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@mrpmiller: I've looked quite heavily into the code that determines advancing from one chapter to another:

Prelude: The only requirement is to get two conversations at the end, one with Fenthick or Desther, one with Fenthick, then complete the conversations naturally. This automatically levels you to level 3 (important now that I'm skipping the trigger to get to level 2). Incidentally, on that subject, I found a setup for the Academy clip that's not exactly reliable, but is at least reliable enough to attempt on a run. Haven't finished a run using it yet, though. This gives me a pretty unusual problem: because I skip the trigger to reach level 2, I only have one sorcerer/wizard complement of hitpoints at the Mysterious Mage, which is not enough to survive Magic Missile. My current solution to this is to cast Daze at him; it goes off first due to the game's perception rules, and if it lands (around a 40% chance), the Mage is dazed long enough to run past him without getting missiled. A 60% chance of run over is pretty nasty, though. At least it's early.

Chapter 1: I haven't found any exploit in Aribeth's conversations here (at least with respect to advancing to chapter 1e). Each of the four components is checked for separately, by its own item tag. Thus, your only choice here is to recover the four items in question. It doesn't matter how you get them, but I don't know of any way (short of debug mode) to produce items without going to a location where they exist in the game world, or running a script that gives them to you.

Chapter 2: The trigger to move onwards only cares that you turn in two journals; turning in the same one twice is fine. This badly breaks the logic of some of the other journal entries, but you don't care about those. (Actually, the logic for the chapter 2 main quests is broken anyway, even if you don't duplicate items. This could make 100% quite awkward.)

Chapter 3: The game has code to prevent you turning in the same Word of Power more than once. However, due to a scripting error, it doesn't run if your Charisma is lower than a certain value (I forget what it is offhand, it's somewhere around 14 though). Naturally, I found this out during a run attempt trying out a higher-Charisma route.

Chapter 4: The only item-based plot gate is on the Chapter 4 Word of Power. This has a different item tag internally than the one from Chapter 3, so sneaking a Chapter 3 Word of Power into the module wouldn't help anyway.

I reinstalled the game recently onto a USB stick in the hope that it would make load times faster, but it actually made them slower, so I put it back onto my hard drive. On another, mildly amusing note, when I was semi-casually completing the game (i.e. I spent about 3 hours) in order to unlock everything that could be unlocked, I managed to die in Astral Pocket of all places, and the "respawn" button isn't disabled. Strangely enough, this doesn't softlock the game, even if you go and die elsewhere in order to reset the respawn point; you can play through the Source Stone again, and when you come to the Inner Sanctum, it's full of spell animations and there's a portal next to where you enter. It does mean that the plot of the game makes absolutely no sense, though (in fact, Haedraline was still asking me to get the Word of Power, and the only evidence that anything had changed in the game world was that Aarin was aware of Maugrim's death; this was probably a consequence of the Aribeth skip).

This is clearly useless for speedrunning, of course, because if you're in Astral Pocket you should just go win the game. It's pretty amusing, though. (I then spent something like 10 minutes trying to recreate it. You have to get hit by the Hand of Morag just as you're running through the portal. The timing is surprisingly tight for something so useless.) If it happens in a real run, by the way, just click on the priest, hit 321, and keep going.
Edit history:
ais523: 2015-01-25 10:20:37 am
ais523: 2015-01-20 04:36:17 pm
ais523: 2015-01-20 04:35:05 pm
And on that subject, I got a new PB. Unpatched OC single segment with resets, 53:41, or 49:22 with load times removed (well, most of them; that figure doesn't contain load times around save-related glitches or around respawning, because the without-loads times were a side effect of some other analysis I was doing). There are a bunch of rounding errors in the load time removal, too, as I measured seconds rather than frames.

Splits (I have these at a per-room level of detail if required, but the per-chapter ones will be more directly comparable to other routes):
Prelude complete: 3:14
Chapter 1 complete: 24:33
Chapter 1e complete: 31:30
Chapter 2 complete: 36:33
Chapter 2e complete: 42:10
Chapter 3 complete: 47:00
Chapter 4 complete: 53:41

That was an average or slightly below-average Prelude run. Chapter 1 mostly went well but Alaefin was terrible, and I had 48 seconds of mistakes and bad luck in the Docks (currently not resetting for things that don't outright force me to change the route, and sometimes not even then, or that'd have been a reset). The rest of the run was fairly solid, nothing special (except a fast Door of Three clip) but nothing too terrible either. The PB status is mostly due to route changes; I think I can do better.

