Welcome to the ultimate Ghostrunner movement tutorial! Whether you’re just starting with the game or looking to level up your speedrunning techniques, this guide is for you. Split into two parts, this article will take you through the basics for beginners and the advanced techniques for seasoned runners.

Part 1: Basic Movement Techniques for Beginners

Before diving into movement mechanics, it’s essential to configure your controls. Adjusting your binds to suit your playstyle can make a massive difference in your performance.

Control Bindings

• Dash: Binding the dash to Right Click or another button that you can press comfortably will ensure quick air dashes without losing speed. This is the most essential bind to get right, so you don’t have to rely on less efficient inputs.
• Crouch: Make sure crouch is bound to a comfortable key, such as C or a thumb mouse button, as you’ll often use crouch while dashing to perform slides.

Movement Fundamentals

Ghostrunner’s default walking speed is 10 meters per second. However, when you slide, your speed increases to 17 meters per second. The catch? This speed depletes due to friction with the ground, but jumping significantly reduces friction, allowing you to maintain most of the speed. This technique is called a Slide Hop. By stringing multiple slide hops together, you can keep a steady pace through levels.

Ledge Boosts and Ledge Jumps

Sliding at the edge of a ledge grants a speed boost of almost 30 meters per second. While this may cause you to fall faster, the combination of a ledge boost and coyote time can be incredibly useful for clearing larger gaps. Coyote time gives players a brief window of 0.3 seconds to jump after reaching a ledge, allowing more flexibility in your movement.

Slide Hopping

Slide hopping is one of the slower forms of movement but can be useful for spacing or during segments where you cannot dash, like Cyber Void sections. To master slide hopping, press crouch every time you jump to avoid timing mistakes.

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Part 2: Advanced Movement Techniques for Speedrunners

Once you’re comfortable with the basic techniques, you can start incorporating more advanced strategies into your speedruns to improve your times and efficiency.

Ground vs. Air Dashes

There’s a key difference between ground dashes and air dashes in Ghostrunner:

• Ground Dash: A dash on the ground indicated by white ticks by your crosshair. It lets you warp forward quickly and can be restored after a brief cooldown.
• Air Dash: Performed when airborne and can only be restored by landing or maintaining enough momentum in the air.

Using air dashes effectively allows you to keep momentum during jumps, which is critical for more advanced speedruns.

Wall Climbing

Wall climbing is a technique where you wall run, jump off, and air dash back toward the wall to gain height. This allows you to navigate vertical levels or save yourself from falling.

Wave Dash (Dash Slide)

By dashing and immediately sliding before the dash ends, you preserve a portion of your speed. This technique is ideal for quick acceleration in tight spaces, though it’s not as versatile as other speed methods.

Dash Slide Jump (DSJ)

The DSJ combines the dash and slide mechanics with a jump to maintain high speed through the air. Mastering this technique requires precise timing: dash just before you slide and hold crouch during the jump’s first frames to maximize speed. This allows you to cover significant distances, especially when chaining multiple DSJs together.

Super Dash Slide Jump (SDSJ)

This advanced technique combines a ledge boost with a DSJ to reach speeds exceeding 40 meters per second. It’s one of the most difficult techniques to execute consistently and requires perfect positioning, timing, and experience with ledge collisions.

Instant Grapple

By striking your sword immediately after initiating a grapple, you can reduce the grapple animation time by about a quarter of a second. Though this doesn’t seem like much, over a full run, it saves considerable time, especially in levels with frequent grapples.

Up Dog

The Up Dog technique is used in elevator levels to gain additional height. By jumping at the right time and air dashing as you land, you can bypass the elevator’s invisible wall and proceed early. Mastery of this technique saves a few seconds in each elevator segment and can add up over the course of the entire run.

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Conclusion

By mastering these movement techniques, you can dramatically improve your performance in Ghostrunner’s speedrun routes. While Slide Hopping and Dash Slide Jumps are the foundations of most runs, advanced techniques like SDSJand Instant Grapple are key for shaving precious seconds off your time.

For beginners, focus on the basic movement and getting comfortable with your controls. Advanced runners can push their speedrun skills to the limit by incorporating the more complex techniques listed here.