I started playing Minecraft around 6 months ago, and never got good at it. 2 months ago, I ran into videos on speedrunning Minecraft and decided that that would be a good way to learn more about the mechanics of the game.

For a bit more context, speedrunning is the act of playing a video game, or section of a video game, with the goal of completing it as fast as possible. In the case of Minecraft, the end goal is to beat the ender dragon, i.e. a mob boss in the game, as fast as possible. To do that, you need to collect resources, food, do some necessary damage and basically not die.

Usually, an experienced speedrunner would be able to speedrun the game within 15 minutes. On speedrun.com, there are currently 4473 speedrunners that got their runs verified. 15 minutes of in-game time (IGT) would place you on 793rd place. My best time as of now is at around 81 minutes.

One interesting I noticed about speedrunning: if I spend a lot of time paying attention to the timer on the top right, I would somehow not be able to focus on the game itself. I got my personal best time when I was fully enjoying the game, and never trying to speedrun at all.

I definitely wish to speedrun the game at a much faster pace. But for now, I'll leave that wish aside and make every run count.