Speedrunning Immortality

[johannhowitzer]

Necromancy is making a comeback all of a sudden. For a long time now I've been considering the feats taken at 27 and 30 pre-reinc to be nearly worthless, but I forgot about one vital part of this run - Zerya killcount.

I have to kill Zerya twice for two books, and one of those kills must grant the tag. I can't do the tag kill after reincarnation, since I have to use the second book before reclaiming tags. So at some point in this Wizard leveling build, I have to get this killcount.

Most importantly, with my paper defenses, I have to be able to get the kills necessary under Timestop, which lasts for 3-4 casts; groups are too large to land a Bigby on all enemies in a spawn. Kurai spawn in groups of six. Kurai are also far too resilient and pack Heal potions, even with Maxed Freezing Sphere I can't hope to kill them during a Timestop, I think. I'll test this when I can, but it seems very unlikely.

That leaves us with Taro, Sekines, Yukio, and Kaito Okami. Kaito are the real buggers here, as they are immune to Fear and therefore Weird. These spawn groups tend to be a lot more spread out, and with Yukio, probably impractical to gather tightly enough with a black blade to make damage spells an option. Yukio and Sekines also have high reflexes.

Far better is Wail of the Banshee. I can take up to ESF in Necromancy at levels 27 and 30, and even better, this means I can in fact bar Necromancy when I specialize for Supergate in the early 20s - because taking ESF Necro means I can then despecialize, and it might even be practical to respecialize in Necromancy.

This will reach a Wail DC of 43:

- 60% to kill Taro
- 95% to kill Kaito Okami
- 70% to kill Yukio
- 55% to kill Sekine

Well within reasonable, if you ask me.

[johannhowitzer]

Leveling route has worked out to hit 24 perfectly just before Razhid. As the Deep One trip is just before, I can kill some extra trolls if I'm just short of the mark. The route is mostly in complete form up to level 25 now, although I need to plan Razhid a little more meticulously to reduce resting.


Random stuff:

- Uroboros killcount is met just by clearing the entire floor above the Lair except the Royal Guard room. Archers up there require Legend Lore to oneshot as they have some physical damage resist.

- Grey Render Mothers cannot be oneshot by Max Ice Storm even under Legend Lore and Identify, so Empowered is actually better for its chance to roll higher damage. Alternatively, just Weird spam also works. Probably going with Weird in the end.

- I can let the catacombs curse drop my INT by 3 before using Remove Curse, without any meaningful slot losses. The bone golems in front of the Hall of Statues entrance can be despawned by going after the Adamantine and Brazier. As the Brazier is a shorter trip, it should be done first to guarantee the despawn timer does tick down to zero while off the map. Duergar mines by themselves were a little too short. No enemies in these areas have True Seeing.

- Hall of Statues golems are oneshot by maxed level 4 Orb spells.

- Max Vitriolic Sphere is the best possible spell for the Trolls before the Deep One. They only have 5% to evade, and 100% vulnerability to Acid, versus only 50% vulnerability to Fire. Rogue Spectres are oneshot by Max Ice Storm. In fact, none of these oneshots all through the Deep One trip require any Lore buffs. Plenty of extra Vitriolic Spheres in case I need more XP. The Blood Moor trolls also take more from Acid than Fire, by the way - 75% versus 50%.


Razhid stuff:

- I have about 48% to kill Zombie Elites and 56% for the other stuff with Sunburst. Extended GV gives me plenty of time to Wall of Stone doorways to avoid melee with the Zombies and grab the Spectres. Premo and Displacement are plenty of defense against the Guards' bows, but I drop a summon anyway to distract them.

- Zombies can be hit with Max IGMS after a couple sunbursts if one or two refuse to die.

- Dragon falls to 5-6 Max IGMS. Probably going to take 6. Gate back to start after picking up key and gem.

- It's easy to spawn Razhid solo of course, and Bigby 7 only took two tries to grab him. I get two free tries under Timestop, maybe three, if that fails, I have to GS and wait for a second Timestop. I can also set Gate here as an anti-wipe in case the second grab set also fails, if I've specialized by now (which I probably will have).

- Razhid did not reset his mantle under Timestop, but he did while grabbed, some time after I'd emptied my missiles into him. This should not be a serious issue.

