“To be, or not to be: that is the question:”

If you are interested in speedrunning, the first thing you need to do is beat the game once. That’s not condescension: without too many spoilers, you will need to reach floor 25 twice before you unlock the “story” enough to speedrun.

The first time you attempt a run, I would recommend you focus on staying alive and getting to the end. This will build your confidence and get you a victory right at the start. You can’t speedrun until you have a run!

Playing through the game to that point will get you familiar enough with game mechanics as well, or at least get you asking the right questions.

So have fun! Get to the final boss - turn off In Game Timer if you have to.

Spoiler warning from here on out.

In order to have your run verified on Speedrun.com, you’ll need to record yourself playing the full game. There are quite a few ways to record your screen such as OBS, a free software that is widely used to record or stream games.

I’ve seen issues with frame rate drops in the Queen Bee and Evil Frog Boss fights, so make sure your computer will be able to run OBS and DitD smoothly. You can try to optimize your settings on OBS, or playing DitD in windowed mode.

Be sure your recording follows speedrun rules:

• Make sure you record the “Play”, “New Run”, or “Give Up” buttons
  
• The IGT will need to be visible in the upper right corner the full run
  
• Spend a little extra time on the end screen that shows your final time and stats in case the video or video platform cut a bit off

You’ll need to create a (free) account on speedrun.com in order to submit a run. Follow the Die in the Dungeon game category as well to get notifications on new world records and other game activity.

There are a few different categories, but we are focusing on any% runs. The Steam edition is “PROLOGUE”.

You need the following information ready to submit your run:

• In Game Time (displayed on the Victory page)
  
• Link to the video of your speedrun
  
• Fun description or note for others to see!
  
• The category, player, platform, and date all auto-fill.

One way to get a playable link to your video for free is to upload it on YouTube. You can even set your run to be unlisted so it can’t be found by searching on YouTube.

"Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer"

Now that you are a speedrunner, you should join the community! You can show off your runs in the #submit-runs channel, get tips from other players, or get announcements for new fixes or features.

You have your run on the speedrun leaderboard, and now you need to beat it! Give your current PB a watch through and start analyzing it. How can you do better, and how much time might that save?

Set yourself a personal goal to beat and start working towards it. If you are not sure what a reasonable time is, start aiming for sub 20 minutes, then sub 15. After you have beaten the game in under 15 minutes, keep trying to save a minute off for your next goal!

The largest improvement a new player can make is in deck management. Slimmer decks are much quicker and more successful than heavy ones with lots of dice. You only have 5 dice available to play each turn - if you have more than 5 in your bag, you might not draw the dice you need to beat the floor quickly.

So, if you ignore this advice and continue making large decks, you will not draw enough attack dice to quickly clear floors => your final time will just be generally slow.

Five dice is an ideal deck - discard two of your starting dice as soon as you are able and leave your deck with 2 attack dice, 1 block, 1 boost, and the glass heal. Then start making your 5 dice stronger.

The second largest time sync is making decisions. You have to choose what dice to play, what enemy to target, what floor reward to pick, which dice to upgrade/draft/discard…

You should decide these things before you start your run. Here is your decision making strategy:

What dice should I play?

1. Prioritize attacking. You beat the game by clearing floors. You clear floors by attacking
   
2. If you will die this turn or next, then defend or heal
   BUT you might be able to stay alive by attacking instead
   e.g. 3 flies doing 3 damage each for your 9 hp - kill 1 fly rather than block 3
   
3. Practice putting your attack/block dice before placing your boost
   Place 2 dice in the corners of the board
   Then place a 1 or 2 or 3 boost on the board so it boosts both other dice

What enemy should I target?

1. Which enemy has the highest health you can kill this turn? Target that one
   
2. If multiple, take out the one with the most attacks

Here is a quick prioritization of enemies:

1. elite archer
   
2. elite beetle
   
3. elite fly
   
4. elite moth
   
5. cockroach

What reward should I choose?

1. Don’t get more dice - you want fewer dice than you start with, not more.
   
2. Upgrade your attack to silver - you need higher attacks to kill enemies
   
3. Discard 1 block and 1 boost - so you can draw those silver attacks more often
   
4. Upgrade your attacks to gold, then your boost to gold
   
5. Start upgrading the rest of your cards and add good mods to your dice
   
6. Heal if you are almost dead

You’ll have to play aggro. You’ll die in the dungeon a lot, but that is kind of the point of the game 🙂

I’ll repeat here: the way to get to floor 25 is to clear floors and the way to clear floors is to kill enemies. Always look for any opportunity to make the best kill you can.

