dWelcome to my shit osu! guide

Contents:

❖ osu!standard❖ Mapping❖ Changelog

osu!standard guide

The most commonly played mode of osu!

Table of contents:

❖ Introduction

❖ Hardware➢ Tablet

■ What tablet should you get?■ How big should your tablet area be?

● How should I hold my pen?➢ Mouse

■ Types of Mice● Settings for the mouse

■ What mouse should I get?● Different ways to hold your mouse

➢ Keyboards■ What are Mechanical keyboards?

● Switches and what they are

❖ Settings

➢ osu!’s resolution

➢ Widescreen vs Standard

➢ Background videos and storyboards

➢ Skins from songs

➢ Hitsounds

➢ Dim level

➢ Hit lighting

➢ Combo bursts

➢ Snaking sliders

➢ Shader effects

➢ Score meter type

■ Hit error

■ Colour

❖ Building up your skill

❖ Mods

➢ Hidden

➢ HardRock

➢ DoubleTime

➢ FlashLight

❖ Streaming

➢ How do I stream?

■ Streaming Accurately

■ Stamina

■ Programs for calculating your streaming speed

➢ Stacks

❖ Jumps

➢ Squares and polygons

❖ Other commonly discussed subjects

➢ Single tapping vs Alternating

➢ For tablet users: Hover vs Drag

❖ Accuracy and sliders

❖ Skins

➢ How to install a skin

➢ Skins recommended

IntroductionDisclaimer: I’m no pro at this game, just based on my experience. These are NOT the only ways to play the game, if you feel uncomfortable with these methods, go ahead and stop.

You’ve probably seen oblivious people asking (well, making) threads about ‘how do I (insert problem here)’ and probably didn’t read the thread for that in the osu! Forums. I’ll try my best to answer all the things that thread didn’t answer or go in greater depths.

(But really if you've been on the forums there isn't really anything very new here.)

I was bored in school one day so I decided to write guide out. I never saw any extremely detailed guides so I decided to invest a lot of time in one.

Hardware

The very common question, ‘tablet or mouse?’ Honestly, there isn’t much difference. The only difference is that the tablet has ‘absolute tracking’ which means that every fixed point on the tablet = every fixed point on the screen, making muscle memory easier than the mouse. Both the mouse and tablet’s ‘sensitivity’ can be adjusted to your liking. For most gaming mice, there is an option to adjust the dpi, the lower the dpi, the more you have to move across the screen. If your mouse doesn’t come with integrated dpi adjustment, you can instead adjust the mouse sensitivity in the osu! settings. For tablet users, you can adjust your tablet area using the driver software that comes bundled with most tablets. Both the mouse and tablet has the same potential and level of mastery, it’s just that the mouse takes more effort in mastering, because of the lack of absolute tracking that the tablet offers.

What tablet should you get?

Wacom CTL-460 to 480 are rather popular choices for people buying tablets for osu!

Any tablet will do (heck, you can play osu! with anything that can at least move the cursor around.) You won’t need anything fancy like a cintiq (tablet with a screen) all the special features like pressure etc is for drawing so unless you have a lot of extra money

and you are a hobby artist, go ahead and get one. If you’re money minded, get anything that’s cheap (osu!tablet maybe?) What only matters should be the hover distance and how big the tablet is. Generally getting a small tablet is good because for a small tablet, the area is already pretty big. Big tablets would just waste your money and you’ll end up using tablet area to make the area smaller anyway.

Not all tablets come with region mapping settings, so that may be something to look for when purchasing a tablet if you would not like to use the full tablet area. All Wacom tablets and the osu!tablet come with region mapping settings.

Also, if hovering seems uncomfortable for you, it’s worth noting that playing with the pen touching the tablet surface is an option, but only recommended if you use a soft nib as rough nibs will cause the tablet surface and the nib itself to degrade over time. I’m not sure which tablets come with soft nibs, I personally use a Wacom Intuos 640 which did come with one. They’re black with a small white tip, the white part has a sort of soft/fluffy texture to it which makes it near-frictionless like this:

How big should your tablet area be?

