New Run submitted
4 years ago
United States

I submitted a new run. It's very sloppy, as I just started, and played it when I just woke up, but it's a different route which I call the murder hobo route, as you'll see if you watch it. The route just uploaded to youtube:

The route is pretty much completely different than MSKain's route, I spent my time grinding in town killing patrols till I was strong enough to take the game. Since it's a new route I know there's a ton of changes to get more out of it, and sub-1 hour shouldn't be too hard; with some lucky runs could see it dropping even more.

It might be a good idea for me to twy a hybrid of this route and MSKain's, so I grab the dust of disappearance. If I change my levelups around some, (Grab fireball spell at the 23 min mark) and get sokol cleared sooner, that might be the better strat.

I did have some major issues with this run too, was short on expected gold, was a bit lower than expected in EXP, at least once hit the windows ket trying to get the splits to change, and ate a lightning bolt right off the bat in the final fight. I stopped time at the EXP screen from the town.

If we do get more runners and formalize the rules, ending time is one I think we should agree on. I'm also learning to having cycles at 6000 or even 10000, makes movement smoother.

MSKain likes this
Utah, USA

A fascinating run. There's definitely room for improvement--I don't think buying the Fine bows really does that much for you, as you say, grabbing the dust and using that for the final fight instead would be much easier and faster, you can just have your warriors quick combat with two-handed swords and, as you've probably seen from my videos, they murder him real fast when he can't breathe on them or hardly hit them in melee. I see a lot of my early self, too, in the hesitation in menus and travel; once you get used to those a bit more, sub-1 hour will be really easy.

Also, this route gets enough good items early to take advantage of the item dupe glitch that I never real find a use for in this run. You could multiply your Javelins of lightning after the first fight and just use those to reliably toast the guards the rest of the way. And/or if you get the Dust of Disappearance early enough you could dupe it for the last few guard battles and again easily quick combat through them when the enemy can't see or do much to you.

As for the cycles, feel free to experiment if you like. Mostly I haven't messed with them because I'm too lazy--some parts could be really sped up with cycle count increasing

Utah, USA

Oh yes...and stopping at the exp received is the place I always stopped it at before as well. It actually sets off a hidden flag on your characters and marks them as complete--you can't add them back into a Pool of Radiance party once that happens, so there's no real NG+ in PoR, so it works as well as anything for a time stop. Could be on final hit of Tyranthraxus, but some other RPG speedruns that require you to go somewhere to finish the game set that at the end point, so it's always worked for me.

United States

The javalens really only help on the second fight, which is the hardest one next to tyrax the way I ran it. After that I have 1-2 stinking clouds each time.

The bows, I wanted it for the two Half-elfs, since they generally killed him using bows, the other people were there just to slow him down. But this is the first run the too much money bug didn't hit me since I figured it out, so I ran with it just to make sure it kept working.

Looking at Tyranithraxus, he doesn't play like I remembered. For one thing, I thought it was immune to magic. In the Ruins of Adventure he has a flat 20% resist. Looking at his numbers, he doesn't seem to have this. His magic resistance shows as 0. He can be hit with magic missiles and these seem to always hit, so wands of magic missiles are kind of useful against him , and more importantly, he is not immune to stinking cloud.

Almost immune to it, but not quite. He doesn't seem to choke, but he does cough from it. This causes his AC to go from -4 to 4 in the status area; might be just a rendering issue, but I think it's legit. So that's a nice 40% chance to hit. He seems immune to slow, fire and lightning.

His flame aura I can't find for sure, but in the pen and paper game it's 2d10. Most of his stats are the same as pen\paper, at least for damage. It is resisted by resist fire. He can see invisible and strangely shows a status of displaced. A cloak of displacement causes the first hit in combat to miss, so that might mean your first physical attack on him will always miss. (Cloaks can also be abused, if you unequip and re-equip them in combat, it resets this and the next attack will miss)

South Yorkshire, England

Just had a look at the data files with Gold Box Explorer. Tyranithraxus shows up as having the "resist magic 15%" effect, as well as the stuff you found. He also has two effects that GBE sadly doesn't know the details of (tyranthraxus_unknown_power1, tyranthraxus_unknown_power_half_damage?).

He also has really good saves (7, 8, 9, 8, 10).

United States

That's odd, in GBC it's showing as greyed out for me. But I just started messing with GBC, so might be looking at it wrong.

One effect is his flame aura, the other would most likely be immunities. But he also has the fear aura flag, so some of these may be overlapping.

His saves are at 2x hit hit dice from the pen and paper book, so he saves as an 18th level fighter.

