Grimrock

I got it yesterday, using 2 human fistfighters and 2 mages.

Batty wrote: Ice shards hits all squares in front of the caster so you can hit more than one enemy at once.

this is even smarter, how could i had forget about Ice Shards

I tried other things with a lot of frustration but once I put the ice shards party together it only took 2 tries. I think it's the easiest method.

I did it with 2 unarmed fighters, 2 fire mages in 3:34 on normal.
Useful tips are:
strenght 16 and dexterity 15 on fighters plus fist fighter only.
maxed out willpower and aura and strongmind on mages (or aura only)
skip first snail, kill the second and kill the third with the pit teleport
kill the two snails to save energy for the fungus guys
kill 2 or 3 fungus and skip the rest with the blue gem, skip the skeleton dude.

Edit: ice shards take longer to cast, but maybe with 4 mages it doesn't matter.

It can be done on easy and even if you have to kill every monster in your way.

Just pick four fist fighting fighters and go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlRtJ6DTzCA

Thanks for the tips Raistlin, I used your advice to get the achievement. I will note that loading it up on Steam today, the timer didn't start until I was in the dungeon. So that easily saved me the 40 second startup time.

Also, kudos to the post by zalewapl, I should have gone that route because it seems more sneaky and underhanded. I might have to incorporate the party switching into my normal tactics, although that would require much more work for normal fights. That reminded me of replaying the first level of Grimrock, where I throw snail pieces, torches, and any other odd piece of crap in my inventory at the snail until it dies. Snail vs full inventory... it never had a chance...

For those newbies reading this, I'll note that there must have been a patch to the calculation of starting time,such that one no longer has to worry about the time spent selecting your party's attributes. The clock is set to zero when you are thrown into the dungeon.



This should add 30 seconds to the time available to complete Level 1. So those who did it before this patch were really hustling.

sadly,I'm nowhere near 4minutes even with the extra time....

That was one of the most difficult gaming achievements I've ever accomplished

Four human fighters, all unarmed, with Agile and Fist Fighter traits, all points in dexterity first and then strength.

I feel like I could have used a better strategy (I like the idea of four Ice Mages), but I think with some lucky crits, I was able to pull it off after only about 10 tries.

Woo!