It depends completely on you. Sometimes it is by the way you hold your pen and how big your tablet is. If you hold it the way you normally hold a pen to write, your tablet area tends to end up becoming smaller because your fingers can only stretch so much. It’s best for the area to be your limits, no matter what way you hold your pen. Because if you make it too small, you’re just going to end up suffering with accuracy during maps with small notes, jumps and the HardRock mod, also it’s really difficult to use full rea on very big tablets too. Most top players use full area but tablet area is all up to you. You can start small first and slowly increase your area size as you go on.

How should I hold my pen?

And again, this is completely up to the user. You could always hold it like a normal pen.

Or hold it like this:

Holding it like a normal pen would mean that you can’t move around a lot unless you move your wrist. Holding it the second way (the way most osu! users do) would allow more movement and thus allowing a bigger tablet area. Bigger tablet area would mean that you don’t need to strain your fingers so much when the notes are small.

If you’re sticking with a mouse

Recommended you turn off mouse acceleration and pointer precision. It helps accuracy, jumps and spinning. Spinning smaller will become easier, thus you can spin faster when you manage to grasp it. Contrary to popular belief, it’s actually faster and easier to spin with a mouse than a tablet.

Get a laser mouse, they are much more accurate and distance snapping is much more accurate than the usual optical mouse. Normal mice can’t work well with reflective surfaces, but laser mice can work well (much better than optical mice, they can achieve even better performance on proper tables and gaming pads) on glass and even on your bed. They are even cheaper than tablets if you’re not trying to get those that have 5+ buttons on them and being branded.

What type of mouse should I get?

You’ll surely have difficulty reading, so here’s the image by itself.

Different ways to hold your mouse

There are three ways to hold your mouse,

■ The palm grip■ The claw grip■ The fingertip gripThe palm grip is the most common way to move a mouse, the user’s palm is resting on the end of the mouse. This also means that you have to use either your wrist or elbow to move the mouse around.

The claw grip makes the user arch his hand like a claw. This way is for the user to press the mouse buttons as the fingers are right under them.

The fingertip grip is when the user only uses his fingers to move the mouse. In other words, the user needs the shift the mouse slightly more forward so that he can pull back the mouse if there are notes on the lower region of the screen. Using this grip would mean that your wrist and elbow does not move much compared to the rest of the grips and that you require a mouse with a short end so that when you pull the mouse backwards it would not bump into the end of your hand.

Any type of grip would be fine and it is up to how comfortable the user is with the mouse. Different gaming mice are made for different grips, so remember to check and do a bit of research on what you or you might end up buying something not suitable for you!

Mechanical keyboards

If you didn’t know, you can, instead of clicking and dragging, use z and x to substitute that. And of course, if your keyboard is bad, you’re going to have quite a few problems. The keyboards you see everyday are called rubberdome keyboards. They're cheaper and faster to produce. They serve their purpose well, but not as well as mechanical keyboards. The downside about these keyboards is that they feel squishy, you need to press all the way down for them to work, thus sending info to the computer slightly slower than how fast mechanical keyboards can.

Mechanical keyboards use things called switches under each key. This is what makes their prices rocket. The switches make it so that just one slight press would situate the keys. I changed keyboards recently, if not for this I would have missed notes that I didn't miss thanks to the feature.

Different types of switches are identified by colour:

Red switches: A popular switch choice for gamers. They are the most quiet out of the of the switches and doesn't have any tactile feedback. The least amount of force required to activate compared to the other switches.

Blue switches: They give clicking sounds and tactile feedback

Brown switches: They're like the inbetweens of reds, tactile bumps.

Black switches: They require more force to to be pressed compared to the rest of the switches.

Red switches are rather popular, browns are too. People don't really use blues because of the tactile feedback. But some highly skilled players have used blues for great accuracy despite the difficulty.

Should you switch to these keyboards? Even though they feel nice, sound nice and all, they burn a real big hole in your pocket even for the cheapest one without any lighting and all the cool stuff compared to the $10 rubber keyboards from normal stores.

SettingsRun osu! in windowed or fullscreen? 100% dim or not? This part would explain the differences of gameplay with each setting.

