Tetris Effect: Connected

Updating with scores from comments, thanks everyone!



Marathon = 400.300 (don't fail) [S] - MR MITT3NS

Ultra = 30.000 [S] - Tervissimo

Sprint = sub 1:20 [S] - Master Okojo

Master = 189.250 [S] - MR MITT3NS

Chill marathon = 220.470 [S]

Quickplay = 10.000 [SS]

Ambient (sea/wind/world) = 30.000 [S]

All clear = 26 [S] - MR MITT3NS

Combo = 100 [S] - Wylliecoyote07

Target = 26 [S] - PhilKill

Countdown = 42.000 [S] - Master Okojo

Purify = 350 blocks purified (don't fail after!) [S] - ChiflaGoodluck

Mystery mode = 319.920 [S] (Endless) - The SCHWARTZ 00

Journey mode [Expert]: Area with 3 stages = 74k [S] - CircusPaws

Area with 4 stages = 94k [S] - Bloomy

Areas with 5 stages = 115k [S] - Bloomy

Final area = correction 50k [S] - Sambaweb

Unknown if Zone Marathon and Classic Score Attack are required, will add scores when known S ranks

Zone Marathon = 800.000 [S] - HeadedFern39705

Classic Score Attack = 200.000 [S] - ChiflaGoodluck

The objective of this achievement is to get S ranks “everywhere possible”, which practically means beating everything the game has to offer, but actually means completing only 20 things:
(1) Every sublevel in all 7 Journey mode segments (one difficulty, even the easiest, is ok)
(2) All 13 effect modes except for Zone Marathon and Classic Score Attack, which are more recently-added modes (in spite of the name, whenever an effect mode has multiple types, like Endless, you only need to get S-rank in one of them. This also applies to A-rank. Pick Endless whenever you have the chance since it is easier to get a high score once you've cultivated the staying power to play the mode for a while).

(The skills and time investment required to S-rank all modes are cross-applicable to all achievements in the game except for the avatar one.)

So it seems like most of the guides for this game presume some prior facility in Tetris, which makes sense (since people who are going for this achievement probably are already very good at it in the first place). So, I thought I'd write something that documents what I think is the best way to go from being brand new at the game to getting this achievement, like I was. (for reference, when I first started playing TEC, it was my first time playing Tetris except once or twice with friends as a kid. I was topping out on Marathons at speeds of 3 or higher, and I completed my first sprint in around 3:40. I got my last S-rank today in Ultra mode, with about 189 hours of playtime.) If you are already pretty familiar with the basics of Tetris, this solution is not for you; I refer you instead to Guttapunk’s excellent solution for pro tips, which for the most part held for me once I knew what I was doing.

I will be recommending a number of external sources (YouTube tutorials, online free Tetris practicers) which will help to facilitate this process.

As a last note - so Tetris obviously involves building a tower (or a stack) using tetrominoes of different shapes, and leaving a well somewhere that you can fill to stack for points. There are many different strategies that competitive Tetris players use when stacking their towers, but for nearly all the modes you only need to know how to create a “9-0 stack” (which basically just means leaving a well open at either the far left or the far right edge of the tower, and then filling it with an I-shaped tetromino, clearing four lines at once in a Tetris.) This is the most intuitive way most people stack anyway when playing the game. There are more creative modes of stacking that can drastically improve your efficiency in the game, but none of them are necessary for achieving S-ranks.

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PART 1. Starting Out with Sprint Mode

Competition-level Tetris players like Tafokints have a basic and time-tested recommendation for those who are serious about grinding out Tetris until they are competitively good at the game, and that advice is to start and stick with Sprint as your primary mode. As Guttapunk already notes in the other solution, this is the most difficult mode to S-rank, but don’t worry about the scores you get for now; doing sprints gives you a standard benchmark by which you can gauge your progress over time. If you intend to play Tetris from scratch with the intention of getting S-rank, begin without caring for your scores – just keep playing so you can cultivate the appropriate skills to play the game well.

