Neverwinter Nights/Routes

Any%, unpatched, single segment

This route was designed by ais523 for an any% completion on an unpatched (1.11) version of Neverwinter Nights. Because unpatched versions have a speed cap that is easy to hit, there is not much point in building for movement speed beyond Chapter 1 (like you would do on a patched version), so this route instead builds towards early Invisibility and fast boss kills. It tries to rely only on high-probability events, so as to be safe for use in a single-segment run.

Where low-probability events could save time, I'll try to point them out, to be useful to players playing segmented. Much of the advice is also applicable to other routes, but it focuses on the Cleric route because that's what I know and practice. Likewise, I'll also try to point out advice suitable to other categories (e.g. 100%, no-major-skips, glitchless) at appropriate points, even if this isn't a guide to them.

Directions here will be given relative to your running direction, because I play using Chase Cam. You might need to translate them if you use a Top Down camera.

Starting Character

• Gender: irrelevant
  • Reasoning: There is only one gender-specific effect that is potentially relevant in an any%, which is saving Aribeth. It is faster to save her than to kill her; but it is also faster to do so via Persuade check than via the romance sub-plot, negating the reason to play male.
• Race: Human
  • Reasoning: Quick to Master is more useful than any of the ability adjustments; this route is tight on skills, and wants three feats before hitting level 6. This also makes some conversations a little easier/faster.
• Alignment: Chaotic Evil
  • Reasoning: This impresses the demon in Chapter 1E, meaning you get a double reward from the glitched conversation, each time round the glitch. This more than makes up for the extra text, especially as it gives a useful item that would not otherwise be reliably obtainable.
• Starting Role: Cleric
  • Reasoning: You need Invisibility (available at Cleric [Trickery] 3) by the start of chapter 1, thus at level 3. This means the first three levels must all be in Cleric.
• Abilities: Str 16 / Dex 8 / Con 12 / Int 8 / Wis 18 / Cha 14
  • Reasoning: The most important abilities are Wis (for spellcasting) and Str (for DPS early). Raising them to 16 (the highest reasonable value) leaves 8 improvement points. A higher Charisma helps prevent Turn Undead whiffing, which can really damage the run. The remaining points go in Con, because we have enough skill points even at Int 8, and Dex does not help anything but Reflex (mildly important early on) and AC (on this route, much more than a +2 to AC would be needed to make a noticeable difference).
• Skills: Open Lock 1 [cost 2], Persuade 4, Lore 2
  • Reasoning: None of these skills become relevant until Chapter 1 (or later in the case of Lore), so we pre-place the skill points where they will later be needed to save time levelling up. We need 1 point of Open Lock and as many points of Persuade as possible in Chapter 1; we need no other skills until Chapter 2, which also needs Use Magic Device (unbuyable) and Lore, so we pre-place points there to save a marginal amount of time.
• Feats: Weapon Proficiency (martial), Lightning Reflexes
  • Reasoning: Being able to wield a greatsword gives us much better DPS early than we could otherwise manage. There is one unavoidable Reflex check in Chapter 1 that saves noticeable time if we pass it, so the bonus from Lightning Reflexes increases the chance of getting it in a single-segment.
  • Segmented: You don't need Lightning Reflexes in a segmented run; instead, you'd manipulate the 5% chance of hitting the Reflex check in question naturally. It's unclear which feat to replace it with, though.
• Domains: Trickery, Plant
  • Reasoning: Trickery gives access to Invisibility, which is very useful on speedruns. The second domain is less obvious. Plant gives access to Creeping Doom, which is used to help with two of the boss fights, and Turn Vermin, which helps marginally in chapter 1. It is possible that some other domain could serve the same purposes more efficiently, but this is currently unexplored.

Prelude

Senior Barracks

• Either run round Pavel, or let him talk to you then cancel the conversation via clicking on Bim.
• You must talk to Bim to open the door, but he will open it immediately upon choosing option 2 in the conversation. You can run to the door using the mouse during the conversation to save a marginal amount of time.

Training Halls

• The correct sequence to skip Olgerd's tutorial without opening the shop is 1112113211. (It may be marginally faster to skip the tutorial and open the shop in the process, but that leaves windows that need closing.)
  • Glitchless: Not that this route works glitchless past Chapter 1, but if you want to use this route for a glitchless route in Chapter 1, you want to raise at least 50 gold via selling items to Olgerd. The only item in your inventory right now that will save you any time at any point of the run is your starting mace.
• You need to rest and memorize spells while still in the first room. Otherwise, you are too close to "enemies" (actually, the targets that register the Warrior training) for the rest to succeed. You need to do so now because spellcasting is required to complete the Divine Caster training, which is faster than the alternatives.
• You can start resting and rearrange spells during the rest. Level 1 spells are refreshed at approximately 40% and again at 100%. You want to have them all in place by 40% so that you can cancel the rest, saving over 15 seconds of waiting. (There's no point in doing an Instant Rest here because it takes most of that 40% to do the memorization you need.)
• Which spells you memorize is mostly unimportant because the only spellcasting you need to do is spontaneous. I memorize two copies of Endure Elements and one copy of Bless; all these spells are needed at the start of Chapter 1, so it saves on menuing later. Additionally, Bless is helpful in the Prelude itself.
• Once the spells are memorized, start sorting out the quickbar so you can see when the level 1 refresh happens. After memorizing your L1 spells, drag any of them to an empty quickbar slot as fast as possible. As soon as it stops being greyed out, cancel your rest using W. (If you don't manage this in time – which is entirely possible, because the timing is quite tight – just reset, this is the second room of the game.) Place all the L1 spells you need during the entire run on the quickbar: Bless, Endure Elements, Summon Creature I, Spontaneous Cure Light Wounds.
• Run to the Divine Caster training using the keyboard. While you're doing that, you can arrange your quickbar how you want it using the mouse. There should be enough spare time to also wield your mace. All of this can be done in parallel with movement; generally speaking, in this game, you want to, as much as possible, be moving with one hand and menuing with the other.
• Complete the Divine Caster training (cast Spontaneous Cure Light Wounds at the injured man, and Turn Undead at the skeleton; Turn Undead is on the quickbar by default). Turn Undead will reach the skeleton from most places in the room; the correct place to cast it from is thus next to Elynwynd towards the door, and the correct time is after Spontaneous Cure Light Wounds due to the 6-second lag between non-movement actions (you have plenty enough time to get into position after healing the man). However, it is far from guaranteed to succeed. You need luck to complete this room quickly, as a result. (Of course, this is still the second area of the game, so you can just reset if something goes wrong.)
• Talk to Elynwynd and, while running out of the room, advance the conversation by one screen in order to gain Chainmail. This will be your armour throughout chapter 1.
• Start a conversation with the Door Guard. You don't actually have to go through the conversation to get into the next area, just start it.

Graduation Chamber

• Cast Bless on the two groups of NPCs nearer the door (target it between them), catching yourself in the radius in the process. This maximizes the chance of the fight in this room going quickly.
• This is your only chance to equip your armour without losing time, but the naive method (using the keyboard to move and the mouse to equip it) is prone to accidentally cancelling the "equip" action, because keyboard movement cancels everything. The better method is to use action queueing with the mouse. Click on Aribeth to start a talk action with her, and your character will start running towards her. Then open the inventory (I on the keyboard) and quickly equip the Chainmail and the Small Shield (the fastest way to equip an item is to drag the right mouse button away from it to the right, or to the left for an offhand item like a shield; avoid doing this in a shop, because that will sell the item instead). The equip actions will be queued behind the talk action, with the result that as soon as the conversation starts, your equipment will change instantly (you're not in combat). Conversations also close the inventory window.
• Mash 1 to get through the conversation with Aribeth quickly.
• This starts a fight, which is impossible to lose (the enemies will never attack you personally and cannot injure Aribeth, who will eventually finish them all no matter what). However, there are ways to make it much faster or slower. The important thing is to help out the low-level NPCs in the room, who will usually get slaughtered; and in particular, you want to help the ones furthest from Aribeth (nearest the door), because they are the most likely to die, and attacking the enemies that are least likely to die early. My current technique is to attack the Unknown Mage in the near left corner as you enter the room (the far right as you look from Aribeth's location towards the door). Once he's dead, help out the other group of NPCs near the door (who are often either dead or nearly dead at that point). If you're lucky, Aribeth will finish the fight in the process. Otherwise you might have to wait a few seconds, or even help her.
  • Warning: Do not cast Summon Creature I in this fight, even though it seems appropriate. The badger will spend too long buffing itself to help in the fight, and it will influence the encounter tables, increasing the chance you get obstructed in the following corridors.
• When the fight ends, you want to be near the door, as Aribeth will run towards you, and you can't talk to her until she's out of combat. She'll rarely run all the way to the door, but you can lure her quite some distance during otherwise unusable time. Once she stops moving, click on her repeatedly until the conversation starts. The inability to talk to people during combat, combined with the game's definition of "combat", is frustrating; but don't worry, we can turn it to our advantage much later in the run.
• Once the conversation starts, start mashing 1, but also start running towards the door (using the mouse). The conversation can continue while you're running, as long as you don't get too far away, and if you mash 1 fast enough you'll finish it in time.

