Profit Taker Speedrun Guide

Before I go into the actual details of the guide, I want to let everyone know
that this guide is mainly to help the people who already have good times
when it comes to profit taker (Sub 1m 50s or less), to get better times.
If you don’t fall under this category, I highly recommend taking a look at
Iterniam’s guide here as it is what I almost completely used to get good
times.
As of U 29.6.7.1, Saryn Prime infused with Eclipse, Zenith, Magnetic Kuva
Nukor and any Zaw with the Exodia Contagion arcane along with Mausolon
is the best loadout to go with. Although doing ‘ass meta’ would mean better
Radiation and Magnetic damage, your consistency needs to be at its absolute
best if you plan on using it. I will get a bit more into detail about this later
on and explain why I decided to continue using a Magnetic Kuva Nukor.
As you all know by now, there is a lot of RNG when it comes to profit
taker. There’s RNG from shield element order, pylon location, how fast the
pylons drop, random movements when shooting the limbs, potential limb
regen although it is now 100% reproducible (check here), random blue walls
and finally the spawn location. My goal was to get a Sub-85 run and I did
end up achieving that on the Lake spawn, albeit with some noticeable errors,
with a time of 1m 24s 767ms. I can say with a lot of confidence that unless
you have an internal aimbot and the literal best RNG possible, it is near
impossible to hit Sub-80 on the shrooms spawn. However, if you are only
going for Sub-90 runs, I have 3 Sub-90 runs at shrooms with my best being
1m 27s 767ms. This means that you should not be aborting any run due to
spawn unless you are trying to beat my personal best, or due to lighting.
Note: The method to time profit taker was recently changed. The end of
the timer was changed to being on kill rather than on bounty pop-up as
there was a lot of RNG on when the bounty popped up. This resulted in
my run being a Sub-80 run with a time of 1m 18s 850ms. Do note that the
links to my runs have runs which were timed using the old method. If you
feel like normalizing these runs to the new timing method, just subtract 6
seconds from the run as that is roughly the time between the profit taker
dying and the bounty popping up.

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When to run
Now that I’ve introduced lighting, I just want to give some rough approx-
imations of when to run in what spawn as far as lighting is concerned.

Mountain
Last 4 minutes of Cold, entirety of Warm and the first 7 minutes of Cold.
Any run started after the first 8 minutes of Cold will end with your final
shield phase in bad lighting, potentially ruining your run.

Lake
Last 3 minutes of Warm, Last 10-11 minutes of Cold. The latest run for
Lake should start when the Vallis timer says 1m to Warm.

Earlier on, I spoke about Magnetic Nukor being better than Rad Nukor
with ass meta. One of the main reasons for this is due to how inconsistent
ass meta is. I tried a fair bit of runs with a Rad Nukor doing ass meta and
it has a higher probability of ruining your run than making one. There have
been numerous runs which have been ruined due to ass meta.
One of the biggest, if not the biggest time reduction is from having good
aim when it comes to shooting the pylons. My personal best still had some
misses when it came to aiming pylons although the shots were very close
which didn’t result in a loss of too much time. I absolutely recommend using
a DPI of lower than 1600 on your mouse. For reference, I use 800 DPI with
17 in game sens. This is still high by certain standards so feel free to mess
around with whatever suits you the best. Make sure to not change your
sensitivity or DPI too often as that can result in bad muscle memory when
it comes to hand movements which can again ruin runs.
One thing which I’ve learned to do very well is keep track of time for every
single phase so I know when to abort and when not to abort. This comes
from practice and requires simple calculations on the go which might be a
bit difficult initially. I’ve listed the thresholds for a Sub-80 run below. If
you’re going for Sub-85 run, there’s some extra time for errors so as long as
you aren’t way over these time thresholds, you should be fine.

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Time Thresholds
(A note on format: When I say < 10s, it means at 10s or lesser
IGT. Do note that this considers that you leave the elevator at
roughly 12s IGT.)

First shield down < 23s

The quickest first shield I’ve ever had is 21s IGT but this is not ideal.
Another thing to note is my run had a 24s first shield because I messed up
badly. 23 or less gives you some breathing room in the run.

