GOD GAMERS – How Hollow Knight Players Beat The "Perfect" Speedrun

Two minutes and 29.9 seconds was all the time it took Monster to finish Path of Pain, Hollow Knight's toughest platforming challenge. In case you don't know, Monsterler was the

speedrun

ning king of Hollow Knight. Since the game's release, he has achieved more than 60 world records. of which were in the game's most competitive categories at 12 percent of all Pantheon bosses, even achieving a personal best more than 10 minutes ahead of second place, was one of the most dominant world records ever set in the game, so when he said

perfect

after finishing his race it was a big deal, although everyone knew that the race would be surpassed eventually, no one expected that today he would be almost 30 seconds away from the world record in the years after his race, the community Speedrunning dramatically changed

players

by mastering the path of

speedrun

ning pain to a level not seen in other Hollow Knight categories.

Sink thousands of hours into a challenge that lasts only a few minutes. Over time, the path of pain became the hardest punishment and the fastest Hollow Knight speedrun. Without a doubt, in this video I will tell you the stories of these

players

. They will all detail the broken barriers, the rivalries, the discoveries, the impressive achievements and the heartbreaking losses. This is the story of the world record speed run in Path of Pain, but before we talk about Monster's world record, I want to tell you about the world's first goomba. Simulator Wunderling DX is a non-stop puzzle platformer where you play as a goomba running alone.

The game forces you to race against the clock, forcing you to collect flowers on each level to replenish your constantly depleting energy bar. Each level offers its own. Challenges and puzzles with collectible items and rewards scattered everywhere and despite its appearance it actually gets quite challenging especially if you try to reach level 100. The wunderling dx game is a hidden gem with cute illustrations, satisfying movement and excellent level design. More attention than it's gotten, if you want to give it a try, the game is available on Steam for PC and on Nintendo Switch, click the link below to check out vunderlingdx, but with that let's get back to the video.

The Path of Pain is an area made up of four rooms that you will become familiar with as we look at each player's career before starting; However, something important to note is that in Hollow Knight moving hazards, such as saw blades and spears, work on a cycle that begins when the player enters the room, this means that all movement in a room that leads to these hazards determines where they will be when the player reaches them Because this painful path, fast running strategies leave almost no room for major errors, errors of any kind can alter a player's movement through the All the rest From the room, Munsterler's run begins with a glass dash to the first room and then quickly ascends while evading the saw blades that reach the thorn-filled section of the wing molds.

He made a precise run using an intentional shortcut and then descended past the large saw blade. Then, to increase the speed of his drop, he performed a bug called inventory drop. Inventory drop is as simple as opening inventory in the air. It is a cheat that removes the player's fall speed limit, allowing them to fall significantly faster. He also aborts the landing. Stunned normally caused by falling a great distance following this monstrous crystal he darted to the left and made his ascent to the second room. Monsta made quick work of the first half of room 2. The previous sections of the room don't see much optimization because no matter how fast the player is, this saw blade in the middle of the path will block their path.

Monsta made his way through the section filled with stationary saw blades and reached the final part of Room 2. In this section, most of the players climbed up the left wall and the crystal flew out. up, but Monsteller knew the cycle of the sawblade well enough to simply cut through its path and then pass under Monsta's next crystal, burst into the third room, canceling it at a specific time and jumping off the sawblade , was able to gain enough height to jump directly to the upper wall, he also skipped the left section of the climb by performing a second precise bogo on another moving saw blade, but when Monsta reached the upper section he did the unexpected: he jumped like a crystal from the highest part of the wall, he jumped twice and used a fish screech to stop in the air as he did so, a saw blade to his right snuck low enough for him to jump and allow him to skip a part From the upper room and proceeded through the tunnel of saw blades and thorns, he turned left and entered the fourth and final room.

At first he used a precise glass board from the left wall too high and would hit the ceiling, ending the glass board too low and would cut the thorns ahead after jumping twice and slowly. he slid down the next wall, a brief pause allowing him to navigate the saw plates through the rest of the room without stopping even once the inventory fell to the two mold kings defending the exit using a slash and throw strategy. nests of staves twice in each on the The right king mold that he intentionally damaged collapsed instead of avoiding the blow.

The glass went through the door and the final scene began and with that monster the world's first way to pay the world record was won. Monsta's personal best was ahead of its time and remained undisputed for almost an entire year, but in that year the Hollow Knight speedrunning community was changing, players were becoming increasingly skilled at the game by the end of 2018. , a player named dl kurosh started making runs. Kirosh had posted solid times in some categories, so everyone knew it. He had the experience to compete, but no one expected him to

beat

Monster's time by 13 seconds.