Training Halls

• You can just run to the next area during the cutscene, meaning you shouldn't be attacked. I love the way Neverwinter Nights does cutscenes (in particular, the fact that you can move around during them).

Academy

• Just like in the previous area, run to the next room during the cutscene.
• Ignore Pavel; nothing forces you to talk to him and he doesn't help enough to be worth the time the conversation takes.
• The faster route out of Pavel's room is east (the left of the two doors in the corner).
• Run around the Tough Goblin, and the set of three Weak Goblins. There is some randomness in the way they spawn; it is possible that you will need to kill one or more of them to get through.
• Speak to Geldar and press 1 a few times to get an immediate experience boost to level 2. (Nice of the game to give you a free level just so it could teach you how to level up.) I believe (but am not 100% sure) that this conversation is flagged so that it can be started even during combat. Run towards the door, and while running, level up. (You need to do the levelling up substantially before you reach the door, or it won't open.) For some reason, I'm in the habit of mashing 1 during this sequence even though it doesn't help at all (it doesn't hinder either).

Level 2:

• Role: Cleric
  • Reasoning: Cleric is required to get Invisibility by the start of Chapter 1.
• Skills: postpone buying
  • Reasoning: You'll level up again before the next time your skills become relevant, so postponing buying them saves time trying to find them in the menu.

• While running, you can use the time to memorize your fourth Level 1 spell in order to save time at the start of Chapter 1. This should be Summon Creature I, if you memorized Endure Elements twice and Bless once as recommended above.
• Don't take any side passages; you want to go straight down the corridor, take the turn to the right as the corridor turns, dodge the group of goblins (again, if you're unlucky with the way they spawn you might have to fight one or two of them), and open the door in front of you when the corridor splits to the left and right. (This is the fastest route through the area.)
• Something easily missed and very important in the room beyond the door you just opened: there are two large stone pillars near you in the room, and the obvious route is to run between them, but you want to run to the right of both of them instead. This postpones getting into the Mysterious Mage's line of sight as long as possible, greatly increasing the chance that he only gets one round of actions against you. If he gets two rounds, which is reasonably likely if you run between them (still possible, but much less likely, if you run to the right), you will probably die. Just run past him and out the door to the next area.

Stables

• It is likely some enemies will follow you into this room. Any undead who turn up can be ignored; Fenthick will Turn Undead and one-shot them. It is normally fastest to focus on the goblins near Fenthick and Desther first, because they do less damage to nearby targets (they punch them) than to distant targets (who get shot with a crossbow). You do more damage than anyone else here; Coup de Grace anything that gets hit with a paralysis effect, and otherwise just melee things to death (the points in Str you bought are pretty useful here). If low on health, you might want to heal; you should have one spontaneous cast of Cure Light Wounds available for the purpose (in addition to potions). Or you might prefer to just risk not getting hit.
• After the fight, you can start the first conversation by talking to either Fenthick or Desther. Pay attention to whoever was in combat more recently, and talk to the other. If you aren't sure, just try to start conversation with both of them until it works.
• The first conversation here can be completed just by spamming 1. The second conversation is harder and I frequently mess it up; you want to spam 1 until you get a screen with exactly two options, then press 2. If you miss it, you might actually have to read the options you're given to work out which one you need to take (it's the one where you agree to meet Fenthick within the week).
• The fastest way to proceed is to click on the door to Chapter 1 and level up while your character is running to it, but it's possible to mess this up. If you have to level up in Chapter 1 instead, don't worry; it's only marginally slower.

Level 3:

• Role: Cleric
  • Reasoning: You need Invisibility.
• Skills: Persuade +2 (=6), 2 points postponed
  • Reasoning: This is your last chance to buy skills at Cleric costs until after Chapter 1 has finished, and a high Persuade score saves you time in the Alaefin fight. 6 is the highest value a level 3 Cleric can set their Persuade to. There's no benefit to buying other skills, as they're either already high enough, or would not be useful before the next time we level up.
• Feats: Weapon Focus (greatsword)
  • Reasoning: Even with your high Strength, you have problems hitting during the Chapter 1 boss fights. This gives enough of an edge to make those fights quicker. (Note that it also totally screws up the loot you get from one fight in Chapter 3, which I'll point out when it happens, but this is a comparatively small price to pay.) By the way, you can't legally buy this as a level 1 Cleric, so if you want to buy this and have it useful in chapter 1, it must be at this specific level-up.

Chapter 1

• To skip the cutscene when SafeMovie=1 (required for it to render correctly on Windows XP or higher, which you are probably using), press the spacebar. (This took me an annoyingly long time to figure out.)

City Core: Sanatorium

• You can just run past Fenthick. The conversation will naturally cancel once you're far enough away from him.
• Use the time before you reach Aribeth, during the Aribeth conversation, and perhaps in the next area, to adjust your spells; conversations cancel the inventory window but not spell arrangement. You need to memorize your level 2 spells: two copies of Invisibility and one of Bull's Strength. Also place them on the quickbar (you can overwrite Spontaneous Cure Light Wounds, you're not going to need it for the rest of the run).

City Core: Hall of Justice

• Do not cancel the Aribeth conversation: if you do, you will not have enough gold to complete the City Core section of the run. In fact, you want to perform the Aribeth gold glitch once (ask her about the Stone of Recall when you get a chance to ask her questions); this hardly costs any time and is necessary in single-segment because otherwise you won't get enough gold.
  • Segmented: You don't need to perform the gold glitch (even though it only takes a few seconds and makes things much easier), because you're lucky and (this no longer being single-segment) can perform reset glitches.
• Before leaving the room (as this is an any%, leave it towards the City Core, the other options are for optional sidequests), open the inventory and quickbar the Stone of Recall. Conversations make this awkward to do in future rooms, and doing it right now means your inventory will close naturally.

City Core

• Bethany will bug you every time through here unless you at least advance the conversation. The fastest method, therefore, is the "run away while spamming 1" option used on Aribeth in the prelude. I find it easiest to use the keyboard to move and the mouse to talk, for this conversation (typically the spell memorization window is still open at this point, which makes it hard to find something to click on to move with the mouse).
• Go towards the Trade of Blades. The extra DPS and Concentration interruptions added by a henchman save a huge amount of time over the course of Chapter 1.

City Core: Trade of Blades

• Hire Daelan.
  • Segmented: You will need to persuade Daelan down to 175 in order to be able to afford to hire him. (As this is segmented, you may as well aim for 150; it's not particularly unlikely with your current stats. Persuading him below 150 is impossible.)
  • Glitchless: You will need to persuade Daelan down to 175 in order to have enough gold in the Meldanen boss fight.
  • I like to Persuade Daelan down to at least 175 even in other circumstances, because I think it doesn't waste time if the check succeeds, which it usually does, and having the extra gold can help later on (I have literally been just a few gold pieces short of something I needed before now).
• Rest to restore your L1 and L2 spells. You can cancel your rest once those spells are restored (press W). Then use the Stone of Recall to recall out.
  • Rationale: We want Daelan for every chapter 1 boss fight, as he has the highest DPS. This would make it fastest to do the Docks first (he's right next to them), but that turns out to be untenable on this route due to issues with weaponry and experience, and in general due to issues with gold. So it's faster to recall out in order to get to the other end of City Core more quickly. If you have particularly slow loading screens and aren't subtracting them from timing, it might be faster to just walk out of the door.

City Core: Hall of Justice

• Leave towards the City Core.

City Core

• Run towards Blacklake. While doing this, tell Daelan to stand ground (with the mouse, you can do this via right-dragging; with the keyboard, press VWX). This is necessary to stop him taking damage in No Man's Land.
• Just open the gate leading into Blacklake; the guard will protest, but he won't stop you.
• Before going through, cast Invisibility on yourself.
  • Segmented: You can go without this cast of Invisibility if you're very lucky through the next area; its only purpose is to prevent you being hit, and each single enemy is relatively likely to miss, it's the cumulative effect that's the problem.

Blacklake: No-Man's-Land

• Just run through to the Barricades via the shortest route. Daelan will be perfectly safe while in stand-ground mode. The enemies here will all ignore you while you're invisible (unless you attack them).

Blacklake: Barricades

• Talk to the captain to request entry to Blacklake. With your current statistics, the shortest conversation path is 141. (This can differ with other characters.)

Blacklake

• Run round to the front entrance of Meldanen's (i.e. round to the right, up the ramp, then to the left). This is around the same speed to enter as the back entrance is, but puts you much nearer to your goal once you've gained entry. There's plenty of time for menuing while doing this; a good use for it is to quickbar L2 spells that will be used later in the run (Negative Energy Ray and Hold Person). There should still be some time spare, which I use to examine NPCs just for fun. Perhaps there's a better use.
• Talk to Orrean. This conversation is normally difficult and has no guaranteed route for most characters, but as a high-strength human, 22111 is both very short and guaranteed to let you in. (This is another good reason to play a human, by the way.) The requirement to be human might or might not be a mistake in the code, incidentally, because there's no reason given in the dialogue for why being human should matter.
• Enter Meldanen's estate through the front door.

