* Crown Prince Build Guide and Overview

This guide will be explaining your general goals and build choices in speedruns as Crown Prince in **primarily Normal Difficulty**. Some or most concepts will carry over to higher difficulties but not all decisions will or should be the same as the ones you would make in Normal difficulty.

#General Gameplan and Miscellaneous Tips
	Crown Prince's biggest weakness for Speedruns is his **lack of movement speed**. Aside from that though, Cat offers some of the highest damage in speedruns and high build diversity because of his very powerful ascensions and **Smoke Grenades**, so we'll be focusing on enhancing those aspects to make a strong build with very little. In most runs, your endgame goal will be a stacked **Demonlore** with some amount of Smoke Grenade ascensions, especially **Acidic Explosion**, but you have many other options to achieve the same goal.

* Just like all characters, scrolls that allow **No-Reload** synergies(Projectile stacking, Demonlore stacks etc) are our highest priority Occult Scrolls and should be taken over any other option in almost all scenarios. Scrolls like **Advanced Depot, Against the Flow** and **Skateboarder** are all scrolls you can use to enable such a weapon synergy.

* Cat heavily relies on his Smoke Grenades to create opportunities for damage, both through their own AoE and their Decay application, so we'll want to heavily build upon them however we can to maximize our damage. 

* Fire weapons are generally our best options since they can easily make use of the **Combustion** fusion. Weapons like Demonlore, Scorching Rounds, Fire Tower, etc. are all strong options. Gemini'd Fire Weapons are okay, but take a lot of time and money to obtain so be wary of seeking them out specifically.

* Aside from No-Reload scrolls, we want to **Prioritize Movement Speed** scrolls when given the option. Beyond those, any **Skill damage** increases(Brutal Gloves, Sucker Punch, etc.) are extremely valuable as well as **Lucky Shot** scrolls(Good and Evil, Bullet Light, Elemental Torment etc.). Most other scrolls aren't very impactful.

* **Corrosion Enthusiast** is great on Crown Prince but only if you can obtain either **Snow Boots** or **Corrosion Shard** to cancel the negative effects. If you find Enthusiast early it may be worth holding onto(especially in wave rooms) but don't let it overstay it's welcome.

* Smoke Grenades have a long lasting AoE, so throwing them at spawn locations as you're walking there is very efficient. They also explode as they touch the ground, so trying to throw them against enemies, at shallow walls or directly onto the ground is a good way to get them to explode exactly where you want them.

* **Wildfire** is a uniquely *dangerous* Ascension on Cat when running No-Reload synergies. If using Against the Flow, Wildfire gives you less leeway and makes it easier to accidentally run out of ammo and reload. Be wary using this ascension if you plan to abuse No-Reload weapon builds.

* **Backpack Expansion** can rarely be useful if using a Fire Tower or running a Pyrodominance-based build, as they are very heavily reliant on throwing lots of Smoke to proc Combustion.

* Fire imbued **Energy Echo** is a good backup ascension for deleting bulkier targets when combo'd with Smoke to deal Combustion damage.

* If building an elemental gemini, you'll want to be looking for an **Aura of Venom, Poisonious Ghost** or **Prism** for corrosion and for Fire Gemini we want a **Fire Tower or Piercing Flame**.

#Acidominance Build
	This image below will be your general buildpath for a basic speedrun. Note that it is not an end-all-be-all and sometimes the correct option will deviate from this list. This build is aiming to get **Acidominance's Lv3** to unlock the ability to spawn Smoke via Crit. Combining this with both **Combustion** and **Smoke damage** via various Ascensions, we'll be blowing up groups of mobs by critting just one of them.

https://i.imgur.com/JtaEYwz.png

* Early into the build we want to focus on getting Smoke's damage up, so **Toxic Smoke** is incredibly powerful early on, otherwise Cat's ability to clear rooms is relatively poor.

* Try to split ascension points across Toxic Smoke and Smoke Genius. Ideally, you will get **Lv1 of each** and then pick whichever you prefer and try to get it to Level 3, as the **Lv3s are absurdly powerful**.

* Fire Tower is a uniquely powerful weapon to use in the early game due to it's high damage, faster movement speed and ability to proc combustion when combo'd with Smoke.

* Most of your runs won't get Acid3, but given strong Smoke ascensions and Acidic Explosion you can still very easily wipe mobs of enemies quickly.

**Wait For Good Acidominance**
	The peak of the Acid3 build is abusing **Wait For Good with a Rainbow** to instantly crit enemies without having to reload. This setup is *very*, very rare, but is the peak of the build and is among the fastest builds in the game with the highest potential. Assuming you find the Wait For Good scroll and are successfully building Acid3, you want to look for ways to **prevent a Rainbow from reloading**. This means looking for No-Reload scrolls or finding reroll chests to reroll your Rainbow into the "50% Chance to refill magazine" inscription. Note that when using this build you'll be using the Rainbow for mobbing and thus will need a different weapon for killing bosses efficiently. Demonlore can still be very strong here but since you will be stacking from nothing it's common for other options to be better.

**Pyrodominance**
	**Pyrodominance** is uniquely powerful since it directly boosts the damage of weapons you'll already be trying to use but is especially so because of it's **Lv3 effect that boosts the strength of Combustion procs**. This effect is so powerful that, occasionally, it can be worthwhile pivoting away from building Acidominance if you are offered Pyro more than Acid and want to go for Pyro3 instead. While you'll need to be throwing more Smoke Nades than an Acidominance build, your weapon damage will on average be much higher and you'll have an easy time clearing mobs. **Fire+Decay elemental Geminis** are also extremely powerful with Pyrodominance, since it will allow you to avoid throwing Smoke to proc Combustion which is where the overwhelming majority of your damage is coming from. Geminis are difficult to get in a run without wasting time but are worth going after in Pyro builds if the opportunity arises.

#Weapons
	As mentioned previously, Fire weapons are extremely powerful for Crown prince and are going to be the main weapons we'll be looking for during a run. Weapons that are generally useful but won't often be our final choice are going to be weapons such as **Illusion, Scalpel, Sunder, Pupil, Angelic Aura, Woodpecker** and more.

* **Demonlore** is our Go-To because of it's passive stacking ability when combo'd with No-Reload builds. Without No-Reload though, we'll generally want to avoid using it for general mobbing as there are better options. Inscriptions that affect aspects of reloading or negatively affect stability/accuracy are to be avoided. **Don't be afraid to skip over a Demonlore** if it doesn't have any inscriptions that'll be giving it extra damage and there's no chance for reroll in sight.

* **Crimson Firescale** is a fantastic weapon for nearly **any boss** on all characters but even moreso on Cat. While less powerful for general mobs, it's still a very strong weapon and it's weapon skill is a useful "delete this dude" button.

* **Scorching Rounds** often works very well in the early game but can struggle due to it's small magazine size and moderate RoF.

* **Fire Tower** is very all-or-nothing, in that it can be among Cat's most powerful tools but requires a lot of maintenance to not slow you down in runs. Ideally, you'll have ditched FT for a longer ranged weapon by Act3, but it's wide AoE on melee swings, high base damage and high elemental chance make Fire Tower an alluring option. Try to avoid or reroll inscriptions that lower it's elemental effect chance.

* **Fire Dragon** can be very strong given good inscriptions but due to long reload and slower movement speed, it's not the best for runs. It can still be very strong though and can be worth taking if offered nothing better.

* **Dual Fang's** ability to proc two elements is strong on Cat but it's DPS is still somewhat lacking compared to the potential of other options due to it's wind-up and relatively low "effective" proc chance for Fire, even when combined with Smoke Grenades.

* **Piercing Flame, Laser Glove** and **Justice** are all relatively bad options for the long-term in runs on average. These weapons are either slow or lack in damage and are often worse than running a generalist weapon like Scalpel, Illusion, Angelic Aura, Sunder and more.

* **Aura of Venom** is very powerful when given a Fire Element gemini or when used to give Decay through gemini. 

* Non-Elemental weapons can roll an inscription that infuses them with Fire Element. Most generally useful weapons are even better with this inscription but some weapons like **Golden Bow, Strike Wing, Rainbow** and others are also good options if you aren't being given anything better.

#Extra Notes
	Anything written here is subject to change as we learn and discover more about the game over time. If you have questions that aren't answered in this guide you can find a lot of runners in the Speedrun-Discussion channel of the official Gunfire discord. The discord is linked at the very top of the leaderboards or at https://discord.com/invite/gunfire-reborn

Please check out the category and game rules before doing any runs! https://i.imgur.com/sOJ0cR2.png

Good luck!

* Gunfire Reborn Speedrunning Quick Start Guide

**Pick Your Category**

Currently on the boards there are 5 Main categories to run - Each slightly different and each with their own set of rules, All runs will be based on the in-game time shown in and at the end of your runs.

**Full Game**
This is our Mainstay category and we expect most people to want to run this category, It's all 4 Acts (Longling tomb, Anxi Desert, Duo fjord, Hyperborean Jokul) hence the name, It has both Character and Category separation so pick your poison.

**Any%**
This run is slightly similar to full game but only chooses to complete 3 out of the 4 acts as this is the earliest you can "Clear" a run, This category also removes the separation between characters and only has difficulty separations so pick your fastest one. Any% will also be the **only** Main category to allow the use of preset files. (To find more info about preset files check the info post inside the guides section).
If you attempt to submit an Any% run that did not exit to the inn after Duo fjord boss then these runs will be rejected

**Foundry Only**
This run is one of the 2 featured Challenge type runs as a category, As the name suggests you are only allowed your starting foundry, As with Full game it features Character and Difficulty separation along with requiring all 4 acts to be completed. During this run you're only allowed to use hero skills and a foundry, It is however allowed to scale the foundry, If you're running this category be sure to read the full rules (For a list of specific rules click on Foundry only and "View rules").

**Co-op**
Co-op runs are functionally identical in gameplay as Full game runs will be, but just with friends, The category has Player count and Difficulty separation, There is not any limitations on characters (For example only one of each) you can have any possible combination. The run requires all 4 acts completed just like Full game. Recording only requires on player's point of view - If you want to submit more pov's you can link them in the run description.

