Speedrunning Immortality

[sabregirl]

Sounds like you've made great progress. Feel free to contact me if you need a hand with something.

-S

[johannhowitzer]

SG came into my stream recently and I did about six hours' worth of testing with her offering suggestions here and there... managed to figure out a bunch of stuff about Black Dragon Knight, Shrike Mother, Axilar, Wastalgraniq, and the Ruined Arcane Academy. Also got my epics. I still need to go back and solidify the Headmaster kill, but here's some of what I learned.

- Black Dragon Knight falls stupidly fast to Maxed Combust under Timestop, and very likely has no killcount.
- Shrikes still fall to Harms with Thunderclaps to mop up. There doesn't seem to be a faster way; I messed around with some ideas but nothing beat the Harm spam.
- Black Sun Symbol is got with Firewall glitch.
- Four webs blocking the path to Shrike Mother CAN be passed with Firewall - yes, despite the cramped area I was able to get through. However, there's an anti-exploit that teleports me back out, so I have to get the glands.
- Shrike Mother is just Bigby 5, then Empowered Static Field (which doesn't zap me) and Empowered Finger of Death, which did the best damage out of all the spells I tested.
- Axilar's door anti-exploits as well, but it's just six extra Harm kills. Regular Shrikes have pathetic Will and fall to Undeath to Death. Axilar falls to Timestop Bigby 9 then Maxed IGMS.
- Wastalgraniq has extreme regeneration and is immune to level 7 and below spells. Best spells against him are Maxed Vortex, Meteor Swarm, and Horrid Wilting.

- Sunken City can be Firewall glitched past. Headmaster appears to spawn on Academy entry, so last rest will be right after blasting the door with Cone of Cold.
- Guardian spirits by the "password" door can be lured into the side room with a summon, then walled in there. Casting the door open is then perfectly safe.
- Best way to handle the Headmaster and the two Revenants near him is to draw them together with a summon, then Bigby Swarm. I was not able to test beyond that as I died and did not have a Gate set to get me back there.


I think I've made a breakthrough with regard to how despawning works, and why Zerya despawned on me. I think when you leave an area with no players present, a timer starts, and just like respawn timers, that timer keeps ticking even after you come back to the map. So if you leave the map again, if that first timer expires while you're away, you get a despawn, just like an instafugue. What this means is that I either need to test the boundaries of that timer to make it safe to port away and back more than once, or I have to kill every single boss in two full spellbooks - one on spawn, one off map to rest. Since this will be an issue for MOAD, Lolth, and the Immortal, as well as potentially stuff like Wastalgraniq and Deadpool, I will probably need to test the timer extensively.

This idea occurred to me when Wastalgraniq despawned on me. I realized nothing so far had ever despawned the first time I'd left the map - only the SECOND time. Zerya took more than one rest to kill, whereas no boss before her had. I'm never going to have the slots to guarantee killing all bosses on a single rest, unfortunately.


Another thing Wastalgraniq made me realize: Necromancy is not doing me very many favors in the endgame build. I don't have the DC to use Wail or COD effectively, and FOD functions without it. The only thing I really lose is Death of Magic, which I'd just be using on the Immortal and potentially Lolth. I do plan to test a setup for Death of Magic heal skipping on the Immortal fight... if I can't make it consistent, then there's nothing to lose by dropping Necromancy. Evocation seems like a great alternative, since I get Missile Barrage, among other things. Missile Barrage may be absolute garbage in legendary and beyond, but it smashes serious face before then. It would mean dealing with far fewer rests for Wastalgraniq, and would make up somewhat for lack of Death of Magic on the Immortal. It would also come in handy in many other places, like the Headmaster, Ancient Kings, Lolth's aspect, MOAD... and after all that I also get a bonus to every Evocation spell's DC, including Sunburst, which unlike Undeath to Death, does see some use in the endgame build.



