A General Speedrunning Discussion/Guide

First, why the heck even consider running this game?

    Well, you can make turns go by as fast as you want so the run would already have a great amount of learning and skill. You also have a lot decision making by e.g. abusing deaths (more about that later).
    A lot of potential categories, from the obvious any% to "any% No MES (No Maj'Eyal Skip)" to "NightmareMindslayer%"

Obvious downsides of speedgaming this?

    RNG. You think "oh, you can just randomly die to an OP rare and lose your run!" and I wouldn't really agree. Sure, at first I had the same thought but then I realized that Exploration mode is a thing - you can just abuse the hell out of that. Sure, you could now complain that running this game is on easy mode but that's the reality of speedrunning; you always go for whatever is fastest, unless something else is required in the category.
    The other aspect of RNG, item drops, seems like a harder issue to fix. I don't think god-drops will matter too much but they might and will definitely help.
    The other issue I thought of is loading times. Speedrunning, especially on PC, always has that issue. So if anyone who can maybe help out with that (like a thingy that detects loading times) that would be GREATLY appreciated, otherwise I'll look into it at some point maybe :)

Now let's talk a bit about Categories. The two I can see being the most interesting and competitive would be any% and any% NoMES.

    any% is nice because it is a very relevant category in the vast majority of speedgames since it is "just" about beating the game as quickly as possible. How would you do that? Most likely starting as an elven Celestial class.
    any% NoMES seems really interesting since it allows for a HUGE amount of possible classes to play around with. Is the super bursty Anorithil/Archmage best? Or maybe just a plain Berserker? I think it's going to be a melee class since normal attacks can be thrown in a very rapid succession and you don't have to wait for cooldowns.

Next up, routes.

    For any%, once again, you probably start as a Shalore Sun Paladin and never go to Maj'Eyal. Instead you start off by drowning the Super-Sun Paladin to get easy levels. You'd then probably go to the cave you are teleported in when you first enter The Far East as a normal character to get some levels (this might even be bad because you don't NEED to clear this). From there I don't really know, probably start doing Prides.
    any% NoMES might start out in Trollmire, from where you go into the Maze (Maze because of T5 randarts) and then do Dreadfell. You'd then immediately go into The Far East and start clearing Prides. I highly doubt it'll be worth doing the Charred Scar to not fight the Super-Sun Paladin since you don't NEED to even attempt it and the time loss would be a lot higher than the gain.

The last strategy related thing I want to talk about are strats themselves.

    The only really useful one I could think of is death abusing on exploration. There are a lot of uses for this surprisingly enough, the most obvious being refilling your resources instead of resting. The other one that I used a lot in my "speedrun" for funzies was abusing the exploration-only mechanic that enemies are still damaged when you come back from the dead. This can be used to kill bosses you could never ever kill before since you can just throw out your combo, die and repeat. Now this might sound a little dull now but hold on - dying costs a lot of time because the game saves multiple times. When it does that the save is no longer in the background but instead in the foreground, making it so you have to wait for the load to finish. This makes this technique quite slow and I found that in a lot of cases it's better to just play a little safer.
    Another thing you could use is "Auto-accept target" which would make throwing out spells a LOT quicker but also a lot riskier. The only way I can see that working out is with an addon I'll be talking about later

Most requirements to run this game should be obvious, but I'll list them anyways.

    So you'd obviously need the Sher'Tul chest since otherwise getting loot would be really slow.
    You'd also need the class to run that specific category (like any Celestial class in any%, which one is better still has to be determined).
    Since some artifacts and classes from the DLC might be relevant, having that would also be preferred.
    Something that is less obvious to consider is the game version. Are we gonna run the game on the newest version ever? My suggestion is that we should find the most broken melee character in all of ToME 4 in go for that character's version since that would possibly be the fastest class. Since I was really bad when I started I don't really know what classes were really good before 1.2.5 or so. From my knowledge, Doombringer might be a valid consideration since I heard it was REALLY OP when it got released.
    It is also nice to have already played through the game as the class you want to run. Why? Because this way your hotkeys are already set up and you don't have to change them mid run, which is obviously slower.

What Classes would be the fastest?

