Dragon's Dogma

Edit history:

scaryice: 2012-06-17 04:35:07 am

2012-06-17 03:15:20 am

Been playing it a lot recently. I thought I'd start a new game and try to beat it as quickly as possible, and with no real planning, strategy, or item managment, ended up with a time of 6 hours. So obviously that can be beaten by a lot. That's as a warrior, which probably isn't optimal. I'm guessing ranger/strider is probably the best choice.

General Thoughts

Like Dark Souls, it's necessary to play offline to make things fair.

Also like Dark Souls, it's very easy to just run by every enemy...even easier here. Your pawns might die, though. They're not really too useful outside of a few major fights, so it's not too big of a worry.

Armor is pretty worthless. Healing items are very cheap and you can hold a ton.

Money is key to upgrade your weapon and also to buy ferrystones (at least 8 by my count?). I was hurting for money, but a proper run would surely get the right chests to make it a cinch. Might want to buy a couple wakestone shards if possible to speed up the end.

Thread title:

scaryice

Edit history:

scaryice: 2012-06-18 12:05:59 am

scaryice: 2012-06-17 04:36:11 am

scaryice: 2012-06-17 04:36:02 am

scaryice: 2012-06-17 04:36:00 am

scaryice: 2012-06-17 04:22:06 am

2012-06-17 04:18:49 am

There are 24 quests necessary to beat the game. Here's a list, with some thoughts and observations:

Pre-Wyrm Hunt

1. The End at the Beginning - The prologue. You can fight the Chimera without summoning the extra pawns, but it's clearly worth the 5-10 seconds it takes. Not sure what triggers the door opening before that fight, time based?

2. Harbinger of Destruction - All you have to do is run away.

3. Newly Arisen

4. Upon a Pawn - You don't need to save Reynard. I read that you can avoid triggering his little cutscene, but I doubt it would be be worth going that far around it.

5. Call of the Arisen

6. A Rude Awakening

7. Off With Its Head - Really annoying escort quest. It doesn't appear you can run ahead to Gran Soren, even when the quest marker appears there.

8. A Master of Myrmidons

9. Lure of the Abyss - I know you can fall towards the bottom when you get pretty close to the end. Can you get on top of the ogre, let him fall off the edge, and not take fall damage?

Wyrm Hunt

The Cypher
A Fortress Besieged
Seeking Salvation
The Watergod's Altar

Quests 10 & 11, as you only need to do two of these. Seems pretty clear that Cypher and Seeking Salvation are the best two. I don't think anyone could argue against Cypher. You might as well take the idol while you're there, to give it to the merchant to easily complete his quest later. You can fail fortress pretty quickly and it still counts, but it's so far away.

Royal Orders

12. Come to Court

13. Griffin's Bane - This could be the make or break quest for a speedrun. I read that it's possible to kill the griffin before it flies away, which would save lots of time. You'd still have to walk all the way to Bluemoon Tower later, but that's still a huge timesaver. Not sure how possible it is at low levels, though. Also note that if you do go to Bluemoon to fight it, there's no ferrystone at the top. That's only after the Wyrmking quest, which I unfortunately forgot.

14. Trials and Tribulations - Just rest at the inn several days in a row until it's over.

15. Pride Before a Fall

16. Thy Wyrmking's Ring - I noticed that my pawns all were transported to the top of the tower after the Salomet cutscene, even though they were dead. That was nice.

17. Honor and Treachery - You don't have to kill the cockatrice. Maybe if you let the stuff get destroyed, it'll end faster?

18. Reward and Responsibility - Apparently you can sneak in here earlier. Worth it to upgrade your weapon?

19. Deny Salvation - It's about here that I realized how much warriors might suck, vs the wights. It'd be nice to hit them without destroying all their stupid minions.

End

20. The Final Battle - I read that it's optional to visit the Dragonforged, so you can just keep going after the last quest. That pretty much negates my idea of using the portcrystal here. Obviously you'd want to use it at Bluemoon after the griffon fight, but it you can avoid that, I don't know if there's anywhere worth using. Maybe better just to sell it.

I had a hell of a hard time with the warrior solo vs the gorechimera and the dragon. The chimera was actually way worse. I didn't check to see if you could trigger the door without fighting him, which would be huge. I had a couple hellhounds that I ran past randomly enter the room during the fight and then run back out, not attacking much. Strange.

Now as for the dragon, I read if you buy the Maker's Finger arrow (300,000), it's a one hit kill. So I'm guessing that right there is reason enough to use a strider. I wonder if he dies earlier if you use it in the first parts before you run away.

