Over two years of sabering beats

…and yes, I am still very much at it. The last time I talked about this game in the usual amount of detail was nearly 1.5 years ago. Since then, I got 7 more Expert FCs, 6 more Faster, 3 more Super Fast, 12 more Expert+ FCs, 6 Faster, 2 more One-Saber FCs, 2 more 90° FCs, and 1 more 360° FC. These make my grand totals 45/50, 32/50, 5/50, 25/50, 6/50, 27/28, 18/19, and 18/19 in that order.

Did I say 50? Yes, I said 50. Volume 6 dropped recently with 5 songs including new Boom Kitty, new Camellia, and even DragonForce. The other two are negligible by comparison, although I will say that Heavy Weight reminds me partly of Octopath Traveler and partly of the “Castle / Boss Fortress (Super Mario World / SMB3)” remix in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. (Also, I felt good about FCing the song on X+ as quickly as I did.) In terms of Expert difficulty, Cathedral (the new Boom Kitty) was no slouch to FC, especially at the part with the bombs and the circling arcs, while the two big dogs were painstaking final songs to SS. Tempo-Katana (the new Camellia) in particular has me questioning the Beat Saber Minimum Points Per Rank Breakdown that I’ve had since my first report and have been updating regularly (now with Hard, Normal, and Easy difficulties); the formula has the SS cutoff as 1,165,203, but I previously scored 1.18 mil and still got a mere single S.

Before I get carried away with this, I should mention that “the Noir color profile with no visual effects” I brought up in my Topster post did not last long. I came up with a custom color profile that I consider the ultimate sweet spot between playability and ease on the eyes.

  • Left saber: 128 Red
  • Right saber: 128 Green
  • Obstacles: 128 Red, 128 Green (dark yellow)
  • Background 1: 128 Red, 64 Green (dark orange)
  • Background 2: 192 Red, 96 Green (not-so-dark orange)

Notice the lack of blue? I’ve heard that blue light is the kind that causes the most eye damage, hence the ubiquity of “night” modes on electronic devices that make their screens look orange. (Not to mention eyeglasses that filter out blue light, which I have been wearing for as long as I can remember.)

Speaking of orange, I chose it as the background color because it’s my favorite color, while my saber color choices are based on how “left” is “sinister” in Latin. Then, by process of elimination, I chose yellow for the obstacles. Unlike color profiles, environment overrides are reset between sessions, so the exact background colors are the best fit I could find for every single non-DLC environment. Also, if I want to put on the Ghost Notes modifier in order to max out one of my Expert scores, I have a variant of the color profile where the sabers are fully red and green instead of just half; it makes the incoming arrows easier to see.

That brings me to new Expert accomplishments. Prior to the Volume 6 songs, I got 215$-Step and Final-Boss-Chan, the latter of which gave me at least two more outro chokes since my last report about it. The farthest I had gotten in 215$-Step before the FC was at the tail end of the piano part, which had me thinking I focused too much on the duos of upward notes; all I did differently in the FC run was tell myself, “Don’t think,” during that part. After the Volume 6 songs came an FC of Spin Eternally that required some serious consistency refinement. If memory serves, I have had at least one run past the first part where I choked (which I realized within a few runs was because I overlooked the double before the final spins), but my nerves crumbled when the sixteenths rolled in. That leaves #45, the one that gave me too many chokes for its own good: EXiT This Earth’s Atomosphere.

I like to call this song “Sam I Am” because of how I mishear the vocal sampling in the buildups. At first, the intro deterred me from even thinking about this one, but I’ve improved a whole lot since then. It just took a whole lot of trial and error, and for the outro in particular, I find that it helps to lean in the recessive direction (left in my case). In the end, the chokes included one reverse (at the transition into the outro), at least one within the last five notes, and one within the last three notes. Such a pain.

