Status: #partdone
Note Type:
Tags: #score, #spoilers
Official Score Run Rules
To submit a score to the official leaderboards, there are some rules that should be followed during gameplay.
These rules are not definitive and are subject to change in the future.
Rule History
Before stating the rules themselves, it's important to note that for a long time, there were no strictly-defined rules. Score Running was pioneered by three players (Wobbles, RobLttM and Lugiacrus) which had unspoken rules between them and therefore no documentation was available.
As hunting became more popular and an effort was made to document strategies, so came the need to establish rules more clearly for new runners. Icetoblerones wrote down the WIP Rain World Score Run Guide with a reasonably concise set of rules, which will be partially transcribed on this note.
Preamble to rule definition
Score running is an exercise in superiority over a game that is designed to be brutally difficult and unforgiving. While the technical objective is to raise the score to the maximum, using exploits that avoid the game’s difficulty or distort the gameplay are not in “the spirit of the run” and the expert runners have agreed to not use such strategies.
An easy example for this are the neurons in Five Pebbles. These neurons can be consumed seemingly infinitely for infinite score which will defeat any other (more enjoyable strategy) if a player is stubborn enough.
An additional concept worth mentioning is that the starvation mechanic in the game is exploitable in several ways. Some specific examples of exploits are allowed in the run because they are still challenging to complete and require “playing the game.”
Rules
General Guidelines
- A Score Run is a test of skill for traditional Rain World gameplay.
- All runs should be submitted with a full screenshot of the 'statistics' screen.
- Runs with a score above 50k must be recorded in video and made available somewhere for evaluation.
- Starving is not allowed unless a rule states otherwise.
Specific Rules
- No modifications to the game are permitted. Current PC version is 1.5. Consoles’ version is 1.8.
- No reading the save file to reveal hidden information. Using the Hunter Tracker is allowed.
- No quitting, especially before the end of the 30 second grace period. Deaths should be taken instead of quits in these cases. This avoids karma caching, and waiting for good cycle lengths.
- No infinite points strategies (Five Pebbles exploit).
- No kill-duplication glitch.
Starving Rules
- A starve is permissible to activate the double spawn glitch.
- A starve may be taken, if an echo is taken on the following cycle to gain Passage progress in Saint, Monk, Wanderer, or Friend.
- Any passage progress that occurs on a starve cycle, which results in death, must be repeated on a valid cycle (e.g. yellow lizard kill for Dragon Slayer, Wanderer pips).
- No auxiliary passage progress (Wanderer regions, Dragon Slayer Yellow, etc) is allowed before cycle 13. I.E. no advantage from dying on starve to gain the Survivor passage early. Some passages such as Outlaw or Hunter are allowed.
- No intentional deaths on starve cycles.
Current leaderboards
The current leaderboards are available here. This document also contains relevant run history and the single-cycle leaderboards.