**Fresh File**
Fresh file is second of the 2 features challenge type runs, this category has you start a completely fresh file and use your one "Tutorial" run in which to complete the game, As it's only possible to have your character be Crown prince and the difficulty be Normal, the category is limited to those things. We would have love to have supported an actual full game run (All 4 acts) but it's actually not possible to enter the 4th act, So all runs will be 3 acts.

**Recording runs**
This will be a very brief overview of what we expect from the video of a recorded run, Following all of these should assure that your run won't be rejected due to recording issues.

- Recordings should start ideally before any gameplay - I.e. The main Menu
- Recordings should End after displaying Player information (More info on this in a sec)
- The video should not have any overbearing external music, and if possible clear game audio (In-game music isn't necessary but ideal if possible)
- Any on-screen elements should not cover any of the UI, Health, buffs, in-game timer, Level/difficulty name, Copper/Souls count, Weapon/ammo count. To a lesser extent things like Challenge events ideally not be covered.
- **Challenge success screen and Player information should be shown**, This is probably the most important thing that people miss, Challenge success is the screen that shows directly after clicking the portal to exit, Player information can be accessed via the main menu after the run. The short reasoning for these screens being shown is to prevent potential cheating, Hence it being a reason for rejection.
- If there is any significant stuttering or pausing in your run (Not in-game pausing) We may have to reject it.
- Quality doesn't need to be 8k ultra HDR and 120fps, as long as UI and gameplay is readable and watchable then it should be fine.

**Posting and submitting your run**
Posting your run is as simple as making a permanent public or unlisted sharable video available to stream, Things such as Youtube and Twitch (Only highlights on twitch, Vod's are temporary).

- Open the category you wish to submit to and select "submit run" and start filling out all the run information.
- Time will always be the in-game time, We don't use real time anywhere currently.
- Preset/No preset - If you're running any% or Individual levels and are using the preset file then please select "Preset", All other categories don't have this option
- Date field isn't just the current day's date - It is meant for noting what date the run was recorded/played - If you have the local file you can right-click and check properties for the date - Or alternatively check the handy Player information you showed at the end of the run and it should also have the date.

**FAQ and Extra support**
This isn't an FAQ at all since i hopefully should have covered everything, But if you somehow still have more questions after reading the rules in full over here: ![](https://i.imgur.com/TCveQqj.png)
I urge you to Please join the official gunfire reborn discord and ask your questions there - Before attempting runs and possibly botching the recording or breaking rules resulting in a rejected run.

The discord is linked at the very top of the leaderboards or https://discord.com/invite/gunfire-reborn
*You can also just join to talk strategies and get answers for specific run strategies.*
If you don't want to use discord - You can direct message Pimmalage on Speedrun.com.

* Lei Luo Build Guide and Overview

# General Gameplan and Misc. Tips

* Lei has two primary builds for speedruns. These builds are the **Thunder Nemesis/Magical Supply** build and the **Lightning Governor** build. Both of these builds take the “Summon a Thunderbolt when Chain Lightning only hits a single target” Gifted Man Talent. 

* Thunder Nemesis/Magical Supply can clear rooms extremely quickly as each time you kill an enemy in Fatal Current, you proc Magical Supply and re-cast Fatal Current (at a reduced duration), numerous thunderbolts are summoned upon 3/5/7 enemies. This build has the potential to be one of the fastest in the game for clearing rooms, however it does not perform well for bossing and you will need a weapon to boss with. 

* His Lightning Governor build uses the ascension Lightning Governor which **autocasts Chain Lightning** while in Fatal Current. This build can turn the game into an autoscroller given the right ascensions, as the 3rd level of Lightning Governor adds duration to Fatal Current for each enemy that is killed while in Fatal Current. This build also struggles with bosses unless you have a very high roll on both ascensions and scrolls for skill DMG.

* Chain Lightning is a multi-target skill that is placed on your crosshair (although it is sometimes a bit dodgy) and after hitting its first target it chains to other nearby targets. Chain Lightning’s base “bounces” or targets it can hit is 3.

* Tesla Coil can be worth taking early on as it increases the max number of targets that Chain Lighting can hit in a single cast, making it faster to clear some of the early layouts. This also has some synergy with the Lightning Governor build such that it negates the penalty of max targets at lower levels of Lightning Governor

* Magic Watch and Ancient Timer are very powerful scrolls for both builds as they allow you to enter Fatal Current more often, allowing you to be at the peak of your build for a longer period of time. 

* Thunder Turbo is a generally useful ascension that can be used to scale both your weapon DMG and your skill DMG, however all stacks are lost on shield break.

# Thunder Nemesis and Magical Supply

* Thunder Nemesis can be one of the fastest builds for room clearing in the game, however it is restricted by the need to be casting Fatal Current consistently. **Magical Supply** is a must have ascension as it re-casts Fatal Current on kill (with reduced time in Fatal Current) and should be prioritized over anything else as this build does not have near the same potential without it. Pairing this with Thunder Nemesis is when the build starts to become activated. 

https://i.imgur.com/M6GMpZB.png

* Getting resets requires you to kill your target in one shot, so a high single damage weapon, such as Concealed Ammo’s weapon skill or a Sunder will usually suffice to get your reset without issue. Bolt from the Blue is another must have ascension as it increases the duration of Fatal Current, allowing for more Magical Supply resets to happen, before having to wait for Fatal Current to be off cooldown and start again. Bolt from the Blue also gives a significant DMG boost that applies to the thunderbolts summoned. 

* Even though this build can be incredibly strong, if you don't get the right supporting ascensions, its damage falls off quickly once you leave act 1 and 2. **Fulminous Zap** is used to scale the damage of thunderbolts significantly, and higher levels of Thunder Nemesis increases the number of enemies that can be killed in one Magical Supply reset. We have a slight preference for increasing base damage over higher levels of Thunder Nemesis but generally we just want to split levels across the two ascensions. 

* One level of Lightning Governor can be useful for early game bossing as we always run the “Summon a Thunderbolt when Chain Lightning only hits a single target” Gifted Man Talent, which can result in a lot of thunderbolts on a single target from both casting Chain Lightning yourself, and the autocast while in Fatal Current.

* Bossing in this build is almost completely reliant on gun damage, so points in Thunder Turbo are useful to help scale your gun damage higher, however all stacks are lost on shield break so this bonus is not always active when you are taking damage.

* Heart of Battle can be impactful for this build as it reduces Fatal Current’s cooldown for each enemy killed. No more than one point of this should be taken and other ascensions should be prioritized. Storm Blast can also be useful as it increases the damage of the projectile that hits a target while in Fatal Current. This can be useful for getting resets in the late game where enemies have quite a bit more health.

# Lightning Governor
* Lei’s lightning governor build relies on staying in Fatal Current as long as possible, and autocasting Chain Lightning through the ascension Lightning Governor. Important ascensions Lightning Governor such as **Bolt From the Blue and Hypercurrent** should not be skipped as these will boost your damage significantly.

https://i.imgur.com/KivsKGs.png

* Magical Supply can greatly increase your uptime in Fatal Current, as long as you ensure you are getting your reset near the end of Fatal Current’s duration.

* It is still recommended to run the “Summon a Thunderbolt when Chain Lightning only hits a single target” Gifted Man Talent, as Lightning Governor can summon large amounts of thunderbolts on to single targets, such as bosses. Bossing in this build can be done with skills, but it does require a large amount of damage boosting scrolls such that weapon damage is normally the better option.

# Scrolls
* Most scrolls we care about are fairly self explanatory. Movement speed options are among the most important but it can fluctuate between Movement and Skill damage depending on what you're currently lacking at a given time. Lei has high base movement speed so one or two scrolls increasing movement speed is generally enough. Lei can run into problems with scaling his skill damage as his ascensions alone do not boost his skill damage very high. Scrolls that reduce the cooldown of Fatal Current should also be prioritized. Additionally, just like any character, No-Reload synergies are incredibly powerful and are among the best backup builds you can make in runs so prioritizing any scroll that can create that synergy is good.

* Skill damage options such as Brutal Gloves, Spirit Bible, Enduring Caster, Surprise Bonus, Deadly Curse and more are all key scrolls you should take in all situations.

* **Merciless Combo** paired with a high rate of fire weapon can be enough for bossing almost on its own.

* **Magic Watch** and **Ancient Timer** are strong options for reducing Fatal Current’s cooldown.

# Reincarnation Tips

* Reincarnation has two main builds, being **High-Powered Arc**, which focuses on Chain Lightning damage, and **Thunder and Glory**, which massively increases your thunderbolt damage, and halves the cooldown of Fatal Current.

* High-Powered Arc is a strong blessing for the early game, however it does fall off as the damage doesn't quite keep up with the scaling in the higher reincarnation difficulties, making Thunder and Glory the better option in almost every scenario.

* Thunder and Glory relies heavily upon Thunder Nemesis and Magical Supply, so these are the two ascensions you will want to take regardless of other choices.

* With the release of the Lone Wolf modifier, overconsumption is a powerful blessing to take as your Lone Wolf blessing, giving large increases to most stats, and further reducing the cooldown of Fatal Current.

# Extra Notes

Anything written here is subject to change as we learn and discover more about the game over time. If you have questions that aren't answered in this guide you can find a lot of runners in the Speedrun-Discussion channel of the official Gunfire discord. The discord is linked at the very top of the leaderboards or at https://discord.com/invite/gunfire-reborn

Please check out the category and game rules before doing any runs!

https://imgur.com/sOJ0cR2

* Qian Sui Build Guide and Overview

This guide will go over a general idea of Qian Sui build path in speedruns, along with general tips for the character in speedruns. This guide is intended for solo categories alongside normal difficulty, although Qian Sui is strong enough that his gameplan shouldn't adjust much from normal, elite, nightmare, and R8. Coop has a slight ascension adjustment that will be mentioned later. Some things in this guide are covered in a lengthy explanation, so for that reason there are TLDR sections if you want a quick glance at certain things.