• 1x2boost + 2x1attack = 6 damage = fly dead
  
• 1x1boost + 2x2attack = 6 damage = fly dead
  
• 1x2boost + 2x3attack = 10 damage = dead moth or spider archer
  
• 1x3 attack + 1x2attack = 5 damage = ant dead
  
• And so on

The Queen Bee on floor 20 ends a lot of good runs. Hopefully, you have your attack at gold (with hollow or grow mods as well), and your other dice past basic tier. It also helps to have 26 HP so you can survive 2 hits without defense.

The Queen Bee can take the following actions:

• Strong Attack: 11-13 damage
  
• Honey Blocks: gives 3 honey dice to the player
  
• Special: The Queen Bee does nothing this turn, but the next turn is ALWAYS two heavy attacks.

The Honey Dice are the main mechanics of the boss fight.

• Honey Dice can roll 1-3 and act similarly on the board as boost, placing honey spots 1-3 spots away according to the die roll
  
• However, any dice on these honey blocks are halved
  
• Unless, the honey dice is on a Crown Spot (Royal Jelly), in which case, the die on the royal jelly is doubled

Since the Queen Bee has 120HP, you have to use this mechanic in your favor to damage the bee quickly enough.

• Place the highest facing die on the crown spots: 6x2=12; 4x2=8
  
• Boost works before the crown spots double: (6+3)x2=18
  
• If you have 5 dice in your deck and the bee has honey intent,
  and if you play 3 dice that turn, your hand will fill with 3 honey blocks
  so save back 1 die that you want to play next turn
  
• Honey blocks can stack on crown spots: 6x2x2=24; or with hollow 6x2x2x2=48
  
• When you see the special intent, start preparing for 20+ damage by next turn. You need to either kill the bee, or add some heal and block to survive

The Evil Frog uses the same board as you to make his attacks, which make it more difficult for you to use your boost without accidentally bosting him. He has two phases with 50 health and 80 health respectively. Phase 2 also allows him to play 4 dice with mirror to potentially copy your dice.

• Grow counters on your dice, your health, and your block all carry over to phase 2
  
• Keep an eye on boosting patterns to quickly decide if you can boost your dice without boosting his
  
• The Evil Frog will also use boost dice and will sometimes leave places that you can boost your dice with
  
• If you have the heavy mod on your dice, don’t place them in the corners - the Evil Frog plays first and can use mirror dice to duplicate the effect for himself
  
• Don't use terrain dice generally, as the Evil Frog can use them for himself too.

You can also click to speed up his dialog.

"The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,"

There is a lot of RnG in DitD Speedrunning. Proper deckbuilding is the way to make our own good luck.

The hollow mod allows you to play a dice without using action points. Heavy mod leaves the dice on the board, while subtracting 1 from its value for each subsequent turn. There is currently a 1 turn delay between heavy running out - it is discarded in the bag AFTER it runs out and is not immediately redrawn

For speedrunning, you want hollow over heavy. You might not even want heavy at all. If you have 5 dice in your deck, and 2 of them have hollow, you can play the same 5 dice every turn almost without thinking which can really speed up the time each turn takes.

A Heavy dice loses value after each turn, while a hollow dice is rerolled every time you play it. Eventually, a heavy gold die will only output 1, while a hollow gold die will never roll a 1.

The only situation I’ve seen heavy benefit a speedrun is with a larger deck - heavy stays on the board, and helps get the other dice rolled. But even then, you want grow on the heavy dice to keep the output consistent each turn.

Generally, the only time heavy is applied is on block dice in large decks, as it allows for constant damage without much risk.

The Grow mod adds one bonus point every time a die is played. Always take grow!

Improve your attack dice with grow first, but you can also add it to your block or heal if you already have grow on your other attack dice.

You can use grow on heavy dice to make their output consistent - the +1 bonus offsets the -1 of heavy. So if you roll a 6 on a heavy grow attack, it will put out 6 damage every turn.

