Speedrun - let's brainstorm!

[BaukisFilemon]

Okay, so I just finished the game on hard with this party:

Human - Fighter Axe/Athletics/Armor
Human - Rogue - Unarmed/Dodge
Human - Rogue - Throwing (some in assasin once i reached max)
Insectoid - Mage - Poison/Spellcraft and some points in fire (even though i rarely used it)

In this thread I want to discuss what party combination and strategy to use to finish the game as fast as you possibly can - preferably on hard.

In the end, my throwing rogue had 10k more experience than the rest and probably would have had more if I hadn't involved the others out of boredom. 16 throwing daggers and 6 throwing stars rarely run out. I never used the throwing bombs except for testing. I haven't tried bow, but I remember it took much more time to find a bow than a throwing weapon (rocks and knives and a throwing star at first floor) so my theory is that throwing is very useful to quickly clear stuff up on the early levels. Rogue seems to kill stuff the fastest anyway.

I also experimented with an all lizard rogue unarmed party on normal (because picking up weapons takes time and the amount of time it takes to plan out what weapons to get and on what level is something I'll wait for others to come up with). The backrow ones go for assasin to get the attack-from-second-row and everything else in unarmed (wondering if throwing/bow is better).

The first floor went well, I attacked with front row, quickly switched up my backrow characters and did this back and forth until the enemy died. Everytime you hit, the enemy becomes staggered and if you keep the rhythm up you should never get hit (assuming you don't miss - a big if, which is why I went for the high dex race). When you get the backrow-attack-skill you should therefore NOT attack as fast as you can, but keep a rhythm that makes you have an attack ready at all times, always keeping the enemy staggered.

This strategy is obviously only useful for people quick with their fingers. I have played starcraft 1 and 2 and warcraft 3 on a semi-high level and really enjoy the realtime aspect - I get very bored if things get too slow.

I went through level 2 pretty easily too, but poison stuff and inevitable misses makes it risky. Circling around while attacing and switching back-to-front-row continously is too much even for me after a fight or two.

Anyway, I have many more ideas, but let's hear what you guys think about potential speed running strategies. I'm not sure about the rules yet, but hard mode and only using the blue saving stones seems reasonable to me. What do you guys think? Also, I think the ingame map should be allowed since you can print out one anyway.

[2Xmatch]

Frankly best help would be mage with air for invisibility, the monks and golems still see you though. This would let you run past half of the nasty situations in the game, also escape most "ambushes" but you will probably have to survive the last fight with a low lvl party(Lightning barrier does help against the monks + hoard your frost bombs).

[BaukisFilemon]

Excellent, totally forgot about invisibility.

Think I'm gonna do an easy run just taking notes where important stuff is and try different strats out. Will definitely bring an air-mage with me.

[qqq]

yeah, was thinking this game would be great for speedrunning

rules? hard and old school mod., submit to sda.

if you don't do single segment run, save only before doing locations where's big chance of fuck up. crystals are still youseful for insta heal and autosave though (faster than saving manually)

the general strategy should be to evade combat as much as possible and take the shortest route to stairs. this means your characters will have quite low lvl and thus low skill points. party composition should be based around what you can find on your path to next level without sidetracking if possible...

pretty sure weapon warriors aren't worth it because their damage and hit chance. the best melee items are also secrets = too much time lost finding them. same with archers. this leaves you with unarmed chars, throwing rogues and mages (unless you can get some weapon really easily, i can only think of maybe daggers.) invisibility sounds alright but takes a lot of skillpoints. ice bolt might help getting away from monsters as well...

[FloorBelow]

I highly recommend getting a fite mage focused on getting greater fireball as fast as possible. I'm at level 6 and a fireball can 1-shot everything except ogres, crabs, and uggardians.

[Nano]

LOL your going to have hell of a time with that in Level 8+ where fireball dose no damage.

As people said AIR is best chool

Lighting Bolt dose tons of damage and has a critical
Invisibility spell
Enchant Shock Arrows

I highly recommend getting a fite mage focused on getting greater fireball as fast as possible. I'm at level 6 and a fireball can 1-shot everything except ogres, crabs, and uggardians.

[SodanKerjuu]

I'm trying a speedrun party with following setup:

Two lizardman rogues in front line who only max dodge for evasion. They are just there to keep the enemies from damaging you.
Backrow has minotaur rogue who maxes attacking power. He is aggressive and headhunter, boy does his throwing weapons hurt
even when he doesn't have any skill points there. Skills I was planning to get assassination up so he can attack melee from back,
then some daggers. Not sure if I should try to max the daggers or the assassination tree.

Fourth member is insectoid air-mage to get that invis combo going on.

Yes, elemental damage and ranged attacks are your biggest fears (also damage from falling down pits, poison traps etc is a higher portion for the front line than usually).
My team setup makes casual encounters easy, but I'm afraid I don't have enough dps output with my two dancers on the front to deal Ogres / Ice lizards etc for the fastest speedrun.