Becoming an osu! Pro (Part 1)

NolanM's current performance chart, as of 3/3/2015 (Going up, still; just started with a tablet.)

Part 1~With a mouse and keyboard.

How in the world can one be so insanely good at this game, getting SS ranks (100% full accuracy) on such difficult maps? The answer is simple. As mentioned before, it depends on the type of way you play. When you begin to play, you can and will feel that osu! is a very hard game, by how slow your mouse moves, and the limited amount of clicks of the mouse you can do at once. The majority of osu! players play with either a mouse (with x and z keys), or a tablet (also with x and z keys). How do those mouse players play with such accuracy though?

We've got it covered that a player is able to "click" notes so rapidly because they are using keys "x" and "z," but how do they do all those other magic tricks? The other secret is (and this is pretty obvious, many of you have probably figured this out already), sensitivity change. What is that? It's what it sounds like. It means, for example, if you change your mouse sensitivity level from 1.0x to 2.0x, that would be multiplying the sensitivity by two, and therefore, with the same distance that you would move your mouse with your hand, the distance that the cursor moves on the screen is doubled.

But higher sensitivity = harder to control? This is true, but depending on how motivated you are to move up in rank and start playing new songs, you can get used to it easily. I play at 4.0x sensitivity. I recommend not to move directly up to 4.0x, but instead moving up slightly every once and a while so it doesn't feel like an immediate and totally uncomfortable change. It will get really easy after a while

How do I use the "x" and "z" keys?! This applies to tablet usage as a type of way to play to, but it may feel very uncomfortable to use the "x" and "z" keys to hit the notes rather than clicking. The answer for you would be to pick one of two paths. One path, the easier-to-grasp path, is single tapping. Single tapping is basically using just one key, x or z (preferably x) to tap for everything except for triple notes or streams (Don't worry if you don't know what those are, but they are basically, to sum it up, notes that appear on the screen which require insanely fast hitting of the notes). As for using this path, playing songs with a much faster BPM is very difficult, as you will need to practice single tapping with one finger super fast. The other path, alternate tapping, is more difficult to grasp on to. It's the opposite to single tapping, and its name describes it. What you do basically is alternate between both numbers for everything. What makes it so difficult is that when you're alternating between to fingers while playing, it feels very unnatural and does not feel like it goes with the song often times. Anyways, it's up to you!

This is part 1. Later parts will be posted on later days. Have any questions? They may be addressed in the next part, or you can ask in the comments below! Good luck choosing your tapping style! (I'm personally a single tapper.)