Game’n Breakfast – Kemist
Welcome to the last Sunday of February 2024. With the Speedons speedrun marathon fast approaching, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about this increasingly high-profile discipline. So who better to discuss it than Kemist, the speedrun expert who finishes Elden Ring before you even manage to unlock Torrent? As you’ll soon realise, this chemist has swapped his test tubes for a stopwatch to keep time with his games. So let’s find out more about this character, the speedrun and the link between the two. As for Game’n Breakfast, as announced last month (here), this is the last episode to be released on a monthly basis. Quite simply, because by diversifying the formats, I’m running out of time and in order to avoid repetition, I prefer to space out the issues to gain in quality and concentrate on varied and little-known profiles. But don’t panic, we’ll definitely be meeting up again in a few weeks’ time to meet someone new. In the meantime, make yourselves comfortable, Kemist is waiting for us.
As his pseudonym suggests, Kemist didn’t study anything to do with video games. His schooling was in the sciences, as can be seen from the various references in the universe of his stream. He obtained a bachelor’s and then a master’s degree in chemistry in 2023. Video games are a childhood passion. From an early age, he played a number of titles. During high school, it was Nintendo that caught his eye, but it was during his degree that he was finally able to afford his first PC. Kemist found himself with an almost infinite number of games, and he cracked as many as he could. As a Master, he finally had access to fibre and the ability to stream. Always with the idea of making the most of the plethora of titles available, he got into multigaming. It covered all the new releases, as well as the classics. It was in this way that he discovered Dark Souls 3 and began to immerse himself in FromSoftware’s universe. He then went on to play the original emulated version of Demon’s Souls, and a friend gave him the opportunity to play Bloodborne, again with a view to discovery. Watching a 1TLAU run on Sekiro was a revelation: speedrunning is far from being the preserve of retro games like Super Mario 64 or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time. For him, up until then, speedrunning had been a nostalgic discipline that wasn’t really accessible to the new generation of gamers. He was shocked to see a runner abusing a game that he had spent hours working on. Kemist says to himself that if others can do it, why can’t he? It’s late 2021 and FromSoft’s next game, Elden Ring, is about to be released. It’s a title he’s been waiting for with bated breath, and it seems logical to him not to get involved in speedrunning when he knows full well that he’ll be dropping everything for the Japanese studio’s long-awaited open world. So he’s putting the idea to one side.
On 25 February 2022, Elden Ring was released to the public. Kemist set about completing the game with a character focused on strength, followed by one focused on dexterity and another on magic. The desire to make the challenge more challenging was felt, and he heard of players who finished the game while remaining level one. So it’s his turn to spice up his experience, the discipline is cool, he’s having fun, but in the end it’s just a matter of making a fourth character. The game’s appeal doesn’t diminish, but it does run out of content. The new game + is of no interest to him. So the question arose: what do you do when you know every nook and cranny of the adventure on offer? That’s where the speedrun comes in. The Purgatory% is an event that encourages people to speedrun. The aim is to eliminate the fifteen major bosses while remaining level one. Kemist had a week’s break from his exams, so he set about learning how to run. In one week, he managed to finish in six hours. With more work, he quickly got down to three hours, which was a very good start. The challenge of the stopwatch kept him on his toes, and he began to develop his learning methodology. Kemist tried his hand at several categories, but the ones that caught his attention were the ones with the most content, because they made him laugh. The more competitive categories, even if they are more limited, are interesting because the times and strategies are constantly changing. One thing leads to another, and he’s been ‘bombing’ speedrunning for over two years now, and still finds it just as much fun.