 *I highly suggest reading a few of the sections, understanding things in detail helps this character a decent amount in regards to speedruns.*

# **General Gameplan**

Qian Sui differs from most of the cast, where **his best build goes nowhere near involving any guns at all, and opts to wield a sword solely for the movement speed.** Yes, even for bossing in his ideal scenarios. Weapons aren’t bad with him, but his kit is so self sufficient that you'll want to build around using his punch skill while remaining in the Aspis state. Due to that, the weapon section of this guide will be strictly fallback options, as they shouldn't be a primary focus for the most part. Due to that, the gameplan is simple. You punch things.

# **General Ascension Priority - Striking Punch**

Qian Sui's ideal build for speedruns is a punch oriented build around **Striking Punch**, to no surprise. The 2 Key ascensions are **Irrepressible Surge** & **Wave-Breaking Blow**. For one point each, these 2 ascensions give insane value across a run for speed and damage alike. Ascension tier list is below.

https://i.imgur.com/xuHijZR.png

***TLDR: In an ideal order, Take Irrepressible Surge first, then Wave Breaking Blow. Follow it with Clenched Fist and Rogue Wave. Dark Tide to level 1, 2 if necessary. Unbearable Hurtle is amazing for bosses, Stormy Riptide is good with Wave Breaking Blow in mind if you're newer, otherwise stack more Unbearable Hurtle. Wave Rider/Tidal Rhythm/Battle Adrenaline are all okay.***

Since **Irrepressible Surge** and **Wave-Breaking Blow** are such high priority, take them whenever available. Surge gives a ton of mobility after getting a kill and actual control of aspis uptime, resulting in huge value for a single point. Wave-Breaking Blow offers a huge damage increase, as long as you can maintain the punch cost that it will inevitably take. Both of these ascensions also have quite the nuance to them, so more advanced mechanics will be explained in the advanced tips section. Surge is incredible for clearing, so taking it first is usually the safest bet. There are cases that will call for Wave-Breaking Blow to be taken first however, such as having any points in Stormy Riptide, but again this is more advanced and when you get experienced with the character, then you can start thinking about how you feel for this route.

The ideal pickups after those 2 are **Clenched Fist** and **Rogue Wave**. Assuming you get any movement scrolls into the run at all, Rogue Wave goes up in priority and, in some cases, can even be considered over Clenched Fist, but these moments are few and far between. Safe option is always Clenched Fist into Rogue Wave. I would personally recommend 2 Clenched fist to 1 Rogue Wave ratio, but if punch 3 shows up you kind of have to take it.

**Unbearable Hurtle** is also really great, and very useful against bosses and paired with the ascensions up above, but only feels great if backed up with some damage increases. Take this when you feel your single target is lacking, or take over the general skill/weapon damage ascensions. This ascension also shines quite a lot in Coop, pairing with your coop teammates and making them do 30/60/100% more damage so... it rises a bit up on priority there. *You still need Clenched Fist and Rogue Wave though, so keep that in mind.*

**Dark Tide** is in an interesting spot where it isn't technically necessary... if you highroll. Qian Sui, in normal, is actually capable of mobbing and defeating most bosses without this ascension, but if you don't have the damage and you use all your punches... you're going to be sad. For this reason, at least one point is appreciated, while 2 points is ideal. I still wouldn't suggest it at level 3, as level 2 is usually good enough to keep you punching for awhile and that point can be put towards more damage somewhere else. With Double Exhilaration, you should try to stick to level 1, and aim for more damage.
Ignore this segment if you get capacity overdrive, Dark Tide is then basically a waste of points.

**Stormy Riptide** is a standout utility ascension, but only when combined with Wave-Breaking Blow. Any extra punches with Wave-Breaking will also give you more aspis time or more cooldown reduction. Additionally, there is an interaction with these 2 ascensions that allow you to use your skill, and as long as you hit nothing, you receive the effect of stormy riptide while also using no punches to do so. At level one + Wave Breaking, you have access to a ridiculous amount of cooldown reduction to your main ability, and as such when starting out with turtle this is a no brainer pick. When you get adjusted however, it’s not doing much for aiding damage needs, so it becomes less necessary as you manage to properly Aspis reset on enemies with Irrepressible Surge, you won't really see much benefit out of taking this. 2 points and up are just funny overkill.

**Wave Rider, Tidal Rhythm and Battle Adrenaline** are all fairly linear skill/weapon damage increases, with the order being Wave Rider --> Tidal Rhythm --> Battle Adrenaline. Wave Rider offers even more synergy with movement scrolls (Abnormal Speed, Strategic Advantage, etc etc) that will directly relate to more damage through this ascension, both weapon and skill damage. Tidal Rhythm is nice, but not a high priority as it's a fairly linear ascension. Battle Adrenaline double dips for weapon damage and movement, and can be okay but is meaningless for bosses as you can't trigger the effect, winding up to be a decent waste of ascension investment.

**Hostile Gift** and **Formidable Aspis** are both very much gimmick setups, both being particularly strong on paper, but just not on turtle in his ideal ascension path. Hostile Gift is really funny as it allows the worst feeling Demonlore setup in the game, so if you like pain, this is an option. Formidable Aspis shines with a few weapons, even at level 1, so it's not completely terrible. This will be elaborated more on in the weapons section below.

**Defensive ascensions are just not really worth it. Even disregarding the fact that it’s a speedrun and damage is king, this character allows you a lot of leeway in the defense department. As long as you're facing towards or... well, killing high priority targets, you’ll be fine.**

# **Weapons + Bossing Gimmick Setups**

***TLDR: Swords are your only concern for the movement speed buff. Otherwise the normal good guns apply here. Now here’s the explanations.***

**Swords (Poisonous Ghost, Flowing Light, Fire Tower)** - It really is this easy. Qian Sui benefits from being self reliant on his own kit and a small amount of scroll support for skill damage. So he doesn't really care about guns. Most times. Due to that, you're only using this for the movement speed it offers, directly increasing your punch damage due to the Fist Sensation mechanic. Any sword will do, but a friendly reminder that the Flowing Light and Poisonous Ghost offer a bigger move bonus than the Fire Tower, so prioritize both of those over any Fire Tower.

**Concealed Ammo** - The right click on this makes it really easy to gain a secondary, if all else fails bank on the right click throw to feed you back one punch in a pinch. A decent Concealed Ammo also does pretty okay damage, but should never be relied on for massive damage. 

*Things can go wrong, however, due to Qians Sui’s reliance on ascensions. At boss 1, sometimes you might lack punch damage, so for that reason you might have to resort to backup plans using weapons due to your ascensions going wrong. Here's some gimmick options, but ***note these are "gimmick" bossing options, because Qian Sui rarely ever struggles to clear properly if played correctly. Do not FORCE these setups to happen, let them happen naturally. Only consider them an option if you aren’t offered your other ascensions.**

**Pupil + Formidable Aspis** - Pupil in general is a good option, and with the pairing of Formidable Aspis, this gun actually shines the most out of any if you really need to use a weapon on a boss as Qian Sui. With a similar setup to Qing Yan, you can activate and retract aspis to trigger Formidable Aspis, giving your next 3 charged shots 100% damage at level one, which can hit really hard if you find a good pupil. Make sure to charge the shots in this setup to get the most out of it, however.

**Wild Hunt + Formidable Aspis** - It's always a gun that can have a ton of DPS on the table, with reload speed inscriptions or advanced depot showing incredible DPS, or the gemini to combine it with a high magazine weapon. Formidable Aspis has synergy to strengthen the next 3-5 shots, depending on ascension, useful for a decent amount of burst damage on a boss. The Pupil feels a bit better with this synergy in mind, however, due to the accuracy of the charge shot basically guaranteeing the shot will hit the target. 

**Demonlore + Hostile Gift** - Recognized as a staple in speedruns, it's still something you can opt for here, if necessary. Normal enablers are **Against the Flow, Skateboarder and Advanced Depot**. On paper, Hostile Gift allows for a setup to keep a bit of magazine where you activate and deactivate Aspis to get ammo back but... in reality, unless you fully send into hostile gift, it just ends up feeling odd and not worthwhile. Don't go out of your way to make this work unless the Demonlore is perfectly rolled, **it's not practical.**

**Crimson Firescale** - Never sleep on this weapon. Capable of a nice amount of damage on the table with the right click barrage, it's a good gun to use on nearly every character for bosses. 

**Illusion** - I don’t really think much needs to be said, it’s just ol’ reliable. Consistent damage with a high damage potential, useful for boss 1 almost always.

# ** Standout Scrolls**

***TLDR: Propulsion Device, Advanced Joggers, Surprise Bonus and Untold Effort are incredible standouts.. All skills damage and movement scrolls are excellent. Now onto explanations. ***

**Propulsion Device**- Potentially Qian Sui’s best scroll, a match made in heaven. More dashes allows you to predash in bossfights for Fist Sensation stacks, giving you TONS of potential damage. Just this scroll alone allows Clenched Fist 1 + Rogue Wave 1 to be enough for bosses, it is an INCREDIBLE SCROLL on Qian Sui. 

**Advanced Joggers** - Codename “budget surge”. It’s not going to see incredible use in mobbing scenarios if you have Surge but can boost your damage noticeably when used during bosses. Also directly translates to more movement in general floors, so if you don’t have Surge, budget surge can have your back.

**Any Skill Damage Scrolls**- Fairly big list, but anything offering more skill damage would be appreciated. Enduring Caster, Brutal Gloves, Sucker Punch, Rich’s Privilege and the almighty Spirit Bible, to name a few as an example.

**Untold Effort** - This scroll is incredible on Turtle. The downside with wave-breaking can somewhat hurt, but Dark Tide at level 1 or 2 can mitigate the downside, making it a perfect pairing with Qian Sui’s kit. This also applies to his retraction punch. Not only does it not cost a secondary use to retract, you also get INCREDIBLE damage if you win the 50% chance. Very worthwhile.

**Surprise Bonus** - A chance for double damage. It’s great. Not much else to say..

**Any Movement Speed Scrolls** - Again, big list here but turtle will benefit from all of them. Abnormal Speed, Strategic Advantage, even Improved Clip can give you speed since you won’t really need to reload anything. You might think there’s one that is slightly anti-synergy and yes I’m talking about that one as well….

