Setup Overview

Before diving right into meta it's important to outline the differences in versions and how mutation sets are obtained.

Method 1: Set Grinding
Historically Throne players would repeatedly grind out a mutation set to see if they have a viable set, restarting the run if not. Many really old records use this method, but this fell out of popularity as it is very time consuming.

Method 2: Daily Sheet
This is a community scouting sheet as daily sets are seeded, so routes can be planned out to get the most optimal one possible. Some mechanics are particularly advanced/convoluted, so be warned.

Method 3: Grillskills
This is a mod that is used for NTT that completely removes mutation RNG and is allowed on some record leaderboards. It became popular during 2021 and is the preferred mode of play to most meta players now.

In other words the majority of players choose to play dailies as it has daily leaderboards and community scouting, and/or grillskills as it always gives guaranteed sets.

The next question is which version to play. A summary of beta changes by version can be found here, some particularly important for meta includes many new settings such as rad attract and additional remapping for controls, and a lot better performance in later loops to make the lag a lot more bearable. Chain explosions and SPC damage are fixed on betas as well, explained on the Survival page.

Here are some character changes that exist on the betas, that are relevant to the character's meta:

• Rogue's Blast Armor & SBA Ultra will no longer trigger IDPD grenades.
• Horror's Stalker will no longer trigger IDPD grenades.
• Skeleton's Blood Gamble will no longer consume rads on ultra weapons, such as Ultra Crossbow.
• Chicken's weapon being erased if it is thrown while a portal opens will no longer happen.
• Plant's TB will cause enemies to die at 33.33% or below, instead of just 33%.

If any of these changes sound appealing then 2023 openbeta or NTT v100 are probably the way to go. (2021 openbeta has many of these changes, too) Be aware that fresh builds sometimes may have game-breaking bugs, which are reported through the NT Discord.

These changes are not present on the stable version u99r1, also known as Non-Beta. Many older runs are done by this version and is still actively used within the daily community along with the betas. The only other versions that still get decent use out of the community are NTT v9940 and v9944, although these both require a mod to function as vanilla. (See next section)

Tools

Record submission may have to adhere to a few rules that are listed on the record pages themselves. A list of record sheets actively updated can be found here.

Any recording software works, OBS is the popular go-to choice here. Also useful to review deaths and learn from mistakes.

While NTT is useful for runs it can also be used for practice, such as going to specific areas with debug mod.

Record eligible runs for NTT v9940 will require explofix mod as explosions are broken on this version. Download seems to only be available through the NT Discord currently.

Record eligible runs for NTT v9944 will require vanfix mod as Van collisions are bugged on this version.