I did notice there's a spot on the dragon where you can hang just below his heart, where he tries to swipe you off but misses. It looks like you're too low to hit it, but it works.

21. A Warm Welcome

22. Fathom Deep - How best to gather the 20 wakestones? Well, you could just kill the Ur Dragon. This would be one of the most interesting places to plan for. I think the room with the ogre/cyclops/golem (Estrangement) was pretty good for farming, since you're probably going to get 1-2 from each of them. If you get the metal golem/wight instead, you can die and retry, and it can be different. The gorechimera chamber (hope) seemed reasonably good too. It might be faster to just do one really good chamber, ferrystone, then rest at the inn the 3-4 times necessary for it to respawn.

23. Final Judgement
24. The Great Hereafter

There are 24 quests necessary to beat the game. Here's a list, with some thoughts and observations:

[u][b]Pre-Wyrm Hunt[/b][/u]

[hidden]1. The End at the Beginning - The prologue. You can fight the Chimera without summoning the extra pawns, but it's clearly worth the 5-10 seconds it takes. Not sure what triggers the door opening before that fight, time based?

2. Harbinger of Destruction - All you have to do is run away.

3. Newly Arisen

4. Upon a Pawn - You don't need to save Reynard. I read that you can avoid triggering his little cutscene, but I doubt it would be be worth going that far around it.

5. Call of the Arisen

6. A Rude Awakening

7. Off With Its Head - Really annoying escort quest. It doesn't appear you can run ahead to Gran Soren, even when the quest marker appears there.

8. A Master of Myrmidons

9. Lure of the Abyss - I know you can fall towards the bottom when you get pretty close to the end. Can you get on top of the ogre, let him fall off the edge, and not take fall damage?[/hidden]

[u][b]Wyrm Hunt[/b][/u]

[hidden]The Cypher
A Fortress Besieged
Seeking Salvation
The Watergod's Altar

Quests 10 & 11, as you only need to do two of these. Seems pretty clear that Cypher and Seeking Salvation are the best two. I don't think anyone could argue against Cypher. You might as well take the idol while you're there, to give it to the merchant to easily complete his quest later. You can fail fortress pretty quickly and it still counts, but it's so far away.[/hidden]

[u][b]Royal Orders[/b][/u]

[hidden]12. Come to Court

13. Griffin's Bane - This could be the make or break quest for a speedrun. I read that it's possible to kill the griffin before it flies away, which would save lots of time. You'd still have to walk all the way to Bluemoon Tower later, but that's still a huge timesaver. Not sure how possible it is at low levels, though. Also note that if you do go to Bluemoon to fight it, there's no ferrystone at the top. That's only after the Wyrmking quest, which I unfortunately forgot.

14. Trials and Tribulations - Just rest at the inn several days in a row until it's over.

15. Pride Before a Fall

16. Thy Wyrmking's Ring - I noticed that my pawns all were transported to the top of the tower after the Salomet cutscene, even though they were dead. That was nice.

17. Honor and Treachery - You don't have to kill the cockatrice. Maybe if you let the stuff get destroyed, it'll end faster?

18. Reward and Responsibility - Apparently you can sneak in here earlier. Worth it to upgrade your weapon?

19. Deny Salvation - It's about here that I realized how much warriors might suck, vs the wights. It'd be nice to hit them without destroying all their stupid minions.[/hidden]

[u][b]End[/b][/u]

[hidden]20. The Final Battle - I read that it's optional to visit the Dragonforged, so you can just keep going after the last quest. That pretty much negates my idea of using the portcrystal here. Obviously you'd want to use it at Bluemoon after the griffon fight, but it you can avoid that, I don't know if there's anywhere worth using. Maybe better just to sell it.

I had a hell of a hard time with the warrior solo vs the gorechimera and the dragon. The chimera was actually way worse. I didn't check to see if you could trigger the door without fighting him, which would be huge. I had a couple hellhounds that I ran past randomly enter the room during the fight and then run back out, not attacking much. Strange.

Now as for the dragon, I read if you buy the Maker's Finger arrow (300,000), it's a one hit kill. So I'm guessing that right there is reason enough to use a strider. I wonder if he dies earlier if you use it in the first parts before you run away.

I did notice there's a spot on the dragon where you can hang just below his heart, where he tries to swipe you off but misses. It looks like you're too low to hit it, but it works.

