angband speedrun

[Estie]

AC does not matter for an archer type. And 5 shots is sick

Very true - but I would still use the melee setup, if pressed, while keeping the boots as a switch for bosses.

[Pete Mack]

@Estie--
He likely has Glyph as a high level mage. And he has stunning attacks from Raal's.

[Estie]

@Estie--
He likely has Glyph as a high level mage. And he has stunning attacks from Raal's.

Yeah I know, the reason I like melee is that you dont have to cast many spells (glyphs or other) or maintain stacks of arrows, you can just walk over trash monsters easily for xp + loot. Teleport dangerous things away, and later dress as archer for the bosses.

[Grotug]

@Estie--
He likely has Glyph as a high level mage. And he has stunning attacks from Raal's.

I was playing a HT/Warrior.

[Grotug]

Well, this isn't quite what you were going for with speed run (I'm not sure what the rules are for doing a speed run if any?)

In this game, I am playing with skip 4 levels on (so I start on DL4, and when I hit the stairs I go to DL8). I'm not playing deep descent, but I am playing disconnected stairs, no selling and no gear at start. Half-troll Warrior.

https://youtu.be/VGEfFZhzolo The video starts getting kind of fun at 34:17.

Pardon the language; I get a bit salty from time to time

[luneya]

Well, this isn't quite what you were going for with speed run (I'm not sure what the rules are for doing a speed run if any?)

In this game, I am playing with skip 4 levels on (so I start on DL4, and when I hit the stairs I go to DL8). I'm not playing deep descent, but I am playing disconnected stairs, no selling and no gear at start. Half-troll Warrior.

https://youtu.be/VGEfFZhzolo The video starts getting kind of fun at 34:17.

Pardon the language; I get a bit salty from time to time

Putting on level skip is very much contrary to the spirit of a traditional speedrun challenge, as part of the difficulty in speedrunning is finding the stairs (or deep descent scrolls, or Mordy's for the create stairs spell).

Level skip by itself is most useful as either a mere timesaver (that is, trying to avoid tedium as opposed to trying to conplete the game as quickly as possible as a challenge), or perhaps as a way for a player who isn't accustomed to diving to force themselves into a diving mindset (because there aren't as many shallow levels to play through).

Level skip + forced descent is an interesting challenge, as it leaves you with fewer opportunities to find useful treasure before you reach the bottom of the dungeon and have to fight the bosses.

[Derakon]

Putting on level skip is very much contrary to the spirit of a traditional speedrun challenge, as part of the difficulty in speedrunning is finding the stairs (or deep descent scrolls, or Mordy's for the create stairs spell).

Eh. It's just different rules. A speedrun with levelskip=4 would be ranked separately from a speedrun with levelskip=2 or levelskip=1 or levelskip=25. They pose different kinds of challenge and put focus on different aspects of the game.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Eh. It's just different rules. A speedrun with levelskip=4 would be ranked separately from a speedrun with levelskip=2 or levelskip=1 or levelskip=25. They pose different kinds of challenge and put focus on different aspects of the game.

But is level skip reported in the birth options? Or is it a modification of the constants file? I.e., is it a reported constraint or is it the honor system?

[Derakon]

But is level skip reported in the birth options? Or is it a modification of the constants file? I.e., is it a reported constraint or is it the honor system?

Everything's always on the honor system anyway, so does it matter? Someone dedicated to lying would have any number of ways to cheat undetectably even in a closed-source realtime game, let alone a game like Angband where you can change the code so that midgame uniques "just happen" to drop amazing equipment and monsters "just happen" to not use their most powerful attacks.

[Nick]

Everything's always on the honor system anyway, so does it matter?

One of my main pushes as maintainer has been to get as much in the data files as possible. I hope one day to make all variants obsolete because they can be achieved by judicious editing of the data files

[dos350]

yes its strict honor system ofc

but if a few ppl start running and ppl pay attention to the play im sure viewers will be able to ID an abuser

[Grotug]

skip 24

When Derakon mentioned skip 25 I thought how silly, surely no one tries that? But then I was bored, so I set level skip to 24 and gold start to 15,000 (too high!) and rolled up my favorite combo: HT/Warrior. I had a pretty good start:

https://youtu.be/5Q4MDmX9MWY

I went on to win the game. I didn't have deep descent on, but I did put on disconnected stairs to discourage level scumming. I will not post the whole adventure as I am a slow and boring player to watch (my game took 14 hours), but I may post highlights since I did record the entire thing (it took about 13 hours 40 minutes).

