Speedrun: Swearingen to Capstone, Any%, Trainless
Welcome back everybody to another edition of Third Spur Gaming. Today, we will be speedrunning from the John E. Swearingen Engineering building to the Capstone House. This is one of the longest and most treacherous commutes that students have to take on campus, especially those living in Capstone House. If everything is done perfectly, this run can be completed in about six minutes. Let’s see how well I can do.
Unfortunately, this run is heavily RNG reliant, so if I get unlucky with traffic or bus routes, I can lose a lot of time. Thankfully, this is the trainless category, so I don’t have to worry about any pesky trains blocking the way. Ideally, the Yellow bus will be waiting outside Swearingen. Even though the Yellow bus route was made longer in patch 20.21, it is still by far the fastest method to complete this run. Ugh, but my BusTracker.exe is telling me that it’s on the other side of the city for some reason, so that means I’m going to have to walk. This is a big-time loss, so I’m probably not going to achieve world record here, but it’s worth a shot.
A lot of players think that grabbing a coffee for the speed boost is the way to go when it comes to this run, but there simply isn’t enough time. The time lost waiting in line for a coffee outweighs the time saved from the caffeinated buff, meaning that for this run it is a complete time loss to grab a coffee.
Even though this is trainless, I don’t actually ever cross any train tracks, this is because, since the discovery of the 300 Main skip, players of all categories have been using this skip, which saves about twenty seconds over the original Main Street route. Using this route, we can clip through the 300 Main building, which allows us to travel underneath the train track and cut across the recreation field. Traveling diagonally means we cover more distance in a shorter amount of time when compared to taking the sidewalks. The clip is very tricky though and involves some complicated movements involving drinking from water fountains while standing on top of them and the relative cardinal direction of the last place you went to the bathroom.
The next section involves a large incline, regardless of the route you take. This is one of the most difficult parts of the run. Some players will take the Bull Street route, which saves about two seconds when compared to the Russell route, but it takes up a lot more stamina, which players need to complete this long trek. If you use up all of your stamina on the Bull Street route, you won’t be able to complete the run at all. In general, though, it is up to the personal preference of the runner.
The last hurdle of the run is Barnwell Street. This is another RNG-reliant section. If traffic is heavy in this section of the run, it can kill your hopes of a PB by adding twenty, thirty, even forty seconds to your final time. And no matter what you do: make sure you don’t get hit by a car. Doing so could add as much as three months to your time. If you are hit by a car, you should immediately reset.
Looks like I finished the run with a respectable time of 19:54. Not late for class, but definitely out of breath. I think I can do better, though. Gonna reset.
