The first part of the guide is about a few easy tips and tricks everyone should follow, when desiring trophies or being fast. Although some of these things may sound like common knowledge or something, not everyone always remembers this stuff :P



This one is rather easy to understand and execute. Most of you probably know this, but I think it's better to repeat this.
The time will continue running after you died, that means you will lose some time, which is bad. This is why you should restart the level whenever you die. Maybe you still have some space left, were fast enough etc, but I guess you also want a nice spot in the leaderboards, so restarting isn't always a bad idea.
You should also restart if you notice that you are too slow: if you play a level over and over again, because you want that trophy, you will start to notice that you probably cleared that room earlier a few tries ago, or maybe you just waited too long at some parts and lost time, in this case it would also be smart to just restart the level.




Yep, you heard me right, there are optimal settings.
This one will be short, as there isn't much to say about it.



Turning off cutscenes is not mandatory, but it helps. The timer doesn't continue, but these cutscenes distract you. Especially when you are trying to beat a level as fast as possible, these cutscenes can get you out of the flow, if you know what I mean. Tutorials aren't needed anyway. Death reset also just distracts you, since most of the times you aren't immediatly ready to play again. Quick reset is set to Level, because resetting the room doesnt reset the time.




I don't think, that there is much to say to this. Apples are an important part of Slime-san, but collecting them costs time.
You can always collect them before you try to get the trophy or afterwards, it doesn't really matter. Just don't expect a good time when also collecting apples ;P
They may look delicious, but don't get too distracted by them!




This one will also be short and easy to execute.
Spamming the dash ability can be really helpful. Many of you probably found this one on their own.
Whenever you have to wait for something to happen, like a bossfight action or an elevator it is smart to dash-spam, because it actually speeds up everything except time, just like morphin slows down everything except time. Just dashing as much as possible is way faster than walking, but you have to focus on what is happening around you, or you'll get killed.




This may sound strange, but it makes sense. When you're in a rush you often forget things, this applies to this game too, when speedrunning or being fast in general.

Many people forget, that they have powerful abilities, like the Superjump or even the Dash. Or they forget, that they can airjump after touching a wall. These are things you can learn in the dojo, a place I didn't visit either ;P
They are really useful in order to beat the trophy time and can even lead to you finding a shortcut! So, be smart, never underestimate the power of this cute little slimes.
 

 
Regular Slime-San is a great and balanced playstyle, which is why I use him in my speedruns, but luckily there is some diversity. We can buy a few different playstyles in Slumptown. These playstyles can help us reach some apples, beat a level faster or they just look cooler. It seems like Kawaii-San is quite popular ;)

While it is possible to get almost all trophies with any playstyle, there actually is one, everyone with speed in mind should use: I'm talking about Wife-San. She jumps higher, dashes further, but falls faster than regular ol' Slime-San. These stat-changes are perfect for getting trophies, because you want to be fast. In almost every level she would be the better choice for getting trophies, but not in every level. She weighs a bit more than her husband (hehe) and thus falls faster, this means it's a bit harder to react when falling. Her weight also hinders you from beating several levels containing trampolines, these things that swallow you and shoot you out again and about everything bouncy. In this case Slime-San may be the better choice. But overall she is the best playstyle for getting trophies.
Kawaii-San is a bit more floaty, which means it's easier to react to things around you, but she is slow, veeery slow, which means, that even though she is an easier playstyle in general, she isn't suited for this job. The exception being levels where you are able to take advantage of being floaty.
Eldest-San dashes further which makes him ideal for levels with a lot of straights. His lower jump height can be countered by adding an upward dash to each jump when wall climbing.
Son-san is fast on water levels with dash spamming being the fastest way to maneuver through water.
Evil-San dashes further just like Eldest-San, but can also jump higher. Be clever with this and you'll find many shortcuts.

 
Many people hate it, I hate it and you probably hate it too: Planning.
Planning plays a big role in this game, because just rushing into a level and expecting to beat the trophy times will most likely lead to nothing.

Especially as a speedrunner, planning has become very important for me. I need it in order to get faster and even to find shortcuts and use them.


A very good example, on why planning is important, is the story about how YOSUMIN and I found a consistent way of subbing 12 seconds in level 1-1:
So far, only I was able to get below 12 seconds and only because of a near perfect run.
Suddenly YOSUMIN hits me up on steam and proposes an idea, which would later lead us to sub 11 seconds.
He sent me a picture of the last room, with a few arrows on it, they showed a route which we never tried and I was confused, because I always thought it was slower:



After that we talked about the routes and the problems of using them, for that we used another picture of the last room, but I also marked the route we were currently using, as it helped us a bit.


