Might And Magic 7 Speedrun

gammadragon

2013-09-17 03:07:08 pm

Might be magic...

Good point - before I forget, here are the savegames from the MM7 speedrun.

Attachment:

gammadragon-MM7-Speedrun-Saves.7z

kiri

2013-09-18 08:57:22 am

Excellent run gamma.
I've some questions but I want to start with a first point I wanted to check but didn't yet :
Is it shorter to portal out of the Dwarves mine then take the coach + fly than exiting the normal way ?

I've also one small improvement that could be conducted (but it's before getting the 2 LB scrolls Sad

) :
In the wall of mist in the first arch, you should do the stairs in opposite order to be closer from the chest after jump (really small improvement actually but maybe worth some seconds).

I have to recheck some things also because I found that you used a lot of TP and coaches at some points and it could maybe be optimized a little but I can't confirm that yet...

gammadragon

2013-09-19 04:44:04 am

Might be magic...

Quote from kiri:

Is it shorter to portal out of the Dwarves mine then take the coach + fly than exiting the normal way ?

I actually tried both ways and the TP + coach way seemed to take a few seconds less, but it's pretty close either way.

Quote from kiri:

I've also one small improvement that could be conducted (but it's before getting the 2 LB scrolls Sad

) :
In the wall of mist in the first arch, you should do the stairs in opposite order to be closer from the chest after jump (really small improvement actually but maybe worth some seconds).

That's a good point, the chest is a little on the left hand side so it might be slightly quicker to do it in that order.

Quote from kiri:

I have to recheck some things also because I found that you used a lot of TP and coaches at some points and it could maybe be optimized a little but I can't confirm that yet...

I put some effort into optimising the route. Sometimes I used a coach because the stables is closer to my destination than if I used a TP. Definitely open to suggestions in that department though, as the number of possibilities is quite complex.

[quote="kiri"]
Is it shorter to portal out of the Dwarves mine then take the coach + fly than exiting the normal way ?
[/quote]
I actually tried both ways and the TP + coach way seemed to take a few seconds less, but it's pretty close either way.

[quote="kiri"]
I've also one small improvement that could be conducted (but it's before getting the 2 LB scrolls :( ) :
In the wall of mist in the first arch, you should do the stairs in opposite order to be closer from the chest after jump (really small improvement actually but maybe worth some seconds).
[/quote]
That's a good point, the chest is a little on the left hand side so it might be slightly quicker to do it in that order.

[quote="kiri"]
I have to recheck some things also because I found that you used a lot of TP and coaches at some points and it could maybe be optimized a little but I can't confirm that yet...[/quote]
I put some effort into optimising the route. Sometimes I used a coach because the stables is closer to my destination than if I used a TP. Definitely open to suggestions in that department though, as the number of possibilities is quite complex.

salt

2013-09-30 04:24:07 pm

My respect, Gamma! I don't know how to improve you route significantly. Frankly say, I'd not have such patience to farm TWO Invisibility scrolls for 1500 times... So, congratulations - you are the champion! Smiley

Very nice trick with the wishing well Smiley

And amazing Xenofex killing! I haven't known these 2 things about this game before!

Then, please, say a few words about running through Eeofol tunnels - how many tries? What place was the most difficult for you?

P.S. And add you run as a video answer to mine. It was deserved a little promotion Wink

gammadragon

2013-10-01 05:34:18 am

Might be magic...

Quote from salt:

My respect, Gamma! I don't know how to improve you route significantly. Frankly say, I'd not have such patience to farm TWO Invisibility scrolls for 1500 times... So, congratulations - you are the champion! Smiley

Thanks

it did take a lot of patience but I thought the game was worth it. Your run also showed me a few tricks which helped improve the total time and was the main inspiration for starting my attempt in the first place.

Quote from salt:

Very nice trick with the wishing well Smiley

And amazing Xenofex killing! I haven't known these 2 things about this game before!

Then, please, say a few words about running through Eeofol tunnels - how many tries? What place was the most difficult for you?

The Tunnels to Eeofol segments were tricky and rely heavily on chance, but after a few attempts you start to work out where the monsters like to stand and it gets easier each attempt. I hated the little jump across the chasm at first but eventually got a pretty high success rate for that. One of the tricky things was that the thief had to survive to the end of the tunnels because he was the only one that does not get eradicated from the wishing well. This was a bit of a challenge because he usually got knocked out in a single hit from a behemoth. Probably made around 70 - 100 attempts for these segments and most of them were long attempts, unlike the thousands of tiny attempts going shopping for scrolls.

