What is this guide?

This guide is written for those of you looking to speedrun Element4l, whether it be the whole game or IL speedruns, or just looking to improve your times overall. Element4l is on the whole a fairly simple game in its speed tech. The vast majority of people who pick up this game should be able to manage fairly competitive times with the help of this tech, none of which are individually difficult to pull off.

Throughout the guide we will assume you understand the basic movement as described in the tutorial, and also have seen the various objects encountered throughout the levels (speed boosts, lava, etc) and know the basics of what they do.

Who am I?

I originally played this game semi-casually back in 2013. I've never been #1 on any of the IL leaderboards, but I have fairly competitive times at the top of a good number of them. I've returned to the game recently to bring my remaining times up to par and bring all my rankings to within the top 7 (ideally top 5, but some of these levels can be pretty tight on execution).

Other resources

Element4l is not a very widely played game, so resources on the game are scarce. Moreover, the race system, while nice, is usually not helpful for players in the middle of the pack trying to improve your times, because it only ever shows you a ghost that is quite close to your own leaderboard placement. If you check the IL leaderboards, you'll see (especially on later levels) that there is often a huge gap (possibly up to dozens of seconds) between a top 5 runner and the subsequent records. This usually happens because of a shortcut that is known to the top runners but unknown to the rest of the leaderboard, and only a few players have access to the ghosts from the top runners, making it hard to see what shortcuts are being used. Moreover, even if you have access to the top ghosts, if they are going faster than you then they often disappear off screen and you still don't know what tricks they are performing.

Fortunately, Samppooni (one of the best runners of this game, and at least back in 2013 the single best) has posted recordings of his IL records on their YouTube channel. Routing takes up the majority of Element4l timesaves, and these videos will show you what shortcuts are being used at the top level of play. Once you are aware of these shortcuts, and you are equipped with the mechanical knowledge from this guide (which are required for many of the shortcuts), you should be well prepared to start attempting optimal IL runs yourself. This guide will not touch on routing since Samppooni's videos do that better than I could in words. Also, I think exploring and routing the levels yourself without spoilers is a lot of fun, so I don't want to take that experience away from anyone who just wants to learn the speed tech.

In any case, big shoutout to Samppooni for their big contribution to this small community. In 2013 I used to see some of your ghosts in race mode and have no clue what happened, and I'm really glad to have come back and discovered that you recorded it all. If you see this, I hope you don't mind that I'm using your videos as prime examples of the tech described in the guide.

TL;DR: Air and Fire lose momentum, switch back to Ice immediately in most scenarios to go fast.

The most important mechanic to know about in Element4l is air resistance. The core of it is very simple. When you are Air or Fire, you experience air resistance, resulting in a gradual loss of momentum. When you are Earth or Ice, you ignore air resistance, and preserve all momentum while you are in the air.

What this means is that in practice, since switching to Ice is free, top runners generally try to stay in the Ice form as much as possible while airborne. This is also why if you come across a ghost for a fairly fast leaderboard time in race mode, you typically see the ghosts switch to Fire or Air for only a fraction of a second before switching back to Ice. In any portion of a level where the current priority is just speed (as opposed to, say, obstacle avoidance), any excess time spent as Air or Fire is automatic time loss. Given the nature of Element4l, this kind of time loss can compound because losing momentum earlier can result in being unable to perform certain maneuvers later, as well as simply limiting the overall top speed you can achieve in that level. Using the momentum preservation property of Ice also allows for significantly longer or higher jumps than otherwise possible, and is vital to most major shortcuts.

Example:

All top times in Element4l constantly make use of this mechanic, but a standout example is Samppooni's run of S1L4. The first instance of the use of this mechanic begins at 0:10, where Samppooni is seen switching back and forth between Air and Ice in order to make it to the ledge toward the left. This jump is impossible without switching to Ice, as while you can gain the necessary height easily, you lose too much horizontal momentum from air resistance if you stay as Air.

The second instance of making use of the no-air-resistance property of Ice begins at 0:17. It is a similar story: Samppooni needs to make this (rather difficult) jump and needs to preserve all of the horizontal momentum they can get, especially because it is likely impossible to gain the required vertical height from switching to Air alone; some of the horizontal momentum needs to be converted to vertical by hitting the slope with enough horizontal and some upward momentum. You will notice that Samppooni's Air transformations are extremely brief, and they spend as much time as possible in Ice form.

The final instance of the use of this knowledge in this short level is the remainder of the run, in which Samppooni slides and flies over the top of the (intended) level. You will notice here as well that Samppooni switches to Fire to gain additional horizontal momentum and to Air for some upward momentum on the final jump, but in both cases immediately switches back to Ice and stays that way for most of the final jump, using transformations only to adjust their position. Here it is partly about being able to make the jump, but mostly now about maintaining as much speed as possible.

