the source golden final room entry

this run is already my hardest achievement in this game. getting this single entry took 114 total hours in the map, with 107 of which being golden dedicated. i've also been working towards this golden for just under 5 months now; i originally cleared the map in december of 2023 and did a little bit of strat labbing before deciding that i wasn't good enough yet and should instead spend my time focusing on superfecta. april of 2024 was when i decided that i was going to fully commit to this golden, and since then it has at some points been my favourite thing to invest my time into, and at other points been such a massive burden that i felt like i would kill just to not have to play it anymore. i'm going to put it all to an end soon

the run happened pretty randomly, i was just playing stardust ruins silver on stream, and after getting way more unlucky than i could mentally handle for a tier 5, i decided to take a break and derust this map instead since i hadn't played it actively for about 2 weeks. i practiced, did a few runs, and then this just came out of nowhere. nerves weren't too bad until i had the lagspike in the middle of chaos (how did i survive that??) and i totally could've fluked the entire room, but did the reverse hyper on the core block too early, which imo is the second to last input you should ever die to. i'm not sad about it though; i think it would've felt worse if i died early into the room, because then getting the golden might not feel possible

also, this golden is absolutely underrated. i gave myself some time to think about how i feel about all the new ish-strats, and considering how much time it took me to get my first final room entry even after playing around with all the strats and route optimizations and deciding which are the best for me, i think it's comfortably a high tier 1. i think that a run to final is a mid tier 1 on its own; it didn't feel overdue either because i still went through the classic short golden process of having a neverending skill issue that just moves to the next room after you pass the room it's currently in for the first time. i think i expect 5-10 total final entries to get the golden, but i'm not sure how long this run will take to replicate

okay, enough yapping, back to grinding