Blacklake: Meldanen's Estate

• Talk to Grommin, mashing 1 to get through the conversation; this is the fastest way to unlock the door to the next area. This requires a Persuade check to get him to unlock the door; however, with our Persuade modifier of +8, I am not convinced it is even possible to fail it, and I never have done in practice. If you do fail it, it should be possible to click on Grommin to reset the conversation and try again.
• You have time to cast one or two spells while Grommin is opening the door. One of them should be Endure Elements on Daelan; you won't get a chance to do this elsewhere without losing time. For the other, I like to cast Bull's Strength on Daelan, but am not 100% certain he is the best target for it (it might be faster to cast it on yourself). Then go down the corridor that Grommin opened.
  • Segmented: One of the spells needs to be Invisibility on yourself, if you didn't cast it earlier.
• While running down the corridor, continue casting the spells you need for the Meldanen fight. Remember that although casting spells prevents you moving for only 3 seconds or so, you can only cast one spell every 6 seconds, and so it is best to space them out in time.
• The list of spells that need casting in this area (either at the door, or while running):
  • Endure Elements on Daelan
    • Rationale: Otherwise, Meldanen often kills him with Cone of Cold. In a segmented run, you could probably skip this.
  • Endure Elements on yourself
    • Rationale: Ditto.
  • Bull's Strength on Daelan
    • Rationale: For the DPS. Casting it on yourself might or might not be better; I'm not sure.
  • Invisibility on yourself
    • Rationale: If you don't refresh this, it will run out at a very inconvenient time, and you may well die as a result.
• Go through the second-last door on the corridor. Then continue forwards and open the door in front of you (at the other side of the room).
• This corridor is trapped; you'll need to weave first left, then right, to avoid the traps.

Blacklake: Meldanen's Sanctum

• Run forwards (east) through the first room; take the door opposite you, not the side door. This route is more difficult than the other, but has a pretty notable reward on it: there is a guaranteed Greatsword +1 on the weapon rack in the second room (with the fire beetles). Take and equip this weapon. You will be using it pretty much all game. (This is why the character bought two greatsword-related feats.)
• In the next room, press up against the shelf on your left to avoid a trap (use the keyboard). There is only a small amount of leeway to avoid triggering the trap.
• Enter the boss arena. There are basically two strategies that can be used for this:
  • Recall drop (does not rely on glitches, legal in single-segment-without-resets, costs 50gp): run towards the dryad to spawn Meldanen. Then run back towards Meldanen and recall out. Cast Summon Creature I and Bless (both for DPS purposes), then use the Recall portal to enter the fight. As soon as you arrive, declare an attack on Meldanen with the mouse, and type VWE with the keyboard to get the rest of your party to also declare attacks (this works outside turn order and perception order, so is faster than waiting for them to join the fight naturally, and is also required because Daelan's still in stand ground mode).
  • Reset glitch (is a glitch, requires a reset, costs no money): Reset and reload the game. This warps Daelan into the room. Then cast Summon Creature I and Bless, whilst typing VEE to take Daelan out of stand ground mode, and run towards the dryad to spawn Meldanen.
• During the fight itself, your aim is to melee-lock Meldanen: every time he tries to cast a spell, you want either you or Daelan to hit him hard enough to knock him out of the spellcast. A recall drop makes this easier to pull off, because your party is nearer to him at the start of the fight. However, the reset glitch leaves his AI more predictable (he is very likely to cast Cone of Cold if the melee lock breaks, quite possibly killing the badger, and wiping your party if he casts it twice), whereas with a recall drop, more or less anything could happen, and some possibilities (e.g. Ghoul Touch) will massively slow down your run. That said, I normally go for the recall drop, but which method is better depends on your segmentation discipline, timing method, and how lucky you feel.
• When Meldanen surrenders, you should normally just force-attack him; this gives the most gold out of any of the non-massively-time-consuming options and is also probably fastest. Loot the master key (for plot progression), the gold (why you do this area first), and the staff (for selling). Be very careful when looting; you can collect loot by clicking on it, but if your click is interpreted as a drag, the item won't be looted and you'll have to go back for it. You can look at the message area to see if this has happened; it won't show the "Acquired Item:" message.
  • Backup strategy: If the fight goes badly wrong (e.g. Daelan dies), you will not be able to reliably win the fight. You can get all the relevant rewards but the Staff of Meldanen through dialogue: ask him to make you an offer, then accept the gold and the dryad. This is awkward to do because there are so many choices on the conversation menu (I haven't worked out the required numbers because of that; I think there's even an 8 in there somewhere).
• Unlock the door to the Dryad's prison, then talk to her. The fastest route through the conversation is to type 23 then to recall out of the conversation. (Don't worry about her, I checked the scripts, and the Dryad takes the opportunity to walk to safety after you unexpectedly leave.)

City Core: Hall of Justice

• While running to the door to the City Croe, expel Daelan from your party (right-click on him in the party list, then click top-left and bottom-right). He's going to die and respawn here anyway if you don't, but making him leaves serves two purposes: altering the experience formula (thus making it possible to get enough experience to hit level 4 in the Beggar's Nest overworld), and preventing him forcing you into combat and thus leaving you unable to have conversations. If you have a badger in your party, leave it until just before your next Turn Undead cast; it'll make more enemies spawn, meaning you have much more leeway for unlucky Turn Undead results.

City Core

• Perform a partial rest to refresh L1 and L2 spells. (Bear in mind that some spells on your quickbar are not memorized, so they won't refresh at all. Also, try not to cancel the rest after just the L1 spells have refreshed, with the L2 spells missing; I do that far too often.)
  • Resets allowed: You can do an Instant Rest here instead. Even better, however, is delaying this glitch until just after talking to Jemanie; there's enough of a window to rest in that area that you can pull an Instant Rest off, and that gives you more leeway on bad Turn Undead dice rolls.
  • Segmented: It may be possible to do without the spell refresh here altogether, although that would mean doing Blacklake and the Beggar's Nest in one Invisibility charge each. Blacklake is possible like this if you're lucky enough; the Beggar's Nest is more difficult on one charge, but possibly not by enough that skipping the rest is slower. This is probably not worth it unless the run is also glitchless, though; an Instant Rest does not cost much time.
• Go to the Beggar's Nest. Like Blacklake, you can just walk through the door despite the guard's protests. (All the main areas work like this.)

Beggar's Nest

• You need to grind to level 4 in this area, and you do that via 5 casts of Turn Undead (i.e. about 15 seconds out of your way for the casting, plus maybe 30 seconds or so because not all the locations are precisely on your route). The first two locations (before you temporarily go to a different area) are:
  • Turn left as you enter; you reach an intersection with a sewer grate behind and to your right, and paths forwards and to the left. You want to cast Turn Undead at the point where the path to the left opens up and starts to expand into the main area. This is almost exactly on your route.
  • Then take the path in front of you (not the path to the left), and turn left towards Jemanie's house. Use Turn Undead to kill the three zombies outside it. This is exactly on the route.
• Enter Jemanie's house at this point.

Beggar's Nest: House

• Talk to Jemanie. As soon as the conversation starts, immediately click on the entrance door while mashing 1. If you hear one "quest complete" sound effect, followed by three "journal updated" sound effects, you mashed fast enough; this is not particularly difficult. The developers tied a lot of quests to this area for some reason. You should end up running out of the door with all the required quest advancement, taking hardly any time.

Beggar's Nest

• Here are the other three Turn Undead locations:
  • Leave Jemanie's house to the north-east (i.e. the direction you were going before you entered it). Warning: the door to the house is attached backwards (a mistake the developers occasionally made when connecting areas), so you will need to use the mouse to turn immediately after leaving). To the north-east of that house (i.e. to the right of your path) is a small building-like cluster. Run round the right side of it, letting the zombies follow you, and go towards the locked entrance to the Great Graveyard. Cast Turn Undead in the chokepoint just before the area with the sewer grate. This is a few seconds off the route, but worth it for the huge amount of experience it gains you.
  • Run round to the north-west corner of the building-like cluster, and cast Turn Undead there; this should kill the zombies that started following you as you ran round it, plus the zombies attacking the nearby citizen. This is the fastest route, given the detour you just took. (If you had a badger with you as you entered the area, this cast can be omitteds.)
  • Run just beyond the entrance to the cultist hideout and cast Turn Undead there, killing the zombies on the far side of it. This is only about a second away from the fastest route.
• Before interacting with the Hideout itself, cast Invisibility on yourself. You need to cast it to get through the next area anyway, and
• Open the door to the Cultist Hideout, and go through the conversation. This is worth 50 experience. If you killed all but one (or all) of the zombies in range of these five Turn Undead blasts, you should have had at least 5950 experience and so levelled up as a result.
  • Backup strategy: If you don't have enough experience yet (i.e. you missed more than one zombie, or perhaps failed to kill Meldanen earlier), you can make the time up by killing zombies either now, or in the Great Graveyard a few rooms from now. Open the character sheet to see how much experience you have; zombies give this character 75 each, so you need one more kill if you're on 5925 or more (5875 if you haven't opened the door yet), two if on 5850 or more (5800 if you haven't opened the door yet), three if on 5775 or more (5725 if you haven't opened the door yet). The most likely zombies to miss are at the Great Graveyard entrance; this can happen due to bad dice rolls. Also, note that (unless doing a single segment without resets) you can reset glitch to restore your Turn Undead charges.

