Astro Bot's third DLC trophy is live - 3 tips to help unlock it

Astro Bot's third DLC trophy is now live alongside the latest free Speedrun Level — here's three tips to help you master the new stage Spring-loaded Run.

Lee Brady

Published 31 Oct 2024

The time has come: those Astro Bot trophies have a new challenge waiting for you! Astro Bot's third DLC trophy will task you with mastering the new Speedrun Level "Spring-loaded Run" — a fresh gauntlet worthy of one of the best PS5 platformers ever made. Below, we'll reveal a few tips to help make this latest challenge a breeze.

How to unlock Astro Bot's "Punchy Rescue" DLC trophy

The third addition to Astro Bot's Stellar Speedway trophies is available to unlock following the release of the free DLC level "Spring-loaded Run" on Thursday, October 31, 2024. This latest level follows on from our Astro Bot Stellar Blade trophy guide, so make sure to check that second DLC level out first!

Beat that red bird!

To unlock the third DLC trophy in Astro Bot, "Punchy Rescue," as well as unlock the latest VIP character, you're going to have to beat the blue bird's time of 70 seconds in the new Spring-loaded Run level.

That's not all, either! If you want to continue making progress towards Astro Bot's silver "Fast and Found" trophy — which will become unlockable after Thursday, November 13, 2024 — you're going to have to beat the red bird's time of 55 seconds in this third DLC speedrun level.

To do so, you're going to want to follow the easy tips below and master Astro Bot's froggy boxing gloves power-up. Follow these three tips and you'll easily post a time of 45 seconds or less.

Tip #1 - Cut corners

Unlike the power-ups from the first two Speedrun Levels, the froggy boxing gloves power-up doesn't give Astro Bot much of an advantage when it comes to skipping segments of the course.

A simple shortcut.

That means you'll have to use a little bit more platforming sense this time around, cutting corners and using Astro Bot's standard abilities to shave seconds off your speedrun time.

For example, as you can see at the start of the stage (screenshot above), if you use the bounce pad and then hover towards the sticky red pole, skipping two platforms and a barrel in the process. If you want a good time on Spring-loaded Run, you'll need to identify a couple of opportunities like this one.

Another easy shortcut.

Another handy example is later in the stage, where you take a slope down and see two more sticky red swing poles ahead of you. You can easily save a couple of seconds by hovering right past the first pole and swinging on the second pole instead.

While I was able to get a time of 45 seconds, the World Record is already nearly 10 seconds faster than that. I suspect there's also a shortcut near the very end that requires a combination of hovers and aerial extensions using Astro Bot's regular punch (the Square button). Good luck finding those bonus shortcuts!

Tip #2 - Use short hovers

Another way to shave off extra time on your speedrun is to use short-burst hovers to get around platforms that you don't actually need to land on.

Bounce pads, who needs 'em?

As you can see in the screenshot above, this trick becomes most useful when you're scaling the wall vertically using a series of stick red poles.

Instead of letting yourself land on a bounce pad or a platform after a swing, simply hover for half a second, then use your froggy boxing gloves to stick to the next pole. You'd be surprised how much time this simple trick shaves off your speedrun.

Tip #3 - Don't punch too often

As you explore the Spring-loaded Run stage, you'll find an absurd amount of giant barrels blocking your way. Some are hiding bounce pads under them, while others are rolling towards you, practically daring you to punch them out of your way.

Sneaking around barrels.

For the most part, you can get away with the following advice: don't bother punching the barrels. The vast majority of them can be skipped and take up unnecessary time getting rid of, so find a way around them.

For example, see the barrel in the screenshot above? Why not run straight past it? Later, you'll find two barrels blocking your path, the first of which has a bounce pad underneath. Why not bust that first barrel, then use that bounce pad to simply jump onto the second barrel without stopping to punch it?

Barrelling through.

It's probably pretty obvious that you can skip the entire segment with the rolling barrels without breaking a single one just by hovering over the gap and swinging onto the next red sticky poll. However, did you know you can break two barrels in just one punch?

In the screenshot above, you can see a section where you run into four barrels. You'll need to destroy the right-most barrels to get to the bounce pad and proceed. Here, if you jump slightly before punching with the R2 trigger, you'll destroy both of the right-side barrels in a single move.

Sol Badguy's got a friend!

Master all three of these tips and you'll breeze right past both the blue bird and the red bird to unlock the third Astro Bot DLC trophy! You'll also unlock a VIP bot themed on Guilty Gear's Ky Kiske, and another Helldivers II bot to add to your growing squadron of disposable goons.

How did you find the latest DLC Speedrun Level for Astro Bot? Have you got any of your own tips or shortcuts to share? Were you surprised to see another Guilty Gear character join one of the best PS5 games ever? Let us know in the comments below!

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Written by Lee Brady

News Editor Lee covers the latest upcoming PS5 games like Ghost of Yotei while making sure PlayStation Plus’ classic PS1 and PS2 games are given enough respect. Lee leads the charge on our original data analysis courtesy of Game Lens. His 25 years of PlayStation experience compliments his love of Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Sonic the Hedgehog.