I wanted to make a separate category for any% /w teleport cheat. Can finish the game in about 30 mins by using it.

It used to be that you can just alt+f4 instead of save+exit and it wont save. then you can just load it back up and imbue again.. if this isn't fixed, then you can just try that.

Stop it guys! All of the love and affection in this forum is going to make my heart burst!

This thread actually gave me a good laugh. I agree with almost all statements. IMO Slimo is correct in his initial point, but I think that can just be solved by making him a moderator. Teo firing shots at his behaviour around the IRL stuff is pretty damn weak - this community is pretty toxic. I would argue that Slimo would have sought the support of this community, rather than doing what he did, IF this "community" was not complete garbage. I am a reasonable guy, and I don't get upset by many things at all.. but Teo's attitude in general just grinds my gears to no end.

Id rather see a dedicated site for d2 speed-running, than continue this kind of crap on here.

There was a guy streaming some 100% runs on twitch. However he gave up because of crashes on load screens 😕

Save some skill points on Joseph so you can get Fire7 as a backup for that. He dies pretty quick to firewall.

Take a break from this game,, it gets infuriating. Gonna attempt a run today. But will improve the wolong route first.

Yeah I agree about the patch.. I did some testing and didn't see a great improvement either.

I did a run that was on the same pace and lost to completely screwing up the wolong microing.. I really hate doing that shit.

I would be surprised if there was nothing else new to find, but at the moment I can't think of anything to try.

Is this in typical areas for crashes or just completely random?

I've had similar issues before that went away after moving/deleting my saves. Try the timeslip patch? It fixes some issues with savegame corruption I think - worth a try,, you just extract 2 files into the main folder and it works magically.

LuL..
Actually I found a consistent setup shortly after making this video. I'll record it and post here.

I think that there is an actual gap there, but the devs thought it would be too small to fit through? but somehow you can...

LuL.. this fucking game:

Not really sure of the timesave potential here, as you still have to backtrack a tiny bit. However, I think there may be more places to use this 'bug'. wtf..

Damnnn.. this will still be a bit tricky to pull off I think 😕 worth a try tho. Another side effect of killing joseph is that the summon will go hostile and engage enemies that get in jekhars way 😮

Yup thats right. I have to test the Pijian one (assuming it works the same), coz that will save the most time. The Liangshan skip saves 30sec-1min btw

Edit: It works with Pijian. Just summon in the spot where Jekhar shows up later, and then run to the fight with Joseph. Obviously you have to kill joseph when he gets teleported too - which could be a spot to put the points into fire if you're gonna use him like that.

OK I found my guide,, and here is the mechanic used for some minor skips::
If you touch a trigger that teleports your team (not a yellow line), your summon will not be teleported if you are in solo-mode.
For example, if you summon celestial samurai at the start of jade temple, and kill the riders + murod in solo mode with joseph (obviously he can't be allowed to die), then you can speak to the NPC after the fight without running the whole way. The summon can interact with NPC's like a normal party member.

I noted that there are some other places in which this could be abused to save quite a bit of time. I'm going to look into them now.

Liangshan minor skip: There is a spot just to the left of the first 2 mages that you encounter (the path with the large bones on the ground), where you can summon across the water. Start the route as normal, and use a couple of infernos as you get closer to this spot, which can knock the chasing Onis out of aggro range (otherwise you will need to kill them), then summon the celestial samurai across the water (X will turn blue around the edge of the small structure across the water), run the rest of the way with the samurai. I also improved the time here by having Fire7 with joseph, and casting fire wall on the NPC to kill him faster (as well as the Onis). I might need to show this in a video, to get the summoning position right.

Honestly the microing of party members in town (or anywhere) is just a pain in the ass because of the camera changing angles each time. I tried some of these strats for Woolong1 and its just painful lol. Fast but painful.

@LifeL1ke
I had made a lot of minor improvements and a few major ones, and I was just going to showcase them in a run, as I was working on writing a new guide. I lost interest at some point and had a lot of IRL stuff going on, and my sub 2hour run lost at Machival.

Radge's run is comfortably sub 2 with the changes I mentioned above and a few others, and looks more like 1:45 without any big mistakes + good RNG. 1:30 and below will take another skip, and/or some major route changes. The closer the time gets to the 1 hour mark, the more I am inclined to run it, as I don't like to spend a lot of time in one sitting doing speedruns.

Cool. I put up the patch for download in the resources section 🙂. I'll have to agree with you on the script thing - but I think AHK or similar software should be allowed for bindings, since there is no control options in the game. I think this patch allows skipping of the cutscene I mentioned near the start of the game. I think this should be allowed, because that scene is just terrible.

Could you please also put up your splits in the resource section? I would like to use them.

I wouldn't call speedrunning a 'joke' but I also wouldn't take it too seriously.. its supposed to be fun 🙂. For me, the fun is in finding the exploits/bugs etc, and definitely not about the grinding - thats why I've only completed half a dozen runs or so.

I started writing a guide for the sub 2hour run, but I lost interest half-way through as there was no interest in this game. Also, LifeL1ke submitted his run to GDQ, and I told myself that I would really get invested in it if the run got in (super unlikely lol). I'll have a look for that guide.

