How to win the third Speed Star race

[Thyraxus]

How do you win that stupid race? I checked whatever guides I could find, slotted as many Movement Speed chips as I could, popped a Speed Salve, watched some videos for the optimal route that I try to follow, but I still am not getting even close to winning. As in, I'm still so far away from the goal when I see the bot arrive that it's not like "almost got it, just got to try a little harder", more like "how am I supposed to win, this is impossible". We're talking like 4-5 seconds too slow here.

It feels like I am missing something totally stupid, obvious or fundamental (or any combination thereof) but I just can't figure it out.

Any ideas?

[Mako]

With chips and salve it should be somewhat easy.
Descend by falling, gracefully, straight down, like a 150kg rock, dont glide. You may glide at the very last moment to soften the landing but I dont think its required.
Then just run, dont dodge, with chips and salve regular running is faster.

[Thyraxus]

Thanks for the suggestion, but no, doesn't make a difference.

So, I am taking a path around the left edge of the crater like I saw in one video, and somewhere towards the end of that path is a gap you need to jump over. That gap is about as far as I get, whatever I try, before I already see the flying machine arriving at the goal. So it's not even close.

The vexing thing is that in the video I watched, that player's 2B was moving a lot faster than mine, it looked almost silly (like one of those old Benny Hill skits) so I wasn't sure whether the video was sped up for brevity or I am missing a significant potential speed boost somewhere.

But like I said, I used as many +speed chips as possible (until the game told me I reached the cap, which was something like 20% IIRC, which does not seem all that much to me) but even with that and the speed salve, winning this race seems to be about as easy as taking a trip to the moon ... on foot.

[Mako]

Yes, running should look comical if you combine chips and salve. Not sure whats going on. If you have any mods, especially fps uncap, disable/remove them and try again. Also try forcing vsync.

[EleventhStar]

look up the route on youtube.

use speed salve. use max speed chips. (i reloaded my save whenever i ran out of large speed salves)

find the mental fortitude to not get angry at the cutscene you can't skip.

[Thyraxus]

I'm not using any mods, completely vanilla game installation. I am playing it on a Steam Deck, though, no idea if that has anything to do with it.

[MShields]

charging the pod's skill slows time (but not you!) for the first 3 seconds, don't activate it though, use pod's regu(L)ar gun to cancel the skill

[á]

Here's what helped me out.

When you need to run on the way, don't glide to the buildings and houses, you'll lose a lot of time. Instead, just dash into the track itself. You can equip chips like Evade Range +6 (killer move for A2). When you are close to the finish line, start charging your Pod Slow program. Better hold it to extend the range.

The Speed Star is really fast (makes sense, since he's just flying all the way straight), so there'll be a gap in approx .2 ~ .5 seconds.

When you jump into the finish line, quickly release your pod program (not cancel). This way, he'll be reeeeally slow, hence you'll win.

Patience and timing is a key here.

Good luck!

[ShortyBuzzGER]

If you are still in trouble maybe try the skirt trick. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYbiw3dJ9Jg
Will give you a multiple seconds head start.

[.Zaga]

I didnt even use the optimal route, I just use all movement chips without items and I did it
I think theres something wrong with how you run if you didnt make it