Fullscreen vs windowed

If you don't want to change your tablet area and generally move less, play in any windowed you feel comfortable with. This is really just a preference. Though I must say that osu! looks amazing in such high quality in fullscreen.

Widescreen vs standard

There isn't any difference in widescreen and standard, you don't need to move more or anything. It’s just that some skins were created for standard and may look really

strange on widescreen. This is also purely out of preference. (Collections tab during song selection does not appear in standard.)

Background videos and storyboards

They can be highly distracting sometimes (it will affect gameplay a lot if the middle of your hitcircles are completely transparent) I don't even see them because my dim level is at a 100%.

Skins from songs

Skins are usually there to beautify the song, not to make it any easier to play. People would usually turn it off. Some people do not use the 'disable all skin from songs' to just see if the song does have their own skins.

Hitsounds

Skin sounds are a special case, it actually helps people play better. Following the beat becomes much easier. However, some hitsounds from skins do the opposite.

Dim level

If you're using the default skin, you can see the notes clearly even with the picture at the brightest dim level. But if you're using a rather transparent skin, turning it off or much lower is recommended so you actually can see what's going on. Dim level that's 100% might help reading harder maps. It becomes easier to concentrate.

Hit lighting

This light up the field each time you hit a note. And if your 300s are transparent, just the hit lightning could very well be the 300 to the user. It gives off the feel that you have actually had hit something during hidden, and it actually lights up the note that had disappeared position during kiai time. The downside is that it clutters up the screen during songs like The Creator or Scarlet Rose with the way it expands and everything.

Combo bursts

They block your screen, but they're translucent. Pro players end up not noticing them when they appear because the songs they play require focus. Turning them off will help with songs that has notes everywhere because of the low AR (Approach Rate). Just use combo sounds if you want to know if you've got good combo.

Snaking sliders

Turning them on or off is highly debatable. Pros and cons weigh equally. It depends on you for which one helps you more.

Pros of turning them on:

While you're busy concentrating on a part of a screen you can see what direction they're growing in and subconsciously prepare for it from the corners of your eyes.

Cons of turning them on:

If the beatmap is really fast the sliders tend to scare you with how fast they grow. If there a lot of sliders everywhere, it may become really messy (to some people).

Pros of turning them off:

Fast beatmaps or maps worth short sliders everywhere look less threatening. Less messy and won’t be cluttering up the screen.

Cons of turning them off:

Your aim and accuracy might be slightly off with the way they appear. Ready preparedness and fast reaction is needed, not too hard when one gets used to it.

Shader effects

One of the options I highly recommend turning OFF. Just imagine yourself playing a really insane map that you can barely pass and you’re really anxious because you’ve never went as far as what you’re playing so far. And then the whole screen goes red because of your low life bar and all the redness caused you to fail. It’s distracting and almost like the ‘You have failed! But you can continue playing!’ when you’re in multiplayer that keeps you failed.

Score meter

Score meter type doesn't affect gameplay very much. Different score meter means that they would tell you different things.

Hit Error

One of the only things that I think is useful of this is that it tells you if you’re hitting the notes too fast or slow. It helps a lot during streams. When the arrow moves to the left, it means you are hitting the notes too fast, while the right is means that you’re too slow. The middle part of this bar is self explanatory if left is too fast and right is too slow. The only downside of this is that it’s really small and low at the bottom of the screen. Usually when you look at it, you’ll just end up losing focus and ending up worse than you were

off before.

Colour

This one tells you how well y

ou did. The colours shows up as squares and tell you how you hit for the notes you have hit. Blue for a perfect hit (300), green for a good one (100), orange-yellow for a bad one (50), and red for a miss. It’s a rather pretty bar but it doesn’t do much. Unless you’re really forgetful and forgot how you did.

Whatever set in the settings is just what you prefer for convenient gameplay.

Building up your skill Something people keep whining about for some reason.

In other words, 'how to improve'. People would usually just say "PRACTISE HWAHAhasaASGFlg [insert puush of your play count here]" I don't exactly disagree with this, or agree with it either. Yes, practising is the thing to do to become better, but not HOW to become better. It's like practicing easy maps to be able to beat insanes.