As far as making modifications to this game, I am the only moderator for this game, and I am all for making changes that improve the performance of the game for speed-running purposes. One of those things was to remove the unskippable cutscene at the palace, and just starting the timer at the length of the clip (ie you start the game with +2mins or whatever it is on the timer). I looked into the crashing issues, but wasn't able to determine a fix for it - I have a IT/programming background so I am comfortable with helping solve the issue. Although, the resetting the game is not a massive issue, and there are plenty of other games that require the same sort of thing. I had never heard of the fan patch, I'll have a look into it.

As far as key bindings: I have already written AHK scripts to do a lot of things, including purchase spam (hold a key to buy at about the speed you were doing in your run). These should be permitted as they don't contribute much to the actual time you complete the game, they just improve your experience in doing so.

Priest King Skip: I looked for a while, and decided that he is only activated once the keys are inserted. So the only skip would be to open those locks without the keys,, not sure if this is possible at all.

Murod Skip: I'm pretty sure I'm thinking of what you just explained with the skip, and it saves a very small amount of time.

Do you happen to have savegames from major points in the game? I had an archive with all the saves but I can't find it anymore.

I'm very sorry for the delay on verifying your run. I've just moved house, and I haven't had internet/been extremely busy.

Thanks for reviving Summoner speedrunning! at least for now
Your time is really great, and I was kinda expecting that it was due to some timesaves that I had discovered but never posted here, and didn't use in a run (a sub 2hour run ended with not enough scrolls etc at machival). Actually you found some more time-saves: (I'm actually not sure if these were your discoveries, or Lifelike's)

Summon in Catacombs: I tried this!!!!!! But I guess I gave up on the idea too quickly. For me, the summon died too fast or had too much issues with enemies.. I guess I'll have to practice it a bit. I think we could use a combination of both our strats to get a much better time here.

Tower of Eleh Skip: I spent quite a while looking for this.. this saves a lot of time and a headache.

Backstab: My original 3:30+ run included backstab but I got so sick of it, like what happened to you against evil joseph, that I completely gave up on it. That route included getting the trip ability and using them in combination - which although does crazy damage, its not feasible in this run because its too hard to pull off. I think this is best used against Pyrul, and Machival1&3. I don't include Luminar, because I'm pretty sure I had figured a better strat to beat him.

Galienne: This strat makes my original one look very silly . I will definitely adopt this.

Multitasking your party in towns: I tried this and it really frustrated me so I gave up - there was only 1 or 2 places that I had used it so I didn't bother - but you manage to save quite a bit of time with it.

Invisibility Potion: I also tried for a long time to find a use for this,, and using it with Tears in the caverns is actually very useful!

Cleansing Potion: Very good addition,, I don't know why I never bothered with this.

Where you can save 15-20 minutes:
I'm sorry if some of these are already apparent.
1. Sewers 1 - Route is not very good - I actually found a much better route, which I'll show in a future run.
2. Ikaemos - Using only Fleece on the first level is much faster, but the minotaur on the second level is an improvement, as well as avoiding sneaking with Fleece.
3. You missed a dialogue skip with Yago, when you enter the palace to talk to the queen and prince. You can save load when you get pulled over to Yago.
4. Murod - I had found a way to stop him from teleporting. I wrote it down somewhere. Also, I'm pretty sure there was a small skip there somewhere.. I'll have to look into it again.

Those were the ones I made mental notes of while watching the run, but there were quite a few small improvements that I had discovered also that save seconds here and there. I'll definitely do a de-rust run within the next week (probably offline), and then see if I can get the time lower. I think 1:45 will be the new target.

I was also very surprised at your level of knowledge of the game. You explained very well some of the speed strats that I don't think I ever went into detail about. I'll probably provide commentary on my next run too, to clarify some things and explain some old routes.

@Teo-
"was" = past tense. Although botting is obviously unethical and not allowed by bnet, it's one of the main reasons that d2 online play is not completely dead - yes there are literally thousands of bots on bnet. I don't condone botting in general, but I can see its positive effects on a 20 year old game. Botting/Hacking/Cheating/TASing provide valuable insight into how the game works. Another thing keeping the game alive is speed-running, which again is not an intended way to play the game. I apologize if you take this the wrong way and/or disagree, I just want to defend my position 🙂.

@blazer-flamewing
I'm going to do a run just to get it on your leaderboard 😃

@LaV
It's about 150-200ms these days 🙂.

At the end of the last ladder (just before the reset) I was botting with Etal. There are a lot of workarounds to avoid getting realmdown/softban/cdkey-ban. Most of these were avoiding by making games at least 3 minutes long etc. They've put a lot of stuff in place to stop botters, and this sometimes affects players too. Unless they've removed all this in the last ladder reset, it is something that could affect runs.

@EmotionallyComp
I think thats a good idea. Keep a spreadsheet for now, and only make leaderboards on speedrun.com for categories that become extremely popular.

@LaV
I agree with most of your points, but it would be nice to be able to do multiplayer runs on a custom server, as certain strats would get realm downs/soft bans (e.g. creating multiple games that run for less than 3 minutes), and also you wouldn't have to deal with shitty bnet lag etc.

The spreadsheet idea would not be hard to do using google docs.
What is the category extension thing?