I've been speed running Hades unofficially for some time now, and have really grown to love the any% category. However, I tend to be chaotic, and decided one day to try and speed run an Extreme Measures run. It didn't go well to say the least, but I feel like some others out there would be interested in this idea of mine, so I'm sharing it with you all, and hopefully we can see it as an official category some day?
Essentially, as the title implies, its an Extreme Measures run; requiring the player to beat EM4 (EM Hades) as fast as they can. Also, Middle Management would be turned on as well, to make mini-boss rooms different/more difficult as well.
This alone requires a minimum of 12 heat to attempt, and assuming the player is familiar with typical Hades speed running, Forced Overtime would be maxed out as well, bringing the recommended heat level to 18. FO obviously isn't required, but highly encouraged. And of course, this category could be completed with any weapon/aspect/keepsake(s) the player wishes.
Now, I'm not too familiar with high heat strategies, nor have I attempted to run anything higher than 32 heat, so I don't know if this is a strategy used to reach the required heat for a high heat run. Even so, I think this would be a super fun category to run competitively or even casually.
Let me know what you guys think!
MM is very often taken in the high heat categories (32 and beyond), and some of the 50-heat runs do in fact use EM4 to reach the heat requirements (see my 50-heat eris run as a particularly speedy example!)
So there is some precedent to legitimately incorporating these pacts for some aspects as part of their high-heat speed strategy.
Just FYI most of the community doesn't actually check these forums and you're more likely to get a productive discussion going in the speedrunning discord server: https://discord.gg/zN7cc8Z
