Thank you! I made the same observation on RNG mitigation. It does make we wonder if duping a full suit of good armor once it's acquired (Plate+1 or Bracers+Ring, Shield+1, Cloak of Displacement) would be worth a time investment for duping and then just autoing through most fights after the graveyard. The conclusion I came to after throwing in a few auto battle was to say 'Y' at the end battle message to continue the battle and spamming the space bar as fast as possible, after two tries maximum I was able to end the quick combat, wastes a few seconds but at least allows me to go into the next battle safe.

I won't be uploading the Max Cycles until I hear from LordBreakfast and Davidtki about their thoughts on it, in case they do have alternate ideas. But it was interesting to try out.

While it certainly makes a difference to this run, I think it could make an even bigger one to Curse and Secret due to relying more on auto with their characters to begin with, at least based on my runs. Of course, if I remember right you leaned on Necklaces a lot more for your run of Secret, which actually makes sense (my original theory was that since Secret is a much higher level adventure most enemies would have too many hit points and the advanced fighters would do damage more reliably, but since we have difficulty control for that game they actually have small HP pools than I at first thought; also, when I started running it I probably assumed Red Dragons and similar enemies were immune to fire, but only Fire Giants are in first ed). In any case, max cycles making combat faster would make more melee-centric, quick combat-focused parties and routes more appealing.

I too prefer to run on at least somewhat perceivable speeds, which is why I never even bothered changing the cycles on my runs until other people started showing an interest in the games. But having settings be as fair and competitive as possible definitely trumps small bits of personal comfort. If the best way to get DOS games to run consistently similar across machines is to go max settings, I'm willing to accept that across the Gold Box games

I'm not sure how much more I'll work on any% unless I get it into a marathon sometime. With my weird attitude, it's not worth it that much to grind a 15 or less minute game. I get more bored running something quick over and over than running something long (in fact, until you came along and broke the any% by doing the things I was always afraid to, I never seriously ran any game that took under an hour to beat). I may play a bit more. Having one mage makes the any% super luck-based, tho; if you only have 1 sleep spell, you have to get real lucky to put out the 5th level cleric with it, as you did in your submission, and beating him at level 1 without sleep is a tall order. I've failed to get him with 2 sleep spells once and wiped real fast.

I've actually been playing with a bunch of things on 100%, although my two best near-full runs thus far have been moot (the first time I forgot to clear Stojanow's Gate after running any% so much and just slipped past it again to kill Ty; the second time I was doing much better and forgot to pick up the diplomatic envelope from Cordona for the Zhentil outpost). But I've discovered that a number of factors contribute to the size of the slum forces, including weapons and hit points. I put the magic shortbows and arrows on a character in the back to more easily shoot down the enemy and suddenly was facing full-sized groups of goblins, including captains; and when my hit points started getting really low, I discovered that I was getting groups of only 4 enemies.

I played around with that a bunch more and found that if you have a party of all 6 HP or less you will only get 4 enemies on the slums random encounters. This makes your characters slightly more vulnerable to being knocked out during the slum fights, but I think it might be worth it to field a party of 4 F/M with 6 HP, keep the last character with no armor so that the enemies will surrender rather than run.

Going to continue working on this today, and hopefully will have my official 100% video up today sometime.

Sorry, we just haven't been diligent with adding all the characters. Should be fixed now.

