Getting Better - A Journey from Noob to Top Percent

Advice for newbies, hardcore players and everything inbetween. A recommended path to success and advice for when you feel like you've stopped improving.

This Guide

After having played this game since before the first anniversary, I've finally decided to make a guide on getting better at Muse Dash.

This guide will contain the following:

• Player skill levels and progression
  
• Goals and challenges each level faces
  
• Advice for those wishing to improve and for those that are stuck for each level

These are my other guides.
High Score Characters/Elvin Combinations
All Hidden Sheets + Unlock Conditions.
Little Devil Special Technique - Perfect Imperfection
Steam Achievements

A Word of Advice for Every Player

Fun First, Mastery Second.

At the end of the day, Muse Dash is a game. And though a game might bring many emotions with it, both happiness, anger, sadness and frustration, ultimately you should enjoy yourself.

Player Skill Levels

First things first we have to determine where your current skill level is. These are unrelated whether the game says the track is easy/hard or master difficulty or to the song's difficulty that range from 1-12. I've come up with my own system based on what you should be focussing on as you're playing the game.

This guide will go over the following player skill levels. Read more about them in their sections to see which one applies to you.

• New
  
• Novice
  
• Casual
  
• Intermediate
  
• Advanced
  
• Expert
  
• Veteran
  
• Master

New

You've just booted up the game and are in need of some assistance. I'm here to help out.

Advice
Play the tutorial and then play whatever tracks you feel like.
I first recommend you just have fun with the game. Have fun and relax.

Your current goal
Find the difficulty that you can most comfortably get to the end of the song.

Check the number of the difficulties of the song you're playing. Whether it's an Easy/Hard/Master track will never matter. All tracks have a difficulty ranging from 1-12. I remember when I started out I initially could only clear songs that were about a 6/7 in difficulty and lower. Everyone starts somewhere.

If you're still playing after a couple of sessions and a couple of hours of game time, it's time to move on to the next tier for you.

Novice

I would recommend checking whether you've done all advice and goals from previous tiers.

You've played a couple of hours and you've decided you want to get better at the game. You've seen those magical high scores and percentages in the top 100 list next to every song. Let's get started, shall we?

Advice
First things first. You want to get better and not have to relearn the game twenty hours in like this idiot writing this guide? Go set up your control scheme and get used to using more then one finger for hitting enemies either up or down. Go into options and go into controls. I recommend setting it up like me, but honestly just do what is most comfortable for you. As long as you have multiple buttons per category, you're in the clear.



Don't fret about people online yelling that certain lay-outs are better than others. Each lay-out has its up and downsides. I've seen a lot of people hate on the default button lay-out and how its impossible to get in the top tier with it. As someone that is both in the top tier and uses the default button lay-out, I can confirm that it doesn't matter.

Second piece of advice, make an account if you haven't already. Your scores won't show up yet in the high scores for a while. I just want you to have it there already for when you inevitably get your first top 1000 score.

Your current goal
Get used to your new button lay-out. Get a good base layer of muscle memory going for you. The only advice for muscle memory I have is play, play and play. It's time to get comfy with the game.

Once muscle memory has made it so that you consistently hit the button you intend to press, it is time to move on to the next tier.

Casual

I would recommend checking whether you've done all advice and goals from previous tiers.

You figured out your controls and your getting comfortable with the game. You're in this tier when you have about 10-20 hours into the game. Chances are you are planning to play this game for a while.

Your current goal
Get to a level where you can comfortably get to the end of difficulty 8 songs or higher. Once you've done that, go unlock Master difficulty on a good majority of songs. Master difficulty can be unlocked by at least getting a 90% accuracy score on the Hard difficulty of a song.

Advice
Once you can get to the end of difficulty 8 songs, this means that you can pretty much unlock Master difficulty on any song. There might be a few you can't make it happen on yet. Don't worry about it, everybody has certain tracks they're worse on than others. You'll get there eventually.