You can add the grow mod as a floor reward, or find grow dice as floor rewards, or in events (the Jester might even transform a grow dice for you). The Mage Grasshopper event transforms 1 dice with the grow mod and 1 with the glass mod. Choose your attack dice for grow and let the glass be random. You can discard that die and replace with with a new die from a floor reward or event.

Grow also plays a large part in defeating floors 20-25 quickly by scaling damage each turn.

• Mirror dice are more helpful in the Queen Bee battle than the Evil Frog
  
• Boost patterns allow for +8 (4x2spots) or +6 (2x3spots)
  
• Mirror dice naturally can be +6 when mirroring a 6, but can boost higher when targeting grow, or in conjunction with a boost/honey
  
• Mirror is most helpful when there is a specific die you need to boost (such as area attack)
  
• Can also be used to help larger hands - mirror doubles a die to make up for not drawing another, and has either hollow or glass

Always take the skip floor event to pass 2-4 levels. This can give you 5 floors free (including the event floor) and is more powerful the higher the floor you can skip. If you get the event earlier, the gold die draft will let you pass subsequent floors quicker.

Exact die draft should be chosen situationally, but if you do not choose one of the three dice, and instead press skip, the event itself is also skipped 🙁

Getting smooth movement is not as much of a timesaver as deck building and decision making, but it helps to shave off seconds

Keeping track of what dice you have in the discard pile and which dice you will draw next can help you plan your future moves, saving time on decision making. Knowing exactly how many discards or upgrades you need to have a viable deck is important too

Practice placing dice in a common boost pattern - even if you don’t necessarily need it that turn. The most easiest place for the boosted dice to be is in adjacent corners, which helps power the +3boost+mirror placement.

Mouse movements to these places should be the most fluid. When fighting axe bugs or ants which restrict your die placements, try placing the boost die first to determine the best position for that turn.

Many event floors, such as the random 3 die upgrades and the grow/glass event, have a final dialog to end the event. Save a couple seconds here by positioning your mouse in the middle of the screen and end the event right away.

Becoming familiar with the different events that can fire will also help save time. Beware the Jester.

Make a habit of placing your glass die during the final turn to heal up before the next floor. This will allow the chance for max health increase reward rather than heal up. Killing enemies should still take priority over the final heal.

Get used to clicking the Finish button to end your turn. You’ll click that a lot.

Speedrun.com is the best place to watch runs of other speedrunners, but there are several on YouTube, and you can also ask the Discord community for others. On speedrun.com, you can see the top runs and analyze their strategies.

Pick a run that is closest in time to yours or your goal and figure out what they did differently than you. Did it work for them? What things could they do better?

You’ll come across new strategies or tech that you can use in your next run - and posting your runs gives other runners the same opportunity!

The biggest indicator of a fast pace is the boss fights. Currently, the discord community considers a 4-5 minute bee a quick pace. Entering the final boss at 8 minutes is also considered quite fast. Typically, floor 1-19 takes a little less than half of your run, and floor 21-24 takes a bit less than that time. (The final boss death animation takes 25 seconds or so by itself)

For reference, one of the previous World Record runs at 8:58 (IGT) has the following rough splits (video time):

1. Floor 1 complete: 9s
   
2. First Event Floor: 17s
   
3. Floor +10: 1m48s
   
4. Queen Bee enter: 4m26s
   
5. Queen Bee kill: 5m23s
   
6. Evil Frog Enter: 6m44s
   
7. Final: 9m15s

The following enemies have gimmicks.

You must kill the roach with the exact damage of its health (7). If you don’t it will revive itself with 2 more HP than it had before. Here’s a few common combinations:
4+3=7
5+2=7
6+1=7
2+3+2=7
4+2+1=7
4+5=9
6+3=9

A good strategy if there are multiple cockroaches and you can't perfectly kill one is to reset one of its health to a higher number, allowing for more combinations to work.

A recent patch added a cap to cockroach health to 2x their original health. These can now be brute forced in 4 turns (7, 9, 11, 13) which can be a viable option if “softlocked” with heavy or grow attack.

The mimic enemy (it’s a cicada) will make moves based on the dice you play. Either kill it first, or kill the other bugs with minimal dice (2 attacks vs 3, or do you really want that block?)