Thanks for the tidbits and advice. I just finished a 5-man party in under 2 hrs and if I get a chance today might stream another. I think I'll save off on the Slums for now, just do it as normal, and then later on try a 4-man party that exploits the encounters. My wishing to do things the 'right way' is not entirely consistent--far as I'm concerned, the Slums is a big bunch of battles so finding an alternate way to do them is plausible. I'll have to try playing with the buccaneer and nomad sections to speed through them (on the 2 hr run I just did I tried helping the nomads, and you have to wait around for quite a while before the kobolds start attacking, which is very annoying). 1:30 is definitely in play, we'll see how much more I can drop it

I count Norris the Grey because it's the only quest available in Kuto's Well; essentially, every area has a quest cleared. For Textile House, Library, Plaza and Graveyard, you don't 'full clear' them but you do complete major quests. Of course, it makes it a bit difficult to come with a catchy 100% accompaniment phrase, because it isn't actually '100% (All Areas Cleared)' but Kuto's Well is arguably not a major quest so '100% (All Major Quests)' isn't exactly correct, either, although it's probably closest. Unless we want to use Super Mario RPG's 'Most of the Stuff(TM)' definition. I still lean towards '100% (All Major Quests)' as the best descriptor.

I agree that Clerics are generally useless in PoR, and I've often thought of dropping them, but my neurotic 'safety-first' mentality has prevented me from doing it. In 100% there are moments where just having a few healing spells is particularly useful, especially if you're soaking trap damage during some longer segments.

Sub 1-Hour is definitely plausible, perhaps with 4 characters. My next run will likely have 5 and then if that goes extremely well I might go down to 4; the fewer characters you have, the less optional treasure points you have to visit and the more time you save.

With all of this work you two have been doing on this game, it's really making me wonder how my '2- and 3-game' runs will be reworked when I'm ready to tackle those again.

Just ran an updated 100% route. Recorded it, will upload it with some commentary and actual splits in the next day or two, when I'm feeling better. This run was sub-3hrs despite some major rust on my part. I'm very go-with-the-flow in my running, but by planning this out better (exact number and point of level-ups, exact number of Dust of Disappearnce needed for end) and simply executing many points better I could probably get this down to near 2 hours or even sub-2.

I'm using a full group, which I'm simply used to--4 F/M, 1 C/F/M, 1 F/M/T largely for the mansion although he still doesn't manage much--but I could probably drop one of the F/M and blaze through with 5 pretty easily. Four? Not sure, but you get so much exp from doing 100% that you don't need to reduce party for bonus exp too much. All my characters are 4-5 by the time we finish, so I think going less than 5 won't help too much, but a bit of extra xp by going to five will make multiplying items a little easier and give enough bonus exp that I could skip some of the treasure grabs I do in places like the mansion.

I use a thief because there are traps in a couple of the places, like Koval Mansion, that a thief can disarm, but he generally failed on 90% of the disarms anyway so maybe I should just drop the F/M/T. For the speedrun in the gold box games, the thief has only (sometimes) been helpful in Secret of the Silver Blades

The mission to the nomads is to 'deal with' their threat, which means helping them against the kobolds or slaughtering them all gives the same reward from Phlan. It may not be 'as heroic' to attack them, but it's not much different than slaughtering all the kobolds or buccaneers or Zhentil soldiers. By the same token, dealing with the Lizardmen in either way is acceptable, but I'm sure it's much faster to duel their evil champion after freeing the prisoners of Yarash's Pyramid. Opening the treasure is a little trickier--part of me wants to insist you get the reward, by delivering it intact or getting the help of the thieves to loot it, but it does 'complete' the quest if you open it instead. I'm fine with either way, really. It's a weird arbitrary decision but I'm allowing myself to be talked into the simpler, faster option for that quest. Maybe it's just because Cadorna is evil, after all.

I very much feel you should only need to count the major rewards from each area that has multiple points to clear--the five important tomes of the Library, the auction of the Plaza, Cadorna's treasure, and the vampire of the graveyard. I agree that the minor rewards don't add much to the game and just increase the amount of tedious random battles and such you need to get through. After all, it has how I've been practicing them, anyway. In my experimental runs I did attack the nomads instead of helping them (although I think I should test that, maybe the kobold fights are actually faster, but it would be a route decision, not forced) and I've been skipping all those minor area clears.

