F*ck the SPEED! challenge.

[Viking Mana]

I'm well aware that I'm not the first person to say this, but it is what it is. It's a ridiculous and extremely unfair challenge that frankly has no play in the game, as it's nigh impossible in 95/100 cases.

Worse still, when it is possible, you're still not safe.

I've spent that last 8-10 ingame hours in BoI trying to do it. I figured I'd do nothing else until it was done so that I could get used to the speed of the enemies and figure out how best to try and counter them. Then I get to an XL Womb, and I think; "Holy sh*t! This is it! This is my chance!"
I end up clearing what felt like two dozen rooms before I get to the bosses. The first one goes down easily. The cell-thing that hops around and splits on death. It was absolutely no challenge for splash-damage mega-buffed Death's Touch.
Then I get to Mom's Heart. I'm not doing as much damage to it as I'd like, and it's really a race against time, given the sheer amount of unavoidable damage you take in that fight on SPEED!-mode. But I win!

I did it! I killed Mom's Heart on the SPEED! challenge! The trophy drops down from above and my heart is pounding. It's finally over.

But of course it isn't. Of course the last of the heart's animations glitches outs and delays that last ring of tears. I end up taking an unavoidable hit from it. There's nothing I can do - My character keels over in front of the trophy.

Were none of these challenges tested? If so, how did one that outright breaks the game make it through? It's ridiculous. Just look at Monstro, and how his attacks are delayed because the game apparently can't keep up with itself.

[Blargo]

Okay.

[Phaper]

Speed is not that bad because it has item rooms.

You can restart the run until you get a really good first floor item (Mom's Knife, Magic Mushroom, Tech X, Cricket's Head, etc).

BRAINS! and Ultra Hard are markedly worse.

[Justice]

Originally posted by Phaper:

Speed is not that bad because it has item rooms.

You can restart the run until you get a really good first floor item (Mom's Knife, Magic Mushroom, Tech X, Cricket's Head, etc).

BRAINS! and Ultra Hard are markedly worse.

Speed - Luck always beat skill
Brains - Skill always beat luck

Do you understand why speed is worse?

[Viking Mana]

Originally posted by Phaper:

Speed is not that bad because it has item rooms.

You can restart the run until you get a really good first floor item (Mom's Knife, Magic Mushroom, Tech X, Cricket's Head, etc).

BRAINS! and Ultra Hard are markedly worse.

I disagree. BRAINS! just basically requires you to roll the dice until you get an early Pyromaniac. At that point it becomes trivial. But as the commenter after you pointed out, even if you don't get that, your skill is at least a relevant factor.

In SPEED! you're entirely luck-dependent. If no mapping is available to you (A likely scenario, as grinding out money isn't really an option) you just have to pick a direction and hope it's not littered with rooms full of unavoidable damage. A few of those in a row, and there's nothing you can do but just reset. Add to that the need for a level 1 or 2 Brimstone, Death's Touch or Mom's Knife, and it gets comical.

Ultra Hard is very tough, but the premise is sound: A little bit of luck combined with the skill needed to make sub-par builds work.

[Viking Mana]

And literally the same thing just happende AGAIN! Died to a glitched out ring of tears on Mom's Heart!

This challenge is such HORSESH*T!

[Viking Mana]

To echo my sentiment above - I PICKED UP the trophy, but the timer killed me while he was holding it and it did not give me credit for ACTUALLY COMPLETING THE CHALLENGE!

[Phaper]

Of Brains!, Speed!, and Ultra Hard, Speed is the one that allows you to mitigate difficulty via skill the most.

It's harder to get the timing down for avoiding faster enemies and projectiles, but definitely doable. Even a single Emperor card can decrease the difficulty significantly, along with any mapping or high damage item. In addition, it has item rooms, so if you've had some frustrating attempts, you can hold 'R" for a couple items until you get a solid starting item OR an XL floor.

BRAINS! removes item rooms, gives low starting stats, and makes many otherwise good items useless because of Blue Baby and the blindfolded attribute.

Ultra Hard does the same thing, except to a much greater degree.