Level 4:

• Role: Barbarian
  • Rationale: Barbarian Fast Movement gives the greatest time gain in Chapter 1 of anything you could purchase with this level. A Monk's fast movement scales higher, but starts smaller, so the Barbarian's boost is more useful for a 1-level splash. The rage can be occasionally useful, too.
• Ability: Wisdom
  • Rationale: It actually doesn't matter whether you put this in Wisdom or Strength (odd ability scores function pretty much identically to the even scores one point lower), but I got into the habit of doing the Wisdom boosts before the Strength boosts.
• Skills: postpone buying
  • Rationale: Barbarians have an awful skill point price list. It's better to wait until we can get skills at reasonable prices.

• Enter the estate.

Beggar's Nest: Snake Cult Estate

• Run to the exit via the shortest (only) route; your invisibility will prevent any enemies perceiving you. Quickbar Barbarian Rage while running.

Beggar's Nest: Crypts

• This is another "run to the exit via the shortest route", but that route is a little non-obvious and full of traps that will ruin your run (either due to long-duration paralysis or very heavy damage), so it's written in full here.
• Leave the first room through the corridor to your right.
• In this corridor, run along the left-hand side at least up until the collapsed wall section (which will prevent you continuing along the left-hand side), to avoid a trap. Don't take the branch to the left; the door there is locked right now.
• As the corridor bends to the right, take the corner very tightly, and stay near the right wall until it opens up into a room.
• Pull the lever near the cultists to unlock the door in the corridor you passed by earlier.
• Retrace your steps back to the junction. This means running along the left hand side of the corridor leaving the room (the corridor you entered by, but now you're going in the other direction), then keeping to the right just after the collapsed wall.
• The corridor opens up into a room, then collapses back into a corridor. The first bend in that corridor must be taken very wide to avoid a massively damaging trap; you're pretty much running along the outside wall.
• Then go to the left and through the door to leave the area.

Beggar's Nest: Great Graveyard

• If you aren't level 4 yet due to mistakes earlier, grind up to level 4 on zombies here (using reset glitch + Turn Undead, or just meleeing them down).
• Refresh Invisibility on yourself: otherwise it'll run out at or near the entrance to Gulnan's room, which makes the fight rather harder as a) she'll start buffing herself early, and b) some of the enemies from outside are likely to follow you into the fight.
• Enter the Warrens through the door to your right.

Beggar's Nest: Warrens of the Damned

• After the first room, turn right. (I've never actually tested that this is faster, but I assume that it's faster because it's one of the few points where my instincts agree with the existing runs, and I don't have the other route memorized to compare.)
• The way this area works is that there's a large ring with many smaller rooms off it, two of which contain keys, and you need one of the two keys. Thus, you need to open the door in front of you, even though it's a detour off the ring, to get a key. The door just beyond it is trapped; however, it's a pretty weak trap that deals only damage, so just tank the damage. Loot the key off the corpse of Torin.
• Backtrack to the main ring, and continue running round it. (There are no detours/side rooms between here and Gulnan.)
• Run right up to Gulnan, then recall out; we're going to do this fight with a recall drop (this seems to be by far the most reliable method).
• Do a full rest, even though it "wastes" a level 2 spell slot if you rested after Meldanen. This is for health, Turn Undead charges, and Invisibility charges.
• Join back up with Daelan, then cast buffs for the fight. I'm not sure which buffs save time on average, but as Gulnan is the hardest fight in the run (although Callik is more luck-dependent), I prefer to err on the safe side (a segmented run should try to do without some of these):
  • Summon Creature I (DPS);
  • Bless (DPS);
  • Bull's Strength on Daelan (DPS, and to help disrupt Gulnan's casting);
  • Endure Elements on yourself and again on Daelan (to mitigate Flame Strike to some extent);
  • Barbarian Rage.
• Recall back in, hit VWE, and start attacking Gulnan. It's possible you may have to cast Turn Undead at some point in order to stop them interfering with the fight, but if you're lucky, you can go without.
• Loot Gulnan's heart (for plot advancement) and Scimitar +1 (for money), then recall out.

City Core: Hall of Justice

• Just leave. We're about to do a combat sequence, and have enough spells remaining (two Invisibility) to take us through to just before Callik, so resting would be counterproductive as it would remove the buffs we set up for Gulnan, but are still useful here.
  • Backup strategy: If you got heavily injured in the Gulnan fight, heal at Aribeth.

City Core

• Head to the Docks. (This gate works like all the others.)

Docks

• This is the most luck-dependent area, although there are backup strategies almost everywhere. As such, a guide to the route has to be a bit looser than it would be otherwise. The basic idea is to kill enough generic enemies along the shortest path to get 5 Smuggler's Coins. Use Daelan and (if alive) your badger to do most of the killing; you can also kill, but looting is a better use of your time when loot is available. Drop back and/or drink Cure Light Wounds potions if you're running low on health.
• The shortest path is to turn left upon entering, then right, then it's a straight path to the Seedy Tavern. The route starts with a group of three enemies, and then no enemies for a while. There's another group of three near the fountain, and another just beyond them. You should try to avoid combat beyond those three groups, because then Daelan will start running all over the map, preventing you entering conversation. (VEE helps to avoid him running off, if he hasn't already entered combat; if he has, he'll break it off, but that'll just bring the combat to you. Once I have five Smuggler's Coins, I spam VEE in order to try to avoid unwanted combat.)
  • Backup strategy: if you don't get five Smuggler's Coins off these nine enemies, you can enter the shop to the right of your route and buy up to three for 150gp each. The loot from Meldanen and Gulnan should mean you can afford this.
• Bribe your way into the Seedy Tavern (1431).

Docks: Seedy Tavern

• Buy three Potions of Invisibility and one Potion of Speed from the auctioneer. (You will have to sell some of your loot first to get enough money.) The basic idea behind the Potions of Invisibility is to save having to rest to refresh spells, which saves around 15 seconds; it costs about that in time spent shopping, but I think the ability to buy a Potion of Speed at the same time makes the shopping route faster. (In categories where resets are allowed, this rationale is less clear, because of the Instant Rest glitch; there may be a faster route that doesn't buy items here.)
  • Segmented: You only need two Potions of Invisibility; the third is a hedge against Peninsula trolling you, and a segmented run can just reset if that happens.
  • Untested: It might be worth spending all remaining money (including from saleable items) on Potions of Speed, purely for the running speed boost in the remaining running regions in Chapter 1. This seems like a waste, but probably actually does save time, if only a little. Remember to leave a little left over; many backup strategies involve unrecalling.
• Attempt to open the door to the basement, in order to get Daelan to start bashing it. Then bash it yourself at the same time. Chef will go to get help, but you'll be gone before it arrives.
• Skew your route to the left beyond the door, to avoid a trap. Also, press VWX during this time; you don't want Daelan and a possible badger running around inside the next area.

Docks: Bloodsailor Hideout (B1F)

• Cast Invisibility on yourself.
• Run invisibly to the end of the corridor (there's only the one junction, go straight on at that junction), opening the door at the end. Then take the only route down to the next level. As you're invisible, nobody will interfere with this. While running, quickbar the potions you just bought.

Docks: Bloodsailor Hideout (B2F)

• Cancel your VWX (with VWE or VEE); there's going to be combat here.
• Kill the enemies near Daranei. (You don't need to interact with Daranei herself.) Loot the Instructions from Callik.
• Establish your VWX again; Daelan should have killed the Bloodsailor patrolling outside by now, so this area will be undisturbed by enemies.
• Cast Invisibility, then leave past the Bloodsailor Lieutenant (follow the corridor round to the right, go to the end, then through the door at the left). While running, dememorize both castings of Invisibility (you'll use potions for that for the rest of Chapter 1); memorize two castings of Hold Person instead (it should already be on your quickbar). Also dememorize both castings of Endure Elements in favour of Summon Creature I (this is a case of removing something entirely useless in favour of something potentially useful if something goes wrong).

Docks

• Run round the outside of the building you just left (turning right three times), then head off west towards the Aqueducts.
• Pick the lock to the Aqueducts. (The rank in Open Lock is needed for other reasons too, but this is the reason it had to be bought so early.) Note that the pathing around the door is a little awkward; you might need to manually move closer to the door before you start to pick it. At Dex 8, Open Lock 1, you have a 5% chance of picking the lock, and under Neverwinter Nights rules (which are a corruption of the D&D "take 20" rules), a skill check outside combat and outside conversation always succeeds if it has a nonzero chance of succeeding. Therefore, the lock will always open.

