Flight school
Your guns fire on their own. Staying alive is on you. These are the moves the best pilots use, straight from the game, numbers included.
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Dash
Tap Space / RT
A 0.18 s burst that makes you untouchable for 0.34 s and cuts every drone in your path. You hold 3 charges, each back in 1.6 s.
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Time Stop and hops
Hold Space / RT · place hops with E / A · let go
Hold dash and the world slows to 10% for up to 6 s. Place one hop per dash charge, then let go: your ship flies the whole route in a blink, untouchable, shredding everything on the line. Every boss throws a missile curtain that only this gets you through.
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Perfect dodge
Dash through a shot
Dash through a shot at the last moment and the game shouts PERFECT. Time freezes for a beat, your guns overcharge for 1.6 s, you get half a dash charge back and your wing hits back. Chain another within 4 s to keep the overcharge going.
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Graze and Nova
Fly close to shots, then Space / RT
Every shot that skims past without hitting you fills the ring around your ship. After 16 close calls it reads NOVA READY, and your next dash or hop chain detonates into a blast that clears everything around you.
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Drift boost
Hold Ctrl / RB, let go
Hold drift to slide: steering drops while a charge builds over 1.3 s, faster when you slide sideways. Let go and you launch at 1.5× speed.
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Boost and slipstream
Hold Shift / LB on a route
Between planets, boost for 1.55× speed, but watch the heat: overheat and you crawl at 0.62× while the engine cools. Ride a slipstream ribbon for 1.4× speed, and hit the next one within 9 s to chain them for XP.
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Slingshot
Skim a gravity well at speed
Fly past a gravity well fast and close and it flings you out at 1.45× speed for 2.5 s. Free speed, if you dare get that close.
Speedrunner tech
The small print, for anyone chasing a time.
- Dash cancel
- Dash again once the current dash is 45% done. Three charges, three dashes, almost no gap.
- I-frames
- 0.34 s of invulnerability per dash, plus 0.035 s of grace after it. Speedrun mode's frame data shows both live.
- Input buffer
- A dash pressed up to 0.12 s early still fires.
- Tail steer
- The last 40% of a dash bends toward your stick.
- Pinball
- Hit a rock at 70% speed or more and you ricochet off it, keeping 90% of your speed and cracking the rock.
- Snap turn
- Pushing against your own momentum brakes up to 3.6× harder, so hard turns stay sharp.
- Stacking
- Evasive Burn, slingshot, slipstream ribbons and drift boost all multiply together, and boost or a relay's slipstream stacks on top on campaign routes.