Do go check out higher difficulties every now and again. Get a little taste of what the game has in store for you. It is normal to try a difficulty 10 song and to think "This is impossible, how can anyone do this?". I had those thoughts too. Turned out I was capable of doing this, it just took many hours of practice.

Once you get to a point where you can unlock pretty much each Master difficulty track, it's time to move up to the next player level.

Intermediate

I would recommend checking whether you've done all advice and goals from previous tiers.

You're getting to a level where you are no longer a casual player. You find yourself booting up the game on the regular and having good length sessions. You are getting to a point where you've put more hours into the game than the average player. It is time for a change of priorities.

If you're still here playing the game, it is time to start getting your hands dirty. We leave the casual player behind us. This is the moment where you decide whether you care about seeing your name in the top 1000 ranking. If you do, keep reading. If you don't, continue to have fun with the game and stay in the casual tier. You've mastered the basics, this is the most comfortable and least try-hard tier to be in.

But if you're still here and want to continue climbing, it's time to start working towards your next goal.

Your current goal
Find the difficulty on which you can most consistently get a Full Combo. Try and be able to at least consistently clear difficulty 9/10 songs. Take out Characters and Elvin's out of your rotation that promote bad behaviour.

Advice
This is the biggest list of goals you'll have to learn. Clearing 9/10 difficulty songs is a matter of muscle memory and reaction speed. You'll get better at this as long as you keep playing. This is just a matter of pumping in more hours into the game.

This is the first time you're going to care about Full Combos. You don't have to do this for all difficulty songs. Being able to do this at about the 7/8 difficulty songs is recommended, 9 is a good place to be when moving onto the next player level. Figure out where your current comfort zone is.

Now you know that, it is time to wave goodbye to a few Elvins and Characters. Up until now, it hasn't mattered what you've played. I'm about to list all the Characters and Elvins I would recommend to not play anymore at this point.

Characters:

• Bad Girl Rin
  
• Christmas Gift Rin
  
• Sailor Suit Buro
  
• Violinist Marija
  
• The Girl in Black Marija
  
• Hakurei Reimu
  
• El_Clear
  
• Kirasame Marisa
  
• Amiya
  
• Hatsune Miku

Elvins:

• Rabot-233

So in quick regard to the new Elvin Silencer. You can totally use that Elvin and then play any of the characters I recommend you don't play. If you care about aesthetics but don't want to pick up bad behaviour, this is the way to do it.

The character ban list contains many characters that alter how the game is played. I left in some characters that can turn invulnerable for now. Don't get too attached to all of them, because there will be another culling in the next player tier.

And as a small little tip, start looking into playing Little Devil Marija with Lilith. Her mechanics are going to be very important next tier. Worth getting used to her a little on 9 and higher difficulty songs.

That's it for this player level. Once you consistently start getting FCs in your comfort difficulty, it's time to move on to the next tier.

Advanced

I would recommend checking whether you've done all advice and goals from previous tiers.

Full Combos have become standard practice. You're starting to feel confident in your skills. You look back to when you started playing and you see that your growth has been immense. It is time for the big leagues.

Your current goal:
Optimised character/elvin combinations. A couple of top 1000 scores. Average accuracy for all tracks from 1-10 difficulty 90-95% or higher.

Advice
It's time. Time to join the top 1000. You're going to need an account if you didn't have one up until this point. Else you won't be able to see if your score is in the top 1000. And also you will want to leave your mark.

If you've already received a top 1000 spot, you have my congratulations. If not, I guarantee you that you will hit at least one during this player level.

As always for the accuracy requirement you should continue to practice, practice and practice.

It's time to wave goodbye to almost all characters and elvins in the game. For 99.9% of highscores, you'll only see combinations of the following six.

Characters:

• Little Devil Marija
  
• Bunny Girl Rin
  
• Joker Buro

Elvins:

• Lilith
  
• Dragon Girl
  
• Little Witch

Now when should you use which? You can take the time to figure that out, which is incredibly time consuming. Lucky for you, I've got you covered. The most optimal combination for each track is in this other guide I made. They are all in there, so you don't have to remember or figure out any combinations yourself. Link to the guide below.