- I will probably want to bait him forward before grabbing him, as his starting location would force me to spawn two Rogue Spectres to get in range with shorter-range damage spells. I can oneshot them easily, but it's still a nuisance.

- Razhid takes only 120 from Max IGMS, and is fully immune to Cold, Neg, and possibly Electrical. I did not bring enough spells to kill him in this test, so I will be returning down there with a stronger arsenal and testing a bunch of spells on him - Max Evard, Max Vortex, Max Acid Fog, Max Orb of Fire/Acid/Sound, Emp Thunderclap, Emp DBF, Max Vitriolic, maybe others. Detonate and Max Combust could also potentially work, I can stop his on-hit Harm but may still take too much melee damage.

- The full Razhid run granted me nearly a full level, without killing Razhid at the end. Might get level 25 before Blood Moor, although I don't think that will give me any meaningful power increase - just a single casterlevel for spell damage, and +1 to Premonition's soak if I haven't barred Divination. The real end goal for this second section of the speedrun is to hit around level 26 or maybe a little extra XP, then turn in eight quests for level 28, use Zerya's first book for 29.5, turn in two more quests for 30, reincarnate, then use the second book for 31.5. I'm very nearly there, it looks like I will be dropping quite a few quests. Doubt I'll return to Zhent for the Brewmaster, may also be able to skip Gaobin for now, or the Drow Tunnels quest trip.

- It is possible that I might skip some spawns in Razhid if my XP ends up being lenient by the end and I don't need the extras for killcount. I already have some decently consistent ways to skip certain spawns in there, and it's a pretty slow trip with frequent resting. Would really love to be able to take the edge off that.



One thing I haven't mentioned yet that's waiting off on the horizon - whether or not I need to scribe spells to transfer to the reincarnated build, before reincarnation there is a strong chance that I'll be scribing a fair amount of BBOD scrolls. This is to drain off the Immortal's spells, since at that point I'll be rationing ring charges.

[johannhowitzer]

Welp. Razhid's a pretty tough cookie to crumble quickly. His reflexes and Evasion renders most spells useless, and his AC is too high for Evard, Bigby 8, orb spells, touch attacks... he also has this DC26 Reflex save vs some kind of death on his melee attacks, I got killed and the logs didn't show anything but the reflex save I failed. At least the DC is rather low, so I can put on a little gear as a safeguard against tiptoeing too close!

The best kill strategy I can come up with is Max IGMS with Max Vortex and Max Evard under him. Evard needs a 20, but it only needs to hit five times over the many attacks it'll get during the fight to be worth the six seconds to cast two of them. Vortex hits for 22 a pop, so it needs six rounds to pay for itself. After that it's just affording as many IGMS slots as possible. It did occur to me that a Breach spell would serve in place of Mord here, since all I'm trying to drop is the mantle; I'll test that next time I go there, it'll save me some 9 slots. I might also switch to Bigby 9 instead of 7, see if the success rate is higher; 7 seems to miss over half the time.

Anyone know offhand whether Reverse Gravity can be Evaded? That would hit really hard if not.

[condude]

Reflex save vs. death on a weapon sounds like vorpal to me. Especially on that low of a DC. Try Gift of Undeath, and see if that blocks it.

In other news, BB9 stuns it's target, whereas (I think) BB7 just roots them. Thus versus a caster BB9 is much better.

[johannhowitzer]

Well, I can't use Gift of Undeath until level 34, which is above Razhid's cap. I'll just have to pump my Reflex save. Doubt he'll touch me though. The only reason he's broken free and killed me in my tests is because I've been taking my time and experimenting with a bunch of spells. (Razhid's saves are nearly high enough for the Hells!)

Razhid is immune to stun, so Bigby 9 won't help there; but at least in the vanilla game, 9 has +2 to the grapple check over 7. The advantages to 7 are using a lower level slot, and the fact that it doesn't deal damage allows me to GV freely, whereas 9 would break GV every round. 9 also prohibits resting unless you use !cancel on the target(s) first - this is a common issue for mages trying to kill Zerya.

[condude]

Of course, stupid me. I believe vorpal only procs on crits though, so if you can get your AC to where he can't confirm them...

[johannhowitzer]

He appears to have 57 AB, so ideal AC would be 77. Let's see...

