Hey Dead Rails speedrunners,

A new game update just dropped, bringing a ton of content to the game! Some of the new thing include:

• Town of Sterling
• Nightmare Mode
• Ores
• New Zombie Variants
• Bug Fixes

Leaderboard Impact

You’re probably wondering how this update affects the leaderboard. For now, I don’t think anything needs to change immediately. I don't see how the new area, ores, and zombie variants might shift the meta. For the most part I think the meta will stay the same.

Potential Additions

I’m considering a few leaderboard updates based on the new content and would love your feedback:

• New “Tame Wolf” Category: With wolf taming now in the game, I’m thinking of adding a category where the objective is to tame a wolf as fast as possible.
• Difficulty Variable: A new variable to sort runs by difficulty. Normal difficulty would remain the default for leaderboard rankings, but you’d be able to filter and compare runs on Nightmare Mode.

Your Feedback Needed!

I want to hear from the community before making any changes. Here are some questions to consider:

• Do you think the new structure (Town of Sterling) and ores have changed the meta too much? Should we archive pre-update runs to keep things fair?
• What do you think of the “Tame Wolf” category? Would you run it?
• Do you want a difficulty variable to sort runs by Normal vs. Nightmare Mode?
• Any other thoughts on how this update affects speedrunning or what categories/variables we should add?

Please leave your feedback in the comments below or reach out to me on speedrun.com or Discord.

• Suna