I don’t remember offhand what the Faster FCs were, but I do know that I scooped up Into the Dream and also got Full Charge, Unlimited Power, and Magic. I’ll say as many times as it takes that Full Charge is my least favorite song in the game, partly because its Expert map is chock full of parts that have no right to be as tense as they are. I have been going for It Takes Me for a while, considering that I tend to pair it with Into the Dream, but it’s been so stubborn that I’ve been heavily moderating my fervor in pursuing it.

As for Super Fast, I have added One Hope, Country Rounds, and Reason for Living to my collection. Why exactly I even bothered with the latter two, I’ll touch upon in due time.

Okay, Expert+ time. I got Legend out of freaking nowhere while trying to grind for Escape. Last I reported about Unlimited Power, “My best run so far got a choke in the first cycle of the second chorus. Now I’m somehow incapable of even getting past the intro.” Then came one fateful run when I got a combo past the intro by what felt like a total fluke, and I didn’t even miss anywhere after that. LUDICROUS+ was a rather quick one, primarily on account of how short it is, but to think I previously couldn’t even claim to pass it on command. (That outro is wild.) Firestarter was a real pain, especially after I choked at the uppermost of the freaking last three notes. I did get Escape at some point, but I don’t remember when exactly.

Origins was just a matter of learning the quad zig in the intro, and then getting accustomed to the rest of the song. The former front was a saga in its own right, which also involved my first pass of EXiT on X+. In terms of freebies, that intro and the transition into the outro of EXiT were two of three quad zigs I knew at the time, the other being in the second half of Spin Eternally. (These are in ascending order of speed. Note that the Origins zig consists entirely of sixteenths, despite the percussion triplets.) Naturally, the one in Origins was my go-to for ingraining the technique into my muscle memory. The technique in question: Focus on the bounces in the center, and make a circle with the arm on autopilot. The Origins zig has four bounces: from the bottom with the dominant hand, from the top with the recessive hand, from the top with the dominant hand, and from the bottom with the recessive hand. Prior to each bounce, the other arm is making a circle. That’s as well as I can explain it. The learning process for me was about 50-50 between concept and feel.

That aside, after Lift Off and Heavy Weight, and rather recently too, I freaking finally got Immortal after having reverse choked in the second drop at least once and having choked past the halfway point of the outro.

Before I move on to the Faster FCs, which surprisingly do not include Rum n’ Bass or Breezer, let me take a moment to talk about… How should I put it? A sibling concept of Setlist Shuffles. It’s called a Setlist Sweep, where I go through the entire set of free-to-play songs across two sessions (because the Quest 2 doesn’t have enough battery life for just one) and play each of them in the easiest format that I have not yet FC’d. (The standard flow at this point is Expert ==> Expert+ ==> Faster ==> Expert Super Fast ==> Expert max% [Super Fast + Ghost Notes] ==> Expert+ Super Fast, etc.) I haven’t actually done one of these since before Volume 6, when I found it best to start at Volume 1, go from top to bottom, and split between $1.78 and Curtains. (If $1.78 wasn’t such a horrible song to start off with, I would have easily said between Volumes 4 and 5 instead.) With Volume 6 added to the mix, I would split between Volumes 5 and 6 if I were to take up the practice anew.

What I’m getting at is that all of my X+ Faster FCs are wild ones that I would have never considered in the absence of Setlist Shuffles and Setlist Sweeps. First was Crab Rave, a matter of getting used to the drops after gaining firsthand proof that I could hit the second buildup. Then, $100 Bills in one of my earliest Setlist Sweeps. Yes, it was a Sweep. First song of the session. I thought the whole time, I will never hit the big dumb. (The “big dumb,” of course, lines up with the first “$100 Bills” in the drop.) Guess what? I hit the big dumb. On an FC run, no less. I was like, “What?” and fortunately didn’t choke afterwards. As if that in itself is not crazy enough, the exact same Setlist Sweep held the next Faster FC: Reason for Living. How I was even hitting those buildups at all, I don’t freaking know. Country Rounds is one that felt more within reach every time I played it, so it felt closer to a grind than the previous ones. Give a Little Love happened in a random Setlist Shuffle. Finally, the most recent one was Escape: a real slap in the face, having taken only two tries after normal speed took me practically two years. (The first try had a really dumb miss at the first note of the break, but somehow no other misses.)

