So I "speedran" 5 fresh characters to Endwalker+

[Martynek]

4. Solo Duty Finder Queuing ALL MSQ dungeons/trials EXCEPT for The Mothercrystal in Endwalker (My reasoning for this was: If you think you're "good" enough to speedrun an MMORPG or what I'd like to consider FFXIV, and RPG first with MMO elements, you're good enough to help/assist players along the way with ease without any issues) which is the only instance in which you can use Trust bots. Also, players are capable of pulling more than bots. The only negative from this rule is duty queue times, but that won't matter if you're a healer which I recommend.
9. Market is allowed.

These seem contradictory.
You can get outside help by having friends set you up with gear on the market, but can't get people to help you run DF? And even then you can rig it by... for example, queueing JP language only in EU datacenter, or DE language only on NA datacenter, along with other friends doing the same thing, to get fast queues with a "premade" group.

Just seems like a badly thought out ruleset through and through.

[ReynTime]

But those are specific to that speedrunning community and their intended goals.

Not everyone who speedruns is part of that community or wants to adopt their specific rules. Unless the game itself incorporates a speedrun version, none of it is official. It's just for fun on the individual player's own terms.


OP may not have needed to do anything extra for 48-50 since they didn't limit themselves from using XP bonuses like the Brand New Ring, Heat of Battle buff, etc.

The 46-49/49-50 XP gaps only happen if you avoid all XP bonus sources other than unavoidable rested XP and all side content other than class/job quests. If you're only playing a couple of days a week instead of long hours every day, the rested bonus will cover most if not all the gap. It's something I tested in Shadowbringers.

Then your speedrun isn't considered valid.
That community made a set of rules because someone had to. And they're considered the "official" speedrun rules for games so that there is a standard to reference. Making your own arbitrary rules is fine if you just want to do it for fun, but the bragging rights are null if it's all made up by you as you see fit.