Docks: Aqueducts

• Start crossing the bridge. The Bloodsailor will attack Daelan (or possibly the badger) as you start to cross. Spam VEE in order to try to keep Daelan alive and out of combat.
• Start conversation with Charon. As soon as you do, pause the game. Pause-buffer this conversation in order to preserve your precious "outside combat" state and Daelan's life; if you don't, you'll enter a fight with a Bloodsailor horde that you will not win, and that will knock you out of conversation.
  • Backup strategy: If Daelan dies anyway, recall back to his respawn point in the next area and retrieve him that way. If the conversation is broken, you can try to re-establish it by pausing the game and clicking on Charon again.

Docks: Sewers

• Rest to regain L2 spells, and perhaps also HP if you or Daelan is badly injured. (In other words, how long to rest depends on your HP and whether the category allows Instant Rest.)
• As you run along the corridor, start buffing for the fight:
  • Bull's Strength on Daelan
  • Summon Creature I
  • Bless
• Once inside the room with Callik, move moderately near to him (about to where the room's narowest point is), ten cast Hold Person on him. If it doesn't stick, try again. If it still doesn't stick, you're in trouble, but can try to complete the fight via brute force and recalling when on low HP. Whether it sticks or not, you want to type VWE to improve Daelan's reaction time to what just happened, drink the Potion of Speed, then kill the guards first and Callik afterwards. If Callik breaks free of the paralysis and you still have a Hold Person cast left, run back and cast it on him to see if you can make it stick again. If Callik starts attacking you, run behind Daelan until he switches target. If you get disarmed, pick the greatsword back up again. (This is a pretty luck-dependent fight.) In emergencies, recall out to heal, or just die and respawn for the free heal and get teleported back to the fight; the respawn penalty is negligible right now because your wealth is mostly in the form of saleable items you haven't sold yet, and you don't care about experience due to a glitch coming up later. If Daelan gets badly injured, you may want to let Callik kill him because it's the fastest way to heal him; however, this is kind-of risky if you can't finish off the fight yourself from there.
• There is no need to loot the corpses for anything (there's a saleable Rapier +1 but it's not worth enough to be worth picking up at this point); just run round to Vengaul. He will start conversation automatically, and you must complete the conversation to progress the plot (but mashing 1 works). Don't click on the crate that contains the feather until after Vengaul's conversation is done; it breaks conversation.
• Pick up the Cockatrice Feather, then recall out.

City Core: Hall of Justice

• Just leave. You might want to request healing for safety if you are critically low on hitpoints, but you shouldn't be; and the potions you bought mean that you don't have to rest just yet.
  • Resets allowed: The Instant Rest glitch is faster than healing at Aribeth. Although it won't necessarily heal Daelan.

City Core

• If you don't have a surviving badger, summon one; you'll need it later.
• Head to Peninsula. (As usual, you can ignore the guard and just open the gate yourself.) On the way, tell Daelan and the badger to stand ground (because I'm running with the keyboard right now, VWX wouldn't work, so I use the radial menu instead for the same purpose).

Peninsula

• Ignore the guard just inside the gate: he doesn't actually do anything if you leave without talking.
• Cast Invisibility from a potion while still near the entrance.
• Head round to the Tanglebrook Estate, using the key under the mat to gain entrance.

Peninsula: Tanglebrook Estate

• Run to the stairs down. Use Turn Undead (for its Turn Vermin feature) on the Stink Beetles, to get them out of your way. Then go on to the next area. If you're unlucky, this won't work first time, but you can just try again.

Peninsula: Tanglebrook Tunnels

• Run around the chessboard. It's full of traps.
• Use Turn Vermin to oneshot the fire beetles blocking your path on the distant bridge (you can typically get all five with one blast if you have a good idea of what its area of effect is shaped like). Then go on to the next area.

Peninsula: Prison Main Floor

• Note that the door to this area is attached backwards, so be careful not to run right back to the previous area.
• Just before the first door, turn invisible via potion. Then open it, pull the Door Lever beyond it, and follow the shortest path (i.e. turn left whenever it isn't an obvious dead end) to the next level. There is just about room for you to slip past the boss of the level (and being invisible, he won't notice).

Peninsula: Containment Level

• This is the worst level in the entire game for NPCs standing in your way for minutes on end, so some other tactic is needed to mitigate it in a single-segment run. Run forwards to the door in front of where you open. As you enter, tell the badger (specifically) to follow, leaving Daelan where he is (you will need to use the radial menu for this). Pull the lever and open the door opposite where you entered. If you are lucky, the badger will distract the prisoners into walking into locations where they don't block the door, and you can run through. If you aren't, you may have to improvise.
  • Backup strategy: The spare Potion of Invisibility is for if you take too long to do this area. If you get blocked for more than 20 seconds or so, you will need to drink it at some point to stop the invisibility wearing off; judge when based on how long you were blocked for.
  • Backup strategy: If you're improvising, things can go spectacularly wrong if enemies run past you, because you'll take an attack of opportunity and break Invisibility. It's possible to go all Prelude-style in this area and just run around visibly, tanking damage, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you have no other option. You'll need the spare potion of Invisibility anyway when doing this because you definitely need to be invisible to get past Kurdan.
• At the end of the level, running to the left gives you a very marginally shorter running distance, and running to the right gives you considerably less camera movement. I prefer to go to the right, as I find manipulating the camera harder than running.

Peninsula: The Pits

• Pull the lever when you enter. Then run through to the end of the area via the fastest route. (Note: I'm not actually 100% sure what the fastest route is, so I'm not listing it here.) Memorize the trap locations to avoid triggering them. Sometimes the enemies will block your path; you can sometimes work around this by using the spare casts of Summon Creature I to distract them.
• The jewelled door (the first one past the doors opened by the last set of door levers) is trapped with a slowing trap, which is annoyingly time-wasting. My current strategy here is to hope that Lightning Reflexes works (a 15% chance), or to take the time penalty if it doesn't. It might be possible to pull something off with Potions of Speed to work around this.
• Being invisible, you can just run past Kurdan.

Peninsula: Lair of the Devourer

• Perhaps unexpectedly and surprisingly, you can usually rest at the start of this area, without even recalling out. Do so, at least up to L2 spells. (Alaefin will occasionally interrupt the rest via random-walking; often, though, you already have the spells you need regained by that point.)
  • Resets allowed: You can Instant Rest at the start of this area, which means that this rest is even more risk-free.
• Cast Summon Creature I, Bless, and Bull's Strength on Daelan.
  • Backup strategy: Recall out, and rest and buff there. This is mostly for use if something goes disastrously wrong, like Alaefin killing Daelan during buffing, because it costs a lot of time.
• If he isn't already, get Daelan into comabt with Alaefin. Then cast Hold Person on Alaefin until it sticks or you run out of charges. Either way, go round rescuing guards until they're all gone; just because you're chaotic evil doesn't mean you have to be stupid. After that, join the fight.
  • Dubious: Divine Trickery might or might not make persuading the guards faster. I mean, it does make it faster on average, but not by much, and it takes time to cast.
• When phase 2 of the fight starts (i.e. Alaefin dies, revealing the Intellect Devourer), enter rage, and start beating on it along with the rest of your party. The occasional VWE doesn't hurt, either. If you aren't very low on HP when this stage of the fight starts, you are almost guaranteed to win it; the devourer does hardly any damage. The rage is thus useful in multiple ways: boosting the Will save means you spend more time attacking and less being mind-affected, and the Strength boost means you hit more often and do more damage.
• Pick up the reagent off the corpse and recall out.

City Core: Hall of Justice

• Talk to Aribeth, and hand over the reagents. Take care not to accidentally donate your reward to charity; losing the gold is minor (although significant), but losing your Evil reputation would be a lot worse. When she asks you whether to leave right away, accept and end the chapter.
• You will typically level up at this point. There's no real advantage to going through the level up dialogue now, though; better to leave it until after the experience glitch.

Chapter 1e

Ritual Chamber

• You have to talk to all the major characters, but you don't have to complete the conversation; just opening up the first screen and moving onto the next person is enough. The exception is that you need to complete the last conversation in the area. This should be Nasher, as his is trivial to complete (14).
• During the following cutscene, cast Summon Creature I for a small amount of bonus DPS in the next fight. Dememorize Hold Person in favour of Negative Energy Ray; this makes menuing in Chapter 1e somewhat easier. Spend the rest of the time rearranging your quickbar. The only slots from it you still need are Negative Energy Ray, Bull's Strength, Summon Creature I, and the Stone of Recall; although in most cases you can just overwrite a quickslot, I find that explicitly emptying them (during time where I have to wait anyway) makes it easier to avoid mistakes where I overwrite the wrong quick slot.
• It also helps to get Daelan over the opposite end of the room to you (which can be accomplished via VWX or, to some extent, via the "follow at long distance" dialogue command). You want him picking a different target to you in the ensuing fight, if you can.
• Once the fight starts, try to kill the enemies efficiently (i.e. don't get in the way of NPCs or other party members who are fighting), and in particular, chase down any enemies who try to flee the fight (because the allied NPCs have an annoying tendency to cast fear-based spells).
• With all enemies dead, you must complete the conversation with Aribeth before you can use the portal.

