#1
freesha's "guide" to becoming a mediocre osu! player.
i first started playing osu! in april 2024, the photo below is after 1 month of progress.
i had no concept of pp farming, or really how important rank was in a status-sense. i never had a long-winded background of knowing all of the important events that occured before me. i just was some random girl who happened to have an art tablet already, and a fascination with rhythm games. this is where my entire journey began, before i learned what taiko no tatsujin was, what sound voltex was ... i knew what dance dance revolution was, and guitar hero, and that's about it.
i learned what this game was through youtube shorts... awkward. so you'll see in my earlier plays in-game were for rabbit hole miku beatmaps...
now its may 2024, no longer a 7-digit player. i feel like for most people, getting out the "1 million club" userbase is easy as pie. it was for me too. i was going on vacation the next month because it was summertime, so i was dedicated to get a decent amount of rank movement before i left, knowing my rank would dip a bit during my absence. luckily, i was able to push past the 900k group and into #893,317 before heading out. my cruddy school laptop i brought with me on the trip was too weak to run osu.
but after my vacation, i truly locked in. in july 2024, i played for hours on a daily basis, started playing 3* beatmaps and not sucking horrifically at it. though, i mostly stuck to playing 2* with HD/HR. i think a lot of players out there would've told me to just focus on vanilla gameplay and not use the mods so early, but it helped spice up the very repetitive cycle of playing the same 2* beatmaps over and OVER again until i S/SS'd them. i was, and still am, the player that is determined to be well-rounded, good accuracy, good combo, and a good letter grade. that's the qualities that makes up the best players...
i feel i've done well for myself, considering these are the stats on my profile today (as of october 2026.)
its august 2024 now, school is starting but i didn't let that stop me. i'm a music major in community college at this point, so i can't spend every hour dedicating time to it. but i still spent a lot of time on it, even if i felt apprehensive because i was starting to plateou, not making significant progress the way i wanted to. unfortunately, this is where i really started to bully myself for being a "shitty 6 digit player.", despite having only played the game for like 3 months maximum at this point.
i also found out that edibles made me relax enough to play beatmaps without having a shakey hand. some people take caffeine pills, i take edibles. ok bro.
now we are in september 2024, i hit 600k, and henceforth will be stuck in this category asides from pp reworks that would adjust my rank around. i can't say i naturally hit another milestone ever again after this point. but i was still having fun with ut, i finally had the raw ability to start playing 4* beatmaps on halftime, i wanted the harder challenge and i felt consistently determined to push my skill ceiling. i liked that i was just playing however the hell i wanted to. even if i realized that the way i played would be criticized. i stopped caring, because i felt that if it worked for me, then who was others to stop me?
oh yeah, my 100pp play was on the stupidest map imaginable. it could be worse? at least it isnt pen pinapple apple pen tv version sped up version.
while my pp gain started significantly slowing dowm after hitting my first 100pp play, i never got to 150pp or 200pp ever again as of now. i don't let it bother me so much, because i really feel like i still make progress even if small. i started becoming obsessed with the reol cover of systematic love, and there was a really cool osu beatmap of it, so even though it was tremendously out my skill-range, i slapped on NF/HT and brute forced learning it until i didn't suck. until i could actually read notes that fast, and aim better.
here are two scores: one i set around sept 2024, and my most recent play. not perfect, but im happy about the progress.
now it's october 2024, i start to stop making progress all-together, not just because my phase of enjoying osu is just simply starting to wear off, i also am disatisfied with my lack of percieved progress within the game. i refused to progress using pp-farm maps, as i found that simply upping my rank by repeatedly playing these boring slop maps brought me no enjoyment or real pride for my true skill. instead of my top scores being scores im proud of, its the stupid ones i happened to get a decent score on. i want my profile to really truly reflect how my skillset actually is, in my heart, my pinned scores are my best ones. but even top players play pp-farm maps, and use them to top up their rank when it starts to dwindle down, so i really hold no resentment for anyone who plays them. tl;dr pp farm maps are boring and bloat my profile with stupid scores im not that proud of.