[Viking Mana]

Originally posted by Phaper:

Of Brains!, Speed!, and Ultra Hard, Speed is the one that allows you to mitigate difficulty via skill the most.

It's harder to get the timing down for avoiding faster enemies and projectiles, but definitely doable. Even a single Emperor card can decrease the difficulty significantly, along with any mapping or high damage item. In addition, it has item rooms, so if you've had some frustrating attempts, you can hold 'R" for a couple items until you get a solid starting item OR an XL floor.

BRAINS! removes item rooms, gives low starting stats, and makes many otherwise good items useless because of Blue Baby and the blindfolded attribute.

Ultra Hard does the same thing, except to a much greater degree.

I firmly disagree.

Either way, after about 10-12 hours of grinding, I've done the SPEED! challenge. After completing it a total of 4 times.

It's not a fun challenge. It's basically asking you to play under gamebreaking conditions.

Ultra Hard is extremely annoyed, but it doesn't break the game. Speed actively breaks the game's own rules. Instant hits, unavoidable damage, enemies and rooms that are effectively unbeatable without piercing shots or Brimstone.

And despite what people say: Mom's Knife is an awful item for the SPEED! challenge. It's leagues behind Death's Touch and Brimstone, both items you can effetively roll into at the start of the run (Brimstone can be obtained through curse rooms leading you to a level 1 Deal with the Devil), as it often demands that you put yourself in a dangerous position. Bomb Flies and turret-style enemies, for example. Enemies that chase you. Quite a few bosses as well.

Of course, I didn't have any of those. I had a Tech.5, Magic Mush and Pentagram. My only Deal with the Devil item was Ceremonial Robes. My spacebar item was Shoop Da Whoop! - An item that's actually remarkably effective on this mode, assuming you can't get your hands on a real Brimstone.

But all I reall have to say is: F*ck the SPEED! challenge.

[ei balls]

I dislike the speed challenge too, but the way you died was completely your fault.

[Justice]

Originally posted by Phaper:

Of Brains!, Speed!, and Ultra Hard, Speed is the one that allows you to mitigate difficulty via skill the most.

It's harder to get the timing down for avoiding faster enemies and projectiles, but definitely doable. Even a single Emperor card can decrease the difficulty significantly, along with any mapping or high damage item. In addition, it has item rooms, so if you've had some frustrating attempts, you can hold 'R" for a couple items until you get a solid starting item OR an XL floor.

BRAINS! removes item rooms, gives low starting stats, and makes many otherwise good items useless because of Blue Baby and the blindfolded attribute.

Ultra Hard does the same thing, except to a much greater degree.

You missing another crusial point in Speed challenge - you have very short time to beat the challenge, so often you have to abandon attempts finding treasure room because you have no time. If timer in speed challenge was removed - it would have been 2 times easier since you no longer forced to rush and worrying about.

[Viking Mana]

Originally posted by Justice:

Originally posted by Phaper:

Of Brains!, Speed!, and Ultra Hard, Speed is the one that allows you to mitigate difficulty via skill the most.

It's harder to get the timing down for avoiding faster enemies and projectiles, but definitely doable. Even a single Emperor card can decrease the difficulty significantly, along with any mapping or high damage item. In addition, it has item rooms, so if you've had some frustrating attempts, you can hold 'R" for a couple items until you get a solid starting item OR an XL floor.

BRAINS! removes item rooms, gives low starting stats, and makes many otherwise good items useless because of Blue Baby and the blindfolded attribute.

Ultra Hard does the same thing, except to a much greater degree.

You missing another crusial point in Speed challenge - you have very short time to beat the challenge, so often you have to abandon attempts finding treasure room because you have no time. If timer in speed challenge was removed - it would have been 2 times easier since you no longer forced to rush and worrying about.

I actually agree to some extent. One way of balancing the SPEED! challenge would be to at least increase the timer to a fair amount of time, if not remove it entirely. It's more than difficult enough to play through the game with every enemy moving at twice their normal speed. The extremely strict timer, giving you 2 minutes average on every floor, is overkill. A single Curse of the Lost or Curse of the Maze can basically end your challenge.

