Neon White

FYI: This guide will be exclusively talking about the Hell Rush. The Heaven Rush is nothing more than a practice run by comparison.

Heaven Rush unlock prerequisite: Complete the game; may also require witnessing all ten relationship memories (aka Complete all Neon relationships)

Hell Rush unlock prerequisite: Obtain the true ending and witness the final memory (Do the above, then replay the final chapter (level select won’t work for this). After finishing Absolution in this manner, you’ll be presented with a choice. Select the bottom option.)
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Welcome to the ultimate challenge "Neon White" has to offer, White’s Hell Rush. I’m going to be blunt. This is a bitch. A fun bitch admittedly, but still a bitch. I would not even consider attempting this without at the bare minimum obtaining an Ace on every level beforehand, maybe a couple of (non-cheesed) Red Aces as well, just to make sure you’ve built up your skill enough to able to sustain yourself for 45+ minutes.

The conditions for this run are the following:

• Clear Condition: Complete every main story stage in one sitting (Sacrifice excluded; seems to most likely be due to NPCs not showing up in Rushes + Sacrifice not really working without that)
• Level restarts are banned
• You only have one life (However, if Green is killed in any of the fights with him and you die shortly before or after, that death will not count against you. Your health should be fully restored in the following level if you died via running out of health, but if you die via completely expending the Fists card, your health won’t be restored. All in all, not an edge case you should rely on.)
• Health is not automatically regenerated between levels (all level health pickups remain though)
• You have access to a Miracle Katana that can fully heal you and grant you one of any card type of your choosing, including the Book of Life. This katana can be discarded three times across the entire run. (For White (and Mikey while we’re at it), it’s recommended to hold onto all of your charges to save yourself in case of a screw up or if you’re at critical health past Chapter 5 levels on a No Shuffle run. There will be an exception outlined later, but it’s not an end all be all use case.)

For reference, in regards to the lack of automatic health regeneration, these are the levels where you’ll be able to grab Health cards (credit to the game’s speedrunning Discord server for the list):

• Glass Port
• Jumper
• The Clocktower
• Apartment
• Fuse
• Estate (3)
• Ricochet (2; they’re both very close to each other though so don’t expect to take advantage of that)
• Fortress
• The Third Temple
• Congregation
• Absolution

In regards to general tips, I don’t have much, and it’s all fairly obivous stuff, but I think it’s all worth repeating regardless. Better to be patronised than dead, after all.

• Do not pull any risky routes that may kill you or require a Miracle Katana discard to fix if done wrong unless if you have thoroughly practiced them
• Make sure you aren’t being overly reckless with constantly attempting Red Ace-tier routes, or being overly cautious with taking 2 minutes to clear longer levels. Obivously patience is a virtue on this Rush, and it doesn’t really matter if you get this done in 45 minutes or 90, but the longer the run goes on, the more you’re opening up the chance of dying. Just keep that in mind.
• If you’ve been playing at a high enough level where you’re frequently making use of bullet boosting shenanigans, try to not use them frequently for the Hell Rush. Contrary to the mode’s name, getting your first clear of this is a marathon, not a sprint.
• If you’re starting to get frustrated or develop some hand pain you should end attempts for the day there. It’s pretty unlikely you’ll get your Hell Rush clear quickly, and accepting that will make the process of grinding for a clear a lot more tolerable.

Now, as for whether to use Shuffle or not, I’d say it’s up to you, as both have strengths of similar value. (Shuffle: Can get harder levels out of the way much earlier, allows for more consistent practice with all of the levels, and makes the general process of attempts for a clear far less monotonous imo. No Shuffle: Makes it easier to manage health and allows you to be more ready for what’s to come.) You may find it a good idea to switch between the two though if you’re finding yourself struggling to initially get far on No Shuffle runs. For what it’s worth, my initial clear of White and Mikey’s Hell Rushes were with Shuffle enabled.

And just to be very clear, there is no silver bullet that I can provide for completing this Hell Rush. I am going to provide a couple strats (almost all of them with video demonstrations attached) to help with shaving off the window of time where you could die by a couple minutes all up (strats which you should really practice beforehand btw, especially for Marathon), some of which are found in some of the more threatening stages for a Hell Rush run. But ultimately the execution of the Rush will be up to you. Now, let’s begin.

(P.S For all strats in the Thousand Pound Butterfly levels, it’s recommended you set your Field of View to 60 so that you can get demons in your crosshair more easily. It’s not exactly comfortable, but it’s practical. For normal play though your regular Field of View should suffice.)

The Clocktower

Relatively minor strat, but still a decent time save (and has basically no risk attached in the event of a screw up). To put it short, when you get to Green’s second damage stagger, shoot for about 2 seconds, or until you count him receiving 16-20 bullets (or see 16-20 ones over his head, whichever you prefer). At that point, jump towards him, and throw two Purify bombs at him. By the time they explode, you should be at one of Green’s sides. You can use that explosion to get right up to where the next damage phase is located, saving a good 20 seconds of walking to it where nothing but bad can really occur.

Greenhouse

Grab the Stomp card and then head to the upper-left edge of the platform. Jump off it as late as you can, perferably a coyote jump, and hug the wall. If you jumped late enough that you can see a Mimic, try to get it in the bottom-left of your Stomp crosshair (first shots always come out from there) and shoot it. No big deal if you miss it. Regardless of whether or not you shot it, walk up the stairs when you land and immediately shoot the Guardian. Then clean house with the aforementioned Mimic and two more Mimics below to the Guardian’s right, and finally a Tripwire at the back of the room to the Guardian’s left. The Elevate demon can be killed with the Stomp’s radius, or a parry if needed.

