«

[kmonster]

Nice party and another proof how useful barbarians really are.
Because of the manual error most newbie players prefer knights, although barbarians are far superior.

How long (in real time) did it take to finish the game ?

[ElricXeen]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(kmonster @ May 26 2007, 02:50 PM) [snapback]291486[/snapback]</div>

Nice party and another proof how useful barbarians really are.
Because of the manual error most newbie players prefer knights, although barbarians are far superior.

How long (in real time) did it take to finish the game ?
[/b]

What's the manual error? I think that the manual doesn't emphasize how strong multiple attacks get. Also, full armor and full weapon use barely matters because magical properties matter much more than the strength of the base item. You want any weapon to be usable by at least one character, but having a ninja and paladin in the party easily takes care of that (since the oriental weapons are generally pretty rare) and barbarians can use enough of the weapons that you won't have trouble getting obsidian weapons that they can use.

The game took about 4 1/2 hours for Clouds + Darkside. After that I got tired of rushing through the game so I took my time finishing World of Xeen. I imagine you could do Worlds in an extra 1 1/2 hours (6 hrs total) if you were pushing it. I had played through the game recently and so my memory for most of it was pretty good- and I planned the rough outline for completing the game in advance.

The maps at http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/dos...me/564553.html and
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/dos...me/564552.html are very helpful if you haven't played the game recently and helpful even if you have (I used them in some places).

[kmonster]

6 hours is really impressing considering how huge those games are. Did you play adventurer or warrior mode ?

About the manual error: I'm referring to the barbarian class descriptions in the manual, something like "the Barbarian is almost as good a fighter as the Knight" which is obviously untrue and would have made me avoid the barbarian if I hadn't known it better.
Luckily I had already played MM3 before with both in a party and therefore got a strong suspicion. When I tested them (at level 200) against the same monster there, the barbarian did about 5700 damage while the knight did only about 4300.

[ElricXeen]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(kmonster @ May 26 2007, 04:27 PM) [snapback]291492[/snapback]</div>

6 hours is really impressing considering how huge those games are. Did you play adventurer or warrior mode ?[/b]

Warrior. I fleshed out the guideline I wrote for myself a little more, because it sounds hard to believe the game is this quick until you've played it this fast. This was my second try at beating the game quickly- the first time took me longer partly because my memory for the game was worse and partly because I didn't have as good of an order to do things in.

Key tips:
Leaving effects and music off made the game run much faster in DosBox. It's possible that I set things up wrong to start with and that's why it was slow in the first place, but when you're going for speed you can't be too concerned about sound effects.

Fountains are crucial: Nightshadow, Rivercity, Vertigo, +2500 HP in Darkside A1, +1000 SP in Darkside E1, +15 levels at Darkside C2, Sandcaster- stand in exact middle of town at exactly noon (you get there when you cast Time Distortion), face South and press Spacebar—bonus 1800 spell points to each character

If you never look at (or near) an enemy, the game doesn’t activate that enemy. So you can back up into a crowd of ranged-attackers and fight them one group at a time.
If you reload while facing away from a monster, the game forgets that it ever saw you. This is even more of a cheat than the previous strategy. This feels somewhat justified by the following point, though:

Bows are terrible past low levels. Although you get multiple attacks per round, this doesn’t apply to bows. Additionally it’s very hard to find powerful magical bows (Clouds near Lord Xeen’s castle are best place to find powerful bows). If you want to fight at a range, your choices are either casting one spell with one party member or having every character with a bow shoot one arrow. Then all of your enemies get to attack you. It’s pretty pitiful.

The most important combat spells in the game are Day of Protection and then Day of Sorcery. Go to a level-boosting fountain at 5 am every day and then cast these spells. Early in the game you’ll want to go to Nightshadow, then Asp (maybe Vertigo first) for HP, then Rivercity for SP. Since Day of Protection is the most important spell, give all bonus experience points to your Paladin.