Road to Helm's Hold

• Run to the next area. While doing so, unsummon the badger (which will almost certainly be alive at this point), and tell Daelan to leave the party; you have no combat until the Desther fight, and that fight is complex enough without the ally AI messing it up further.
• You can just ignore the Strange Visage.

Courtyard

• Run to and use the side entrance on the right. This is not only the shortest path to where you need to go, it also lets you avoid combat, as you will avoid stepping on the spawn trigger for the enemies who are meant to be in this area.

Helm's Hold (1F)

• Turn left upon entering, go through the door, then turn right at every opportunity after that until you come to a bookshelf. Take the Black Grimoire from it. For the only time in the run, we're doing a sidequest for experience.
• Use the Black Grimoire to complete the summoning on the nearby altar.
• Now talk to the demon, who has a very glitched conversation:
  • First, go through the conversation normally (use 111131 because it gives the best rewards for a chaotic evil character). The conversation is not over at that point, but it has reached a point at which you get maximum benefit from starting the glitches. Note that the final "1" is one of two options saying "Continue"; this conversation is more glitched than many people realise. You get an unidentified cloak and unidentified boots from this.
  • Warning: the rest of the glitches with the conversation must be completed within three in-game seconds. This requires very heavy pause buffering (to pause-buffer a conversation, you have the game paused, and select an item via pressing the digit, then very quickly hitting Space twice). This limits how much you can gain from the glitches.
• First up is an item glitch. Pause the game, then click on the demon to reset the conversation (this causes the "despawn" sound effect and animation but the despawn is delayed three in-game seconds), then pause-buffer 111131 to get the reward again. Then do this two more times (for a total of four sets of rewards). This is the maximum that seems to be possible within three in-game seconds, given the amount of text in the resulting dialogues.
• Next is an experience glitch. With the game paused, just click on the demon repeatedly; you get experience for every click (because as it happens, the experience is granted in the first node of the conversation, meaning that the game doesn't need unpausing at all). You can double the speed of this by using both a mouse and a touchpad and mashing with both hands. Gain enough experience to reach level 17. (The game will start lagging because every click also causes a separate despawn animation to be drawn, but the lag won't be visible until you unpause it, and will only last a few seconds.)
• You can (and should) level up with the game still paused, so that if you fell short on experience, you can go glitch yourself some more.

Levels 5-16:

• Role: Cleric
  • Rationale: We're trying to gain access to various Cleric spells that let us completely break boss fights. The highest-levelled of these is Aura versus Alignment, at level 8, meaning we need 15 levels (12 more levels) of Cleric to cast it. Additionally, this means we hit a total level of 17, which gives the most expensive random drops from chests (level 16 gives the most useful random drops, but we can't rely on any particular drop in a single-segment, so instead we just hope for expensive saleable items).
• Ability: Wisdom, Strength, Strength
  • Rationale: We need to pump Wisdom to 18 to cast Aura versus Alignment. The remaining points go into Strength for carry capacity (which can matter if our random loot items happen to be very heavy), and melee prowess (marginally useful, but more useful than the benefits of higher Wisdom; some enemies need melee attacks to finish them after being Harmed).
• Skills: postpone buying
  • Rationale: We need to buy skills at level 17, and doing all the buying at once makes menuing easier.
• Feats: Still Spell, Extend Spell, Spell Penetration, Toughness
  • Rationale: Still Spell and Extend Spell both let us adjust spell levels in order to avoid clashes and memorize more copies of a spell than we would otherwise be able to. Extend Spell is generally better, as many of our spells have awkwardly short durations, but it doesn't work on all spells, so we need a second metamagic feat for that purpose. Spell Penetration makes the run both safer and faster because in many fights, SR checks are the only randomness involved, and a bonus to beating SR checks is thus very welcome. Toughness is mostly just filler, but filler that can occasionally save a run that would otherwise take just a little too much damage.

Level 17:

• Role: Rogue
  • Rationale: We need a role that can both equip Monk-specific items, and cast Sorcerer/Wizard-specific spells. Rogues have the ability to do those, within limits that we can make high enough.
• Skills: Use Magic Device 13, Lore +18 (=20), Persuade +7 (=13)
  • Rationale: 13 points of Use Magic Device, plus a Charisma of 14, lets us cast Time Stop even if it's in a large stack of scrolls, meaning that we don't need to constantly waste time working around a bug in the game just to cast Time Stop. (If not for the bug, 8 would be enough; if playing in a category where resets are allowed, 8 is also enough, because then you only need five scrolls). Maxed Lore gives us the best possible chance of identifying items on the run, rather than having to examine them at a shop (which wastes a few seconds), and also lets us identify certain specific items in time to use them in the Desther fight. The remaining points go into Persuade, because there are some hard Persuade checks later on that we benefit from passing.

• Run along the corridor leading out of this room from the nearest door (i.e. westwards), sorting out spells as you go. When reaching the door at the end of the corridor, rest to regain spells. During the run and the rest, the following spells must be memorized (this list is based on when the spells are needed):
  • L7: Creeping Doom *3
    • Rationale: Needed in the Desther fight, probably. This is currently one of the two main reasons to pick the Plant domain. Also required for Host Tower Level 9, which is the reason to memorize maximum copies. Upon reaching Chapter 3, this is no longer required and will be swapped out for more Harm casts (via Still Spell).
  • L6: Harm *4
    • Rationale: The best boss-killing spell in the game, basically because the damage isn't capped, is resistable only by SR (or negative energy protection but nothing has that), and ignores the enemy's max HP. Almost every boss fight is about finding an opening to cast Harm.
  • L4: Extended Invisibility Sphere *6 (must be quickbarred immediately)
    • Rationale: It's Invisibility, except you don't waste your time clicking a target, so it's faster and less "typo"-prone.
  • L3: Protection from Elements *7
    • Rationale: Being able to tank traps is faster than having to heal up from them (and increasingly, it becomes impossible to run round them), and most traps do elemental damage. You don't need this many copies, but more never hurts in case something goes wrong, or for no-major-skips (which takes a lot of elemental damage in Chapter 3).
• The following spells also need memorizing and quickbarring during Chapter 1e or Chapter 2 (and can simply be memorized now if there's spare time):
  • L8: Aura versus Alignment *2
    • Rationale: The only Cleric spell I could find in unpatched that deals damage that bypasses SR (in this case, via dealing it in a rather indirect manner). It isn't that much, but it's enough for the purposes of the route.
  • L5: Extended Divine Power *5
    • Rationale: Temporary hitpoints and a +5 to base attack bonus are both exactly what we need in melee combat, e.g. trying to land Harm against an enemy with minions, or trying to finish a Harmed enemy in situations where neither Aura versus Alignment nor Negative Energy Ray works. You really don't need all five copies here – one is probably enough – but it's fastest just to mash the memorize button.
  • L2: Negative Energy Ray *5 (2 should already be memorized)
    • Rationale: Many sequence breaks need either a ranged attack, or an attack that deals an unusual sort of damage. This is both. Two casts are needed during chapter 2, but you should have those memorized already; the extra 3 are for spamming against spell-resistant enemies until one of them goes through.
  • L2: Lesser Dispel *1
    • Rationale: For glitching the final boss, and that's it. Do not quickbar this spell until later, to save slots. You can skip this in a segmented run, because there are faster but riskier strategies for the final boss that don't need it.
  • L2: Bull's Strength *1 (should already be memorized)
    • Rationale: Gives either +2 or +3 to attack and damage. This makes finishing off Harmed enemies more reliable in Chapter 4.
  • L1: Summon Creature I *1 (should already be memorized)
    • Badgers are no longer that great at fighting, but you can use them to trigger traps remotely.
• Cast Extended Invisibility Sphere, go through the door, and head up towards Fenthick.
• Between now and the Desther fight, quickbar Creeping Doom and Harm. Spend the rest of the time memorizing and quickbarring other such spells. Note: you can't quickbar Aura versus Alignment from the spellbook, as that locks it as Unholy Aura, which is useless. Instead, use the radial menu from the quickbar, and lock it as Holy Aura, which is what we want as most bosses are Evil. The quickbarring here accounts for nine slots; the other three should be Stone of Recall, Divine Trickery, and one empty slot that will later be used for Time Stop.

Helm's Hold (2F)

• Just ignore Fenthick, and continue with your identification, equipping, and quickbarring.

Helm's Hold (3F)

• Continue with your quickbarring up to the door of the Desther fight.
• Go into the Desther fight (invisibly), and run to and open the door on the far right-hand corner, but don't go through it yet.
• Cast Creeping Doom centred on Desther. As soon as you regain control after the spellcasting lag, run into the room beyond the door you just opened, and loot the two nearest chests (these contain "boss-quality" drops, so unless they're healing kits, they should fetch you a lot of money).
• If you did things correctly, after about 24 seconds or so (the exact timing depends on luck), Desther will lose spell resistance due to the deaths of four Ritual Creatures, Meanwhile, his custom AI will cause him (and only him) to run into the room with you (or perhaps just to the entrance). Spend this time identifying your Cloaks of Movement and Dragon Slippers, and equip one pair of each (the Dragon Slippers, in particular, are required in this fight if things go wrong because the room is full of fear auras). Then you can simply kill him with Harm and complete the conversation to end the chapter. (If you can get him alone, you can also try the Harm kill earlier; just hang onto the last cast in case the first three are stopped by SR.)
  • Backup strategy: If enemies other than Desther start attacking you, stay alive by recasting Extended Invisibility Sphere and running out of the entrance to the room; then later, try to locate and Harm Desther. You may have to turn invisible multiple times due to enemies random-walking into Creeping Doom's AoE. This is the best of several bad options.