Your objective, at the beginning, is to practice the following things, in this order, as you are ready:

1) Stacking flat. What this means is creating a tower that is as flat at the top as you can manage. If the top of your tower is spiky and/or staircased, you will accumulate “dependencies”, such as an “I-dependency”, which make it difficult to decide where you should place your next piece without ruining your stack (for instance, by burying holes inside your tower). For example (in the case of the I-dependency), if you create a tower with a hole that is 3 or 4 units deep, then you will be forced to stall. You will have to drop other pieces until you get an I-tetromino that is capable of filling that hole. By keeping your tower mostly flat, you’ll be able to accommodate nearly any pieces that end up being delivered to you in your queue, and this means you will need to think less about where and how to place your pieces. Though many have been posted, an excellent YouTube walkthrough on stacking flat was published by Nitric Acid:
2) Hard dropping. There are three ways to force a placement of pieces in Tetris: you can let it fall naturally; you can accelerate its fall (soft dropping; down on the D-pad); or you can drop it immediately, locking it in place instantly (hard dropping; up on the D-pad). Once you have a feel for how the tetrominoes fit together in a flat 9-0 stack, practice transitioning to using only hard drops (with some exceptions to be discussed later) as soon as possible.

3) Finesse. Once you are comfortable with basic stacking procedures, it is time to think about technique. The key to playing faster at this stage depends more on skill rather than stamina. Finesse in the Tetris community means the placement of tetrominoes using an optimal and minimal number of controller inputs (translations and rotations), and this is something that will pay back dramatically if you practice it early. This is ends up being a lot more nuanced than it initially sounds. Modern (as opposed to Classic) Tetris games use what is called the Standard Rotation System (SRS), which means that depending on how you rotate a given tetromino, it can “kick” off the walls of the playing field or off other already-placed tetriminoes, allowing you to place your piece in some really strange and unintuitive locations. (an interesting and informative video on the theory of this was posted by Superclass on YouTube:)

The best way to get used to this is not to practice using TEC at all, but a free online tool called Tetresse: https://tetresse.harddrop.com/. What this website does is it resets your tetromino placement every single time you perform a suboptimal maneuver, and then it provides guidance on how to rotate and translate your pieces to accomplish what you intended to do with finesse. Practicing for an hour or so a day over the course of a week on this website was enough for me to get a sense of how to do this by muscle memory.

4) Looking ahead. Once you know both how to place tetriminoes well and efficiently, the next thing best thing to practice is looking ahead in your queue, and visualizing where you will place each of those tetrominoes. Anticipating the placement of multiple pieces at once is difficult at first, and it is best practiced by occasionally looking ahead 1-2 pieces in the queue at a time until you are comfortable with this process. It is not simple to explain this in words, so I will instead link an excellent YouTube tutorial by KezDaBez (warning, it is a bit loud at the beginning:)
5) Downstacking. If you make a mistake and you are left with one or more gaps somewhere in your tower, which is very probable if you are a rather impulsive person who is new to Tetris, you should develop strategies not just for flattening your stack but also resetting a bad stack as quickly as possible. KezDaBez again has a great YouTube tutorial that exemplifies this practice:
Mastering these basics is all that is really necessary to playing Tetris well outside the many gimmick effect modes.

If you practice sprints until you bring your times down to between 2:00 to 2:30, you should be in a position to attempt (and quickly S-rank or SS-rank) the following modes, recommended in the following order:

- Relax - Quick Play (clear 30 lines; 8,000 points required for S)
- Relax - Playlist: Sea (32,000 points required for S)
- Relax - Playlist: Wind (32,000 points required for S)
- Relax - Playlist: World (32,000 points required for S)
- Adventurous - Countdown (I-tetrominoes occasionally drop; 42,000 points for S)
- Adventurous - Purify (this mode involves clearing what is known as “cheese” in other Tetris games, since Swiss cheese has lots of scattered holes in it. If you are well-practiced in everything above, but especially downstacking and looking ahead, you’ll have absolutely no problem here. Clear 400 purple “infected” blocks for S rank)

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PART 2: Speed and Gravity

The first major shift that you will have to accustom yourself to after this point is that for certain modes, the natural drop speed of your tetrominoes will increase over time. It can quickly feel like it spirals out of control in Marathons if you start at lower speeds and are unaccustomed to decisive, accurate, and speedy hard-dropping. Fortunately, if you have done Part 1 first, you should adapt quickly.