2nd Archgun deploy < 46s

Any time over 46s and it is going to be a real stretch to hit Sub-80 unless
you get a perfect set of 2nd pylons.
Another thing to note here is limb regen. If you are hit with limb regen and
have to reshoot more than 2 limbs, you are more than likely going to have
an Archgun cooldown for the 3rd limb phase which you can’t afford while
going for Sub-80.

3rd Archgun deploy < 58s

This requires you to have a second shield which roughly lasts 5-6 seconds.
Any longer and the rest of your run will be delayed. Any shield less than 5s
gives you a lot of breathing room for the last shield which is crucial.
The 2nd pylon phase follows here and just try to do this as quickly as
possible. Knowing what pylon will drop where and which ones drop first
will come only from practice. Another good practice involves taking a look
at the pylon directions to know the general areas you’ll have to aim so you
don’t unnecessarily aim at an area with no pylons.

Final Archgun deploy < 1m 25s

If you deployed the archgun at or before 1m 25s, you are pretty much guar-
anteed a Sub-80 run.
The rule of thumb here is that the (IGT - 6s) at which you deploy
the archgun for the final time will be your run time, give or take
500ms.

3
Rivens
I’ve received a fair amount of questions when it comes to rivens. So, I
thought I’d go over the ideal rivens for each of the 4 weapons. This obvi-
ously means that every riven should have a harmless negative. If you have
any further questions about rivens, you can just ping me on the Warframe
Speedrun server. The link to join the server can be found here.

Zenith
Damage and Multishot are absolutely essential. Damage lets you 1 shot
the pylon using 1 pellet. Multishot is needed so you have 3 pellets to cycle
the shield in 1 or 2 shots at max. The 3rd stat has 4 potential choices.
The 4 choices ranked from best to worst are Critical Damage, Toxin / Elec
and finally Critical Chance. When I say worst, it’s just relative to the other
choices and doesn’t mean that it’s bad. When building the Zenith for Saryn,
the only 2 stats you stack are Damage and Multishot. So your 3rd stat on
the riven has to be one from the 4 mentioned choices. Critical Damage is
the best purely because the stat value on the riven is more than Vital Sense
on a high grade. As long as you have one of these 4 stats, I wouldn’t bother
about searching for a better one unless you are hell bent upon minmaxing
for no reason. I’ve also listed the stat value range for each of these stats. The
reason I put Critical Chance on the bottom is because of Arcane Avenger
which pretty much guarantees crits.
Note that these values are from the October 2020 dispo changes.

Kuva Nukor
Since the disposition of the Kuva Nukor is 0.5 and will probably stay at 0.5
forever, ideal rivens are purely based on grades. In an ideal run, you want
to use your Nukor only during the 2nd shield. If timed right, this should
align with the cat buff and you should have guaranteed crits on the Nukor
during this time. Keeping this in mind, the best riven is one with Cold, Tox
and Crit Damage. This way, you run Hornet Strike, Barrel Diffusion, Lethal
Torrent, Primed Target Cracker, Anemic Agility, Primed Expel Corpus, the
Riven and then Primed Heated Charge. Multishot instead of Crit Damage
also works while using the same build. Fire Rate or Damage to Corpus for

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the 3rd stat is also fine. The order of preference for drawing the 3rd stat is
as follows:

• Crit Damage

• Multishot

• Fire Rate

• Damage to Corpus

Besides this, if you want to maximize your damage, having atleast one ele-
ment from Tox / Cold helps a lot because of the stats having really low
values on the riven to the disposition. Considering you have Tox / Cold on
the riven, the 2 other stats can be drawn from Crit Damage, Multishot and
Fire Rate. In this case, you will have to replace Anemic Agility with the
Cold / Tox mod so that you get Viral accordingly. The order of preference
for drawing the other 2 stats are as follows:

• Crit Damage + Fire Rate

• Multishot + Fire Rate

• Crit Damage + Multishot

• Fire Rate + Corpus

• Crit Damage + Corpus

• Multishot + Corpus

If you are unable to roll / find a riven without an elemental stat, it means
that you will need a roll with 3 stats drawn from Crit Damage, Multishot,
Fire Rate and Damage to Corpus. In this case, you will have to replace
Primed Expel Corpus with the other Cold / Tox mod so that you get Viral
accordingly. The order of preference for drawing the 3 stats are as follows:

• Crit Damage + Fire Rate + Damage to Corpus

• Multishot + Fire Rate + Damage to Corpus

• Crit Damage + Fire Rate + Multishot

• Crit Damage + Multishot + Damage to Corpus

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Zaw Configurations
Before I talk about rivens, let me talk about Exodia Contagion macros and
ideal Zaw configurations. I consistently get over 120 fps at the fight and I
use a simple Double Jump, Aim, Melee macro. If your fps is lower than 100,
you might have to increase the time between the button presses. This is the
macro I use. I hate to say it but it’s nearly impossible to achieve the speed
at which I contagion unless you use a macro.
Onto ideal Zaws, the best Zaw, considering you have a good riven, uses the
Dehtat Strike, Seekalla Grip and Vargeet II Jai Link. This is a max speed
zaw and requires a good riven so you one shot IPS (Impact, Puncture and
Slash). IPS is the weakest element type when it comes to contagion and
usually requires a good riven or very good lighting to let you consistently
one shot it. Ooltha, Kronsh and Mewan are also good contenders as far as
the Strike is concerned. The Grip and Link remain the same. The reason I
suggest Dehtat is because of its high riven disposition along with high base
attack speed, thereby letting you spam Contagion at high speeds.
If your riven does not let you one shot IPS, do not double stack attack speed.
Instead stack Crit Damage with Gladiator Might. This won’t let you spam
Contagion at high speeds but will give you consistency which is the most
important aspect of any speedrun.

Zaw
There are a wide range of possible zaw rivens with minimal difference in
damage. For high disposition weapons like Dehtat, Ooltha, Kronsh and Me-
wan, Critical Damage and Attack Speed are very good because the values
of these on rivens is much more than Gladiator Might and Primed Fury even.

The image above shows all the good stats on a Zaw riven which will boost
your Exodia Contagion damage. As you can see, even the lowest value on
Attack Speed is more than Primed Fury. So, an ideal riven for a high dis-
position Zaw would have Critical Damage, Attack Speed and 1 stat from

6
the following 4 stats ranked from best to worst: Melee Damage, Elemental
Damage, Critical Chance, Damage to Faction. I put Critical Chance and
Damage to Corpus in the end because you need an extremely high grade for
it to provide a better result when compared to Sacrificial Steel and Primed
Smite Corpus respectively.
With an ideal riven and even decent lighting, you should be able to one shot
IPS consistently. This is the build I used. The riven I have is Critical Dam-
age, Attack Speed and Elec. As you can see, the only 2 stats being stacked
are Critical Damage and Attack Speed. So make sure to replace whatever
your 3rd stat on the riven has in a way you don’t double stack anything but
Critical Damage and Attack Speed.
Negatives are very important for Zaw rivens as well. Try to stay away from
any of the following stats as a negative: Impact, Puncture, Slash, Melee
Damage, Critical Chance, Critical Damage, Attack Speed and Damage to
Corpus. Any negative besides this is completely harmless.

Mausolon
The best stat on a Mausolon riven for Profit Taker is Damage to Corpus.
You can either get a riven with 2 positives or 3 positives. The only 2 rivens
worth using with 2 positives are ones with Damage to Corpus followed by
one stat from Multishot and Critical Damage with Multishot being better.
Since Dual Rounds is only +60% multishot, multishot on a +2 -1 riven gives
you almost consistent 2 ms or guaranteed 2 ms depending on your multishot
grade.
For a riven with 3 positives, Damage to Corpus with any 2 stats (ranked
from best to worst) from the following are fine: Multishot, Critical Damage,
Heat / Elec, Damage.
As far as negatives are concerned, just make sure the riven doesn’t have
Ammo Maximum as a negative. That will surely make you have a cooldown
if you have a quick 2nd shield. The obvious harmful negatives are bad as
well.
(Note: Fire Rate does provide a huge damage boost but it comes at the cost
of using potentially more ammo. This mainly affects you when you deploy
the archgun after destroying the 2nd shield quickly. So be very cautious
if you do decide to roll fire rate on the riven. The stat would be ranked
between Multishot and Critical Damage.)