I've been testing the Hall of Kings tonight, very cautiously of course! Here's my info on the enemies:

Ancient Guardian
- Augury to stop onhit Mord
- AOE Mord drops their SR to 50 (I have 46 SP)
- 59 AB after Bigby 5 needs 20 to hit me
- Tenser's for touch AB then Heal them, finish with any AOE spell

Umbra
- Need Fear, Death, Sneak immunity
- 38 Reflexes and Evasion
- Immune to 6th and below spells
- 92 AB, deals physical and magical
- 45% concealment
- Partially immune to magical damage

Guardians are simple and easy and safe. Umbras are anything but safe - however, since I don't need Bigby Swarm for the Guardians, I can use it on the Umbras. Then alternate GV and Detonate, thankfully no need to Timestop as I'd have to use way too many and the cooldown would become impractically long. I have also not been using any physical or magical resist gear - if I can find 10/- in each, that drops the Umbra melee hit to 80... I can also use Concentration gear and crit ring to ensure they never interrupt a cast, and then maybe GV can go out the window and I'll just sit and spam Detonate in relative safety. Detonate two-shots them, by the way. It's the best thing I could come up with. They're immune to negative, they evade all my level 7 spells, orbs miss a lot and even if they hit they only hit for half damage. Destruction does work but my slots are more limited and the damage is lower than Detonate even empowered. They evade all elemental damage clouds, Vortex deals full damage but is slow, and max Evards often enough, but only for 12. Summons may also be an option, though they were tearing through Summon Creature I wisps pretty fast.

The real problem is the concealment. Am I right in thinking that Blind Fight would reduce this for spell touch attacks? Because that would be a much more tolerable 20%.

[condude]

Sept 4, 2016 2:12:51 GMT johannhowitzer said:

I think I've made a breakthrough with regard to how despawning works, and why Zerya despawned on me. I think when you leave an area with no players present, a timer starts, and just like respawn timers, that timer keeps ticking even after you come back to the map. So if you leave the map again, if that first timer expires while you're away, you get a despawn, just like an instafugue. What this means is that I either need to test the boundaries of that timer to make it safe to port away and back more than once, or I have to kill every single boss in two full spellbooks - one on spawn, one off map to rest. Since this will be an issue for MOAD, Lolth, and the Immortal, as well as potentially stuff like Wastalgraniq and Deadpool, I will probably need to test the timer extensively.

I'd recommend figuring out the length of the timer (5 minutes would be my guess), and then just use a stopwatch, or similar methods, every time you leave a map. Make sure you're on the map when it hits 0. It's the method we used pre-loggers (especially HC!) to avoid fuguing.

[johannhowitzer]

Okay, abandoning the Detonate strat. Instead I found if I just lay things on really thick and use Horrid Wilting, I can beat them about as fast as with Detonate, maybe even faster, and I don't have to walk into touch range. Prismatic Spray also beats the Living Darkness, just like in the Morgue.

Also I can go with minimal buffs against the Guardian mummies - just AC buffs, Tenser's, Augury, maybe Stoneskin if it does any good.

And yeah condude, that's about what I had in mind.

[johannhowitzer]

Really solid plan for Hall of Kings now.

Buffs: AOV, Life's Grace, Tenser, Displace, Stoneskin, Augury, Freedom, Shield, Vestment on shield

I can go without Shield if I happen to find any +11 amulet or +12 deflection item, and can go without Magic Vestment if I find a good shield or a way to shuffle items around without losing immunities. Can also probably lose Stoneskin, it's a very minor thing it seems.

Gear setup (shop unless noted):
- First Defense (shield)
- Arch Wizard's Robe
- Drachen Helm
- Bracers of Resilience (drop from Bloodpool)
- Drachen Belt or rare slot belt
- Cloak of the Fold (drop from Axilar chest, I think? forget where I got this)
- +9 Amulet or better
- Priest's Circle
- Rhiannon's Mind ring (fear)
- Not sure what boots yet

Planar Staff is left off to avoid the disarm of the mummies.

GV, spawn, open with aoe Mord, Timestop if there's a king and then Bigby 5 on the king, Heal all the mummies including king, Prismatic Spray or Starfire the entire group, Bigby Swarm on resulting Umbras. Set up Max Vortex, 2x Max Evard, then spam Horrids. Bigby 5 on regular mummies turned out to be unnecessary.

It looks 99.99% safe. To die, you either have to screw up badly, or a mummy has to roll 20 on attack and make the conceal check TWICE to strip your buffs, then you also need to not escape alive, plus should have rebirth. All I need to look into now is killcount, I had some success avoiding spawns, and Gate can return me to the center portal room after each wing, reducing the number of forced enemies even further.