This is not gonna be the final list, I'll add and remove classes with time and experience, position in the "tiers" doesn't matter. Note that up until now I only tested Shadowblade and Berserker. Also note that all these rankings are based on using time instead of turns.

"OP" Classes

Shadowblade

Shadowblades combine very high mobility (two rushes + medium and long-range teleport) with very high burst (two instant-cast damages + flurry). Getting Stealth on lvl 10 increases that burst damage even further and allows you to sometimes skip unwanted fights. They can also access Vision later on which gives them a really good scouting tool for High Peak. All in all, this seems like the perfect class for this run since they bring exactly everything you'd want to the table. 10/10

Archmage

An Archmage's offensive toolkit consists of a lot of high single and AoE skills, making them extremely stong in the early game since they will just one-shot any trash mob and two-shot bosses. Combine that with Conveyance (teleport) and Divination (scouting and you got an incredibly promising class. Only downside: they are no weapon users, making their late game worse.

Arcane Blade

Arcane Blades seem like the love-child of a Shadowblade and an Archmage - they combine the early game power of Archmages with the late game burst Shadowblade. They also got access to Conveyance for teleports but unfortunately don't get Divination. In the early game they will basically play just like Archmages and carry over that power into the late game when their weapons are really potent. However, their early game is a little weaker than Archmages and their late game burst is worse then Shadowblade's since their damage skills' modifiers are lower, they don't get Stealth and they also only get the worse instant-cast damage. Still, these guys seem very promising and potentially better than Archmages.

Paradox Mage

These guys are really comparable to Archmages. On paper they got comparable damage to Archmages that is also mostly AoE, worse teleports since their teleports have a lot less range, and a scouting tool that is a little better (for the most part) - Precogniton. For comparison, Precognition has a range of 27 with 100 spellpower and max level, Vision has a range of 19 and reveals the area. Vision is sometimes more useful on High Peak because the Unique guarding the stairs might be gone. Precognition is a lot better in the Prides since you have to find the Boss.

Strong Classes

Temporal Warden

These guys almost seem like a "worse" but more versatile version of Shadowblades if it wasn't for their scouting. They got good mobility (4 teleports, one being instant), good damage output since they are weapon users and really good scouting. However, their teleports are a lot less abusable than Conveyance and their burst is a a little lower than Shadowblades. The latter might come as a surprise since TWs don't have any instant casts or stealth BUT they have Arrow Echoes, which is effectively a 600% damage bow skill that also triggers Warden's Call every turn.

Classes with Potential

Cursed

Cursed are very interesting for this run. They gain movement speed from two skills (Rampage + Surge), making them move very fast, allowing you to skip unwanted fights. Other than that, they got good burst with Rampage, a short-ish range mobility move in Reckless Charge and a kind if bad scouting skill in Prenatural Sense. This appears to make them kind of Jacks of all Trades with really high movement speed. It is also kind of useful that you have Hate as a resource since you basically never have to refill that, especially in a speedrun. Honestly, I don't think this class is gonna be all that competitive but it might be.

Reaver

Reavers are comparable to Arcane Blades - they got some spells to clear the early game faster and use weapons later on. In general, I'd say that a Reaver's damage output is probably higher than that of an Arcane Blade because of Corrupted Strength but that's about it really. They got a very mediocre scouting tool in Vimsense and no mobility at all. Latter is by far the most crippling one but I still decided to list these guys since I think they got some interesting tools to work with. They also use Vim, which is a very good resource since it refills by killing enemies, just like Hate.

Doombringer

I have very little experience with this class so this is gonna be short - from what I heard they got high burst and Rush. They do not have access to scouting or high range teleports but use Vim, which is nice.

Demonologist

A very interesting class, from what I can tell a better Doombringer. They got a lot of potent damage skills which, combined with counterstrike, deal a ton of damage. They also got Blighted Path as a Demon Seed Skill, which is potentially insane since it's able to deal about 1000 blight damage without taking a turn. So these guys potentially got the highest damage output of all listed Classes. Other than that, they have Rush, a medium range teleport and Wraithform (which is situationally useful). They also use Vim so that is pretty nice. Big downsides: no scouting and no high range teleports

Since this game's addon scene is quite big, I think it is also important to talk about that.

