throne any% faq

nuclear throne faq:

Q: what is this shit
A: game is nuclear throne, roguelike, unseeded any%.  you progress through levels by killing every enemy and collect radiation which can be spent on leveling up by selecting a perk from a random pool of perks (known as mutations).  layouts are random, weapon drops are random, almost everything is random.


Q: what's the run like?
A: tl;dr defeat the nuclear throne as fast as possible, fresh start (no crowns/gold weapons), timed by ingame time.  we use a character that dual wields weapons, he's far and away the best character for speedrunning.

we take a shortcut in 1-1 to skip a ton of early progression areas, saving a bunch of time but leaving us undergeared.  each level from here is just clearing every enemy to progress, and every x-3 level is a boss level that also must be killed.  7-3 is the final boss and it's basically a DPS check that ends the run when killed.

the run as a whole is bottlenecked by 2 things: damage and movement.  there's very few mutations that strictly assist in either of these things, so generally it's not worth it to sit and ponder over mutations and instead just pick what immediately sticks out as useful.  weapon drops are completely random though and what can drop is based on your progression - getting good weapons is incredibly important and is what makes or breaks seeds.

the main interesting mutation we really want is last wish - this opens up a shortcut in 5-1 (jungle) that lets you instantly clear 5-1 and then play through a (very bullshit) optional area.  a high roll on a good jungle layout probably saves 10-15 seconds over not using jungle but an average jungle breaks even, assuming you manage the survive it :).  i need this mutation before 5-1, and if i don't get it it's a reset on the spot unless my pace and build is incredibly good otherwise.

as far as weapons, it's way too difficult to explain what i would and wouldn't want.  in general though bolt weapons are best due to high dps, and a mutation (bolt marrow) that makes them snap towards enemies and makes aiming trivial.  by 5-3 if you want a WR capable run you practically need to have a top tier bolt weapon - in the top 5 of any%, my run is the only one without one lmao.  expected odds on this are about 1/22 for every weapon from a red chest in jungle and a 1/37 chance from any weapon drop from a jungle enemy.  you also have a small chance of finding something early in 5-3 but you're kind of fucked if you dont find one before the boss spawns.  good luck.

in early game i'm resetting for 3/9 possible weapon drops from the 1-1 red chest, solid mutations on top of needing last wish by 5-1, then a good bolt weapon in jungle along with a good jungle layout (and good layouts throughout, for that matter), and if all of that comes together i have a good shot at PB/WR if the layouts are good and i get good enough weapons to finish off the final boss.  expect 1 or less WR capable seeds a day.

despite that it's a pretty fun run imo.  lots of quick decisions and subtle knowledge is rewarded (especially on knowing where enemies likely are on layouts), having to execute on the run where things slowly come together is really fun.  go in with low expectations (ie don't expect to PB every session) and it's a good time, at least until you're 2 hours deep and haven't seen last wish yet


Q: what's your goal/PB/WR?
A: current PB is 3:21 (4th place, 2nd is a tie at 3:20), WR is 3:09.  my goal is WR and depending on how long that takes sub 3 afterwards.

current WR is a pretty strong run - all the top runs are skilled runners getting pretty solid seeds, despite all the RNG good seeds only take you so far in this game.  PB is quite weak for my skill level though - again, it's the only run in top 5 without a god tier bolt weapon, it was otherwise a solid seed that i played pretty well.  in my previous grind a year ago i was really close to record but eventually moved on to other things (minecraft i think, lmao), had several runs that would be WR with better end game weapons and a handful of sub 3 potential that died in palace.  also had a run that was a 3:23 without jungle :).


Q: any glitches or tech?
A: not really any heavy glitch abuse, a fairly large oversight is hotswapping:

hotswapping: picking up a weapon off the floor refreshes reload cooldown, meaning you can mash picking up a weapon to fire it without cooldown - seen very often in 3-3

otherwise the tech is mostly just noticing patterns with generation or other quirks.  some examples:

portals spawn on the last enemy killed in a level, but theres a lot of nuance.  killing 2 enemies at once will often spawn the portal on the first of the two enemies, destroying props after the final enemy will often delay the portal spawn, and the 3-3 boss when killed has an animation that must first play before the portal becomes active, meaning it's optimal to kill him first and then clean up all the other enemies as he's dying.

the oasis weapon chest is bugged and will very frequently spawn the same weapon that was found in 1-1 - this means a good 1-1 weapon likely means a good oasis weapon, which is why bad weapons in 1-1 is so slow.

skipping red chests gives a higher chance of spawning a big weapon chest in the next level which contains 3 weapons.  manipulating these is player preference.  my manipulation involves skipping the 4-1 and 5-1 chest in every circumstance, to try to hedge on a jungle big red chest to give me 3 rolls at an auto crossbow or splinter pistol.  very few weapons added to the pool in 4-1 are better than the ones you reset for in 1-1, so it's rarely worth checking.


Q: are any other character viable?
A: steroids, the dual wielding character, is clearly the best.  dual wielding gives him effectively double the DPS of any other character in the game, and while he's a very weak character in score runs any% ends far before he starts to fall off.  he also automatically fires weapons when holding fire which means he's doing optimal dps with every weapon, as opposed to potentially losing frames from mashing on non-automatic weapons.  there's not much to it other than that - while some other characters have faster movespeed or other interesting niches, damage is the most important thing in the run - it doesn't matter how fast you move through levels if nothing is dying.  every character is capable of a sub 4 though, but all of them are just less interesting than roids.


Q: why continue some runs past the nuclear throne?
A: killing the generators in the throne fight lets you loop the game, opening up extra content and other categories.  if a run is barely too slow for PB but has a really strong build, i'll go for this and try for record in another category.  captain has you enter the HQ and fight an optional extra boss that ends the game when killed, and all bosses has you kill all the loop bosses before ending on captain.  it's more likely i'll go for captain - i have record in all bosses and it's a very strong run on a lucky seed (overall run quality is much higher than my any% PB) and my captain PB (2nd) is pretty weak.


Q: planning on playing more/doing score runs?
A: no, they're too time consuming and stale for me.  i might do a daily or two just to get my fill of deep score runs but i am doubtful i will ever return to serious throne score attempts (if you're not in the know a PB potential run for me would take well over 8 hours).  also still to this day have people bugging me about it and that's a good way to make sure i never do it lmao