Understanding Landing Types and Their Effects
-Perfect:
Generally increases your current speed.

-Good:
Retains your current speed. (Note: it can either slightly increase or decrease depending on the slope.)

-Ok:
Reduces your current speed. (Rarely, it will allow you to retain speed, depending on the slope.)

-Bad:
Massively reduces speed and sends you on a generally disadvantageous trajectory. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

Why This is Important
Sometimes you might need or want to take imperfect landing spots to better set yourself up for your next jump to increase your average speed. Think about whether you should take a reduction in speed, maintain it, or increase it to make future landing/s better. The more you think ahead in this way, the better your flow will be.

Think 3-Dimensionally
Sometimes, it’s worth adjusting your course to face slightly more downhill or the next slope to turn what would be a Good/Ok landing into a Perfect/Good landing.

General Rule of Thumb for Speed, Flow, and Control
Low, flat arch's are ideal for speed and generally provide better flow.

High, slow arch's are useful for "precise control," particularly for set pieces. However, there are a few issues with this:
-The longer you’re in the air, the slower you get, eventually causing your landing point to shorten.

-Your angle of attack becomes steeper, limiting your perfect/good landing slope options and leading to further speed loss.

-Note: Low, flat arch's may limit some slope options at the time, but with good timing, your dive can open those options right back up.

Recognising Shard Set Pieces
Learn to recognise each shard's set pieces. Look ahead, position yourself accordingly, and anticipate the loss conditions they create. Think about what options you have to mitigate those loss conditions.

How It Works
After activating your board, it will:
-Accelerate you upward slightly.

-Change your angle of attack to a more shallow incline.

-Significantly boost your speed.

Main Reasons to Activate Your Board
-Just as you perform a Perfect/Good landing to gain speed quickly and set yourself up for better flow.

-To get a bit further during a jump to hit a slope correctly.

-To power through a speed-sucking landing by timing it for when you land to maintain speed.

-To adjust your angle of attack just before hitting the ground for a better landing and more speed retention.

There will also be niche times you need to activate the board. Play around, and you’ll figure them out.

Boost:
Affects top speed and likely acts as a multiplier to your speed calculation.
(Note: Take this with a grain of salt. This is my best guess, based on my observations.)

Energy:
This is your resource to use your main ability (e.g., Courier Board).

Health:
Your health. If you reach zero, you lose a life.

Life:
You start with 2 un-upgraded lives. If you reach zero, you are ejected from the shard and must restart your run.

Spark Pickup Range:
The range at which sparks are attracted to you.

Luck:
This affects items that have a chance to trigger. Say you have an item that has a 5% chance per cooldown to give you 5 health; with 200% luck total you would instead have a 10% chance per cooldown. (Shoutout to Blank for pointing this out in the comment section)

In general, during a run, you want at least one boost and one healing item. However, every run is different, so keep the following stats in mind:

Triggered and Passive Boosts:
These improve your flow, especially at the start of a fragment where you are most vulnerable.

Healing, Energy, or Boost on Fragment Entry:
These help you during your weakest point, at the start of a fragment. Anything that helps you gain speed or recover health really helps with run reliability.

Healing of Any Kind:
Grab it! You'll make mistakes, and sometimes the game will put you in tough spots. Without healing, a bad fragment might force you to walk on eggshells for the rest of your run, causing more unforced errors.

Raw Health:
This acts as a buffer, allowing your healing items to work longer if you encounter 2-3 bad spots in a row.

Invulnerability:
Generally niche, but I like the "On Perfect Landings" invulnerability items as they can open up awkward slopes that would otherwise be bad.

Upgrade Your Stats with the Captain as soon as you get the chance.
(Hover your mouse over the plus icon to see what it will upgrade to—this may affect your purchasing decisions.)

Order of Purchase (Suggested)
- Max Lives: Get at least one point here.
EDIT: As of the recent patch on 4/4/25; you probably skip this till later depending on your playstyle.

- Max Energy or Max Health: Prioritize this based on your playstyle.

- Sparks in Fragments or Starting Sparks: Choose based on your needs.

- Item Rarity: This likely affects what shops carry, but rare items cost more sparks, so it could indirectly be a downgrade.

Opinion:
DO NOT PURCHASE Daros, Niadas, or Wraith’s Items. These only give you the option to change your active ability. For example, buying the Sage’s Cowl from Daro lets you swap your board ability for a small height gain ability, which I think is terrible. You can change it by clicking the tab button and selecting the abilities icon. I felt scammed after purchasing it and haven't bought any others—maybe the grappling hook could be good, but it costs a lot of sparks that could otherwise go into powerful stat upgrades.

EDIT: As noted by Tea and Cosmetic respectively; Daros cowl has been recently buffed and apparently Niadas grappling hook is pretty good; Give em a try. Especially with the extra life on the recent patch, the big impact of needing to save up for at least one life has been relieved.

Change Your Hotkeys:
I’ve changed my item 2 hotkey to Q and my item 3 hotkey to E. Do I need to use them often? Not really, but it might help in specific situations.

Adjust Mouse Sensitivity:
I increase my mouse sensitivity from my usual 550 DPI to 2000 DPI while playing. It helps with dodging obstacles in tight spots. Of course, there's an upper limit to how much this helps, as the in-game turn rate also matters. But turning it up a bit can feel more comfortable.

Try New Things:
Especially during boss fights, try things that seem counter-intuitive, such as purposely going slow or rotating in circles to wait out attacks.

You Will Fail:
Don’t worry about it. Learn from your mistakes and try again. Take breaks when needed.

Good luck and have fun out there! :)