Most difficult segment is hard to say. Once the route was planned, none of the segments were really too difficult - just a matter of retrying until the moons aligned. Some of the segments were probably too long because I tried to end them just before a large amount of luck was required to minimise the wasted time on the next segment.

Strangely enough, on both speedrun attempts the most frustrating part was the last segment. Making it through to the Oscillation Overthruster without being killed should be a simple stroll towards a target item but it actually turned out to be a crazy hellish suicide run. I think it was due to my poor choice of starting statistics - Luck and Endurance are probably the most useful for that segment and I reduced luck to the minumum for most chars. Also, there was about a 50% chance of a robot spawning in (and blocking) the corridor about 30s into the segment which broke a lot of attempts, and the same character who used the first LB scroll has to survive the run to cast the second LB scroll. I must have spent around 2 days on and off just trying to finish this one. Wasn't quite happy with the final result because I was slow with the LB scroll, but was in a hurry to finish at that point, especially after making over 100 attempts with only one success.

Having said that, there were quite a few frustrating parts during the run. The thief had a bad habit of dying on the trapped chest in the Temple of Light about 95% of the time and my route relied on him being available to steal the cube. Messing up the easy part after spawning two Jump scrolls was also annoying and I only have myself to blame due to poor segmentation, should have started another one straight away. At one point I also made it all the way to Xenofex before I realised that I had forgotten to get Expert Body Builder for my Monks and had to throw away all those completed segments. Managed to redo them better than the last time before because of the extra practice.

There are also many unlikely "coincidences" in my route which require a lot of mindless reloading and make a single-segment run with this route virtually impossible. Stealing, red potion spawning in chest, NPC hires, double scroll purchases (especially LB scrolls - I lucked out with that one), troglodytes not blocking the corridors, behemoth dodging, thief surviving to end of tunnels, xenofex kill, run through Lincoln.

The segment that was performed with the most finesse was probably the arbiter quest, as I spent a while memorising all the keyboard commands, exactly how many mouse clicks to use while training... it all became reflex after a while Tongue

Quote from salt:

P.S. And add you run as a video answer to mine. It was deserved a little promotion Wink

Apparently Youtube video responses have been disabled! Only just found out about this now when I tried to do it.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/57931?hl=en

[quote="salt"]My respect, Gamma! I don't know how to improve you route significantly. Frankly say, I'd not have such patience to farm TWO Invisibility scrolls for 1500 times... So, congratulations - you are the champion! :)
[/quote]

Thanks :) it did take a lot of patience but I thought the game was worth it. Your run also showed me a few tricks which helped improve the total time and was the main inspiration for starting my attempt in the first place.

[quote="salt"]Very nice trick with the wishing well :) And amazing Xenofex killing! I haven't known these 2 things about this game before!

Then, please, say a few words about running through Eeofol tunnels - how many tries? What place was the most difficult for you?
[/quote]

The Tunnels to Eeofol segments were tricky and rely heavily on chance, but after a few attempts you start to work out where the monsters like to stand and it gets easier each attempt. I hated the little jump across the chasm at first but eventually got a pretty high success rate for that. One of the tricky things was that the thief had to survive to the end of the tunnels because he was the only one that does not get eradicated from the wishing well. This was a bit of a challenge because he usually got knocked out in a single hit from a behemoth. Probably made around 70 - 100 attempts for these segments and most of them were long attempts, unlike the thousands of tiny attempts going shopping for scrolls.

Most difficult segment is hard to say. Once the route was planned, none of the segments were really too difficult - just a matter of retrying until the moons aligned. Some of the segments were probably too long because I tried to end them just before a large amount of luck was required to minimise the wasted time on the next segment.

Strangely enough, on both speedrun attempts the most frustrating part was the last segment. Making it through to the Oscillation Overthruster without being killed should be a simple stroll towards a target item but it actually turned out to be a crazy hellish suicide run. I think it was due to my poor choice of starting statistics - Luck and Endurance are probably the most useful for that segment and I reduced luck to the minumum for most chars. Also, there was about a 50% chance of a robot spawning in (and blocking) the corridor about 30s into the segment which broke a lot of attempts, and the same character who used the first LB scroll has to survive the run to cast the second LB scroll. I must have spent around 2 days on and off just trying to finish this one. Wasn't quite happy with the final result because I was slow with the LB scroll, but was in a hurry to finish at that point, especially after making over 100 attempts with only one success.