The big saving over my previous runs is to do Peninsula before Blacklake (making the new Chapter 1 order for unpatched Docks, Peninsula, Blacklake, Beggar's Nest). The reason is that because the 10% Barbarian speed boost is the only practical way to gain movement speed in Chapter 1 in unpatched, I can't take three levels of Wizard or Cleric for Invisibility. Everyone hates shopping at Eltoora's because it's so much of a detour. However, the Moonstone Mask also sells Potions of Invisibility, and it's a much smaller detour – if you're going to Peninsula. The only real disadvantage of this area order is that if you want a weapon other than a dagger for Alaefin, you have to buy it off Olgerd rather than having a ready-made Greatsword +1 from Meldanen's. It has other minor advanages, though (e.g. your familiar is summoned at the end of the Docks, and you also want it at the start of the Peninsula, meaning fewer quickrests are required).

Most common places for me to reset, in order:
* Prelude: Academy (Mysterious Mage: Will save: rolls higher than a 7)
* Prelude: Training Halls (possibly the hardest menuing in the game, good thing it's so early)
* Helm's Hold (not farming enough experience, or buying a level in the wrong class and not noticing until it's already been locked in)
* Beggar's Nest: Crypts (has mostly stopped now that I run the long way round the L-shaped trap, I run into that trap far too often)
* Beorunna's Well: Trading Post (upon discovering I forgot to pick up the Dragon Blood in Meldanen's; I can't complete the run without an effective melee weapon)

Slowest rooms (i.e. rooms most worth focusing on for optimization):
* Peninsula: Lair of the Devourer (3:24) [can be improved with more luck but I really need a better strategy for this; I'm planning to test various bizarre options like Set Trap]
* Helm's Hold [ground floor] (2:38) [can I get away with being less than level 17? will it help?]
* Helm's Hold [second floor] (2:28) [where I buy those levels; the fight itself is also quite slow and thus improveable]
* Peninusla: The Pits (1:24 including 7 seconds of bad luck) [this doesn't look that optimizable, it's just a really long level; save 7 seconds by making that Reflex save, I'm buying Lightning Reflexes now to help out]
* Maugrim's Sanctuary (1:09) [I miss Harm]
* Ritual Chamber (1:09) [hi, cutscene so long you can Rest during it]
* Fort Ilkard: Creator Race Ruins (1:01) [get good at the clip, I guess]

That's every room that takes over a minute.

EDIT: Looks like I'm 30 seconds slower than Mejcel on Prelude: Graduation Chamber for no good reason, Mejcel's strat there is just better than mine. I'll have to copy that strat and see if I can get my Prelude time right down. Unpatched Prelude should definitely be beating Diamond, due to the clip.

I'm curious as to whether buying a Barbarian level (probably as level 2) for the early movement speed might be worth it even in Diamond. All those modifiers stack there, after all, and a 10% increase in run speed in Chapter 1 (maybe even later, if it stacks with Monk speed) is going to translate directly to time savings. The disadvantage is having to buy potions, but the movement speed gains might be larger, and Barbarian levels aren't exactly useless for combat either. (You also save a feat on WP martial; not sure how much one feat gains you right now, but maybe there's some creative use for it.) EDIT: Obviously this is a bad idea, I forgot about Extended Expeditious even though I invented it.

Also, given that we're discussing both unpatched and Diamond in this thread, it might be a good idea to get the thread title changed to something more generic. (Especially as I play on v1.11; according to what I've been able to find, this is identically unpatched to v1.10, but was intended for Europe rather than the US.)
Edit history:
Mejcel: 2015-01-24 04:12:09 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-24 01:35:21 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-24 01:34:50 pm
I would also like to route and run HotU, I remember the campaign was really fun playing casually, however it's years since I've played it so I probably need to do a normal playthrough first. (You get to start from level 15! Speeeed!)

