Nuclear throne general speedrunning FAQ

nuclear throne speedruns general FAQ:

you can speedrun this game?
yes.  you can try, at least.

what is the definition of this category?
complete the game (sit on the throne) as fast as possible.  golden weapon, proto chests, and starting with crowns are all banned, but anything else goes.

why steroids?
steroids has by far the best DPS in the game early on, as he can basically do double the dps of other characters.  his throne butt gives him absurd sustain for fast firing, high damage weapons, all his weapons are automatic which means you're getting essentially the optimal DPS for a weapon versus having to mash click, and even his weapon inaccuracy can help him clear rooms faster than other characters.  plant may move fast, but the main bottleneck in this run tends to be killing beefier enemies with low-mid tier weapons.

what mutations or weapons are you looking for?
mutations: scarier/extra feet are usually taken over everything.  last wish is excellent as well due to jungle and quick ammo refills.  stress, throne butt, impact wrists, and paw are solid pickups.  rhino and bloodlust are fantastic for defensive mutations but wont help speed up the run usually.  everything else tends to be situational: trigger and marrow are nice but dont help with the dps bottleneck against throne, boilies is useless for most of the run but saves 2-3 seconds on the throne explosion, gamma guts can get ~2 second kills on big dog but offers basically nothing else, open mind is actually pretty nice to get more chances for weapon chests.  everything else is fairly lackluster.

weapons: assault rifle from the 1-1 chest is ideal.  oasis tends to spawn the same weapon as 1-1, which gives you double assault rifles which can easily get you through most of the game.  a slugger or crossbow from a chest is very nice on 3-3 as it allows you to do the swap spam trick against big dog.  for mid/late game weapons, assault slugger is the ideal weapon to get against lil hunter, as 2 clips will kill him and it is an excellent high damage weapon for snowbots/tanks, and enemies in palace.  auto bow can be found as early as jungle (assuming oasis route) which is absurdly good for mid game.  for throne, gat slugger, heavy slugger, super bazooka, super slugger, and super crossbow are ideal.  ironically, unlike score runs, energy weapons are usually avoided since they have fairly lackluster dps and clear compared to other weapons (the early ones do, plasma cannon/spc are busted lol) and melee weapons are absolutely horrid for going fast, except jackhammer is occasionally good to plow through jungle.


how are you firing X weapon so fast/why is there so much text on the screen?
dropping a weapon will completely refresh the time it takes to reload.  by mashing the pickup weapon key, you can essentially fire a weapon without reload time allowing you to absolutely nuke bosses.  steroids makes this even more awesome by having all his weapons be automatic, meaning as soon as you pick up the weapon it will automatically fire again.  this trick unfortunately can't be used on throne as you dont have a weapon chest close enough, meaning you'd have to run to him to start the fight, run back to use the trick, and then run back again to sit in the throne.


why is jungle fast?
while jungle is absolutely brutal to get through, it essentially skips 2 levels of the most lengthy and most random zone, it gives you back a mutation, and last wish is a nice refill for ammo and health mid run.  overall, a good jungle will save anywhere from 15-25 seconds.  if i don't get jungle, i take the crown vault on 5-2 instead for similar reasons, often taking crown of destiny to hopefully get a clutch mutation to catch up some lost time.




besides that, leaderboards can be found here: https://www.speedrun.com/Nuclear_Throne