Might and Magic 8: Day of the Destroyer

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2012-07-13 09:35:22 am

2012-07-13 09:34:42 am

INTJ

Ah... I suspected that much - unless there are no other difficulties, this is rather unreasonable for a SS ^^

Edit: Also, did you try to play around with the turning-option? This may help navigating a little

MUGG

2012-07-13 10:56:25 am

TASer

Was the 29 minute run you did a single segment? I would much much prefer a single segment run over a segmented run...

gammadragon

2012-07-13 06:35:42 pm

Might be magic...

Yagamoth: With the turning options, I have to have it on "smooth" as both the 16x and 32x are impossible on my computer. Reminds me of those old games with "spin" traps Tongue

MUGG: The 29 min run was a single video, but it could definitely be done much faster than that as I included a lot of failed attempts and loaded savegames. However, there are a couple of places quite far in where it can go spectacularly wrong, like at Escaton's Crystal. I was really lucky to get through on my first attempt there, in my previous tries it took about 50. Not sure if I have the patience for that Tongue

gammadragon

2012-07-14 07:41:27 am

Might be magic...

Run completed (18m 45s):

There are probably a few places where I may have been able to save a second or two. Constructive criticism welcome!

Yagamoth

Edit history:

Yagamoth: 2012-07-14 10:08:37 am

Yagamoth: 2012-07-14 10:07:36 am

2012-07-14 10:06:45 am

INTJ

Overall, I really like the run ^^

I have a few pointers where you might be able to improve. I know how finicky and awkward this game controls, so I'm not sure how reasonable my suggestions are:

- Do you really need to distribute the stat points in the beginning? I don't know where the timing would start, but potentially you might get aways without redistributing the stats
- Maybe try getting through the Air Portal with less Champions
- After you got Cauri, wouldn't it be faster to town portal directly out to the earth plane after you got the Fire Stone?
- If you would actually go to the Water plane afterwards, you wouldn't have to visit the fountain again since you didn't lose the gold
- Further, Using Town Portal in general instead of dying, wouldn't that set you a bit further ahead in Ravenshore?
- Do you really need Telekinesis? (If you can operate buttons and levers with it, you may want to think about using this as a quickcast)
- I'm not sure about the days and travels in the game, did you try to optimize them so you don't have to wait too long?
- Overall a bit more refining on the pathing, especially on the long flying parts (Again, I don't know how much is possible with the controls - but the later segments look much better)
- Does jumping actually benefit you? o.o
- Releasing the Air Elemental: You might be able to use "jump" earlier already to get up faster
- Is releasing the fire elemental last really faster? I mean, it's certainly harder to navigate and I'm not sure whether you could survive going outside. Also, I don't know about the overworld map length. But according to your segments it took you roughly 31 Seconds to get to the Earth 'Release' and a bit more than 20 to get the Fire 'Release'

So far - Really fast progress, I like it ^^

Overall, I really like the run ^^

I have a few pointers where you might be able to improve. I know how finicky and awkward this game controls, so I'm not sure how reasonable my suggestions are:

- Do you really need to distribute the stat points in the beginning? I don't know where the timing would start, but potentially you might get aways without redistributing the stats
- Maybe try getting through the Air Portal with less Champions
- After you got Cauri, wouldn't it be faster to town portal directly out to the earth plane after you got the Fire Stone?
- If you would actually go to the Water plane afterwards, you wouldn't have to visit the fountain again since you didn't lose the gold
- Further, Using Town Portal in general instead of dying, wouldn't that set you a bit further ahead in Ravenshore?
- Do you really need Telekinesis? (If you can operate buttons and levers with it, you may want to think about using this as a quickcast)
- I'm not sure about the days and travels in the game, did you try to optimize them so you don't have to wait too long?
- Overall a bit more refining on the pathing, especially on the long flying parts (Again, I don't know how much is possible with the controls - but the later segments look much better)
- Does jumping actually benefit you? o.o
- Releasing the Air Elemental: You might be able to use "jump" earlier already to get up faster
- Is releasing the fire elemental last really faster? I mean, it's certainly harder to navigate and I'm not sure whether you could survive going outside. Also, I don't know about the overworld map length. But according to your segments it took you roughly 31 Seconds to get to the Earth 'Release' and a bit more than 20 to get the Fire 'Release'

So far - Really fast progress, I like it ^^

MUGG

2012-07-14 10:38:35 am

TASer

I really love the new run as well. I wouldn't have believed you can beat this game in less than 20 minutes.
Like in the previous run, however, I couldn't help but wonder if you can't leave Escaton's palace some other way than walking back to the entrance... I guess it's not possible.