Today, Kemist has gone from multigaming streamer to Souls runner. When he first discovered FromSoftware games, even though he thought they were good, they made no more of an impression on him than The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2 or Monster Hunter. It’s really the very rigid, challenging and competitive speedrun aspect that appeals to him. Every run is different, because the battles are never really the same, so there’s always a need for perfect execution. In short, he doesn’t really care for the universe, but the gameplay sets these speedruns apart. The possibilities are so numerous that with all the goals he’s set himself, he doesn’t have time to try his hand at other speedruns. Kemist pushes the categories he chooses as far as he can, so it’s not unusual for him to spend six months optimising his route. Knowing that there are between five and ten categories per game, he still has many years ahead of him. But the idea of trying something else is still very much in the back of his mind. He’s keen to try out speedruns of Dishonored, Celeste, Super Mario Wonder, but also JRPGs like Fire Emblem. What interests him is discovering new methods inherent in these different game genres. Kemist really enjoys scouting, watching what other people are doing. At dedicated events, he can chat to other runners while they’re training, and see the subtleties of the different types of run. There’s always something interesting, like looking for glitches, an area he hasn’t mastered. With experience, the runner develops a flair for exploiting loopholes.
For the time being, Kemist has not yet created a run from scratch, but is working on those already on the leadboard. It’s worth noting that there’s a website called speedrun.com, which acts as an official ranking and where you have to submit your times for them to be validated. It’s a bit like the Guinness Book of speedrun. If you select a game, you’ll be taken to the leadboard, a table that lists the most frequently played runs with the best times achieved. Kemist uses this summary to find the challenge he’s looking for. He starts by looking at the title holder to see what the run looks like. That’s a good start, but it doesn’t give him all the techniques he needs to try and compete with the first place holder. In speedrunning, helping each other plays a major role. The community is the first source of information. One of the best ways of discovering secrets is to go to the community’s discord server to find tips, guides or clarifications. Mario game servers are a good example of this. You can find tips with several levels of difficulty, from very easy to get into the run to very difficult to grab the precious seconds that will bring you to the top. The link with other runners is therefore essential. Next, you need to watch lots of runs to see where you can improve and refine your execution of the different set-ups (using certain mechanics, going over walls, for example). The third pillar is to find out about training tools. This is one of the things he would have liked to know earlier, because it would have saved him a lot of time. These are generally simple tools that allow you to save and load quickly or teleport. To master a skip, a shortcut in French, it’s easier to be able to start again in a few seconds than to go back normally or even start the game from the beginning in some cases. These three tips will save you a considerable amount of time compared with learning the hard way, on your own. To be a little more concrete, let’s go back to souls. There’s software that lets you copy and paste back-ups in an instant, so you can come back wherever you want to practise. You can also make yourself invincible, see triggers (points of passage that trigger events such as the arrival of a giant at the entrance to a castle), block bosses or teleport. Otherwise, dying in a souls game means waiting for the death screen, which is a loading screen, reappearing, quitting the game and reloading the savegame, as it can only be manipulated in the main menu. In other words, when you have to do it dozens, hundreds of times to understand a technique. Every second saved by using a tool is welcome. As soon as he dies, Kemist presses a key that causes his game to crash, but not the game, and he restarts the game directly from the main menu. In try-hard games, you have to make life easier for yourself. If we go back to the sequence of events, once they’ve done their homework and identified the route they’re going to take, they watch a run two or three times (more if it’s complicated), to which they add clips of the critical passages. He then launches a first run, and at each key point (each skip, each boss), he makes a save. Once the route is complete, he knows where he needs to train thanks to his saves. On top of that, this first run gives them an initial idea of the final run. After that, he prefers to take each critical point to practise. Once he feels comfortable, he launches into a boss rush times three, the aim being to do all the executions three times in a row. He believes that to validate a sensitive point, he must be able to do it three times without error. If he misses the third run at stage twelve, he starts again at the first iteration before moving on to stage thirteen. As well as improving, this method adds a fun aspect to a goal. Without this fun aspect, it’s quite easy to get bored, or even careless, which is the enemy of an effective run. Now we come to the first real objective: to get the run in in a single session! The previous stage allows you to build up a sense of automaticity, but you mustn’t forget that souls have some difficult passages. Some games require less rigour, like Mario Odyssey. Reaching the top times remains a challenge, but a mistake doesn’t lead to a punishing death, as can be the case in the games we’re interested in today.