For the Graduation Chamber fight, it's the place I think I reset most. I don't know if you have a much slower training (Barbarian?), but I'm happy exiting the room with anything below 1:20, the best time I think I had was 1:10ish. It's a lot of RNG, and you got to react quickly to different situations. The main things to consider are of course getting Aribeth closer to the door, and if possible, skipping the 6s round ending time out where you can't have a dialogue with her. That's something you can't influence a lot though. Usually my order is the same: top-left, bottom-left, bottom-right, and Aribeth usually goes for the top-right mage - wasting time - unless you get lucky. Some things to note: never ever go for the same last mage as Aribeth since she will then try to trigger her conversation, fail due to the round not ending, and end up somewhere middle of the room, not going for her waypoint towards the door. Also, do note that you can move already for the next mage if you see the "Attack Roll: hit" text appear on your console.

Side note: my best prelude times have been when Fenthick & Desther allow me to start dialogue instantly, saving that 6s round end time out. Sometimes actually delaying killing the goblins can save time due to this, but it's (at least for now) really hard to time and therefore a segmented run strategy I'm afraid.

I'll do a few offline runs tonight, speedrunning is still a low priority in my life at the moment. However I'll try to get there (sub 38 or 37??) even if it takes half a year eventually.
Edit history:
Mejcel: 2015-01-24 07:51:07 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-24 07:50:47 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-24 07:50:27 pm
Wow, weird bugs tonight:

1) Out of bounds. Not useful (yet??)



2) My diseased state disappears, and so does Charon??? (I did do the quickrest before properly.)



EDIT: Hahah, this day. A -38,2s run on Chapter 1 done split crashes at Kendrack's Barracks leaving me with +1,00 at the Luskan Tower... Cheesy
Speedrunning's an even lower priority in my life right now. I might get back to actual runs in a bit; for the time being I've mostly confined myself to experiments.

Some bad news: I found a trick that can save over a minute but it's really luck-based and inconsistent. This is what you do: you go into the Alaefin fight, start it as normal, move onto the Intellect Devourer, then remove Daelan from your party using the mouse (drag to top-left and bottom-right; this works during combat), recall out and go do something else (Docks or Blacklake, because neither has much/any combat). Then once that's done, you deathwarp out (I do Blacklake in the intervening time, and deathwarp off a chest in Meldanen's bedroom), then go through the recall portal to get back into the Intellect Devourer fight. Usual result: Daelan is permanently dead, the devourer beats you (it does a ton of damage once it's out of spells), and the run's over. Optimal result: Daelan won the fight while you were gone, and you can just pick up Daelan and the devourer brain and recall out of there.

My training is the same as yours; my first level is taken in Sorcerer for the fast training (it's easily the fastest, tied with Wizard and Bard, although Druid isn't so bad) and because I need to do a familiar clip at level 1. Losing the 10% move speed throughout the Prelude doesn't really hurt given how little running there is now.

I also discovered something to save time on my route: although a little riskier, I get more of a speed gain from taking my glitch-gained levels in Rogue rather than Barbarian. I forgot the #1 rule of RPG speedruns, "always play glass cannons". This doesn't change the route much, it just means that enemies go down faster, which is nice for the small timesaves you get in chapters 3 and 4. (Incidentally, I believe I have to hit level 17 to get enough money from random drops to buy Ravager +4 and scrolls of Time Stop and Weird, which is pretty much the minimum expenditure I can get away with; technically I could still complete the run without Weird but it'd likely be over a minute slower. Perhaps it's possible at level 14 if I'm lucky.) Another advantage of Rogue is that you can use skills to substitute for pretty much all the utility spells like Knock, etc., that would save time.

I've also started buying lots of ranks in Open Lock, rather than just the one. This makes Grommin faster (I think opening the door yourself is faster than letting him do it), locked doors you have to go through faster (chapters 2e and 4), and also means that if you're not feeling lucky, you can run round rather than through in Peninsula: Containment Area (much more consistent, probably a little slower on average though). This requires either Dex 14 or Skill Focus (a common DC to have to hit is 28).

With respect to that out-of-bounds glitch, it looks like you're actually in-bounds but inside a wall. The way the game positions objects appears to be that the game-world is two-dimensional, and everything on the game world is placed at a height that depends on the height of the floor/objects there. So I guess that the wall ejection algorithm broke in a different way from normal. Going through walls is probably easier than going inside them; I wonder if your familiar would be able to clip you out from up there (that rather depends on if the collision algorithm respects height or not).