**Ostrich Rider** - This one is a double edged sword in certain contexts, but don’t immediately write it off. There’s a decent amount of ways to get around it, 2 of which Turtle has in his ascension list. Wave-Breaking + Stormy Riptide just lets you charge aspis and every time you activate aspis, dash cooldown disappears. Also Irrepressible Surge just nullifies the downside in mobbing scenarios, so yeah.  Use that to your advantage if the time comes.

**Energy Storage** - while not damage increasing, it can save you from dropping aspis in case something goes wrong. 2 charges feels pretty nice.

# **Tips for Surge**

Irrepressible Surge is really the core of Turtle in Normal difficulty (honestly good in all difficulties including Rein 8, but different discussion) and especially for speedruns, it’s quite valuable at one point as previously stated. Irrepressible Surge is simple to explain in 2 parts.

When in the Aspis state, after killing an enemy you can repeatedly dash with no cooldowns for the next 2 seconds. Good for speed, good for Fist Sensation stacks, good for everything. 
Additionally, 2 seconds after retracting your aspis, killing an enemy in those 2 seconds will immediately charge your Aspis and allow you to reuse it again. Fairly simple right?

This can be taken a step further with the fact that these 2 seconds start immediately, including the retraction punch. This is the core of the Aspis reset, as shown in the video below. 

https://i.imgur.com/mrq95iM.gif

This allows you quite an incredible amount of Aspis Uptime, excellent for bigger floors on stage 4, for example. In addition, every time you reset your aspis, you gain a secondary use due to the additional character talent Qian Sui gets. Pretty nice for the earlier floors.

On top of the previously shown Aspis reset, you can also re-enter, dash and exit the aspis state during this 2 second time period, causing your aspis to never enter a cooldown state. This can be considered both a safety net and applied to movement with clearing rooms with some practice. Note that if you miss the time window, you’ll put your aspis on cooldown, resulting in a bit of uptime loss on Aspis. Try to be careful. 

https://i.imgur.com/N18Uysc.gif

# **Extra Notes**

Anything written here is subject to change as we learn and discover more about the game over time. If you have questions that aren't answered in this guide you can find a lot of runners in the Speedrun-Discussion channel of the official Gunfire discord. The discord is linked at the very top of the leaderboards or at https://discord.com/invite/gunfire-reborn

https://i.imgur.com/sOJ0cR2.png

Please check out the category and game rules before doing any runs, and enjoy Qian Sui!

* Tao Build Guide and Overview

This guide will be explaining your general goals and build choices in speedruns as **Tao** in **primarily Normal Difficulty**. Some or most concepts will carry over to higher difficulties but not all decisions will or should be the same as the ones you would make in Normal difficulty.

#General Gameplan and Misc. Tips
	Tao's primary build for speedruns will be **Blade of Bloom**. Blade of Bloom has a very large AoE, can be applied through walls and has fantastic scaling damage through Tao's ascension tree which make it fantastic for runs. Given extremely good ascensions, BoB will become so strong that you won't even need a weapon to be killing bosses efficiently so there is less emphasis on building weapon damage when playing Tao. Additionally, Tao offers a range of useful talents and ascensions that make her extremely powerful in speedruns, allowing her to be the fastest character in the game for runs. Much of Tao's kit is through Talents and Ascensions, and thus she can be very consistent for speedruns by needing fewer Occult Scrolls than other characters to succeed. 

* **Fatal Bloom** is a spherical AoE that's placed either on first contact from your crosshair to an object(be that an Enemy, Barrel, Wall etc.) *or* after travelling a maximum distance. This AoE **isn't affected by collision** and can be used to hit enemies through or around walls which you should try to abuse as much as possible to save time waiting for mobs to become visible. Understanding it's AoE and max distance is key to top-tier times on Tao.

* Having methods to consume ammo quickly can restore Blossoms very quickly without wasting time. Weapons like **Scalpel** and **Concealed Ammo** are fantastic for this purpose since they can dump ammo faster than most weapons, even if their own damage output is poor. 

* **Glowing Bloom** and **Mark Chaser** are strong early-game options as they can clear mobs faster early on when Blooms will outright one-shot enemies. Scaling Bloom's damage for end-game is unrealistic, though, so no more than a point or two in either ascension is very worthwhile.

* **Fish or Bear Paw** is a superb option on Tao when building for **Fatal Bloom** procs since it is effectively reducing the hits/proc by half. Comboing this with a multi-projectile weapon can make for extremely high damage against single targets, ideally bosses.

* Tao's **Warlike Blade** is generally useful for increasing your weapon's DPS and is a good option when your weapon is making up a majority of your damage.

#Blade of Bloom
	Blade of Bloom is your bread and butter for Tao runs so we want to take it every time it's offered. In general, BoB Lv1 isn't sufficient to complete an entire run with and so we want to hard focus on getting Lv2 of BoB. From there, we want to stack as many damage bonuses as we can with **Epic Swordcraft** and **Sword Enthusiast**. Generally, we want to split levels across the two ascensions with a slight preference for Epic Swordcraft due to it increasing Base damage and thus making all other increases more potent.

https://i.imgur.com/vp6NR7u.png

* **Blade of Bloom** is your highest priority ascension as it is the foundation for your build and without it we cannot clear rooms as efficiently. You should also avoid casting Tao's **Swords Out** when using Blade of Bloom since the swords summoned by BoB are based on active Blade Heart stacks. Lv3 of BoB is less important than Lv2 but is still incredibly strong especially when combined with more levels of **Sword Enthusiast**. Lv3 of BoB also allows you to use Swords Out for extra damage and Enthusiast stacks since Lv3 of BoB will always cast based on your maximum Blade Heart stacks rather than your current stacks.

* Having said that, **Sword Enthusiast** can situationally be a better option than Epic Swordcraft if you already have Lv2 or 3 of BoB before being offered either. You should try to consider your total output of swords from BoB when weighing the two ascensions against each other.

* **Epic Swordcraft** is especially important in this build to keep our BoB scaling into the late and endgame enemies, especially in higher difficulties. The base damage increases will significantly boost our damage as we get other ascensions and skill damage scrolls, making it key to our build.

* Miscellaneous ascensions like **Luminous Heart** or **Mark Chaser** can be impactful to our build as last resort options. **Amplified Sword** also increases our damage but is relatively low impact and won't affect a run if it's your only damage-boosting ascension.

#Ammo Extractor, Warlike Blade and Rainbow
	An alternative build route that is less consistent but has higher potential for fast times at the highest tier of runs is Tao's **Ammo Extractor**, which automatically refills your magazine upon killing an enemy which allows us to turn almost any weapon we want into a no-reload setup. Even more importantly, this ascension pairs greatly with a Rainbow in specific situations which can allow us to create some of the fastest builds in the game. The Rainbow itself has special interactions that are difficult to detail, but put simply, after killing enemies and continuing to hold Left Click the Rainbow will start shooting at it's next target with massively increased RoF for a small time. Because of this special interaction, we want to scale our Rainbow's damage and RoF as high as we can as well as prevent reloading to chain kills with this increased RoF, as the bonus RoF will go away if the beam is actively dealing damage for too long or if we reload. This is why **Ammo Extractor** and **Warlike Blade** will massively increase the effectiveness of this build.

https://i.imgur.com/bvZwIM6.png

	Something important to consider when attempting to use this build is that it's mostly incompatible with **Blade of Bloom** and building them simultaneously is often a bad idea, as BoB requires too many ascensions in areas where an Ammo Extractor build doesn't care about and vice versa. This build is also more difficult to get going than a BoB build so it will take many more attempts to see a strong setup, albeit with higher potential for a fast time once the build is actually online. 

* **Ammo Extractor** will effectively provide us an infinite mag if our damage is high enough to quickly chain kills and often a single point into the ascension is enough to make the build work. Its also very important for allowing us to abuse **Wait for Good** and give our Rainbow guaranteed Crits, detailed in a [video by Pimmalage here.](https://www.speedrun.com/gunfire_reborn/guide/o28my) A small but important note is that Ammo Extractor has a negative interaction with Bloody Ammo, as you wont be able to maintain a 0 Magazine size, thus breaking a **Deadly Counter** and **Bloody Ammo** setup.

* Our other key ascension, **Warlike Blade** offers general improvements to our guns but most importantly offers more Rate of Fire to our weapons which is an incredible boon for the Rainbow. The special RoF Rainbow experiences also scales based on it's own RoF, so any increase to this stat will see massive gains to DPS. 

* The **Rainbow** itself is very important to this build as well, of course. Unlike a Demonlore, the weapon level of our Rainbow is fairly important as the base damage to scale off of will matter much more than those cases. Additionally, inscriptions on our Rainbow that increase either **Lucky Shot**, **Rate of Fire** or **Base Damage** are incredibly powerful and make for a good Rainbow.

* **Merciless Combo** is arguably the best scroll to see in this build as it offers **insane** damage bonuses for Rate of Fire, something we're already doing in our build. This scroll combined with one point in Ammo Extractor, Warlike Blade and a decent Rainbow can be enough to have an incredibly fast build without anything else.

* **Sword Enthusiast** can be a moderately useful ascension for helping increase our damage mostly for free. **Swords Out** can be cast even while firing a weapon, so you can use it as a burst damage option against very tanky enemies that break our increase RoF or spammed off Cooldown to keep Enthusiast stacks high. **Empathy with Sword** is good when paired with Enthusiast for the same reason, it helps increase our general damage without interrupting our Rainbow.

* Ascensions like **Luminous Heart**, **Sword Shadow**, **Epic Swordcraft** or **Furious Wave** are all decent options if you're not offered anything better because it strengthens Swords Out and lets it synergize better with **Sword Enthusiast**. Likewise, one point in **Blade of Bloom** can be helpful in getting some early DPS if your build isnt quite complete and needs something to hold you over.

#Scrolls
	Most scrolls we care about are fairly self explanatory. Movement speed options are among the most important but it can fluctuate between Movement and Skill damage depending on what you're currently lacking at a given time. If your BoB damage is sufficient and will be to the end of the game, taking movement speed will always be valuable, however the extra speed will be redundant if you have to spend extra time killing enemies. Additionally, just like any character, No-Reload synergies are incredibly powerful and are among the best builds you can make in speedruns so prioritizing any scroll that can create that synergy is good.