Chapter 2

This chapter is very short on a speedrun; although it has a lot of content, almost none of it is mandatory, and it is possible to use sequence breaks to make it even shorter.

Port Llast - Kendrack's Barracks

• Recall out. It's fastest to do all the mandatory stuff here in one go, which means doing it later.
  • 100%: Getting Vardoc's journal requires a series of actions with mandatory waits between them, so there are a bunch of effective frame rules in chapter 2. Thus, the very first thing to do is to start the timer, which you do by going to the inn and killing Solomon.

Port Llast - Temple of Tyr

• Sell saleable items (the boss drops from Chapter 1e, the items you got from the demon other than the ones you equipped, and the +1 weapons from Chapter 1 other than the ones you equipped).
• Buy and equip the Robes of the Dark Moon. (The radial action for equipping is the same as for selling, so you'll need to equip them the slow way, by dragging them to the "equipped armour" slot.) This immediately sets your movement speed to the fastest possible value available in unpatched.
  • No major skips: If you're willing to use the experience glitch on the demon, but not to sequence break the main plot of the game, you'll also want to buy and equip a Lesser Amulet of Health here in a single-segment run, or you will have too high a risk of failing Chapter 3.
• Leave the temple through the door.

Port Llast

• Run south towards Charwood. The Farmer's Son will interrupt you, but you can just ignore him and the conversation will cancel due to distance.
• Cast Extended Invisibility Sphere just before using the south exit.

South Road

• Use your running time in this and the next few areas to finish any spell memorization or quickbarring that you didn't manage to fit into Chapter 1e.
• Aim towards Charwood by the shortest path (which involves crossing the river at an angle after the bridge).

South Road - Farmland

• Continue towards Charwood. (For some reason, I have a huge tendency to go the wrong way here. The correct route is to turn right and uphill just after the footbridge.)

Charwood - Haunted Forest

• Continue towards Charwood. The fastest route is to go right across the small stream at the first fork in the road, and to the left rather than crossing the bridge. You won't be attacked, because you're invisible.

Charwood

• Open and walk through the two gates. (You have to walk through the left-hand half, because the right-hand half is stuck.) Follow the path up to the house next to two people, then enter that house.

Charwood - Inn

• Immediately declare an attack on the Strange Man; you should kill him in one round of sneak attacks (if you're unlucky, it'll take two, but this is a minimal time loss). He will drop a journal, plus boss-quality treasure; take both and recall out.
  • Segmented: It's possible to buy Pick Pocket and steal the journal off him instead, which is slightly faster but requires quite a bit of luck. You miss out on the treasure, but that doesn't really matter in segmented as you can manipulate expensive items out of chests.

Port Llast - Temple of Tyr

• Duplicate the journal you just looted/stole, by dropping it, buying a copy from the divining pool, then picking up the original.
  • No major skips: you will have to get another journal legitimately; the fastest is obtained during the Neverwinter Wood main quest (you can just recall out after you get it, you don't need to complete the quest at that point).
• Then leave through the front entrance. (You might also have to sell items if your random drops have been particularly heavy.)

Port Llast

• Head to Aribeth via the fastest route. (You'll need to open the door to the barracks, even though it's normally always open, because you didn't open it from the inside when you arrived here.)

Port Llast - Kendrack's Barracks

• Talk to Aribeth to do the "start of chapter 2" conversation and turn in the journals, then to Aarin to gain access to Luskan. Warning: escaping the Aarin conversation too early seems to make the game unwinnable. I'm not sure of the exact point in the conversation that the guard in question spawns, but tend to finish the conversation naturally to make sure (there's easily enough time to do that while running towards the door). Then turn round and run north.

Port Llast

• You want to leave via the north exit. Assuming that you're not doing a 100%, you'll hit the spawn trigger for Solomon if you follow the road directly, which can cause interruptions/complications. You can minimize the risk by memorizing the location of the spawn trigger and running round it.
• While doing this, recast Extended Invisibility Sphere, if it doesn't replenish itself spontaneously (Invisibility Sphere is kind-of glitchy in this game, and seems to have a pretty high chance of spontaneously replenishing itself while leaving the raised area that holds the temple entrance).

North Road

• Ignore everyone and run north.
• Spend the time while running identifying items.

North Road - Green Griffon Inn

• Run north to the gates of Luskan. (Darktongue Breakbone will ignore you because you're invisible, but he may be blocking the way, forcing you to run round. Alternatively, it's possible he won't spawn at all; I'm unsure of the exact trigger.)
• Talk to the Luskan Sergeant to gain entry to Luskan. (There's an option to skip to the end of the conversation.)
• Walk through the transition to trigger the next chapter.

Chapter 2e

Luskan

• Recall to the temple; it's closer to where you need to go than your current location. (If you're using including loading screens in your timing and you have slow loading screens, it may be faster to do the first bit of the chapter without recalling, to reduce the loading screens; in this case, cast Extended Invisibility Sphere immediately.)

Luskan - Temple of Tyr

• You may have to rest here if you're low on spells due to needing to improvise earlier. The spells you need before the next time you rest are Summon Creature I x1, Protection from Elements x1, Negative Energy Ray x2, Extended Invisibility Sphere x3, Creeping Doom x2; following this route exactly should give you all those spells (and more), but you might be missing them if you had to improvise. (If you're in a category that allows resets, you can do an Instant Rest.)
• Cast Extended Invisibility Sphere.
• Leave through the front door.

Luskan

• Ignoring everyone, leave for the gap in the wall that leads to Kurth's base. (This is the fastest of the four routes that lead to seals.)
• While running, cast Protection from Elements. (This will be up all chapter, for the purpose of tanking traps.)
  • Segmented: it might be possible to go without and just tank traps on your HP total, but I'm not sure if you can survive that.

Luskan - Docks

• With your current stats, you can't open the entrance door from outside. Thus, you need Kurth's men to open it from the inside. Run to approximately the corner of the island you're on (where there's a chest and a barrel), and cast Negative Energy Ray at one of the generic Bugbear Archers. This should turn the inside of the base hostile. As soon as they open the gate to reach you, cast Extended Invisibility Sphere and run past them into the base. You'll be taking some attacks, but they won't do enough damage to kill you.
  • Untested: Is it possible to summon a monster on the other side of the bridge to turn the enemies hostile? Is that enough to unlock the door?
  • Untested: Can a spell like Knock be used to enter the base without breaking invisibility?
• Follow the fastest route to Kurth's castle (turn right, run past/through a market area, take the first right on the bridge tiles. The Bugbear Archers can really get in your way on the first corner after that right turn, but I don't know of any reliable way to get them to move.
  • Untested: AquaTiger's segmented run uses Fireball here, but I can't see it saving time overall given the detour needed to obtain it. It might be possible to do something with Summon Creature I, but the problem is that the enemies are archers and thus unlikely to move to attack.
• Enter the castle. The entrance is also a little dubious in terms of NPCs blocking the path, but much easier to get past than the archers; make sure to observe the area to see where the clear path is.

Luskan - Kurth's Lair

• Run to the right upon entering, then take the leftmost door in the resulting room (i.e. you're now running the way you were facing when you entered).
• Pick the lock on the door that leads to Kurth.
• Run past Kurth (he can't see invisible), and enter the far left room. There's an acid trap there which is awkward to avoid, but the Protection from Elements you cast earlier will tank it for you. Open the chest behind the curved screen, and loot the High Captain's Seal. Then recall out. This chest often but not always contains some pretty good treasure; I'm not sure offhand what treasure table it is, it doesn't seem to follow any of the standard patterns.

Luskan - Temple of Tyr

• Talk to Aarin. The fastest route through this conversation is 4141, followed by running out of the door (there's no need to end the conversation naturally).

Luskan

• Go to Host Tower via the fastest route (go forwards after leaving the temple, cross the bridge to your left, then follow the shoreline left until you reach the bridge to Host Tower).
• Claim to be an ambassador to gain entry to the Host Tower.

Host Tower - Courtyard

• Talk to Captain Islund to gain entry. This conversation is awkward, because although I think there are guaranteed paths through it no matter what, which path you need to take depends on randomness, thus you need to actually read the conversation to know what to do. I can't generally remember all the paths except when I actually read the text, but IIRC the correct route is to Threaten, and then if that fails ask if he's denying you entry.

Host Tower - Ambassadors' Quarters

• Go to Aribeth's room (centre left) and take her key from the armoire. There's a hostile construct there, but it can't see you because you're still invisible.
• Use the portal to warp to the second floor.