I have an off-topic question: Does age of a character affect anything? Is there a threshold after which the age doesn't increase any more?

gammadragon

2012-07-14 08:48:44 pm

Might be magic...

Quote from Yagamoth:

- Do you really need to distribute the stat points in the beginning? I don't know where the timing would start, but potentially you might get aways without redistributing the stats

From what I understand, the timing for official speedruns starts after character creation. Having said that, there are not really many places in the run where a lot of hit points are actually useful for the main character. In the air castle it's usually a one-hit-kill from an air elemental, so endurance does seem pretty pointless.

Quote from Yagamoth:

- Maybe try getting through the Air Portal with less Champions

Doing it with less than four chars would probably be a one in a million run. Even with four chars it's probably about one in a thousand. I'm debating whether it's actually any faster trying to get the air heart without Cauri. The only real amount of time saved is the travel time from Alvar fountain to Cauri's statue, as Town Portal makes it pretty quick to get to Alvar. The time it takes to get the three followers and dismiss them probably saves about 10s from the total run and makes that segment much, much harder to pull off. It does make it more interesting to watch though Smiley

Quote from Yagamoth:

- After you got Cauri, wouldn't it be faster to town portal directly out to the earth plane after you got the Fire Stone?

Not possible, as Cauri can only get Master level Water Magic skill, meaning that Town Portal only works when there are no hostiles around (similar to Invisibility). At Grand Master level it works near hostiles but dark elves can't achieve that level.

Quote from Yagamoth:

- If you would actually go to the Water plane afterwards, you wouldn't have to visit the fountain again since you didn't lose the gold

True if Town Portal was an option, but because it's not we have to die to get out of every plane quickly.

Quote from Yagamoth:

- Do you really need Telekinesis? (If you can operate buttons and levers with it, you may want to think about using this as a quickcast)

That's a good thought - as it turns out, we don't need Telekinesis because if we are lucky then the big Juggernauts kindly roll out of our way :). Using it cancels invisibility, but it would be pretty useful in some situations though. Like if we make the last prison to visit the earth prison, we could use Telekinesis to free the air lord, saving a few seconds walking time. I wonder if it could be put to good use in the air prison too?

Quote from Yagamoth:

- I'm not sure about the days and travels in the game, did you try to optimize them so you don't have to wait too long?

No. You just made me think carefully about it though... It might be faster to get the water heart before getting Cauri, because we arrive back at Ravenshore on a Saturday and the coach leaves for Garrote Gorge on Sunday. That's two days less that we have to rest and we don't need Cauri for the water heart anyway (in fact, if anything she probably slows us down by dying too slowly :P). After getting the water heart, next time we are in Ravenshore it's Sunday again and we need to wait only one more day for the coach to Alvar.

Quote from Yagamoth:

- Overall a bit more refining on the pathing, especially on the long flying parts (Again, I don't know how much is possible with the controls - but the later segments look much better)

True, a couple of the paths were not optimal (Cauri and Ironsand Desert for example). Some of the paths look a bit funny but in occasionally it was because I needed to cast Invisibility with no hostiles around (when circles turn green)

Quote from Yagamoth:

- Does jumping actually benefit you? o.o

I was trying to figure this out actually. After measuring the video frames I came to the conclusion that it was a grand total of 3 frames quicker (1/10 of a second) to jump the whole way down a corridor, which was probably just due to slightly different starting position. It's weird though because the whole movement system in MM8 seems really odd - moving one way down a corridor seems slower than going the opposite way for some strange reason.