* Skill damage options such as **Brutal Gloves**, **Skill Bible**, **Enduring Caster**, **Surprise Bonus**, **Deadly Curse** and more are all key scrolls you should take in all situations. 

* **Capacity Overdraft** can easily hard-carry a run and completely forsake the need for any weapon damage if your BoB build is well fleshed out. An instant pick.

* **Abundant Vitality** is especially powerful on Tao thanks to her **Resilient Shield** talent allowing a high up-time, although it only applies to weapon damage and thus isn't always impactful. Because of this talent **Silver Medal** is useless on Tao and should be avoided.

* **Merciless Combo** will further synergize with Tao's Blooms and affinity for multi-projectile weapons and as a result is a fantastic choice for weapon-based damage.

* **Untold Effort** only increases the damage of Fatal Bloom itself and not Swords summoned through Blade of Bloom so avoid it in BoB based builds. That said, it affects **each instance of Bloom** and not just the application, so Untold can be **extremely** powerful in Bloom Proc builds.

#Weapons
Tao can run all sorts of weapons but really has no preference beyond options that offer ammo consumption, high DPS or boss killing as BoB will be carrying most of the damage in runs. Some common setups include **Demonlore Stacking**, **Wild Hunt** Magshare gemini, Illusion with Glowing Bloom and more.

* As stated previously, High Consumption weapons like **Scalpel** with double-shot and **Concealed Ammo's weapon skill** are often just as valuable as traditional weapons by virtue of consuming ammo to restore BoB uses. **Angelic Aura** is also a good weapon for this purpose, among others. 

* Shotguns or any weapon with multiple projectiles are often good generalist options on Tao because of Fatal Bloom. **Illusion** especially is a great boss killing weapon given good circumstances, although **Pupil** and **Sunder** can still be situationally strong.

* **Rainbow** is an extremely powerful option in the correct circumstances, although quite rare. It's ammo consumption is decent and in Normal difficulty it's damage is fine as an addition to BoB but often lacking impact in late-game unless it's forcing crits through Deadly Counter or Wait for Good. Without either of those, it's often better to use something with better ammo consumption or outright better damage.

* No Reload synergies are covered above but are obviously a cornerstone in speedruns if you're able to set them up.

#Extra Notes
Anything written here is subject to change as we learn and discover more about the game over time. If you have questions that aren't answered in this guide you can find a lot of runners in the Speedrun-Disucssion channel of the official Gunfire discord. The discord is linked at the very top of the leaderboards or at https://discord.com/invite/gunfire-reborn

Please check out the category and game rules before doing any runs! https://i.imgur.com/sOJ0cR2.png

Good luck!

*Patches info Document & How to Downpatch

So recently we've gone through the effort of adding support to the boards for Downpatching, Which means it's possible to complete and submit runs from older versions. Patches are listed in MM/DD/YY format on the boards.

A full list of every patch since 1.0 can be found in this document, Along with notes on specific patches we feel are notable, the info is far from done but we will get around to adding more. The document will come with a link to the specific SteamDB page and official patch notes.
[Document with info for every patch](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WQxLbwPoPMF9hBxhAFhlT_ymi0TCmB21CcyRbSYoths)

#A few things about the changes:
* Runs from older versions have been on the boards for a long time now but have just been kept from when that patch was the latest version, As we didn't feel it was necessary to wipe the boards with each new patch it's been a long time coming.
* We're keeping this to 1.0 and above to save the hassle of supporting very different versions of the game. 
* While this solution could cause some problems for verification as the game since it's inception has never listed a version number or patch date anywhere in-game, but we're leaving it upto the submitter to provide the version they're using.
* There is no advantage to incorrectly listing your version on the boards as all versions will be listed along-side one another.
* Not all currently available versions have been tested for their advantages in speedruns, it's very likely that X version will be nicer for certain categories, we hope the community will explore this over time.
* World records/Top runs completed on X version does not always mean you "HAVE" to be on that version the beat it, There's a lot of changes with each update and sometimes a lot of power creep to simply say a run is unbeatable because it's on X version isn't that clear cut. We implore you to ask about specific runs and versions in the discord if you're gunning to beat it and are unsure, all runners are very open the sharing info and strats help people out.
* Saves initially created a long time after a version may be incompatible with older versions, It's almost impossible to test which versions will cause issues with this, So if you run into an issue please post about it here or on the official discord (We may be able to provide very old saves to fix this). As always when messing with versions/saves **Backup all your saves**.
* In the document we will note the current "PC Latest patch" and the current "Xbox gamepass Latest patch", The xbox patch is likely to be very different to the pc patch, Currently the xbox patch is 12/03/21 Combined with the enhanced scrolls from 1/21/22, none of the hero balancing in the patches between is present.
Because of this all Xbox runs should be listed as 12/03/21 For now.

#Downpatching Guide
Now for Downpatching itself, As we have no official support for downpatching like other games the process is a bit less user friendly than we'd like.
But for short downpatching involves navigating to the Document we provided above and finding which specific patch you want, Using Steam - launched with a specific command to access the console, Then manually downloading a specific version.
All the steps can be found in this video:
https://youtu.be/T9CTeYrJRpw

*Small footnote, if any runs are seemingly on the wrong patch or haven't got a patch applied at all, please contact Pimmalage#1608 (There was a lot of runs sorted through manually and i am likely to have made some errors).*

Nona Speed guide 

This guide will be explaining your general goals and build choices in speedruns as **Nona** it wil work for **all difficulties**.



# General Gameplan and Misc. Tips 

- •	Nona and Iron Wing are the two player "controlled-by-one" super combo. While Iron Wing shoots random targets at insane ranges, Nona can clear up the rest and deal a ton of DPS to bosses.
- •	Nona's skillset is really diverse but in speedruns you want to narrow it down to the “Talent Craft” build. This means putting Iron Wing in **Fire Mode**, shooting rockets around with the **Shoulder Cannon Upgrade**. With this Ascend, Iron Wing will shoot random targets after being summoned, with a short cooldown.
- •	**Heavy Modification** is used so that Nona can rapid fire her own rockets. Just run to where you have to be while pewpew’ing the enemies on your path.
- •	For Bossing, just drop Iron Wing near aggro range so it can shoot **Shoulder cannon**. Meanwhile, just press and hold your secondary skill button to unleash your rockets. 
- •	Before Iron Wing gets his shoulder cannons its Nona doing all the work herself. So you have to clear the room with a combination of your own rockets and a good early game weapon like Star Ring or Rainbow. 



# The Build

 The general idea of this build is upgrading Iron Wing into a super cannon. This means that Shoulder **rocket cannon** is essential to your build. After that its all upgrading the Super Robot Chicken.

The priority of the skills is something along these lines:

![](/static/blob/yzrym4e4.png)



*TLDR: in an ideal order, take Shoulder Cannon Upgrade followed up with Heatcore. After that you want Heavy Modification and from there you want to upgrade Heatcore and Shoulder cannon Upgrade. When you see a chance take Force recovery. To top off your build use Missile Storm and Energy overload. Make sure you have a pistol to use Battle Pace.*





- **Shoulder Cannon Upgrade (SCU):** is your main priority. This ascension makes it so that Iron Wing can shoot rockets around the map so that Iron Wing clears the map while you run towards the gate. SCU is spread amongst the targets on the map. Every time you place Iron Wing the normal cooldown for SCU resets, Which means you can let him shoot his salvo of rockets and then drop it againto trigger another SCU. So the optimal way to utilize this is by dropping Iron Wing in front of you as soon as a map opens up and while running but prioritizing areas that are lined up with as many enemies as possible. 
- **Heavy modification:** makes it so that Nona herself can shoot really fast. This way you can shoot at targets while running towards the end of the map. And when fighting a boss you can just simply hold your secondary skill button and the cannon will rapid fire. 
- **Heatcore:** is just a straight damage upgrade on your rockets. But upgrading rocket damage doesn’t only upgrade the damage of Nona, it also ups the damage Iron Wing's rockets deal. When there is a choice you want at least one of these upgrades before the first boss to get a quick kill. But with the scaling there is no use in picking up all the upgrades at the start. With Heatcore level one you can basically make it out of the desert. Scrolls also help to up the damage. So balancing the damage is a bit up to feel. When you have sufficient damage, take more points in SCU. When you feel your not one shotting enough enemies, upgrade Heatcore. It’s a balance between the amount of rockets and the damage the deal.
- **Force recovery:** gives you back your rockets and ups the amount you can wield. So when you feel that you have a steady base damage take this.  Also, any rockets Iron Wing shoots counts toward Force Recovery, so it comes down to the more pewpew Nona and Iron Wing do, the more pewpew Nona can do. Which results in being able to hold **Heavy Modification** up for a long time. 
- **Missile Storm:** is the speed Iron Wing shoots at. So the rockets come out quicker and the time between the launches gets shorter. As a bonus it gives Nona a damage boost on her own rockets. This can add up pretty quick when fighting a boss.
- **Battle Pace:** is just a straight up speed upgrade when you hold a pistol. So be sure you pick up a pistol in the first few maps. You wont be shooting your own weapon since Rockets are going to be your best damage, so holding a pistol for the movement speed bonus is optimal.
- **Energy Overload:** this is a damage upgrade overall. Each time you drop Iron Wing both of you get a upgrade. And since your basically spamming Iron Wing the ascension has a high amount of uptime.
- **NEVER take Suicide Device!:** This might sound like a upgrade that does big damage, but it only slows down the spamming of Iron Wings and SCUs, which ends up a net negative in the long run.
- The rest of the ascensions are mostly worthless for our build. This is because Precision is all about shooting Which our build doesn’t do and Divine craft is about Iron Wing in battle mode, which he won't be utilizing.