That is pretty much how I defined 100%, Rich B. I think that rescuing the heir successfully would be required, although that would threaten to invalidate it deep into the run if you fail--although that's what safety saves are for, an easy thing to do in these old games. But it definitely ruins the spirit of 100% if you enter the base to trigger the event and then leave immediately to auto-fail if it's 'faster'--not something I've ever done, but considering how I've seen other RPG speedruns work (including a part of the Champions of Krynn run) that seems possible. Podal Plaza can be cleared by killing monsters if you mess up or skip doing the auction, but seeing the auction pretty much turns it into a safe zone, so either way should be viable (and the auction is quite a bit faster, so that. Wealthy Area is 'cleared' by killing the orcs in the first mansion along with the Temple of Bane/Tyr--so that's a 2-in-1 area. Cordona Textile house, the only real 'quest' concern there is the evil clerk's lootbox, so that would be the requirement--I always do it the 'intended' way when I practice 100% but opening it should also be viable, it triggers a completion flag and a cutscene. But completing each quest and/or counting each area as 'clear' is always what I envisioned as the most realistic (as opposed to killing every set encounter and looting every treasure, which would take far longer and be a lot harder to actually track anyway), and what I have practice-run doing, so that's how it would be counted. For best tracking, having the splits define those points would work best. I really need to get an actual run of this out sometime soon....

For the Vorpal Sword, I'm not sure about its status as a dimension-crossing weapon on its own, but it was integral to the Pool of Darkness plot and was thus the one obviously-intended exception to losing your gear. Ironically, as hyped as the Vorpal Sword always is because of the decap chance, it's only a +3 weapon. So why is it always considered so much more powerful than +5s? (Well, obviously, decap).

I have practiced an effective '100%' category--I would define it as all quests/main areas cleared--as some areas like Podal Plaza have multiple ways to clear. It's kind of a meme category overall, as there is no way to easily define in the game that all flags are cleared, no 'congrats, you've actually accomplished all quests' message to track, so it would have to be hard-defined and then tracked in game, but it's something I still keep telling myself I need to do 'officially'. Right now, my best test run clocked in at 3:57:20

Glitchless is something that would have a much bigger effect on the later games than PoR, especially with a sub-20min WR now. I cannot see that 'Force Reaction' [walk up, walk back] is a glitch; it's no more a glitch than, say, abusing an AI mechanic in a boss fight in a Final Fantasy game. In FF6, for instance, using Vanish/Doom is an obvious glitch; having a character come into battle against Dadaluma with a Reflect ring equipped so he wastes a turn casting a useless spell on that character is not, nor is constantly casting Float against Catastrophe in FF5 so that he wastes his turns removing it. Duping is the only usable mechanic I would define as a glitch ATM, unless some way of useful level underflow or exploiting a bag of holding arises.

Anyway, since a 'glitchless' run would only save a couple minutes at this point, I don't see much of a point myself, but if you want to define something like that and go for it, and even want to avoid using the Force Reaction technique, speedrunning is all about doing it the way you want, so feel free.

Dragons attack three times every round, so his 'ignoring' Cloaks might just be the first attack auto-missing but the other two getting full chances to hit (if the 'Attack of Opportunity allows all three attacks, which I believe it does). If the order of attacks follows the generic way 1st Ed Monster Manuals write it, he would claw/claw/bite for his three attacks. Also, since you have 3 mages if you run into damage trouble you could dupe your Wand of MM before the final stretch and give one to each fighter/mage, allowing them to deal guaranteed damage. And if you use dust, you can move them away from Thraxus so he can't hit them and just Quick until he's dead

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

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.

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

When I started running these, as the only runner, I used the default gog.com DOSBox settings (at the 3000 cycles). When casually using DOSBox on other old games, I would usually crank it up to 15-25k, but decided that leaving it on the default was the most 'fair' or at least basic way of playing and it really didn't matter to me since I was the only runner anyway. If more people become interested in these and there's popular demand to 'allow' higher settings (or enough people just start doing it on higher settings, since there's no real 'rule' against it) I might also use that standard

Certainly. I will create a separate category for it.