Quote from Yagamoth:

- Releasing the Air Elemental: You might be able to use "jump" earlier already to get up faster

Do you mean the Earth Lord in the Air Prison? Possibly, it might make a small difference.

Quote from Yagamoth:

- Is releasing the fire elemental last really faster? I mean, it's certainly harder to navigate and I'm not sure whether you could survive going outside. Also, I don't know about the overworld map length. But according to your segments it took you roughly 31 Seconds to get to the Earth 'Release' and a bit more than 20 to get the Fire 'Release'

Good point - if the fiery floor can be survived then it would be faster to do the earth prison last, saving about 7 seconds

Quote from MUGG:

I couldn't help but wonder if you can't leave Escaton's palace some other way than walking back to the entrance

Potentially another death could teleport us to Ravenshore, but then we would have to go back through the crystal again. Here's another situation where the Lloyd's Beacon spell would be hugely useful, but Cauri can't get it. I doubt if we could get a Lich follower as well, because they usually only join once the alliance quest is complete. Maybe a Wand of Beacons? Escaton's palace is also the most boring part of the run, would be great to skip bits wherever possible. If we could use that "Pass Through Doors" glitch it could make the whole thing much faster

One other thing I'm going to look into is whether I can change the key mappings to make things faster. At the moment I'm using the default keys which are definitely not optimal for a speedrun. Having to jump from the keypad to the mouse slows things down considerably. I'll try to get a layout that puts everything within reach of WASD if I can.

[quote="Yagamoth"]- Do you really need to distribute the stat points in the beginning? I don't know where the timing would start, but potentially you might get aways without redistributing the stats[/quote]
From what I understand, the timing for official speedruns starts after character creation. Having said that, there are not really many places in the run where a lot of hit points are actually useful for the main character. In the air castle it's usually a one-hit-kill from an air elemental, so endurance does seem pretty pointless.

[quote="Yagamoth"]- Maybe try getting through the Air Portal with less Champions[/quote]
Doing it with less than four chars would probably be a one in a million run. Even with four chars it's probably about one in a thousand. I'm debating whether it's actually any faster trying to get the air heart without Cauri. The only real amount of time saved is the travel time from Alvar fountain to Cauri's statue, as Town Portal makes it pretty quick to get to Alvar. The time it takes to get the three followers and dismiss them probably saves about 10s from the total run and makes that segment much, much harder to pull off. It does make it more interesting to watch though :)

[quote="Yagamoth"]- After you got Cauri, wouldn't it be faster to town portal directly out to the earth plane after you got the Fire Stone?[/quote]
Not possible, as Cauri can only get Master level Water Magic skill, meaning that Town Portal only works when there are no hostiles around (similar to Invisibility). At Grand Master level it works near hostiles but dark elves can't achieve that level.

[quote="Yagamoth"]- If you would actually go to the Water plane afterwards, you wouldn't have to visit the fountain again since you didn't lose the gold[/quote]
True if Town Portal was an option, but because it's not we have to die to get out of every plane quickly.

[quote="Yagamoth"]- Do you really need Telekinesis? (If you can operate buttons and levers with it, you may want to think about using this as a quickcast)[/quote]
That's a good thought - as it turns out, we don't need Telekinesis because if we are lucky then the big Juggernauts kindly roll out of our way :). Using it cancels invisibility, but it would be pretty useful in some situations though. Like if we make the last prison to visit the earth prison, we could use Telekinesis to free the air lord, saving a few seconds walking time. I wonder if it could be put to good use in the air prison too?

[quote="Yagamoth"]- I'm not sure about the days and travels in the game, did you try to optimize them so you don't have to wait too long?[/quote]
No. You just made me think carefully about it though... It might be faster to get the water heart before getting Cauri, because we arrive back at Ravenshore on a Saturday and the coach leaves for Garrote Gorge on Sunday. That's two days less that we have to rest and we don't need Cauri for the water heart anyway (in fact, if anything she probably slows us down by dying too slowly :P). After getting the water heart, next time we are in Ravenshore it's Sunday again and we need to wait only one more day for the coach to Alvar.