One of Kurosh's biggest optimizations was the use of the sharp shadow spell. Sharpened Shadow grants players shadow cloak damage and 39 percent more distance on each run, which meant Kurosh and future players had to plan where to use each shadow cloak in the run to maximize the benefit of the charm. Karosh's first two rooms were similar to monsters, but the sharp shadow is a double-edged sword and usually saved time when Kurosh's inventory fell on the statue, for example, he had to move to the left for only a brief moment. , since the extra distance from the board would have sent it into the thorns.

Similarly, in the second room, Kurosh was forced to intentionally waste his shadow cloak, since this place did not. He did not have enough space to accommodate a sudden shadow movement. Karosh's movement was crisp as he touched a wall to recover his run and a double jump. He would instantly tap to end the walking state and begin to fall a little earlier after performing a pogo. Kurosh was also tapping. the opposite direction to cancel the nail movement animation because the player cannot double jump while the nail animation is active. This allowed him to perform a double jump a little earlier.

At the end of the second room he was already 2.74 seconds ahead of the monster's world record in the Third room Karosh didn't use Monsta's Crystal Nash in the upper section despite how creative the move was, he actually lost time. Karosh's biggest time saver was in the fourth room. He developed a new movement strategy for the entire room, saving a full six seconds. He started out by running through the spears as they retracted into the thorns with this setup, he was able to make many more runs around the entire room by the end, his movement cycle allowing him to complete the most difficult section of the room without stopping for even a frame. .

The strategy became the standard for Path of Pain in the following years and allowed Korosh to achieve a new world record of 2 minutes and 17.09 seconds. This time, the save symbolized how much more competitive the speedrunning community had become over the course of 2018, but Monster had improved more than anyone else and was about to prove it in early 2019 after pulling off one of the biggest sweeps of the charts. Hollow Knight rating ever. Monsterler made his return to Path of Pain in June, adopting many of Karosh's strategies but also adding some new ones. his in the first room, for example, Muscler implemented an instant pogo on the wing mold leading to the thorn shortcut.

This was much more difficult to execute because being so close to the wing mold meant risking being hit, but that meant he didn't do it. He had to wait until the pogo dropped again because of the time it saved him. He reached the vertical saw blade while it was still at the bottom. It seemed like it would block his progress, but he discovered that with extremely precise positioning he could

perfect

ly pass between them. the two saw blades after it cut its crystal passed by the statue with a short double jump to start moving upwards a little earlier in the first room alone, the monster saved 1.62 seconds in the final section of the room 2.

The monster was also able to do an extra move by hugging. the lower left saw blade, the center saw blades and the upper saw blade as he moved to the right, saving 1.16 seconds. Similarly, he discovered a faster movement for the upper section of room three. He jumped twice to the same wing mold as Karosh, but instead of jumping. and double jumping to the next one, he jumped over it and immediately ran towards the moving saw blade, the extra board saved .65 seconds for the room, but he actually had one more trick up his sleeve after killing the left king mold, He waited a little before launching. on the right, he was able to pass through the enemy, meaning he dealt damage to them and did not suffer freeze frames from the damage.

Overall, Monsterler shaved 3.71 seconds off Karosh's world record and finished with a time of 2 minutes, 13.38 seconds. Monsta took the world record. He returned, but it would be his last run in the category after this, he focused on full game categories in the pantheons. However, his achievements would go on to inspire many others to try the category themselves, but what came next was something few expected, a contender who chose not to. To use the most important spell in the run, the spell was Dash Master, which reduces the cooldown of Dash from 0.6 to 0.4 seconds. Ironically, many speedrunners despised its use, as its cumbersome downhill mechanics often sent them face-first into the nearest saw blade for personal injury. challenge removed you wanted to achieve the world record without using the spell, it was definitely doable for him, he was a player who possibly had the best understanding of the game's movement among all the others, ax discovered several time savers for the race, he started with the form in which he sailed. around the first vertical saw blade, the ax pushed the saw blade and moved towards the right wall by performing three wall jumps on top of it.

Previously, players performed a double jump here, but double jumps in Hollow Knight have a delayed activation, meaning you fall for a brief moment before the double. The jump actually activates, this means that wall jumps are a little faster to perform than double jumps, but in the run, when Ax reached the statue, he made a mistake by accidentally canceling the inventory drop too soon , as a result, he left the room a third of a second behind the world record in the second room, however, he kept pace with Monsta entering the third room without bleeding longer x used a different strategy for the tunnel of thorns at the end from room 3 similar to Monsta's instant pogo out of the wing mold in room 1 ax Used a strategy of waiting until he fell far enough that he could jump with the saw blade and then instantly launching himself.