It’s also worth mentioning that I only have 5 songs left to pass on Expert+, with Spin Eternally being the most recent one knocked off the list.

  • Final-Boss-Chan: I previously couldn’t even get past the first drop, but now I’ve gotten as far as the second buildup. I’ll explain later.
  • 215$-Step: I’ve gotten past the piano part exactly once.
  • Ghost: The left-start sixteenths before the final leitmotiv are a real show-stopper.
  • Power of the Saber Blade (DragonForce): At best, I’ve only barely gotten past the intro.
  • Tempo-Katana: Same as above

In terms of One-Saber, I painstakingly got Into the Dream and randomly got Cycle Hit, so now Ghost is the only one I have left. As for the circular maps, Rum n’ Bass 90° and Origins as a whole were not too bad; only Pop/Stars remains.

With all that on the table, I have three confessions to make throughout this post. Number one: I went and purchased a few DLC track packs. The main impetus was feeling like the base game is worth far more than just $30 USD, and even with my recent car and phone upgrades, I still have plenty of savings. It started with the Electronic and Rock Mixtapes in late November 2023, followed by Queen in December, Interscope in January, and Fall Out Boy just this month. I was enticed by Darude Sandstorm; Free Bird; Queen in general; Party Rock Anthem; and Dance, Dance in respective order. I only play the songs on Expert+, even Free Bird. Let me give a quick rundown.