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Destroying Shields
My main goal while talking about this is to explain my thought process
while doing shields. There are so many nuances which I’ve come to learn,
some the easy way and some the hard way, when it comes to destroying the
shield. There are numerous scenarios to consider here and you should be
able to adapt to each one on the go. This might be too much information
but trust me, it goes a really really long way in destroying the shield quickly.
Let me first start off by talking about what the 3 ideal shields would look
like.
This does not mean that runs without these elements in order are
bad.
(Disclaimer: In every run, after the 2nd limb phase, the profit taker shield
regens for a few seconds and any damage dealt will just cycle the element
without damaging it until the shield fully regens. It is good practice to cycle
2 elements to give you better RNG for the last shield. This will make more
sense when you see what ideal shields look like.)
First Shield - Cold, IPS, 1 from Gas/Blast/Elec/Tox/Corro
Second Shield - Rad, Mag, Viral, Heat, 3 from Gas/Blast/Elec/Tox/Corro
Third Shield - 1 from Gas/Blast/Elec/Tox/Corro, 4 elements from the first
shield
This means that you never waste time switching weapons at any point in
the fight. This saves a huge amount of time especially when you consider
times where you have a Nukor element, Zenith element and then Nukor
again which means you swap twice for one shield. So right after the 2nd
limb phase, you throw contagion once and swap to your nukor and just
hold down your left click while spamming Contagion occasionally. This will
almost instantly destroy shields if the second shield contains elements as
mentioned above.
This results in your first shield being Zenith + Contagion, second shield
being Nukor + Contagion and third shield being Zenith + Contagion again.
Getting shields like these could take an absurd number of runs. Any shield
where you have to swap weapons will be a slow shield and wastes a lot of
time, especially when going for Sub-80.
As mentioned earlier, a Magnetic Kuva Nukor was my preferred secondary
of choice. This should now make more sense after looking at what an ideal
second shield looks like. Since you ideally want to cover viral only once, it
is definitely easier to do so while just holding down your nukor. In the end,
it all boils down to what you prefer. This is just what I personally found to
be better for me. Do not use this as a golden standard by any means. Feel
free to experiment with both the methods (Magnetic Nukor and Rad Nukor
+ ass meta) and choose whatever you are more comfortable with.
Let me now talk about the scenarios where you have to abort the run if you
are going for a Sub-80. If the first shield has any element which involves the

8
Nukor, that is pretty much an instant abort. The only exception to this is
if you have Radiation as the last element in which case you just deploy your
archgun and shoot the shield and then consequently the limbs. The reason
being, if your first shield has a nukor element, your last shield will have the
same element again. This is still a pretty risk move as Radiation can show
up again on the last shield in the middle and ruin the run again.
Another scenario where I abort runs is also if the 2nd shield has the Cold
element in the middle. This would more than likely mean that I’d have to
swap from the Nukor to the Zenith and then back to the Nukor again. The
loss of time is pretty big especially when you consider how small the room
for error is when chasing good times.
While on the topic of aborting runs, it is also bad to abort runs consistently.
Personally I made it so that I complete 1 in 10 runs. This means that I
never aborted more than 9 runs continuously. Aborting runs could lead
to temporary rust and might ruin a run with good RNG. So this is also
something worth considering so you don’t constantly abort every single run
due to bad RNG.
When using Saryn, after the first shield, your Zenith covers only Cold. The
only places where Cold would be ideal is in the first Shield or 1 one of
the first 2 elements in the second shield which you cycle while the shield
is regenerating. The third place although extremely rare is if the first time
you see Cold is the first element on the third shield.
Moving on to actually destroying shields, one of the most important things
I’ve learnt is timing my Contagion. If I see an element which I can cover
with Zenith, I throw my Contagion before I fire my Zenith. This results in
cycling shield elements quickly with minimal time wasted. This is mainly
to account for IPS not being covered by the Contagion’s explosion from a
previous throw. If you throw your contagion after you fire your Zenith, you
have to wait till the Contagion hits the orb which will take longer when
compared to doing it the other way round.
As mentioned in the beginning, RNG plays an extremely big role when
running for good times. You can run for days without having a single good
run. It is how RNG works.
On a final note, I hope this guide helps you get better times. Also feel free
to message me on Discord if you have any other questions about the fight
in general. My tag is Blunt#1829.