This was risky because he had to land very close to the saw blade before making the jump, but it suddenly saved him a significant amount of time. Ax was entering the final room tied for the world record in the frame. Ax didn't have Dash Master, so in theory he should have lost time in the fourth room, but he still managed to make Karosh's fourth move in the room to the king's molds, his fourth. the room was spotless, it was due to the wire ax that loaded his glass board, but he finished it a moment too soon, meaning he had to walk away to start the final scene.

His time to

beat

him was 2minutes and 13.38 seconds after eight months, a new world. The record had finally been set by beating Monsterler's personal best by 0.2 seconds at most, he achieved his goal of getting the world record without Dashmaster, but while doing these races, a player that almost no one knew was rising in the rankings, so something that many don't know is that Hollow Knight actually has a large following in China due to censorship laws, however, Chinese players cannot access Discord and Google, making communication with the speech community English is a major challenge and, as a result, that doesn't even take into account the language barrier.

Few Chinese players ever tried to learn the speedruns that were popular among the English-speaking crowd. Taburete was a player who didn't let that get in his way. His story began in November 2019 when he published his first Path of Pain Run on Billy. billy with a time of 2 minutes and 21 seconds came in fourth place, just seconds behind monsta ax and korosh in December 2019, a month later he improved his personal best to a time of 2 minutes and 16 seconds, knocking karosh out of the top 3 and so on. On January 31, Taburete recorded a run of 2 minutes and 13 seconds, just a fraction of a second behind the world record.

Taburete was a player with minimal experience in sprinting. What separated him from the others was his dedication to the race. At that time, Stool had already spent months in the category in February 2020, a month after Ax to use the world record stool recorded a new personal best, it was the world's first 2 minute 12 second race and there were something subtle about the race that made it stand out, other players generally saved time by implementing new strategies into their races, but the stool barely used anything new. He saved a third of a second in each of the first three rooms simply by executing the movement strategies that everyone else was already using faster than with this running stool, which showed the incredible skill of him. in the category and held the world record for months but on June 26, 2020 a big discovery was made in Hollow Knight, there are places where the ground hitboxes actually peak above the thorn hitboxes, meaning that The player can find extremely precise points to land within the thorns.

One of these points was discovered that looked intriguing, it was in room 3. and it was quickly confirmed that it was possible to do a jump with the saw blade and a double jump to the thorns, allowing the player to skip the entire right section. of the third room. He saved about three seconds. It was the biggest leap ever encountered in the path of pain. speedrunning we called it thorn skip, the problem was that it is tremendously difficult to achieve, it was more precise than any other trick used in Hollow Knight speedrunning, but unbeknownst to them, as the English-speaking community celebrated the discovery, the Stool revealed that he had discovered the skip independently. months before and she knew that the world record could be improved by seconds if someone could achieve it by running, but no one volunteered to try.

Months passed and nothing happened, but on October 14, 2020, Taburete recorded a new personal best of 2 minutes and 9.89 seconds. on the racing stool he completed the first two rooms almost flawlessly, tying his personal best at a tenth of a second and when he reached the stool in the third room he did a pogo, the saw blade launched and landed successfully on the thorns , was finishing a race with thornskip, a feat that would change the category forever unfortunately the stool error cost him half a second and his tremors continued in the fourth room where he lost another quarter of a second but the race was still more than enough to break a huge barrier stool achieved the world's first sub 210 trail of ran with pain and completed the first race using thornskip.

Anyone who wanted the world record from this moment on had no choice but to also do it with his running stool. It took the path of pain to another level when spike jumping was first discovered, most sprinters hesitate to try it after all, imagine spending hours doing races only to have them all end up in the exact same place, but Once players saw that the stool could pull it off, it actually started to have the opposite effect: a new Hollow Knight speedrunner named Kolasky. He was the first to step forward two months after the world record stool on December 7, 2020, Kolaski made his first submission through the path of pain.