One thing to note is that at very high speeds (and in the high gravity mode), the tetromino will almost instantly fall against your tower. If your tower is spiky, then the pieces may become trapped in unfavourable configurations, complicating your attempts at maintaining a clean stack (and thus, high scores). If your stack is too tall, then losing control of even one piece can kill your run. Other than stacking flat and low, be attentive to what is known in the Tetris community as a Delayed Auto Shift, or DAS, which basically means that tetrominoes that are being actively shifted or rotated will not lock into place immediately onto your tower. This allows you to maintain some agency in deciding where and how your pieces will be placed in very high-speed drop modes.

You should be in a position to clear the following modes, perhaps easiest in the following order, with S-rank very quickly once you get the hang of these pointers, on top of everything in Part 1:

- Classic - Marathon (start at max speed 15 until you get used to it; 400,000 points for S-rank)
- Relax - Chill Marathon (start at max speed 15, 150 lines: 200,000 points for S-rank)
- ALL JOURNEY MODES (I recommend doing the Expert mode first to clear that achievement, since you are already practicing high-speed Tetris, and then redoing it all on the beginner mode for the S and SS-ranks. Smartly using the Zone feature - which freezes time, and which can be executed by tapping both RB and LB, easily got me to S-rank on every level. I activated it every time I had at least 8 lines ready to clear (a tall stack and two I-tetrominoes ready), even I had only a quarter-charge on the Zone meter.)
- Classic - Master (start at M5, or higher if you dare. Basically, the speed is so fast/gravity is so high that your pieces are instantly already on your tower when you start. If you aren’t DASing from the start, you will lose control of your tetrominoes instantly. Nevertheless, no problem if you’re well practiced on marathon speed 15. As long as you stack flat and low you’ll be fine. About 180,000 points for S-rank)
- Adventurous – Mystery (this one is very RNG-prone, and some of the modes are real headaches (one of them involves playing Tetris upside-down, and this killed me every time at higher speeds). If you are good at downstacking and at playing fast when the drop speeds increase, you’ll be fine. 300,000 points required for S-rank.)
- Focus – Target (You need to clear all iridescent target blocks as quickly as possible. A lot of this requires familiarity of downstacking and creatively tucking tetrominoes under overhangs, but if you are fast enough to do the rest of the modes above, you should be ready to move quickly enough to finish these modes too. Pass 26 missions for S-rank)

I was practicing Sprints along the way, and the practice at high speeds across these other modes helped me cut my Sprint times down to about 1:40-2:00.

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PART 3: Technical Know-how

The Focus modes (as well as the combo achievements) all require an awareness and familiarity with specialized elements of Tetris play that are situationally used by certain competitive players to enhance the efficiency of their play. The following skills are required, and should be practiced on Quick Play instead of Sprint. This is because you get the privilege of fixed drop speeds without a time limit, and you can reset your playing field without ruining the order of your drops if you play on a fixed instead of random drop order.)

1) Spins. Virtually all the tetrominoes (except only the O-tetromino, for obvious reasons) can, under conditions and in certain configurations, be rotated into areas into which they could not possibly fit under ordinary circumstances. The most obvious and commonly-executed version of this is the T-spin, which involves rotating a T-tetromino into a T-shaped well beneath an overhang. Lesser-known spins include J- and L-spins, the S- and Z-spins, and even an I-spin. Properly executing all of these involves executing the correct rotations in the correct order and at the correct locations. They also require specific stack configurations in order to accommodate a successful spin. You will need to understand how to do all of them, and quickly, in order to get an S-rank on the All-Clear effect mode.
Even the T-spin (arguably the easiest and best-known of the spins) is quite difficult to visualize beforehand, and it is unlikely you would accidentally encounter a situation where you would recognize and then execute any one of these spins. It requires some set-up, and that set-up requires a facility with stacking that exceeds that merely of stacking flat. Orz produced a great basic tutorial for T-spins on YouTube:
Once you are acquainted with a basic T-spin, which you would need to know anyway to get the T-spin achievements in TEC, a really helpful tutorial for the more advanced spins can be viewed from GoTron88 on YouTube:

The best place to practice these is within the All-Clear effect mode, unfortunately; relevant puzzles appear only after you complete at least 10 missions.