21. A Warm Welcome

22. Fathom Deep - How best to gather the 20 wakestones? Well, you could just kill the Ur Dragon. This would be one of the most interesting places to plan for. I think the room with the ogre/cyclops/golem (Estrangement) was pretty good for farming, since you're probably going to get 1-2 from each of them. If you get the metal golem/wight instead, you can die and retry, and it can be different. The gorechimera chamber (hope) seemed reasonably good too. It might be faster to just do one really good chamber, ferrystone, then rest at the inn the 3-4 times necessary for it to respawn.

23. Final Judgement
24. The Great Hereafter[/hidden]

sshplur

2012-10-18 03:34:44 pm

It's a shame there's no interest in this. Hopefully the Speed Run mode will get some people on board when it's out.

PhAz3

Edit history:

PhAz3: 2013-04-04 07:57:35 pm

2013-04-04 07:56:09 pm

i have been playing this game since it launched, and have been doing a lot of planning for a speed run, though my last attempt was ruined by a botched griffin's bane attempt...ive found in my testing that the 3 best classes for speed running are the strider, assassin or the magik archer. But i still need to to a lot more work to get it to an actual presentable level, current best time on normal mode is 7:26:31(this was with a botched griffon's bane, and a really sub optimal ur-dragon), hard mode is 9 something(Wasnt actually paying attention to the ingame time when i finished the game, and then i forgot to turn my 360 off so when i remembered that i was playing i was sitting at 16 hours lol. but i think normal is going to be the best for a decently entertaining run, that can show a lot of skill. im also looking into glitch's/sequence breaks...but i havnt found anything worth while yet...other than glitching through the floor but that instakills you 99% of the time and the other 1% is unusable. im going to marathon through it again tonight and see if i can get sub 6 hours...should be possible as long as i can get the griffon single round kill and a decent ur-dragon.

Also, if you are still attempting a dragons dogma run i'd like to talk with you and see if you've found any interesting trick's/techniques for leveling/quickly getting through the quest's.

i have been playing this game since it launched, and have been doing a lot of planning for a speed run, though my last attempt was ruined by a botched griffin's bane attempt...ive found in my testing that the 3 best classes for speed running are the strider, assassin or the magik archer. But i still need to to a lot more work to get it to an actual presentable level, current best time on normal mode is 7:26:31(this was with a botched griffon's bane, and a really sub optimal ur-dragon), hard mode is 9 something(Wasnt actually paying attention to the ingame time when i finished the game, and then i forgot to turn my 360 off so when i remembered that i was playing i was sitting at 16 hours lol. but i think normal is going to be the best for a decently entertaining run, that can show a lot of skill. im also looking into glitch's/sequence breaks...but i havnt found anything worth while yet...other than glitching through the floor but that instakills you 99% of the time and the other 1% is unusable. im going to marathon through it again tonight and see if i can get sub 6 hours...should be possible as long as i can get the griffon single round kill and a decent ur-dragon.

Also, if you are still attempting a dragons dogma run i'd like to talk with you and see if you've found any interesting trick's/techniques for leveling/quickly getting through the quest's.

Wooglin

2013-10-13 09:54:08 am

I've been thinking about this too. Here are some of my ideas on optimization:

Normal mode would be best, and I would advocate for NG+ because it's available and I say if the game allows it then go ahead. The biggest advantage to this would be that you could place portcrystals at important places for the story to cut down significantly on travel time (I'm looking at you bluemoon tower). Also the main character and main pawn will already be created and customized with optimized vocations.

There are two things although that I'm not sure about NG+ though. 1) Should players be allowed to carry over hordes of gold from previous playthroughs? and 2) If the player carries over more than 20 wakestones can he skip the ever fall/ur dragon and go straight to the seneschal? For 1 I don't see why not because the only thing you're likely to buy in NG+ is curatives and stat boosters. As to number 2 I'm not sure I think it's something that the running community would have to come to a consensus on it but I've seen boss skips in other games so I don't care if we do it in this one.

Using these strats and with a mystic knight I'm getting a pretty good time, although I agree that Magic Archer is probably optimal I need to work on getting better equipment for them. Let me know what you guys think should be the rules for Any% and 100% and if any of you want to start running this seriously. I'd love for a bit of healthy competition.

I've been thinking about this too. Here are some of my ideas on optimization:

Normal mode would be best, and I would advocate for NG+ because it's available and I say if the game allows it then go ahead. The biggest advantage to this would be that you could place portcrystals at important places for the story to cut down significantly on travel time (I'm looking at you bluemoon tower). Also the main character and main pawn will already be created and customized with optimized vocations.