As for the disease disappearing, this is an intended mechanic. If you pause the video around 00:14 (as you're casting Expeditious), you can just-about still see that you made your save against the disease. (The same message is onscreen for a few frames at 00:11, and later at the top of your scrollback.) The game doesn't print the die roll, though, for some reason (sometimes it doesn't). I'm not sure what happened with Charon, though. (I have noticed several cases where the Luskan Sergeant doesn't spawn, though, and I can't spawn him through conversation later either; in order to help prevent this, I've been completing the conversation with Aarin naturally, which seems to work.)
Edit history:
Mejcel: 2015-01-25 01:32:31 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-25 01:31:10 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-25 01:29:38 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-25 01:29:22 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-25 01:25:40 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-25 01:23:33 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-25 01:23:26 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-25 01:23:21 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-25 01:22:56 pm
Mejcel: 2015-01-25 01:22:31 pm
I see with the glitch videos. Charon actually did spawn and he still had a hitbox, but he was invisible and you couldn't talk to him at all. Weird. Wow, that Devourer trick sounds super interesting, I'll have to try it out!!

Got a new PB: 38:16. Pretty uneven run, I  still count around one and a half minute of execution errors. Here's how it boils down:

Prelude and Blacklake are really solid. Bad execution at Docks clip, I lose 9 seconds. Prison and the Devourer both are pretty good, although I fail a bit with the buffing. Beggar's Nest was really horrible for "a change", I fail crypt clip (-8s), Warrens clip (-21s), fail to cast flame weapon on myself (-6s), die to Gulnan (-6s), and Gulnan heals like twice or so (-10s???). Geez.

Chapter 1E goes gold due to the new Helmite strategy. I'm pretty proud of the setup, and the fight goes almost perfectly. Some 20k of extra XP and minor errors with doors and Desther. Another thing I'll have to add to the run is to identify the cloaks while fighting Desther.

Host Tower, meh. For some reason I don't get the key at the first floor first try and lose 6s. Premature recall from the top costs me 10s, ouch. Should never ever try to pre-recall again.

Word of Power clip isn't really perfect again, but goes somewhat well. At least -6s from that though. It's a long time since I've failed Aribeth clip, but here I do it costing me 12s. I'm just ten seconds ahead going to Chapter 4 and lose so much time on Aribeth, however the Dragons clip goes really, really well now. The familiar dying cost me only 4s, and it's a gold split with over a minute saved in the end. Pretty funny that I finish with 1hp, no idea why the barrier got again spawned before me.

I split a bit late, final time was 38:16,5ish. Sum of bests 35:49 and I feel like I still have a lot golds to make after Chapter 1. New goal sub 37.



http://i.imgur.com/gR0yYBM.png - PB
http://i.imgur.com/PBXpuvD.png - Sum of bests.
Oh wow, I never even thought of pre-recalling on the Host Tower. I suspect it's on the same "once every six seconds at a randomly selected offset" timer that everything in this game seems to be. (I'm almost positive that the barrier is on such a timer, which explains why you sometimes randomly fail it. In unpatched, it's possible to observe the timer and use Lesser Dispel to knock it back down at a time when you know it'll stay down for a while. That was actually on my route for a while but I've discovered faster strategies since.)

I've been identifying the cloaks (and boots, if you're not playing Monk) during the Desther fight for a while. It's often nontrivial, but luckily much of the fight is just "click on Desther and wait for him to die", meaning that neither the mouse nor the keyboard is busy. I've gone back to doing all the levelling during the Desther fight, rather than some of the levels before it, because fewer zombies spawn that way, meaning I spend less time respawning (a while ago, I realised there was no point spending any effort into surviving the Desther fight because respawning costs less time than any of the possible methods for making it safer would). If I'm really lucky, Desther casts Bestow Curse and it lands and gives me infinite Invisibility casts; I can't remember if that happened on my PB, but it persists through anything but a rest/quickrest, and there's basically no reason to do those in chapters 2, 2e or 3 other than refreshing Invisibility casts as it is.

With respect to the Aribeth clip, it's much easier (and goes in a different direction) in unpatched, so I haven't failed that in ages. I have failed DCRing Aribeth once, though, but that was due to lack of attention. The DCR there has been easier ever since I realised I could do it from the outside of the door (bash down the door then run past Aribeth), rather than having to turn round and do it from the inside (which works in more situations but is harder to pull off). DCRing is easier in unpatched generally because the "in combat" state persists longer.

This reminds me that I still have to write my guide to the DCR glitch. Let me write the generalities on the forum before I get distracted (am also planning to write about specific places you can trigger it).

