How to Route a Speedrun for the First Time (2026) Guide

To route a speedrun for the first time, pick a category that has an active leaderboard, read its current rule page, find or write a route for that exact category and platform, turn that route into splits in your timer, then practise the segments until a full run is clean. Expect several weeks of practice before you submit anything.

Routing means deciding which parts of the game you will complete, in what order, and which you will skip entirely, then practising that sequence until you can execute it without thinking about it. It is a planning problem rather than an execution problem, and most of the time you save in a run gets decided before the timer ever starts.

That is the part that surprises beginners. Two runners with identical button inputs can finish minutes apart because one knew the level order and the other had to backtrack for an item. Better execution cannot rescue a bad route, because the timer only ever sums your segments.

What You Need Before You Route Anything

Six things. Most first-timers already have three of them and get stuck on the rest.

1. A game and a specific category. Not a game in general. “Any% on the original release” is a category. “That game” is not.
2. The current rule page for that category. Rules change, and an old forum post is not a rule page. As of 2026, speedrun.com is the authoritative source for category rules, and the game page’s own rules tab is the version moderators enforce.
3. A route source. A guide, a reference run, a TAS, or route notes from another runner. If the game has an active board, someone has usually mapped the category already.
4. A timer with splits. LiveSplit is the most common choice, and it runs alongside most games on Windows. A split file is what turns a route into something you can measure.
5. A recording setup. Console capture, screen recording software, or emulator capture, depending on whether your category allows emulators.
6. An account on the platform. You need somewhere to submit, and reading a leaderboard before you submit teaches you what a finished run looks like.

The vocabulary you will meet in every route

Learn these before you read anything else. Most confusion in the first week comes from not knowing which word a guide is using.

• Route — the list of what you do and in what order. Routing is the act of deciding it.
• Segment — one chunk of the run between two splits.
• Split — a marker at the end of a segment. The file holding them all is a split file, usually a .lss file.
• Autosplitter — a script that triggers a split automatically instead of you pressing the key.
• Sequence break — finishing parts of the game in an order the developers did not intend.
• Skip — a glitch that removes a required or optional chunk of content from the route entirely.
• Frame-perfect — an input that must land on a specific frame. Pixel-perfect is the same idea with directional precision.
• PB — your personal best. WR — the world record on the board.
• NMG — no major glitch, a category restriction that bans game-breaking skips.
• Load removal — cutting loading screens, which usually only matters in in-game time categories.
• RTA — real-time attack, timing that includes load screens and menus. IGT — in-game time, which usually only counts the game’s own clock.
• Verification — a moderator checking your run against the rules before it lands on the board.

Step-by-Step: How to Route a Speedrun for the First Time

Choose a Speedrun Category and Read Its Current Rules

Your first decision is the category, and it changes everything downstream. Runners who pick badly spend weeks building splits for a category their game does not even support.

Category type	What you must do	Best for a first-timer?
Any%	Reach the credits by the fastest route, skipping whatever the rules allow	Usually yes. Short and well documented.
Low%	Finish a large share of the game, usually in a fixed level order	Only if the game is short and the route is published
100%	Every required item, cutscene and boss	Rarely. Long, hard to route, needs a strong guide.
Game-specific	Whatever the game page defines, such as a glitchless or NMG variant	When the board says so clearly and the rules are short

Then read the rule page closely. You are checking four things: which platforms count, which regional or game versions count, whether mods or patches are allowed, and how the timer starts and stops. A route written for a patched version can be illegal on an unpatched one, and the difference is often a missed cutscene.

How you know the category is live: the leaderboard has recent submissions, the rules tab has a moderator assigned or a last-updated date, and the forum has recent posts for that game. If the last run is two years old, the route may be stale even though it is technically valid.

Set Up a Reliable Recording and Timer

Do this before you practise a single segment. Setting up tooling mid-progress is how beginners lose an evening.

1. Install LiveSplit (or your platform’s equivalent timer) and run a test. Confirm it appears on screen while the game runs, usually as an overlay.
2. Set the hotkeys. Start, split, reset, and pause. Make sure you can hit split without looking away from the game, and test that pause and resume actually add correctly to your time.
3. Choose your timing method based on the category. RTA needs manual start and stop at the points the rules define. IGT often pairs with an autosplitter that reads the game’s own timer.
4. Look for an autosplitter for your game and platform. If one exists it removes timer fiddling from every future run. If none exists, manual splitting is fine — just be consistent.
5. Set up recording with no dropped frames, and check the audio is clean. A run with a stuttering capture can fail verification on quality grounds alone.
6. Back up the split file somewhere outside the game folder, so a crash during practice cannot lose a day of setup.

Two rules from here on. Never edit the recorded file — keep the original capture untouched and only trim if the category explicitly allows it. And know which timing method your category uses, because a timer set to the wrong one makes every segment time meaningless.

Practice the Route Before You Record

This is where beginners stall, usually at one specific mechanical step: turning route knowledge into actual split boundaries. A LiveSplit forum thread captures the confusion exactly — someone knows the route but cannot decide what to split on.

Import an existing split file if the game has one. Right-click the splits in LiveSplit, use the comparison or import option, and load the file that matches your category and platform. Importing is preferred almost universally, because a file maintained by other runners already has sensible boundaries and you can see their segment times.

If no file exists, build one yourself from the route. The rule for split boundaries is simple: split where the next action is meaningfully different from the current one. End of a level, a resource obtained, a major skip completed. Do not split every room — you will spend more time pressing keys than playing.