It was a race of two minutes and 9.56 seconds. He silently made almost 10,000 attempts to complete the race in which he unfortunately lost. a copyright warning and was never uploaded again because just two days later, the stool shot up again on December 9, 2020. The stool did more than just reclaim the world record, it broke another second barrier by completing the first world race 2 minutes and 8 seconds as usual. With the stool, the time savings were mainly due to better execution. He also saved time as expected by avoiding the wing mold in room 3. However, in the first half of room 1, he used a new strategy before the thorn shortcut stool jumped the first wing mold. as early as possible, he then double-jumped to the left and ran straight into the tunnel of thorns, skipping the second wing cast entirely.

This strategy was just as fast as before, but was a little easier for players to perform after the stool race. Kolasky took a brief break during the 2020 holiday season. Up to this point, Path of Pain only saw brief bursts of activity, but 2021 saw twice as many Path of Pain world records set as in all previous years combined and began with An avalanche of world records set by Kolasky Kolasky's playstyle and movement strategies were inspired by acts more than anyone else, this was because Cal was the only other major player who had similarly chosen not to use Dash Master. .

He was constantly losing about a fifth of a second in Room 2, but Cal knew what he was doing. He regularly saved about a quarter of a second on stool in the first room alone, it was because if Cal's first room wasn't absolutely perfect, he would sometimes restart himself by making up to a hundred attempts before even reaching the second room. Cal's other stronghold was his room three. He was incredibly consistent in three of the four times he submitted, the time he achieved in the third room of it was 20.7 seconds. He did this by implementing a movement strategy discovered almost a year earlier through actions.

Cal was able to leverage these strengths with great success by achieving three consecutive world records achieving a time of 2 minutes and 8.28 seconds, but Cal ultimately wanted to break a second barrier and achieve the first world time of 2 minutes and 7 seconds, at that time He had already made almost 15,000 attempts and was still in third place. of a second away, he needed something more to be able to achieve it and, luckily, a new discovery was being made, the players were previously convinced that they had been running down the path of pain in the optimal patch, patch one, two, two. one but the developers had released patch one four three two this patch removed the inventory drop which was a significant waste of time but there was another difference in 1432 the king casts at the end had significantly less health which It allowed for a new quick kill strategy that players could descend on. dark as far to the left as possible and would barely hit the left king mold with the shockwave of the spell they would then attack and a sharp shadow would pierce the king mold on the right shadow, soul to the left three times to kill them both at the same time.

Same time. He started running the new patch to test if it saved time. He immediately had a great rhythm despite not being able to lower the inventory. He only lost a third of a second in room 1 and even saved time in room 2. However, room 3 started. Outside clumsily, Kelly used a new strategy to jump to the soul statue instead of the saw blade, but she hesitated a little before doing so. Somehow, Cal still managed to climb fast enough to reach the saw blade in time to perform a thorn jump. He finished the third room with a time of 20.7 seconds cal was just 0.2 seconds off his personal best with a possible time saving at the end of room 4.

He reached the king molds with a near perfect movement and he launched himself into the arena, perfectly executing the quick death strategy he launched himself into like crystal. he to the right and finished the race, but was it enough to make up for getting into the room behind in time? Cal was looking for the sub two minutes and eight seconds of running oh my goodness oh my goodness oh my goodness oh my goodness oh my goodness oh my goodness Oh my goodness, I finally did it after months of effort and almost 15,000 tries. Cal broke his first barrier of the first second.

As a result, patch 1432 became the new standard for Path of Pain speedrunning. Happy with his achievements, Cal moved on to other sprint racing categories and with stool and kolasky out of the picture a new player began his climb to the top two weeks before kolaski's race on January 14, 2021 a player named shy registered a Path of Pain personal best of two minutes and 22 seconds, it was his first featured sprint race. but what was impressive about this run was that shai had already started using high level strategies, such as karosh's fourth room movement cycle on february 3rd. shai recorded another personal best this time, a 2 minute 13 second run using thorn skip, it was a trick that only two players had ever accomplished in a timid race, they practiced in the room for 8 hours before pulling it off even once. only once and continued for dozens more hours before becoming consistent enough to use in races.

Shai was determined to become a top speed runner on the path of pain. Throughout February, Shy rapidly improved setting new personal bests on February 8 with a 212 and on February 12 with a two minute, eight second run in just one month. shy was already just one second away from the world record, but shai was one player who wasn't. Only focused on execution, Brilliance developed and implemented more new strategies for running than anyone else, for example, in the second room of the statue, Shy discovered that he was marginally faster if he performed a precise run along the floor avoiding a unnecessary double jump when landing.