There are several things that start combat, but changes in faction rteputation is not one of them. Thus, if you can see a peaceful NPC (blue mouse-over aura), and they're turned hostile for plot reasons, that isn't in of itself enough to make them attack you. The normal way that the game gets around this engine deficiency is to use a conversation to trigger the change from peaceful to hostile, and have both the change in reputation and an explicit "start trigger" conversation as part of the conversation scripting.

However, neither you nor a monster can be in conversation during combat. The conversations typically have the "change hostile and start combat" trigger if aborted, but not if they never start. Thus, what you have to do is ensure that the combat state blocks the conversation, and the scripting breaks completely; either the monster never becomes hostile, or else it becomes hostile but doesn't attack (because nothing started combat). There are also additional complexities if the monster has allies, which I can't quite remember any more; your position relative to monsters you attack and monsters you don't attack before the monsters are hostile, and the same factors also matter after the monsters are hostile but in a different way. The conclusion is that I managed to break the Old One Cleric fight with nothing more complex than a ranged weapon (no invisibility needed!), and knew why it worked at the time, but it might take me a little longer to re-figure out why it works now. (Luckily I still remember the strat itself, and posted it earlier in the thread; reminder: attack the Cleric with a ranged weapon from the right-hand side of the corridor outside the room, immediately hit the trigger inside the room, then run straight through the fight, slowly enough for the Cleric to follow, and don't start the fight properly until you're near to the gate.)


With respect to Charon, I don't know what happened, but it reminded me of something silly a friend of mine ran into: the portal that you enter via in Source Stone Sanctuary (that you have no reason to use in a run, because it takes you backwards) wasn't marked as indestructible, so it can be blown up with stray fireballs. This doesn't matter much given that you have the Stone of Recall, but it can get quite confusing (I'm not sure if it prevents you re-entering via means other than unrecalling, but my guess is no). Perhaps Charon got involved in the combat somehow, but I'm not sure why it'd make him invisible/uninteractable rather than just dead.
Regards to the pre-recall, I tested it out now. In the video itself you can actually see that it actually succeeded, but haha, I just barely didn't finish the Aarin conversation. So yeah, it's just based on the 6 second timer and it doesn't matter when you recall, the plot will eventually progress. Pre-recall all you want.

This leaving Daelan behind to combat the Devourer trick is really cool. I think Chapter 1 needs to be re-routed eventually to include it. I'm right now trying to test and time it a bit. I feel like it's good to do one cure ingredient before heading to Prison in order to make sure you got enough money for potions, so perhaps Docks -> Peninsula -> Beggar's Nest -> Blacklake -> death warp? I think buffing Daelan up at least with a Potion of Clarity before the fight is a must.
Docks, Peninsula, Blacklake, (very short Peninsula 2), Beggar's Nest is my current order. And yes, the potion of clarity is almost certainly going to be required. (You can't recall at all while Daelan's left behind, because you can't change the recall portal location or you won't be able to get back into the Prison without wasting a ton of time, so you only do one area "inside" Peninsula.)

I guess it's also worth testing whether Grimgnaw is better against an Intellet Devourer than Daelan. We've suddenly reached a point where some condition other than DPS is important in the henchman choices, which is not something I expected at all.
What does Grimgnaw have superior to Daelan?
Not sure, I don't have his stats memorized. If he has that weird DR pierce thing that monks get, it'd definitely be worthwhile. Just having better survivability might help, though. (That said, barbarians have more survivability than monks against physical attacks; monks are better against magical attacks, but Clarity should help thre.)
Do you know if you need to persuade the Former Guards at all? Does the script to possess them kick in while you're gone at all?
My guess would be that it does; unlike most games, in Neverwinter Nights, things typically still happen even why you aren't there.

On the other hand, maybe a sufficiently buffed henchman could kill four guards as well as the Devourer. It's not like they have good stats. That said, I'm not 100% sure that the guards and henchman would actually attack each other; the faction reputation system is really awkwardly fragile.
Ok, I timed it until the Devourer death and I think it will ultimately save time as you mentioned. Not sure it will be a whole minute though. Need more experience with it, I'll try running with it sometime soon.
I'm really bad at that fight, I'd be surprised if it saved less than a minute for me. You have better execution pretty much everywhere in your runs than I do, though (I still haven't got my head around how you can do the chapter 1e glitch with that little pause-buffering), so any attempts by me to say how long something should take are likely inaccurate.

