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.

• 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!

Good luck!