First thing you need to do is to find your cap, your limit. To do this you'll need a lot of beatmaps. Download 2-3 beatmap packs. Then, type these commands to find the maps that has what the commands are looking for.

AR=

This is to find out what approach rate of the circles you want them to be. The higher the number, the faster the AR would be.

CS=

This is for the circle size, the high the number, the smaller they will be.

Keep playing and increase the number until you are unable to pass the map anymore. That is your limit, practise it.

(Note that not all maps are the same, it could be that the map you can't pass is hard to read etc and not the circle size or approach rate that is affecting you. But if you play other maps with the same AR and CS but still have problems, it’s either the approach rate or circle size reading problem for you.)

Don't try thinking that increasing the level is going from easys to normals to hards

This is a common mistake made by beginners. It's difficult to improve like this. If you haven't noticed, the difficulty gap between normal and hards is pretty big. Some hards are actually harder than others.

Millions of 'okay's aren't good enough

Before you go on trying to pass your limits, you need to practise hitting the circles accurately. If you can get 93%+ accuracy on easy maps with Double Time and Hardrock, you'll probably realise that other maps have become not-so-bad because you are now actually concentrating on the circles and sliders properly, your aim is also better. It's

better to DoubleTime and HardRock easy 2 star maps, they are faster than normal maps but slower than hard maps. DoubleTime HardRock 3 star maps is on a whole different level, so don't do that until you're fast enough.

Mastering DoubleTime HardRock easy maps will help normal, DoubleTime Hardrock normal maps will help hards, DoubleTime hards will help insanes. Well, this is just what I experienced/noticed.

Basically, practice your limits. That's pretty much what you'd see in the rest of the guide because there really isn't any other way.

AR difficulty reading table

How high the AR would be with added mods.

James TrainingIt actually works (For me, for others I'm not sure.) Download beatmap pack 13 and play it. It only works if you only PLAY HARDS or anything harder than that. It would be absolutely insane to you at first, but keep going. If you really want to surprise yourself, don't play other maps other than James training ones till you can FC (Full Combo) them.

Why it works

These ancient (they're so old) maps will train your aim and accuracy. Because of the circle sizes and the way they were mapped, they should be straining your hand to memorise the area you're playing with to be much more accurate. Just changed DPI? Play James Training. Just switched to full screen? Play James training. Your skills should improve, but don't expect yourself to be able to play insanes immediately and your skills to rocket sky high.

Actually the reason why it makes someone better is because it's so badly mapped you have to try much harder to read and everything. But of course, reading older maps and being able to do them isn't really useful unless you're trying to play older maps. This means that you might as well play new maps that has puny circles or hardrock everything. (this means that you have to be able to do high AR at the same time.)

Note: These maps are not made for people who have less than 5k play, they're too difficult for people who Also you need to download a ton of maps.

More info here.

But really building up your skill is just trying to do well on maps and practising.

can't pass hards and have just started. And not everyone would agree with this being a great way to train, play any way you want. This is just a suggestion.

More info here.

Higu's jump trainingAnother training I had tried. Not really sure if they work since I didn't stick to it for long. But I do think that if I actually completed it I would be much better than I am now.

Note: These maps are beast. At level 1 they're already really hard for a so-so player.

Game modifiers (Mods)

"How do people be able to play xxx???

Mods makes things harder, sometimes easier. They decrease or increase your score. Some of them are just for fun. This section will teach you about the ones that makes the game harder.

How to be good in... Hidden (HD)

The hidden mod makes those approach circles disappear. To make it even harder, the notes fade into nothingness. How fast depends on the AR. HD is one of the easier mods because the most you need to do is read the fade out and listen to the beat. You will need to have good memory to remember exactly where the notes are during hard to read maps. Another problem with hidden is when notes are behind sliders. You won't know because there isn't an approach circle to tell you that they are actually there. So you'll need a transparent skin that will show what's behind the sliders. Playing hidden makes you play the map according to the beat and rhythm, not focusing on approach circles, therefore it may aid in getting better accuracy for some players.

