I haven't made this category mainly because I don't want to have too many empty categories. So far, noone has donr an All Quests run, so there is no pointin maming a category. When someone comes up with an actual video plus ruleset, i can consider making a category for it.

It's not about not taking damage. It's actually about being even much faster than the requirement for the gold level. The Shiny golden medal is a semi-hidden feature for the ppl that really want to take the Time trials seriously.

One Example: 5-3: Flutter Flyaway, a level with many flying platform cycles that can be skipped with good movement. The Golden Medal requires a time below 1 Minute 49 sec. That time can barely be achieved when you stick to the moving platform cycles. For a shiny golden medal, you need a time below 1 minute and 8 seconds - 41 seconds faster. For that time you need to actually skip most of the moving platform cycles.

The shiny golden medal feature shows very good, how the devs had the time trials in their mind when designing the levels. That's why I think it's a very good game for speedruns in general, because it was built in a way that you can go really fast most of the time.

By the way, all shiny gold times are listed here, have fun trying to get them: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/wii/997764-donkey-kong-country-returns/faqs/62787

Wow, suddenly Super-Mod. Thank you Kotti for trusting me to moderating the leaderboard in a good way. I'll do as good as I can, I promise ;)

Yeah, i'm also not 100% confident about the name "Glitchless"... As I said, names still can be changed, and most likely will. I guess i'll rethink about it, but for now, "No Major Glitches" sounds quite good... I guess we might end up using that name, but I'll rethink about it.

And yeah, sorry that i did not move all the runs, but as i did the restructure the Website was quite under load and i ended up getting a bit angry about having to do some inputs two or three times. I was happy that i managed to move the WRs and just wanted to get finished with it. Good to have the older co-op runs for the WR history.

Good to see it summed up. As mentioned in the other topic, i guess i'd sum up my point of view as well here, because in the end there is still a ruleset to define which might be very important.

So in my Opinion, there is no "the correct mastery" when it comes to Any% runs. In the end, what matters at most is the movement speed. As long as you get the movement speed at least close to the cap, you can do the run quite fast. Each mastery-combination can get enough damage-output to get the bosses down in about the same time (i've tested alot with that, but there wasn't really a big difference as long as there's at least one mastery that can deal some damage... even Nature/thieving can do it in a quite good amount of time). So what matters most is the "how do I get movement speed?". For Rune, it's easy: just keep the rage running. But Also other mastery combinations can get a quite decent movement speed. The best movement speed i've got with the Haruspex was a consistent 163% (23% movement speed, 30% skills and 2 Hermes Sandale pieces=10%). Also the times you mentioned seem to be a whole amount better than what is possible with the Haruspex, but when it comes to a very good Haruspex run, it might end up in quite the same spot. Actually, I've made a 1:09:51 run on August 5 2017. I was a bit lazy submitting it (the leaderboards were quite inactive that time) and i've made an incredible sub-4-hour Any%-legendary-Run a week later that I totally missed highlighting/submitting it. The VoD is gone now, sadly, so i'll never submit that one to the leaderboards. I normally did not plan to mention that i made that time since it's a bit embarrassing that i forgot to make a vod for an actually good world record run... but it's just for the comparison. The sum of best segments in my Livesplit (I still have the 1:09:51 splits) shows a best possible time of 1:07:26. if we take into consideration that this run was done before the Ragnarök Expansion and that we had five domains in the tower of justice instead of three (i'd say it's about 1 minute of walking), we end up in a pretty similar time as you mentioned. Also i might be quite bad in the Ragnarök area currently (that's why i only have a 1:52:31 right now), but if i do some training, i might get into similar times as you're mentioning.

So... all of that is just to point out that in my opinion, it's more about the own taste which masteries you take. I'll most likely stick to my Haruspex since I'm most used to it.

But still, there is one big question linked with all of this:

The main reason why i wanted to keep the Hades(AE) subcategory alive is for the people that might not have bought the ragnarök DLC and still want to compete on the leaderboards. So I've thought about it as a category to be done explicitely if you don't have the DLC. For a class like the haruspex, there is technically no difference in running to Hades, splitting there to compete with the Hades(AE) leaderboard and go ahead through the DLC area. However, if someone is using the rune mastery, it could be questionable whether or not he should be able to compete on the leaderboards, since only people who bought the DLC can access the rune mastery. So if the rune mastery gives an unfair advantage in the run, that would mean that we have to ban the rune mastery for the Hades(AE) category. So that's why i mostly wrote up all the stuff above, because as far as I could say right now, it still should be possible for players without the rune mastery to compete with the players that use the Rune mastery (even if they have some RNG to fight against). That would technically make your 1:10:44 Run the actual WR for Any% Hades(AE).

And that is the main question that comes with my post: Do you guys think we should allow the Rune mastery only for Ragnarök/Accomplished Hero runs, or also for the Hades(AE) category?

