California, USAWith update 2.206 heavily nerfing The Secret Hollow, there's been a few changes that I want to talk about.
First, it's still faster to run the first 3 levels on 2.201, because they were not affected by the update in any way. TSH IL and Floor 1 runs (which will I will be talking about here) should be on still be on 2.206.
The zero cycle skip in The Sewers will most likely not be utilized in runs for a while because of the coyote time difference. The window is the same as 2.204 (0.05 seconds), but it's such a stark difference from 2.201's 0.08 seconds that it will be difficult to pull off for many runners, making it the new hardest trick in the full run, surprisingly.
No difficulty change for jcak, elevator and Pac-Man cycle. The elephant in the room is the boss fight. The main strategy of fighting still applies, it is just a much shorter fight.
It also seems that the RNG involved in the fight is more fair, during practice I died a lot less to bullshit maneuvers the boss made than I normally would have on 2.201, and I had better luck with the amount of lasers and slam he sent my way.
Overall, the biggest thing we have to give up for the run is zero cycle, and in return we get an easier and faster boss fight. Seems like a sweet deal, right?
If you ask me, as a speedrunner, I'm not very happy with this update. I've always loved the fact that I could use 2.201 instead of 2.204 to run, but now we're essentially being forced to use 2.206 to achieve top times. Sub 7 was an incredible achievement when it was first achieved by Alex on 2.201 months ago, but thanks to this new update, damn near everyone can get it. The next barrier seems to be 6:3x, but I have a feeling it'll come very soon. This whole update just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
this wouldnt help save any time bc the time it would take to get to the first obstacle to perform the glitch isnt worth it
i think once floor 2 drops, running will get more bearable since u could still make more mistakes to get a decent time