How to be good in... Hardrock (HR)

The Hardrock mod makes AR, CS, OD (Overall Difficulty) higher than it was at first. They also screw with your muscle memory by flipping everything vertically (luckily not horizontally, or right-handers will have so many problems.) They don't pose much problems in easier difficulties but by the time you start HR'ing hards they can become a real pain. Most people don't use them when they can just DoubleTime. It's tempting when it comes to practising AR9.8 using HR on AR7 when you could just DT and the AR would be lower. AR is one thing and CS is another. Practising Hardrock is to just use it on lower difficulties and keep going on. If HR is too difficult, use map editor, flip everything,

Change the AR and CS to something close to the HardRock one and keep increasing as you get better.

This can be found when you edit a song in the map editor. Don’t forget to select everything and vertically invert it!

How to be good in.... DoubleTime (DT)

DoubleTime makes everything faster (obviously, by the name). To be good in this is to practise faster BPM maps. Slightly slower than the song's BPM on DT. Once the BPM is mastered, go higher. You also need to practise AR. Use the AR table as

reference. Sorting everything out by BPM would help.

How to be good in... Flashlight (FL)

Mostly considered the hardest mod of all of osu! mods. I'm pretty sure it also stands for f*** life too. The most info I can give about this is to have a skin that has obvious followpoint to see while in a small restricted area of the screen. This is a mod you can't train using other maps, you will have to keep replaying the same map over and over. But when you get used to it there wouldn't be so many problems in the future. Less replays would be required. (Basically you’re teaching yourself to have better memory.

You can’t miss these follow points in FL.

Streaming (and stacks)

"How do you know how many notes there are???"

Do we look like we count them? Actually, most of the time we're just guessing, or it's obvious like 4 note stacks. After doing a lot of hards and insanes, we start being able to know how much we need to press from the size (sometimes we see the numbers under the transparent circles) of it. Another way is knowing the feel of the song. From that, you can tell why there was a stream there (due to the part of the music), and when this portion of the music stops, thus ending the stream. You'll only need to worry about streams and stacks when you are able to do insanes. (Maybe some hards)

Stacks

Basically, just keep pressing z and x until there isn't any left (obviously) as dumb as this sounds you make yourself get used to this habit of clicking at an amount of times. Like, 'oh I see this short one' and then your hand taps at this amount without trying too much. And then when you see a longer one your hand automatically taps longer but stops at a particular number because of habit. How this happens is because the same amount stacks are repeated through a lot of maps. Also, if you have a skin that is transparent you can see

through the stacks and see the numbers of the hitcircles. (though it's rather useless at times because the numbers go to the point of unreadable the way they are jumbled up together.) The size and the amount of approach circles will also tell how many or how long you have to press for these stacks.

Streaming

It's also basically pressing z and x. But this time you can't instill it in your muscle memory to know how many notes there are. It's basically, 'stop when it ends' since you can see the ends of them much clearly than stacks.

It takes practise to move your cursor along with moving your fingers.

I'm slow at streaming, what do I do?

Playing songs that need zxzxz would help train it. But if you want to, get a keypad to do the zxzxz movements on wherever you go so you don't need to be constantly playing osu! to train. You can do that on any surface, wearing headphones and listening to osu! beatmap songs is a bonus. Add as much streaming parts in the song you're listening to. (Don't do that when you're mapping though, that's just overmapping.

Start with lower BPM stream songs, remember to check the BPM of every song before you start. The hit error bar enabled will tell you if you're streaming too fast or slow during songs.

How fast do I stream?

There are currently two programs right now that can calculate your streaming speed.

1. Stream Speed Tester

BPM tester is a simple command prompt program that you have to specify how much you have to stream. In other words, you don't see how fast you're streaming while they're calculating. It's simple, fast and easy to use. No installation, you can put it in a thumbdrive and bring it to school to test your speed with school computers.