Oh, something I forgot to mention earlier but is probably useless: I found a similarly bugged conversation to that chapter 1e conversation in chapter 1. It's at blacklake zoo, while the tree portal thing is open; you can talk to the animals any number of times for a reward of 20 xp each time. That has got to be too slow to be worth it, though: requiring the portal to be open means it's very out of the way (you can't just clip into the cages, like you could if it worked with the portal closed), and the reward is on a later node of the conversation rather than the first, meaning that you can't just spam mouse clicks. (Not to mention that the amount of xp gained is very low.) Still nice to know it's there, though.
Edit history:
Mejcel: 2015-01-27 02:20:14 pm
Mmh, it seems to me like it is actually less, but probably like at least 20 seconds. I think I'll put this strat still on hold though, I don't feel like grinding it out yet with it's uncertainty since I already reset so much already. I'll definitely add it later when I get some practise and a time I'm happy with with the current strats.

More small things I'll consider: first of all a lore of 15 (+1 from INT = 16) is enough to identify the Cloaks of Movement. There are no rolls involved, it uses a table based on item value.

Leveling up at the devil: I think I'll skip choosing anything else other than +attack feats and just hit Recommended. The +2 saves are nice but I feel like right now the run hasn't got that many saves to make. Maybe I'll some day regret this decision, failing to make a save on an Implosion or a Stunning Fist but for now... I think it just wastes time.
Right. I never know if it's worth the menuing time for Skill Focus (Lore) (unlike you, I need to buy items later in the game, meaning I need to sell items for money; it wastes time if I can't ID them on the run). Perhaps I'll try without sometime and see what happens. (No time for grinding out attempts right now.)
Although Chapter 1 is sadly unbreakable, I found a different method to break the ending conditions of Chapters 2 and 3, which is probably a few seconds faster. Pity it's not really a major discovery, but might help shave some time off the record.

In chapter 3, don't bother duping your Word of Power at the divining pool. Instead, go through the conversation to the point where the "I've found a Word of Power" conversation option shows up. Then drop the Word of Power and continue the conversation. The game can't remove it from inventory because it isn't there, so you can just pick it up and turn it in again. I haven't tested this in Chapter 2, but it should work there.

This doesn't work in Chapter 1. You can keep the reagents by dropping them on the "Tell Aribeth about..." sccreen, but you can't turn the same reagent in twice, so it's pointless. If you try dropping the reagent on the "I've found a reagent" screen instead, the conversation just ends abruptly, and no plot flags change.
Also, given that we're discussing both unpatched and Diamond in this thread, it might be a good idea to get the thread title changed to something more generic. (Especially as I play on v1.11; according to what I've been able to find, this is identically unpatched to v1.10, but was intended for Europe rather than the US.)[/quote]

is v1.11 the first original release version for usa?
I've installed neverwinter nights v1.10 but it keeps asking for play disc even though the play disc is in the drive? what is it causing it to do that? Is because the cd key does not belong to the disc?
Edit history:
ais523: 2015-03-02 04:01:29 pm
v1.10 to v1.17 inclusive are all the same version, but released in different regions (and possibly with different translations). I don't know which was released in which area. They should all be identical for speedrunning, as far as I know.

As for your disk version, if you enter the wrong key, it normally asks for the key rather than the disk. It's possible that your drive is incompatible with the copy protection. (Officially patched versions like Diamond have the copy protection patched out, but unpatched still has full copy protection.)
Edit history:
Mejcel: 2015-03-05 01:01:34 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-04 06:49:59 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-04 06:48:22 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-04 06:45:33 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-04 06:45:01 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-04 06:44:25 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-04 06:43:53 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-04 06:43:15 am
Quote from ais523:
Although Chapter 1 is sadly unbreakable, I found a different method to break the ending conditions of Chapters 2 and 3, which is probably a few seconds faster. Pity it's not really a major discovery, but might help shave some time off the record.

In chapter 3, don't bother duping your Word of Power at the divining pool. Instead, go through the conversation to the point where the "I've found a Word of Power" conversation option shows up. Then drop the Word of Power and continue the conversation. The game can't remove it from inventory because it isn't there, so you can just pick it up and turn it in again. I haven't tested this in Chapter 2, but it should work there.