Mastering a run requires patience, but that depends above all on the objective. If we take the run Shura any% glitchless (Sekiro), Kemist estimates that if the runner is already familiar with the game, it will take twenty hours to pass the first time. On the other hand, for an RL1 (Rune Level 1: completed the game while still at level one) DLC% anvil road (Elden Ring) run, you need to multiply by ten, giving between two hundred and five hundred hours needed to get through the twelve bosses for the first time, while the slightest blow received sends you back to the starting point. This category is just as demanding in terms of combat, movement and skipping. At the time of writing, Kemist was still working on this route (at the time of going to press, he was in second place in the world with a time of 24 min 26 secs). It’s one of the most difficult routes, and there’s always an element of chance about it, so you’re never sure you’ll get to the end when you start.
Another important point: to optimise your performance, keep your eyes open. Setting a new record is often synonymous with a new discovery, a new glitch (in the categories that allow them) and therefore a new strategy. In the three games he is currently playing, Kemist is aiming to improve his time in the hardest categories. Each new advance is a gain in time at a level where every second is crucial: he is six seconds behind the leader on Elden Ring. For example, on Dark Souls 3, in early 2024, a new glitch was discovered on a boss, which saved two minutes, so the run went from 1h10 to 1h07’50’, an optimisation of 3%, which is huge on this kind of route. What’s more, this glitch is easier to use (for run experts, don’t get me wrong). For the record, the previous glitch was the elevator skip, which was difficult to set up, and has now been replaced by another that allows it to be overridden, giving it the name elevator skip skip. Every new strategy sends the community into a frenzy, and every micro-optimisation rekindles the race for the record. On some of Sekiro’s runs, the challengers follow each other to the nearest second (since validations don’t go down to a tenth of a second, chance means there’s no tie), so they’re looking to win even the slightest half-second that would move them up a place or even into first place. And remember, this is the FromSoftware game whose gameplay allows the greatest mobility, so the search for the jump that will gain a few grains in the hourglass is always in full swing. And more generally, as runners are very attached to their game, there’s always room for improvement, whenever possible, so you always have to be on the lookout for the smallest optimisation. As far as Kemist is concerned, even if discovery isn’t of direct use to him, he’s still curious to see the latest discoveries in the games he runs in.
As Souls speedrunning isn’t as widespread as all that, it’s hard to really talk about a French community – it’s primarily international. Even if runners tend to go and watch the streams of friends who speak their language, the souls speedruns discord is international and you’ll find all the communities around the world there. It’s a place to share personal bests (PBs) and discoveries. Every question is answered by someone who knows the subject inside out. Of course, Twitch chats are also an important source of information, but that remains ephemeral and mainly related to what the runner is doing. It’s more interesting when the streamer tries a new glitch or route to discuss it with those present. So we have two methods of gathering information. While group work remains at the heart of the exchanges, there is still a bit of a competitive spirit. However, with nothing at stake, it’s still good-natured, if sometimes tough. It’s mainly a race against time to get or keep first place. Each new record is followed by congratulations and then a wake-up call for the challengers.
Today, it’s hard to talk about speedrun without mentioning Speedons, the charity weekend that brings together video games and Médecins du Monde. I’ll tell you more about it below. It was at the 2023 event that I discovered Kemist. What a pleasure it was to see him do boss after boss while putting on a show! That’s really what he’s trying to do with his mate who’s commentating. As well as delivering a masterful run, it’s a real convivial moment. He sometimes saves the jokes that come to him over the course of the year for the big day. With some of the commentators who accompany him, he does a few sessions beforehand to see what can be done as a duo. From the point of view of the run itself, instead of doing a reset every time he goes over the planned time, he makes an average according to the accidents and unforeseen events, because during the event, he can’t start again ad infinitum. The fact that he has to complete his route in a single attempt forces him to add safer strategies. Don’t forget that in a marathon, the timing is meticulous. Any delay or advance can create a gap that disrupts the organisation. What he appreciates is the interaction with the audience, which allows for improvisation based on the reaction of those present. It’s obviously a source of stress, but a positive stress that allows him to give his best, like closing the 2023 edition with a clash with Malenia (Elden Ring) for one hundred thousand euros. It’s important to remember that at that time, he was only at the beginning of his life as a runner and completely unknown. This pressure now means that he is much less sensitive to the stress generated by this kind of event. Finally, this feeling is often present in speedrunning, because when a session becomes a PB opportunity, the right to make mistakes is no longer allowed. Whether it’s solo, in a stream or in public, he loves this feeling that pushes him to give it his all.