Download: http://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/160893

2. ClickMeter

ClickMeter requires a game plugin from the Microsoft website in order to work. It's a bit of a hassle but it is somewhat worth it with it's stimulated osu-like play area with a configurable moving hitcircle. Each time the circle is hit it will produce a different sound and create a rhythm, which actually makes some players faster with the rhythm to hit to. You can pick what skin you want them to use too. They will display your BPM per 10 hits, it's rather distracting, but maybe a source of motivation to some people. The downside is that you do not need to specify what keys to stream with and easily achieve up to 600+ BPM by pressing a lot the keys on your keyboard at the same time.

Download: http://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/117038

Streaming accurately

I can stream fast, but not accurately, keep getting 100s and 50s, help!

Alot of people spam streams when they see them, and as a result, don’t are not very accurate at them. You might think that singles and streams are two different things, but in fact, they are the exact same. Watch this video by thelewa and read the description to understand.

Basically, ½ notes and ¼ notes are the exact same, except that you alternate your other finger in between for ¼ notes. Remember the rhythm and beat of ½ notes and you will be able to stream ¼ notes accurately.

Stamina

There's no trick to this one, it's just trying your best to stream longer. Do it regularly and slowly you'll last longer than the last time. If you’re able stream 195 BPM and is moderately good at jumps, Mythologia’s End is something worth practicing with.

Jumps

Some people love them, some people hate them. Notes that are really far apart are called jumps. Sometimes creating pretty patterns and creating emphasis on songs.

To be good in jumps, (I doubt it's possible to master them) is to have very good aim and speed to reach the notes. It's all how much your hand has memorised the area you use to move around in. It's all up to muscle memory, going over the area you use so many times you can hit notes at tough spots without trying too hard. Right now, they may be hard, but in the future after more plays, you'd be surprised why you even had problems in the first place.

This may be just me, don't replay the same map over and over to do a jump.

This might actually just strain your hand and leave you tired. Constantly playing the same map over and over won't help (you might actually get worse the more you retry), constantly switching at every retry is a no too. Just let your muscle memory build over different styles of mapping.

Soon after enough different plays of hard/insanes (jumps usually don't appear in normal and easy, so you can just forget them.) You should be able to do some jumps you weren't able to back then.

Also, James training.

There are jump practice maps like Blood Sugar and Shotgun Senorita, but of course, there are a lot of other maps with jumps. Any insane difficulty should contain a few.

Snapping

A special way to hit notes, the cursor reaches the note before the approach circle does. It means that the cursor has to stay at the circle for awhile before being hit. It gives a robotic feel. It might increase accuracy and aim because you reached the note really quickly and you can prepare for it. You'll need to get rid of the habit of hitting z/x when your cursor reaches the hitcircle to snap properly.

Squares and Shapes

Separated notes placed in a way that they look like the corners or angles of a shape. They can be strenuous for people who had just started because of the awkward movements required to hit them. Basically, don't see them as shapes. If you do this, your mind would subconsciously try to hit the notes by drawing it out (especially for tablet users) it’s like looking at the pins instead of the arrows on the floor when you're bowling.

Concentrate on the next note you're going to hit as if they are the normal random notes put together that you see in maps a lot. This will be difficult because you can surely see their shapes. Squares/shapes need good hand control, keep practising and it will come naturally.

Big screen squares is completely up to being able to do jumps and good aim.

There is a square jump training map too.

Single tapping and Alternating

So, what is single tapping and alternating?

When you first started and didn't know what these were, you were probably a single tapper. As the name suggests, single tapping is tapping with z or x with on one finger. It is still single tapping when you use two fingers for streams and one finger for everything else. Alternating is using two fingers, using one finger for this one and the other for the next and so on. It is still alternating if the user favours one finger over the other but switches fingers often.

Which is better? Single tapping or alternating?

This is also preference. Most pros single tap, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t alternate or alternating isn’t good. They have their own goods (and bads) also reasons why people use them.

Single tapping: It takes more effort to single tap insane songs with fast spread notes but it is possible. They have problems with fast connect sliders compared to alternating when you can easily change fingers without having to worry if you were to slow. You will be more accurate with single tapping because you have to take note of what you’re going to hit.

There are two ways to single tap, to use your finger to spam your key or keep your finger still and use your wrist to do the moving up and down motions.