[quote="Yagamoth"]- Overall a bit more refining on the pathing, especially on the long flying parts (Again, I don't know how much is possible with the controls - but the later segments look much better)[/quote]
True, a couple of the paths were not optimal (Cauri and Ironsand Desert for example). Some of the paths look a bit funny but in occasionally it was because I needed to cast Invisibility with no hostiles around (when circles turn green)

[quote="Yagamoth"]- Does jumping actually benefit you? o.o[/quote]
I was trying to figure this out actually. After measuring the video frames I came to the conclusion that it was a grand total of 3 frames quicker (1/10 of a second) to jump the whole way down a corridor, which was probably just due to slightly different starting position. It's weird though because the whole movement system in MM8 seems really odd - moving one way down a corridor seems slower than going the opposite way for some strange reason.

[quote="Yagamoth"]- Releasing the Air Elemental: You might be able to use "jump" earlier already to get up faster[/quote]
Do you mean the Earth Lord in the Air Prison? Possibly, it might make a small difference.

[quote="Yagamoth"]- Is releasing the fire elemental last really faster? I mean, it's certainly harder to navigate and I'm not sure whether you could survive going outside. Also, I don't know about the overworld map length. But according to your segments it took you roughly 31 Seconds to get to the Earth 'Release' and a bit more than 20 to get the Fire 'Release'[/quote]
Good point - if the fiery floor can be survived then it would be faster to do the earth prison last, saving about 7 seconds

[quote="MUGG"]I couldn't help but wonder if you can't leave Escaton's palace some other way than walking back to the entrance[/quote]
Potentially another death could teleport us to Ravenshore, but then we would have to go back through the crystal again. Here's another situation where the Lloyd's Beacon spell would be hugely useful, but Cauri can't get it. I doubt if we could get a Lich follower as well, because they usually only join once the alliance quest is complete. Maybe a Wand of Beacons? Escaton's palace is also the most boring part of the run, would be great to skip bits wherever possible. If we could use that "Pass Through Doors" glitch it could make the whole thing much faster

One other thing I'm going to look into is whether I can change the key mappings to make things faster. At the moment I'm using the default keys which are definitely not optimal for a speedrun. Having to jump from the keypad to the mouse slows things down considerably. I'll try to get a layout that puts everything within reach of WASD if I can.

gammadragon

2012-07-14 09:49:13 pm

Might be magic...

Interesting things of note:

* You can find scrolls of Invisibility (I bought one from the Shadowspire magic shop). The spell cast this way lasts for 50 minutes game time and still has the restriction that it cannot be cast near hostiles.

* A google search found this items list, which shows there is no "Wand of Beacons" in the game: http://ns3.gamer.com.tw/gemread.php?brd=Might_Magic&f=F0SLTP5Q&n=7

Yagamoth

2012-07-15 03:56:56 am

INTJ

A wand of Beacons would've been fairly awkward to use I imagine ^^

I have to admit, I expected the "Earth Release" in the Earthy-Looking-Thing, I don't remember which elemental has to be freed in which zone ^^;

Also, I noticed the varying speeds aswell when I played it... It seems really weird at times. But usually I thought, it would be because I was in a place who was much bigger (such as the dragon caves)..
Can you actually rebind the Keys somehow? The standard setup is extremely awkward- true ^^;

gammadragon

2012-07-15 04:09:49 am

Might be magic...

Quote from Yagamoth:

Can you actually rebind the Keys somehow? The standard setup is extremely awkward- true ^^;

Yep, most keys can be rebound through the main menu. I've got a better setup now but it will take some time to get used to it.

Yagamoth

2012-07-15 04:12:14 am

INTJ

Oh my god... I didn't even know that xD

Mr. Nevoli

2012-07-30 05:27:58 pm

You play to win the game!

After seeing this discussion I decided to try running it. I used to absolutely hate the fire castle, but I never realized how painful trying to get the Earth Heart can be.

I got the air heart with one party member, using invisibility. On the way I had swooped down and got Cauri. The fire went really well and well the water is a piece of cake whenever, but every time I go to get the Earth heart something happens and I am massacred.