  • Alone: I remember hearing this in a 360chrism stream once. The verses sound like Jigglypuff’s lullaby. The parts before them are not sightread-friendly. This is one of my two FCs in the Electronic Mixtape.
  • Animals: I’ve heard this on the radio in the early 2010s, back when I carpooled to college with my siblings. It’s the kind of song that tries to be funny but isn’t. It jams, but it’s not as easy as I feel like it should be.
  • Freestyler: I like the beat, but not so much the vocals. My best combo is over 900; kind of a pain in some places.
  • Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff: Honestly the weakest song in the pack. It’s also the easiest, but my two-saber FC of it was more painstaking than it had any right to be, and my One-Saber sightread got screwed by a really dumb miss (I don’t remember exactly where), so dumb that it’s hard to believe I can’t just scoop it up with any subsequent attempts.
  • Icarus: Easy One-Saber SRFC, but the chains in the two-saber map are a real pain. My first experience with Madeon was when a MyAnimeList user recommended the song “Finale”, but ultimately I don’t find the artist particularly appealing.
  • Darude Sandstorm: This is either the Newgrounds BGM or the “Song name?” meme, depending on whom you ask. More than that, it’s the most difficult and fun song of the pack, so I want to get SS someday.
  • Stay the Night: My brother used to play this song from time to time, back in the college years when we played multiplayer games more often than sparingly. It’s a decent song, and I never would have guessed that it featured Hayley Williams (lead singer of Paramore), but those buildups are the absolute bane of any FC attempts on my part. (I did manage to hit all of them in one run, but it feels at this point like I merely got lucky.)
  • The Rockafeller Skank: In the same boat as Freestyler, but with tempo changes and one nasty outro.
  • Waiting All Night: Pretty much another “fun rhythm with unappealing vocals” kind of song. It’s quite a long one too.
  • Witchcraft: Arguably the hardest one to pass, on account of those buildups. The intro sounds like Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
  • Born to Be Wild: This sure is a song. I was 7 notes shy of an SRFC, but I can’t be bothered to grind this too extensively. It’s also one of the two One-Saber songs in the pack.
  • Eye of the Tiger: I didn’t expect this to take after FitBeat, but it makes sense because the song was written for Rocky III. I’m so close to FCing this.
  • Free Bird: Of all the songs on the list, this one is the true middle ground between Camellia songs and regular songs. Half of it is a snooze fest, but the other half is an endurance test.
  • I Was Made for Lovin‘ You: I never was a fan of KISS, and this particular song has no bearing on that stance. It’s the kind of song that I wouldn’t go out of my way to play.
  • Seven Nation Army: A rather easy FC because of how Warriors of Rock made me intimately familiar with the song. (It’s one of the few songs I managed to OMBFC [one-man band full combo], no less the only one in which I have an optimal score on drums.) However, I was just shy of an SRFC due to misremembering the second half of the guitar solo.
  • Smells Like Teen Spirit: One of the songs of all time. Expect some serious bounces.
  • Sweet Child o’ Mine: Anyone familiar with Guitar Hero 2 should know this song to some degree. In a way, it’s like Free Bird but small-scale.
  • The Pretender: Besides Free Bird, this one was the hardest in the pack for me to pass. Those inline fills are not sightread-friendly in the slightest. That said, in a Stockholm Syndrome sort of phenomenon, I kinda like the song. And hey, One-Saber is not so bad.
  • Another One Bites the Dust: Fun song.
  • Bohemian Rhapsody: Iconic. Another song from WoR. As expected, the guitar solo is where it starts heating up. One of the 4 FCs I have in this pack so far, but I don’t have a One-Saber FC yet.
  • Crazy Little Thing Called Love: I’ve only played this once.
  • Don’t Stop Me Now: Good song. Kinda trippy, though. It’s also the other One-Saber song.
  • I Want It All: Iconic, but I haven’t played it much.
  • Killer Queen: The most fun song in this pack that I have FC’d so far. The snare roll mapping is the highlight of it in terms of difficulty. This song is one of five I had as paid DLC back in the Warriors of Rock days, per recommendation alongside Somebody to Love and A Classic Case of Transference. (The other two were ones I knew I wanted: Living Dead Beat and World on Fire.)
  • One Vision: I’ve only played this once. The “one direction” part has some clever mapping.
  • Somebody to Love: Pretty good.
  • Stone Cold Crazy: The hardest song in this pack, the one with the most chaotic energy. It was also featured in Guitar Hero Metallica, specifically the one demo that I have played at a GameStop.
  • We Are the Champions: Another FC that I have, and I’ve almost gotten it Faster in a Setlist Shuffle. The chorus with the arcs and bombs is the trippiest part.
  • We Will Rock You: The intro is not sightread-friendly, but it is clever. This is the other FC I have in this pack.
  • Counting Stars: Surprisingly fun. The gallops are satisfying. Currently the only (two-saber) FC I have in this pack.
  • DNA.: I freaking hate playing this song. It’s even worse than Full Charge. I can at least tolerate Full Charge, but this song I straight up dislike. How annoying that it has to be one of the two One-Saber songs in this pack.
  • Don’t Cha: Iconic, but I haven’t played it much.
  • Party Rock Anthem: Peak. I want to FC this someday, but it has some tricky bits, especially the doubles about halfway through the outro. (I have managed a combo up to that exact point.) On a brighter note, the “I’m running through these hoOoOo like Drano” part never gets old, and this song also has a fair few gallops.
  • Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle): Loaded with censorship in the verses. NHL Hits nostalgia. Pretty fun, especially the final chorus. Deceitfully tough to FC, though.
  • Sugar: One of those “I know this melody” kinds of songs, and I never would have guessed that it was by Maroon 5. Second-weakest song in the pack, but hey, One-Saber SRFC.
  • The Sweet Escape: I freaking choked in the outro. It’s not a hard song, just a bit pesky at times. Going back to the subject of quad zigs, the second “refrigerator” part has an even slower one than Origins does.
  • Centuries: “I know the melody” again. Pretty meh; the chorus is the only remotely memorable part.
  • Dance, Dance: Considering Beat Saber is not far off from dancing, I expected more from this map. But hey, easy FC thanks to WoR experience. (The only thing that threw me off in my sightread was the transition into the second chorus, with upward cuts at the “love” and arcs indicating that the sabers should be moved back to the bottom. I did not get the hint.)
  • I Don’t Care: I love it The words “pants” and “pull” together in the second verse…mate, that’s one of my fetishes. That aside, this song is rather difficult for its pack and resembles Uprising by Muse. It’s also one of the One-Saber ones.
  • Immortals and Irresistible: I’ve only played these once each. So far, they’re the least memorable songs in this pack.
  • My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light ’em Up): Clever mapping in the choruses. This was a decent FC to get. The intro is rather trippy. Also the other One-Saber song.
  • This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race: I feel like I should have an FC of this by now, but the game begs to differ. The sixteenths in the instrumental break might seem daunting, but it’s actually before that that I tend to miss more often than not.
  • Thnks fr the Mmrs: I went from S-ranking on sightread to getting a -2. The first miss was dumb, so I’m glad it wasn’t a full-on reverse choke. The part in the chorus with the offbeat snare hits is fun to play, but it takes some getting used to.

