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Tips that can become quite handy and improve your skill

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Topic Starter
Shiyo
Hello there osu community! I have written you some tips on how to improve your gaming skill at osu no matter how bad or good you are. Keep in mind that these tips might or not work. So don't try to rush things in a desperate manner or expect massive change within hours.

I am 18 and I am a self-proclaim analyst who loves to observe & critically think in my own ideology, so I am here to share what I have concluded BASED FROM MY POINT OF VIEW when watching a lot of replays from the top scores of the game and videos from players.



First, I would like to make some annotations:

- Don't over-extend the use of fingers (keyboard users)
This will cause you too much fatigue in your hands. Little pain means improvement but you should take a break if it hurts.

- Don't hesitate because you're not seeing results
Stay relaxed and have patience, Roma wasn't build in one day.

- Don't overdo practice
(3-4 hours a day should be an absolute max) since it will start getting less fun and more of an obligation that will lead to you not wanting to practice anymore.

- Don't practice always the entire song
It's not bad to retry the song for several times but the smaller the info you put in your memory, the easier will be to remember. If you practice the whole song, you may also remember, but will not be as effective than practicing the song in parts. Remember, osu in a way is a muscle memory game.

- Edit mode is your best friends
Many think that the best way to practice is simply putting the music in NF or HT or even both. It is not bad to use them but it can develop a bad visual coordination and bad rhythmic accuracy.

- Remember that accuracy+stamina > speed
Don't just be tapping rapidly when a stream shows up. It is not how it look. Study it well or follow the rhythm and let your instinct do the tapping.

- Play on a chair and in position
You'll develop back pains if you don't play in position. You need to be comfy as possible to get accuracy and more endurance.



Now let's get started:

1. Do finger warming exercises. Stretch your fingers so it releases all that muscle tensions and be more agile.

2. Warm up with recognisable maps that are a bit lower than the skill level of your prime.

3. For all tablet users, use pen mode (NOT MOUSE MODE). Believe me, you'll regret it if you do.

4. Turn off pointer enhancement.
Right click in Desktop / Personalize / Change Mouse Pointers / Uncheck Enhance Pointer Precision

6. Play in DirectX with Unlimited FPS. If laggy, then set it to 120FPS but try to keep far from OpenGL.

7. The lesser the osu resolution, the more FPS you'll have. But play your resolution as your preference, it really doesn't matter.

8. USE YOUR WRIST TO CONTROL YOUR PEN. A lot of people tend to hover using only fingers and have low activity of the wrist. This will create fatigue and your index finger will get reddish. Your accuracy will improve if you use more your wrist. Only use finger movement to do zig-zags for example or when necessary. (yet again, this is preference)

9. Don't use the default skin. It's actually an excellent skin but what makes it annoying are the splashes that make the notes hard to see.
Recommendations: WhiteWolf's Skin, -Kamui-, Niko's Skin, NikkoDots (Great for challenging hidden players)

10. Put the DIM at 0 for every song, disable videos and custom skin if necessary. No matter how cool they look they're just distractions.

11. Try to equalize Master / Effects / Music ... Having everything too loud can cause delays when hitting a note without you even noticing it.



MOUSE SENSITIVITY / TABLET

A lot of players tend to change either to full or small area whenever they feel to. But this is wrong. You should stay with one.
IMO I highly recommend setting your tablet area like the full area of a CTL-460. If you have that tablet then it doesn't matter and
why? Well the reason is that playing on a full area with a small tablet really improves the control of your accuracy. So it's not about the tablet, but the area you use.

If for somehow you feel that you need an extra movement speed at certain songs, don't try to change the sensitivity. You probably haven't achieved hand speed yet.

DO NOT rest your hand on the tablet. It will fatigue your hand more and lose grip on the pen. Also can damage your tablet sensibility if your hand is the sweaty type. The right way to do is to lay your wrist just about to bottom of the tablet.

LAY YOUR ARMS ON SOMETHING... If you have arms by mid-air and streaming for example, I can guarantee that you won't get past 10 seconds before showing arm fatigue.

Talking about stamina.... Stamina is greater than speed. If you're tired, give yourself a little break and then come back on. You'll improve in a way.

REST ON THE CHAIR.... Don't play staring at the LCD like a maniac. Having a good position keeps you relaxed and play better eventually.

HOLD YOUR PEN FIRMLY and figure out your own way to manage a comfy grip.



