speedrunning cadence tips?

[ChekinNooget]

any tips for speedrunning in particular? like weapon choice, when to go look for items, etc

[Aged Swine]

I'm not much of a speedrunner myself (despite my 800 hours in game), but from what I've seen on youtube, they strongly favor axe as a weapon (for any character that can wield it), since it has a wide dash attack, allowing to kill monsters (if you have enough damage) and move at the same time. Also, you should use as much trapdoors as you can find (even more with Synchrony's cracked floors, if you have bombs). That also means that you shouldn't take boots of levitation (they will prevent you from dropping down).

Well, and you'll definitely need to learn and practice quick kill strategies for all bosses. Since you are asking specifically about Cadence, you'll want to have at least 5 bombs (or 4 bombs + bomb spell) for the NecroDancer fight, so that you can just bomb you way to the lute and then to the NecroDancer himself without wasting lots of time on the buttons. For Dead Ringer, Synchrony added some ways to damage him directly - e.g. berserk spell or reflective shield (there's an achievement for the latter).

People who did some serious speedrunning themselves would probably give you a lot more tips, but it's a start I guess. :)

[ChekinNooget]

thanks for the tips. would you recommend a cat or rapier more, if i cant find an axe?

ill start practicing the quick kills, i knew a few but theres one for king konga where you intentionally miss a beat and bomb, but i cant figure out how to do it

ill have to look out for reflect shield and berserk spell for dead ringer, that sounds really useful

[Aged Swine]

Well, I never managed to learn to use the cat properly, so I generally avoid it. :) Rapier sounds fine - it's more predictable, anyway. If you happen across a ring of piercing, a warhammer would probably be fast enough too (otherwise, it might get you in trouble with blademasters and the like).

For King Conga, I've seen a mega-skilled guy on youtube (SpootyBiscuit) dig or bomb his throne to make him damageable early. Not sure how to do it correctly - that was a new one for me and I'm way past most achievements, so never tried it myself. :)

Are you aiming for the 15-minutes run achievement? It's been many years since I did that, but I believe that timing like that was relatively easy to achieve with just a lot of practice, even without using all the super tricks. :) Basically, you rush towards the exit, pick up whatever you can find on your way and try not to take too many hits. :)

I myself have just started trying for Suzu 12 minutes achievement. Instantly recalled that my biggest problem with any speedruns was always finding the right direction to go in zone 1 or zone 2, it's always so easy to pick the opposite way and get into a dead end (so, grab a map or torch of walls if you see one)... Still, when things go well, I finish zone 1 in about a minute, 2 minutes tops, so 12 minutes for 5 zones sounds pretty generous. Probably the same with Cadence.

[ChekinNooget]

i did a run without the dlcs solely for the achievement and got a time of just over 10 mins, now i'm just trying to get a good time with the dlcs for fun

i found this[psnprofiles.com] guide online, the king konga quick kill seems really easy now, so ill have to test it out

yeah mapping is one of the really annoying parts of speedrunning, for z1 and z4 it's pretty easy to find the exit but for z2 z3 and z5 it's almost impossible lol. it's probably best to bomb a shrine of space for a map, right? taking a shrine of darkness also gives a map and a compass, but it's kind of annoying to play with darkness for a while. suzu is really fun to speedrun though, good luck

[Aged Swine]

Originally posted by ChekinNooget:

i did a run without the dlcs solely for the achievement and got a time of just over 10 mins, now i'm just trying to get a good time with the dlcs for fun

I remember the time when Amplified came out and added me an extra zone just as I was struggling to get my first Aria all-zones run. That was painful... but in the end, I kept playing with DLC on - after all, it also "fixed" ooze golems in Z4. :)

As for the fun - the greatest part of the Synchrony-related base game updates was when they added the saves in 2022. It is the thing that allows you to just have fun while going for an achievement like Polyamorous (which still requires lots of skill) - just save after each character and go relax or do whatever else you want to do until you are ready for the next one. That's how I got mine (still took months to achieve), and this possibility was the only reason I returned to the game. Because before (back in 2018), my last hard achievement was "Undeadly" and, because I don't like speedrunning (my idea of fun in this game includes clearing whole levels), it took about 5 hours on end for the successful run alone. Not anymore. :)

Originally posted by ChekinNooget:

yeah mapping is one of the really annoying parts of speedrunning, for z1 and z4 it's pretty easy to find the exit but for z2 z3 and z5 it's almost impossible lol.

Well, for Z4 it's not just "easy" but trivial - you just need to understand what corner of the map you are in (possible at a glance even with an empty map if you have a good eye-meter), then go to the exact opposite.

In Z5 it's easy - just look for the biggest room - torch of walls is perfect for that, but in general, any torch is enough. and you can often find it even without one just by looking at back ends of the wall tiles (unless that room is one of the north ones).

With Z3 it's worse, but since it's so open, the minibosses often help you by rushing to attack early - just look where they came from.

I agree that Z2 is the hardest. But Z1 is also bad for me - it often has dead-end side passages (with or without the shop) in directions which seem logical for an exit. And the RNG sometimes tends to troll you by putting an unbreakable wall exactly between the start room and the exit. I can't tell how many times I died on Tempo because of this nonsense while trying for Very Polyamorous (not done yet, but I actually ended up always taking Tempo first just because of Z1 unpredictability).

Originally posted by ChekinNooget:

it's probably best to bomb a shrine of space for a map, right?

Yes, good idea if you see one and have a spare bomb.

Originally posted by ChekinNooget:

taking a shrine of darkness also gives a map and a compass, but it's kind of annoying to play with darkness for a while.

Yep - main reason I never take darkness intentionally and rarely use sunglasses (even though they are one of the best early items for Aria) is that it's annoying and thus less fun. :) Especially for someone like me, whose eyesight is bad enough already (so I generally hate all features in all games which mess with my ability to see clearly).