Pro tips for better scores

Some tips and info for those looking to improve their scores

Hitting without misses

That's obviously the first goal, and apart from training training training, there are a few things to know on that subject.

First, let's start with an explanation of how the game recognizes a hit between the hammer and the drum: a point on the front of the hammer creates a line when moving, which intersects rectangles located on the surface of the drums. The front face of the hammer must entirely exit and then re-enter the top of the drum for the collision to register.

There is a lot more tolerance for where you hit on the outer drums, to compensate for arm reach. If there are two valid notes and you hit in the middle, the overlap is handled by looking at which note is the closest. Here is a little sketch to give you an idea of what the hit zones look like:



Please note the only important thing is WHEN you hit the drum (when the rune aligns with the center of the drum), not WHERE you hit on the drum, as long as you are in the hit zone.

Now, a few settings can help you hit without misses:

• Drum height
  Find the correct height for you. Typically this would be around hip height. This is important to ensure your hammers completely exit and then re-enter the drum for each hit
  
  
• Hammer orientation and position
  Same as above
  
  
• Choose your hammer
  If you've unlocked multiple hammers, you'll notice they all have different shapes, which can impact your gamefeel. Try them all to find the one that feels the best for you.
  
  
• Play standing if you can to have the best freedom of movement and the best field of view to see runes in advance.
  
  
• And of course, make sure you follow all the manufacturer's recommandations to ensure the best tracking for your headset.

Scoring system

Here is a slideshow[www.ragnarock-vr.com] explaining the scoring system in Ragnarock.

General tips:

• Your goal is to make the most perfect hits. Perfect hits give you more points AND charge your combo faster.
  
  
• Always wait for the second-level (yellow) combo to maximize the added bonus (except for the very end of the song where you must use whatever combo you have before the end).
  
  
• Use your second-level combo as soon as you get it. There is no point in waiting as the combo gives you a fixed boost and is not impacted by incoming notes.

Getting Perfect Hits

To score the most points and charge your combo the fastest, the whole goal in Ragnarock is to score "perfect hits". As explained above, perfect hits are counted between -15 and +15ms around the exact timing. Training will help you maximize this of course, but you might also need a bit of help from some settings.

Options that can help you hit more accurately are :

• Change your "Rune speed" (Modifiers settings)
  Some players like to modify this value to their liking, to anticipate runes better for example (especially on lower levels).
  
  
• Turn down "Drum sound compensation" (Advanced settings)
  This will allow you to hear exactly when you hit the drum, rather than the corrected, more in sync, drum sound. This can help you realize whether you hit too early/too late.
  
  
• Check "Display beat lines" (Display settings)
  These lines show the tempo during the song and can help you keep up.

If after this you still feel your hits are not as perfect as they feel, you can try adjusting the LATENCY setting (especially if you're using bluetooth headphones).

• What is Latency?
  In Ragnarock, latency is the average difference between your hits and exact timing. A perfect run made by a robot would have a latency of 0. Latency can be a positive or a negative number depending if you hit too late or too early compared to the song. It can come from hardware specs (e.g. headphones) or from your own timing.
  
  
• Where is it?
  In Advanced settings, check "Show latency" to see your average latency. It will show under "Perfect hits" in all your scores, at the end of a song or in the leaderboards.
  
  
• How to adjust it?
  Try to play a few songs you're comfortable with to find out your average, then enter the opposite value in the "Latency" advanced setting (e.g. if you get a -30 average, put your Latency at +30). This will offset the audio (song) and the visual (runes) by that amount, and should allow you to have a lower latency overall and therefore hit more "perfect hits".
  
  Please note that since you are a human (hopefully), it is normal for your latency to never be the same, but you can try to adjust it so it is optimized for your case. Keep in mind the window for perfect hits is +/-15 ms so you don't need a 0 latency to have great scores.

[Asha]

There's no 'Show latency' box in the Advanced settings tab, has this been removed?

[jek777]

At the top of this guide there is an image showing the hit zones to be larger than the drums, especially on the outer ones. However for me (and others) the're not.

To hit the drum the center point of the hammer must be within the round top of the drum, for all drums. If no part or just a corner of the hammer (but not center) is in the circle the drum will not react.

Is there a setting somewhere to get larger hit-zones, similar to that picture, or are that guide outdated or wrong?

(Especially in songs altering between both right then both left drums I find it hard to hit every time. I can't keep an eye on the drums while playing since I look at the coming runes, but I have vibration on for hit and empty, so I feel that it don't register a hit at all, so it's not that I'm too late or early. And it can't be that I haven't lifted away the hammer from the hit before when it's the drums on the opposite side that miss)

[»1MåההLåה«]

Thanks for the tip with the rune speed modification. I always had the problem that the latency was too low for slow songs and too high for fast songs.
I now fixed the rune speed to 25 and instantly got 70% perfect hits were i was always never able to go above 50%.

Side effect: Level 1-3 songs are now also fun to play because the runes are pretty fast. So the rune speed is for me the most important thing which should be increased over time when the skill grows!

[Djent]

A latency calibration like Beat Saber has would be better. There is a beep and a visual calibration. You have to hit to the beep and it calibrates latency automatically.
I have way better feeling in beat saber than in Ragnarock. I have still not figured out best setting in Ragnarock.

[Jon.Topps]

For some reason my latency is pretty awesome, and yet I'm getting bad results in perfects. The one level I was spot on (in my opinion) and my latency was literally +1. I got very low perfects, and even missed a ton.

[kirstie.reed]

Added to the loosening your grip comment - breathe evenly and try to relax. Adrenaline automatically speeds things up, so if you can calm yourself a bit, timing will improve

[Psyck]

Great guide. To add a few things on the "training training training" part, here's my 2 cents
1. Practice using your wrists for striking and aiming
* Accuracy & Speed - You can snap your wrists much faster than you can swing your arms.
* Control - You can keep your arms relatively steady and position them well
* Stamina - You're doing a lot less moving

2. Don't be afraid to cross your hammers over.
You'll find that scales that previously seemed impossibly fast become possible.

Example scale from Masters of the Galaxy:

Try

L
__R
____L
______R
__L
______R
____L
__R
L

instead of

L
__L
____R
______R
____R
______R
____R
__L
L

* Using practice mode to zoom into these tough scales makes for efficient, um, practice.

I don't rigidly observe this, but sometimes it's the only way

3. Tighten your controller straps and keep a relatively(!) loose grip if you can. [\b]
Death grips keep you stiff, slow you down, and tire you out faster.

Hope that helps. :)

[big0nes]

Thanks for the helpful guide! For me there was a better way to improve accuracy that didn’t involve changing latency that wasn't covered in the guide.

For weeks I tried to adjust latency to improve accuracy, I would play a song, and it would show ~50% and -25ms latency. I would adjust latency +25, play the same song then get roughly the same ~50% and -25ms latency. So I would again adjust latency, now up to +50 - repeat same thing - until I was playing at +85ms latency - and my accuracy would top out at ~55% with -12 latency.

I was then reading something CaptClaww wrote about adjusting the rune speed modifier. What I found was increasing the rune speed - my accuracy increased to 60-65% and my latency (now set back at 0) is within + / - 3 on almost every song. There is a rune speed that for me was just right (25) - but I found just altering that did a lot more for my accuracy than adjusting latency.

[Tabasco Fiasco]

Thanks for the guide! I always wondered what the value under the perfect notes percentage was. It seemed like "time saved" through perfect notes which didn't make sense. Hopefully I can fix my latency issues so I can just be bad by my own volition.

[NoLaSP]

Update: added more images to illustrate