High Score Characters/Elvin Combinations

Play an optimal combination on a track you're comfortable on. See the insane jump in your score. Bask in the glory. Once you've completed your goals, it's time to go up to the next player level.

Expert

I would recommend checking whether you've done all advice and goals from previous tiers.

You've mastered all basic techniques and are getting to a point where you can pretty much FC any song. 11 and 12 difficulty songs might still be too difficult. That's fine, a lot of them are pretty evil. It's time for the roughest player level thus far. Be proud if you already made it this far. We're going to make sure you get even better.

Your current goal
Get your comfortable 100% accuracy scores up to difficulties 7/8. Learn the Little Devil Special Technique. Get your accuracy scores for difficulty 9/10 to about 98% or higher.

Advice
Welcome to the toughest level. This might also be the longest one. This is mainly because your improvements will start becoming smaller and smaller. Whereas before a new best might have meant you went over witk 10k points. You'll slowly start entering the realm where that become 1k and eventually only 100.

Early on in this level, ignore where you are on the top 1000. First you want to focus on your accuracy scores. When I was first here, I could just about get to 95% accuracy on 9/10 difficulty songs. You're going to want to improve. Even if your scores don't reflect it, try and get your accuracy ratings up across the board.

Speaking of accuracy, you should be able to get 100% accuracy on a bunch of songs now. This is a good moment to see where your base skill level lies. At this point, I went to play every single track. And that also meant the 1-6 difficulty ones. Now you don't have to play all of them if that sounds like a chore. I went overboard, I'll admit. But this is a good moment to figure out which songs you can 100% and get a gold S on. By the end of my insanely extreme training, I got consistently 100% difficulty 1-7. During this skill level, my average ranking in the top 1000 changed from around 800 to 300. At the end of this level, you want to be able to get gold S on 7/8 difficulty songs consistently.

Two tips to make you a better player at this point. Go to settings and turn on both "Show early/late" and "All perfect". This information will be important for you from this point onwards.

Finally, it's time to learn the Little Devil Special Technique. It is a requirement for a bunch of tracks. The technique is not too difficult most of the time, but it takes a bit to explain. I recommend reading up on my guide specifically on this technique once you're ready to dive into it. A link is below.

Little Devil Special Technique - Perfect Imperfection

Once you've met the goal, it's time to move on to the second highest tier.

Veteran

I would recommend checking whether you've done all advice and goals from previous tiers.

The climb has been real. You're likely to be chilling in the top 300. We're getting close, but we're yet so far.

Your current goal
Master Manual Fever, start getting 100% accuracy on 9/10 difficulty songs. FCs on 11/12 songs should be a common appearance.

Advice
Welcome to the level I myself am currently in. We're finally going to adress Manual Fever. For those that played this game for hundreds of hours and somehow missed this, this is a setting you can enable in controls. Instead of Fever Mode automatically firing once the bar is full, you can now press a button and activate it on command.

Your accuracy is simply going to take practice. But for the songs you can consistently get a Gold S on, it's time to start using manual fever. And this is required if you want to move up from number 100 to number 1. A word of warning, finding the perfect manual fever timings is going to be very time consuming. So do the community a favor and share the perfect timings you've found. There's 1000+ tracks and finding perfect timings on even a single track might take a few hours.

Starting to get into the top 100? It's time to move on to the highest tier.

Master

I would recommend checking whether you've done all advice and goals from previous tiers.

Welcome to the final tier. The only thing that is left to do is getting a Gold S on every track, finding the perfect Manual Fever sweetspots and getting the highest possible score achievable. Each track has a hypothetical maximum score you can get. At this point it's only a matter of discovery and execution.

And that's it. You've found the highest possible score. At best you can become smoother at the game. There's nothing more for you here except the joy of playing Muse Dash. And I do hope you're still having fun. I know I do.

