So - You've beaten the campaign.
You're hungry for more.
There exist a daily challenge? Awesome - you enter.
Holy smokes Arthur! Why are there SO many cubes!? Are those DOORS?!
And what do I do with all this gold?!
BUY ALL THE FLAK UPGRADES!
...
No!

Fret not, for I am here to give you a proper introduction to the daily challenges of Time Rifters, and how YOU could be the next top 3 contestant.

Who am I to give you advice, you may ask? Well, I'm the very best at the daily challenges, no less! And those two other guys that beats me once in a while (or several days in a row) are sore losers with no claim to my throne!

A new daily challenge is added every 24 hours.
This means that you can always go back through time, and revisit previous challenges. You can even better your previous scores, should you like to.

Each challenge consists of 10 rooms, selected by random from the top 100 best rooms in the steam workshop during that day.

There's no "fairness" guarantee in these rooms, you might not be able to complete them, you might not even be able to reach the 50% mark. But everyone else is thrown into the exact same configuration.

If you have already tried your luck at a challenge, you have probably noticed a couple of differences. We'll explore all of them in turn.

Doors
You also met these during the campaign - these are just of a fixed size.
Each door will either be open, locked, or locked from the other side.

Open doors are simply a open gate, and imposes no challenge.



A locked door will have 1-4 red orbs on the sides of the door.
Shooting the orbs will graidually break them, like cubes. Once all of them are destroyed, the door will open.



A door locked from the other side, however, can not be opened by normal means (see the weapons section), as you cannot see the orbs. What you see - the black orbs - are simply a grayed out indicator of the life of the orb on the other side.



Orbs cannot be poisoned.


Cube movement
As all rooms in the challenges are user made, none of the blocks will move. Ever.
This also means, that there are no hidden-inside-the-walls blocks.


Starting gold
In challenge mode, you start with a bit of gold. Don't forget to upgrade your weapon of choice before the first run.
This amount is fixed and doesn't change with the rooms selected for the challenge.


Early finish
There is no early finish (I've tried). 100% IS the maximum score for each day.

While the weapons are the same, the massive amount of gold in challenge mode, does change the way we use them.



Scatter pistol
The pistol is good for odd patterns. Non-linear designs, and for opening doors.
The pistol, due to it's scatter, can even open doors from the locked side, by aiming just at the bottom of the visible orb.
Again, using scatter, the pistol is also able to shoot through "glass", enabling you to take out small amount of cubes without have to do the puzzles first.
The pistol is a poor choice for first runs, and a sub-par choice in general, due to it's low cubes-hit-per-second.

Flak cannon
The SMG is the pistols sorry brother. It's inaccurate. It has a max distance. It doesn't scatter (it does bounce though) and have a low max-dps.
Never pick this. Ever. It's a trap.

Plasma beam
The laser can be a powerful first pick. It's accurate, it's fast (near instant) and has penetration available early.
It's horrible for opening doors, however, so plan ahead.
A good first-round laser will often have acid + 3 levels of penetrate.
After the first round, there's rarely a reason for picking the laser.

Particle Ball
The particle ball is a weapon you should stay away from.
While the dps is MASSIVE, it's a melee weapon, with way of quickly covering large areas.
It can have situational use, though. There's at least 1 room, for which I sometimes use this.
Hardly worth it though.

Rocket launcher
The rocket, like the particle ball, is a horrible choice - but does have situational use.
While the dps is high, it's inability to hit new targets quickly, means that the total dps of other weapons are usually WAY higher.
The only upside of the rockets, are the single level upgrade that spawns upwards moving rockets. These can, in some circumstances, be decent.
In short: Never take the rocket, it's a trap.

Spread rifle
THIS. This is the god of challenges if there ever was one.
Close up, this weapon has the second highest dps of all (beaten by particle ball). On range, it has the widest hit-area. It has access to penetration, attack speed, more projectiles and acid, allowing to hit a maximum of targets, leaving all of them to die slowly.
My favorite upgrade pattern, goes like this:
First round: Acid, 1 penetrate, 2 spread.
Any round thereafter: Acid, 5 spread, 2 penetrate, 2 speed, 1 pentrate - and then either penetrate or speed as needed, depending on the rooms you aim to clear this run.

Every second spent moving, is a second not spent on winning - so let's see how we can improve that part.

Planning ahead
Of course "planning" is step one.
One should know where to go each run. Which rooms to clear, the most direct way to get there and so on. But that's not really advice, that's a given. First, a story:
Imagine 2 runs: purple and green, and 3 rooms: A, B and C.
Purple runs to A, shoots all the cubes, opens the door to B, shoots a lot of cubes.
Green runs to A, opens the door to B, opens the door to C, shoots all the cubes, goes back to B and finishes the job there.

Now, the advice is this: If you need a door open later on, open it as early as possibly in a single run. This way, when your future self come running, it's open.

Let's try the story again:
Purple runs to A, opens the door to B, shoots all the cubes in A, runs to B, shoots a lot of cubes.
Green runs to A, opens the door to B runs to B, opens the door to C, shoots all the cubes, goes back to B and finishes the job there.

Simply by doing the same steps, in a different order, you've saved yourself time.


Jumping
Jumping is quite useful. But it's also slower than running. Technically speaking, your velocity is the same, but you increase the distance travelled by jumping.
And it follows that double jumping is even slower.
So, limit your jumping to when you actually need to get over something. And don't double/sprint jump when less can do.



Skipping rooms
A single sprint-jump can jump the entire length of a room - this is useful if you're travelling in the upper levels.

Jump-sprinting
While sprint-jumping always makes you double jump, it's possibly to jump first, then start sprinting.
By doing so, you limit your height, thus time wasted, but still get the speed increases needed for getting "there" faster.

As for tactics, there's a few rules that I almost, always obey.
Of course, no rule is above the circumstances, and rooms and layouts always have the final word.

ACID, ALWAYS ACID
Rule number one: You don't have time for killing all the cubes. Make it.
The acid upgrade will poison individual cubes, making them take damage over time.
As a rule of thump, it takes the following to kill a cube:
Yellow: 30 seconds
White: 10 seconds
Red: 5 seconds

This means, you first priority should always be to hit as many yellow cubes in the first 30 seconds as possible. Remember to return to collect your reward.


First Pick
As you start out with a few gold, I usually stick to one of two tactics for my first run:
If there are any doors I NEED to open, I pick a Spread Rifle, take the usual upgrade, go up close and blast each lock.
If there are no locks, it depends on the rooms I'm about to encounter:
Lot of surface: Spread rifle.
Deep nested (thick layers of cubes): A Beam rifle with penetration.


Plan ahead
The math is quite simple: You got 4 attempts to clear 10 rooms.
Or, as I like to think of it: 1+3, since the first run is bound to be done with roughly 500 gold worth of upgrades.
This means that you should plan for clearing roughly 1/3/3/3 rooms each run. Never leave the job half done, if you can help it.
Remember that traveltime ain't free, and that yellow blocks requires to be dealth with first.

Always pick the spread rifle.
Upgrade: Acid, 3 penetration, 5 spread.
Shoot everything once, move on to next room.
Clear each room you start, never leave a job half finished.
Pistols can open doors from the opposite side.