[Grotug]

I think a good system for adjusting gold at the start to make level skip games more fair is to add 125 starting gold for each level skipped. So if playing with skip level is 1 (the default), starting gold is 600. If level Skip is 2 then starting gold would be 600 + 125 = 725. For a level 24 skip game, starting gold would be: 23 X 125 = 2875 + 600 = 3475.

Here's a failed attempt I just did, but that is demonstrable of how feasible (and fun) this mode of playing is. The starting gold feels quite right to me.

https://youtu.be/YEX-3QuEBNY

Here's another amusing/fun failed attempt: https://youtu.be/YG8pXRVE-sc

This one I really shouldn't have died. Needlessly threw away a promising start. :-/ Starting supplies were some light armors, 30 phase doors, 40 charges of wands of wonder (2). No weapon. 22 CLWs. 4 Infravision potions. 5 ?Magic Mapping. 1 Detect Evil (which I forgot to use at the start).

[Derakon]

Ha, that's awesome. I'm glad players are able to do experiments like this now.

[Grotug]

I'm reviving this thread because yesterday I made my lowst turncount win and started in the morning and finished in the evening. Since I record all my games I was able to figure out just how fast that 27,384k turn win took in real time. The game started at approximately 8:21am and finished at 8:56pm with some breaks in-between. I wasn't trying for a real-time record, just another low turn count win. I've added up the videos and tallied the total time of actually playing the game (total recording time from start to finish). This time includes deliberations while staring at my screen, trying to decide my next move. I do not stop recording during this time. It also includes the time it takes me to zoom in on the screen after starting the recording for each play session.

There is no force-quitting the game when things go south. This is a legit win like all my wins unless I've admitted to force-quitting (which I used to do but haven't done in a long time). The continuity of the videos will attest to this (if I decide there is enough interest in this account for me to upload them).

Race: Half Troll
Class: Warrior

Starting stats:
8 STR
6 DEX
6 CON
0 INT
0 WIS

Random artifacts: Yes
Connected stairs: No
Force player descent: Yes
Word of Recall has no effect: No
Restrict creation of artifacts: No
Stack objects on the floor: Yes
Lose artifacts when leaving level: No
Show level feelings: Yes
Increase gold drops but disable selling: Yes
Start with a kit of useful gear: No
Monsters learn from their mistakes: No
Know all runes on birth: No
Know all flavors on birth: No
Persistent levels: No

On the ladder: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=22137

Strategy: Lately my strategy has been to buy 3 to 5 scrolls of mapping at the start if they are available to reduce turns wasted wandering around levels that are unnecessary for HT/Warrior. The rest of my gold was spent on a !CLW and ?phase doors. Punching things is fine for the first 7 dungeon levels. That's basically it. Otherwise, if I saw stairs I generally took them immediately, unless something of interest led me to explore a level some.

The game was won over the course of 5 videos:

format: hour:minute:seconds

Video 1: 2:22:14 and I reached DL47. Took a break because I was outside a vault and had nearly died moments ago.

Video 2: 0:40:29 and I reached DL50.

Video 3: 2:41:46 and I reached DL70 and took a break after nearly completing a raid of a large vault (and when I came back even though I had taken a breather I still forgot the slay evil weapon in the dungeon that would been my best bet against Morgoth).

Video 4: 0:26:25 and I reached DL72

Video 5: 2:16:14 and I reached DL100 and took 12 minutes on DL100 to defeat the boss.

If my math is right, my grand total playing time, from character creation screen to ***WINNER*** displayed on the screen was less than 8 hours and 27 minutes.

If anyone wants me to upload all these videos to youtube as video evidence I'm happy to do so, but will only do it if I receive a request to do so.

Dunno if dos350 has visited these boards recently or not.