4 Your First Hundred Hours
Everything after this chapter assumes you already play. This one doesn't. It is also the chapter this book exists for: almost every problem in Ch. 32 starts in the first month, with a player skipping the boring part.
Setting up, once
- Keys. The default is Z and X, one finger each, and that is what almost everyone uses. Click on the mouse works but ties your clicking hand to your aiming hand; separating them early saves relearning later (Ch. 6). 58
- Audio. Effects volume above music volume, wired headphones or speakers. You are playing to a sound, and you need to hear your own hits. Bluetooth adds about 170 ms of delay, which is several times the entire 300 window (Ch. 7). 164
- Turn on the hit error bar (Options, Score meter type, Hit error). Seeing whether you are early or late from your first week is worth more than any setting you could buy (Ch. 7). 72
- Everything else can wait. You don't need a tablet, a mechanical keyboard, a skin, or a custom area to reach the middle ranks; Korilak, who reached the top 100, says as much about the 100,000 to 300,000 range. Buy comfort when something hurts, not when you're stuck (Ch. 17). 31
What the numbers on a map mean
| Setting | What it does to you |
|---|---|
| Star rating | The game's difficulty estimate. Useful as a ladder, unreliable as a comparison between map types, and recalculated when pp updates (Ch. 24) 59 |
| AR | How long objects are visible before you hit them: 750 ms at AR 8, 600 at AR 9, 450 at AR 10. Lower AR means more objects on screen at once, which is harder to read, not easier (Ch. 8) 47 |
| OD | How tight the timing is: ±50 ms for a 300 at OD 5, ±32 at OD 8, ±20 at OD 10 (Ch. 35) 46 |
| CS | Circle size. Higher CS means smaller circles (Ch. 10) 48 |
| HP | How fast the health bar drains when you miss |
The first month, concretely
- Play maps you can pass, then maps you can full combo. Star rating is your ladder: sit where you can full combo with good accuracy in a couple of tries, then move up. Both extremes fail: SS-ing easy maps teaches nothing new, and pass-hunting far above your level builds nothing you can repeat. 71,108
- Chase accuracy before difficulty. 98% is a good early target, though don't force it while your tapping is still forming. Accuracy habits built now pay off for years; accuracy skipped now becomes the wall in Ch. 32. 31,71
- Alternate from the start. Tap Z, then X, then Z, on anything faster than comfortable singletapping. Mashing through your first bursts is exactly how finger lock is trained (Ch. 6). 3
- Play a variety of maps, not one type. Your first few hundred maps decide which skills exist at all (Ch. 22).
- Expect to be bad for a while, and expect improvement to be invisible while it happens (Ch. 23). 124
Drill: Your first week
- Pick five maps you can pass at your current level, across different styles: one with jumps, one with bursts, one slow and technical, one long, one you simply like.
- Play each until you can full combo it at 97% or better. Alternate every burst even when mashing would pass.
- Then raise the star rating by half a star and repeat with five new maps.
- Keep the five old maps. They are your first benchmark (Ch. 33). 3,108
Not yet
These are not forbidden forever. They are things that, done in your first hundred hours, cost you more than they give:
- Mods. Hidden, Hard Rock, and Double Time all wait until you are comfortable across a variety of maps without them (Ch. 15). Hard Rock in particular raises AR, which hides the dense reading you're supposed to be learning. 13,15,66
- Farm maps. Short maps with a spike of jumps pay pp and teach one skill. They are not banned, but a diet of them at low accuracy produces the three walls in Ch. 32. 3,40
- Relax and Autopilot. Each removes half the game, so neither trains the half it removes (Ch. 15). One run of each is a useful diagnostic, though, and Ch. 27 explains how to use them that way. 62,143
- Chasing pp and rank. Both are lagging indicators, and both get recalculated without you playing a note (Ch. 24). 59
- Buying gear to fix a plateau (Ch. 17).
Finished this chapter?
Log in to track progressMark it complete for 🍪 100 and track your way to Codex Graduate.
Community discussion
Discussion is not evidence: it never changes the chapter directly. Corrections go through Codex suggestions, where they're checked against sources.
Forum threads about this chapterStart one
None yet — longer questions and write-ups belong in the forums, where they stay findable.