EDIT MODE

The very best players use edit mode and plays songs by PARTS while memorizing movement on the pen. Once they think they have it, they just rely on the
muscle memory and follow their instincts of tapping along with the rhythm. They have to concentrate as well or course. Shorcuts from edit mode are also quite handy
like F1 (Exit Test Mode) & F5 (Test Mode). Don't worry if you have to save in order to play test mode, you can always re-download the last version of the song at the song-list.

Try to avoid Auto Pilot mode, since there's a lot of music that have some notes that it doesn't need to be hitten entirely like short sliders. It will just mess your tapping
and you'll think you're the problem.



CHALLENGE YOURSELF

After you have mastered a song without mods, try it with them. It will improve more your skill and mods are the road to be in the big leagues.

Don't quit if you're losing in multiplayer, it makes you feel like ashamed and it's embarrassing. Try to stay till the end, even though you weren't
good at it, people can remember you and the day they see your name they'll see how much you've improved =)

If you think you're not good, keep trying, but don't be a quitter. Work smarter, not harder" If I could do it within a month, you can do it aswell in a lesser time.



I may be wrong or not at certain point since it has to be with just preference, but like I said. This is based on how I managed to improved so it doesn't mean it's gonna work the same for anyone. I don't want any flame in my topic. There can be people who agrees or disagree, I am here to learn aswell from everyones opinion! But would appreciate any corrections and will be accepting any extra tips if you want me to add them.



Kind regards, Shiyo ~
Weed
also play scarlet rose
Pettanko
I disagree with a number of your points, notably the parts about using relax and not playing the entire song, as well as adjusting the in-game sensitivity for mouse players (you'll want it to be at 1.0x as much as possible since your mouse speed wouldn't be consistent when you're in and out of osu! if you changed it) but I respect the amount of effort you put into making this guide.
iSpR1Te
Wow, really great post. There are a lot of really good points here that I wouldn't have thought was coming from someone that only has 2k play count. There are a few points that I do disagree with, but I'll keep my mouth shut.
Topic Starter
Shiyo
I forgot to mention that these tips are towards tablet users, but some can still be considered for mouse users. Playing the entire song it's not entirely bad like I stated, but it's not as effective as practicing it in parts. Appreciate the feedback though :)

Cheers ~


EDIT: iSpR1Te, I am open of receiving any corrections so I can make changes to the content. Nothing personal. Everyone makes mistakes :p
Callum
~
Lach

Shiyo wrote:

11. Enable OSTable Support (tablet users)
Don't do this. It force enables Windows Ink which causes more problems than it solves. It's for touchscreens.
EcksDee
I don't know how much of Osu! is muscle memory though. Sure enough I aint a pro player or a very good player now that I think about it so I can't say howvthey play but muscle memory seems to fuck me most of the time. I made it a policy to not play one map more than twice in a row since my muscles start memorizing incorrect movements.
Osu! IMO is more about reading than about memorizing.

Why should you not play the entire map too? I'm just not grasping some of these points you're putting out.

I prefer dim at around 90 to 95% so that there's still some texture on the background. Having it be all black is just depressing.

The key overlay thing is a bit silly IMO. When I used it I found myself getting distracted more often than not. I'm an alternating player, you see, and my OCD made me keep looking at the sidebar to make sure the numbers were even lol
Xcrypt
I like to play with full background brightness and video enabled. I find that all those distractions train me in learning to read and focus better. I used to have the same idea though, and when playing for score my guess is that it's better to disable it.

And maybe another underrated tip that is important for beginners is don't overdo practice (3-4 hours a day should be an absolute max imo) since it will start getting less fun and more of an obligation that will lead to you not wanting to practice anymore. You may be able to keep up more over a short period of time but I don't think most people can keep it up over a longer period of time.

Playing certain sections of a map is only helpful for training specific patterns imo, other than that you need to be exposed to as much patterns and as much randomness as possible by playing entire maps and always different maps to make sure you are training your overall skill and not your song-specific skill. For example I used something similar in o2mania to train on certain ladder patterns and inverse notes, because I found them really hard to train if you play the entire songs always.
RaneFire

EcksDee wrote:

I don't know how much of Osu! is muscle memory though.
Depends how you look at it. When you are learning, it's mostly about muscle memory, and doesn't take much time. Once you are fairly accurate/precise, it's about improving the execution speed (mostly mental) of said muscle memory without sacrificing that, with only minor improvements to accuracy/precision over a long time. Speed, and the stamina to maintain it, takes the longest to develop and that's why people think muscle memory doesn't feature, but it's still muscle memory and that's why you can mess it up by training wrong.