Well, I don' think that the rune mastery can outperform the Haruspex in an optimized Any%-setting. Sure, the Haruspex depends on journeying boots. But with good RNG you can get 24% boots plus a hermes piece right away, which brings you up to 159% speed permanently. Thats only 7% behind the cap of 166%. You can get this cap really easy with the rune mastery, but you would have to keep your HP low for it.

Additionally you have a better charge skill with Take Down and you can get the leveling to 8 without stopping via Trance of Wrath.

So I'd say rune is more consistent for getting runs, but the haruspex has still more potential in case you get the RNG you need.

So, first Version of the Restructuring is ready. A few Notes:

1. I only moved the PBs form the Immortal-Throne Categories, so the obsolete runs got deleted. (It just made no sense for me to move all obsolete runs aswell).
2. The Names of the (sub-) categories are still subject to change, especially with the "Hades(AE)" subcategory name i'm not that sure about it. If there are some ideas, let me know.
3. Legendary has no Sub-categories for now . Old Immortal Throne is not possible with that build due to different balancing of pets, so someone needed to come up with a new strat for that. The Accomplished Hero Legendary might not make that much sense since you still need to go through Helos-Hades for Epic and Legendary, and for Ragnarök i doubt that anyone would be crazy enough doing the run. The subs can be added though when runs are coming up.
4. Still thinking about a good ruleset for Accomplished Hero Coop. If someone has an idea, let me know here.

So since John came up with a NoSkillpointGlitch*-Run on Ragnarök and we have some new Runs for a "accomplised Hero" category, it might make some sense to restructure the Leaderboard.

I thought about restructuring it since "Any% (IT)" and "Any% AE)" are technically only 2 Sub-Categories of an "Any%", like it is set up within the "Any% (AE)" right now with Hades and Ragnarök. Also since we got some NSG-Runs lately, it might be a good choice to put them a bit more in the spotlight instead of them being a "filter" within the leaderboard for Any%.

So my Idea would be to Structure it like this:

1. 4 Main Categories: Any%, Any% Coop, Any% NSG and Any% Legendary.

2. Within the main Categories, there would be 4 Sub-Categories: Immortal Throne, Anniversary Edition, Ragnarök and Accomplised Hero. (For Legendary, i doubt that Accomplised Hero and IT subcategories would fit, since its just out of the way).

For most of these categories we have at least one run, and i guess it would give a better structure to the leaderboard without the NSG-Runs just being a "filter-addition" to the Any% category. Also, we would still be able to support each main version of Titan quest (oldschool immortal Throne, Base Anniversary Edition and Ragnarök), and the 2006 Base game could be added as well when we get runs for it.

So, what do you all think about that? Would that be a good idea or does anyone have a better idea in structuring the leaderboards?

*I prefer using "NoSkillpointGlitch" (or NSG) over "Glitchless", since NSG would make it clear that only the Skillpoint-Glitch is banned, tricks like locking Nehebkau in place would still be accepted (Some ppl might argue it is a glitch and thus, banned in glitchless).

Hey guys, Sorry for not reacting, i had quite alot to do and had no time to check the forums. I didn't create the categories immediately after ragnarök release because i don't like to have empty categories and I normally wait until we actually have runs for it. Since now we have runs for it, i'll add the Categories.

Please expect the categories to go live on Sunday since I already had the idea of completely restructuring the leaderboards for Titan Quest and I'd like to hear your opinions on it (see another thread here in the Forum going up soon)

Interesting Stuff! I highly doubt that it will be a thing in an Any% Run since the fight just goes too fast and he is not able to do much damage anyways. In the Any% NSG (no Skillpoint Glitch) it might be quite interesting.

https://discord.gg/MUT4dVn

this one won't expire. ;)

Really cool Stuff!

One thing which was not mentioned exactly... you mentioned that you don't want to rely on 3rd Party Systems. Does that include runner's own notebooks or is it still accepted to bring an own notebook for the run?

For my PC run, Venetica, there is a bug in the game installer itself which can cause some odd glitches that can lead to me not being able to complete the run. To make sure that I have a correctly installed version of the game i would bring my own notebook where i can make sure that everything is running fine.

Pretty neat strat, if it works for you. However, it might not be always better. I know for myself that it would not be faster since i am able to click very fast with my right index finger, that's why i'd stick to my own strats. On top of that, the duration of the freezes depends on your PC. If you have a fast PC, the lag spots are shorter and because of that you cannot achieve as many points during one freeze. On my old PC my personal record for points in one freeze was 29, but now i'm kinda happy when i get to the 21-23 mark.