And if you read the entire guide up to this point, I'd like to thank you. It was a joy to write and reflect back on my personal journey through this game. It's been three years of having immense fun of mastering this game and I am still not done yet. And I hope to see each and every one of you here sometime. And even if you get stuck somewhere on the journey, you've become the best at the game you can possibly be. That in itself is a great accomplishment.

Thanks for reading!

Q&A

Q: I feel like I'm getting worse. What do I do?
A: That's a sign of improvement. Feeling like you're doing worse generally means you've learned to recognize more mistakes that you make. The feeling sucks, it really does. Also the path of improvement isn't a nice smooth line upwards. There will be bumps up and down. Stick to it. Maybe it's just not your day. The feelings are temporary, your skills will continue growing.

Q: I think I've reached my limit. I don't think I can get any better anymore.
A: I've said this to myself a hundred times in the three years I've played this game. I have yet to be right on this sentiment. Given time and practice, it has always turned out there was still room for improvement that I was able to do. And there is a limit for everyone. One day this sentiment might be true, but probably not now. Especially not if this is the first time you're thinking this. Play some tracks you haven't played in ages and see how you've improved.

Q: I feel stressed/forget to breath/cramp up during certain tracks. What do I do?
A: There might be a few problems. First of all, you might simply not be comfortable on the track you're playing on. This game requires stamina, and just like any other sport, you have to train and build stamina. As long as you keep at it, this should slowly fix itself.
But something else might also be happening. Cramping up might mean your posture isn't great, your hand position is less than optimal or you might just be playing too much for what you can handle right now. Also check how many buttons you are using to play the game, maybe up that number.
Forgetting to breath and cramping up is something I do a lot on songs that are at the limit of my skill level. It takes effort keeping up with the song and the longer the songs goes on, the more tiring it gets. Sometimes I just need a few runs at the song and I get calmer about it and a bit more familiar with the track. Sometimes it's because I'm so close to that Gold S and I tense up at the end of the song and mess it all up. It's rough. It will take a while.
So in short, it's either due to lack of practice, lack of nerves, or a physical uncomfort you should adress. Sometimes a combination of all of them.

Other Guides

These are my other guides.
High Score Characters/Elvin Combinations
All Hidden Sheets + Unlock Conditions.
Little Devil Special Technique - Perfect Imperfection
Steam Achievements

[Mizome]

Got myself up to Expert/Veteran before even checking Steam for guides of any kind, glad to know I had the right idea on a lot of things. Great guide, time to go learn Manual Fever

[nitpow125]

As someone who abstained from using guide and stuck to a 'mouse'(left click for pink and rt click for blue) and at a max i could 92% 7* Vacuum using base Rin. This guide thought me dum dum self one thing. Use more keys ya twat...

[Tuosev]

As someone who is currently in early Expert Tier and have raised myself to it on my own, this guide is just about perfect. The only thing I really deviate from is that I don't focus on score at all, just accuracy right now. I still use the silencer elfin because I enjoy using different characters and I like seeing when my "new best" is actually a new best.

[SelkieFlwrs]

thanks, appreciate it

[Rosemagwin]

Not at all in terms of score. You can play her if you want, but ultimately adds nothing in terms of highscores.

[SelkieFlwrs]

Any judgements on Miku ? Will she be useful in any way ?

[Shrub]

Your guides are wonderful. Thank you for sharing what you know!

[FiveLike11]

thanks a bunch for the guide, been stuck for a while at advanced and I think the combinations are just what I need to get to expert, since I'm already getting a lot of full perfects

[Rosemagwin]

Ive seen people play that are WAY better than me. I thought they were gods too when I started out, but practice does make perfect.

[Punchy]

i think, theres no way a normal human being can achieve S gold on every song above diff 9.
if people like that actually existed, i think you should put them on 'god' tier. its above veteran and master. bruh. in my opinion, you are 'god', if you can do that. hahaha...