25 Advice From the Top
osu!'s own news team runs an interview series, The Followpoint, which has put the same question to several of the game's best players: what would you tell someone starting out? The answers are shorter than you'd expect, and they don't agree with the internet's idea of what top players think. Two of the interviews below were written up with the help of DigitalHypno, whose chart this book is built on. 23
mrekk
Rank 1 for three years at the time of the interview, and still there as of this edition's ranking check. 61
- Don't let top players demotivate you. Supported. His first piece of advice, and the one he puts above technique: believing you can never reach that level is itself what stops the improvement that would take you there. Self-efficacy tracks performance in both directions, and low self-efficacy predicts avoiding the difficult tasks that build it (Ch. 23). 23,147
- Don't overthink anything: setup, pp, any of it. Agrees with everyone in this book. Overthinking moves your attention onto numbers instead of the game. He adds that as a 5-digit player he barely knew what pp was and simply played and full-comboed things for fun. Conscious monitoring of a well-learned skill is a known route to choking, and intrinsic motivation predicts performance better than chasing external markers. 23,106,123
- Do wrist and hand stretches between sessions and between maps. Partly supported. He raises RSI and carpal tunnel unprompted as the thing that could end his own playing. Workplace reviews find strong evidence for strengthening programmes and moderate evidence for stretching against upper-limb problems; no osu!-specific routine has been tested (Ch. 20). 23,136
- Breaks bring motivation back. Agrees with Korilak and Tonehh. He describes finding bursts of motivation whenever he tries to take a break, which is the same pattern Korilak reports after three or four days off. 4,23,31
- On talent. Nuance. He is candid that his improvement was unusually fast, to the point of being accused of cheating and having to prove himself with hand cams. That is worth holding next to the argument in Ch. 23 that genetics are an excuse: individual differences are real and the best player in the world says so, but they are not what is stopping a player who practises badly.
WhiteCat
Former rank 1, asked the same question about advice for people just starting out. His complete answer was two words: enjoy game. 24
That is not a joke answer, and it's the single most-repeated claim in this book. Tonehh's fifth principle of "play more" is enjoyment, and he argues the other four follow from it. bloo says the same. A 2012 forum reply, buried in the thread that produced half of Ch. 11, answers the how-to-improve question with "having fun". A 40-year meta-analysis finds intrinsic motivation predicts performance, and flow, which requires a challenge matched to your skill, is linked to better performance across sport and gaming tasks. Asked separately whether mindset can stop you playing, WhiteCat's answer was that mindset is everything, and that you have to at least have yourself on your side. 4,14,24,66,123,127
xootynator
Eleven years playing, a World Cup regular, and the game's best-known full-area player.
- Full area works at the top. Supported by example. The book's position on area is that it is preference within a broad range (Ch. 16), and a top-level player using the entire tablet is the clearest evidence that the range really is broad. 25,139
- She has used two tablets in eleven years, and changed once for a concrete reason. Agrees with everyone. She switched because hover height suited her better, not because she was stuck, and expects to keep the current one for a long time. That is the whole "experiment, then stabilize" rule as a biography (Ch. 28). 25
Azer
A decade of World Cup play, captaincy, and organising, and the source of the most useful nerves material in any of these interviews.
- He meditated in the minutes before a tiebreaker, then full-comboed it to win the match. Experience-based. One instance, not a method, but it belongs next to the nerve-control research: what he describes is deliberately composing himself rather than trying to want it more. 26,104
- Expecting to lose made his team play well. Supported. As captain he deliberately spent a first pick his team expected to lose, on the theory that tournament nerves peak at match start. His summary is that playing with no nerves and no expectation of winning produced good play anyway. That is the outcome-versus-process mechanism in Ch. 14 tested in a live match: nerves come from attention on the result, and removing the result removes them. 26,106,107
Flaro, Predominador, and BTMC
- A skill set can be added deliberately, years in. Agrees with Tonehh. She played almost exclusively low-BPM flow aim and jumps until 2022, then committed to grinding speed for one specific score, and is now known for it. Skills you have never trained are missing, not impossible, and the rotation in Ch. 22 is how they get added. 4,27
- Speed is overweighted in the current system. Dated by design. She said so in 2024 while hoping a rework would rebalance it, and reworks have landed since (Ch. 24). It is a useful reminder that what pays pp is a moving target and a bad basis for choosing what to train. 27,79
- Break a long goal into sections and think only about the next one. Supported. His rule for a six-figure grind: set the far goal, then look no further than the next thousand, because dwelling on the total is what demotivates. That is ferret_irl's small-goal method arrived at independently, and it matches the goal-setting research on specific proximal goals with visible progress (Ch. 28). 28,38,148
- If your goal needs long maps, play long maps from the start. Supported. Otherwise you spend the end of the grind with nothing but the maps you avoided. It is the specificity point in plain terms, and the same reason Ch. 14 builds length gradually instead of all at once. 28
- Every failure in osu! is yours, and so is every score. Partly supported. He contrasts it with team games: nobody else can lose your run, and if you set a score once, you know you can set it again. The second half is the stronger half, because past mastery is the most reliable source of the confidence that carries you through a hard attempt (Ch. 23). 29,147
The pattern across seven interviews is worth noticing. Not one of them answers the improvement question with a technique, a setting, or a routine. They answer it with attention, enjoyment, patience, goal-setting, and not hurting yourself.