• Before starting your run press F9 to turn off music. Music off is a huge time saver. Game isn't spending the fast travel transitions loading- it's actually doing fade out of the previous track and fade in for the new track and the game is paused until the next track is fully playing. I need to record a video showing the difference in action fast travelling from the Village to the Monastery and talking to the monk then fast travelling back. It's not milliseconds- it's very noticeable.
• You can skip starting dialogue with Deirdre and typing your name if hold down 2 or 3 on the numeric keypad after selecting the difficulty.
• Press M to toggle on larger item icons to make it easier to pick stuff up. Unfortunately this has to be toggled on each new game and you pausing moving while doing so.
• Fast equip items to hands by click it on the interface face portrait icon for left and backpack for right. If it swaps out with the item previously in your hand, right click to send it to inventory.
• You can equip necklaces by clicking on the backpack on the interface.
• Press 1 on the number keys on the top of the keyboard for using left equipped window, 2 for right. Throw items with 3 for left, 4 for right.
• You can use the numeric keypad to move while the inventory is pulled up and move items around. Sound in theory, kinda awkward to do in practise as very few places you can just walk in a straight line doing it. Both visits for Catacombs and a chunk of Dark Forest are good candidates.
• Try to keep the top 9 slots free as possible for new pickups. At least one of them should be a sack or a pouch. While you might have free slots in a sack or pouch, the game will not put items directly into them.
• Any item that does not need to be actively put in your hands can be put in a sack or a pouch. Can also put full pouches inside of sacks.
• Use C to talk to nearest character without clicking on them. In the pub, need to come down and left slightly first otherwise you'll try to talk to the bartender.
• Anytime you need to type a word for a conversation, you only need to type the first 5 characters then it will autocomplete. Underlined words in conversations can be quickly selected by pressing the first letter of the word on the keyboard. E.g. if asked if you want to buy something, pressing B will do the buy.
• You can sometimes skip further into a conversation than you should be able to by typing the later keyword. Not all characters and dialogue options will let you do this. For example, right at the start you can ask Annabelle about "Parsley" without having picked the herb up from the Other Village, but you can also skip even that and go straight to the end of the conversation branch by typing "Evil" instead. However, Maria will not react if you type "Needs" until you have heard about the voodoo doll plan from Matthias in his room upstairs in the pub.
• If need to interrupt a character to type, press Enter and wait a beat then start typing the word.
• Coin routing is important as need a lot of coins for the Silversmith.
• Use Shift and - or Shift and + to quickly toggle inventory screen view to full screen and to minimized. You do stop walking for a second while this happens though, so quicker to walk with the numeric keypad and use the mouse to pull the inventory window up and down.
• F1 toggles map- faster than moving to click on the HUD icon.
• Right click to skip cutscenes, including stair transitions. Hold Enter to speed up cutscenes that are not skipping.
• Stair transitions are faster if you enter them using the numeric keypad for movement and hold down the key.
• Use the map to fast travel to same location to return to entrance without backtracking
• Carmen will heal poison status along with injuries, but will not cure disease or weakness.

• Pick up the Rope in the swamp and equip it to either hand. Spam the relevant use hand keyboard button as you walk up towards the tree to use it as early as possible. While the animation is playing for tying it to the tree, hold 9 on the numeric keypad to automatically use it the moment you can.
• If not going for YOLO run, can grab a Motherwort plant in Dark Forest as a safety strat for fighting Andrei as he does have a chance to inflict it. As a YOLO strat, getting Weakness inflicted in the Dark Forest or Lake by the Will O'Wisps should mean doing both of these sections (running instead of fighting) and then going to the Hedge Maze before fighting Andrei. There's a Nasturtium herb right before you get the Garlic in the top left corner of the map and won't get inflicted with the status effect after this point.
• Blessing the Silver Sword does lead to Andrei dying a lot faster, but offset entirely by having to fast travel to the Monastery solely to do this. The Other Village isn't available as a fast travel until after the resurrection ritual is performed so no way to get it beforehand without adding a third trip there.
• The murder questline can be completely skipped- but if doing it, can bypass the conversation with Ambrose's spirit visiting the Crossroad by holding down 1 or 2 on the numeric keypad.
• Mausoleum doesn't require exiting all the way out to the cemetery before you can use the map to fast travel.
• Holy Symbol questline can be skipped as Kairn's coffin location is thankfully not RNG.
• Exiting the Mansion will NOT put you at top of Hedge Maze- make sure you have grabbed all 6 Garlic plants first.
• Should have 6 free slots in your inventory starting the Hedge Maze so as to make it easier picking up the Garlic.
• Have the map with the Garlic locations marked uploaded as a guide here. Fastest route seems to be: SE, E, W or Centre (passing by the side room Centre on way to W and makes no difference), NW and finally NE right at the exit.
• As a safety strat for some mild gambling, can grab and equip the Carline Thistle herb right at the start of the Hedge Maze to cure poison status if one of the snakes inflicts you and hold off on using it for a while for risk/reward of not getting it again versus having enough health for rest of the game without visiting Carmen.
• Only one of the three skeletons outside of Kairn's Fortress need to be killed to drop the key.
• Getting hit with the aged status effect doesn't matter for the end game.
• Kairn's true name is RNG from a list. Unfortunately this does not seem to be set until you have been shown it from Agrippa (otherwise you could skip Crazy Frank's entire questline). Having used a hex editor to check the game files and removed names of other characters and items, the full list of possibilities appears to be:

1. Beaulu
2. Bhenblod
3. Brcko
4. Dauthr
5. Drak
6. Malachi
7. T'san
8. Yfelan

Further notes:

• For anything other than Easy combat, need to throw 2 items at the Werewolf to kill it. Best ones are the Coffer and the Knife as don't need to pick them back up.
• Skipping the opening chat where you name your character has him named as "Squid McFearson"
• In the Swamp, equip the Rope in a hand while picking it up. As soon as you are past the hole between the Rope and the tree, spam the hotkey for the hand to warp up to it. Hold 9 on the numeric keyboard while the animation is playing.
• Need to check coin routing as possible might be taking too many as don't need the extra for the plating the silver bullets.
• Don't move Lit Blessed Candle into a pouch or it'll disappear and you have to buy a new one, bless it and relight it.
• Should be able to just say "Peter" to the historian to unlock Lake Shore but seemed bugged? Have to test more, but alternate strat is can just talk to the witch about everything until she stops talking.
• Have to check how soon you can stop talking to Christiana about Andrei.
• While talking to Kirill the last time, as soon as you can see Andrei's Room Key hit your inventory you can stop talking.
• In the Cemetery, you don't need to actually walk up to the mausoleum entrance to bring up the spirit of witch's grandfather to banish him. As such, it's faster on that trip to the Cemetery to equip the Shovel in your left hand and the Silver Bell (on the Ribbon) in your right hand. Talk to Natalia's father first then walk over the grave and hold 1 to dig. Right click once to pick up the Pouch then left click to take the Iron Spike. Equip the Iron Spike in your left hand (replacing the Shovel which you can drop) and immediately press 3 to strike the bell. The game will appear to pause (as music is off) but hold down F1 to fast travel as soon as you can move.
• Equip the Horn before fast travelling to the Lake Shore. Immediately press the hotkey to trigger it and then press C to talk to Ferryman straight away without moving. When coming back, press C as soon as full figure of Ferryman is on screen to avoid going all the way over.
• Before going upstairs to find the musician's body, talk to the villagers to spawn Matthais in his room.
• Do not try to skip dialogue with Matthais for getting the tooth- if you do so, Maria won't have the dialogue option unlocked and the game gets softlocked as he won't trigger it again.
• If you get inflicted with Aged by one of the ghosts, just have to put up with moving slower or reset.
• Deirdre will always talk to you before you have time to both grab the key and to nail the coffin shut.
• Get the Huge Iron Key first before nailing the coffin so can hold F1 to fast travel as soon as it is done.
• As soon as you can see the Voodoo Doll leave your inventory, press right mouse to stop talking to Crazy Frank.
• Make sure you have grabbed the Prybar before fast travelling to the Caves.
• When in Agrippa's chamber, press C as soon as you can see all of the book onscreen to start the talking.
• Make sure you have your inventory sorted before going up to Kairn. You should have the Mushroom and Holy Water in your hands. Garlic necklace should be already worn by this point and have the Magic Box in the top 9 inventory slots so you can equip it quickly.
• You'll need to walk down the stairs from Kairn's room before you can fast travel.
• Click on Kairn to talk to him when you enter the basement- pressing C will only talk to Deirdre as she's closer to you at the room entrance.

I have to do some more testing but- I think the game doesn't actually check for all 15 Silver Coins when you are crafting the Silver Sword. Only trouble is for properly testing, I need to tank a run at around the 15 min mark :(

Edit: looks like if you craft the Silver Bell first and then immediately craft the Sword, the game lets you get away with being 1 short. However, means need to be careful menuing with:

• Maria, to avoid accidentally paying for fortune teller
• Monk, to avoid accidentally donating twice for 2 Holy Water
• Candlemaker, to avoid accidentally buying three candles