It appears that today will be Brad, Will, Ryan, and Patrick's final attempt to successfully complete the Lantern Run in Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. With that in mind, I thought it'd be best to look back at their attempts on the second day and analyze what went right and wrong. If you're interested in day one statistics, check those out here and here.

As a reminder, here is the criteria for success:

• Reach the ninth "arena" in the path. Completion of the ninth arena isn't necessary.
• Earn 1,000,000 points in a single run.

With that established, let's look at day two's basic statistics to start.

Run Tally

Alone, these numbers don't mean that much, and they don't tell us anything beyond what we already knew: Brad and Will are the best performers on the team. It might be worth noting that in many of the runs, Brad's score is well above the rest of the team, which wasn't as evident in day one's scores. Run #13 is the team's best performance on day two, and much like day one's top performance, Will had the best score by a large margin. When he does well, so does the team.

Oh, and here's the updated score graph that shows all 15 runs thus far:

As you can see, there was a lot more floundering and less gradual improvement on day 2. In fact, on average, the team made it through 4.5 arenas on day one, and 3.9 arenas on day two. I'll have some theories with stats and shaky speculation on why this is throughout the rest of the blog.

Division of Score

Here's the division of total score over all of day two's runs:

Unlike last time, the worst run isn't significantly different from this division, but the breakout of the best run proves my point about Will:

Not that Will remembers saying this during day two, but I never said he survived the longest! I just said that when Will kicks ass and survives longer than normal, the team usually experiences its best runs, even more so than when Brad does well.

All That Power

In regards to power-ups, Brad still hogs the power-ups, with Will a distant second. Nothing new there. I did find this difference surprising, though:

Average of total power-ups grabbed per run

• Day 1: 12.63 power-ups per run
• Day 2: 9.14 power-ups per run

This may not be exact, as sometimes I'd record power-ups picked up through weapon swapping or death, but even then it seems clear that the team wasn't grabbing as many power-ups as they were during day one.

"But wait, PsEG," you might say, "they also got further on a lot of their runs on day one, so that makes sense, doesn't it?"

Perhaps a little, but let's examine the average between the two days of power-ups grabbed in total over the number of arenas entered, to give us a power-ups per arena average.

Average of total power-ups grabbed per arena entered

• Day 1: 2.81 power-ups per arena
• Day 2: 2.37 power-ups per arena

Still a notable difference! If you go back and look at day two's video, you'll note that there are several times where the team will leave power-ups behind. That may be a grave mistake.

Speaking of which...

Everybody Dies Eventually

Except for Brad on run 14! That run (34:08 to 42:32 in the video) ended with his lantern being snuffed, but he was technically still alive at the end. Given that was also the team's second best run on day two, maybe there's some merit to Brad staying alive longer at the start being beneficial.

Anyways! Here's some far-more-interesting-than-that-paragraph-above numbers.

Average Deaths Per Run

Yeah, you're reading that right. Despite a crappier performance on day two, everybody died less than day one. Even if I were to make this average deaths per arena entered, it'd be a downward trend.

So what does that mean? It's not just about not dying in the Lantern Run. It's about not dying at the worst possible moments. The first death is always bad, since it almost always guarantees the snuffing of the first lantern, but after that, one player could die in every section, and as long as the rest of the team can keep the remaining lanterns moving, it'll work out.

Speaking of snuffing lanterns, I'd like to bring back my favorite graph for the Lantern Run.

Snuff Times (or When Lanterns Get Snuffed)

I continued to note where every lantern was snuffed, and I have this lovely graph of survival rates for all 60 lanterns snuffed thus far.

And, since that's a little small, here's a table.

This isn't all that different from the first graph I released, so for the most part, lanterns are still getting snuffed in the same areas on average. The most dangerous section, the second tunnel, now claims 38.3% of all lanterns, up from 34.4%.

The first lantern death tended to start a chain reaction of death on day one, usually by Patrick fucking up, but in this day's stats, the fault was spread out far more evenly and was isolated to one death for six out of seven runs (Patrick and Will being the only exception).

Some Final Thoughts

With the stats and my own personal observations, I'd like to make the following suggestions to the team for today's final run:

• Grab power-ups. Leaving power-up opportunities behind decreases your ability to survive.
• Don't worry so much about Brad or Will always getting the power-ups, either. Just make sure everybody has weapons they're comfortable with, and let people get health when they need it most.
• Will and Brad (assuming Will joins the final attempt) need to bicker less. The early runs on day two suffered from their needless angst, and results improved once they calmed down and started working together.
• Also: Brad, do better at the beginning. Will, do better at the end. Your runs will benefit.
• The whole team needs to move faster. Surviving is key, yes, but once the first lantern's gone, there's often going to be an open claw-arm waiting to grab a lantern should one of you perish. Don't fuck up a run through unnecessary hesitation, needless carrying-the-lantern-in-front-of-you trickery, or having someone lag behind for lantern-catching safety's sake, causing the tentacle monster to move insurmountably close to your position.
• Bullshit is going to happen to you tonight. It's how you overcome the bullshit tunnels in Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet that will determine your final outcome.
• Go right. Don't die. You'll win.
• ...hopefully.

Thanks for reading, and best of luck to Brad and crew on tonight's run.