Alternating: It’s rather strange to alternate at first and will be rather awkward to newer users trying this out. It’s rather tempting to just single tap when alternating, but one needs to get used to it, they can do it without even thinking. The good thing about alternating is that less effort is used to hit many notes and slider. The problem with it is that it would introduce problems like spamming z and x on maps like Scarlet Rose.

Accuracy and Sliders

“I only fail 3 why my acc so low? I see pros and their acc is 97%+”

Accuracy is (obviously) how accurate you are. It’s the timing of you hitting the notes that matter when trying to achieve high accuracy. Accuracy depends on getting 300s, 100s and

50s. Just concentrate on the approach circles. Don’t just waste a billion retries on SS for just your general accuracy, just aim for a high accuracy. Everything would click together after many S’s.

Slider breaks

Slider breaks happens when you let go of the slider halfway and you break combo. Just keep holding on z/x even after the slider ends. It’s allowed, no accuracy is taken away. Also, make sure your cursor stays in the slider follow circle.

This will not result in slider break, as long as the cursor is in the slider follow circle, it is counted. The slider ball seems to be there for fun. The slider ball seems to be there to tell you when the slider will end.

This means that all the annoying sliders that has hard to follow patterns can be done with less effort because all you need to do is stay in the slider follow circle.

This method is especially helpful during fast maps with short sliders.

All you need to do is hold z/x on the short slider for a bit. If you try to follow the slider, you’re likely to be too slow and slider break.

Skins

Skins replace images on osu! with custom ones. The default skin is, uh well, horrible. The circles, cursor, everything, isn’t good for effective gameplay. It actually makes things harder. With a better skin, reading maps would become much easier.

Only some parts of a skin is required to be changed for easy reading, which are:

● The hitcircles

● Slider ticks

● Default font

● Cursor

● Follow points

● 300, 100, 50, miss

● 30s and 10s for sliders

● Star2.png (kiai time stuff)

● Hit sounds

The rest can be customised any way that suits the user’s interests, or left blank so osu! would use the default to fill it in.

What skin should I get?

Skins with (semi) transparent hitcircles so that you can see the numbers under the circles (and maybe tell how many notes there are in a stack) would help to see notes under sliders

during hidden. Cursor somehow just makes the feel of hitting notes like jumps better, and sometimes the default cursor is too huge for smaller notes. Follow points in the default are rather difficult to follow so use simple and more obvious ones. 300s should be completely transparent to avoid cluttering up the whole screen. It’s only worth knowing your mistakes (100s, 50s and misses.)

Usually when the hitcircles are (semi) transparent, background dim should be set to really dim or 100%, or it’d just become even harder to read the map than using the default skin. (This means enabling or downloading videos would be hopeless.)

Hitsounds can be helpful because they sound better, and helps in following the beat better because of the way they sound.

How do I change my skin?

The extras tab does not have any very good skins and they might actually be even worse than the default skin. Download a skin you like, if it comes in .osk, just open it up and osu! would parse the file for you.

If it comes in .zip or .rar, get an extractor (not needed for .zip though)

1. Extract it to you desktop.

2. Open up computer from your start menu, click on computer and open up your local hard drive.

<-- Open that

3. Open up a folder called program files. (On newer computers, there should be program files (x86) open that one.) then open the folder called osu!

4. Open the folder called skins. If you haven’t used anything before, it should be empty. Drag the skin you extracted in step 1 into this folder.

5. Open up osu! Go to options>skins>click on that button thing with the name of the skin and by who.

6. The skin selection thing would load and you’ll be able to see your new skin as an option there. Click on your new skin’s name and osu! will show a preview of it. Just click on back and you will be using the skin you have just installed.

Congratulations! You managed to finish reading my super long guide that took me a few days to write!

tl;dr Practise your limits with effort (there aren’t any shortcuts) and have fun.I’m not asking you to be a casual player, you can be as hardcore as you’d like, but don’t frustrate yourself over this game. You’ll just ragequit when it can actually be fun practicing.

Just an extra reminder that you only need to worry about high AR, BPM, jumps and streams when you can pass hards.

