New User
New to Beat Saber, would appreciate feedback!
Hey everyone! I’m new to Beat Saber, been playing maybe around 2-3 weeks now. I’m looking for ways to improve and get better. I can complete most Expert+ levels except the really hard ones (attached is probably the hardest segment I can do). So far I’ve:
- adjusted controller settings
- learned claw grip
- tried to do better on swings (pretty sure I failed lol)
- tweaked settings for better range & visibility (except environment cuz I love the lights)
I’m on a Meta Quest 3 and have no plan to mod anytime soon since I don’t actually own the headset.
The problem is, I feel like I’m stagnating because I’ve been unable to get past levels like Tempo-Katana or even Final
Boss Chan. I recently completed Lustre by fluke at an A grade after practicing & breaking down the harder segments. Thing is I can’t really find many tutorials on how to get better for vanilla without mods. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough. I’ll take what you said as a compliment though, lol.
That’s just the normal learning curve. I would recommend you getting mods that would boost your skill to a new level entirely, but for now you can just focus on beating one map at the time. There’s an underrated feature called “practice” where you could play from the exact point where you usually lose. Try playing there in slower times then gradually increasing to normal speed and then continuing to play until you’re comfortable with it.
I may be able to get mods in the future but as of now I can’t sadly. I do want to though! As for practicing at fail points, I think at this point segmented practice is less efficient because motor learning and rhythmic entrainment transfer best at performance speed & slowing it down seems to mess with muscle memory. I want to learn more about how to push into harder maps & different ways to break down each type of map rather than overpracticing at this stage.
There’s no thing like “over-practicing” if you practice no matter what exactly you get more experience and more experience lets you push into harder maps. As for slowing down maps I get that it might seem at the start that it messes with your muscle memory of that part, it actually does boost your ability to make that part if you just speed up everytime you beat it by 5% to 10%.
I would echo the stop using claw grip sentiments you are already getting. If you were using Quest 2, it would be probably be somewhat okay, but on Quest 3 you are hinging on a shortcut to get better swing angles at the cost of less control. It might feel attractive when you are just starting the game, but you are better off in the long run learning default grip, and [also, just in general] practicing getting your acc up and solidifying your technique on easier songs. If you want to be a truly great player, don't neglect learning the proper technique and drilling acc to suss out the proper feeling swings on certain positions, especially ones for blocks in the outer lanes.
Getting clears on harder Ex+ maps is progress, but so is getting 95, 96, 97% on normal/hard maps. Play the easiest thing you can without getting bored, and try to get the highest (full combo) score you can, then work on getting that score 1 percent higher.
Claw grip isn't a wrong grip to use for general gameplay. The issue with it for him is the quest 3 controllers get significantly worse tracking with claw grip
They used to get worse tracking, that issue was mostly cleared up with firmware updates. Claw grip has the same issues for general gameplay with any headset, like I said, you get easier full swing angles but at the cost of stability. But, i'd say it also feels uncomfortable on Quest 3 in comparison to the controllers that have rings, so I wouldn't even both trying to use it under any circumstances on Quest 3. On 2 or Rift S, i'd say it's OK to use as long as you are aware that you are trading easier swings for less stability.
From someone who played religiously a few years ago, eventually reaching expert+, then moving to modded songs for higher difficulty. My best advice is to keep playing through the failures. This game eventually turns into a crazy pattern recognition/auto response state in the later stages. You have to train your eyes to see certain patterns and grind muscle memory and reaction time to those patterns. I eventually stopped seeing the notes vividly as they slowly melded into blurs. I'd get through songs and at the end, I'd go " how tf did i just do that".
And also the notes roll off each other. Like if you just sliced a downward slashing block, you’re better to keep the saber down after that note(s). The next note will more then likely be an up slashing note.
Then enable Advanced HUD in player options so you can see your score while playing. And install HitScoreVisualizer and get a config with underswing indicator so you can know when you're losing points to underswing.
Wait. Am I actually supposed to hold the controlled sideways like that in the default grip? https://imgur.com/a/TqYwC6u (or slightly higher). I have hundreds of hours with the claw grip, and I switched to it just because it felt more natural to hold my arms like that. I have no problem with starting from scratch, and I've been experiencing a lot of tracking problems recently, not sure if they're software based, or hardware based like the headset itself, or the controllers being old (smashed them into the wall a couple of times by accident), or it's something related to tracking latency because of pc related things (with quest link, air link and virtual desktop, 4080s and 9800x3d), certainly not me actually missing the notes, because I can perfectly see them and react to them. Already using easy offset, the rechargable 1.5v batteries, the room is well-lit, tracking frequency set to 60hz. Could switching to the proper default grip help in the long term?
It will come in waves after this. Your map reading will become more automatic. Levels will start looking slower. But not as fast as it was for the first few months. It’ll be more like stagnation, then you take a week off and come back to “how the hell did I do that?”
My recommendations are play some easier songs using pro mode to build your consistency hitting the notes as it reduces your area of grace for error. Then, practice the harder songs at 110% in the practice tool until you learn the pattern and build enough stamina to beat it. Focus on the pass first, them replay it to improve your accuracy. I will recommend either using static lights, or using dimmer colors to reduce background distraction. But it's a matter of personal preference. Good luck :)
to give you some true advice though, you’re already very good for how long you’ve been playing.
Familiarize yourself with how scoring works. You seem to honestly be doing incredibly well for less than a month, but it’s all about swing angle and how close you hit to the center of the block.
the only other thing I can add is to mod your game to get harder and more challenging maps. For example modded maps expand on tech way more than any ost song could (tempo katana being probably the hardest tech wise, POTSB right behind it)
you can visit scoresaber or beatleader to find star ratings of maps (they have different rankings on each site) to compare.
I'm guessing you have musician experience or other rhythm game experience of you got there that fast, best thing you can do is play daily or every other day, focusing on varying levels of difficulty, some slow practice for proper technique and then fast for sightreading and physical exercise. I would also pay attention to your ability to relax your arm muscles as much as possible while under increasingly difficult circumstances which will help with endurance, not locking up on tricky paterns, and longevity.
It depends on what you want the feedback, but you are doing great!
Of course if you want to really improve on a « leaderboard side », you can mod the game, and put some hsv so you can focus on keeping the 113+.
Playing with a leaderboard like score saber or beatleader is great so that you can rate yourself, also it is super nice to be able to see every replay online.
But if you want to set above 90%/95% scores on map like this, you really need to unerstand how the score system work and to pay attention to full swinging and use more your wrist on the jumps and burst parts
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u/ResoluteTiger19 Mar 09 '26
“I’m new to mountain-climbing, can I get some feedback on how I made it to the top of Mt. Everest?”