Getting past the hearts is the hard part. The rest of the game is pretty easy in comparison.

Yagamoth

2012-07-30 06:04:02 pm

INTJ

Oh, nice, another one trying to go for it Smiley

Hm... Is that a different route? oô..

Mr. Nevoli

2012-07-30 07:45:53 pm

You play to win the game!

I just had a thought. Would the time spent dismissing and re-hiring Cauri outweigh the amount of time it takes for her to die? Because in that case if she is just needed to cast invisibility then she can be dismissed and when you grab the crystal you will die in one or two hits, and the add spot is between the re-spawn point and the stables....sort of.

Yagamoth

2012-07-31 03:59:50 pm

INTJ

Interesting thought.. Really interesting actually, since that would also keep her armor in shape which may help later on.. I guess, it's a case to case issue - really interesting oô

Mr. Nevoli

2012-07-31 09:44:06 pm

You play to win the game!

Is there any particular reason that you take the route that you do in the Earth plane gammadragon? I have been going to the right after the first two boulders at the entrance and just following the main path to the same area.

I wanted to do a run of this after I had found out about the skipping of the Alliance quest, but did nothing really until my brother said he was coming to visit. This was a game we both really have liked to play for a long time, so I started looking for stuff to help because I was going to try a single segment run thinking it wouldn't be so bad. I could blow his mind a little bit maybe. That was until I saw the amount of luck it would take to try and pull it off. I'm not giving up on doing a run, but the difficulty seems tremendous.

Mr. Nevoli

2012-08-01 10:12:11 am

You play to win the game!

And for some reason that I don't really know the air plain, not the castle but just the area outside the castle, moves really really really slowly. It takes almost 3 times the amount of time just to get to the castle as it does to get the heart.

Mr. Nevoli

2012-08-02 01:24:25 pm

You play to win the game!

I was practicing some of the elemental plains today to try to improve my time or see if there was a way to make them easier to accomplish. This has been very frustrating as it seems in the Earth plain the first thing that the crushers want to do is get stuck in the doorway that leads to the elemental heart.

gammadragon

Edit history:

gammadragon: 2012-08-02 11:30:02 pm

2012-08-02 11:29:24 pm

Might be magic...

Wow, single-segment is hardcore. Yeah there is a lot of luck involved... good luck Smiley

There wasn't any real reason that I took that route in the Earth plane, except that I measured it and thought it was the fastest way. I could be wrong though, it's a difficult place to map out due to the vertical tunnels all over the place.

Quote from Mr. Nevoli:

I got the air heart with one party member, using invisibility. On the way I had swooped down and got Cauri.

Do you mean that you had a necromancer or dark elf and got the invisilbility spell? Or did you find a scroll somewhere? And when you got Cauri, I assume she didn't join the party immediately, but went to the Adventurer's Guild?

Quote from Mr. Nevoli:

And for some reason that I don't really know the air plain, not the castle but just the area outside the castle, moves really really really slowly. It takes almost 3 times the amount of time just to get to the castle as it does to get the heart.

That's strange, I've never heard of that issue before. Sometimes movement is weird though, for example it seems to be faster going down a hallway in one direction than to go the other way (like swimming upstream or something)

Quote from Mr. Nevoli:

I was practicing some of the elemental plains today to try to improve my time or see if there was a way to make them easier to accomplish. This has been very frustrating as it seems in the Earth plain the first thing that the crushers want to do is get stuck in the doorway that leads to the elemental heart.

Yep, the Earth plane and the first 5 seconds of Escaton's Crystal were the two main reasons I made mine a multi-segment run. Well, that and the sprint through the Air castle, but if you are using invisibility then that one is a piece of cake.

Wow, single-segment is hardcore. Yeah there is a lot of luck involved... good luck :)

There wasn't any real reason that I took that route in the Earth plane, except that I measured it and thought it was the fastest way. I could be wrong though, it's a difficult place to map out due to the vertical tunnels all over the place.

