Speedruns!

[dislekcia]

Whoa, please tell me you have a video for that?

[Spleen]

[William]

[Lynzkar]

[Spleen]

[Spleen]

Added some times, just the Normal levels for now: been working on Any% and I've got it to 2:05:18!
Really want to take it down to sub-2h and I bet that finding SMM or Tomithy instead of THREE FRANKS would help, WHY WOULD YOU GUYS MAKE THAT A BOSS I HATE HIM SO MUCH but still managed to shave off 5 minutes from a no-Frank run so idk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkCcpF2EV8A

[Tinker]

Wow, that's fast!

But also insane... "I lost a minute..." damn, we play so differently! I cooked lunch during today's daily, and played the map in, like, 10 steps (and took more than 10x time you did). Kept jumping up to check the rice and all. I have individual runs that took longer than 2 hours 5 minutes. (Mostly due to interruptions, but still!)

I agree that LEMMISI is generally underappreciated. It's one of the best glyphs in the game. May be *the* best glyph (though there you'll have folks chiming about about WEYTWUT, CYDSTEPP or whatever, so let's keep it at "one of"... ).

If you have your potions anyway, Spoon might as well be an auto-purchase. Chances of you missing that GP later on are low, and the +1 base damage can be significant especially for a Berserker.

EDIT: That BC misclick was wicked... Somehow misclicks in speedrun playthroughs are so epic. I remember TheSchachter's minimum-runs playthrough, he managed to get to Gaan-Telet without misclicking... and then died misclicking on *Horatio*. I'm sure dislekcia smiled joyfully at that point in time...

Also, it's remarkable how much specific preparation a speedrun like this must take. I mean, you play really fast, but it's more than that; you've clearly practiced each level, and have a screenplay you go by, in terms of what order to unlock stuff in, what order to take the maps in, and generally what build to use for each map (sometimes I was like "wow I'd never pick that"). Like Bloodmage for BC and Labyrinth... It's great to be able to tap into the blackspace you can't reach (due to bridge guardian or labyrinthine walls), but BC is small (about 20% less blackspace than normal), and Labyirnth has Rex (well you know this part! ).

EDIT2: You really dislike GG! I was thinking whether it's a playstyle thing, or whether he is just unfit for speedruns, but as much as I can tell, GG is not explicitly bad for speedruns. Darvin, who is as close as it gets to a speedy player from among the regulars, uses GG regularly for Dailies and usually gets one of the best times... So maybe it's just preference. It's just weird for me, in a way, because a lot of players absolutely love GG, and not just the XP-mongers. (I use GG more often than Taurog for *Warmonger* runs. Heck, I use him sometimes on Elf Wizards instead of Mystera. He's my general prep guy whenever I just play casually or do a flaming run. He is considered to be one of the best starting deities for Gaan-Telet... ) Not trying to get you to change your playstyle or anything, it's just that it's so weird, I don't think I've seen anyone dislike GG before...

[Spleen]

So I'm finally back and will be doing the any% again, etc etc, somehow forgot to check the site after a month then the whole game kinda just slipped out of my mind...

But more importantly: THE GLOWING GUARDIAN RANT
Half of it is speedrun stuff and the other half is other stuff, so

First time I played the East I was doing priest as you do, unlocked GG asap on my first quest, drank potions for blahblah and got punished into oblivion, never touched him casually again. Why?
I know exactly what my limits are when I'm using health and mana potions, 40% is great, and they even remove poison/mana burn, and gnomes are one of the most prolific classes (especially in speedruns where you can't find orcs) so of course I'm gonna be using my mana potions but nope can't do that, 10 piety donk. How does GG help you in this? 10 piety refresh and 10(+5) for a 35% healing on both. Oh, and they both clog up your inventory with a miniscule 1% resist bead.
I don't know my limits on 35% healing, I know 40%, but not at all 35%, and with scaling piety, and with it being both not just one, maybe I'm just dumb but I can never work out the math on it rightly.