This doesn't work in Chapter 1. You can keep the reagents by dropping them on the "Tell Aribeth about..." sccreen, but you can't turn the same reagent in twice, so it's pointless. If you try dropping the reagent on the "I've found a reagent" screen instead, the conversation just ends abruptly, and no plot flags change.


This is confirmed not working on Diamond version unfortunately. The game script removes all Words of Power from the ground (however they do appear again in the Divine Pool or however it's called - duping the item - but that's ultimately slower)

Two new riskier strategies found though: first one saves around 10s in Prelude Stables. If you don't heal after the mage and instead just do two quick fireballs with the wand, you're able to hit some kind of a sweet spot in the combat round times, presumably starting the round at the same time as Desther and Fenthick do. This means that you're able to have a dialogue straight after you finish the second fireball, and don't have to wait for the round to end (max 6s save). Also, you skip the healing, which is yet again another max 6s save. What's better, even if enemies spawn behind you, you're 99% of the time still able to dialogue normally, since they don't have time to initiate combat before you initiate dialogue! Sometimes Fenthick's dialogue gets interrupted (like in the example video), but you can resume it immediately. 3:04 prelude time is pretty sick.



The second one is in Warrens of the Damned: I noticed I actually can skip a rest plus another combat wait time, saving around 12 seconds. If I memorise Flame Weapon before resting in the entrance of Warrens and yolo the Warrens skip not using Invisibility, I still have one Expeditious Retreat left for Chapter 1E, and I don't have to rest at all before Gulnan. Just got to hope the Animated Armors don't interrupt my Warrens familiar clip, from what I've tested it happens sometimes but maybe only 1/5th of the time. See for example from 17m35s (I don't know how to link youtube timestamps so that they work):

Code:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDzf9xzc91Y&t=1055


and notice the extra Expeditious Retreat plus useless rest after recalling.
Only you would think of doing that Warrens skip without Invisibility. (That said, I can do the unpatched version of the Warrens skip visibly, but that's a much easier skip than the Diamond version. The main risk is that if I'm not very fast, my familiar ends up in combat.)

That Stables strategy probably isn't going to work properly in unpatched, because the combat dialogue suppression lasts longer. That said, I have spare spell slots in my unpatched runs because Expeditious Retreat doesn't exist, and so there's nothing obvious to use my L1 spells on. I've taken to learning Burning Hands and clearing out the Stables with that; it's probably not quite as fast as the Diamond method, but it's still pretty fast. (Also, I only heal in Stables if something goes wrong. Because I skip almost the entirety of Academy and nothing attacks you before that point, I'm either going into Stables on full health (35% of the time), or dying to the Mysterious Mage (65% of the time).)
Edit history:
Mejcel: 2015-03-05 03:40:43 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-05 03:36:28 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-05 03:32:41 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-05 03:30:42 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-05 03:29:26 am
New WR!



Bad RNG in Docks, getting blinded and Daelan blocking my familiar before Callik clip - I lose 18 seconds. Some bad Prison RNG and weird AI mechanics, however in the Devourer fight I land three (!) 30ish criticals and ultimately have one of the best fights I've ever had yet. Some hiccups at the XP Demon as well as leveling up.

Host tower was terrible. I lose 18 seconds due to an unfortunate Attack of Opportunity in the first floor, and pick up the wrong key in 6th floor so at first I don't end up in Pinnacle but rather 8th floor, losing 10 seconds. First try Word of Power clip in chapter three for which I'm happy. 20 second loss due to not getting the Dragons' clip first try, but that's about it. A lot of minor execution errors and brain freezes simply due to lack of practise (this was my fourth run since 1,5 months).

Sum of bests 35:33.
Edit history:
Mejcel: 2015-03-06 11:11:15 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-06 11:05:42 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-06 11:01:22 am
Mejcel: 2015-03-05 03:29:41 am
Regarding HotU by the way, I'm just starting to look for possible routing. If anyone has any experience, please share!

So far I'm through with Chapter 1, it's fairly straightforward and really fast. I don't have any clue about character creation yet, although it of course will be some combination of Wizard/Monk yet again (1/14 Wizard/Monk or 3/12 Wizard/Monk though, -> the difference is if I want the spell Invisibility? How about Bull's Strength and/or Endurance?)


Anyway, here's my pastebin notes so far:

http://pastebin.com/uDmiWAC1

No idea about Chapter 2 yet, does anyone know the conditions to finish it? Any XP bugs available in the game?