2) Comboing. There are many strategies for setting up really long combos, and none of them are immediately intuitive. They all boil down essentially to two considerations: (1) a fully-built tower, and (2) an alley of some width (two to four, usually), somewhere in your playing field, where successive combos can be executed. If you are going for the Combo Van Gogh achievement (15 combos, requiring a stack that goes to the top of your playing field), I would recommend setting up a four unit-wide alley. When you set up your six-unit-wide tower, you should use a horizontal I-tetromino (or something similar) to create a foothold that juts into the alley, which allows you to start your progression of combos (e.g., see by Dwaggeinite:)
The next step is understanding what configurations you can execute in order to continue your combo. Many possible combos require good lookahead and with familiarity with S/Z and L/J spin configurations. An online trainer by DDRKirby is excellent for practicing this; it shows not only how to place the next piece, but estimates based on a random queue what decisions are best to make: https://ddrkirby.com/games/4-wide-trainer/4-wide-trainer.htm...


Once you are comfortable with these, then you are ready to attempt (and swiftly to S-rank) the following modes, easiest in the following orders:

- Focus – All Clear (clear the entire board as quickly as possible, which means solving certain patterns, which grow increasingly unintuitive over time. Knowledge and facility with all spin types is mandatory. Clear 26 missions for S-rank. To get a sense of the solutions for puzzles you are not familiar with, consult online solution manuals, e.g., https://four.lol/tetris-effect/all-clear, and watch SS-rank All Clear players on YouTube – e.g., Doremy: - Relax – Quick Play (use this mode to practice comboing while working towards the Combo Van Gogh achievement, after familiarizing yourself with DDRKirby’s 4-Wide Trainer. This is the most natural time to attempt this.)
- Focus – Combo (perform as many combos as possible. Once you are familiar and well-rehearsed with the mechanics behind comboing, you are familiar with the technical side of this. All that remains is going as fast as you possibly can. 100 combos required for S-rank.)

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PART 4: Stamina and Endurance

You know everything you need to know to play this well. All that is left for you to do is to practice, practice, and practice. The more you play, the faster you will get, and the more familiar you will become with how everything ought to come together. The last two effect modes to S-rank cannot be cheesed, although they can be achieved while relying only on back-to-back Tetrises and basic 9-0 stacking. (To give a sense of my own trajectory, I played this game for about 130 hours before I reached Level 100, at which point I had cleared almost everything except for Sprint, Ultra, and maybe one or two of the Focus modes. I then played for nearly another 60 hours before I achieved S-rank on these last two effect modes, most of which was spent grinding to improve my Sprint and Ultra scores. IIRC, competitive Tetris player Tafokints reckoned in a video that achieving sub-1:20 likely puts you in the top 20% of players worldwide!)

Only one thing should be noted here – in Sprints, you can get away with some amount of “skimming” (clearing single or double lines at the top of your stack in order to clean it up), but this will cause your point tally to suffer in Ultra mode, where you should depend on as many back-to-back high-value maneuvers as possible in the short time you have.

Your scores will fluctuate over time depending on your mood, focus and attention, and on how kind your queue ends up being. Once you are close to will probably get an exceptionally lucky run that will put into the S-rank range, even if your average scores are not in that range.

- Classic – Ultra (30,000 points in 3 minutes for S-rank, which worked out for me to around 80 lines)
- Classic – Sprint (40 lines in under 1:20 for S-rank)

Going to provide tips for each mode, considering that seeing the S Rank thresholds is one thing, but actually doing it? May catch some people off guard. A lot of the tips shown are how I've personally tackled the modes, and I don't consider myself an outward elite, so these may be more generic and/or obvious tips and tricks. In any case...

Also, for reference, I think Endless scores for some modes can cover for the limited lines. I can't confirm or deny, but I had an A rank on normal "Mystery", but an S rank on "Mystery (Endless)", and still got the achievement, so yeah. Anyway!