First off, addon types i think should not be allowed:

    Gameplay changes (including balancing)
    Class addons, unless you are specifically running e.g. Barbarian%
    Convenience addons such as Respec Everywhere or that drowning rod thing

Things I'd think should be allowed:

    Purely cosmetic addons, such as Shut Up That Damn Dog or Myth's Tactical Borders
    Fixes that would otherwise work on a different setup, such as Classic UI Buff Removal

Things I am not certain about and will talk about in greater detail:

    Faster Rest/Explore
    Plenum Tooltip
    Improved player targeting

Faster Rest/Explore

Pros:

    Cuts off-time which makes the run faster and more enjoyable

Cons:

    Removes a little decision making (is it faster to rest or to kill yourself?)
    Makes the run less accessible when you have a shitty CPU
    HAS to be used when running

My Conclusion:

Request 60 fps and divide by 2 for resting and by 5 when exploring. This makes it run on a lot worse CPUs and still cuts some off-time. Those values were chosen kind of randomly by me and can easily be changed if need be ;) It is REALLY important that all runners use the same settings though, otherwise you will be way faster or slower in comparison.
EDIT: After some more thinking, I think this should not be allowed to maximize general speed for everyone and best comparison

Plenum Tooltip

Pros:

    Makes analyzing an enemy way quicker since you don't need to go into "inspect"
    Optional

Cons:

    ?

My Conclusion:

This addon should definitely be allowed in my opinion since there are no real downsides and it makes the run faster

Improved player targeting

Pros:

    Allows for way faster skill casting through the usage of Auto-accept target
    Optional

Cons:

    Might not always be targeting the optimal target
    Might bug out

My Conclusion:

This addon should also be allowed since it doesn't really change a lot gameplay wise and allows for very interesting strats.

Finally, let's talk about timing methods.

There are two possible ways to start timing, either when you hit New Game or when you create your character and the game creates a new save (RTA). Personally, I'd prefer the latter since that way you can take your time to give your character a clever name ;) One thing I'd like to note though is that I don't think you should be allowed to load a pre-created character since that is going to automatically do your first LvL-Up, which is kind of weird.

A lot of people have been asking about why I suggest using real time instead of turns to measure the speed of a run, I'll give Pros and Cons abouth both methods (keep in mind that I am highly biased towards time because I love high APM)

Using Actual Time

Pros

    Easier to understand for your average person
    Rewards fast and good decision making, vastly increasing the skill cap and learning curve
    Rewards high APM and muscle memory (since turns don't take any time there is almost no limit for APM)
    Makes it so there are a lot of possibly viable strats and characters, so there is more to learn and improv
    Makes Auto-Explore more viable
    Makes the run more frantic, which is better to watch and play (imo)
    Allows for a lot of play styles since fast execution is key
    Makes stacking movement speed etc. less obsolete

Cons:

    Loading Times. Note that this is a problem for literally every game with loading times and no auto-splitter, even on console. Differences in loading screens are just the reality of speedrunning without auto-splitters (once again, if you know how to create one, or know someone who might, any help whatsoever is greatly appreciated)
    Makes the run harder to learn (this should only be a problem for, pardon my French, butthurt lazy "runners" that complain they can't get top times "just because" they don't practice as much)
    Makes stacking movemement speed etc. less useful

Using Turns

First off, tradition is no argument. Just because most Roguelikes do this doesn't mean it's the best way of doing things

Pros

    Makes comparisons more accurate since loading times etc. don't matter
    Makes it so manually walking is more viable than Auto-Explore

Cons

    Rewards slow, thought through play, which is the exact opposite of speedrunning
    Doesn't punish slow play
    Disallows for fun tools such as LiveSplit and awesome "GLOD" moments
    "Is 10k turns slow or fast?"
    Possibly more RNG dependence, especially if you find good movement infusions
    Makes a lot of classes and races not viable, e.g. Undead are completely useless because movement infusions are OP
    Makes a lot of strats not viable, e.g. activating Auto-accept targets is useless
    Cuts some decision-making (such as dying VS resting) since dying takes less turns

My Conclusion:

Well, obviously I think using real time is a lot better but if you still want to use turns then whatever, do what you want, I'm not gonna stop you ;)