Having said that, there were quite a few frustrating parts during the run. The thief had a bad habit of dying on the trapped chest in the Temple of Light about 95% of the time and my route relied on him being available to steal the cube. Messing up the easy part after spawning two Jump scrolls was also annoying and I only have myself to blame due to poor segmentation, should have started another one straight away. At one point I also made it all the way to Xenofex before I realised that I had forgotten to get Expert Body Builder for my Monks and had to throw away all those completed segments. Managed to redo them better than the last time before because of the extra practice.

There are also many unlikely "coincidences" in my route which require a lot of mindless reloading and make a single-segment run with this route virtually impossible. Stealing, red potion spawning in chest, NPC hires, double scroll purchases (especially LB scrolls - I lucked out with that one), troglodytes not blocking the corridors, behemoth dodging, thief surviving to end of tunnels, xenofex kill, run through Lincoln.

The segment that was performed with the most finesse was probably the arbiter quest, as I spent a while memorising all the keyboard commands, exactly how many mouse clicks to use while training... it all became reflex after a while :P

[quote="salt"]P.S. And add you run as a video answer to mine. It was deserved a little promotion ;)[/quote]

Apparently Youtube video responses have been disabled! Only just found out about this now when I tried to do it.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/57931?hl=en

kiri

2013-10-01 08:07:18 am

Once again Gamma excellent work !
I think you found one of the most optimized route for MM7 as beating this game under 40 min is really crazy !
Nevertheless, I still think it could be possible to shave time at some point but it would only add to a mere ~10 / 20 seconds which may not be worth restarting all those boring shopping segments.
I still feel that there may be some major breakdowns that could be found as it's possible to get and kill Xenofex very early in the game.
We would only have to get the wet suits and maybe the quest prior to that.

gammadragon

2013-10-02 12:27:02 am

Might be magic...

Quote from kiri:

Once again Gamma excellent work !
I think you found one of the most optimized route for MM7 as beating this game under 40 min is really crazy !
Nevertheless, I still think it could be possible to shave time at some point but it would only add to a mere ~10 / 20 seconds which may not be worth restarting all those boring shopping segments.

Thanks! Your run has some really great ideas too. I think if it's possible to clear the goblins out of the castle directly on first arrival in Harmondale, it could also speed things up because then there could be one less trip to Stone City.

It could be possible to get two more LB scrolls from Bracada Desert or Deyja to save even more time. One more thought I just had would be to farm Lloyd's Beacon / Telekinesis scrolls from the shops by training one or two levels in between visits, but that would require a lot of patience and might not save any time.

Another big timesaver that could be useful is... Telekinesis! There are actually quite a few places in the game where this would be really useful as a quickspell. Due to a glitch you can also cast spells without waiting for recovery time to finish. Unfortunately it takes a long time to get the promotion necessary to cast Telekinesis so it would probably end up taking more time in total.

Just had another thought - maybe with a sorceror it might be possible to pump up a magic skill high in order to kill Xenofex straight after the wishing well? Some of the easily obtainable spells can do a lot of damage with high skill levels. Or even hiring a Master Healer could help?

Also better execution in some places would save time - there are a few noticable places where I lost some seconds.

Quote from kiri:

I still feel that there may be some major breakdowns that could be found as it's possible to get and kill Xenofex very early in the game.
We would only have to get the wet suits and maybe the quest prior to that.

That's a good point - if we could figure out a way to get the wetsuits early then that would be a big step. It's probably too much to hope for though because the endgame trigger seems to be talking to Resurectra about "Final Task" while holding the Oscillation Overthruster. To get access to that conversation option you first need to have gone through all the earlier quests too.

[quote="kiri"]Once again Gamma excellent work !
I think you found one of the most optimized route for MM7 as beating this game under 40 min is really crazy !
Nevertheless, I still think it could be possible to shave time at some point but it would only add to a mere ~10 / 20 seconds which may not be worth restarting all those boring shopping segments.[/quote]

Thanks! Your run has some really great ideas too. I think if it's possible to clear the goblins out of the castle directly on first arrival in Harmondale, it could also speed things up because then there could be one less trip to Stone City.

