How Tascade works

Tascade is a Fabric mod for Minecraft 1.16.1 that turns speedrunning into a head-to-head game. You can race another player on the exact same world for Elo, or play on your own and collect performance points (pp). Every run happens in your own singleplayer world, so there's no server lag and no shared world to fight over. Tascade just makes sure both of you get the same seed and the same luck.

This page walks through everything from installing the mod to what happens when you win (or lose) a ranked match.

The short version

1. Install the mod and its dependencies.
2. Click the Tascade button on the title screen. You're signed in with your Minecraft account automatically, so there's nothing to register.
3. Pick Solo or Ranked.
4. Tascade creates a fresh world on a filtered seed, counts you down, and the clock starts.
5. Kill the Ender Dragon as fast as you can.

Runs are timed in real time (RTA), starting the moment the countdown ends. The in-game timer from SpeedRunIGT is shown too, but rankings always use real time.

Getting set up

You'll need:

• Minecraft 1.16.1 (Java Edition). Tascade only runs on this version.
• Fabric Loader, installed for 1.16.1 with the Fabric installer.
• SpeedRunIGT, the in-game timer that times your runs.
• SpeedrunAPI, a small library the speedrunning mods share.

Drop Tascade, SpeedRunIGT and SpeedrunAPI into your mods folder and launch the game. The Install section on the home page lists the exact minimum versions.

The Tascade menu

The Tascade button on the title screen opens the mod's own menu. From there you can:

• Play: start a solo run or join the ranked queue.
• Run Modifiers: pick changes for your next run (coming soon, see below).
• Leaderboard: the top 100 players by pp or by Elo.
• Profile and Match history: your rating, pp, best runs and recent results.
• Replays: watch your saved runs back.

The Play screen has a panel for each mode. The Solo panel shows your personal best (across both modes) and a New run button. The Ranked panel shows how many players are in the queue right now, your last few ranked results, and a Start queuing button.

Solo runs

Hit New run and Tascade picks a random seed from the filtered pool, builds the world and gives you a short countdown. Then it's just you against the clock.

• Don't like the seed? Open the pause menu and change it. In solo there's no vote, it's instant. You get a brand new world with its own countdown and clock, and only your final world counts.
• Finish the run by killing the dragon and it's saved to your history with its splits, and it earns pp based on your time.
• Leave early and the run is saved as abandoned. It earns no pp, but there's no other penalty.

Ranked matches

Ranked is where Tascade really shines. You and an opponent load the same seed at the same time and race to the dragon.

Finding a match

When you start queuing, Tascade looks for someone within 200 Elo of you. If nobody turns up within 20 seconds, it widens the search to anyone in the queue.

If you're still alone after a minute, you'll be matched with TascadeBot instead (more about the bot further down). You can turn that off in the settings if you'd rather wait for a human.

Loading in

Once you're matched, both of you generate the world. The world generation screen shows your opponent's progress under the chunk map, so you can see who's still loading. When both worlds are ready, a 5 second countdown starts and the race is on.

During the race

• Race HUD: on the right side of the screen you'll see both players, ordered by who's further along. It follows your splits (Entered Nether, Entered Bastion, Entered Fortress, Finding Stronghold, Entered Stronghold, Entered End) plus a few hidden goals in between, like grabbing iron or a lava bucket, so the order stays fair even before anyone hits a split. You can switch it to a simplified view or turn it off.
• Chat: anything you type in chat goes to your opponent. Their advancements show up in your chat too. Both can be turned off.
• Tab list: holding Tab shows info about the run.

Votes, draws and forfeits

The pause menu swaps its usual buttons for match controls:

• Change seed: during the first two minutes, either player can propose a new seed. If the other agrees within 30 seconds, you both move to a fresh seed after a short pause.
• Offer a draw: either player can offer one, and the other has 30 seconds to accept. A draw changes nobody's Elo.
• Forfeit: your opponent wins and you lose Elo. It's locked for the first two minutes of the race, and it asks you to confirm first.

Winning

The first player to kill the dragon wins. The winner gains 25 Elo and earns pp for their time. The loser drops 15 Elo. When the race ends you're switched to spectator, the result shows up as a title for a few seconds, and then the results screen fades in.

If your game crashes

Don't panic! If you disconnect or your game closes mid-run, the server holds your match for 2 minutes. Relaunch the game and Tascade offers to rejoin, picking up from where your world was last saved. The race clock keeps running the whole time, so be quick.

To keep things fair, Tascade keeps a fingerprint of every file in your run's world on the server. A world that was edited or swapped while the game was closed can't be rejoined.

Performance points

Every completed run is worth pp based on its real time. A 5 minute run is worth 1,000pp, and the value drops off quickly as runs get slower:

pp = 1000 × (5:00 ÷ time)²

Your total pp adds up all your runs, best first, with each one counting 95% as much as the one before it. That means improving your best runs is what moves you up the leaderboard. Grinding lots of slow runs barely does anything.

In ranked, only the winner earns pp for the match.

Elo

Everyone starts at 1000 Elo. A ranked win is worth +25 and a loss costs 15, whether the match was won by finishing first or by a forfeit. Draws and canceled matches leave Elo alone.

TascadeBot

TascadeBot is an opponent for quiet moments when nobody else is queuing. It doesn't actually play Minecraft. Instead it "races" to a target time based on your Elo and reports its progress along a typical route, so the race HUD and chat behave just like a real match.

• Against a 1000 Elo player it aims for about 17 minutes, and it gets a minute faster for every 100 Elo you have above that.
• Its target never goes below 8 minutes or above 30, and each match varies by a few percent so no two races are identical.
• Matches against it count for your Elo and pp like any other match. The bot's own rating never changes, and it never appears on the leaderboard.
• It always agrees to a seed change and never offers or accepts a draw.

Run modifiers (coming soon)

Run modifiers are optional changes you can pick for your own run. Some make the run harder and earn more pp, some make it easier and earn less, and some change the game in a fun way but earn no pp at all.

• Difficulty Increase modifiers have a pp multiplier above 1.
• Difficulty Decrease modifiers have a multiplier between 0 and 1.
• Alternative modifiers earn no pp and can't be played in ranked.

A run's multiplier is all its modifiers' multipliers multiplied together.

In ranked, each player picks their own modifiers, and they never affect who you get matched with. Instead, each modifier has a pace, which is how much slower or faster it makes a run. Ranked races are decided on adjusted time: your real time divided by your pace. If you finish first but your opponent has the harder modifiers, they get a deadline to beat your adjusted time, and the match waits to see if they make it. Your modifiers all together must come to a pace between ×0.75 and ×1.30 to play ranked, so nobody waits too long.

Replays

Every run is recorded, and you can watch it back from the Replays screen in the Tascade menu. Replays include your sounds, mining particles and everything on screen, and you can scrub the timeline, change the playback speed and fly around with a free camera.

You choose which replays to keep in the settings: completed or abandoned solo runs, worlds you swapped for a new seed, and ranked matches you won, lost, drew or forfeited. Replays are saved in tascade/replays inside your game folder.

Settings

Tascade's settings live under Options > Mod Configs > Tascade:

On the website

Everything you do in Tascade shows up here too. The leaderboard ranks everyone by pp or Elo, and every player has a profile with their stats, top plays, best run's splits and full match history. New runs can take up to 30 seconds to appear.

Curious what Tascade changes about the game itself? Have a look at What's different from vanilla. Want to know how the seeds are picked? See How the seed filter works.