Shiyo wrote:

- Edit and Relax mode are your best friends
Practicing certain sections does have its merits, but you still need to train your nerves leading up to these sections, which could put you in uncomfortable positions.

Relax mode did help me learn AR10 by training my general hand/eye reactions and comprehension first. I could then pay more attention to my keyboard fingers to practice 1/4's thereafter.

There are some things I don't agree with regarding ingame sens/hand position/changing your offset for a delayed keyboard (doesn't work), etc., but there's nothing terrible enough to worry about seeing as the rest of the thread is reasonably helpful.
silmarilen

Shiyo wrote:

- Don't practice always the entire song
The smaller the info you put in your memory, the easier will be to remember. If you practice the whole song, you may also remember,
but will not be as effective than practicing the song in parts.
god no, always practice the entire song. you wont get better at the song if you retry on every miss.
from personal experience i can say that fcing a map with FL goes many many times faster if you play through the whole song every time after a miss (think of around 100 retrys for instant retry compared to <50 retrys for full playthrough). same goes for non-fl actually.

Shiyo wrote:

- Edit and Relax mode are your best friends
Many think that the best way to practice is simply putting the music in NF or HT or even both, but they do not know is that they create bad habits and
therefore develop a bad visual coordination and bad rhythmic accuracy. I will explain this later.
relax mode is bad because you dont have to press the button, just moving the cursor is way easier than moving and clicking, relax mode really is only good for what it says, just having a bit of a relaxing moment.


Shiyo wrote:

2. Warm up your hand-eye coordination with a Hard. doesn't matter if you fail or not, it's just to warm up and get your motor skills ready.
not sure what this is supposed to accomplish.
for someone who isnt very good, a hard is probably too hard. for someone that can play insanes easily a hard is so boring that it does practically nothing other than make you fall asleep. playing relatively easy songs is a good way to warm up (i warm up a lot faster if i start with a 160-180 bpm map than if i start with a 200+ bpm map) and you just slowly work your way up to faster songs.

other than that it's a nice topic and it has some good advice.
buny
A lot of what you say is preference, really.
Almost

Shiyo wrote:

(It has to be done manually though, but for some reason peppy hates it when people delete the bg on songs since it can create bugs)
You can change them for all maps through options now.

Shiyo wrote:

If for somehow you feel that you need an extra movement speed at certain songs then play with your mouse sensitivity at your osu setting (Not Windows)
But it has to be either 0.5 or 1.0x, if not, then reduce the tablet area just by a bit.
If you feel you aren't moving your cursor fast enough for a certain song, then you probably aren't fast enough for it yet. Changing your mouse sensitivity or area size would only help to reduce your precision since you have to rebuild muscle memory. The better idea would probably be to come back to the song later when your speed has improved.
Soarezi
If you wan't to get good at the game, never practice the song. What will happen is, eventually you will play the map by memory, not actual reading.

Just keep playing alot of different insanes, and when you can FC them in 1-3 tries, you're in good shape.

People need to learn consistency. It's not that great either if you get #1 on a map after like 300 retries IMHO
buny

Shiyo wrote:

First, I would like to make some annotations:

- Don't over-extend the use of fingers (keyboard users)
This will cause you too much fatigue in your hands. Even though it's supposed to strengthen out, it does it but not the way it should be.
Having finger dexetery it's not an option either.

Disagree. It'll only be troublesome if you over-extend to a certain extent

- Don't hesitate because you're not seeing results
Stay relaxed and have patience, Roma wasn't build in one day.

Agree.

- Don't practice always the entire song
The smaller the info you put in your memory, the easier will be to remember. If you practice the whole song, you may also remember,
but will not be as effective than practicing the song in parts.

Agree. But not for that reasoning
Some maps tend to have one hard part and the rest easy, which is incredibly time consuming if you're only missing on the same part over and over


- Edit and Relax mode are your best friends
Many think that the best way to practice is simply putting the music in NF or HT or even both, but they do not know is that they create bad habits and
therefore develop a bad visual coordination and bad rhythmic accuracy. I will explain this later.

Relax? No.
Edit is definitely a great way to practice with flexibility


- Remember that accuracy+stamina > speed
Don't just be tapping rapidly when a stream shows up. It is not how it look. Study it well or follow the rhythm and let your instinct do the tapping.