Visiting shops takes a day (more for training, guilds, or temples). However, your Days spells and temporary fountains don't fall off except when you Train.
Obsidian Weapons are much, much better than Diamond Weapons. A level-boosted Barbarian with an Obsidian weapon and a level-boosted Day of Protection spell cast will kill most enemies in one hit. For this reason, you should give a lot of Speed bonuses to 2 of your Barbarians (there probably aren’t enough speed bonuses easily available to give you 3 Barbarians who are faster than almost all of your enemies). Also, give most Might bonuses to the two characters at front of party for bashing/opening purposes.

Party: 2 Half Orc Barbarians, 1 Dwarf Ninja, 1 Human Paladin, 2 Human Archers (I initially made a speed run with 3 Half Orc Barbarians and 1 Human Archer, but this configuration seems faster)

Start outside Vertigo—head immediately to Castleview
Make new party (transfer items from old party)(make sure Archer has 17+ Int)
Drawcab monks (reverse order), Secret chest at (21,30)
Get Cartographer skill- Cartographer’s challenge (Sandcaster)
Buy Lloyd’s Beacon at Guild for one archer
Free Jethro from Jail- Buy swimming skill for non-humans.
Two puzzles with the Chests (first puzzle 1,2…9; second, spell Pitchfork)
Go outside, head East along river to sunken ship, answer Palindrome riddle at tent, buy pass to Castleview right next to city, go back in.
Collect prize for freeing Jethro- go to Vertigo
Count Du Money- Beacon to Vertigo- Shangri-La (Days spells, Etherealize, Teleport, Town Portal, Cure Poison/Disease, Jump, Awaken, Lloyd’s Beacon, Time Distortion), try to get bows at Shangri-la armory, back to Vertigo (make sure you save 20000 gold for training—if you have two archers one only really needs Teleport/Beacon right now)
Clean out Vertigo (NW corner)
Train characters- back to Castleview if you want level>10 (Archer will only be able to train to level 10- Barbarians and Ninjas might be level 11 so this probably won’t matter)
Loot treasure at final area in dragon caves (Count Du Money—go to North East Corner of room, teleport 9E, 3E) (Save until you get an obsidian weapon from each item stash)
Go to Dwarf mines 1-4 for stat bonuses—give +6 Int to one Archer

Rest. Cast Day of Sorcery (Archer should have 40-45 sp).
Go to Rivercity—buy Armsmaster, Bodybuilder (SE corner)
Get Barok’s pendant from Sorceresses, drink from Rivercity well, cast Day of Protection (set Beacon at Rivercity well). Beat Nightshadow as soon as it hits nighttime.
Also complete: Asp/Yang Knights, Buy Mountaineer (2)/ Navigator (Rivercity)
Beat robbers- Head to Castle Burlock- deliver tiara and get merchant skill just outside

Back to Castleview—defeat Gettlewait, head into sewers (get Onyx Necklace)
Return Onyx necklace for key to E’s tower, steal Valio’s treasure, Buy Pathfinder (2) (Castleview)
Go to Ellinger’s Tower (don’t get resistance bonuses yet) (Get gold chest in Castleview)

Power up at Clouds town fountains- Town Portal to Sandcaster—solve Paladin riddle
(from Sandcaster, Teleport: 9W, 9W, 8W, 9N, 5N, answer riddle, 5S, 5S,5E,5E,5N,5N,5W). (Obsidian longsword among treasure). Teleport around to get genies in desert (give to Paladin for exp). Beacon to Rivercity if you need more SP.
Head to Ector in E2 then go to E1 to the +1000 SP fountain and to get his ring (Obsidian Battleaxe reward)
Back to Sandcaster- get nearby Emerald Handle, Trade Handle for pass to Sandcaster (B4)

Train again somewhere in here.

