Hi,

Some puzzles can be solved in different ways, there are not so many I am aware of but anyway here are my findings:

Part 01:
How to talk down Stan:

The price for the ship can go up or down, depending on your dialog choices.

The ship is always worth 10000 pieces of eight, we just need to get it under 7000 to have a deal.

If you:
Refuse an extra = - 450 (6 times).
The first extra does not substract 450 so there are 6 extras left we dont need, so we can substract 2700 pieces of eight in total.

Go away:
You can walk away from Stan to lower the price:
1st time = - 1000
2nd time = - 500
3rd time = - 100
4th time = conversation ends

Make an offer
So if you go up an raise our offer this will substract 500
but if we go down this will add half the amount between the last two offers:
I.E. Offer 5000 then offer 2000 = + 1500
Offer 4000 then offer 2000 = + 1000
Offer 3000 then offer 2000 = + 500

So this is in my opinion the fastest way to get the Sea Monkey:
The first offer you make always substract nothing from the original price, but we have to start somewhere so lets go with 2000.
Now we can offer him 3000 (price = 9500), then 4000 (price = 9000), then 5000 (price = 8500), then we leave two times (price = 7000), then we offer 5000 again an voila its yours.
(Maybe refusing some extras would also work, but I cant skip dialog in the floppy version I was testing this with, so someone else can check if there is a faster way on PC)
You can start the video below to see this strat in action

Fun Fact:
You can lower the price so much that you can get it for 4000

Part 2:
Burning and cooking:

Here you can burn several items and also throw a lot of these items in to the cooking pot - but it dont think there is a real "fastest" method:

Getting flaming mass:
- Dusty old book
- Feather pen
- Business Card
- 1000% Cotton T-Shirt
- T-Shirt
- Map

Yeah you can sorta drop some items by just burning them all, but most of them are gone after you get to Part 3...so burn whatever you want to.

You can also throw all of these items into the cooking-pot except of the Map (so no Deadend possible, you can always get the flamming mass)

Part 3:
Blowing up the dam:

One of my favorite puzzles, just because it was so awesome to find out as a kid oyu can solve this in a lot of different ways:

So what can you do:
1. Open the spyglass and use the lense with the sun
2. Get the Rock (if you look at it its flint)
The Rock works with every steel item so we can use the following items:
- Spyglass
- Canonball
- Magnetic Compass
- Stable Remover

So the fastes solutions would be to not get the canonball and the spyglass at the fort and just use the compass or stapel remover to blow up the dam.
We should avoid spending to much time in the fort to not meet Herman and have to talk to him, so gettting only the rope and the gunpowder would be best.

Alright thats all I am aware of are there more of these kind of puzzles?

Awesome thread

I had no idea you could get the ship that way. I just tried it out and it worked (having Guybrush not fully walk away twice, which I also didn't know would work. I thought you meant you had to leave the screen entirely). But even so, for speedrunning I am not sure if this can be faster than turning down 7 extras. Only if the time it takes to leave and return twice is quicker than that. On first glance it seems slower. Mainly because of Guybrushs unskippable walking.

Cool finding on the rest, didn't know some of that stuff was flammable.

Good idea on the compass and staple remover. It won't save much time because picking up the cannonball is so fast. Also never have a problem with meeting Herman there. He doesn't show until you go there a second time. Or maybe if you hang around too long?

It's such a shame you need the rope from the fort, because if you didn't what if you could get a 3rd amount of gunpowder AFTER loading the cannon. The walk to the hold would waste time but not going to the fort would be a huge time save. But I don't even know if you CAN get more gunpowder.

One thing i'd love to do is avoid talking to Herman after you push the rock, he wastes so much time.

Hi thx 🙂

Talking down Stan needs some more optimizing thats right. Maybe a combination of refusing some extras and raise the price would be best.

On second thought picking up the cannonball can be usefull aswell because you avoid scrolling through your inventory to use the Stable Remover or Compass.

Pretty sure Herman pops up after some seconds even on your first visit of the fort.

About the gunpowder I can give you an answer (I was testing this yesterday too)...its gone....just gone after you blow yourself to MI.

Also there are some more actions you can do in TSOMI, but they dont(?) have any effect like:

1. You can cook the fish and the meat in the kitchen (maybe this was part of an unused puzzle? Cook the fish before you give it to the Troll? Dunno...).
2. You can give your Money to Otis (dont know if there is a limit to not get broke [Deadend?])

But overall with your cool findings about the Swordfight and this stuff, I am pretty sure you can lower the current WR 😉

I know for sure it can go lower than 32, with great RNG luck. Just a case of hammering away at it.

Hermans showing up must be an Amiga thing.

You are right about scolling slowing you down a bit, I thought that too after I posted that.

Yeah cooking the items has no effect on anything. Maybe you can do it because it's fun.

There is that thing about sinking the ship (with the rock catapult thing) vs. not sinking the ship. Those two lead to different endings later on.

sinking the ship takes a lot of time (you basically need to set up the catapult again because no matter what, you need the bananas), also I think the final cutscene is either longer or tied, so it's not worth it (but we could time it I guess).