Caveat:

There exist a few situations in some levels where it is not advantageous to immediately switch to Ice after an Air or Fire transformation. These mostly involve some specific obstacles (such as some of the radioactive goo spikes in S3L4) where slowing down can be the better option, or specific elemental interactions (like Air and lava) where you should delay the Ice transformation if it keeps you from falling into the lava.

Also, it appears that in the absence of preexisting vertical momentum, you get the greatest height from multiple Air transformations if you omit the Ice transformations in between. This may have to do with another property of Air and Fire regarding their response to momentum boosts; we'll discuss this in the next section.

TL;DR: Switch to Air/Fire over a ground booster for an extra big burst of speed.

Air and Fire behave differently from Ice when moving over a ground booster. Although I do not know how the physics engine is implemented in game, a good way to think about it is that Air and Fire behave as if they are weightless/extremely light, while Ice is comparatively heavy. Ground boosters will provide the same boost in momentum always, but as you may know from basic physics: if you apply the same force to two objects, the lighter object accelerates much faster.

Therefore top IL runs usually seek to use save energy for an Air/Fire transformation if a ground booster is coming up. The resulting speed boost over remaining as Ice is quite substantial, and in fact necessary for certain strats that require a very large amount of momentum to make a particular jump. Getting the boost is fortunately not a frame-perfect input. Ground boosters act over a small length of ground rather than a single pixel, and you can get the Air/Fire boost as long as you are over the AoE covered by the booster. Be careful, however, not to transform too early, as it may result in you flying over the booster instead. Once you get the boost you will usually have to transform back to Ice almost immediately, as otherwise you will hit the ground as Air or Fire and die.

For maximum speed, you should usually use a Fire transformation if you are going over a booster while moving right. You can use Air here but it will provide a slightly smaller boost on average, and also may be less consistent to pull off for some boosters. If you are moving left over the booster, you have no choice but to use an Air transformation.

Example:

S3L4 is a good example of a boosting level. Here we have Samppooni's S3L4 run.

The level starts off immediately with a booster to the right of the starting position. The intended route is to use the booster to bounce as Fire off the lava wall, going under the starting platform and emerging on the right side later. However, by making use of a very quick Fire transformation over the booster (0:06) in a way that leaves them grounded and able to get a little upward momentum from the little blip in the ground, Samppooni is able to generate enough upward momentum to go over the top of the wall to the right. (Some version of this can be done with Air too, but it does seem a bit less consistent.) You can see the traces of the fire transformation in slow motion; the switch back to Ice needs to be very fast to avoid crashing into the ground. This jump over the wall is likely impossible if you do not get the enhanced boost from switching to fire. In fact, Samppooni gets enough momentum here to skip the first minecart in S3L4 entirely, which is one of the two major timesaves in this level.

(Note also the lava jump at 0:24, skipping the 2nd minecart. This is another jump that is impossible without switching to Ice to preserve horizontal momentum.)

The next ground booster appears at 0:38, and again Samppooni makes use of a quick fire transformation to get the maximum amount of speed here. In this case this is just a speed optimization, but it likely saves several seconds overall given how you can make use of high speed from early in the level later on.

The next ground booster is at 0:47, and again Samppooni uses another Fire transformation over the booster for the extra speed. At 0:49, Samppooni transforms to Air over the booster, since they are moving leftward this time and cannot use Fire. The booster at 0:51 is used without a transformation because of a lack of transformation gauge, but Samppooni recovers enough gauge to use an Air transformation over the 0:53 booster. Another fire transformation is used over the 1:10 booster, which is necessary to generate enough speed for the final flight directly toward the soulspark (cutting out a long section involving a leftward booster that would be on the top left platform at 1:11).

In summary, in S3L4 we get to see the full utility of Air/Fire transformations over ground boosters, both in just generating ground speed for the "intended" routes and in providing enough speed to allow for major skips.

The lava glitch is the last major piece of tech one needs to know before contending for top times on certain levels. This trick allows you to clip through certain walls and often save several dozens of seconds. Activating the lava glitch itself is fairly easy; the challenge is that each instance of the lava glitch can have multiple outcomes, and getting the outcome you want is not always easy as in many ways this glitch involves interaction with invisible level geometry.

S4L3 is probably the best level to get a feel for how the glitch works, since the start of the level is always consistent and the glitch appears at the very beginning. At 0:06, we see Samppooni hit the lava wall as Ice, turning into water and still carrying some upward momentum. While still in the water state, Samppooni clips through the corner of this lava wall.

