Avianavii

This is a post about Minecraft Speedrunning (MCSR). Within MCSR, the biggest/most popular/most respected category is Any% RSG, which is when you load up a random world (seed), and beat the game (kill the dragon and enter the end fountain to roll the credits) as quickly as possible. And you can't use glitches.

Now come back in time with me. The date is June 3rd, 2025. The current world record holder is drip120, with a time of 7:01 (7 minutes, 1 second), which was set on January 3rd, 2024. That makes it the longest standing Any% RSG world record.

Enter Skycrab (Pinne). Skycrab has been playing RSG for a very long time at this point, and has a reputation as an incredibly dedicated RSG player, even when other top speedrunners have moved on to playing other things. Today, June 3rd, Skycrab uploads what many could consider the most devastating video in MCSR history.

6:17 Choke. Do yourself a favor and watch this video (it's pretty short) then come back and we can process what just happened.

After successfully completing the zero-cycle (that thing where went up the obsidian tower and exploded the dragon), Skycrab goes down to the fountain where the portal is about to appear. He can see the timer, and knows that he is about to cut the current world record time by 44 seconds. This is a *huge* timecut, the likes of which haven't been seen since 2021 during the original golden years of MCSR. He takes his hands off his keyboard, in awe. After years of grinding, after 206 days of streams, he has world record.

And then he dies.

When entering the end, he accidentally looked at an enderman for a fraction of a second, angering it. The enderman kills him, and a potentially category ending world record is lost.

The entire community grieves this loss. We've seen things like it happen before, but this is devastating in a special kind of way. The run was over. There was no more gameplay that was supposed to happen. To quote Skycrab himself, "Can't blame [it] on luck this time."

He takes a few days break, and on June 6th, he resumes the grind.

Five days later. June 11th, 2025.

Reports appear of another runner, Lowkey, having just broken the world record, but he wasn't live while it happened, and the video isn't out yet. We wait.

Sure enough, a few hours later, the video drops. Lowkey now holds the WR with a time of 6:50, making it officially the first any% RSG run to break the 7 minute barrier. After a year and five months, we finally have a new world record holder. But there feels something hollow about it, so soon after we all saw the extent of what could be possible. So we keep waiting.

In a few months time, MCSR will explode in popularity in a way no one could see coming. The community will grow exponentially, thanks to the influence of Midoffs and Ludwig. Although Lowkey has the official WR, the entire community holds Skycrab in a place of deep honor, with some even considering him the non-official WR holder.

Skycrab continues to play RSG almost every day, each stream watching the counter tick higher. 250. 300. He has a channel reward that viewers can redeem to make him play a game of Ranked (which is MCSR but 1v1 competitive). Despite only playing a total of 77 matches during Season 9, while the majority of top runners having played 900+, Skycrab manages to qualify for Season 9 playoffs, and walks away with 3rd place. Not long afterwards, he wins both the Couriway x EG Free4All and the first ever MCSR Ranked LAN event.

July 22nd, 2026: There comes a time every year, where in a period of about a month, everything happens at once. MCSR has just seen a new Ranked WR and a new No Reset WR. Several new top times have been completed, but Lowkey's 6:50 still stands at the top. Skycrab sits in a comfortable 9th place, with a time of 7:16. And then, on a pace that is hardly even in his top 20 best, he gets a new pb of 7:11, and posts the following on twitter.

[Image ID: Tweet from Skycrab, July 22. "NEW RSG PB 7:11. WR SOON?" A screenshot of the minecraft end credits and the time, 7:22 RTA, 7:11 IGT. /End ID]

July 27th, 2026. Around 14:00 UTC. Skycrab has been live for an hour, playing RSG as usual. His stream title is "RSG for something good idk day 345"

When he enters the nether, he spawns in directly on a housing bastion. That is a very good type of bastion for speedruns, as they're very consistent sources of gold blocks (and gold blocks are necessary for getting all the materials you'll need for the run, particularly obsidian and ender pearls.) In a normal run, speedrunners will hope to have 20+ ender pearls, so that they can maneuver around without worrying about having enough to fill in all 12 portal frames in the stronghold.

Skycrab gets 15.

This is followed up with sub-optimal blaze rod drops, (the other crucial ingredient for entering the end.) At this point, he'll later say, he basically given up hope that the run would be anything spectacular. He has to use a few pearls in traversing the nether, and doesn't leave with enough blaze rods to fill all 12 portal frames. This is a pretty big gamble. In order to enter the end, he would need 2 frames to be pre-filled, which is only a 23.01% chance. He also doesn't have much food, and, as previously mentioned, not many pearls.

He enters the stronghold at 5 minutes, 40 seconds. This stronghold looks nothing like normal, due to all sorts of weird cave generation. He's lost lots of good times to being unable to navigate the maze-like structure, and these almost seems like it will be one of them. He finds a chest with extra bread in it, and then he sees the portal room, partially exposed by aforementioned weird cave generation. He digs in, and sure enough. Two frames are filled.

Skycrab enters the End dimension at 5 minutes, 51 seconds. The zero cycle he has to hit is Back 92 (don't worry about what that means). The same as his 6:17 choke. He has to use his two remaining pearls to get there, and takes significant damage doing so. If not for the chest with bread, he couldn't have gone for it. He builds high, maybe higher than necessary, to y99, and successfully hits the zero cycle.

Live chat explodes with excitement, but restrained still. 6:17 taught all of us that killing the dragon doesn't mean the run is over. He descends from the obsidian pillar in a boat, leaping out just before it strikes the ground. Had he stayed in it, there's a real chance he could have died, and this whole thing would repeat. He jumps into the fountain and waits.

The credits roll.

The timer stops.

6 minutes, 39 seconds.

We have a new world record holder.

[Image ID: The video description of Skycrab's WR. FOLLOW: https://www.twitch.tv/skycrab / 6375991867154326391 / AFTER A WHOLE YEAR AFTER THE DEVASTATING 6:17 FAIL AND 3+ YEARS OF TRYING I FINALLY GOT THE WORLD RECORD!!! / THIS WILL ALWAYS BE MY PROUDEST ACCOMPLISHMENT FOREVER! /EndID]

For three years, Skycrab has constantly demonstrated himself as one of the best Minecraft Speedrunners in the world, and now he finally has the title to prove it. After the most crushing failure the community has ever seen, he bounced back and kept trying. 345 days of streaming. Hundreds of thousands of worlds generated and discarded. Countless runs lost due to bad luck or small mistakes.

I got to meet Skycrab IRL a few months ago, and he is genuinely such a sweet and wonderful person to be around. The thing on everybody's lips, in the comments, in the chat, in the reaction videos, is the same thing I echo now: Nobody deserves this more.