It could be possible to get two more LB scrolls from Bracada Desert or Deyja to save even more time. One more thought I just had would be to farm Lloyd's Beacon / Telekinesis scrolls from the shops by training one or two levels in between visits, but that would require a lot of patience and might not save any time.

Another big timesaver that could be useful is... Telekinesis! There are actually quite a few places in the game where this would be really useful as a quickspell. Due to a glitch you can also cast spells without waiting for recovery time to finish. Unfortunately it takes a long time to get the promotion necessary to cast Telekinesis so it would probably end up taking more time in total.

Just had another thought - maybe with a sorceror it might be possible to pump up a magic skill high in order to kill Xenofex straight after the wishing well? Some of the easily obtainable spells can do a lot of damage with high skill levels. Or even hiring a Master Healer could help?

Also better execution in some places would save time - there are a few noticable places where I lost some seconds.

[quote="kiri"]I still feel that there may be some major breakdowns that could be found as it's possible to get and kill Xenofex very early in the game.
We would only have to get the wet suits and maybe the quest prior to that.[/quote]

That's a good point - if we could figure out a way to get the wetsuits early then that would be a big step. It's probably too much to hope for though because the endgame trigger seems to be talking to Resurectra about "Final Task" while holding the Oscillation Overthruster. To get access to that conversation option you first need to have gone through all the earlier quests too.

kiri

2013-10-02 04:28:16 am

Gamma, I really think with all those ideas that some new optimizations could come up !
For instance the LB scrolls could maybe be stolen from Dragons while in LOTG or shopped when you are in certain towns in order to limit big walking times.

You may be right also that it could be possible to clean Harmondale on the first visit and avoid the additional visit to Stone City but it may require some different party then.

For Xenofex killing I think that the blaster abuse is still the best way to go as it only requires Accuracy points and Haste potion with Skill points to Blaster skill. Compared to getting some high level magic, which if I'm not mistaken, Xenofex is almost immune to all, would require time to get promotions / books and so on.

For Telekinesis, I'm not really sure which part you're talking about ? Could you please give some details as it may be a big saving as Telekinesis can be bought from almost every where ...

On the major glitch topic, the other path to cut big parts of the the game would be to gain access to the Pit / Celeste earlier in the game. I've already tried a lot of things (Town Portal abuse, Door glitch, ...) but nothing worked as of now.

The last point I mentioned earlier in the thread was the use of the door glitch in the Colony and maybe in some other parts like the Lincoln and Wall of Mist (already tried but maybe on someone else computer ...) that could avoid some buttons pressing ....

I think it's still a Work in Progress Smiley

Gamma, I really think with all those ideas that some new optimizations could come up !
For instance the LB scrolls could maybe be stolen from Dragons while in LOTG or shopped when you are in certain towns in order to limit big walking times.

You may be right also that it could be possible to clean Harmondale on the first visit and avoid the additional visit to Stone City but it may require some different party then.

For Xenofex killing I think that the blaster abuse is still the best way to go as it only requires Accuracy points and Haste potion with Skill points to Blaster skill. Compared to getting some high level magic, which if I'm not mistaken, Xenofex is almost immune to all, would require time to get promotions / books and so on.

For Telekinesis, I'm not really sure which part you're talking about ? Could you please give some details as it may be a big saving as Telekinesis can be bought from almost every where ...

On the major glitch topic, the other path to cut big parts of the the game would be to gain access to the Pit / Celeste earlier in the game. I've already tried a lot of things (Town Portal abuse, Door glitch, ...) but nothing worked as of now.

The last point I mentioned earlier in the thread was the use of the door glitch in the Colony and maybe in some other parts like the Lincoln and Wall of Mist  (already tried but maybe on someone else computer ...) that could avoid some buttons pressing ....

I think it's still a Work in Progress :)

gammadragon

2013-10-03 02:16:31 am

Might be magic...

Quote from kiri:

Gamma, I really think with all those ideas that some new optimizations could come up !
For instance the LB scrolls could maybe be stolen from Dragons while in LOTG or shopped when you are in certain towns in order to limit big walking times.

Good ideas - those sound viable to me.

Quote from kiri:

You may be right also that it could be possible to clean Harmondale on the first visit and avoid the additional visit to Stone City but it may require some different party then.