Instead, he jumps. Shai also found a time saver in the upper section of Room 2. Previously, players would start their run from the far left so that when it was over, they would be in a position to jump. The ringing of the lower left saw blade found that he could start moving to the right instead. as soon as possible and skip the lower left saw blade a little later, naturally this saved a significant amount of time. The giant found an even bigger time saver at the end of the third room before these players jumped over these wing molds to avoid them.

They delayed their run slightly to intentionally spend their shadow cloak after the first wing cast, this meant that the shadow cloak would be refreshed and used here and then refreshed again at the perfect time to run straight through the final wing cast. in the section for those who were paying. Attention, it was not a surprise when Shai set a new world record on February 26, it was with a time of 2 minutes and 7.59 seconds, 16 seconds faster than Kolasky's time, what was a surprise was that only four days later, shai was about to do it again. Within four days, Shai had already started using a new strategy, it was called cyclone drop.

Using a cyclone slash during a fall temporarily unlocks the player's fall speed similar to inventory fall, however it is rarely optimal to use because it only unlocks the fall speed for a small amount of time, but this made it perfect for the statue fall in room 1, where the stun from the descent of darkness wasted too much time despite its simplicity, the strategy saved half a second because of this, Shai was able to find a pace half a second ahead. off the world record entering room three, and while Kolasky's third room's 20.7 seconds was incredible for its time, shy's third room clocked in at 20.34 seconds, more than a third of a second faster than cal, it was a significantly faster time than anyone had achieved before shy was on track for a new world record but when they went to shadow the king's soul casts they ended up botching their second entry by pressing it too early andlosing a significant amount of time the time to beat was 2 minutes and 7.59 seconds despite the shy error he broke his first second barrier achieving the world's first painful speed race of two minutes and six seconds breaking a second barrier in this category was a huge achievement, something Kolasky took almost 15,000 attempts to achieve, but Shai wasn't happy with just that.

A few days later, after having set two world records in a row, Chai unveiled a new bike for room four that replaced Dl Kurosh's bike that had been used for over two years before, with players jumping once out of the sphere. central and then once on the vertical saw. blade then with the new cycle shai squeezed in an extra pogo of the right spear also shy then I would wait for the shea layer to cool before launching this saw blade with this movement the shine reached the final saw blades significantly earlier and such Like they did with Cloak of Shadow updated, this sawblade would then return following right behind the player, allowing them to quickly exit it three times in a row.

This was Shai's new fourth room cycle. It was the greatest journey of pain discovery since Thor skipped the cycle. It's also not easy to achieve, but just five days after the previous world record shy entered room four tied with his personal best and successfully achieved the new movement cycle, everyone knew it would be a new world record, but? would it be the first two minutes in the world? and five seconds of racing in the span of a week broke not just one, but two second barriers. It was the craziest world record series, but the players named the fourth cycle of room movement.

The chai shackle had made so many new discoveries and lowered the world record. faster than anyone could have expected after this for the first time in 2021, there was a lull in the action, but this only gave a new player the time he needed to catch up shortly after shai's world records In the first race, he took 11 hits of unintentional damage and took more than four minutes to finish. The video was titled Trying to Speed ​​Up the Pain Road, But I'm Not a Pain Road Speed ​​Runner. Over the next week he would improve rapidly by completing his first stroke-free race with a time of 2 minutes and 39 seconds.

On April 5 he took a short break before continuing in May returning with another streak of personal bests in June he had improved to a time of 2 minutes and 13 seconds on June 22 vls finished his first race with espina omitted achieving a race of 2 minutes and 9.12 seconds. He began to take things more seriously than before. Six days later, vls published a new strategy for room 2, saving about half a second. He was made running from a little further to the left, which allowed him to jump down to the left. saw blade immediately after the dash, the ls would then skip the center saw blades to the left and then flip to the center saw blades to the right, this allowed it to introduce an additional dash into the room at the end of June.

VLS narrowly took second place from Kolasky with a time of 2 minutes and 7.51 seconds, but was still two seconds behind Shai. On July 13, VLS began another race, his individual times in the room had become so fast that if the stars aligned, he was capable of skipping two minutes and six. second race and taking the world record in one fell swoop, his room one was almost identical to shy's, but in the second room he brought out his new strategy by jumping ahead of the world record by almost half a second after VLS landed with a jump of thorns, the pressure was there.

However, there were signs that the pressure was getting to him. Small pauses in their movement for safety when the room ended, they achieved gold in their division, but even though it was a gold, the vls lost 0.4 seconds because they were shy when entering room 4, they were tied with times of 1 . minute and 21.2 seconds ls could not bleed any more time in room 4 at the last moment the second ls guessed with the press of a button lost the cycle and instantly ended his chance to obtain the world record, but it was still possible to obtain his personal best, he launched himself into the king's casts, ran to the right, and cast only two shadow souls.