I don't like how you can't desecrate his altar; JJ's unlucky coin flip even is better than his 100% wipe!

For speedruns you'll pretty much never get off his Enlightenment and if you do it's for like 2/3 beads.

Enlightenment costs 100 piety and imo is totally inferior to JJ's 80 piety Avatar; I'd much rather a resist wipe than 5 extra mana (unless I'm full spellcaster ham which does happen, I admit, but a guaranteed refill is often still preferable to me)
It costing 100 means that you are often just a bit short or a ton over the limit, so piety is screwy either way. With Avatar, you can go level up -> avatar for 3 total bars of stats. with enlightenment, you really can't do this, you only get the 2 bars of stats you would have anyway, albeit slightly longer bars.

You can't just go for beads then instantly into Enlightenment because it costs 100; a reason I do really like him with Paladin, for the 80 cost.

(my other totally controversial opinion) I really like Taurog, I like to go full SMASH with him or I like to just dip in, get a top-tier sword and breastplate, fill up and do whatever. So on Gaan-Telet, vicious or otherwise, speedrun or otherwise, (except paladin come on they're so op with GG) I would always a deity other than GG: Taurog > JJ > Mystera for me.

GG's level-down may allow you to go big, but it also cuts down fireball damage and regen. for speedruns, totally unviable, you don't level up to 11, it's just a damage/regen loss. Casually, for me, I still don't like it because I really enjoy my fireball/regen antics, the two things hit by it.

Absolution is good I do like absolution a lot, but it still clogs inventory which can be iffy.

Honestly the main use I ever have for GG is a final-hour refill using Protection (except for Goatperson of course) in order to use up all my remaining piety. To continue the JJ comparison, 80 piety with him is 100% refill, but 90 piety going into GG is 10->15->20 for 105% refills, and you could even have 70 piety and a mana potion, so this can sometimes be more versatile, as I said my main usage of him.

I totally get that he has his uses, I would have NEVER cleared Naga City with Goatperson without the prep, but the potions are my big issue with him, limiting my spike potential (and I really really love spiking) and not always refunding me. Heck, my main use for him even IS a spike, so you can see how one-track-minded I am

EDIT: I wrote this at 3am when I was barely lucid but it seems I highlighted points I didn't even know I had. Good job, sleep-deprived-me

[Darvin]

[Tinker]

I remember TheSchachter (?) mentioning that people look at GG's dislike of potion use the wrong way... Think of it this way: it's like a boon that costs 10 Piety and a potion, and refills 40% of one bar! I think the bottom line is, under GG you need to "budget" Piety for potion use just like for his boons.

Now, if you use both bars equally, then Protection is awesome, giving you 2*35% refills. But even if you don't... you will likely be able to drink all your preferred-color potions; convert all your off-color potions; and get a bit more refills via Protections (70 piety will get you 4 shots or 2*140% refills... so you're getting pretty much as much as you would've gotten in your off-color bar... and you get a lot of extra in your primary bar...).

Obviously not ideal if you're a Gnome spellcaster and all you want to do is convert stuff to get mana potions and quaff them for a spell spike. But otherwise my typical run with an Elf or something goes like this: get one desecration; convert lots of stuff (including off-color potions); be left with tons of refills and still have piety/indulgences to quaff my main bar potions if needed. Of note is that GG allows you to swap refills in case of a potion race; I remember a Gnome run on Dragon Isles where I joined GG in the end to be able to get Health refills from my Mana Potions (by converting them, and buying Protections from the Piety). I guess it would be even better deal for a Halfling, converting off all those normally useless red potions, and getting Mana refills and possibly mana boost for it.

Also, sometimes early agressive conversions let you reach 100 piety still at L1, which affords an early (beadless) Enlightenment. The cost is arguably steep, though it is a permanent +5 Mana boost, which can be huge for the rest of the run; and by the time you'd actually want to refill that huge bar, you're likely to get another ton of piety for Protections / quaffing just by leveling up.

And well I can't comment on the speedrun angle, I'm a total snail when I play...