If there are more players who consider it necessary to take the teleport strategy to any point of Ushka Bau in a separate category, then Any% will be divided.

Also offer your options to diversify the runs. A new category will be created if there is a video of the finished run.

So far, the future leaderboard seems to me like this:

Any% — everything that is in the game to achieve the best time.

Any% No Teleport — for those who, for some reason, consider the strategy of fast travel through the code on the second controller to be incorrect, and so that the route with movements through the gates and dragon flights would not be forgotten. (it will not be added until at least four players appear in the main category, two of whom will make a run without teleport)

All Rings — if a way is found to bypass the sealed door in the Fountain of Heaven.

Glitchless — without the abuse of experience, teleport and, possibly, something else.

100% — showing the game in full. All characters, items, notes, books, spells; completing all quests in compliance with the chains of execution, and so on.

Void% — an analog of "Death%" in some games. A fast category, where you just need to die as soon as possible from a meeting with a Void.

Sharing my thoughts here:

Any% — This already exists, and is a good indicator of the player's sequential knowledge of the game. However, it essentially removes any RNG based on drops, encounters, etc.

Any% No Teleport — The game is obscure enough without adding in the fact that an Any% run is fully reliant on the player's awareness of the ability to teleport. Having a No Teleport option would (I feel) make speedrunning the game attractive to a wider base of individuals since it would create a distinctly separate category for players to practice.

All Rings — I've done a bit of messing around but have never gotten through the door without all the rings...would be cool to see this if it was possible.

Glitchless — Removing the ability to teleport would be nice, removing exp farming would be...interesting. If you play the entire game sequentially (as laid out in the manual), I am fairly certain you reach the end of the game pretty far from 9th level, which doesn't make the game impossible, but does make the Motarin and Darius fights heavily RNG dependent.

100% — This would be a money grind and little else, to say nothing of having to find every single note in the game. Requiring All Characters might be nice, but just from a moderation standpoint I feel like this would be a terrible category to verify.

Void% — Would be funny, but I can see runs in this category being about two minutes long...would really depend on whether such a short category would be allowed / appropriate according to the SR.com rules.

I will add "Any% No Teleport" when another run using it is presented (the rules now specify how to use it), maybe it will be me. Or any other for any time. Up to this point, the visibility of competition remains in the leaderboard, which can motivate potential players to connect. Moreover, with the new strategy, it has become much easier to show a good time. But the problem is that for 32 years since the release of the game, and 5 years of its existence on the site, it has only two runs and 4 followers, which indicates its extreme unpopularity.

Before adding secondary categories, it is necessary to coordinate their conditions and rules with interested players who are ready to make a run through them. Unfortunately, here it is impossible to simply divide the table into "Level 1, Level 2, Level 3...".

Regarding "Void%". At the Richi docks (22'0" 5'2") you can get a guaranteed message that "Void has found your party": you need to switch places with the girl, and then turn back. Although, as it seems to me, the usual softlock is disguised in this way.

It took me 68 seconds to do this – with a teleport. So I don't know if it makes any sense, because everything is linear. In general, fan-categories are allowed and are common, but they are added when the main ones are already bored or have become very complex. Short categories are also allowed: there are examples where the time is one second or less.

I am fine with Any% and Any% - No Teleport (despite that basically utilizing a different, but less convenient teleport ;) ). You could also probably have Any% - All Characters, since you basically skip Slash and Feather by default, but they'd might be a tack-on at the end of the run because their spells suck and just eat time. Anything else seems irrelevant for now given there's only a couple runners.

No XP wouldn't be a fun run for the aforementioned end-game fights and you'd have real bad odds of getting initiative at lv. 8 or under (I think it's near impossible for initiative at lv. 7). Basically 4 fights of hoping you don't get duo-Reapered. Not to mention you're probably 40% to wipe on Motarin or Darius at lv. 9 as is (based on the small sample of runs I did a few weeks ago).