Visit +1000 sp fountain (E1), followed by (carefully) Town Portal- Necropolis- Teleport North- then West to get to +2500 hp fountain in A1- be careful to avoid facing south while you’re at or approaching that fountain, so the Gamma Gazers south of there don’t get activated. If you run into Gamma Gazers, you can face North and cast Time Distortion- this will teleport you near the 2500 hp fountain. Set Lloyd’s Beacon here so you don’t have to run this gauntlet again.

Enter Sandcaster: Solve 2 Merchants puzzles (Answers: 3 and 100), clear out rooms just south of there- get speed, int bonus, go into sewers to gym (SE) for bonuses. Buy pass to Lakeside (middle/South Sandcaster).
Clear Lakeside- get statue from sewers- get pass to Necropolis.
Back to Shangri-la (Mass Distortion, Holy Word, Cure Paralysis, Power Cure, maybe a few others)

(At some point):
Get key to East tower in SE corner of Sandcaster
West Tower (before Bark, drink from resist + fountains)
East Tower (before Bark) (drink from Fountain of Minimal Abilities, return Jewel of Ages to F4)
Temple of Bark (kill Barkman)(Save until you get 2 Obsidian weapons from chest Barkman is guarding. Make sure your Ninja can use one of the Obsidian weapons you have found so far! Everyone should have an Obsidian Weapon at this point.)
Sandcaster main city quest—this is optional, but the Speed bonuses are very helpful and you may need to get an item that boosts Int so that everyone can get to 100 Int to read all of the Necropolis books of the dead- the treasure here is a good bet for that (worst case scenario: just give the permanent Int bonuses by Xenoc to your Paladin- he’s the one whose levels gained helps your party the most).

Necropolis—first, set Beacon at Fountain of Ages in F4, visit +50 Int fountain on Clouds side- Darkstone Tower- 6N, 4E, read books of Dead (shuffle around an Int-enhancing item to read the last one)—portal to Fountain of Ages every 75-100 years of aging)
Return Sandro’s heart from sewer (make sure you save before talking to him)
Northern Tower (if you’re already high level, consider getting Euphoria throne bonus levels)
Get energy disks from Giants and/or Ogres and/or Southern Tower

These are pretty much the only quests I do. There's no reason to clear areas of monsters since there's very little benefit to it. Exp rewards from genies, Books of the Dead, and quests are much larger than the rewards from killing monsters, and you don't need to be particularly high level to beat the game when you have level-boosted Day of Protection-boosted characters with Obsidian Weapons and you visit the +2500 HP fountain.


Free levels that are easy to get:
Return statuettes (A4), Super-explorer statue above Witch Tower, Fountain of Life (East Tower), Book of Great Power (East tower) (either go to Shangri-la or buy skills back individually), Shangri-la well.

I usually won't get any of these free levels (except maybe Fountain of Life) until I max out at level 50 before going to the Dungeon of Lost Souls- then I'll get the Fountain of Life and the Book of Great Power, visit Shangri-La to buy all skills back for 600K and drink from the well there, then complete the statuettes quest. This puts you at level 61-62, which when combined with the C1 Shrine makes the rest of Darkside very easy.

At level 50+:
Take 15+ energy disks to Ellinger (get resistance bonuses) to get Kalindra restored, talk to Megan at Kalindra, to get key to Dungeon of Lost Souls, go there, get Songbird (give exp to Paladin if you plan to train again), rescue Queen Kalindra from Castle Blackfang (have to do bridle quest for Dimitri first, talk to Kalindra twice and then set Beacon here before getting her crown), get key to Pyramid, beat Pyramid (set Beacon at top), Corak’s ship, back to Pyramid, to Olympus (get Soulbox), back to Corak, to Alamar

Now complete the Clouds main quest. At this point it’s ridiculously easy and should take you under half an hour. Cave of Illusion- Tower of High Magic- Darzog’s Tower (set Beacon at top). Buy Newcastle for 50K gold- go to Mirabeth for key to Temple of Yak, Temple of Yak, build next level of Newcastle, get key to Tomb of 1000 Terrors, go there, finish building Castle, get Xeen Slayer Sword, teleport back to Darzog’s Tower, go fight Lord Xeen.