Damn I wish I had this guide when I first started.

Extra note: I made this guide before PPv2 came out. Turns out that PPv2 works the way this guide is telling people. Work harder and beat yourself. I basically just typed down whatever I wished that someone had told me when I first started.

ChangelogIf you have made any changes, please record them down here. Please include the date and your in-game name (Facebook name too if you’re in osu!XD)

8/2/14 - Document created by kartistenn (Karuto Isutenn)

8/2/14 - Added Mapping section, as well spelling and grammatical mistakes by neonat (Nathaniel Timothy Hui)

8/2/14 - Fixed some typos, edited hardware and streaming section by Angelic Force (Ser Keat Low)

8/2/14 - Added more to the things needed to be added section, fixed some typos and grammar, edited the stacks, streaming accuracy and James Training section. Also changed the front page by adding a content for everything and making the original guide into a sub category by kartistenn (Karuto Isutenn)

15/2/2014 - Added more info in the tablet section by Primula (I just noticed the edit I have no idea exactly when it was added -kart)

15/2/2014 - A whole new makeover over the contents. Prettyfied everything by adding more pictures and info. Shifted the changelog back to where it was last time. (to-do later: Add recommended skins and rearrange the order of everything.) by kartistenn (Karuto Isutenn)

Editors needed

I am no longer updating this document. But people are still free to edit. - kartistenn

I would like this to be a better guide. So I need other people’s (your) help because my experience is limited on some areas. Plus, there are other players (like maybe you) are much better than I am.

Things that need to be included:

Mod difficulty recommended maps (Add maps that is good for practice for a mod under that mod section.)

Tablet recommendations. (Add a picture of the tablet –I don’t care if you took it from google images. And an explanation of why it’s good.)

Mice recommendations. (Add picture of mouse – I still don’t care if you took it from google. Explain why it’s good.)

Skin recommendations. (Include download link. Please, it needs to be a good skin for gameplay. NO R18 STUFF PLEASE. If there is ecchi, include warning where it has it (section-pass.png etc) Also include screenshots of song selection, gameplay and mod selection. You can exclude the spinner if you want.)

Add anything you think is useful to the guide. (How you play the game, like you have other ways to stream. Or you want to add on about snapping. Go ahead.)

Mechanical keyboard switch picture. (Go steal it from google or snap a picture of your keyboard. And please, mechanical keyboards, not your rubber ones.)

Appreciated if someone could add other guides like how to play Catch the Beat well, Taiko etc.

If you’ve edited this document or bothered to read it, thank you very much!

Mapping guide

Table of contents:

❖ At a glance❖ Picking a song❖ Timing❖ Metadata❖ Difficulty settings❖ What makes it what it is (Easy > Insane)❖ Dividing a song into sections❖ Standard mapping

➢ Slider tick rate➢ Slider velocity

■ Slider velocity changesKiai time➢ Combo colours➢ Objects

■ Circles■ Sliders■ Kick sliders■ Repeat sliders■ Spinners

➢ Placement➢ Streams➢ Jumps➢ Patterns➢ Slider art➢ Anti-jumps➢ Hitsounds➢ Fluidity➢ Cutback/Anti-flow➢ Vocals or music: it’s always a difficult decision➢ Mapping no-gos

❖ Taiko mapping➢ Difficulty settings➢ Slider velocity

■ Slider velocity changes➢ Rhythm➢ Patterns➢ Sliders➢ Spinners

At a glance

Mapping is a vital part in osu! Basically, without the maps and the people who make the maps of songs, there would be nothing to play in the game. A map consists of objects placed strategically within the play area that appear throughout the song. Objects you have to hit are placed such that they usually follow a rhythm of the song, and in most cases, are placed and positioned (excluding Taiko and mania) in a way that suits the style and feel of the song. We will go further into detail on them as we break down further the aspects of mapping.

Mapping can be done in many ways, and the number of ways just keep increasing. This is because for most, mapping is unique for each and every one of us; no 2 mappers would make a map the same way naturally. Each have their own perception of the song but there are quite a number of aspects that they do follow.

Picking a song

The first step of mapping is to choose a song to map.