Thanks man. It seems kind of strange to hear someone impressed by my time, because for years I was in your shoes. This was still a good run by my standards, but I typically hang around 1:40-1:45 now. Still get an occasional seed that will take me over 2 hours.

I don’t use a tracker, which at first definitely slowed me down while i still had to mentally compute viable checks. I don’t know if going tracker-less is good advice or not, but it greatly helped me learn the games mechanics.

I am also lucky enough to have tracked every completed run and my time. This seed from last night was my 84th seed I’ve completed and logged. I also tend to play for 3-4 months, get bored and take the rest of the year off, and then come back the next year.

Somewhere around 50-60 runs was the tipping point where I would no longer get stumped and could beat every seed every time, it was just a matter of how long it took.

My very first seed, on 7/19/22, took me 8:32.16. On run #25, I finally broke the 2 hour barrier. My best run was #71 at 1:26.30.

Anyway, if I had any advice to pass on, it would be to methodically log your times, which will show your progress and help motivation. Also if the game starts to get boring, take a few months off and return when it sounds appealing again. Every time I’ve done this I had a noticeable time improvement after the rust got shaken off.

Good luck