Then write route notes in your own words. The format that works is scannable lines, not paragraphs:

• Segment name
• Where to go
• What to press or collect
• Whether you are taking the skip or skipping the skip
• What you carry into the next segment

Look at an existing notes document for the tone. Good ones are short lists you can read at a glance mid-run, and they are split by category and by platform, because routing genuinely changes between versions. Auto-aim and available glitch characters differ by version, so a note that works on one version is actively wrong on another.

Now practise in a narrow loop. Run one segment. Reset. Run it again. The consensus practice loop among runners is deliberately repetitive: pick a category, pick a route, run it a hundred times, then a hundred more. Only when segments feel automatic do you attempt a full run.

Two warnings. Do not chase frame-perfect tricks early — that is the most common dead end, and a trick you can only do one time in four is worse than no trick. And when you die or miss a skip mid-run, do not improvise a recovery unless the route tells you what to do; the common beginner mistake is burning an unplanned ten minutes on a segment you should have reset.

Record and Complete the Run Cleanly

Treat the recorded attempt as a real run, because it is one. Start the timer exactly when the category rules say — for RTA, usually the moment the game is controllable; for IGT, usually the first frame the game clock runs.

Keep the run uninterrupted. If the game stutters, the capture drops, or someone walks into the room, expect verification to query it. Finish, then stop the timer at the exact endpoint the rules define rather than the moment you feel finished.

Write down the run’s details the moment it ends while they are fresh: platform, hardware or emulator and version, region, patch level, mods and cheats used (ideally none), timing method, and the final time. These become the notes field later, and reconstructing them from memory ten minutes later is how people submit runs missing half the evidence.

Review the Run Before You Submit It

Watch your own recording back once, from the start, timer visible. This catches most rejection reasons before a moderator does.

• Did the timer change cleanly? An unexplained jump is the first thing a verifier looks at. Note why it happened if you know.
• Did any skipped content actually play? A failed skip means you did content you did not route for. That usually means backtracking you did not budget for.
• Any desync or missing audio? Both give a verifier a reason to question the whole run.
• Did you use load removal or a mod? Fine if the rules allow it, a rejection if they do not.
• Is every frame legible? If a split happens off-screen or the timer is covered up for a stretch, it cannot be verified.

If the run failed, do not submit it as a practice attempt and hope. Fix the specific problem in practice and go again.

Submit the Run With Complete Notes

The submission form is where incomplete evidence goes to die. Fill in every field the game page asks for:

1. Category — the exact category name, matching the board.
2. Time — the final time in the format the board uses, from your timer rather than estimated.
3. Platform and region — including hardware or emulator and its version.
4. Game version or patch — the number matters if the category is version-restricted.
5. Video or file link — the original, unedited capture, publicly viewable, with the timer visible throughout.
6. Splits — attach the .lss file, since verifiers read it against your video.
7. Notes — anything unusual: interruptions, a questionable segment, an emulator setting, a skip that landed differently than expected.

Empty notes are the most common avoidable delay. A two-line note costs you nothing and answers the question a verifier would otherwise have to ask you.

Common Mistakes That Get a First Run Rejected

Each of these has cost first-timers a run. They are all avoidable.

1. Submitting to the wrong category or an outdated version. Fix: open the rules tab and the leaderboard on the same day you submit, and confirm your patch number is allowed.
2. Timing started or stopped at the wrong point. Fix: read the rule wording twice and find a reference run of the same category to compare against.
3. A note-free submission. Fix: write the platform, version, timing method and anything unusual before you hit submit, not after.
4. Poor capture quality or a dropped stream. Fix: test the recording for five minutes on a practice run. A dropped-frame video can fail even when the run is legitimate.
5. Losing the original file. Fix: keep the raw capture and the trimmed version separately, on more than one drive, until the run is verified.
6. Stale route. Fix: check the leaderboard’s recent runs for a skip the route you are following never mentions, and check whether the game was patched since the guide was written.
7. Trying to squeeze a harder route in. Fix: submit the run you executed cleanly. A verified slower run is worth more than a rejected faster one.

Tips for a Successful First Submission

Runners who get verified quickly tend to do a few unglamorous things consistently.

Talk to the moderators before you submit if anything is unclear. A forum thread or Discord question about a rule takes minutes and saves a rejection. Moderators would rather answer a question early than reject a run over it.

Keep an archive. Save every recorded attempt with its split file and a note of what went wrong. A first run that failed for a specific reason is the most useful piece of evidence you will generate all week, and it disappears fast if you do not label it.

Re-read the rules periodically. Categories get new platforms, new mods restrictions and new timing definitions. A route that was valid when you learned it may not be valid now, and as of 2026 checking the rules tab before a big attempt is still the fastest sanity check there is.

Treat a rejection as information. Verifiers quote the rule they applied, which means you get a free answer to a question you did not know to ask. Fix the specific thing, re-run the affected segment, and go again. Nobody remembers their first submitted run, including the people holding the records.

And expect the early game to feel slow. It always does. The opening segments of a category are the least optimised part of any run, for everyone, including the record holder’s run from ten years ago. Reddit threads on the subject are full of runners who assumed they were failing and were actually just in the part of the run nobody has optimised yet.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Start with the smallest reversible decision: open the game’s leaderboard, pick a category with recent submissions and a short run, and read its rules tab. Import the split file if one exists, write two lines of route notes, and drill the first segment until it is boring. Everything after that — the splits, the recording, the submission — follows from that one choice.