwillow from the pocketwatch guy at the first railway. -Additionally, I'm wandering at the canyon with the spider because it's in Region A and lets you get into the objectives faster.

SHOPS -There's almost no reason to go into one unless you got screwed over hard by RNG. You should only need to sell two or three things at most if you don't have the requisite 5005 meat. -If you do need to sell things, do it after the Silversmith to maximize the amount of things you can potentially sell. -A Wandering Sally encounter is probably the absolute fastest for getting things sold. Remembering to do so during a run is the annoying part.

TALKING TO YOUR PARDNER -If you're pretty close to your pardner at the start of a screen (on the X,Y plane, not the other sort), and they have an exclamation point above their head, talk to them to clear that location from the pool. This is to ensure that you unlock the Military Cemetery at Breadwood (skipping the conversation with the mayor), Fort Alldead at the Silver Plater (skipping the chain of soup chef>Fort Cowardice>Marching Orders>Fort Alldead), and Buffalo Pile at the Petting Cemetery (saving 500 meat and consistently getting an unlock time pretty close to just running into it on the map). -Not doing that will lead to them unlocking things you don't want when you need them to unlock something specific. -Whether your pardner will have an exclamation point seems semi-random, but consistent enough that you'll be fine if you're paying attention.

GETTING OUT OF BED -This is a known trick, but pressing ESC to open the menu immediately after confirming your class will give you a wonky slide out of bed that saves a second or two. It's very consistent, pretty easy, and very useful.

SPITTOONS -If you are looking into a spittoon during your run, you are losing time. There's no reason to look into one.

NEX-MEX BOOKS -This is the cornerstone of the run. You need four of these. Here are six locations to get them: --Buffalo Pile --Fort Alldead --Military Cemetery Grave 666 --Thirteenth map event of the run. --Fort Memoriam (recommended if your pardner's Suzie, not recommended if your pardner's Doc Alice) --(if insanely lucky and holding at least one dynamite) while wandering for the Silversmith in region A. You'll have a fight with a cultist and a skeleton. Getting this would let you cut out Fort Alldead and save like 8-10 seconds.

MEAT -You should only need 5005 to finish. -You can get up to 5005 meat without selling anything if your luck on meat from the meateor and Gustavson's Gulch are decent. This would save about 4-10 seconds on a good run. -Only needing 5005 meat saves a good deal of time in the shops, as the previous route required 5505 meat and selling a lot more stuff.

BRIDGE -Buffalo buffalo buffalo bone bridges built by Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Bill's bitchin' buffalo buffalo buffalo bones beat Breadwood's boring bread bridge badly.

SILLY WALKING -Fun is suboptimal and should be discouraged. B^| -But for real though, not turning on Silly Walking saves a free second at the start of the run. -This was an unfortunate and tragic discovery.

BUFFALO PILE -Route through here is mostly the same, but now you head to the next room immediately after getting the Buffalo Soldier mixture (milk, blood, ichor). -If your pardner is Suzie and you're skipping Fort Alldead for Memoriam, it's slightly more optimal to mix the fudge (milk, milk, lemonade) when you're walking through the room the second time, after picking up the Nex-Mex book and opening the footlocker. Not much point in walking back to the start of the room if you're coming back anyway!

MEATEOR -Just keep moving through the run. -If you don't have it by Breadwood, just keep advancing and visit the Silver Plater after it shows up. No point holding up the run for something that'll happen as things keep moving along. -The worst that can happen is that you make it to Frisco and realize that you forgot to get the crown. This will happen sometimes because a rare bug that crashes memory mid-run will be caused by the meat pile floating between your ears. It's unavoidable.

SILVER PLATER -This is the same as ever, but not selling the clothes off your back means you'll have to press 2 three times before you can plate the turnip. -You'll want to talk to Doc Alice here, if you can, to unlock Fort Alldead. -This is the fastest way to get a crown that we're aware of. The El Vibrato crown is a hassle, the necromancy crown requires a couple too many fights (though it could be worth looking into), and the tooth crown is a bit too reliant on inconsistent RNG and fights.

HORSE SPEED -Saves like 34 seconds. One of the biggest time savers in the run. Literally no downside, just free time. The other runs don't use it because all of them were done before it was implemented in patch 1.03.

PETTING CEMETERY -You go here to hedge your bets and ensure that you get into Buffalo Pile within a reasonable timeframe. Doc Alice will unlock Buffalo Pile, you can unlock it from the guy at the counter for 500 meat, and you can wander around the area as a last resort.

DYING -Falling unconscious and getting sent back to Dirtwater is less of a run-killer with faster horse movement. The benefit of using Pale Horse over Dark Horse is about 15 seconds, and death costs about 8 seconds. It might be worth restarting the run if you die more than twice.

GOING THROUGH MENUS FASTER Punchy tells me that the game just straight-up moves faster with a 144hz display. Dialog windows and the map scroll faster. A 144hz monitor is probably necessary for the absolute fastest time. We're not quite there yet, but a high framerate monitor will quite likely help your run.