Turns out that TA only uploads 5 videos per guide, so this one’s courtesy of Snuggles. They do take a faster but more risky version of this strat, shooting the two Mimics first, then the Tripwire, then Stomping the Guardian & Elevate demon, but it’s similar enough that that shouldn’t be a problem.

Holy Ground

With the Dominion crystals at the start, make sure that right after you get the card in question that you shoot it with Dominion to get some extra height (TL;DR on how that works, all shootable entities have a brief period where it is considered dead but can still be shot). If you do that right you should be able to rocket jump on the wall with a blue diamond and get over with two rockets left. Use one of them where the first Godspeed card is located and discard it to get over the mini waterfall to the right of the card from where you approach it. Grab the two Godspeed cards right ahead and jump down to a building with a dome top. Jump to the building right next to it, and then jump off that, discarding both Godspeed cards, one after the other. Discard the Dominion card shortly thereafter as soon as you can get a grapple off of one of the floating platforms.

The Third Temple

So, you know how this stage takes about five and a half minutes to do by an Ace standard? Yeah, you can uh… skip it. Completely. In ten seconds. To explain the why a little bit, basically, for whatever reason, the Temple section of this level actually has a goal that’s a little out of bounds. While this goal was patched out of the Steam version, it was for whatever reason kept in all console versions. (Before you ask, no, you can not use this to cheese Divine Intervention per Tyrian Callows, but it’s not really that big a deal: Book of Life spam in this level in White or Mikey’s Hell Rush makes that a cinch regardless.) As for execution, grab the Elevate card at the start for safety, then shoot/slash the first three crystals for a bunch of Fireball cards. (If you want the bare minimum for this strategy, two Fireball cards will suffice.) At the third Fireball crystal, drop down and use the first one when your camera is aimed a little below the red goo stuff. Midair, move towards the wall in front of you, specifically its left end. You should be out of bounds at this point. Use your remaining cards to move to your right where the goal presides. If you’re not at full health going into this stage, I would recommend going through the Temple part of the fight as normal, then when he leaves (when you hopefully have full health), do the strat.

Hike

Pick up the Dominion card at the start and do two rocket jumps, one at your feet, the other at the left or right wall in the room. Fire a third rocket at the Elevate demon to avoid risking a hit. Discard the Dominion card at the top of the rocky terrain to the late demon’s left. From there, you’ll want to look ahead at the next patch of rock and identify a little patch of something else (it’s a barrel but it’s hard to make out at this distance) at the top middle. Jump while keeping your crosshair on it as best you can (and without moving closer towards it; as long as you’re close-ish to the edge of the rock you’re on the Book will be able to lock on) then discard the Book when it’s got a lock on the barrel; repeat with the one right outside the coliseum-like structure at the end of the level.

Switch

After picking up the Dominion card, switch to the Book of Life and move left. Aim your crosshair at one of the tripwires and discard the Book. Move right afterwards and look for the top right tripwire (the one below works too but needs you moving the left stick in an upper-left fashion before doing the telefrag to not die), then use Dominion to rocketboost yourself above that part of the level. Look at the demon ‘protected’ by the following set of tripwires and discard the Book of Life while holding the left stick forward. (This trick can also be used in an identical manner on the tripwires following the big breakable door hold up by three tripwires in Access if you’re interested in that. Just be aware that if you’re too close to the tripwires when you do the telefrag you’ll die regardless.)

Congregation

(Mainly recommended for non-Shuffle runs or Shuffle runs where this pops up late.)

If you still have a Miracle Katana charge left at this point, discard it to get a Book of Life card. Look up towards the Guardians and blue guys and discard the Book to skip straight to the end of the level. It’s no big deal if you don’t have any charges left, but at this point your nerves are going to be bad enough where using a Miracle Katana charge to skip a level is arguably a better play than holding onto it in case of a fuckup, especially since you only really have two levels afterwards (in the case of no Shuffle) where it could help you, one of which being rather quick to clear.

Marathon

(Doable without Shuffle, but I wouldn’t recommend it due to this being a very high risk strat to perform this late into a non-Shuffle run.)

Basically, this strategy involves telefragging most of the ring tripwires using the Book of Life to turn this level’s length from 2 minutes to about 50 seconds on a garbage run. Like with Switch above in the non-optimal scenario, you will need to be holding a direction on each tripwire so you don’t die. After taking care of the first one in intended fashion, target the second while holding your stick to the upper-left. Aim for the hidden (from your angle) Purify chest, then look at the third tripwire. Target it while holding your stick to the upper-right. Aim for the little demon at the bottom of the next structure, then hold the upper-left direction on your left stick. Maintain it when the fourth tripwire appears and is targeted. Afterwards, target the Fireball chest to your left. When you get another Fireball card from the balloons, swap it out with the Book for safety. The fifth tripwire should be targetted while moving in an upper-left direction, then hold back while targeting the sixth tripwire. You can at this point immediately look upwards, use your Fireball card, and attempt to go for the last tripwire if you wish, but I find it to be the hardest one of the lot to telefrag, so I’d recommend moving away from the span of the sixth tripwire and telefragging the balloon demon ahead of you with a Dominion card instead. You can do as much or as little of this strategy as you want and procced to complete the rest of the level as normal. Just make sure you don’t screw up.

As mentioned earlier, TA doesn’t seem to upload more than five videos from any one guide, so this one is also from another user. (Username being ‘Neon White’… with a Neon Violet profile picture. Makes sense to me.) The second half of the video can be completely ignored: it involves the user going for a seventh tripwire backup that is ridiculously risky and is slower compared to another backup not discussed here anyway.
That’s about all I’ve got. Good luck, have fun, try not to get scammed.