From here the exact sequence of inputs is of course impossible to determine, but Samppooni is likely doing a combination of Air-Ice and Fire-Ice switches to generate a ton of vertical and horizontal momentum. (Samppooni still has the infinite transformation gauge powerup from the start of the level.) The interior of the wall has its own geometry, with its own collidable surfaces and empty space. In particular, you can use transformations inside the wall, as Samppooni does here. Samppooni emerges a second later on the opposite side of the wall as Ice. From here on the level proceeds with normal physics. In this level, not only does this save a very long initial section involving moving upwards to melt into water in order to fit through a small drain at the start of the level, it also lets you use the infinite gauge powerup to move extremely fast over most of the level rather than just to solve the starting puzzle. This probably saves at least 30 seconds if not a full minute.

The precise mechanics of why the glitch occurs are unknown to me, but it is a fairly easy one to replicate. Two more examples are in S1L1 (0:18) and S3L4 (0:57), both appearing slightly different from the S4L3 example. The precise mechanics of triggering the clip can vary. In S1L1, you must use a Fire transformation while the water is in contact with the wall in order to clip into it. Depending on the precise manner in how you clip, you may also access different interior geometries. For example, the S1L1 clip actually has at least 3 different interior geometries you can clip into, with the one shown in Samppooni's run being the fastest but also hardest to access consistently. The top of the S1L1 leaderboard is in fact stratified based on which geometry you enter after the lava glitch.

It appears that the common points are:

• You must be in the water state.
  
• You must hit a lava wall, or a wall adjacent to lava, while in the water state.
  
• In some of the cases, you will clip into the wall without any further action. In others, you may need to move into the wall using a transformation while the water is in contact with the wall.
  
• Once you clip inside the wall, you may transform, though the unseen interior geometry of the wall can still kill you if you switch to Air or Fire and collide into something.
  
• Once you clip back out, the game's physics returns to normal.

Incorporating the lava glitch is an easy way to skip fairly long sections, and many of the big gaps between the top 5-8 leaderboard times and everyone else come down to this glitch.

Starting gauge:

You do not always have full gauge when you start a level, and the in-game timer for individual levels starts only on first input. This means that depending on the nature of the level start, it may be optimal to pause for a moment and let your gauge refill. One example of this is S1L1, in which you spawn as Earth and come to a standstill if you enter no inputs. Since you begin with no horizontal momentum, there is no benefit to an early first input, so the optimal strategy here is to pause for a moment and begin the run with full gauge, allowing you to instantly transform Fire-Ice twice, and another Fire-Ice shortly after.

Starting movement:

Conversely, sometimes you have starts where you begin in motion, In these cases, the in-game timer still only starts on your first input, so you may wish to delay first input until you are in a favorable initial position. For instance, this is the case in S1L2, in which you spawn as Earth rolling slightly to the right before starting to roll back. The optimal strategy here is to transform to Fire when you are at (or nearly at) the edge of the rightward movement, since this will get you some free extra distance toward the soulspark. This will also give you time to fill the gauge to full, which is important for allowing the 3 Fire transformations needed to collect the soulspark in a single jump.

The tricky thing about the above two tips is that ghosts in race mode do not show this process: they only record beginning from first input. So it can be hard to figure out from the ghosts alone why other players are managing such fast starts (or appear to be starting ahead of you). Usually one of these is the culprit.

Water boosting:

When using Air inside of water to gain upward momentum, you can time an Air transformation at the moment you emerge above the surface for the maximum boost. This isn't a special trick or anything, it's just another instance of the air resistance mechanic coming into play. Delaying the boost results in lower max speed due to the loss of speed during the delay, and boosting inside the water doesn't do much.

Movement in infinite gauge:

Stage 4 introduces a new mechanic in the super-soulsparks that give infinite transformation gauge for a limited time. Although the mechanic is pretty self-explanatory and limited to Stage 4, there is one useful fact to know. During extended rightward aerial trajectories with infinite gauge, you obtain a higher speed by rapidly alternating Fire/Ice transformations than by spamming Fire. To my understanding this is relevant for the S4L1 lava glitch strat: I'm pretty sure you need the extra momentum to be able to activate the lava glitch with time remaining on the second super-soulspark charge. I believe the same principle should hold for alternating Air/Ice over spamming Air, but there aren't that many places where you need to obtain crazy upward momentum so I can't confirm this.

Final thoughts:

These are all the major speed techs as far as I'm aware - the rest, in my mind, is sequencing and routing. If you are aware of something significant that deserves mention, feel free to let me know and I'll try to update the guide. Also, if you think there are details that are worth contributing to the mechanics already mentioned in this guide, I'd be happy to hear from you as well and potentially add it to the guide (especially an explanation of the lava glitch).

Acknowledgements:

Once again, shoutout to Samppooni for his IL videos. I did not explicitly ask permission to use their videos as examples, but hopefully the extensive attribution should suffice.

Shoutout to I-Illusions for creating what I consider one of the best designed and sadly overlooked games of the 2010s.