Accuracy + stamina are as equal to speed

- It doesn't make a difference if you're low on budget or rich
Learn to play with what you have, anyways the reason of playing is to have fun right? But a good thing is that osu runs in any pc.

yes it does to an extent

- Play on a chair and in position
You'll develop back pains if you don't play in position. You need to be comfy as possible to get accuracy and more endurance.

There wasn't really need in mentioning this. Everybody should play in their most comfortable position



Now let's get started:

1. Do finger warming exercises. Stretch your fingers so it releases all that muscle tensions and be more agile.

Unnecessary. We have beatmaps for this purpose

2. Warm up your hand-eye coordination with a Hard. doesn't matter if you fail or not, it's just to warm up and get your motor skills ready.

Basically warm up with recognisable maps that are a bit lower than the skill level of your prime

3. For all tablet users, use pen mode (NOT MOUSE MODE). Believe me, you'll regret it if you do.

That's a given

4. Turn off pointer enhancement.
Right click in Desktop / Personalize / Change Mouse Pointers / Uncheck Enhance Pointer Precision

Agree

5. Don't use mouse acceleration. Again, it's also bad. People may say it's better but it's all a lie. They're just used to that bad habit.

Pointer enhancement = acceleration. Some people are special and can only play with acceleration, but the vast majority would prefer it off

6. Play in DirectX with Unlimited FPS. If laggy, then set it to 120FPS but try to keep far from OpenGL.

The difference between unlimited and 120fps is really only noticeable when playing ar10 and above

7. The lesser the osu resolution, the more FPS you'll have. But play your resolution as your preference, it really doesn't matter.

More fps won't help you play better unless you were initially lagging

8. USE YOUR WRIST TO CONTROL YOUR PEN. A lot of people tend to hover using only fingers and have low activity of the wrist. This will create fatigue and your index finger will get reddish. Your accuracy will improve if you use more your wrist. Only use finger movement to do zig-zags for example or when necessary.

Personal preference.

9. Don't use the default skin. It's actually an excellent skin but what makes it annoying are the splashes that make the notes hard to see.
Recommendations: WhiteWolf's Skin, -Kamui-, Niko's Skin, NikkoDots (Great for challenging hidden players)

Personal preference

10. Put the DIM at 0 for every song, disable videos and custom skin if necessary. No matter how cool they look they're just distractions.
(It has to be done manually though, but for some reason peppy hates it when people delete the bg on songs since it can create bugs)

Personal preference

11. Enable OSTable Support (tablet users) and Key overlay to keep track of your tapping.

Only necessary for tablets that are bugging in the client

12. Try to equalize Master / Effects / Music ... Having everything too loud can cause delays when hitting a note without you even noticing it.

Personal preference



MOUSE SENSITIVITY / TABLET

A lot of players tend to change either to full or small area whenever they feel to. But this is wrong. You should stay with one.
IMO I highly recommend setting your tablet area like the full area of a CTL-460. If you have that tablet then it doesn't matter and
why? Well the reason is that playing on a full area with a small tablet really improves the control of your accuracy. So it's not about the tablet, but the area of it.

What? Tablet area can be changed, so it shouldn't matter if your tablet is large.
Different tablets also have different polling rates and pen designs, which should be taken into consideration if you're looking to use one for osu


If for somehow you feel that you need an extra movement speed at certain songs then play with your mouse sensitivity at your osu setting (Not Windows)
But it has to be either 0.5 or 1.0x, if not, then reduce the tablet area just by a bit.

NEVER change your sensitivity to accustom to a maps speed. That is just plain retarded and counterproductive

DO NOT rest your hand on the tablet. It will fatigue your hand and lose grip on the pen. Also can damage your tablet sensibility if your hand is the
sweaty type. The right way to do is to lay your wrist just about to bottom of the tablet.

Personal preference.
Personally I rest my hand on my tablet and it's fine.


LAY YOUR ARMS ON SOMETHING... If you have arms by mid-air and streaming for example, I can guarantee that you won't get past 10 seconds before showing arm fatigue. A lot of good players that do videos does it, that's why they don't show their arms on videos thinking it's kinda noobish,
but it really helps by conserving more stamina.

Personal preference
I'm sure the reason they don't show their arms is because they can't fit it into their camera, not for the reason you stated.


Talking about stamina.... Stamina it greater than speed (The best player that we all know states that it is not about speed, it's about endurance/stamina)
If you're tired, give yourself a little break and then come back on. You'll improve in a way.