10 base
6 max DEX (10 from max cat grace, 2 from gear)
10 from +10 robe/bracers (if I do Bloodpool first)
20 from dodge cap (10 boots, 2 mage armor, 4 haste... not sure about other 4)
10 from +10 ring/cloak/helm (Shield spell would give +7)
10 from +10 amulet (+9 is easy to get, not sure where +10 is)

66 AC if I can fulfill all of this, I think I'll pass for now and try out Bigby 9's success rate.

----------------------

I had a crazy idea in the shower today.

Step 1 - At 21 or so, specialize in Conjuration for Supergate, bar Evocation. Do this after Kardkildontar, so I don't bar IGMS for important boss usage. Vitriolic Sphere or other similar spells over Ice Storm for certain minor enemies, fully Weird for Renders.

Step 2 - at 24, despecialize thanks to having ESF Evocation, and specialize in Evocation while barring Conjuration. This blocks Gate use for Razhid backtrack, but adds 2 to Sunburst DC.

Step 3 - right after Razhid, despecialize thanks to ESF Conjuration, and specialize in Conjuration again while barring Necromancy. This restores Supergate.

Step 4 - at level 30, take ESF Necromancy, allowing a third despecialize, and specialize in Necromancy while barring Divination. This blocks Premonition for Zerya killcount, but helps Wail of the Banshee.


This change would just be for the extra DC at Razhid, which I'm not sure is worth sacrificing a bunch of extra guaranteed oneshots and having to visit the docks pedestal two extra times. It is a *crazy* idea, but there it is. The current plan is specialize in Conj in early 20s, then respec to Necromancy at 30 for Wail.

[johannhowitzer]

So, Freezing Sphere, pretty great spell huh? It just became the new Ice Storm. Maxed Freezing Sphere at level 25 (CL24) with capped Lore (+75%) oneshots Bloodback Spiders with 2 damage to spare.

You know, back when I had planned to bar Enchantment and Divination, I seriously underestimated Legend Lore and Identify.

[johannhowitzer]

Done a lot of work today and finished up the 18-30 route. I need to poke around a bit more in Zerya's room and see if I can pin down the spawn triggers; the only thing I need to prevent is spawning Zerya and her Kurai at the same time. If they spawn separately I can always win. Also need to figure out her exact killcount and then narrow down the locations I need to be gathering and Wailing at.


Now that I'm to the reincarnation threshold, though, I've begun to plan how this process will work. I need a solid post-reinc gear setup and spell selections all the way up to Wizard 17. So here's what I've got so far!

Gear Setup

Planar Staff - 789 Wizard slots
Greater Spellchain - lightweight medium armor with no failure and +4 STR
First Defense shield - knockdown, mind, death immunity
Drachen Helm - 89 Wizard slots and +5 INT
Hero's Bracers - +8 CON
Greater Weirding Module belt from Bloodpool - 10/- physical (seemed to be a consistent enough drop)
Wizard Cloak - +8 INT
Rhiannon's Constancy or any better dodge boots (Asimathas drops some nice ones sometimes)
+9 Natural amulet (+9 WIS amulet sometimes when resting and buff with max Owl's Wisdom)
2x Wizard's Circle rings

This maxes INT, gives +8 CON, plenty of bonus Wizard slots, all relevant immunities, and manages decent armor. Magic Vestment x2, Shield, Max Cat's Grace, and dodge buffs bring AC up to a minimum of 74, more than enough for Mother of the Corn and Troll King. More AC can be had from better boots. Some buffs can be eliminated later on with better gear, or ignored when AC matters less.

Other items to transfer across reincarnation:
Priest's Circle rings, Tempered Full Plate (25% fire), Bracers of Resilience (armor and sneak imm), Battle Ranger's Band (10/- phys, replaces belt if I get a slot belt), Hero's Ring (good immunities if I find a nice shield), Seal Breaker and Rope for MOAD, Gem of Planar Travel for Hel

May also transfer Planar Staff, Drachen Helm, and Hero's Bracers to save gold.



Spell selection on leveling up

I will get quite a few spells from shops - Summon Creature I, Ghostly Visage, Owl's Wisdom, Melf's Acid Arrow, Fireball, Stoneskin, Wall of Fire, and Undeath to Death. Black Blade of Disaster will also come for free as I will have transferred a stack of scrolls.

Spells are taken here in the order I will want them to show in the spellbook, to make menuing faster down the road.