It's definitely worth testing. I'll start checking more of it out myself here soon once I've finished with my own busy distractions (new games, darn them). Doing Sokal first with a bit of help from a hero is at least a very intriguing option; having a couple extra magic weapons would expedite the slums grinding, especially since lvl 2 fighters could attack 2 goblins or kobolds a turn with skips they are small enemies. In addition, that could give my fighter-mages lvl 2 by the time the Troll fight comes.

In fact, I've done a bit of practice on 100% (All Clerk Quests), and with exp not being an issue I fielded an entire party of half-elf fighter-mages (1 C/F/M and 1 F/M/T). But since I wouldn't have the exp for lvl 2 before the Troll Fight, I went to Sokal Keep with them after doing the non-Rope-Guild sections of the Slums. In that run it would certainly be more efficient to start with that, especially if a hired hero can make any appreciable difference in the time that fight takes.

And seriously, thanks again for the posts and the work you're doing; being essentially just a trailblazer on games nobody else has ever really thought of testing, I've always done all the leg work alone, and it's nice to actually have someone else pitching in ideas :)

Interesting. Thanks for the research.

I've thought about skipping the slums; the main reason I still clear it is so I have an easily accessible free area to sleep in town. That's worth a huge timesave all on its own (even if you clear 15 encounters, you can't sleep outside a cleared encounter room in the slums safely without getting attacked). A quick walk into the slums to rest and memorize before heading out is huge. ANd you have to walk through the slums enough times, even if you minimize other areas that you visit in the main block, that getting them out of the way is generally a time save. They are trash for items, yes, except for valuable goblin arrows.

Of course, it may be that I overestimate the slums clearing. With my current route and some NPC hired help, I might be able to minimize my trips through the slums to 2 (once to Cordona Textile House for gauntlets/scroll, once to Tyranthraxus) and just visiting an inn a few times would be quicker. But I think I still need the Slums experience; all told, it's worth about 6k to each party member. Losing that much might push me down to be 4th or 3rd level on most of my characters, and a few lucky hits from Tyranthraxus and/or his minions could wipe me out (and with NPCs hired, you get even less exp, so I'd need to find even more sources of backup exp)

I haven't done much with hiring, none since I played the game casually as a kid, and didn't think you could hire characters higher level than you; if you can hire higher level NPCs at the start, that is definitely worth an investment. Clearing Sokal Keep first, at least, with a bit of NPC help would definitely speed up the slums, if nothing else. I'll have to look into this more, or see. But, yes, AI spellcasters have no concept of friendly fire and mages do more harm than good. I still have nightmares of Akabar Bel Akash in Curse of the Azure Bonds shredding my own party with his spells.

But it's definitely worth looking into this, so thanks again for the study and research

On many games I would agree with not turning off the sound; however, there are literally 3 sound files that play in this game: attacks hit, attacks miss, and the step from walking. As I said, since they were there, I used them; however, if I can turn them off and they save large amounts of time, I don't see that they are that important to the run. Oh, and maybe a spell sound or two. But they are pretty negligible, in any case.

I did a test run this morning and shaved many minutes off thanks to having no sound; the sound lag being gone combined with a new backup strat even beat my previously unbeatable lucky necklace PB, so it does make a huge difference; I'll keep running this game without sound. Curse of the Azure Bonds and later games, with more sounds and more significant sounds, I might keep them on; I'll review those later once I pick them up again but going soundless works for this game, at least.

And Witchakorn, hi, I see you've been busy following this thread :)

does it? I was not aware. I'll have to see how that affects the gameplay. I do use the sound a little for knowing how my movement is going and whether the attacks in battle hit or not--the latter is not really important, but I kind of rely on the movement sound for navigation. Points where the movement does not trigger sound slightly mess with my senses. But I can probably get used to if it speeds up the game enough.