# The Weapons

The best overall weapon Nona has is by far the **Star Ring**. Combined with **overconsumption** it will one shot most of the early game enemies. This will keep you safe until Iron Wing is strong enough. Furthermore it procs with Battlepace to give you that slight movement speed boost. Other options are 

- **Rainbow:** is a good pick as a starting weapon. It will hit trough walls and auto aims. This way you don’t have to be bothered with aiming, and just with moving. 
- **Concealed ammo: a** starting weapon that helps you clear the bosses a bit quicker, and it will clear some nasty enemies when you throw it. The AOE on this weapon is pretty decent and is a good option when you’re out of rockets since it does good damage and replinishes secondaries through ammo consumption.
- **Swords:** When you don’t have Battlepace but you want that extra bit of movement, Swords are your friend.



# The scrolls 

A rundown for the scrolls to use for Nona in no particular order, sorted by type.

## Damage

- **Brutal gloves:** 35% damage increase on your rockets. 
- **Bluff:** 25% Damage increase on your rockets (with full HP). 
- **Double exhilaration:** Double the amount of rockets you can carry.
- **Evil-Devouring sword:** 20% Damage up for every cure scroll. Most curses are manageable since there's few that affect movement or skills. Especially if you also find Evil-Banishing talisman.
- **Enduring caster:** 1% rocket damage for every 5 hp. 
- **Vindictive nature:** 40% rocket damage for 10 seconds when hit.
- **Final judgement:** Kills the bosses quicker.
- **Elite assassin:** Especially in Reincarnation runs, there are a lot of bosses overall. So that’s flat 10% damage per boss.
- **Rational overconsumption:** 80% Rocket damage. in drops when you shop, but since you don’t have time to shop a lot, it wont drop a lot.
- **Dual edge:** 1% Damage for every enemy you kill. 
- **Deadly curse:** 75% Rocket damage for 75% HP. 

## Movement

- **Snow boots:** Immunity to slows. 
- **Abnormal speed:** 3% Movement speed for ever 10% Shield.
- **Advanced joggers:** 50% Dash cooldown (so bash that shift button). 
- **Decay driver:** Doesn’t add a lot overall. But it is part of the Speed-Runner collection.
- **Tactical reload:** Same as Decay driver.
- **Propulsion device:** More dashes = more speed.
- **Strategic advantage:** 40% Speed after a dash. So keep on dashing.
- **Ostrage rider:** 50% Movement speed. Only 300% extra CD on dash.

## Other

- **Extra Surprise:** Better chance for enemies to drop secondary charges.
- **Curiosity box:** Free scrolls. And if they suck, just drop them.



# Spiritual blessing

 *(Reincarnation only)* 

Before you start you can pick **overconsumption** as your Lone wolf bonus. This blessing is by far the best starting pick. From the vendor you want to get **Fire Coverage**. The rest will be according to what you can get during the run.

![](/static/blob/5ng8gjzq.png)



Skill freak: This is just a flat damage up 75% to deal 200% damage and 25% to deal 300% damage. This while Iron Wing shoots 10 Rockets. Huge damage increase. 



- **Copycat**: in a speedrun you kill a lot of enemies fast, so you will basically stack all the buffs quickly. This means a LOT of speed, cooldown reduction, HP and so much more. 
- **Endless assault:** this doubles the amount of rockets Nona carries. And on top of that 1 rocket ammo every 3 seconds.
- **Armed caster:** 50% damage up for every crit your weapon has. You will mostly be running starring. So that’s about 3.5 x 50% so a 175% damage increase.
- **Field Proficiency:** Cooldown on the dash and the primary skill for every elite kill. So at least 4x -6% per floor. So that is 24% cooldown reduction per floor (except first one) 
- **Scroll master:** when there is nothing better to take. This is a good gamble to get Speedrunner or any damage up 
- **Ultimate gambler:** When there is nothing better to take. This is a good one to have a bit more chance to get the ascensions to want to get. 



# The Mechanics

## Overal mechanics

Nona has some unique gameplay, this is because you basically have to play 2 characters at the same time which sounds way more difficult than it really is. Just remember the basics and the rest is just about playing Nona and practice. 

At the start of the run you put Iron Wing into **Fire mode**, this can be achieved by pressing your middle mouse button (scroll wheel). By doing this Iron Wing can be dropped down and he will start shooting 1 rocket at the time as a rocket launcher. The goal is to get the **Shoulder Cannon Upgrade** as soon as possible. With this skill Iron Wing will shoot 10 rockets hitting 10 targets on the map (this can be 10 different ones or 10 times the same like a boss). This cooldown resets on a timer or every time Iron Wing is summoned.

On the other hand you want Nona to help deal damage with her secondary skill too. With **Heavy modification**, Nona can rapid fire and since the rocket is an explosion with scaling AoE, you don’t even have to aim so well 😉. 

So for clearing the rooms its all about placing Iron Wing in a way so he has the best line of sight with most of the enemies. He does ignore some of the collision, but not all of it like hard walls. You should just try this a bit, and practice the placement. Meanwhile Nona can run towards the end of the floor while clearing the leftovers. 

Bosses are even easier. This just means throwing down Iron Wing on cooldown while Nona just spams her own rockets. 

*(reincarnation only)*

**Star Ring** + **Overconsumption** kills almost everything in one shot in the first stage. The extra benefit is that Star Ring also hit through walls  



## Example placements for Iron Wing

There are several ways you can make Iron Wing kill stuff before you are able to. The most common one is cutting corners. A couple of examples are:

  ![](/static/blob/qzpyplz3.png)

*Hopping in a room. Dropping Iron Wing at the end so it starts killing enemies while the spawn in the roof and walls that would require you to aim really good. Instead, Iron Wing justs has auto aim.*  



![](/static/blob/5e169vz0.png)

*This room consist out of 2 “rooms”. Dropping Iron Wing in the second one lets him start clearing, but since he has a line of sight of the first one, he's able to clear both.*

 ![](/static/blob/oeoy0vng.png)

*By dropping Iron Wing on top of the ramp he will start clearing the top floor. Since you don’t even have line of sight of it yet, he will be nearly done once you’re up there.* 

 

![](/static/blob/3ek4dmzx.png)

*In world 4 there are a lot of long roads with corridors. Always be sure to drop Iron Wing ahead of the corner. So you can have a safe peek around when you arrive.*

 ![](/static/blob/xz07d0el.png)

*Same goes for the late levels with the hills and obstacles. Just pop him on top while your running.*



An other way to utilize Iron Wing is to make sure he is in lie of sight with as many enemies as possible. Some rooms are designed to run circles. So make sure Iron Wing does most of the work so you don’t have to keep running. 



![](/static/blob/kzwyoynq.png)

*By dropping Iron Wing in the middle here, he can kill enemies that spawn upstairs,*

 *but also the ones behind the fence of the path on the right.*

 ![](/static/blob/xzd8pqem.png)

*By dropping Iron Wing on top of the ramp, he will have line of sight with the enemies on top and at the bottom.* 

 

![](/static/blob/1n523mn3.png)

*Here enemies spawn on both sides of the rock. Just make sure Iron Wing is on top so the spawn location doesn’t matter.* 

 ![](/static/blob/1n7rj0e5.png)

*This is a location to show how tanky Iron Wing is. Just drop him in the middle of the fight. He will clear everything also the flying saucers.*  



# Extra Notes 

Anything written here is subject to change as we learn and discover more about the game over time. If you have questions that aren't answered in this guide you can find a lot of runners in the Speedrun-Disucssion channel of the official Gunfire discord. The discord is linked at the very top of the leaderboards or at [https://discord.com/invite/gunfire-reborn](https://discord.com/invite/gunfire-reborn)

Please check out the category and game rules before doing any runs!![https://i.imgur.com/sOJ0cR2.png](https://i.imgur.com/sOJ0cR2.png)

Good luck!

Preset & Pity File Background/Rules

Gunfire Reborn doesn't necessarily have the usual "glitches" or time saving specific things you'd come to expect from other games, But one thing we have developed over the years is a greater understanding of the game's systems which we utilize mostly via save files.

**Background on Preset**

Through this development a player by the name of Komatozz/bedman planned and executed an idea thought to be possibly too slow or not too advantageous. Having made a file from scratch with 0 external tools - Just some crafty routing in terms of scroll unlocks they went on to take Every Single World Record at the time.

This file heavily utilized the mechanic that when you first reach the unlock amount for a Weapon or a scroll, the game immediately rewards you with that item in your current run on the enemy required to fulfill that unlock.

Setting up these unlocks all 1 or 2 kills away from unlocking results in a run where you guarantee those items every single run (Sometimes a bit of RNG for specific enemy spawns).

Preset does nothing more than just unlocking those items in a specific run, As some outside viewers have assumed that it modifies "All rng aspects" of the game - This is not true. (except for one instance which will be explained in Pity)

At the time these runs were submitted we had a decision as a mod team which was mostly an open discussion with the runners at the time too, Should we allow or disallow this method which we went on to allow.

**Currently the rules for Preset are:**

-  It is allowed in only Any% & Individual levels categories.
- The specific way we define Preset is a file setup to specifically take advantage of the unlocked/dropped items, Picking those up will in moderation terms define it as a Preset. (Some accidental or unintentional unlocks may be dealt with on a case by case basis)
- The files we have used for these runs are always public and available to anyone, runner or not in the "Resources" section. (If newer ones are made we ask that all be public)
- All the files created are not using external tools, This for now is true but possibly later down the line we may allow this. (Currently no external tools exist for this).

**Background on Pity**

As preset was being used to lower the Any% time - A few top runners started to notice things regarding layouts when using the file. Specifically a conversation between community members: Pimmalage, Failology, Jackpls, Kid and Jonwillbert, The initial thing jack noticed was what we considered "God" 1-1 layout just seemed to not exist in the version of preset made by Pimmalage, and by not exist we scoured every preset run posted, and recorded locally ourselves. This through some assumptions and testing eventually lead to discovering the mechanic we call Pity.

Simply explained Pity is what we can only assume is a pseudo rng mechanic put in by the developers to avoid runs seeming the same, stale or potentially avoid layouts people struggle with.

The basic mechanic is your current save remembers 2 variations of a layout, decided by the last two times you entered that layout. For example if there are 5 possible variations of the Layout 1-3, The first time you entered it you got variation 2, The second time you got variation 4, The third time you enter that layout it CANNOT be the variations 2 and 4 only variation 1, 3 and 5.

