Hello everyone!

I've been playing Taiko for about 3 months, and even though I'm having a blast and enjoying it a lot, there are a lot of things that I don't understand very well, and would like some help to figure it out. I'll separate the questions into topics:

1) About PP: I'm not that fussed about getting a better PP or not at this point. I just want to learn how to play harder songs and so on. But anyway, some things kinda make me confused about PP. Is getting a higher ACC more importantly than getting an FC? I mean, if you get an 97% FC and a 99%+ with 2 misses, which one will give more PP?

2) Learning faster songs: I've been playing mostly 3.8* - 4.2* lately, and even though I can get good results in some of them, if the map is fast, I just can't hit the notes on time. I can read the patterns pretty well, but I just can't seen to react fast enough to hit them. What is the best way to improve this? Are there recommended maps to do so?

3) About maps: I've been playing Ranked maps 100% of the time just because they were very easy to get through a thread here in the forum. But watching some youtube videos, I've seen people playing different maps, some of them even with levels available. Is there a pack for these maps as well or some thread where they're gathered? Aside from Ranked, is there a recommended type of map I should be playing?

4) About names of stuff: I've seen a lot of people talking about alt, full alt, 1/8, 1/6, 1/4 and so on. I have absolutely no idea about what this means and google isn't helping a lot. Is there a easy way to understand this?

5) About practice mode: I realized some time ago that edit mode works as a kinda of practice mode, since you can play some specific parts of maps. Is there a way to try the edit mode with HT mode on? I'd really love to practice some specific patterns in a slower speed to understand them, but I just can't seem to figure this out (my nightmare so far are the patterns that goes like dddkkkdddkkkdddkkk).

6) Mechanical Keyboard: I use a regular keyboard and been thinking about buying a mechanical one. Did you notice a big difference in performance after you started using one? Is there some kind/brand recommended?

I guess this is it for the time. Thanks a lot for any help!

1. https://mon.im/taikopp/
You can use that to figure out how much pp does a beatmap give. But since you're still playing 3.8* - 4.2* beatmaps, pp should not be your concern. Just enjoy game.

2. It depends on your comfortable bpm. Let's say you are comfortable at 200 bpm. In that case, start practicing at a slightly higher bpm (for example 210 bpm) and work your way from there.

3. I'm not sure what you're talking about since ranked beatmaps also have different difficulties. Can you give me a youtube link for those videos you mentioned?

4. 1/8, 1/6, 1/4 refers to snapping of notes on a beatmap. You can see them on editor mode and it refers to how dense are they relative to time. Larger denumerator means it's denser. Alt (alternating) means you use different hand to hit pattern one after another (for example : ddkkd -> right hand d, left hand d, right hand k, left hand k, right hand d). Full alt means you always use different hand to hit the next note.

5. Unfortunately you cannot practice edit mode with HT. You can however practice edit mode with DT by pressing Tab (Auto) and then press F3 (change speed). You can only change the speed to either 1.5x or 1.0x.

6. I use mechanical keyboard and it took me almost a month to start making decent performance (transition from membrane keyboard to mechanical one). Imo mechanical keyboard is just a personal preference thing. I'm sure there are a decent amount of taiko players who play better with just regular keyboard.

Thanks a lot for your answers, it helps a lot

As for the youtube link you've mentioned, here it goes:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=a+fool+moon+night+osu+taiko

If you look at the videos, there are some level 150, 300, 450 and so on.

Also, on the answer 2 you've mentioned BPM and I had no idea that this was something I should look for. Also, I don't know what's my most used BPM right now, but I'll start to pay attention to this when picking new maps.

Edit: I've been playing maps with different BPMs but it seems that this is not a constant thing?

I've just tried a 110 BPM map and it was way faster than a 165 one. Is there something I'm missing?

OrnsteinSmough wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=a+fool+moon+night+osu+taiko

If you look at the videos, there are some level 150, 300, 450 and so on.

Fool Moon Night... well you don't need to worry about that for now. Afaik it's the only taiko beatmap with level as difficulty name.

OrnsteinSmough wrote:

I've just tried a 110 BPM map and it was way faster than a 165 one. Is there something I'm missing?

I suspect it's one of those maps where the actual bpm is 220 BPM but it was mapped as 110 bpm.

generally accuracy is better for pp than FCing, but if you can get both then please go ahead, grind for cool scores and not pp

speed honestly comes with practise, if you enjoy going fast then you'll end up as a speed player by pure coincidence, that's what i did

those maps you're seeing around YouTube are probably just popular unranked or loved maps, joining a Discord server such as TSM or a tournament server and asking around can help

apaa covered 4 well

with edit mode for practising what you wanna do is make a "practise diff", find the section you want to practise and copy it, go to the start of the section and make a new difficulty in the editor, clearing all notes, then paste the notes back to where they were, your pointer should already be there. from there you can go to play mode and use halftime, you can also download the rate changer (community/forums/topics/640981) and change the speed of the map precisely, just make sure you select the practise diff you made

for keyboards, do whatever, it actually doesn't matter and i will forever stand by this, it's a bit of a humblebrag but i play taiko exclusively on a Sound Voltex controller and have also never owned a mechanical keyboard, it's ENTIRELY preference


also i'll try to explain BPMs a little bit:
most maps are somewhere from 175 - 250 or so BPM, my numbers might be a bit off due to my own map preferences. higher BPM means faster map, mostly, but some maps use a BPM that's half or double what the map actually feels like, this doesn't really change much with the map tho. the BPM you're comfortable with is all down to you as a player, don't be ashamed if you can't play a specific BPM but everybody else can, you probably have something else going for you and even if you don't you'll get there someday, i believe