1- Shield, Mage Armor
2- Endure Elements, True Strike (stopgap for if Tenser's drops)
(Other L1 spells - Orbs, Negative Energy Ray, Grasps)

3- Invisibility, Cat's Grace (having this as a domain spell is annoying)
4- Combust, Endurance
(Other L2 spells - Bull's Strength, Fox's Cunning, Death Armor, Cloud of Bewilderment)

5- Displacement, Gust of Wind
6- Mestil's Acid Breath, Greater Magic Weapon
(Other L3 spells - Scintillating Sphere)

7- Evard's Black Tentacles, Vortex of Teeth
8- Elemental Shield, maybe an Orb spell
(Other L4 spells - Phantasmal Killer, Orbs, Ice Storm)

9- Energy Buffer, Bigby's Interposing Hand
10- Lesser Spell Mantle, Vitriolic Sphere
(Other L5 spells - Ball Lightning, Mestil's Acid Sheath, Firebrand)
(Will need Cone of Cold for Academy)

11- IGMS, Chain Lightning
12- Tenser's Transformation, Acid Fog
(Other L6 spells - Circle of Death, Freezing Sphere, Spell Breach)

13- Bigby's Grasping Hand, Finger of Death
14- Prismatic Spray, Static Field
(Other L7 spells - Delayed Blast Fireball, Great Thunderclap, Orbs, Spell Mantle)

15- Greater Sanctuary, Sunburst
16- Horrid Wilting, Create Undead (decoy for Revenants / Headmaster)
(Other L8 spells - Bigby's Clenched Fist, Greater Spell Breach, Incendiary Cloud, Polar Ray)

17- Time Stop, Bigby's Crushing Hand

---=== Take 31 before Lithiucshas kill ===---

18- Gate, Weird
(Other L9 spells - Mordenkainen's Disjunction, Meteor Swarm, Wail of the Banshee, Detonate)




Once I have this stuff worked out and tested, I can move on to section three of this four-part speedrun. For that section I have to think a little about XP, but not nearly as much; I also have to plan out MOC, Lith, Grehnaxas, Shadow Elves, Hel, Queen Spider, Zhent, Gaobin, Pontiff, and Axilar trips. Doesn't sound like it will take long.

[johannhowitzer]

The reincarnation notes are more or less complete now. Most items will be preserved across the transition, too. I do need to store the second Libram, the planar gem, slot rings, and gold in the Sage's bookshelf though. None of those things are restored.

I also changed the armor to Arch Wizard's Robe, as this has Haste, which I forgot to equip for, and slots and CON bonus besides. Also an Abjuration focus feat, which could be handy if I want to use Energy Immunity (5% -> 15%).

Hopefully later today I will be streaming / recording a full test of the speedrun route all the way through reincarnation! Watch the Twitter and tune in at www.twitch.tv/johannhowitzer if you want to watch it live.

[johannhowitzer]

1-30 route finished post-reincarnation at a little under eight hours. This was with numerous small and large mistakes, and a lot of very loose routing toward the end, especially at Zerya, forcing me to make things up on the spot. Next step is to go back over this part of the route slowly and fix a bunch of things and tidy up my notes. I believe this can easily be improved by two hours, perhaps significantly more.

Bad news - I closed OBS too quickly and I do not have a local recording for this test as a result, because the video did not finish encoding. Instead I will have to highlight the Twitch stream; hopefully I'll be able to get to that tomorrow, I am dead tired after eight hours of grueling madness and also very hungry. Thanks to all who came to check it out!


I don't even know if there's another RPG speedrun I've ever seen that requires this kind of constant technical ability! Other RPGs have plenty of text mashing, cutscene watching, etc., and even in combat there's waiting for animations and just a few inputs every so often. Higher Ground forces me to use both hands at all times, switching off between WASD, hotkeys, arrow keys for camera, quickslot keys, all while the mouse is in constant motion. I never just get to sit still while my character rests or runs somewhere - while resting, running, even teleporting, there's always spells to set up, equipment to change, inventory space to manage, macro commands to set up, looking frantically over my notes... this is going to take a lot of practice. I think the closest RPG to this level of skill required is Final Fantasy XII, which I think many people have said is the hardest RPG to run? So this would beat that.