Looks like his breath weapon gets 3 shots. Avoiding that, resisting fire, and getting his AC down to 4 with stinking cloud really helps.

lagdotcom likes this
Australia

Thanks for uploading that, I enjoyed watching it and there were some really creative use of the game mechanics there. :)

I've been experimenting with a route which I'm hoping to upload in the next few days - basically, it involves avoiding as many combats as possible and mostly getting experience through treasure hoards. It also uses a 4 person party, which boosts the experience awards by 50% and reduces the strength of random encounters, which scale by party strength. It's a low level run through that aims to get just enough experience to get everyone to 4th level, which is the bare minimum needed to beat Tyranthraxus. Any lower than that and your characters run the risk of getting paralyzed by dragonfear. It's still a tad dicey then, and I've found that if the run comes unstuck, 95% of the time, it's fighting Tyranthraxus, which is a bit frustrating.

I agree that setting a standard cycle rating would be a good idea, because it can make a huge difference. I like the idea of setting it at 6000. I find 3000 a bit cumbersome, although that's mostly because I've practised at a much higher rate. As long as everyone uses the same one.

Utah, USA

I've been running all my Gold Box runs on the default 3000, as I say, since it's just been me. If everyone agrees on a higher setting, 6000 or so, that's fine, as long as it consistent

United States

I'm fine with 6000, and no sound.

Some games we need to be careful with versions too. I know in Curse there's an extra early dark elf lord in hap that they removed.

I'm not sure if I'll run any other games, or even this one much more, I mostly did it cause I'm writing a faq\walkthrough for Pool right now on gamefaqs. Once I'm done there, on to curse, and all the other goldbox games. I started writing it 15 years ago, so this revision is fairly easy to complete. It's an HTML one sorta like Marco's ones on the-spoiler, but with more detail and text. Trying to make it informative but not just one giant wall of text.

As for fighting Tyranthraxus, I do know his breath weapon has 3 shots, and looks like it can leave any of the top two squares at 90 or 45 degree angles, so there's some blind spots. He's somewhat "weak" to stinking cloud.

Move + Snap-back I'll start off with a basic one that's a bit questionable depending on how you use it. When you start moving in a round, pressing the ESC key moves you back to where you were. Any damage done while you've moved, however, will remain, as will any attacks used. When you have two attacks in one round, you can run up to a foe, attack them once, and as long as it kills them, you can use ESC to warp back to where you started, and move again with your remaining attack. This by itself is nothing too special, but it is used in some later tricks, and can be abused like crazy in games with fire shield if you want to be very cheap.

Cloak of Displacement Renewal The cloak of displacement is a great item. Not only does it grant you a -2 AC bonus, it causes you to be "displaced", a feature you don't see mentioned often. What this means, the first attack in combat will always miss you. By itself this is great, but like many items, if you unequip the cloak and re-equip it in combat, this effect renews, meaning the first attack after your turn will always miss. This can be combined with the Move + Snap-back trick and the following trick for some cheap fun.

Force Enemy Actions If you move away from a foe, they get a "free" back attack on you. If a foe uses this free attack before their normal turn, they will not get their actual normal turn. In other words, you can force any foe you can reach into performing an attack on you, rather than say, using breath weapons or casting spells. Combine this with being displaced, and unlimited movement with using snap-back, and you can cause your foes to waste turns attacking someone they can't hit. This does not seem to work correctly on the final boss, however.

So in theory, equip the cloak, run up to him, then leave, and he'll attack the person with the cloak, missing his first attack, and never use his breath weapon, like a poor mans dust of disappearance. I'm wondering if sees invisible counters it in this game.

United States

No heroes were killed in my run..... Two Theurgist were killed though right off the bat to get their rings which sell for 5k gold each, so I have the gold for some level ups. Then I hire two Curates, and force them to fight town guards, where I then kill the curates after the fight to get more EXP. Then I kill town guards till I'm out of money, clear sokal keep so the town folk will talk to me again + a quick route to the gate. Then I kill more town guards for some quick level ups, and storm the castle.

I do hire two more curates at the end to help with the 8th level fighters fight, not sure if they helped or not. Stinking cloud and charm person clears up most of that fight.

United States

I guess I should comment to on the heroes, I'm not real thrilled with them. Great for the beginning, but if you take on the town guards in a controlled fight right off the bat, you get Chain Mail + 2 which is only 1 AC off from their plate mail.

I normally try to buy non-magical plate mail since the rings of protection + 3 you can get later on stack with it.

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