MARATHON:

Start at a higher level. Whether it's 5 or 15, the score calculates how well you perform with the speed, and 150 lines won't be enough to cover 400k, even if you get constant, non-stop Tetris clears. If you can utilize All Clears, combos and T-Spins, then do that, but start on a higher speed on top, and you should be golden.

ULTRA:

Most of what can can say about Ultra is going to be said in the Sprint section, but the only unique tip I have here is that if you mess up with placement, it's not the end of the world. The 3 minute time limit is extremely forgiving towards the S Rank threshold of 30'000.

SPRINT:

Probably the hardest mode out of all the ones required for S Ranks. No fancy tricks, no BS, just straight up skill and talent. S Rank requires you to get a sub-1:20 run, and my successful run was like, 1:18 lol. Good thing you're not on PS4, where you have to get SS ranks, and a sub 1:10 here!

This will require almost utmost perfection.

First, build a fairly large tower, about 4-8 blocks high. Don't specifically hold a straight tetromino until you're comfortable with how your tower looks, mix and match in case you've got a rugged surface that a square tetromino can't comfortably land on.

Second, learn speed. You need to hard drop exclusively, and learn finesse. What is finesse? From a Reddit comment:

"Learn finesse. Build it into your muscle memory.

Finesse is the optimal set of inputs required to get your pieces where they need to be (For example, the optimal way to place a T vertically one space from a wall require DASing* to the wall, rotating, then hard dropping.)

Learn finesse for all pieces. Then, once you've done that, you can focus your brainpower on the thinking part of the game. Let your muscle memory handle the execution. The thinking part will get better and better as you learn more patterns and more "what not to do"s."

* = DASing means "Delayed Auto Shift", or autorepeat, and it refers to the behavior of most falling block puzzle games, including Tetris, when the player holds the left or right key. The game will shift the falling piece sideways, wait, and then shift it repeatedly if the player continues to hold the key.

It sounds complex, but it's a legitimate strat.

Third, if you're someone who exclusively uses one button to rotate pieces, you may need to unlearn it to utilize both forms of rotation in order to place pieces quicker.

Finally, Tetris Effect specifically has an issue with delay in line clears due to the visual spectacle, so if you can, practice on another version of Tetris without the delay, whether it's on the web or another version. It will help, and is a better practice tool than simply bashing your head against the wall constantly trying to beat the time.

Because of the visual fanciness also, I would also recommend exclusively clearing 4-lines at a time. If you're 4-6 lines away from the 40-line mark, then you can try clearing with L-tetrominos.

Other than that, good luck, you may need it.

MASTER:

You ever watched Tetris World Championships, where they sorta give up near the kill screen? Basically that.

Like with Marathon, would probably be best to start at a higher level, but 5 instead of 15 or something. Christ help you if you start at 15. S Rank is logged at 189k on the other solution, and that seems like more than enough, I ended up getting 180k.

Mistakes are inevitable, spamming rotate won't do you much good, I'd recommend placing pieces flat a lot of the time, and keeping towers low. If you can get 4-line clears, that's great, but you won't get punished for sticking with simply clearing lines. The score builds up astonishingly quickly, so unless you're actively trying to fail, you might find this one of the easier modes.

CHILL MARATHON / QUICKPLAY / AMBIENT (SEA/WIND/WORLD):

No notes. Stupidly easy to get through by just playing as simply as possible. Focus on 4-line clears, obviously, but you'd have to be actively trying to fail in order to miss the S ranks here.

ALL CLEAR:

The beginning of the gimmick modes. Here, you're given specific pieces to completely eradicate all blocks from the board. Reaching 1 thru 7-10 will involve puzzles of little difficulty, usually just spamming it and getting a couple of seconds back each time. 11-19 will have you playing with a little more caution, and if you're playing with regular coloured tetrominos instead of a Tetris Effect background, you'll see clear clues as to where pieces should land.