[johannhowitzer]

Here is the Twitch highlight of yesterday's stream: www.twitch.tv/videos/122808363


Been doing some minor work today, nothing big as I needed a little break after that demo recording. Changes I've made:

- Found a way to eliminate one rest in Beholder Prison - instead of equipping the Ring of Insight, I can now equip 2x Ring of Wizards, and begin the area with +6 INT helm equipped. Then cast Max Fox Cunning and replace helm with Goggles of Minute Seeing, +5 Lore. Hits the magic 79 Lore without sacrificing any 7 slots, providing enough Max Ice Storms to kill half the Prison upon entering, needing only one rest to kill the other half.

- Trading Cold Robe and Acid Amulet for Acid Robe and Cold Amulet. This reduces robe swapping in the mid teens, can just keep Robe of Vecna on.

- GSF Illusion by level 4 is no longer useful - it used to power Phantasmal Killer for Rat King, but that's obsolete now. Illusion can wait until level 18 when Weird arrives. GSP is also not necessary so early. Shifting feats around pre-epic, I can get GSF Conj and Evo much earlier. I will explore new strategies in more depth on my next full routing pass; right away, I can see that this allows Max Melf's Acid Arrow to replace Max Combust in some places, notably the Prime Bison quest mob. I can kill it from much longer range - it fails the save over half the time now, which will oneshot, and in any case the second cast is guaranteed to kill, which is still faster than walking up close to touch it. I can see Vitriolic Sphere maybe getting some more use too.

- Considering not using Displacement on myself for Plains of War, to increase the chance that the enemies will die to my Elemental Shield. I can also reduce dependence on Tenser's Transformation by loading up on more True Strikes. True Strike is also a free action whereas Tenser's is a three second cast. I think Oltum might also be safe enough without Displacement, since enemies die so quickly and I have Heal potions.

- I've been hanging on to Undeath to Death for a long time and still haven't used this spell ever. Time to drop it and thus not care about alignment.

- The Strange Tower trip can go as well. I don't use the death immunity belt, and I can do without Tenser's as described above, meaning I also don't need any of the scrolls. Greater Stoneskin was the most important spell there, and I can fit it if I delay Legend Lore, which I don't use for a few levels anyway.

- Redid notes around Zerya kills to show ideas for Kurai despawning and Gate usage. First Zerya trip leaves Gate by her door, then does Tower Ruins to give the Kurai time to despawn, then Gate back in. Second trip won't have Conj spec; first get killcount on floor 2, then spawn all Kurai and leave Gate at the end of the path by Zerya's door. Use some side trip, possibly Asimathas, to give the Kurai time to despawn, and Zerya time to respawn from the first kill. Then run back down manually and use Gate to skip over a large section of floor 3. Necro spec is still better than Conj on this second trip because Sekines have pretty good Fortitude.

- Trimmed a lot of now-unused spells from the leveling process. Still need to go through and clean up spell selection though, shift things around in a way that makes more sense for spellbook and selection process in the leveling menu. At some point in early 20s, I run out of spells to take, and just take random level 2 spells to avoid cluttering the book on higher spell levels.

- Reincarnation test yesterday revealed a bunch of stuff about the process as well as other useful things to change. Arch Wizard's Robe can be bought around level 27 and used for both Zerya kills. Gold cannot be transferred during reinc, so items to be used after reinc will need to be bought beforehand and transferred instead. Will also need a little gold for bags, teleport gems, and heal potions. Should sell or drop obsolete items before reinc, as these will get transferred and cause encumbrance forcing a VERY slow crawl into town. If gold is short before reinc, the Drow Tunnels quest trip can be used just like at the start of the route to gather a few million extra gold. Should optimize this to pick up only a few items based on exactly how much gold deficit exists.

[condude]

BTW, you can use the !wallet commands to transfer gold during reincarnation.

[johannhowitzer]

Yes, I considered that but decided not to use it. Not so much because I'm not 100% sure it's in the spirit of the speedrun; more just because as it turns out, it's almost certain that it wouldn't save time. I don't have much gold before reinc, don't need much gold after reinc, and buying / selling one expensive item is faster than typing out the full !wallet command. It's kinda nice not even having to think about whether to allow something!

[condude]

Cool, I didn't know the details, so I didn't know whether it was better to do that or not. Wallet commands are in the spirit of the run IMO, but you could just put it in the sage's bookshelf in the worst case.