I just beat BRAINS! after spending barely a fraction of the time on it, withou getting neither Host Hat or Pyromaniac. BRAINS! is definitely far more skill determined than SPEED!.

[Justice]

Originally posted by Viking Mana:

Originally posted by Justice:

You missing another crusial point in Speed challenge - you have very short time to beat the challenge, so often you have to abandon attempts finding treasure room because you have no time. If timer in speed challenge was removed - it would have been 2 times easier since you no longer forced to rush and worrying about.

I actually agree to some extent. One way of balancing the SPEED! challenge would be to at least increase the timer to a fair amount of time, if not remove it entirely. It's more than difficult enough to play through the game with every enemy moving at twice their normal speed. The extremely strict timer, giving you 2 minutes average on every floor, is overkill. A single Curse of the Lost or Curse of the Maze can basically end your challenge.

I just beat BRAINS! after spending barely a fraction of the time on it, withou getting neither Host Hat or Pyromaniac. BRAINS! is definitely far more skill determined than SPEED!.

The Antibirth speed challenge is very similiar and was made way better. In there there was no timer, your speed and your tear fire rate is increased as well. This how it supposed to be.

And you can beat brains with out explosion immunity. I beat it with only book of revelationships.

[Viking Mana]

Funny. I also snagged an early Book of Revelations, and it stuck with me through the entire run. Got a level 2 Ball of Bandages and I had the good fortune to become Guppy without having to screw myself over with 9 lives. Brother Bobby, Abel and Bandage Girl all spawned flies for me at a slow, but fair rate. I had a Stopwatch as well. Other than that, I just went for HP'ups.

[Steve]

There are some riddiculous challenges, but that's the point of them. but i have to admit some of them i dont see myself beating, for example the one giving you damage when your tear doesnt hit an enemy, i have to really scratch my head and ask myself how that is beatable.

[Viking Mana]

Originally posted by Steve:

There are some riddiculous challenges, but that's the point of them. but i have to admit some of them i dont see myself beating, for example the one giving you damage when your tear doesnt hit an enemy, i have to really scratch my head and ask myself how that is beatable.

Funny. I just beat that earlier today. Took a few tries, but I had a couple of good runs before I finally won.

It's really not so bad. You just have to look at what you've got and then figure out what you need to add to it to make it better.

You start out with a very high damage Chocolate Milk. You charge your shot and fire a big bubble. If you get a bit up-close and personal, you practically can't miss. On the first two floors that shouldn't be much of a problem, because you can get fairly close to most enemies.

These first couple of floors will determine your run though. The challenge is very.. Well, challenging, if you don't get the tools you need - But luckily you can just reset until you do.

So, what are you looking for? That's easy: Anything that gives you spectral tears, like the Ouija Board or Spirit of the Night (In an early Devil Deal) makes the challenge so much easier. You can now fire through obstacles.

Penetrative shots through Cupid's Arrow are amazing as well, allow you to hit multiple enemies. Dead Onion will also do the job.

For the closest thing to a guaranteed win though: Death's Touch. When fully charged you will fire a massive scythe that has penetration and can even hit enemies taking cover behind obstacles. It'll one-shot just about everything. From that point on you'll just want to stack damage upgrades. They will make your scythe bigger. As long as you don't just fire willy-nilly, you'll almost be guaranteed to hit your target. Obviously homing shots through Spoon Bender helps too.

For a spacebar item I recommend Book of Revelations, Satanic Bible or Crystal Ball. Anything that can help you build some HP, really.

You should UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES pick up offensive familiars. Rotten Baby is the only partial exception to this rule. If your familiar hits and kills and enemy you're about to shoot at, you will take damage if you fire too late. If you have to hold in your key, they can also shoot any bombs you set down. As said, Rotten Baby is alright as long as you mind the flies, but the best option is definitely to ignore all familiars that show up.

That's it, really. A fairly easy challenge that seems deceptively hard if you forget how easy it is to effectively break it. The further you get, and the more HP you have, the less of a problem it becomes to occasionally miss a shot. But with a huge tear, it's really not too difficult to guarantee a hit.