📡 Beacon 3
Intro
After loading in, run up the stairs and into the main room. Some dialogue will pass, and the door to the reactor room will open. Keep in mind that the door won't open quickly if you are too far from it or if you don't have your Ark tool equipped.
Reactor Room
Simply run around the room and shoot the cells, and be careful not to let the arc tool overheat. This room is not very different from a casual playthrough except doing it fast. After returning from the Reactor room make sure to pick up the L-Star for the Dish Fight later in Beacon 3. If you do SFBD or HFB later in the level, you should also throw away your nades now.
[video]
Fastball
All Fastball strats require you to have Moon Boots first!
Moon Boots
Moon Boots
Moon Boots reduces your gravity by 15% which is needed for all Fastball strats. But even if you don't do any advanced Fastball strats yet, it's still very useful to learn and perform. -mats
Fastball
Fastball is a difficult yet rewarding segment, often referred to as "the highlight of the run". It consists of using a combination of Moon Boots and other movement techniques to travel across the majority of Beacon 3's map very quickly. There are 3 different variations of it, all starting with climbing into BT's hand without crouching or jumping and holding jump as he throws you.
Poverty Super Fastball [?]
[I hope to cook up some watered down version of SFB for beginners here -mats]
Super Fastball (SFB)
The oldest and most basic route.
[video]
I'd recommend Super Fastball to every runner independent of skill. Even if you're uncomfortable with SFB you will still benefit from it as a failed SFB is still faster than not doing SFB in most cases. Backups and alternatives are explained in the video. -mats
SFBD and HFB require you to get rid of all grenades before getting picked up by BT.
Super Fastball Deluxe (SFBD)
Super Fastball Deluxe is different from SFB because it allows you to get the grav stars during the route instead of taking a detour later to get them.
[zweek's video is a placeholer as it is geared towards runners who kind of have a basic idea of how sfbd works -mats]
Hyper Fastball (HFB)
Crane Kick
Hyper Fastball holds many similarities to SFBD except you land on top of the spiral room instead of the right, then jump through the control terminal of the next crane and wallkick off of the right side; then, travel to the left side of this large room and make sure to hit the trigger on the left side of the platform that is the intended entrance to the large room. Then, do a diagonal double jump (forward + right + jump) once you have cleared the wall on the right in order to avoid losing all your speed by hitting the forward wall. Then make your way to the far side of the area and jump off of the guardrail, and onto the dish platform or the small area below it if you don't have enough height.
Panel Hop
[ask chill_spirit for this one -mats]
Return + Dish Fight
Return and the Dish Fight afterwards are closely tied together. This means if you do one strat for the return this might force you to do another specific strat for the Dish Fight. Make sure to read all notes on the intricacies of this section.
Overview
[I'm working on an overview video for this section. It'll be here soon(tm) -mats]
Return
Basic route
The Standard route consists of slide hopping onto the antenna and jumping off onto the same white platform used for SFBD, then climbing to the top of the far right building and wallrunning on the stack of metal to get down onto the area with a series of arc-activated platforms. Then just travel along the platforms, using the arc tool when/if necessary, and return to BT using a zipline or wallkick off of the nearby wall if required.
Poverty Zipless (P-Zip)
The Grav Star Route uses a grav star to launch the player towards the white wall at 60-80 kph, allowing them to reach the arc platforms without climbing to the top of the building. This is the most used method among runners.
Zipless
Hyper Zipless
Dish Fight
Dish fight w/o Tesco
This one is even easier than Poverty Tesco. I'd recommend to learn Poverty Tesco as soon as you can though. -mats
Poverty Tesco
Poverty Tesco does not involve any reverse trigger orders strats, all it is is doing the stalker fight at the dish like normal, but while you're on your way there, you kill the 3 grunts that stay behind in the building with the ziplines. This tutorial is an in depth explanation of how to do the dish fight in the most easy and beginner friendly way possible. It also briefly goes into how the fight works, and some common mistakes and what to do if things go wrong.
The Tesco Meal Deal
(somebody please explain the accurate origin of the name of this)
The Tesco Meal Deal uses reverse trigger order to skip the waiting in dish fight, allowing the player to complete it as quickly as possible without having to wait for the game itself to advance.
The Tesco Meal Deal - Cooperang
Very Difficult Strat: using a very good launch (sending you about 120 kph and left of the direction of the beacon), wallkick off of the left beacon support and return to the grunt room, continuing like normal.
Dish Climb / Module Insert
Dish Climb
Richter
Richter fight consists of 3 waves of enemies that have to be killed one after the other, followed by actually killing Richter, so it's essentially 4 waves. The fight is very well optimized, as the enemies are taken out very quickly. You'll likely find that the hardest part about it is killing the enemies before they move around too much.
Richter fight is the last major part of the level, so it can be easy to overlook it, but it is definitely worth putting time into and getting consistent times with it.
Elmo Clip
Elmo clip is performed right after killing Richter and saves about 2-3 seconds.
This strat is pretty easy to learn at any skill level. But it's also okay to skip over it at first as doesn't save that much time. -mats
Scorch Richter
Scorch Richter involves standing in a specific spot before Richter drops in, and then placing the flame traps next to him and igniting them at a specific time so that Richter won't move. We use flame trap duplication to make the traps do more damage.
Because this uses up our tactical ability, we have to swap to brute and use flightcore to do elmo clip.
Scorch Richter is about 4 seconds faster than using ronin to kill him, but the placement and timing is pretty precise, and if you make a mistake it can cause Richter to move away, which loses a lot of time.
While waiting for the dialogue to finish, don't use any of the ziplines around the map.
It will cause the game to crash.