I was thinking maybe a few sorcerors or druids? Then it would be possible to spam Sparks in the hallways to kill most of the monsters. Plus they could cast the Jump spell which might be useful in a few places.

Quote from kiri:

For Xenofex killing I think that the blaster abuse is still the best way to go as it only requires Accuracy points and Haste potion with Skill points to Blaster skill. Compared to getting some high level magic, which if I'm not mistaken, Xenofex is almost immune to all, would require time to get promotions / books and so on.

Sparks might work well here as well. It's low level and easy to obtain and with a high skill level you can do some real damage.

Also I think that accuracy is probably not even necessary with high enough blaster skill, and you can also just use the day of the gods pedestal in LOTG if necessary (though that wastes a few seconds)

Quote from kiri:

For Telekinesis, I'm not really sure which part you're talking about ? Could you please give some details as it may be a big saving as Telekinesis can be bought from almost every where ...

It's probably more useful as a quickspell because it only saves a few seconds each use, but there a many places it could be used. Here's a few places I was thinking of:
- Barrow Downs - use it on the teleporting chest to quickly get close to Stone City (or just use it on the Stone City entrance)
- Red Dwarf Mines - use on entrance
- Red Dwarf Mines - rescue dwarves quickly
- Halls of Mist - in left portal, push switches quickly and open chest
- Hall of the Pit - use it on the entrance to the pit
- Castle Gloaming - use it on the entrance
- Temple of Light - use it on the entrance
- Temple of Light - can probably push the star / moon / sun switches pretty quickly and open the chest quickly
- Castle Lambent - use it on the throne room door
- Erathia - use it on the stables door / ship door

Actually it can be used on nearly every map in some way or other to save travel time.

Quote from kiri:

On the major glitch topic, the other path to cut big parts of the the game would be to gain access to the Pit / Celeste earlier in the game. I've already tried a lot of things (Town Portal abuse, Door glitch, ...) but nothing worked as of now.

I think there is actually something in the game code preventing access to these areas until the arbiter quest has been completed. It's the same as if you try to use a TP or LB scroll in Emerald Isle.

Quote from kiri:

The last point I mentioned earlier in the thread was the use of the door glitch in the Colony and maybe in some other parts like the Lincoln and Wall of Mist (already tried but maybe on someone else computer ...) that could avoid some buttons pressing ....

That would be a really useful skip. Do you know if there are any special requirements to get it working? It didn't work on my system unfortunately.

I wonder if it would allow you to bypass rescuing Roland Ironfist by walking through the wall in Colony Zod which normally opens after the rescue?

[quote="kiri"]Gamma, I really think with all those ideas that some new optimizations could come up !
For instance the LB scrolls could maybe be stolen from Dragons while in LOTG or shopped when you are in certain towns in order to limit big walking times.
[/quote]

Good ideas - those sound viable to me.

[quote="kiri"]
You may be right also that it could be possible to clean Harmondale on the first visit and avoid the additional visit to Stone City but it may require some different party then.
[/quote]

I was thinking maybe a few sorcerors or druids? Then it would be possible to spam Sparks in the hallways to kill most of the monsters. Plus they could cast the Jump spell which might be useful in a few places.

[quote="kiri"]
For Xenofex killing I think that the blaster abuse is still the best way to go as it only requires Accuracy points and Haste potion with Skill points to Blaster skill. Compared to getting some high level magic, which if I'm not mistaken, Xenofex is almost immune to all, would require time to get promotions / books and so on.
[/quote]

Sparks might work well here as well. It's low level and easy to obtain and with a high skill level you can do some real damage.

Also I think that accuracy is probably not even necessary with high enough blaster skill, and you can also just use the day of the gods pedestal in LOTG if necessary (though that wastes a few seconds)

[quote="kiri"]
For Telekinesis, I'm not really sure which part you're talking about ? Could you please give some details as it may be a big saving as Telekinesis can be bought from almost every where ...
[/quote]

It's probably more useful as a quickspell because it only saves a few seconds each use, but there a many places it could be used. Here's a few places I was thinking of:
- Barrow Downs - use it on the teleporting chest to quickly get close to Stone City (or just use it on the Stone City entrance)
- Red Dwarf Mines - use on entrance
- Red Dwarf Mines - rescue dwarves quickly
- Halls of Mist - in left portal, push switches quickly and open chest
- Hall of the Pit - use it on the entrance to the pit
- Castle Gloaming - use it on the entrance
- Temple of Light - use it on the entrance
- Temple of Light - can probably push the star / moon / sun switches pretty quickly and open the chest quickly
- Castle Lambent - use it on the throne room door
- Erathia - use it on the stables door / ship door

Actually it can be used on nearly every map in some way or other to save travel time.