The axe bug limits your movement by targeting 3 spaces in a line on the board. If you do not place dice there, the axe does 10 damage vs 5.

Option A: Kill the axe bug first (easily done with 2 gold attack and 1 gold boost)
Option B: Kill the other bugs on the floor, but place your dice on the targeted line

Area attack target every enemy on the floor with its attack. This is tremendously helpful to clear floors quickly by killing multiple enemies, or even killing all enemies in 1 turn.

If you have optimized your time with the tips above, the last major improvement to your run is area dice. Current speedrun meta rates area damage as overpowered. The current fastest run without area damage is 9:00, which is over a minute behind the actual world record.

The area attack dice are found in endless mode. You will encounter an event floor at an “altar” - choose to grab the dice and start a battle. If you win the battle, you will be able to draft area damage in later runs.

"Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,"

This is an advanced tip that can take many forms:

• Choosing to kill an enemy with 3rd die rather than take an extra turn to heal
  
• Choosing to kill enemies on turn 1 and 2, tanking damage rather than block and take extra turns
  
• Choosing to click finish rather than take time to place the heal die on the board

This shaves seconds off the run but is risky. You ‘might’ get a full heal as a reward.

You may get a heal to full, or +3 max hp event along with the other floor rewards for upgrading dice or discarding dice. I typically only heal up with floor rewards when below half health. I also prefer improving my deck over getting more max HP. My general priority is as follows:

1. Adding Hollow/Grow/Area to attack
   
2. Upgrading attack
   
3. Discarding down
   
4. Upgrading deck
   
5. Health
   
6. New Dice (unless hunting for area)

Adding heavy is usually only good on block dice, or if you have multiple area attack dice.

In general, prioritize killing the largest enemy you can each turn. However, it may be smarter in rare circumstances to flip that order around. Below are a few examples I’ve found:

• Elite Shield vs Elite Moth: Shield has 25 health vs Moth at 20. Shield adds on top of HP up to max HP (potentially requiring up to 50 damage or 40 damage burst), but the Moth can only heal up to max HP. Targeting Shield first can get you 2 turn Shield and 2 turn Moth. If you hit Moth first, the Shield beetle will shield itself and potentially take 3 turns
  
• Cockroach: If you see an opportunity to hit a roach with a 7 or a 9 for a kill that can take less time than killing a larger enemy and not getting the exact roll later
  
• Axe bug: Killing the axe bug frees you to place dice wherever you need for maximum boost without taking 10 damage each turn
  
• Elite Fly: The Elite fly can have 5x1attack hits, which take longer to animate than other enemies

When you have more than 5 die in your deck, you cannot draw all of them on turn 1. Playing a glass die removes it from your hand for that floor. Use this to your advantage to clear out your hand on that floor to help your subsequent roll more likely to contain a better die (attack)

This can be especially good in early floors when you need both attack and a good boost roll to kill moths quickly. Doubly so after the grow/glass event and you haven’t been able to discard the glass.

Similar to above, playing a die returns it to the bag to be rerolled before being played again. Here are a couple examples of how this can be used:

• If you only need 1 good rolled attack to kill an enemy, but you also have a poor rolled attack, play the poor attack also so it can reroll higher
  
• If you have a gold attack and a silver attack with the same roll, play the gold attack since it can reroll higher than the silver
  
• 1 roach and 1 fly - kill fly but reroll the boost for the roach (really need a picture for this one)

On my current World Record run, I discarded heal die. This is a highly risky move but can offer some improvements on speed. This frees your hand for another boost die, mirror die, or attack die. This can also speed your floors as you have no way to heal up, so you don’t spend time placing your heal or thinking about it; the downside is you potentially miss out on floor rewards to take the full heals.

Here’s a list of current known time skips:
Evil Frog talking animation is sped up by clicking
Closing dice bag/hitting skip for events and upgrades is a slight time save
Event floors slow IGT ~1 second compared to real time
Clicking a die in your action bar can skip the roll animation
Spam click the bottom middle of the screen during Evil Frog death animation (where the End Run option will show up

Also not facetious. If you recognize a run is not hitting the pace you need, or not giving you the floors or rolls, use the give up in the menu to start a new run. Know when you need to press on and practice a boss fight, and recognize when the time would be better spent on a more viable run.

"And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;"