If you've ever run the game a decent amount you will have learned some Layouts have variations which lose a TON of time (Looking at you 2-2), So using this method jonwillbert put an insane amount of time working through each section of the game using save backups to essentially make two runs back to back on a single save file containing two of the worst variations of each layout, Resulting in the third run never able to contain the variations that lose us the most time.

These pity files also went through the effort of attempting to avoid unlocking a large amount of the scrolls and weapons - Which for sure should be a debated topic and where most of the power/consistency of using this method lies.

We've openly discussed them being used at length and ultimately decided that they sit in a somewhat grey area since the specific methods used could just as easily be almost "Lucked" into on a regular file, or a new runner just happening to have less unlocks.

**Currently the rules for Pity are:**

- It is allowed in all categories.
- There is no specific definition for a pity file as by any definition we set, every single casual or non casual runner's file will be pity. The only category that effectively isn't pity would be Fresh file (As there's 0 previous runs on the save).
- All pity files will always be public to anyone to use in the resources section.
- Any pity file that coincidentally unlocks an item, Mostly due to low unlocks on purpose - Will not immediately be considered Preset, This can be decided on a run by run basis but the official ruling is if you don't pickup or use those items then you will have no issue. This extends to any run submitted - As unlocks especially for newer runners happen and cannot be prevented in some cases or just being unaware of the ruling.
- Pity files should not use external tools for their creation. This for now is true but possibly later down the line we may allow this. (Currently no external tools exist for this).

**TL;DR**

**Preset - Uses the in-run unlock mechanic to guarantee weapons/scrolls. (Any% only)**

**Pity - Uses the Base game mechanic of Layout pity to effectively avoid the 2 worst variations of each layout. (All categories)**

**Files are always public in Resources**

**If you have any questions please contact via the discord/forums or direct messages and i will answer any and all questions, and add them to this post if necessary.**

You're welcome to Message me on discord directly(Pimmalage), Join the official gunfire discord or via speedrun.com

Setting up LiveSplit & Auto-Splitter for Gunfire Reborn

First of all this game uses the in-game timer and success screen for actual times and verification. LiveSplit and the use of an auto-splitter is used primarily for tracking your current pace compared to other runs, seeing where you lost of gained time, sharing splits, sum of bests and a nice addition to progressing your personal best times.

To get started you'll want to download [LiveSplit](https://livesplit.org/downloads/)  
You'll want to make a new folder and extract the contents - To launch the program doubleclick "Livesplit.exe"  
Once you have LiveSplit you can begin setting up the auto-splitter.  

Once opened, you'll get a small window with just a timer, you'll want to start by Right-clicking the timer and "Edit Splits". Under the "Game Name" Type or search for "Gunfire Reborn" and select it.  
From here you can setup your category in the drop-down menu (These should pull from the categories on Speedrun.com. For additional category variables check additional info).  
Underneath The categories you should see an Activate button, This is to activate the autosplitter (Created by Ero), which will automate the need to download/update the script manually.
If you're wanting to automatically manage the script - Click activate and then Settings, Here you should see a list of check-boxes for places you want to enable auto-splitting. For this example we're going to leave it default which should have everything Checked except "Anxi desert Entrance" and "Duo Fjord Entrance". Once that all looks correct just click OK.
**If you choose to go the route of manually managing the script - This method no longer works for how the script is managed.**  
Now we're going to need to setup the splits that correspond to the autosplitter, For this we're going to need:  
5 Splits for Longling Tomb  
4 Splits for Anxi Desert  
4 Splits for Duo Fjord
3 Splits for Hyperborean Jokul  
The names of the splits don't matter for the functionality of autosplitting, these should be whatever you like them to be just make sure there's 13 Total.  
Example: https://i.imgur.com/Q66gb8d.png  
Once that is setup click OK to exit out, Next we're going to change the timer to compare against in-game time by Right-clicking -> Compare against -> Game time.  **Make Sure to do this otherwise your timer is likely to show Real time instead of in-game time (Unless ofcourse you specifically want to use Real time)**

Once that is done you should be setup and ready for runs. To check the timer is working correctly boot up a run and enter stage 1, The timer should auto-start - Also check that when pressing Inventory and the Escape menu the timer on LiveSplit pauses also, If not - Give your game and Livesplit a restart. Making sure to save your layout and splits before doing so. If the timer still doesn't behave correctly you might want to Right-click -> Edit Layout -> Layout Settings -> Then under Timer and Splits make sure the "Timing method" is either Current Timing method or Game time.  
**If you are playing multiplayer the timer should work perfectly fine as far as me and the community have tested, The method of interpreting the in-game time is looking directly to the value the game uses to display the timer, So any pause/change the game makes, the livesplit timer should also make**

**Big Shoutout to Ero for finding the Pointers and Writing the whole ASL script. If you have any issues with the script itself misbehaving contact Me, Cryorus or Ero. Either through Speedrun.com or Discord.**

Speedrunning Basics and Tips

In this guide I'll *try* and *briefly* touch on some of the things to get you started speedrunning Gunfire Reborn. (Emphasis on try and briefly because i find it hard summarizing things so this might be long)  

#**Overview**  
First of all the game is constantly changing since Gunfire reborn is still in early access - Weapons, scrolls and possibly characters are still yet to be released.  
If you're looking to do your own research and be a bit pro-active you can always look at any of the most recent runs posted in the category you're trying to run - Generally if there's quite a few times posted already you can have an idea of what strategies are being used. Sometimes it's quite difficult to put into words the strategies used or the newer runner prefers to learn by watching instead of reading.  
If there's no runs or very few runs in a category there is always the #Speedrun-Discussion channel in discord, to ask any questions or some sort of specific strategy you don't quite understand.  
Once you've gotten an idea of how the run should go your best bet is to just jump right in and attempt it yourself - Execution in terms of runs has a very low ceiling to begin with so getting a reasonable time isn't as hard as you might think.  


#**Recording your runs and submitting them**  
Recording your runs locally is fairly simple - The rules have a fairly comprehensive list of things you should/should not do.  
For software there's tons of free options such as OBS or StreamlabsOBS (Each are very similar) NVIDIA's Shadowplay (Provided you have an NVIDIA GPU) I've heard of people using Xbox Game Bar (I have 0 knowledge on the program but it seems to work for some runners).  
Once you have your recording software you might want to trim your run down for a number of reasons - Removing resets or cutting out a long section after the run is over - I personally use Avidemux for my runs but it's not the most user friendly, OpenShot, ShotCut and DaVinciResolve are pretty decent free and more user-friendly editors. The software doesn't matter too much just find anything that works for you.  
Submitting your runs via twitch or youtube - These two are going to be the main options for submitting.  
If you are submitting runs from twitch make sure you are submitting a Highlighted version of the run and not a time-stamped past broadcast as these are not permanent and will be removed from twitch after a period.  
Submitting from youtube is just as easy as uploading and providing a link - If your youtube video is limited (Not viewable in some countries due to copyrighted music) the run might be declined - You can use youtube's editor to remove the audio if that's the only option you have.  
After all that make sure your runs don't have any elements covering the timer or any of the other vital elements for the speedrun.  

**PLEASE READ THE GAME RULES BEFORE ATTEMPTING RUNS, There are vital things we need to have shown in a run recording to verify, All runs MUST feature both Challenge Success screen (The screen shown after clicking the portal to end the run) and the Player Information screen (This is done by selecting it on the main menu after the run) It helps to click on the specific run you just completed to show scrolls etc.
This is outlined very clearly as we have to reject any run without that info, and it really hurts to reject good runs without it.**


#**Speedrunning Tips**  
So probably what most of you want from this guide is some tips or thing to give you that edge in running I'll try and break this down into sections.  


#**Know your strategy**  
Have your main strategy for the run in mind and aim to hit that, there's quite a lot of RNG involved with replicating an ideal run for each strategy so don't be afraid to reset runs if it's not looking to give you the time you need - But don't be too over-critical, I've had runs i have been convinced will die and lose tons of times for them to completely turn around and save 30+ seconds in the later sections. Identify what things are critical for the success of a run and what things are "Nice" or could save time but not ultimately make or break the run - An example of this might be Foundry only Qing yen, In this run it is pretty vital you get Easy Kill early on to be able to stack damage and Max Cleave to enable cleaving consistently. Things that would be "Nice" in this run and save time are things like %Damage for cleave or AOE for cleave - Stuff that isn't "required" but you might want to fish for on that perfect run.  
This is going to vary a ton depending on what time you are aiming for so judge and learn what it is you need.  

#**Tier-lists of ascensions**  
So this is something that could easily be conveyed and put into a simple to read "Do and don't" tier-list, but it's extremely important to understand people play the game differently, have different skill levels or just prefer to avoid something we consider to be "Meta". What i recommend every runner is to have their own mental tier-list when it comes to ascensions so you can make decisions on what is best for a run but still keep an open mind to try new things.  
There are ofcourse clear wrong choices in runs like for example choosing some other level 1 explosive ascension when you have the option of Mad bomber 3, but for other things the line can be blurred and rng can speak for itself.

#**Room Variations**  
This one is something that is not very obvious to new runners and something you pick-up and learn later on, Each level in the run has specific variations - These rooms can hugely influence the time of your run some rooms wasting upwards of 45 seconds in just waiting around for mob spawns (At the worst). There's no clear indication which rooms save and lose time this is something that has to be learned - Possibly something the community can look into and map out which rooms are the best.  
Each room has a set group of options, What i mean by this is 1-3 for instance can have upto 5 different options each with their differences in their time to clear.

#**Vaults**  
Generally in an ideal run you shouldn't have to take any vault but to start out you might want to consider taking them for a few fairly quick scrolls, Learn which vaults are fast and what take far too long, if you enter a vault and it's going to take too long just simply leave - The speedrun being in-game time checking vaults wastes only a few seconds. In Elite and Nightmare even top runners opt to take a couple of quick vaults.