The time has come to ask him what he thinks makes a good speedrun game. To start with, the game needs to have a good pace, with limited downtime. Forget the speedrun of Red Dead Redemption 2. There also needs to be variety in the run. If you have to do the same glitch over and over again, it’s going to get boring very quickly. On the other hand, a Zelda with a strategy in which each tool used provides a way of ‘breaking’ the game is much more interesting. You also need to be able to skip the cinematics, which are a waste of time when it comes to speedrunning. There are also games that are on trend, and that’s the case with Souls at the moment. Most beginner FromSoft runners do glitchless runs because they find it hard to detach themselves from the boss rush that is the essence of the games, but also because glitches are difficult to set up. Above all, what makes a good speedrun is enjoying the game. Most runners enjoy the basic title and the speedrun is just a way of extending the experience. In fact, since he’s been speedrunning, Kemist has given up stream multigaming, but also on a personal level. The souls take up all his time, to quote him ‘[…] I do it all the time, just to improve myself like a degenerate. ‘I do it all the time, just to improve myself like a degenerate. The last non-FromSoftware game he played was Nier Replicant to prepare for the concert on 23 February 2024. For him, it’s not a constraint; he’s having so much fun in his discipline that as soon as he wakes up, he’s thinking speedrun. With the exposure he gained during Speedons, he’s now able to make a living from his passion. If you add it all up, you end up with a Kemist who runs twelve hours a day and has a blast doing it, while it lasts. It’s not a pace that suits everyone, like speedrun in the broadest sense. You have to really get into it, persevere run after run, try after try. The only way to know if you’re a potential runner is to give it a go. Speedrunning helps you develop the rigour that comes from mastering your game from start to finish. As far as his objectives are concerned, Kemist isn’t really in the world record race. Playing in fairly popular categories, it’s hard to be competitive with runners who have hundreds or even thousands of hours’ experience. It’s more about the personal challenge of trying to beat your own record.
Before I get to the end of this article, I’d like to give you a brief introduction to the event that started it all, Speedons. For the record, following the success of charity events linked to video games, Médecins du Monde wanted to raise funds in a similar context. That’s when they got in touch with Xavier Dang, better known by his nickname Mister MV, who is a great speedrun enthusiast. The idea was born. Initially scheduled to start in 2020, the CoVid pandemic pushed Speedons back to 2021, at the Accord Arena in Paris. With the help of 59 runners, the marathon raised €614,255. The editions followed one another to reach, in 2024, 91 runners and €2,066,663 at the Lyon Convention Centre. Médecins du Monde is an international medical NGO founded in 1980. Totally independent, it helps people affected by armed conflict, natural disasters and all those who have no access to healthcare. In 2019, the organisation is running more than sixty programmes in nearly fifty countries. In the coming hours, we will see whether generous donors will once again break the last record.
Here we are at the end of this last monthly episode, but as explained in the introduction, this is far from being the last Game’n Breakfast. There’s no shortage of people who deserve to be in the spotlight, and I’m keen to continue this fascinating work and share it with you, to reveal what goes on behind the scenes in the video games industry. In the meantime, we’ll be catching up soon on our podcasts (with a little surprise coming soon), in other articles and on the web. In fact, you’re welcome to join us on the Point’n Think discord to discuss a whole host of things! One last thing before we go!
Bourrez les dons !