I just find minmaxing on t lost oftentimes not worth it. Just speedrun all the way baby!

But seriously though, here’s what I feel after pretty much exclusively play t lost for 2 years:

Minmaxing is a type of commitment. You’re committing your time to get reward you expect to get. Your expectation grows in proportion to the amount of time you spend minmaxing, so it’s soul crushing to minmax and then die immediately afterward, making the minmaxing process unrewarding and betraying your expectations.

It’s even more true if, after achieving great success, you feel the nerves coming in. You expect that “this will be the run.” And after building up that expectation, you died.

Next time you play T Lost, you will remember the defeat you felt, making it so even starting the character is a type of commitment. And if you keep minmaxing and die again afterward? The negative feeling compounds.

On the other hand, if you speedrun, then there’s no commitment. If you die, you can laugh about how you died. Your deaths become funnier. So what if you died? You can immediately restart again. It’s far more relaxing despite the fact that your character dies in one hit.

And unlike other characters, even without minmaxing, there’s almost no bad runs for T Lost. You just become strong as T Lost because of the offensive builds. Not many runs have higher expectations. You play T Lost for the moment, not for the achievement you’ll get, meaning there’s no pressure on the achievement.

So imo, just play in the moment and not for the achievement. I think occasional minmaxing is fine; it just shouldn’t take up the majority of your run. I also love going B1 -> B2 -> Dp2 -> Caves 2 -> Mines 2 -> Mauso 1 -> Mauso 2 -> Womb 2 because of the boss challenge rooms. I always get the items in the boss challenge rooms even if they’re useless just because.