So since Someone (coincidental with a similar name like you ;) ) asked the same question in the current WR vid and I answered there... well i'll just copy/paste the answer here, in case someone else is interested:

To be honest, i never played the earth mastery really much, that's why i didn't consider it for this run. But i have some points where i assume that Earth might be not as optimal as spirit. On thing you should keep in mind: No matter what you find in a speedrun, you will have a quite weak equipment, so if the bosses on legendary attack you, you're pretty much screwd. That's why the Liche King basically does everything in legendary. I know that the Core Dweller is also kinda tanky, but it's not only about being tanky, it's also about doing the damage, otherwise Typhon might be a bottleneck on legendary. The thing about Typhon is, that he has a life draining spell. Even if you have 20k+ HP he can just oneshot you with that one since you normally have no resistence against it. In the anniversary edition the bosses tend to focus you more then in the old IT version. Because of that you basically cannot deal any damage to typhon if you don't want him to attack you (which you don't, trust me), so the damage to get Typhon down has to come from the core dweller alone. Second, Spirit has the Outsider, which is a second pet with very high damage output that Earth would not have. I can't tell how good the earth spells are, but the outsider is often the reason why i get the bosses down that fast. Third: Earth has no additional movement speed. TQ Speedruns have a high focus on movement speed, since you are running pretty much between the bosses. That's why it is efficient to cast Dark Covenant from Spirit very often, just because of the movement speed. Since Earth does not have a movement speed spell, it should be slower than spirit.

These points are all assumptions... but the best way to find out is just trying ;)

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Well i haven't done coop-runs yet, so i can just speak for the solo-run. It also SHOULD apply to coop-runs, since it's still the same game, but no guarantee.

As far as i can tell the lag spots mainly come from from the map loading system. Some areas take quite a while to load so they cause the game to freeze as soon as the player gets close enough to the area so that the game starts to load it. To get the freezes consistently, you have to make sure that between two tries the game unloads the part of the world which causes the freeze. One method to do this, is reloading the game, which takes quite a while in coop-runs and i guess i would not recommand this. In Solo-Runs you can do that easily by just dying after the freeze and respawning at the fountain at the beginning of the lower war camp. If you then wait 1-2 seconds and run back in again, the game will have unloaded the area and the freeze will happen again. I can't tell for multiplayer runs, but i think it should work if your partner is not present at the ẃar camp (or at least on the left side of the stone bridge in front of the war camp).

Another thing is always the Camera angle. The freeze is only consistent if you have the default camera angle without zooming in or out. You can also make sure to have the correct angle by reloading, but there's also a hotkey for it (default is Numpad-2).

Hope that helps a bit ;)

I added a new "Skill point glitch"-Filter to the Any% (AE) Category.

For now, it's only for this category, if someone wants to submit a run without the skillpoint glitch to another category, i can add the filters also for the other categories.

My progress i made for Donkey Kong Country Returns and Venetica since Round 1 Cuts were made: I did both runs at ESA Germany and trained alot beforehand.

DKCR: My consistency improved alot and i managed to pull of a new Personal Best (1h 34m 29s, 4th place on the leaderboard). I Also might soon bust that run again, in theory i could pull of a 2nd place run. Estimates won't change though since i prefer having the buffer time.

Venetica: I did some major route changes for the mid-section of the game, saving about 10 minutes and making a sub 2 hours theoretically possible (i didn't manage to pull of a sub2-run yet). I adjusted the Estimate from a 2h30min to a 2h15min. ESA Germany showed that i can easily finish a run in this time.

My DKCR run in the marathon sucked pretty hard since i had some issues with input delay, no need to watch it ;)

So far i had no issues with the batteries getting off the contacts, the wiiMote never turned off for me... so i can't really tell how to fix that.

Sorry, i was on a marathon the last days, so i didnt check the forums. I just saw the post.

So normally the Sensor bar is not used at all in the run. The WiiMote itself has devices in it to detect movement.

The problem you describe sounds alot like a false neutral zone on the analogue stick: When you start the game before plugging in the nunchuck to the Wiimote it can appear that what the WiiMote registers as "neutral Position" of the analogue stick in fact is not the actual neutral position. I had one run where this spot was slightly to the right of the actual neutral position, so when the analogue stick was in the actual neutral position, the WiiMote registered a slight movement to the left. As far as i can tell this mostly occurs by plugging in the Nunchuck to the WiiMote when the game is already loaded and then starting to play immediately. If it is this error for you, you can easily fix it by resetting the game via Wii Menu.

Let me know if that helps ;)

Nice, so we can get the Old versions Back! I gotta look into this when i'm back from ESA Germany.

Then my first idea for the leaderboard would be implementing a Version Filter (maybe only Pre/Post-1.42 for now, we don't need each single version) to keep track of both, runs on older and current versions.

I'd prefer filters rather then new categories like "Any% (AE current version)" and "Any% (AE with Lag Spots)", because compared to the current activity in this game, we already have quite many categories.

Any other thoughts?