He didn't start the race with enough soul to shoot three. His race finished a quarter of a second behind his personal best, but after 1500 more attempts, VLS got the time of 2 minutes and 6 seconds in the race, there were still some shakes after he landed Thornskip with a jump delayed in room 4 and failed the triple pogo dash at the end of the shackle. but apart from these errors, the race was almost perfect. Vls was just one second away from winning the world record, but the only way he could do it is by overcoming third and fourth room nerves.

Six thousand tries later, he entered room three surpassing his best speed. time by 0.07 seconds, it was a great opportunity, he had a half second advantage over shai who managed to successfully perform thornskip, but he lost time in shy's third room and when he entered the fourth room he was less than a tenth of a second ahead once again. There was no room for mistakes when he finished the fourth room. He was so close that no one knew if he had made it. The time to beat was 2 minutes and 5.61 seconds. It was a new world record for less than two frames after four. months of hard work vls dethroned shai's personal best on july 27 vls painstakingly went from a four minute time hesitating to even call himself a sprinter to being the fastest sprinter in the world, cementing himself as one of The best speed racers in the game.

Shai immediately returned to reclaim the record over the next week and a half, timidly making thousands of attempts and it didn't take them long to get back into the swing of things on August 4th. Shai started running at a great pace and finished first. room with a time of 27.11 seconds shy's move in the second room was a mix of his previous move and vls's new move was slightly faster than before but not as fast as vls but when shy entered the third room It was his time to shine Chai took off his thorn jump and approached the tunnel to leave the room, but at the end of the tunnel he timidly made a jump too early, hitting the ceiling without gaining height.

Chai had no choice but to jump onto the final mold of the wing to enter the fourth room. a quarter of a second behind to achieve it, Shai would need something better than a 44.22 second room four, but Shai absolutely flew through room four, completing it almost flawlessly, there was no doubt that he beat ls room by a while, but was it enough? To recover the world record, the time to beat was 2 minutes and 5.58 seconds. Shai's run resulted in the only one-hundredth of a second tie in the history of all Hollow Knight speedruns, as a result, Shai went back to the drawing boards in the room. 2 after statue shai started using a new right wall jump instead of two wall jumps and a double jump put them in the perfect spot to use four dashes in quick succession, shai also fully implemented the vls move at the end of the room.

Finally, and most importantly, Shai started using the Spinning Thorn Jump. It was an even more difficult version of the jump. It involved a double jump first and launching almost directly onto the thorns immediately after the race. The player would turn around for only a moment before landing and running. twice immediately after saving about a third of a second, but it was an absurdly difficult jump to achieve in a late August race. After starting a race, they finished the first room with an excellent time of 27.02 seconds and thanks to their movement optimizations in Room 2 Shy finished with a time of 32.8 seconds.

This was the fastest pace a player has ever entered room 3 and when they reached it, they removed the spike jump and finished room 3 1.48 seconds ahead of the world record the race was at. pace to break barriers two seconds at a time by skipping the two minute and four second race to earn the first world record of 2 minutes and 3 seconds, but the shyness was just a few pixels too low and the pace disappeared an instant later for the timid race to be revealed. They were only able to complete the thorn jump twice in one run, out of about a thousand runs that had reached the jump, it was a 0.2 percent success rate of the player with the best room 3 in the world.

He timidly took a step back. of the attempts and in his place a familiar face returned, the stool was returning to the category, it was October 2021, a couple of months after shy tie vls ran to the frame stool, he saw all the new strategies that had been developed since then and realized that the record was The ripe point for reaching his personal best was a time of 2 minutes and 8.84 seconds set in December 2020, more than three seconds off the current world record, but the Taburete's strength as a player was his execution and whether he could master strategies that others had found.

The world record would be his on October 5. The stool posted a run. His attempt counter was still below a thousand, but he was performing all the new moves successfully even in the first room. The stool saved time without significant differences in strategy. Everything was in the smallest. of details, saving milliseconds whenever possible, the first stool room was on the same level as Cal's, but he used all the new saved times, left the room a third of a second before the world record, but did not decrease the speed in room 2. vls room 2 was the fastest ever done in a world record by a quarter of a second, but the stool finished the room even faster with a time under 33 seconds when the stool entered the room 3, I was tied with shy's crazy rhythm from before to the frame stool.