[kmonster]

Amazing. You should record and publish a speedrun.

[ElricXeen]

I just beat Clouds and Darkside in 3 hrs, 45 minutes. I was using the 2 Archer party, which definitely seems superior for finishing quickly. I still didn't have any hard fights even with only 2 Barbarians. Having 2 Beacons was great- I made the run to the A1 2500 HP fountain very early, set a Beacon there, and was completely invulnerable for a long time as a result. I also used the backup trick a lot: the West Tower, the East Tower, Lakeside, Sandcaster, the Great Pyramid- pretty much everywhere the enemies are strong and have ranged attacks.

The time breakdown by part of the game was as follows:
50 Minutes- Create party, go to Castleview and do that portion, back to Vertigo and do the early Clouds-side portion in the guide (Count Du Money, Shangri-La, Rivercity, Nightshadow, etc.). After 50 minutes I was ready to head back to the Darkside.
1 hr, 55 minutes- Complete all of the listed quests on the Darkside before the Dungeon of Lost Souls and the end sequence.
25 minutes- beat the Clouds side (Teleport helps to find Megacredits really quickly in the dungeons).
35 minutes- complete the rest of the Darkside.

I got a little lucky in this game as follows:
At the start I rolled well (given that I wasn't rolling for that long) and managed to get a 20 Int for one of my archers. Then I found a ring of +2 Int in Shangri-La—22 Int is enough to get you 40 sp at level 10. So I skipped the Dwarf Caves entirely. My Barbarians were a little slower, but I think this was the right choice. The other time you can clearly skip the Dwarf Caves is if you get an item that boosts speed in the Dragon Caves treasure and this boosts your speed high enough that you can beat the Sorceresses in Rivercity without Day of Sorcery. It should be easy to beat them without Day of Sorcery or a speed boost if you run back to Vertigo to get more HP part of the way through the final room (this seems a little cheap to me). I forgot to add Nature's Cure to the list of spells to buy in Shangri-La; you also might be able to win by casting Nature's Cure a few times in between battles in the final room (again, this works because of the back-up trick).

I found an Obsidian Club in Morgana's treasure in Sandcaster. This meant that when I reached the Temple of Bark I only cared about getting one Obsidian Weapon. Then I got really lucky and found an Obsidian Scimitar Monster Masher in Barkman’s chest. An Obsidian Monster-Mashing weapon is the best item in the game and will let you take out the Dungeon of Lost Souls with ease (Minotaurs and Gorgons are "monsters"- so are Annihilators and Autobots). I'd have taken this even if I only had 5 Obsidian Weapons total, but it was nice to still have 6 and the Monster Mashing Scimitar. I found a Wisdom Amulet at some point early on, and this meant that I didn’t have to worry about getting to 100 Int for the final book of the dead (“lowest Int� character had 11 Int—a few were below 10 but the Fountain of Minimal Abilities in East Tower took care of this: 11+ 19 from Bark + 50 from Clouds-side fountain + 22 from the Medal= 102).

Quests that weren't important:
The Yang Knights should probably be skipped, since you don't get much out of it (although it’s really fast). However, I remember that the first time I played through this game I considered beating them a big accomplishment because it was such a tough battle. So it’s very satisfying to beat them in the first hour of playing the game.

Asp- Asp might be unnecessary. It’s awfully quick, though, and the slight HP boost over Vertigo is nice for a short while.

I never remembered to go back to complete Valio’s quest, steal his treasure and kill him after beating the Queen Rat. This was probably for the best.

The Southern Tower was useless, as I ended up with 2 extra energy disks (only disks I missed were the Ogres’s). I had been planning to read from the Book of Power in the East Tower and then use the 300K from the Southern Tower to help buy all skills at Shangri-La (as I thought I might run into gold troubles otherwise) but didn’t end up doing this, so the extra gold wasn’t remotely important.