(That’s a grand total of 10/44 two-saber FCs and 2/10 One-Saber.)

Overall, DLC has marginally improved my prowess at the game, namely in terms of flexibility in hitting rather unusually mapped notes. However, I wouldn’t recommend it to solo players, especially the pragmatic sort.

That brings me to confession number two: I have delved into the world of custom levels and game modifications. I’ve been considering this since Steam Link became a thing, but I ultimately never followed through until late December. It made me have to upgrade my networking setup, and while I thought a 50-foot Ethernet cable was adequate for any situation, I find that it’s only barely enough in my current home, no less with the wiring involving four Cable Armor Floor Channels. I chose the Steam version (and yes, bought the game again, even though it never goes on sale) primarily because I want to keep the headset-native copy of the game pristine, and also because it seems easier that way. Thanks to a Steam guide by JaffaCakes118, I have the Mod Assistant application on my PC and BeatSaver bookmarked; it’s as simple as that. Playing with mods on 1.34.2 was fun while it lasted, but now that the current version has been 1.34.6 for the past two weeks (I’ve read that mod creation is volunteer work, so I know that being patient is in my best interest), I can only play a particular subset of custom levels. I am aware that the community has guides on how to downgrade the game, but currently I can’t be bothered.

One thing I learned the hard way: The game is not actually modded until after the “Install or Update” button is clicked with all appropriate mods selected, and the green version numbers appear in the fourth (?) column. If the game is in this state, then it’s unable to load the “PLAY” button for certain songs such as Centipede by Knife Party. It used to be that way for many more songs, but now only the statistics (average NPS, total notes, and so on) are absent; in this state, pressing “PLAY” will softlock the game, leaving it in a pure black environment for the rest of its runtime. It’s always been that way with the SeHa Girls anime OP on an unmodded game, at least in my experience, but now it also applies to songs like the following:

Additionally, when running “Mr. Invisible” by Thank You Scientist in an unmodded game, the notes do not appear.

One thing I shied away from when I modded 1.34.2, besides Chroma because I wanted to keep my eye-friendly colors, is Noodle Mods. Just having them installed, even playing songs that don’t require them, causes the game to lag more than usual, so I shudder to imagine how it would run a map that does require them. What I mean about “lag more than usual” is that my network setup is not perfect, meaning that the game lags from time to time, somehow more so on unmodded 1.34.6 than on modded 1.34.2 (without Noodle Mods). Speaking of lag, it’s worth noting that scrolling through the custom level list might come with a few stutters if the cover images in the folders have overall sizes greater than 1 MB. (The guideline is 512×512, but not every BeatSaver map is complicit with that. Heck, a map I found of “Run Devil Run” by Crowder has a freaking 5000×5000 cover picture that’s a whopping 2.54 MB big. That was the first one I noticed as a source of this kind of lag.) Another means by which I reduce lag is by setting the Mirror Quality to Off and reducing debris from the notes; however, the former setting tends to reset to Medium for no apparent reason, which is kind of a pain.