(Red arrows: His idea; Pink arrows: Our current route) (ya, the red ones arent arrows..)
We came to the conclusion, that it could be worth a try and YOSUMIN tested it. He could easily beat my time. So I tried it too and could beat his one. After some time we both got sub 11 seconds.

This just shows that with planning you can achieve things you didn't know were possible. Only because of planning and YOSUMIN's idea we achieved something, almost one year ago I didn't even know was possible. If we only ever rushed into levels we couldn't have done this.
Just go and start any level, replay it a few times and look for ANY possible shortcut. Find some ideas, draw some arrows and maybe, you'll beat every other time in that level!
 

 
First of all, I really like the Super Mario 64 Speedrunning and TASing scene, so I wanted some krazy techniques with krazy names too, that's why I call this one LSL :P


Before I explain this thing you have probably nooo idea what it could mean, hence the title, I want to say, that YOSUMIN found out about this.
This basically changed the meta-game, because if you want to compete with the #1 times, you HAVE to use this.


Ever since input lock was (re-)introduced in the release-version of Slime-San, it has been harder to get better times, because you can't move for about 0.2-0.3 seconds when entering a level or room. Some beta testers probably know what I'm talking about.

Level Select Loading, or short LSL, kind of helps us deal with input lock.
As its name says, you start a level from the level select and instead of having the usual input lock, you can almost immediatly execute actions. While we don't know why it happens, we sure are happy that it does. In order to use it for our advantage we actually have to have plan on how we navigate through the level, hence the "Planning"-section :P.

The problem with LSL is, if you fail your run, you can't just re-use it by restarting with Quick Reset or via the pause menu, you have to go back to the level select and from then start the level from there, in order for it to work again. This costs time and is quite annoying, but there is no way around it.
It seems like LSL also works when you restart the level from the victory screen after beating it, but I'm not sure.


NOTE: This only works when entering FIRST ROOM. If you enter the next room, you won't be able to act immediatly again, you'll have to wait until the input lock is over. With this only working in the first room it may sound rather irrelevant, but it makes a huge difference if you're not using LSL.

We didn't want to keep this one to ourselves, that'd be unfair, so we decided to share this with you.
I really hope, that the very kind and beautiful developer team doesn't remove this bug/ feature ;P
 

Before I start this one, I want to clarify, that this is not as useful as you may hope.
Dash Cancel - Another super secret technique, this time found by me :D

Dash Cancelling (DC) basically means cancelling out a dash with another dash, probably sounds weird, but it makes sense. Whenever you dash, there is a small cooldown until you can dash again in order to prevent spamming and similar. But with DC you can just spam dash without any cool down.
The problem with DC is, that it occurs somewhat randomly, I just couldn't determine a consistent way of doing it. This means, that I'm only telling you about it, because IT IS possible to happen, so you shouldn't just stop after getting a good time at a level, but try it again, since maybe DC will happen. Sounds a bit annoying and useless, but with the right use, you could improve your times.
I got it to work sometimes by simply jumping or touching the ground without previously dashing in the air, but that was too inconsistent and could've been luck.

So far I've only been able to do it in 2-15, world 2's autoscroll level and 2-20, the boss of world 2. But I think it's possible in other levels too.


Here is a small comparison:
(Top with DC, Bottom without DC) (Sorry for the bad quality, I didn't setup my recordingsoftware correctly, you may need to reload the guide in order for them to start at the same time)

It's a bit hard to see in the gifs, sorry for that.

It's only a little bit faster, but maybe these 20 milliseconds decide whether or not you are #1?
After some testing it seems that Dash Cancelling also saves time, because dashing in general speeds things up, but not the time, so DC could be somewhat helpful in a bossfight (like 2-20).

But yeah, as I said, it isn't that useful, appears somewhat random and only saves little amount of time, so it's not really worth trying. I just wanted to

 
Took me a while to write all of this, it was fun, but I'm glad it's finished. I really hope, that this short guide can help some of you getting these trophies or maybe encourage some of you to join our (small) speedrun community for this great game!
There are probably still way more shortcuts for us to discover, but the game has only been out for a week now, this is only the beginning :P

Just like Super Milkbox' guide, this is the first guide I've made, please tell me if there are any mistakes, thank you for reading :)


Special Thanks:

YOSUMIN, for his suggestions and help finding some of the stuff.
Super Milkbox, for inspiring me to make a guide.
Fabraz, for this great game and their active bug fixing.


Please watch Super Milkbox' guide on how to get all apples. There is a special reward for you, if you got all apples and trophies... :P