[quote="kiri"]
On the major glitch topic, the other path to cut big parts of the the game would be to gain access to the Pit / Celeste earlier in the game. I've already tried a lot of things (Town Portal abuse, Door glitch, ...) but nothing worked as of now.
[/quote]

I think there is actually something in the game code preventing access to these areas until the arbiter quest has been completed. It's the same as if you try to use a TP or LB scroll in Emerald Isle.

[quote="kiri"]
The last point I mentioned earlier in the thread was the use of the door glitch in the Colony and maybe in some other parts like the Lincoln and Wall of Mist  (already tried but maybe on someone else computer ...) that could avoid some buttons pressing ....
[/quote]
That would be a really useful skip. Do you know if there are any special requirements to get it working? It didn't work on my system unfortunately.

I wonder if it would allow you to bypass rescuing Roland Ironfist by walking through the wall in Colony Zod which normally opens after the rescue?

Sniffles

2014-04-05 06:52:57 am

Just one small suggestion. Find some way to keep the thief alive even if it means shaving a little off the other char stats. Looks like this would save well over 1 minute.

gammadragon

2014-04-05 06:59:29 pm

Might be magic...

Quote from Sniffles:

Just one small suggestion. Find some way to keep the thief alive even if it means shaving a little off the other char stats. Looks like this would save well over 1 minute.

At which point should the thief be kept alive? The only times I think it's needed are for stealing, carrying the eradicated party members back to Harmondale, and more stealing of the cube.

Being dead before the cube stealing is not a big problem as we have to go through the temple of light at some stage and can heal there.

You're right that the stats could be better distributed - endurance and luck are probably the most important.

CapnClever

2016-03-04 12:19:36 am

Wanted to post in the M&M7 thread because I've been working on it as an RTA run. Crazy, right? I thought so too when I started by adapting the segmented strats. But after finding a real, bonafide glitch (and thanks to Adiiihhhh in finding creative ways to abuse it) I've gotten a run down to 45 minutes!

First off, the run:

There are numerous small errors (and one time where I click out of the screen, just fantastic), but really good luck overall outweighs all of them so it's my current best.

The most important part of this run, and the reason this game is now RTA-viable, is what we've called the save-buffer glitch. By loading the game and buffering an action, said action will be performed immediately upon load. It's so immediate, in fact, that some things haven't finished loading into the game! This comes handy for two reasons:
- If you buffer a save going into a new area and then load with a buffered action, the action will occur before the game takes into account enemy surroundings. In short, that means you can cast Invisibility in places you're not supposed to. This can theoretically be useful all over the place, though for the most part it's reserved for Tunnels to Eeofel (not that you NEED it with the current RTA setup but the segmented might get away with one scroll use) and The Lincoln. Being able to avoid taking damage in The Lincoln is why this run is RTA-viable, by the way: trying to survive that section, even with three super-tough monks, takes a lot of luck and reloading.
- Walls that move in response to some trigger aren't always loaded in time. As it turns out, the wall that opens the exit to Halls of Mist is one such wall, and you can use Telekinesis to access the momentarily-visible exit a few steps after entering. This shaves a good three minutes off the run all by itself.

With the above glitch in effect, we don't need HP to survive The Lincoln, and we don't need HP to survive Halls of Mist. Where do we need it? I've found the next-deadliest area to be Castle Gloaming in The Pit. We could be invisible for that, but since we're already getting Telekinesis it's a good deal faster to enter the castle via that and hope for the best inside. Other than that you'll need a little for Colony Zod to take out Xenofex, though the spawns aren't typically too bad.

Because we don't need so much HP, we can afford to drop a monk. The best class to add in place of the monk, at least in an RTA route, is a Sorceror or a Druid: these two classes are capable of learning elemental Mastery at first promotion, which is the earliest we can possibly get it. The alternative to this is to grab 5+ invisibility scrolls and at least one telekinesis scroll, which is another reason RTA was considered unreasonable. I actually worked out a "mage route" before finding the above glitch but had found it even more impossible to survive Lincoln so I'd scrapped it at the time, but it came in handy once Lincoln was trivialized.

