Red speedrunning practice

Lately I've seen a lot of Red runners lose time to suboptimal menuing and movement. The best way to improve your time in an optimized game such as Red is to work on your execution, not grind out attempts in search of better luck. There are several ways you can do this -- practice execution-heavy splits (such as Koga or Lorelei), practice individual menus/movements (such as the Fly menu or Victory Road), or do no-reset runs to get practice in the context of the entire game.

Regardless of your practice method, you should set tangible goals for improvement. This will push you to practice until you're actually good, rather than until you no longer feel like practicing. However, given how much luck exists in a Red run, combined with the fact that top runners tend to reset for the best luck, I'm think many runners don't know a good way to measure their execution. To help this, I've listed goal times for several execution-heavy splits below.

Fly: sub-10:24
Koga: sub-14:00
Erika: sub-5:10
Blaine: sub-2:58
Sabrina: sub-1:44
Lorelei: sub-8:00

These times assume the standard strats for a god Nidoran. The splits have RNG, but if you set up a proper save state, you'll rarely lose significant time to it. The idea is that when you get the standard "good RNG," such as full red bar in the Koga split or 0-1 useless criticals in the Sabrina split, you'll meet the goal with good execution.

If you're unclear on the standard strats that you should use for this, read the info below.

Fly -- Leave Surge in red bar, buy Super Potions in Celadon. You can switch out on the 4-turn Thrash fight to continue practicing, but you won't be able to meet the goal time this way. Split in the middle of the HM02 jingle.

Koga -- Have Paras (or, if you don't, add 7 seconds of handicap). Don't get the PP Up, swap X Speed and X Special up, Horn Drill Machoke, get red bar off Silph Rival, use Elixer and Rare Candy before the second Juggler, X Acc to stall on Weezing.

Erika -- Use 2 Rare Candies in Fuchsia, walk to the water, use 2 Rare Candies in the mansion, IB x4 in Erika's gym.

Blaine -- EQ x4.

Sabrina -- EQ x4.

Lorelei -- X Acc + X Special on Viridian Rival, deposit Squirtle and Paras/Oddish, use bird strats on Lorelei, EQ Jynx. Add 1.2 seconds of handicap if your flier is Spearow.

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Questions? Talk to me on Twitter/Twitch/Skype, and I'll be happy to help.