[quote="Mr. Nevoli"]I got the air heart with one party member, using invisibility. On the way I had swooped down and got Cauri.[/quote]
Do you mean that you had a necromancer or dark elf and got the invisilbility spell? Or did you find a scroll somewhere? And when you got Cauri, I assume she didn't join the party immediately, but went to the Adventurer's Guild?

[quote="Mr. Nevoli"]And for some reason that I don't really know the air plain, not the castle but just the area outside the castle, moves really really really slowly. It takes almost 3 times the amount of time just to get to the castle as it does to get the heart.[/quote]
That's strange, I've never heard of that issue before. Sometimes movement is weird though, for example it seems to be faster going down a hallway in one direction than to go the other way (like swimming upstream or something)

[quote="Mr. Nevoli"]I was practicing some of the elemental plains today to try to improve my time or see if there was a way to make them easier to accomplish. This has been very frustrating as it seems in the Earth plain the first thing that the crushers want to do is get stuck in the doorway that leads to the elemental heart.[/quote]
Yep, the Earth plane and the first 5 seconds of Escaton's Crystal were the two main reasons I made mine a multi-segment run. Well, that and the sprint through the Air castle, but if you are using invisibility then that one is a piece of cake.

Mr. Nevoli

Edit history:

Mr. Nevoli: 2012-08-03 08:19:24 am

Mr. Nevoli: 2012-08-03 08:19:09 am

2012-08-03 08:18:32 am

You play to win the game!

Quote from gammadragon:

Do you mean that you had a necromancer or dark elf and got the invisilbility spell? Or did you find a scroll somewhere? And when you got Cauri, I assume she didn't join the party immediately, but went to the Adventurer's Guild?

I bought an invisibility scroll in Ravenshore before heading to Alvar, and yes she doesn't immediately join your party.

Yagamoth

2012-08-04 06:35:15 am

INTJ

Buying an invisibility scroll... Genious, why didn't I think of this? xD... nice.. Do you even need Cauri at that point, if you can get enough invis scrolls? Smiley

For a single segment I only have to add, that it probably is usually faster to save/reload on tricky parts instead of taking a detour though, since saving/reloading is so fast

Mr. Nevoli

2012-08-04 09:50:04 am

You play to win the game!

When I did my practice run last night I had bought the invisibility scroll and stone to flesh the rescued Cauri on my way to the plain of air. I got the heart with one character, died, then when back in Ravenswood hired Cauri and went back to Alvar to get the money and the spells. One of the problems with it is I usually have to check more than one store as I have almost never had both the stone to flesh and invisibility show up at the same store. Once i get these scrolls the bulk of the luck is in getting through the fire castle and the earth plain. I have a strategy I have been using in the earth plain, but it requires that I have an extra person to absorb damage, and still fails because of the stupid crushers blocking the doors. Thr crystal I usually have good luck with, but i know now that I have said that it will no longer be the case.

My initial timed run was a bit terrible, but I just wanted to get through with it. I had many mistakes and time wasters, and my time was 30:30.

gammadragon

Edit history:

gammadragon: 2012-08-05 02:12:15 am

gammadragon: 2012-08-04 10:56:06 pm

2012-08-04 10:51:35 pm

Might be magic...

That's a good point - buying an invisibility scroll would be faster than hiring all those extra chars like I did. Keep up the good work! 30:30 is pretty good for an initial run.

Edit: By the way I never submitted my speedrun officially as I always felt there was room for improvement (like the invis scroll shortcut you just found). Was planning to get around to improving the run eventually, but you might just beat me to it!

Mr. Nevoli

Edit history:

Mr. Nevoli: 2012-08-04 11:38:43 pm

2012-08-04 11:26:27 pm

You play to win the game!

I will be putting a bit of effort into getting some practice and maybe another run this week. I'm still not really sure about my methods, but so far hadn't thought of much different. I really don't want to have to get the extra person, but i just take too much damage in the earth plane. Oh well.

Edit: Also another note is that my space key has started to refuse to pick up some items such as horseshoes. Nice.

uanime5

2012-08-21 11:37:36 am

Regarding getting over burning floors can you use the vampire's levitate ability? This ability levitates the whole party so they don't trigger traps on the floors so it may work.