There are two things although that I'm not sure about NG+ though. 1) Should players be allowed to carry over hordes of gold from previous playthroughs? and 2) If the player carries over more than 20 wakestones can he skip the ever fall/ur dragon and go straight to the seneschal? For 1 I don't see why not because the only thing you're likely to buy in NG+ is curatives and stat boosters. As to number 2 I'm not sure I think it's something that the running community would have to come to a consensus on it but I've seen boss skips in other games so I don't care if we do it in this one.

Using these strats and with a mystic knight I'm getting a pretty good time, although I agree that Magic Archer is probably optimal I need to work on getting better equipment for them. Let me know what you guys think should be the rules for Any% and 100% and if any of you want to start running this seriously. I'd love for a bit of healthy competition.

scaryice

Edit history:

scaryice: 2013-10-14 04:07:39 am

2013-10-14 04:06:28 am

Personally I think NG+ runs are boring to watch. Takes away all the challenge and strategy.

Although if you're going to do it, you should have everything you might possibly need.

Wooglin

2013-10-14 08:44:50 pm

I agree but if we're going for speed it's the fastest ways to do it. We could always do a non NG+ any and 100% categories as well. It's kinda like windwaker that has 4 different any % runs and people can choose which one they want to do. As far as I know their are no major glitches in DD to exploit so the optimal way to route it would be to place the port crystals strategically and optimize how to do quests in the shortest amount of time.

KingOfCats

Edit history:

KingOfCats: 2014-05-30 05:19:22 pm

KingOfCats: 2014-05-30 05:03:42 pm

2014-05-30 05:02:39 pm

Great Person, Bad Player

This is an old thread yet, I have just recently arrived at SDA forums, and happen to have a taste for Dragon's Dogma. My best time NG+ Is around 3 hours and 20 minutes and is my third run of the game. My first run was not at all a speed run and was to experience every inch of the game before attempting a run, placing at 50+ hours. My second run was around 4-5 hours. Its true that it takes more skill to start from scratch and play non NG+ but more casual players like me enjoy the old unique characters I created and spent exploring with. Yet there is still the strategy of Port Crystal placement and item management to incite somewhat thought provoking problem solving that we enjoy so much. I will be playing NG+ Runs and if you want to talk strategies i will enjoy it greatly. Thanks for reading my lengthy addition to this great thread!

Addition: Does anyone know if there are any leaderboards for this game so i can compare my times? PM Me if it is not appropriate to post in this thread please.

This is an old thread yet, I have just recently arrived at SDA forums, and happen to have a taste for Dragon's Dogma. My best time NG+ Is around 3 hours and 20 minutes and is my third run of the game. My first run was not at all a speed run and was to experience every inch of the game before attempting a run, placing at 50+ hours. My second run was around 4-5 hours. Its true that it takes more skill to start from scratch and play non NG+ but more casual players like me enjoy the old unique characters I created and spent exploring with. Yet there is still the strategy of Port Crystal placement and item management to incite somewhat thought provoking problem solving that we enjoy so much. I will be playing NG+ Runs and if you want to talk strategies i will enjoy it greatly. Thanks for reading my lengthy addition to this great thread!

Addition: Does anyone know if there are any leaderboards for this game so i can compare my times? PM Me if it is not appropriate to post in this thread please.

mkob

2014-05-30 05:59:44 pm

Hi there KingOfCats, I suggest you post in the Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen thread over here instead:
https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/dragons_dogma_dark_arisen.html

It's been kinda abandoned but Dak_Rey and myself posted two different runs of the game with a different category, mine being NG+ (the one you seem to be interested in) while Dak_Rey opted for a fresh new game. He achieved 1:36:38 RTA, 1h27 IGT (which is damn impressive for a new game) and my PB is currently ~40 minutes real time and 16 minutes ingame timer.

I don't know which version of the game you're playing, vanilla DD or Dark Arisen, so if you're playing vanilla DD then you should totally switch to Dark Arisen, you get more spells/more powerful weapons/better abilities and some items are cheaper. The NG+ route doesn't change much on both versions anyway, but Dark Arisen is simply better in every aspect.

Have fun with the run and feel free to ask about tips and stuff.

hecatomb

2017-12-10 10:36:38 am

Well if you are looking for New Game and not NG+ here you go full game finished on new game with DLC.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKsh-Yh1HaMcTZEUsRqGpfbYT1tMdr-uc