Sandcaster- the speed bonuses and treasure that you get are nice, but I might wait until after the Temple of Bark in the future to see if I really need to do this.

Other notes:
I trained to get everyone to level 10, then again I think after solving the Merchant’s riddles in Sandcaster before going to Lakeside (Paladin level 18- everyone else 14-15). Then I trained again, I think after beating Lakeside, West Tower, East Tower, South Tower and Sandcaster (Paladin about level 22, everyone else about 18-19). Then I trained after reading the Books of the Dead, Returning Sandro’s Heart, and beating the North Tower and Temple of Bark (Paladin level 50, everyone else level 48).

At this point I decided that I’d go to do the Clouds side and then train everyone else to level 50 with the experience from there. I probably should have just gotten the bonus levels in the Northern Tower instead- there’s a little too much traveling/training time this way. I also stopped and got a few of the +5/10 ability bonuses on the top two floors of the Cave of Illusion—not sure this mattered.

I never used a single free level bonus. It wasn’t important. I didn’t get the Euphoria Thrones in the Northern Tower because I was so confident that I wouldn’t need it to get through the Dungeon of Lost Souls given that I had a Monster-Mashing Scimitar—but then I ended up doing Clouds first and training again, which means I probably should have gotten this in the first place. For a lot of the game I was using the +15 levels shrine at C2 (1,8) because it’s so easy to get to with Town Portal Necropolis, 9E, 3S.

Before beating Alamar, I went into the Castle’s Dungeon and got the key to the Dragon Tower (and pulled a switch so that you can access this area from Shangri-La). This is a good time-saver before doing the World of Xeen portion and with the Monster-Mashing Scimitar, killing Annihilators wasn’t a problem.

I forgot this note about the Worlds portion: the Xeen Slayer Sword can hurt creatures that are normally immune to physical damage. I’m not sure if this is a feature or a bug. In particular, this means that you can beat the creatures on the Elemental Water and Air planes and you don’t have to worry about buying Implosion for an archer (or the spell points to cast it all those times).

Before going to the Dungeon of Lost Souls I set a Beacon at Dimitri. Then I left the Beacon there for easy retrieval of Queen Kalindra’s Crown. I never needed to Beacon back to A1 after this so I didn’t lose any time by giving up my beacon at A1 (since you need a second beacon to set at Queen Kalindra in Blackfang’s basement). Two beacons lets you set one at the Dragon Pharoah, go to Corak, set the other one at Corak, Beacon back to the Dragon Pharoah, Town Portal to Olympus, and Beacon back to Corak. The end of Darkside felt like a total blur thanks to all of the beacons.

That's about all I can think of at the moment- let me know if you have any questions about what I did.

[ElricXeen]

I completed the World of Xeen sequence. It took me 35 minutes. It could have taken less, but I had never played through this part of the game with speed in mind and made a few mistakes.

Worlds Overview:
Go to Olympus and train with the gold you have. Prioritize your Paladin for the majority of the level gaining, since you’ll have more levels than you can afford. Go to 1000 SP fountain and 2500 HP fountain but don’t go to a level-boosting fountain.

Dragon Tower- go straight up the center stairs. Get key card (Infinity-don’t type this one in wrong!) from statue on Dragon Cloud. Drink from and set Beacon at 50 level fountain on Cloud (keep another Beacon at 2500 HP fountain).

Return via Shangri-la to Alamar Dungeon. Buy Divine Intervention for your Paladin while you’re down here. To get to Alamar Dungeon: step off Dragon Cloud—it treats you as on Darkside if you try to Town Portal from the Cloud itself, Town Portal to Vertigo, take mirror portal to Shangri-La.

Go to Darkstone Tower (stepping off Dragon Cloud lands you at base of Darkstone Tower). Make sure you have the +50 level boost and then cast the Days spells before doing any fighting in Darkstone Tower.
Fight way to top of tower. Save before fighting the Golems—they drain spell points and you should probably reload if your Paladin or both Archers get drained of SP. The gongs on the top level do a lot of damage and you’ll probably have to portal out for more HP—this is why it’s good to still have all of your spell points. Get key card on top level (120). You can set a Beacon up here, but it only saves a little time. Back to Alamar dungeon.