I might try some kind of massing strat for the exterior to reduce rests, but it would probably mean using Heal while Umbras are around, since the mummies walk so slowly. If I skip any kills it's going to be the ones in the outside hallways first. Despite having Gate, I will have to kill anything I spawn since the portals leading to the side rooms lock.


There's also another armor there! Elytron of Isis, which I forgot existed, and I think it's in a different chest; I've opened them all once so far and haven't found Humbaba's Cruel Heart yet. The King's Keys are not interchangeable though, so I can't open both chests if they're both in the two-chest room (which I believe they are).


(One funny little detail I noticed while making notes - the four chests that have scrolls have them "clumped" in a part of the alphabet. SW chest has scrolls that start with B-C, NE has D-E, NW has F-G, and SE has S-W.)

[condude]

Sept 4, 2016 18:27:55 GMT johannhowitzer said:

...and can go without Magic Vestment if I find a good shield or a way to shuffle items around without losing immunities. 

Big Blue?

[johannhowitzer]

That's a rare. As much as possible I'm trying to stay away from relying on rare drops to show up during a run... obviously I'll use whatever I get though. Hoping for a rare wizard or cleric belt, I really really want the crit ring, and Hall of Kings armor would be a huge help as well. After that, probably a strong shield and amulet are next on my wish list.

Not sure when I mentioned this last, but the speedrun disallows using non-open subraces, bringing in pre-obtained gear or gold, dualboxing, and accepting help from other players. Everything so far that I'm counting on using in the speedrun is either a shop item or a guaranteed / semi-guaranteed drop somewhere.



Also figured out Glith and Drider Chief quickly tonight, those were simple and easy fights, Glith just takes forever, especially without a slot belt. Got my Jade Tooth and am calling it a night, I'll start doing Manatakloss research soon!

Going to be testing all damage types I can on every enemy. Already found out Kyorls fall really fast to maxed Acid Fog, which has better base damage than the other clouds. They have one heal, which can be prevented by stunning them with regular bigbies or using death of magic.

[condude]

Sept 4, 2016 23:21:18 GMT johannhowitzer said:

That's a rare. As much as possible I'm trying to stay away from relying on rare drops to show up during a run... obviously I'll use whatever I get though. 

Wow, I thought for sure it dropped on the second map of the zhents (After the one with the spring water). I just checked though, and instead got a shield of the watcher, which is also a very decent shield. I swear I've gotten a bunch of big blues from there before...

[johannhowitzer]

Got kind of sidetracked there since Legion just came out and my guild came off hiatus so I've been gearing up for raiding. But I've been chipping away at little things here and there meanwhile... I timed some important respawns for grinding areas, made a lot of major / minor tweaks to the overall route, and have begun to tie all my notes together into one document!

I typed up my main notes into a more readable form on the Google doc. Please feel free to pick it apart, there's bound to be something I'm overlooking:

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XYwcLgvGhuMZ42MUCy8g-7CRFfuIr50UeNupcDfaaE0/edit#gid=0

Gate notes on the right side are far from complete, by the way.



I haven't got around to doing much testing in Manatakloss yet, as you can see. I did confirm the Drey have high reflexes and Evasion, so the best idea for them is still Evard and Vortex. I also have a sheet typed up and printed out to make it much easier to scribble down enemy data without alt-tabbing.

I do need to go back and test Acid Fog on a few things; it has the highest numbers of any elemental cloud spell, and can be maximized on top of that. Just don't know everything that's vulnerable to it. I may also run some simple despawn timer tests soon.



Currently spitballing some ideas for barred schools. The Theurge build has to bar Ench/Div, but the leveling build could perhaps switch Div to something else. That would give me Power Word Kill, Legend Lore, and Premonition to play with, which would make some boss kills slightly safer, make massing the Plains of War a LOT safer, and beef up my damage spells a little bit. Damage spells - especially ones affected by Lore - aren't used much before reincarnation, though.

If I bar Abjuration instead, I would have to wait until reincarnation to kill Razhid since I'd lose Mord, and I'd also be giving up Energy Buffer, which isn't that serious since I can easily get 15-20 resistance in one element for specific areas, like Electrical for Grey Renders. This would only affect levels 21-30.