Once you reach 20 (preferably with about 25-40 seconds remaining on the timer), the game tasks you with a few advanced mechanics, like L-tetrominos slotting into thin holes like a hook, something which can be done by alternating how you rotate them, the same with straight tetrominos. It's difficult to adequately explain each one, but since you only need to reach a score of 26 for the S Rank, this site has a fair chunk of all clear solutions, should you need them:- https://four.lol/tetris-effect/all-clear

COMBO:

It's a bit hard to explain this one. A large tower will be set up, and once a line is cleared, you have to keep comboing in order to add to the score, and the timer. You don't have to completely clear the board of tetrominos, just the grey blocks, and however you see fit, with strategy largely ignored, even if you want an S Rank score of 100.

No real advice I can give other than go for broke. You don't need to be perfect here, just fast as hell, and if you can get combos by just about reading the upcoming pieces, then you're more than golden.

TARGET:

Incorrectly attributed as "GOAL" in the other solution, I don't know why. Anyway, a glowing piece will be visible on the board, and your task is to get rid of 26 if you want the S Rank. Focus only on the line that the glowing piece resides, not underneath it or otherwise. If the glowing piece is 3 blocks high, then place an L-tetromino upside down and continue from there. Managing to place a straight tetromino sideways here will do wonders for your time, and out of all the gimmicky modes, this one is one of the easiest.

COUNTDOWN:

Another simple one. Of the ten columns on a Tetris board, one of them will get a straight tetromino to slam down, and you have to build around it in a specific amount of moves. S Rank here is 42k, and it's not too bad, even if you fail to build a tower in time, or if it's too high. The trick here is to try and keep surfaces flat.

PURIFY:

You start off with a board in progress, with many of the blocks glowing. With each line you clear, the glowing blocks will disappear if they were part of the line, or randomly due to the combo. It's hard to explain, but it's one of the few modes with difficulty options, and the best advice here is play on "Expert" (s/o DubstepEdgelord for that tip)

S Rank is 350 infected blocks cleared, and on Expert, there'll be so many that get cleared due to the combos and line clears that you'll pass that threshold in no time.

MYSTERY:

Every once in a while, the game will introduce chaotic parameters on top of a regular game of Tetris to shake things up, which can range from the camera zooming in, to having no hold option and 7 L-tetrominos in a row. It doesn't sound so bad at first, but as more parameters get added, and the blocks fall down faster, it can turn into a mess pretty quickly. S Rank is around 319k.

My personal tip here is just play on Endless. If you only have to get one of these, then playing on Endless is fine since you're not bound by getting to a specific amount of lines cleared either. Sometimes the game will bless you with the parameter of completely clearing the board, or resetting the speed briefly. Use these as a chance to just relax if you don't wanna pause, and untense your shoulders.

JOURNEY MODE:

Again, not much tips here, if only because it's "QUICKPLAY / AMBIENT" in a fat chunk of levels, as opposed to one separate, but alongside getting a specific amount of line clears, the game will also vary the speeds at which blocks fall within each now Effect/Background. I couldn't tell you what speed fall on which Background, so the best tip I have is play on the easiest mode. The S Rank thresholds on the other solution only account for Expert mode, and they deplete heavily across each difficulty, with the player only needing S Ranks on one level for one difficulty only, so save yourself the stress.

While I can't tell you what the S Rank threshold for Beginner mode is, I can tell you my personal scores I got on Normal Mode:

AREA 1 (3 STAGES) : 54.6K (S RANK)
AREA 2 (4 STAGES) : 96.7K (SS RANK)
AREA 3 (ALSO 4 STAGES) : 85.6K (SS RANK)
AREA 4 (5 STAGES) : 108.4K (SS RANK)
AREA 5 (ALSO 5 STAGES) : 103.1K (SS RANK)
AREA 6 (ALSO 5 STAGES) : 94K (S RANK)
AREA 7 (1 STAGE, "METAMORPHOSIS) : 52.1K (SS RANK)

Other than that, if you have a large tower, make use of the Journey Mode-specific Effect power up that allows you to clear lines with ease. I believe pressing RT triggers it once you're able to.

That's all, folks! Good luck, this isn't an achievement to sniff at, especially if you're on PlayStation.