Free Roland, get key to Southern Sphinx. Get Ever-hot Lava Rock (Clouds E2?) and then visit Halon the Inventer in Clouds B4 to get Widget, then go to Southern Sphinx.
Go straight to stairs up (Picard). Cast Divine Intervention if you get cursed along the way to the stairs. Trade Widget for Chime of Opening

Wake Elemental Sleepers on Darkside. Town Portal to Castleview, climb the hut in A3, then Teleport all around the skyroads (What are you seeking?—Earth, Air, Fire, Water)

Wait! What about the Reflectors on the Clouds-side of Xeen? It turns out you don’t actually have to do that to beat the game. It seems like the game won’t let you win without Xeen’s Scepter, the Cube of Power, and the Elemental Sleepers (although I haven’t tested out every permutation here), but it doesn’t require you to activate the Reflectors.

Go back to Darkstone Tower, climb to top and circle around until you get to main Pyramid. Make sure you don’t go past 5 am (find the nearest rest stop when it’s past 4 am and just hit spacebar until the new day). Save the game every so often because it’s easy to accidentally step off the cloud.

That’s it. I forgot to include the length of the animation at the end of Darkside of Xeen the last time, and that plus the animation at the end of World of Xeen adds about 6 minutes to the walkthrough. Note: you don’t have to ever see the Clouds ending, since you get the Scepter after killing Lord Xeen and the game only shifts to the ending if you click on the mirror. I’ve probably rounded the estimated five-minute increments down more often than up throughout this summary so let’s call these animations 10 minutes to balance that out. That’s a total of 4 ½ hours for Clouds, Darkside, and World of Xeen.

I wouldn’t recommend trying this for 4 ½ hours straight. I played this game in four sittings (the first 50 minutes, the next 1 hr 55 minutes, beating Clouds and the end of Darkside, beating World of Xeen), which was much more enjoyable and probably faster than trying to play straight through. It also let me figure out the exact order I wanted to go in as I went along. To play through the game in one sitting in as little time as possible, you’d want to have recently completed the game on a speed run so that you didn’t have to pause to contemplate your next move. This was my third speed run in the last month, and I could probably get a faster time given another try (but I got lucky on magic items this time, and there are clearly diminishing returns at this point).

Lastly, the walkthrough and maps by Andrew Schultz are really good and it’s probably the best single source of information to have as you play. Those links are:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/dos...me/564553.html
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/dos...me/564552.html

[kmonster]

You might get some inspiration there:
http://speeddemosarchive.com

[ElricXeen]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(kmonster @ May 29 2007, 04:23 PM) [snapback]291988[/snapback]</div>

You might get some inspiration there:
http://speeddemosarchive.com
[/b]

Man, I don't think I can compete with someone who can beat Contra in under 15 minutes without picking up a single special item . It seems like a solely speed-oriented run would involve completing the game in a lot of segments (which you'd then try to optimize individually), which to me detracts from the point of trying to beat it as fast as possible in the first place.

My original goal in playing through the game as fast as possible was that I pulled this game out for the first time in years last year. After I beat it, I found that the game wasn't nearly as hard as I remembered it to be. When I mentioned this to the cousin who introduced me to the game, he said that he plays through the game about once a year and typically beats it in 4-6 hours. I didn't believe that at the time so this year when I felt like playing through the game again, I decided to see how fast I could do it. Then I decided to hone my strategy from there, but I don't intend to spend the summer trying to pull off the impossible 2 hr run. I'm kind of sick of the game as it is

[The Fifth Horseman]

which to me detracts from the point of trying to beat it as fast as possible in the first place. [/b]

Not at all. You don't have to divide the run into segments, unless you feel like it.