At any rate, having a new version of Beat Saber, I challenged myself to get all the non-Career achievements on this version, including the 15 FCs on both Hard and Expert. Ironically, the former took longer. I figured the best way to present proof of this is in a Google Doc, linked below.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BNN3tBLk0hosVmuikkvXXdkGwjvpSAEw6Ar-Unh3OJA/edit?usp=sharing

Evidently, most of what I play is related to either video games or anime in some way (yeah, I’m a filthy weeb), although I would play more Christian maps if there were more good ones. The “Run Devil Run” map I mentioned is my second-favorite, with my absolute favorite being one of “Amen” by Matthew West. Somehow I had never heard the song before playing the map, but doggone is it a great song and a whole lot of fun to play. It’s the hardest one I’ve gone out of my way to FC, not that that takes much (not only because of the lag, but for a more important reason that I’ll explain shortly.)

Very rarely do I play a custom map any more than once after passing it. The sky’s the limit as far as community-made rhythm gaming maps are concerned, so singling any of them out is quite a commitment. (There, that’s the reason.) Some exceptions that I have yet to mention are listed below:

Currently, my favorite part of custom maps is how they push the limits of my technical prowess and arm endurance. I like to establish milestones as I go, that way I can improve step by step like the average shounen protagonist. Here’s a rough timeline of how I’ve progressed.

Below are screenshots for some of the above. Others were done in modded 1.34.2.

More recently, I passed “INTERNET YAMERO” after too freaking many attempts and having to practice the part with the slews of 3-4 side-to-side blocks per beat. It disappoints me that the current highest-rated map has no relation whatsoever to the dance that exposed me to this song in the first place, but it’s still a fun map overall. (Also worth noting that the Curtains on speed part takes some getting used to.)

(Side note about the cover art: That heart-shaped foreground light makes it look in the downscaled version like the girl’s panties are showing. Alas, it’s a case of Schrödinger’s panties.)

I also like doing FitBeat-type maps like Tubthumping by Chumbawumba (the “I get knocked down” song), “Let Me Hit It” by Sporty-O (the “When I’m bored” song), the Epic Sax Guy song, “Pump It” and “I Gotta Feeling” by The Black Eyed Peas (the latter is not evidently FitBeat except on a modded version of the game). Those feel more like workouts than just swinging my arms. Also worth noting that the BeatSaver search engine has a Fitness tag.

In terms of future milestones, here’s what I’m thinking:

I’ve also been considering making my own custom maps, namely desiring to add more Christian music or something related to Bravely Default that doesn’t have a freaking 35.4% rating, but as much as I’ve played so far, I just can’t piece together what makes a good map. It’s like being a glutton who can’t cook. Maybe someday I’ll find the inspiration to at least try.

One thing to note about custom maps is that the notes tend to fly faster than in songs native to the game (especially in unmodded play, unless that’s just my imagination), like how it is in the Volume 4 songs compared to Volumes 1-3. The more I get accustomed to them, the better my hand-eye coordination and so forth, the easier it is to hit notes in Camellia X+ songs. That’s how I’ve gotten so much better at Final-Boss-Chan than I was before I started playing custom levels. On the flip side, if I go too hard on the custom songs, then it hinders my ability to FC some of the easier maps. Just as “you cannot serve both God and Mammon,” there is a time for accuracy and a time for feats of endurance; at most, I tend to start my sessions with the former and end them with the latter.

Confession number three (appropriately): I splurged on a Quest 3. The Quest 2 had a good 2.3-year run (give or take), but the overhead strap support beam snapped off recently, meaning that the best I could do to keep the headset suspended was take off the silicone covering, put on a baseball cap, and wrap the overhead strap of the headset around the Velcro strip at the back of the cap. The silicone covering made the headset slide down too much, whereas the final setup was too tight for me to keep up in the long term. So…the new headset is much more compact than the previous model, but not much else is different except some oddities in the controller detection (maybe it takes some getting used to) and that headset-native Beat Saber has more detailed obstacles. I will say that it helped me learn one unusual tidbit the hard way: If the headset has downloads queued up, then Steam Link lags like mad; on modded 1.34.2, it was too laggy for me to even play the Noukin OP.

…Phew, that’s quite a lot. I am spent for now.

À la prochaine! (Until next time!)

[Further reading]

Feedback is always appreciated!