If I bar Necromancy, I give up Undeath to Death for the Plains of War, and of course COD / FOD / Wail, again all of this only at 21-30. Nothing's leaping out at me for these spells, I can still use COD on Ice Kobolds, Ogres, and such just fine. Perhaps something will show itself and convince me not to bar this school.

[sabregirl]

Sounds good Johann. Barring necro might be your best bet since your build is probably poorly positioned to use it, not maxing casting stat and being open subrace for example. one thing I would add though is when you stream you should probably list the game as Neverwinter Nights rather than NWN Hordes of the Underdark, most NWN streamers just list the game as Neverwinter Nights. Otherwise your videos won't show up on searches.

-S

[johannhowitzer]

Thanks, I'll do that. Although if you've noticed I haven't been live, it's because I haven't been live!

Figured out the Xulrae run tonight, and now I'm finally in Manatakloss proper. The Temple has an anti-exploit on the last door, so firewall is out... I'm playing with some other ideas to speed that place up. I can try lots of spawn trigger dodging, I can test to see if despawn also gets rid of the keys, and I can draw enemies into the center room to kill more than one of the eight wings at a time. Kinda sad there's an anti-exploit here, it's really slow and tedious to kill everything.

Also ran a few quick tests on the Drow Academy. There is NO teleport / death anti-exploit from firewalling through the door directly ahead into the boss room, and through the room on the left side that you're intended to enter the boss room from. However, the Headmaster didn't spawn. This can either be a trigger I skipped over, or the Headmaster not spawning *is* the anti-exploit. Have to see if I can get him to spawn somehow without having to kill the whole place. Anything I spawn, I must eventually kill in order to leave.

Probably worth mentioning (again?) at this point that I'm trying to avoid server-hopping or logging out to despawn. I have no qualms with despawning just by leaving a map, though. The only times I should ever leave the server I'm doing a run on are 1) to reincarnate, and 2) if connection drops.

[Deleted]

Hey Johann, I just wanted to give you a big congratulations on your amazing progress so far. I was the first person to respond to the original post (exactly six months ago, in fact) and I must confess that in those first few days I was absolutely certain that this would end up as a failed project. I'm very happy to have been proven wrong; both your dedication and resourcefulness have been extremely impressive and inspirational.

Good luck with routing the last parts of the run, looking forward to seeing the finished product!

[johannhowitzer]

Haha, thanks! I'm having a blast and really enjoying the feedback and suggestions people are throwing my way too.

I've been doing speedrunning for around four years now, and in that time I've done a formidable amount of routing, though most of it not this complex. I mostly speedrun platformers, and the most complex routing project I tackled in the platform genre was The Lost Vikings 1, played in 2-player mode with two controllers in my hands. As for RPGs, I did about a nine-month project a few years ago routing Final Fantasy X - Nemesis category (beat Nemesis and then the game). That project was just a thought experiment, was curious to see how fast it could be done, and I've only done a handful of actual runs. A popular speedrunner named Cereth picked up my route and made some significant improvements on it, driving the time down from 28 hours to 26. It's a really tedious run and I can't see myself taking it seriously, it was very gratifying to see someone else pick up the torch there.

As for this run, I have an inkling I'll be doing quite a few runs and I REALLY hope to be able to show it off at RPG Limit Break next year. I would also be delighted if anyone else decides to try some runs of their own; once this is all in a fairly "complete" form, everything I've compiled will definitely be made publicly available, all my notes and charts and everything. I just don't see the point right now since it's all so scattered and indecipherable unless you're the person who wrote it all down. I'm trying to make available what I can, and I'm pacing myself (and being somewhat lazy at times) to avoid burnout. In my Nemesis routing years ago, I took a similar slow, measured approach and it paid off.

I remember someone way back in this thread said "just start doing runs and improve it from there," citing Cosmo for the source of that wisdom; this far down the road, though, I'm rather glad I didn't take that approach. Many, many large discoveries have been made during my methodical research that would have been found much later if I just started doing runs instead of all this painstaking planning process. I would also have had to scrap everything multiple times - when I was told about reincarnation, when I figured out how to Supergate, the various build adjustments. Discovering those things in the process of writing down tons of information and specific boss / dungeon planning meant the blow of "starting over" was very mild.

[johannhowitzer]

I think we're to the point now that I can call these builds relatively final. May see some minor adjustments, but probably no major shifts in concept anymore.