i wrote this in my notes app around this time period: "my complicated feelings with pp-farm maps — I don't judge or dislike the people who play them or make them, some players have different priorities for playing this game. but I really want my rank to accurately represent my skill level as a player on the average map. so I avoid pp-farm maps, but due to how exceptionally common they are, I've definately played a couple. (haramuchi clover swing arrangement with the titties on the screen is one of my top plays ... not proud."
back on topic of progress, i kept playing 4.5* - 5* maps on NF/HT, even taking off the NF at times and being able to pull decent 80% scores from it. while halftime gives pebbles of pp, it was really beneficial for me to learn how higher star beatmaps moved so i could prepare better. in my opinion, the jump between a 4* and a 5* beatmap in terms of skill is quite wide. during this time, adlols extra on vanity clock (loved) beatmap was one of my favorite maps, and i was honestly able to pull through with some spectacular HT scores for my 6-digit self, i like to think.
in november 2024, a pp rework occured and i was really worried that my just-recently acquired 610k would be taken away from me, i saw my rank dip quite a bit back to nearly 700k, and felt really discouraged during the wonky period of the rework. but, i was hearing from other 6-digits that just playing a beatmap would update your rank, so i did a play of can you understand me, and my rank jumped a whole 170k, and i was now in the 400k range!!! i essentially skipped 500k, and for only being 8-months into this whole playing osu thing, being halfway there to being a 5-digit sounds like incredible progress to me. especially since im no biologically gifted osu player that crams 40hrs a week in it.
in december 2024, after my rank jumped, i realized that 400k is some pretty big shoes to fill. my S-rank/FC 3* plays weren't gonna cut it anymore, and i had to branch out. but honestly i really believe I hit some sort of cap I could achieve with the setup i had. so i stopped playing a lot most of december, finding the expectation and my lack of progress to be annoying. i didn't even know if I enjoyed the game anymore. because for the entire journey so far... i had been playing on a 2008 office computer functioning as a gaming pc, barely ever upgrading it. and honestly for osu it was fine, it was built around older computers, especially stable, but the computer itself wasn' doing too hot after 15+ years of constant use.
for christmas, i got a new gaming pc, and the momokai tap trio. i already had a wacom intuos tablet, because i also do digital art. the upgrade in setup immediately gave me a new wave of excitement and passion for the game, but of course, i'd soon find out that the setup hardly matters. top players can crank out top scores with the shittiest dell laptop on earth, and a 6-digit can crank out exceptionally mediocre scores on a high-end gaming pc. you can't buy talent. i think being consistent with the same setup will lead to better success, and even though money can't buy skill, it sure as hell could buy a much more responsive pc and responsive input. there was a temporary spike in progress, but it was probably just because my pc finally was cooperating and able to quickly register inputs.
... honestly, after this point. i can't say i ever felt the same strong drive for progress. the new year came, and i got into other games. osu has just now entered my roster of games i play on rotation (alongside modded minecraft, sims 3, and roblox games LOL), this game has influenced my life so much because it got me into so many musicians that i would've otherwise never gotten into. i really love music, and osu is just another outlet for me to be able to express that passion, so i really think my goal with this game will always be in-progress, i don't want to be the top player, or even in the top 100, i just want to be able to be exceptional at the beatmaps that i want to be good at. even if my rank suffers for it, it just doesn't matter to me that much what the number on my profile says, the euphoria of a good score makes me happier.
as seen through this entry, even getting "bad" HT scores on a beatmap i loved was more worthwhile to me than getting an SS on a map i didn't care about. i will keep improving slowly until i feel i have scratched this itch, however long it takes. maybe i'll become a beatmapper someday, i think beatmaps are forms of art and can be so exceptional. aspire maps being some of my personal favorites. theres only a couple of maps nowadays that i would love to FC their highest difficulties someday, they're all under my favorites on my profile. :] if ur curious.
as of writing, october 2026, my profile stats look like this. maybe someday i'll be 5-digit? but i just worry about that anymore.
ily osu, see you next time. o7
click the circles.
updated 2026/10/15
posted 2026/10/15
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