He reached for the thorn jump and pulled it out successfully, reaching the king molds at the end of room 4, shortly after this was the only time the school showed any carelessness, his fireballs arriving a little late. and lost a bit of time with the king molds, regardless of the run bench he eventually returned to the top of the path of pain leaderboards. It was the world's first two-minute, four-second race, but Taburete knew he was capable of doing even better just three days later, on October 8, Taburete recorded another personal best. Run used the same strategies as before, but in each room he saved time, his skill was on another level.

In the third room, the stool implemented a jump on the wing mold that Shai had found by jumping directly to the leftmost wing mold twice, saving about a quarter of a second. room three equaled shai's best room three in a race to the frame stool was on track to win the world's first two-minute, three-second pain road race ever held just days after he had already He broke a second barrier, but when he went down to the King he made the same mistake again and lost some frames. It was unclear if he could pull it off. He set a new personal best just one race away from being the world's first two-minute, three-second race.

Second Barrier Broken o No finished the incredible race he had lost earlier and proved that the two minute and three second race was within the reach of a human player. With his precise and consistent execution, he once again took the race to another level; By this time, the pain path had become so optimized that the best runners were veterans of the category, such as stool, or players who had spent months catching up but only two days. After stool set the world record, a new player took it from him. iho was a Chinese player who burst onto the Hollow Knight scene known for setting a new current patch world record without major glitches in early 2021, but now iho was running down the road of pain. when he posted a new time of 2 minutes in 3.59 seconds, the world's first two minute and three second race, the echo room times looked like this, he couldn't match the stools in room 1, but in the room 2 saved almost half a second, this was due to iho optimized the climb to the upper section of room two, the movement was incredibly sharp, you would just launch pixels under the thorns moving upwards with a double jump and three wall jumps , this eliminated two unnecessary double jumps and, since it was faster, allowed the player to start moving right into the next section even sooner.

Eho left the room 0.29 seconds before the world record and held theI lead from room three to room four. However, Eho saved even more time and took off the king's shackle and mold to quickly kill without any loss of time was a race that seemed almost perfect, but one player in particular would be inspired to surpass it. Shai had already established himself as one of the best pain speed racers of all time, even though Shai was in third place at the time. had innovated and contributed a lot to the race more than anyone else, shy paved the way for the community's progress in 2021 and to figure out what strategies to learn next, they looked at the path of pain, which has sections that rely heavily on the cycle. one, however, was the least cycle dependent of all, but the path of painful tasks actually came to a specific cycle involving the large vertical saw blade.

The task caught up with her so quickly that she could barely move to the left because of the sharp shadow that ran down the wall afterwards. By making the downward dash, the task was far enough away that he could make it through the next section without having to break his fall. By jumping with the saw blade, he saved about a third of a second. The problem was that no player had ever achieved it in a race. It required players to be incredibly fast in the first part of the room to reach the saw blade in time, if they were too slow the saw blade would be too low and the player wouldn't have enough room to make the dash down, but while others were making world record attempts shai was practicing the tas room 1 cycle on october 18 just six days after iho's race shai posted his own race on it shai's best time for room 1 was visible live during 26.40 seconds, it was a significantly faster time than anything before and sure enough, when Shai reached for the saw blade, they were fast enough to complete the task cycle.

Shai left room 1 with a time of 26.52, 0.31 seconds ahead of iho's world record in room 2. Shai used eho's new movement strategies, but it wasn't as clean as if he were losing. 0.13 seconds, but Shai was the master of room 3. While they didn't try to turn around the thorn jump, they didn't need to with a clean execution across the room that Shai again took advantage of. 31 seconds, once again in the fourth room, Shin used a different version of the Shigel that had about the same speed, but when Shai faced the king's molds, they made an unfortunate mistake. Chai again performed the fireball entry too early, it was unclear if the world record was still possible, the time to beat it was 2 minutes and 3.59 seconds.

He did it, beating the ejo time by 17 seconds. It took less than a week, but the next day, Eho started broadcasting attempts to regain the world record and that was it. He had already completed a cycle in the homework room, but even though he could manage it from time to time, the cycle was incredibly difficult, his attempts increasing by the thousands as the weeks passed. On November 3, the iho managed to successfully complete cycle 1 of the task room and entered the fourth room. 0.16 seconds ahead of the world record with a spotless room, the time of 2 minutes and 2 seconds was barely doable.

