Extended Bar Management

Optimizing Your Stamina Usage, aka Bar Management
Intro : ) - This is basically how to best use that wonderful green bar above your health, and it WILL touch on basically everything there is to know. I tried to order it in what people will come across first to last naturally, but that doesn't mean all of it is necessary. If you're new, you can prolly just read the first 2 paragraphs and know enough to get a solid time, but if you've been around a while, you can skip to the 3rd and 4th. (If you even need told about EBM.) I may or may not make this a video to more easily explain things as well, but it's here in case I don't get around to it or I don't think it's necessary. Oh and also gemore stands for gem ore, so that the item and cave block aren't confused. If you're so new you don't know that, there ya go.

Keep A Sliver - The simplest thing to understand is that if the bar bottoms out, you move half as fast for a bit, which will obviously lose time, so just don't do that. You can count your hits, and pause somewhere in the middle of holding mine, so the last hit comes out without bottoming out your bar. Not holding mine for a small amount of time on that tree can save little itty bitty pieces of time, but for the most part this doesn't matter.

Mine Gemore Correctly - Where bar management is MOST important is gemore mining, since getting gems will take ~25 swings of your pick, or almost 2 full stamina bars, and not mining optimally can easily lose ~5 seconds. If you held mine the ENTIRE time, you would lose time, since the rate you swing your pick is too slow. Instead, stop on the hit that removes that last sliver of stamina, and wait for it to refill. This allows you to not only mine it faster, but collect it when it spreads out quicker than if you had no bar at all. The reason the latter's the case is because you can swing 13 times with a stone pick, and with 2 stamina bars being 26 hits, you still have a hit's worth left that lets you move quickly after mining gemore.

Correct Resource Collecting - There are some things you wanna mine before others. For example, if you have half a bar, you can mine an iron ore, and while you could wait next to gemore and get a full bar and THEN begin mining, that loses time. So make sure you're not hopping from one to the other willy-nilly, but rather a bit more carefully. This is also the case if you're basically out of bar; take out your shovel and get a bit of sand, as carefully pressing the shovel button makes it neigh impossible to lose bar, and you don't lose efficiency either when done right. Getting an order of things that take more bar to less bar could go a long way in helping shave off the last second or so you need.

Extended Bar Management - This is gonna be EBM, or Extended Bar Management, where you're stretching the bar optimization across multiple resources, and it can even go across the entire run. From here, the stamina bar has a bit of control over what you need to do. Not only should you not let it bottom out, but you should try to avoid it filling up completely, as it would lose time. The best analogy is something like overflowing resources. If you don't spend the resources before more come in, you're screwed of some because you can't store it. That's pretty much what walking around with a full bar is doing; you're wasting time when not using the bar to its fullest. If it's almost full and you plan on going to a zombie at the top of the screen, collect some resources you don't have if you can. If trees are blocking the way, go get some wood, and let the zombie come to you. Not only did you squeeze in some wood collecting, but also walked less distance because you let the zombie walk to YOU. This decision-making can be applied basically everywhere and anywhere where two resources are close together, and helps you choose which to go for first.

One instance of EBM could stretch over almost 3 minutes, which is important to keep in mind. One thing flows into another all the time in this game, so don't treat it as a case-by-case basis, but more so a gameplan and strategy for doing runs. (Which boils down to balancing your bar as best as possible.)

End Thingy - That's almost all this game really has to offer about stamina! There's certain smaller things, ex. better tools let you swing more and have more stamina because of that, but memorizing that is something you could do on your own, and as long as you know fist has 8, wooden pick has 11, and stone pick has 13, you're good to go. Idk what you'll do with this knowledge outside of speedrunning this game, but I'm glad you have it now I guess.

- HoloKnight

- Arumin