As for which class, Druid could theoretically be faster but you have to be REALLY lucky with the chest for the Priest promotion quest (you need to do that in order to access one of the prayer sites for Greater Druid). Thus, the consensus between Adiiihhhh and myself has been to go Sorceror instead: this way you have a free Wizard Eye early on which can be helpful. Wizard promotion quest is to run around collecting golem parts: these are already waiting to be picked up regardless of quest initiation (like any quest where the purpose is to find an item) so you grab them, along with a bunch of gold and horseshoes before turning in the quest. Horseshoes are needed not only to level up air magic to mastery, but for a couple extra points to survive Tunnels of Eeofel in one Invis casting as well. I could probably do with a few less, now that I think about it, but it's worth getting a few to be safe in the tunnels.

Once the Wizard stuff is out of the way, we prepare ourselves to take on Goblinwatch. This is another aspect that the segmented run can improve upon: saving Goblinwatch until after Eeofel forces a third trip to Barrow Downs, but we can shorten it to two if there's a way to clean out your castle early. I figured out that Erathia contains Heroism and Day of the Gods shrines, as well as a +50 might fountain, all of which is just enough to handle everything in Goblinwatch. It's a little scary, especially if someone's knocked out earlier than expected, but it's really consistent (and barely loses time: picking up the golem as part of the Wizard promotion only makes this go faster, too).

So that it doesn't take forever to pickpocket Tolberti, we grab stealing mastery. Getting both expert and master is only a small detour and saves a lot of retry trouble down the road.

Other than that it's about the same (minus glitches obviously). Some miscellaneous notes:
- I timed it a few ways, but AFAIK jumping doesn't save time. I swear it DOES look like you go faster, so it must just be an optical illusion.
- Moving in north and east directions is slow, whereas moving in south and west directions is fast. I have no idea the developers managed to overlook a bug like this, but there you go. Interestingly, the speed decrease is less in hardware mode, making the run fastest with that setting.
- By picking up Telekinesis we can use it to shortcut some of the travel time, especially in Celeste. In the above run I missed clicking the Bracada Desert's inn correctly, but that's also an available timesave.
- You'd expect Telekinesis to work on the petrified dwarves, and it does! But only in software mode. The timesave here is not worth time lost elsewhere.
- You want to spend a little time well-glitching your wizard, if only to get more SP for Telekinesis (and HP to survive long enough to cast it).
- I looked into using Telekinesis to save time in Temple of Dark but there's so much going on and the trap hurts a ton, so it's almost never going to work out in your favor.
- To emulate the ridiculous Lloyd's Beacon usage in the segmented run, we grab the Temple in a Bottle instead. This mercifully brings back followers, at which point it's a simple matter of teleporting to Celeste to finish the game.

I think that's everything. If there's something you see in the video that I missed, just let me know. As for a potential time, I think this run could be a 43:XX with the current route, MAYBE a 42:XX with even better luck than the run here.

Wanted to post in the M&M7 thread because I've been working on it as an RTA run. Crazy, right? I thought so too when I started by adapting the segmented strats. But after finding a real, bonafide glitch (and thanks to Adiiihhhh in finding creative ways to abuse it) I've gotten a run down to 45 minutes!

First off, the run:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkLs8J2nNuk

There are numerous small errors (and one time where I click out of the screen, just fantastic), but really good luck overall outweighs all of them so it's my current best.

The most important part of this run, and the reason this game is now RTA-viable, is what we've called the save-buffer glitch. By loading the game and buffering an action, said action will be performed immediately upon load. It's so immediate, in fact, that some things haven't finished loading into the game! This comes handy for two reasons:
- If you buffer a save going into a new area and then load with a buffered action, the action will occur before the game takes into account enemy surroundings. In short, that means you can cast Invisibility in places you're not supposed to. This can theoretically be useful all over the place, though for the most part it's reserved for Tunnels to Eeofel (not that you NEED it with the current RTA setup but the segmented might get away with one scroll use) and The Lincoln. Being able to avoid taking damage in The Lincoln is why this run is RTA-viable, by the way: trying to survive that section, even with three super-tough monks, takes a lot of luck and reloading.
- Walls that move in response to some trigger aren't always loaded in time. As it turns out, the wall that opens the exit to Halls of Mist is one such wall, and you can use Telekinesis to access the momentarily-visible exit a few steps after entering. This shaves a good three minutes off the run all by itself.