Neutral Good alignment is potentially to buy Undeath to Death at the Lathander shop. If Monk is used in the Theurge build, it would begin as Lawful Evil.



Leveling build

Human, "PT - Air Genasi", Neutral Good

INT 18 (20)
CON 16
STR 12

All increases INT

3 Wizard, then 1 Ranger, then rest Wizard
At level 21, specialize in Conjuration, bar Divination and Enchantment

Max Concentration and Lore
On Ranger level, max Animal Empathy

Feats
1 - Extend, SF Evo
3 - SF Illus
6 - GSF Illus, Empower
9 - SF Necro
11 - GSF Necro
12 - Maximize
15 - SF Conj
16 - GSF Conj
18 - GSF Evo
21 - ESF Conj, ESF Illus
24 - ESF Necro, ESF Evo
27 - 2 free feats
30 - 2 free feats

4 free feats can include things like Great INT, CC/ICC, etc.
Book is used to jump from 28 to 29.5 and then quests finish it off, so feats at 27 and 30 will hardly see any use.


--- Reincarnate ---


Endgame build

Human, "PT - Air Genasi", Neutral Good

INT 18 (20)
WIS 16 (14)
CON 12

WIS increase at 4, 8, 12, 16
All other increases INT

1-3 Wizard
4-12 Cleric
13-26 Wizard
27-30 Cleric
31-36 Wizard
37 Bard (UMD) or Monk (Evasion)
38-40 Wizard

Specialize in Conjuration, bar Divination and Enchantment
Change to Evil at level 34 for Gift of Undeath

Skills - Appraise, Concentration, Craft Armor, Discipline, Heal, Lore, Spellcraft, Tumble, (Use Magic Device if Bard)

Feats
1-24, any legal order:
GSP
GSF Conj, Evo, Illus, Trans
Still, Empower, Maximize

27 - ESF Conj
30 - Autostill 1
33 - Autostill 2-3
36 - ESF Illus, ESF Evo
39 - ESP
40 - ESF Trans

Last four feats can be rearranged as needed.
Empower can potentially be swapped out for something else, such as Armor Skin or Epic Reflexes.

Epic Spells - Bigby Swarm, Missile Barrage, Starfire, Transmute Barrier

[johannhowitzer]

A few notes from testing stuff today. I reincarnated to the above build with Monk splash, just have a couple spells to pick up when I can.

Made a trip to the Arcane Academy to get my two new epics and take another stab at the Headmaster. When summonsoaking him and the Revenants, I had an idea. Black Blade gets dropped by their Mords (and they have quite a few), and Summon Creature spells get destroyed by the Finger of Death spam. But what about Create Greater Undead? That could be a one-spell way to soak everything.

The Balors have low enough AB that it's more worthwhile to Bigby 5 them than grab them; grabs often miss the check. They deal Fire kickback damage, so I think Evards are going to be inadvisable even with Elemental Shield and Energy Immunity, which brings my Fire imm to 40% (starts at -25% from subrace). More likely I'll be using some kind of basic damage cloud, hopefully Acid Fog works, and tossing a few Bigby 8 spells at them or something. Evards on the boss while this happens to pick up damage on them meanwhile, and then when the Balors die, switch over to Vortex or a better cloud if there is one, and blow Starfire and Barrage. Save Barrage and bugs for when the Headmaster is alone, probably.

Their SR is far too high to reliably cast on them, but it's not impossible... I didn't catch what it was this time since I died to ungrabbed Balors, I think after Mord you have around 25% chance to land a spell. That should mean I can still try stuff like Ice Dagger on him while I wait for the clouds to do their thing, no reason not to. Orbs are weak on him, when summon was out I did see he has 72% concealment, not sure if the summon has blind fight.

All I need to fight MOAD at this point is Deadpool and Handmaiden, so those will be my next targets. Transmute Barrier (a very nice pickup!) will mean having to deal with her breath a great deal less, I think Evards and bugs probably do nothing to her anyway. I likely have too many spells to unload to be able to count on the epic wall 100% of the time, but it takes the emphasis off surviving her breath.

Dropping Extend Spell is the thing that has hurt the most, just for the extra seconds on Ghostly Visage. It's a 2-round as soon as I reincarnate, at least, and Extend is just a minor safety feat, not one that improves my speed. If I'm playing correctly, I shouldn't ever need it.