While (begrudgingly) watching AwesomeMan0 beat my Tower of Doom 1 level speedrun by 3 seconds (that is also in the completely wrong speedrun category) I had an epiphany that when you are doing the “rest” section and you have to answer 3 questions correctly to heal or upgrade one of your cards that if you answer incorrectly you don’t have to watch the long healing and upgrading animations but only wait three seconds to continue. Of course this comes with the downside of not being able to upgrade or heal, but it can still be used to great effect. For example, the new world record. at 2:29 they start to go through the 3 rest sections and end at the boss at 3:15. If they implemented this strategy they could of shaved a good half a minute off and gotten a good sub 3:30. (You could argue that they wouldn’t of been able to beat the boss in the same time or wouldn’t of been able to beat the boss entirely, but I would argue that this is a risky trick and can often be a run killer, but still be justifiable to use to save time as of it being its purpose.) Now it’s time for me to put a symbol that no one uses. ~

Interesting strat idea, definitely would be riskier. I don't think it'd be viable for full tower runs, but probably worth it for shorter ones.