Stamina is worthless without speed, and speed is worthless with stamina.
Stop devaluing the importance of speed, please


REST ON THE CHAIR.... Don't play staring at the LCD like a maniac. Having a good position keeps you relaxed and play better eventually.

Once again, this is a given




PEN GRIPS

I personally say that you should try to imitate a hand grip from the best players. Don't try to figure out your own way to manage a grip. First
have some inspiration and then when you feel like you master your hovering then try to change to your own style. I will provide some pictures of different ways to have pen grips that makes you move freely and easy to control accuracy. I feel comfortable with WWW's hand-grip and my accuracy has improved a lot by then.

You don't improve by imitating others; and you certainly don't improve by acting like you're somebody else either. Everybody needs to find their own playstyle to truly improve



EDIT & RELAXED MODE

The very best players use edit mode and plays songs by PARTS while memorizing movement on the pen. Once they think they have it, they just rely on the
muscle memory and follow their instincts of tapping along with the rhythm. They have to concentrate as well or course. Shorcuts from edit mode are also quite handy
like F1 (Exit Test Mode) & F5 (Test Mode). Don't worry if you have to save in order to play test mode, you can always re-download the last version of the song at the song-list.

In relaxed mode, it's also helpful. Even though tapping doesn't count, play it like if you where normally playing it.

If your keyboard it's not the greatest thing ever, that's just bs. Play with the Audio offspring at osu settings and set the delay to the point that you can
actually tap in time (If your keyboard are rubber-based for example). You're not supposed to hardly bump the key but to do it slightly and with the tip of the finger.

Try to avoid Auto Pilot mode, since there's a lot of music that have some notes that it doesn't need to be hitten entirely like short sliders. It will just mess your tapping
and you'll think you're the problem.


Relax doesn't help you improve, even if you pretend to click the notes.
Why pretend to click the notes with relax when you could just turn on no fail and actually click the notes?




CHALLENGE YOURSELF

After you have mastered a song without mods, try it with them. It will improve more your skill and mods are the road to be in the big leagues.

Mods are a different category. I wouldn't recommend them until you master the basics

Don't quit if you're losing in multiplayer, it makes you feel like ashamed and it's embarrassing. Try to stay till the end, even though you weren't
good at it, people can remember you and the day they see your name they'll see how much you've improved =)

I wouldn't even recommend multiplayer for practice.
It takes far too long to start a match and you might not even be playing a map you like, as well as not being able to retry as quickly as in solo and de-warming yourself due to wait times


If you think you're not good, give it another try, if not, it's okay. Everything it's not meant for everyone and like I say "Work smarter, not harder"
I bet there can be others things you can be better at but it's always worth a second try! Hope you players enjoyed my first topic. If I could do it within
a month, you can do it aswell. Nobody comes to birth with knowledge and talent is something that someone develops over time.


You don't get anywhere by theorising without the effort to go along with it


Please I don't want any flame in my topic, if you disagree then just leave, I am here with the intention of helping n.n Sorry for my terrible english by the way. Im trying to improve my communication skill without the use of a translator and getting involved with the community.
So would appreciate any grammatical corrections and will be accepting any extra tips if you want me to add them.



You won't help anybody if you refuse to help yourself
Take criticism as a learning step to improve what you wrote/write in the future. Disregarding every negative comment will only give you a false sense of praise



Kind regards, Shiyo ~
PlasticSmoothie
While your guide is well written and all, a lot of what you write is purely personal preference. osu! has no 'meta' like other games do, there is no 'best way' to do things.
Getting better at osu! just means pushing your limits, try new things and for god's sake remember to have fun. There are very few cases of things being outright bad or outright good.
YukinoDesuDesu
buy a tablet --> start playing like cookiezi did
Tolderone
start playing like cookiezi did --> get xerophtalmia

Also, probably a half of tips in the first post won't make you play better and some may actually make it worse. So I've come up with my own guide: play the most comfortable way for you and make sure your hands/head don't hurt too much. Little pain means improving but big pain means you're sick.
Topic Starter
Shiyo
buny

You have a point. I am also here to learn about your opinions. I can't just be stubborn about it when I only have 2 months :P
Appreciate the corrections though!
jesse1412
Finger stretches are godly useful, they seem to get me warmer faster than playing most maps.
Rinkusan
Really liked this post, thank you for that =) Was pretty much doing everything you recommended already but it's nice to be reassured =)
Zakdawg
"Tips that can become quite handy and improve your skills"

Dedication, practice and having fun with the game.
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