Eho reached the king's molds and made the quick kill without any significant loss of time. Everyone knew it was a new world record, but would he break the second? barrier, it wasn't the two minute and two second race, but it was a huge world record. His only significant time loss was losing 0.19 seconds to Shy's Room 3. If Shy wanted to get the world record back, they had to catch up. He began analyzing the entire level to try to close the gap for possible time savings anywhere, soon enough Shai made a new discovery instead of running before performing the thorn jump.

Shai pressed another pogo on the saw blade to jump twice directly towards the thorns. Because they didn't run before the jump, they didn't have to wait for a sharp shadow to update it, saving about a quarter of a second. Chai tried to run for weeks without much luck, but on November 22, Shai finally had a chance if they could take advantage. Shai achieved the world record, they could also claim the world's first two minute and two second run. Shai reached the space 3.19 seconds short of the world record, but achieved the new move by saving 0.37 seconds on the iho run. than shai's, so it was going to be close, but shai's room 4 was flawless, finishing the room with the fastest time ever in a world record with 44.10 seconds and he reclaimed the world record with a time of 2 minutes and 2.89 seconds if so.

It was no longer obvious that these players were going to compete for the world record when iwo returned, instead of simply copying the new strategy from room 3, he actually improved it and noticed that when shai performed the jump, they jumped twice directly into the mold from the left wing as usual and I had to pause to avoid hitting the leftmost vertical saw blade instead of doing that. Iho jumped twice and stopped at the rightmost wing mold. A pause there allowed the sharp shadow to refresh at the perfect time to allow for a sharper shadow in the room he saved.

About a third of a second, just two days later, iho ran at pace to regain the world record due to his new movement. His third room was a gold split and more than half a second ahead of Shaw's world record and he flew through room 4. prepared to finish the race with a low time of 2 minutes and 2 seconds despite the loss of time on December 24, 2021, the iho set a new world record of 0.22 seconds, but even though his skill and precision earned him a place at the top of the leaderboards, the path that got him there was paved by many others and in early February 2022, Chai was going to prove it.

On February 2, 2022, shy revealed that they had implemented another strategy that they had found in the task, this time it was a strategy in room three a. The strategy that shy said took 3 thousand attempts to achieve just once. It was a combination of the new move iho found along with an additional pogo dash but this time it was on a saw blade that was on top of the player just a few days later Shai posted a dash. He entered room 3 using the same move and strategies than before, but they managed to save a small amount of time on their personal best.

In room 3, they achieved the new tass movement. Suddenly shy was 0.20 seconds ahead of the iho world record with an iho error. At the end of room 4, Shai had the potential to save even more time in the final room after an excellent shy from room 4 had done so, but they weren't sure how much time to beat was 2 minutes and 2, 67 seconds, I told him. You, next time we go to the powder room, we will get the wood record. She timidly managed it, achieving an incredible time of 2 minutes and 2.28 seconds. The time of 2 minutes and 1 second felt so close yet so far away. a milestone that represents an almost completely perfect race with current strategies, even combining the best times achieved of all world records up to this point, the time was 2 minutes and 1.96 seconds, giving only a few frames of margin of maneuver to reach less than 2 minutes. and a 2-second run, it seemed almost impossible for a player to achieve, but iho didn't let that stand in his way two weeks after shai's run on February 16, 2022, eho achieved a new personal best: it was a time of 2 minutes and 1.90. seconds the first time in the world of two minutes and one second in the foot race.

Eho's strategy was identical to Shai's in his previous world record, but his times in halls 2 and 4 were incredible only thanks to precise execution. Iho saved an incredible 0.15 seconds in room 2 and. 26 seconds in room 4. With this race, iho established himself as the pain speed runner with the greatest technical skill without a doubt and, at the time of the creation of this video, eho's race was the last world record achieved in the category after what happened throughout 2021 and early 2022. Who knows what awaits speedrun in the future, although the world record is now more optimized than ever with a path of pain, these players have shown that the The sky is the limit, there are still time saves so incredibly difficult that players have yet to introduce them into the race, which of these strategies will be used, who will be next to take the world record, and whether the time barrier will ever be broken. 2 minutes and 1 second.

If you'd like to stay up to date, I've posted links to subscribe to players below. In conclusion, I would like to sincerely thank all of them for their permission to make this video and use their images. I would also like to thank the Hollow Knight modders whose work allowed players to practice and run runs efficiently. Lastly, it's important to say that speedrunning is more than just its world record holders. Greetings to everyone in the speedrunning community. It makes it as exciting and fun as it is today. Thanks so much for looking. I hope you enjoyed the video and have a wonderful day.