With the above glitch in effect, we don't need HP to survive The Lincoln, and we don't need HP to survive Halls of Mist. Where do we need it? I've found the next-deadliest area to be Castle Gloaming in The Pit. We could be invisible for that, but since we're already getting Telekinesis it's a good deal faster to enter the castle via that and hope for the best inside. Other than that you'll need a little for Colony Zod to take out Xenofex, though the spawns aren't typically too bad.

Because we don't need so much HP, we can afford to drop a monk. The best class to add in place of the monk, at least in an RTA route, is a Sorceror or a Druid: these two classes are capable of learning elemental Mastery at first promotion, which is the earliest we can possibly get it. The alternative to this is to grab 5+ invisibility scrolls and at least one telekinesis scroll, which is another reason RTA was considered unreasonable. I actually worked out a "mage route" before finding the above glitch but had found it even more impossible to survive Lincoln so I'd scrapped it at the time, but it came in handy once Lincoln was trivialized.

As for which class, Druid could theoretically be faster but you have to be REALLY lucky with the chest for the Priest promotion quest (you need to do that in order to access one of the prayer sites for Greater Druid). Thus, the consensus between Adiiihhhh and myself has been to go Sorceror instead: this way you have a free Wizard Eye early on which can be helpful. Wizard promotion quest is to run around collecting golem parts: these are already waiting to be picked up regardless of quest initiation (like any quest where the purpose is to find an item) so you grab them, along with a bunch of gold and horseshoes before turning in the quest. Horseshoes are needed not only to level up air magic to mastery, but for a couple extra points to survive Tunnels of Eeofel in one Invis casting as well. I could probably do with a few less, now that I think about it, but it's worth getting a few to be safe in the tunnels.

Once the Wizard stuff is out of the way, we prepare ourselves to take on Goblinwatch. This is another aspect that the segmented run can improve upon: saving Goblinwatch until after Eeofel forces a third trip to Barrow Downs, but we can shorten it to two if there's a way to clean out your castle early. I figured out that Erathia contains Heroism and Day of the Gods shrines, as well as a +50 might fountain, all of which is just enough to handle everything in Goblinwatch. It's a little scary, especially if someone's knocked out earlier than expected, but it's really consistent (and barely loses time: picking up the golem as part of the Wizard promotion only makes this go faster, too).

So that it doesn't take forever to pickpocket Tolberti, we grab stealing mastery. Getting both expert and master is only a small detour and saves a lot of retry trouble down the road.

Other than that it's about the same (minus glitches obviously). Some miscellaneous notes:
- I timed it a few ways, but AFAIK jumping doesn't save time. I swear it DOES look like you go faster, so it must just be an optical illusion.
- Moving in north and east directions is slow, whereas moving in south and west directions is fast. I have no idea the developers managed to overlook a bug like this, but there you go. Interestingly, the speed decrease is less in hardware mode, making the run fastest with that setting.
- By picking up Telekinesis we can use it to shortcut some of the travel time, especially in Celeste. In the above run I missed clicking the Bracada Desert's inn correctly, but that's also an available timesave.
- You'd expect Telekinesis to work on the petrified dwarves, and it does! But only in software mode. The timesave here is not worth time lost elsewhere.
- You want to spend a little time well-glitching your wizard, if only to get more SP for Telekinesis (and HP to survive long enough to cast it).
- I looked into using Telekinesis to save time in Temple of Dark but there's so much going on and the trap hurts a ton, so it's almost never going to work out in your favor.
- To emulate the ridiculous Lloyd's Beacon usage in the segmented run, we grab the Temple in a Bottle instead. This mercifully brings back followers, at which point it's a simple matter of teleporting to Celeste to finish the game.

I think that's everything. If there's something you see in the video that I missed, just let me know. As for a potential time, I think this run could be a 43:XX with the current route, MAYBE a 42:XX with even better luck than the run here.

gammadragon

2016-03-05 11:08:18 pm

Might be magic...

Awesome, I'm going to watch the run soon. I hope that it can even become faster than the current segmented run!

kiri

Edit history:

kiri: 2016-03-11 03:35:08 am

2016-03-10 03:47:53 am

Wow guys. That is an impressive routing and overall performance.
Let me process all those informations and try to provide any helpful insight that I may remind from my previously segmented run attempts.