#**Red chests (Cursed chests)**  
These are extremely valuable in a speedrun being able to offer you cheap and sometimes even free scrolls/weapons/health, Generally in runs the option for sacrificing health for Scroll is very good - the bun drops being fairly plentiful.  
Be careful about choosing damaged or dusty scrolls, each of the options has a different % chance of the rarity of the outcome, The lower the tier the higher chance for Cursed scrolls.  
Upgrading normal and replacing all for weapon mods, This is something that isn't greatly explained, Upgrading normal will take any random "Green" inscription on a weapon turning it into a "Blue" mod, Sometimes this isn't a direct upgrade as some blue mods can have things such as "Damage/But -Magazine size" so be careful and pay attention to the possible outcomes. The best scenario for this kind of upgrade is if you have say a Justice with -50% AOE and all the other mods are Blue/Orange you can remove the -50% AOE resulting in a much more usable weapon.  
Replacing All is strong for taking a poorly rolled weapon but a weapon you want to use, Small things about the replace all - It will only keep the exact same amount of mods it has on before so replacing all on a 1 mod item will still keep it 1 mod, It will re roll the item as if it has dropped new - So it's possible to get higher rarity mods on it, If the weapon doesn't have a Gemini mod on it - And you've upgraded the weapon to at least +5 when you replace all it will take one mod at random and turn it into a gemini. (And if it has one mod only it will become a weapon with just Gemini and no inscriptions).

#**Mob Spawns**  
If you've played the game even just a small amount you may have noticed the enemy spawns are really not random - It's possible to learn and map out almost all of the spawns in any given room, This is extremely important when it comes to saving time especially in the larger rooms being able to perfectly map out your route/order of clearing the room for being optimal. This is something you cannot simply teach, my tip if you're still learning is to always be looking at the minimap in down-time.  
A smaller thing to learn is in some rooms mobs spawn in sequentially and this is not limited to wave-respawn rooms, There's always a specific order it, it would be hard to give examples in text but you'll notice it once you start paying attention to them - Things like "Late-spawns" where an enemy will only spawn after you've moved to a certain point in the room or cleared X mob or all mobs. There's quite a few of those in some of the 1-2 and 1-4 Variations if you want to look out for them.

#**Boss strategies**  
It's quite hard to put into a list some of the choices for weapons/scrolls for killing bosses that would take an entire other guide, but i will list some small tips for each boss.  
**Lu wu** - Most if not all of his abilities can be dodged simply with a reactionary dash and strafing  
**Golem** - Standing slightly off center to the right can make it a little bit easier to hit his crit spot while his arm is up, Piercing weapons can actually go through his arms.  
**Icthy-something** i forget the name - In the head phase the boss will tilt its head just before doing the beam, Dash immediately in the opposite direction and begin strafing (Make sure you're not extremely far away or too close to cause the melee attack), While the boss is burrowing you can actually hit it as if normal and even the tail is possible to be hit if moving away from you. During the tail phase it's really simple to time a grenade/cleave/kinetic orb to destroy all the corrosive projectiles as they are fired.
If the boss enters the tail phase with somewhere around 80-90% health (Not armour) the slam becomes a triple slam instead of one.
This boss is different as their health isn't all red (Meaning fire weapons being less effective against the first bar) If possible it's highly recommended to have an alternate decent weapon for melting off the armour if you're not Crown prince, Something like a porcupine or a decent corrosive weapon, But ultimately if you have enough damage the armour-type health won't mean much. The way in which the boss dives is somewhat random and "Can" be manipulated but would lose time anyways.
**Yoruhume** - Generally this boss is just aim to burn him down as quick as possible there's not a huge amount of strategy.  
In the cannon phase it can help to start killing the cannons and slowly move forward sometimes avoiding the projectiles by going under them. The octopus spawns are entirely random from what i can tell so just check the minimap or just do a quick check both sides. Placing the cannon ball is done by interacting with the tiny little platform on the back of the cannon.  
In the second phase his crit spot is the eyes, You can shoot down the projectiles the cannon fires with one hit, and if you're using justice you can aim up and time the detonations to blow up the cannon shots while also dealing optimal damage, Making the fight very safe.

#**Boss Quick kills**  
This is something that can save you huge amount of time in runs, Since 80% of the run is about clearing mobs quick and efficiently your weapons and ascensions will likely be catered towards that playstyle leaving bosses to be fairly slow and sluggish, All of the bosses in the game can be quick killed (With the exception of the final boss) - This being the equivilent of a "one-cycle" for other games. Strategies as simple as grabbing an off-hand weapon specifically meant for killing an upcoming boss, For example a crimson firescale is my favorite weapon to use for quick kills on Lu wu/Golem and prove to be very effective - Simply hit as many crit shots as you possibly can while spamming firebomb as soon as it's off cooldown, you want to be fairly close to hit your shots easier. There are countless strategies and specific combos that can aid in quick-killing a boss and couldn't possibly be specifically listed.

#**General movement and Secondary usage**  
Most weapons in the game have a "Weight" to them slowing your character's base move speed, Things like the tiger cannon, big hippo are very heavy weapons and Submachine guns are light barely slowing you down - Use this to your advantage while moving through long stretches of rooms, Ultimately you can press 3 and swap to the foundry it being the lightest weapon making you move faster.  
Of course you want to be dashing at every available time as you progress from A to B clearing a room.  
Position yourself closer to the door while the Golden goblet chest opens, you can interact with it from quite a distance away - Very minor but could save a quite a bit over the course of a run.  
Secondaries (Grenades and cleave) do not interrupt reloading at any point, use this to your advantage - However Primary abilities will interrupt reloads.  

#**Challenge rooms and Elite spawns**  
Generally challenge rooms and elite spawns are completely random, Each of them being quite nice for the run if they don't lose you time, When clearing a challenge room - The last enemy to die in the room will drop either A Bun/Weapon/Scroll so be sure to check where that last enemy died. In some cases the drop can be pulled to a specific location in the room if it's out of bounds. Same with Elites but they can drop A Bun/Weapon/Scroll/Golden Goblet, the difference with elites it's possible to actually roll all 4 of them at once dropping all of the rewards, in most cases dropping 1 or 2 of the possible rewards.

#**Taking your time and making decisions**
This section is just about abusing the in-game time rule by using things like Peddler/Ascensions/Pausing to take your time on decisions and consider your options since the in-game timer is paused. This can also be used while the in-game timer is paused after killing a boss in co-op to exchange scrolls consider what you want/need for the next stages.  
A lot of running this game is about improving your decision making in terms of how to clear rooms, when to use abilities what weapons to take, if the somewhat under-powered weapon is good because of X inscription, Taking X ascension to enable a strategy. There's countless things that you can consider when making decisions in the game, and you'll see runners with a lot of experience be able to make the decisions much easier so they can focus on gameplay optimization. This is really something you can only learn by either playing a ton and learning combinations/options or by watching/talking with other runners, i highly doubt a runner would be opposed to answering a question of why they use X thing and to explain their thought process.

#**Improving your runs**  
If you're at a point where you don't see obvious ways you can improve your run or you're stuck on what to work on or progress, I'd suggest asking in the discord to maybe have someone go over and give some constructive criticism to help improve, I personally (Pimmalage) would love going over runs and maybe making videos reviewing runs to help that specific runner and hopefully other people who watch to improve.  
I'd like to touch on a point of not everyone is going to get those golden times instantly, a lot of the runners have been playing for a long time and 100's of attempts at a single category to get that "one" perfect run. Spend less time comparing yourself to their times and focus on your own PB progression as it's something a lot of people i think can get caught up in.  

#**Closing thoughts**  
Of course i cannot possibly cover every single thing that goes into a run but hopefully this is enough for some of the newer runners to get off the ground and into some great runs.  
I know for a fact i skip a ton of the weapon choices and scroll choices for each category, but each of those could be an entire guide in itself, so i skipped out on some of the "Meta" things the game currently has. If that's something that a lot of newer players really need help with i can look into making something along those lines, but would take a ton of effort.  
If there's anything you specifically want me to add into the guide that you want to know more about or have wrote yourself i'd be glad to add it in as a collaborative effort.

Wait For Good and Injectors - Video Explanation

MrFailology

dumbi14

Pimmalage

TheKid217

jonwillbert

Gunfire Reborn

Cyrix

jackkpls

shaunDsheep

Normal

Elite

Nightmare

2 Players

3 Players

4 Players

Crown Prince

Ao Bai

Qing Yan

Lei Luo

Reincarnation 1

Reincarnation 7

Qian Sui

Reincarnation 8+

Reincarnation 8

Preset

No Preset

Xing Zhe

3/17/23

2/17/23

12/27/22

12/2/22

11/26/22

11/24/22

10/28/22

9/23/22

9/9/22

9/2/22

8/29/22

Any% Subcategories Pre-1.0

Co-op Pre-1.0

Fresh File Subcategories Pre-1.0

Coop difficulty subcategories Pre-1.0

Foundry-only subcategories Pre-1.0

Character Any% Pre-1.0

Foundry Only Characters Pre-1.0

Full Game Character

Full Game Difficulty

Fresh File Character

Foundry only Character

Foundry only Difficulty

Co-op Player count

Co-Op Difficulty

Any% Difficulty

Character

Preset File

Patch

**Lone Wolf Multiplayer Bypass** 

By complete accident, jonwillbert & i have discovered a way to enable the Lone Wolf bizarre dream in co-op when it's meant to be singleplayer only, after some testing we discovered it's about 90% consistent to enable Instructions:

1. Whoever is hosting the game sh

Name	Author
* Crown Prince Build Guide and Overview	MrFailology 1 year ago
* Gunfire Reborn Speedrunning Quick Start Guide	Pimmalage 9 months ago
* Lei Luo Build Guide and Overview	jonwillbert 1 year ago
* Qian Sui Build Guide and Overview	TheKid217 1 year ago
* Tao Build Guide and Overview	MrFailology 1 year ago
*Patches info Document & How to Downpatch	Pimmalage 1 year ago
Nona Speed guide	dumbi14 4 months ago
Preset & Pity File Background/Rules	Pimmalage 9 months ago
Setting up LiveSplit & Auto-Splitter for Gunfire Reborn	Pimmalage 1 year ago
Speedrunning Basics and Tips	Pimmalage 2 years ago
Wait For Good and Injectors - Video Explanation	Pimmalage 1 year ago