Host Tower - Level 2

• Go into Blaskar's room (it's the nearest one to your portal, behind you and to you right).
• Loot the boss treasure from the nearer chest, and the 6th floor portal stone from the more distant chest. Both chests are trapped, and both traps will be tanked by Protection from Elements. (Note that tanking a chest or door trap requires one extra click compared to the trap not being there, so you need to be aware of the traps even though they are unlikely to hurt you.)
• Use the portal to warp to the 6th floor.

Host Tower - Level 6

• This level has one-way doors in, so you run round it in a circle rather than the more common there-and-back route. Open the wooden door behind you and to the right, then cycle round to the left (as always, tanking traps as you go). Ignore the first door you pass, and go in the second (the one near Valindra).
• Shuffle to the left (press Q), causing the Familiar to spawn. It is normally, but not always, fastest to wait for it to random-walk onto the nearby negative trap, which kills it and removes the trap. You might want to summon a monster or just take the level drain if it doesn't cooperate.
• Tank the trap on the chest, and loot the boss treasure and Pinnacle Portal Stone from it.
• Continue your cycle to go back round to the portal. The door blocking your way will open spontaneously. Bear to the right as you go through it to avoid a particularly nasty trap.
• Use the portal to warp to the 9th floor (marked "Pinnacle" in the menu).

Host Tower - Level 9

• This fight is a pain in pretty much every category. This is the fastest route I know, but it's not 100% reliable (although it is reliable enough for single-segment), and there may be other routes that are faster.
  • Resets allowed, partially tested: Doing an Instant Rest (which may be necessary anyway if low on health) gives you a third Creeping Doom charge, which makes things substantially easier. This should make some of the more time-consuming parts of this strategy skippable, but it's unclear which ones.
• Open all four portcullises first, so that you get the maximum possible mobility during the ensuing fight. This really does make a difference.
• Cast two copies of Creeping Doom centred on the same location, placed so as to not hit Arklem but to hit as much of the rest of the main area as possible. The correct centering location can be determined by looking at the floor; anywhere near the centre of the right-angled isoceles triangle furthest from Arklem will do. The purpose of this is not primarily for damage (although the damage does matter on occasion), but for the slowing effect. (Although it's a little slower, you can ensure that both are centred on exactly the same spot via standing there yourself and then casting at yourself; I used to do this, but nowadays just try to judge it by eye.)
• Destroy the braziers in the following order: the one nearest the entrance, the one furthest from the entrance, the one second-nearest the entrance, the one third-nearest the entrance. This gives you the largest possible head start on the enemies that spawn, and with only two casts of Creeping Doom remaining, it seems to be required. (If you're using a route with three casts, this is one of the prime candidates for simplification.)
  • Untested: Because the Fire Elemental (which spawns second) is the main issue, there may be a faster order that still works.
• Run anti-clockwise around the outside of the room and talk to Arklem. If everything is set up perfectly, neither him nor you will be in combat, and you'll be able to move on even though you didn't technically complete the fight.
  • Backup strategy: if something does go wrong, do a cycle of the room anti-clockwise and try again. You can repeat this for as long as your HP holds out.
• Run through the portal to the next level. Normally you won't be chased, or chased only by a red slaad (which you can ignore, they don't do enough damage to disrupt the route). If something more powerful does come through, try to avoid it.

Host Tower - Pinnacle

• An explanation of what's going on here, for people who aren't hugely familiar with the game, because this entire level is set up to deceive you. The previous room was actually the final boss fight of Chapter 2, despite being disguised as a mini-boss. (It's difficult enough to be one in both a speedrun and in casual play.) What you need from this level is for your character to become aware of Aribeth's fate and the Words of Power. There is a mini-boss on this level, but it doesn't actually do anything; in particular, there is no reason to fight it, and it's just there to aid in the deception. There is also no way to leave the area but to recall out. (Future versions of the game had an extra Stone of Recall placed there, as a clue and in case you didn't take your own Stone of Recall with you.)
• Thus, what you're trying to do is to reach the end of the cutscene where Aribeth becomes a blackguard. This is trivial to accomplish because nothing's attacking you, but you want to accomplish it quickly. The easiest way that I know to accelerate this cutscene is to cast Negative Energy Ray on a generic lizard warrior; this causes them to become hostile, and (after an apparently random length of time) the resulting cascade of combat statuses interrupts the cutscene, and the game automatically sets the required plot flag to prevent the game becoming unwinnable. You can tell that this has happened when you hear the click of a journal entry being updated. If it's being slow, using a second cast tends to help.
• As soon as your journal is appropriately updated, recall out.

Luskan - Temple of Tyr

• Talk to Aarin and spam 1 to end the chapter.

Chapter 3

Beorunna's Well: Aarin's Lodge

• Run to the right-hand door, talking to Aarin on the way (if you stay far enough from the wall, he will force conversation on you).
• You need to get to at least a certain point in the conversation for the doors to open and the Stone of Recall to start working, which is awkward because spamming 1 isn't enough. I currently don't have a set route through this conversation and improvise it.
• Leave through the door you were running to.

Beorunna's Well

• Enter the drinking house.

Beorunna's Well: Drinking House

• Talk to Lillian Cambridge. (This is one of the only sidequests that's actually completed during the run, incidentally; there's a sidequest called, literally, "Talk to Lillian Cambridge", because the first part of the Coldwood quest was split into its own journal category for some reason. Talking to Jemanie back in chapter 1 completed another similar sidequest.) This conversation can be completed by spamming 1; there are routes which have fewer keystrokes, but which are probably slower because entering sequences other than 1-spam requires actual thought. The conversation gets stuck in a loop, but you can leave as soon as you get the Teleport Scroll (watch the message area).
• Leave the drinking house again.

Beorunna's Well

• Go to the Many-Starred Cloak enclave.

Beorunna's Well: Many-Starred Cloak Enclave

• Talk to Eltoora and open the shop.
• Sell all the saleable items you have (other than the ones that are equipped) in order to buy as many scrolls of Time Stop as you can afford. (You only need 8 of these scrolls if everything goes right, but the Instant Rest glitch is very useful for recovering if something goes wrong, so extras never hurt on a single segment.) This is the last time you buy items in the entire game, so don't worry about spending your entire gold supply.
  • Resets allowed: You need only 5 scrolls, because the Instant Rest glitch can be done via resetting rather than via Time Stop.
  • Segmented: 4 will suffice; you don't need the extra help against the Half-Dragon Baalor.
• Leave again.

Beorunna's Well

• Run to the north exit (to your right, towards Coldwood). Before you get there, cast Extended Invisibility Sphere.

Coldwood (southwest)

• Run to the east exit (run forwards until you get an opportunity to turn right, take that right turn, then run forwards and across the bridge, then continue running forwards). While on the way, start changing your spell memorization: dememorize Creeping Doom in favour of Still Harm, and change the quickbar to match.

Coldwood (east)

• You spawn facing in an awkward direction; the way you need to go initially is behind you and to the right.
• Run anticlockwise round the level to the magic circle, then run to the floor design; the Teleport Scroll will activate automatically.

Coldwood: Wizard's Dungeon

• Use the door to the left of your spawnpoint, then make your way clockwise around the level.
• The quintet of mephits can easily get in your way (they block your way by default, and will continue to do so unless they random-walk into a pattern that doesn't). You can use Summon Creature I to try to persuade them to move; you will need to get the badger to attack (VWE) or it will be just as invisible as you are. I normally attempt this trick, but have trouble pulling it off.
• Enter the first room after the mephits, tank the trap just inside the door on your HP (it'll hurt but it's survivable), and solve the puzzle. The solution is always the same: a Z shape, starting at the bottom-right as you enter the room, and continuing to the bottom-left, top-right, and top-left. The door opens automatically.
• Run to the snowglobe and take it. There's a nasty trap to the left of the nearest pillar, so run round the right of that pillar. Because you're invisible, the Huge Fire Elemental won't attack.
• Recall out.

Beorunna's Well: Temple of Tyr

• Just leave via the main (only) exit.

Beorunna's Well

• Enter the Drinking House.

Beorunna's Well: Drinking House

• Return the snow globe to Lillian. (Spamming 1 works.) You can flee the conversation as soon as the animation and sound effect starts playing.
• Go upstairs.

Beorunna's Well: Drinking House Upstairs

• Go to Lillian's room (the furthest one on the left after you enter the main area).
• Do an Instant Rest (by Resting a couple of seconds after casting Time Stop in single segment, or if resets are allowed, starting to rest, then saving and reloading).
• Cast Extended Invisibility Sphere (resting causes the old one to time out).
• Talk to the Pedestal, spamming 1. There's a few seconds of delay between the end of the conversation and entering the Snow Globe; don't be fooled into thinking you screwed up the conversation.

Snow Globe

• Start by turning left, then run round clockwise until you reach the central area. (This is the shorter of the two routes.)
• Enter the cave.

Snow Globe Cave

• Run up to the dragon. Cast Holy Aura on yourself before the fight starts (this is a pre-emptive backup strategy for if Time Stop runs out early or you can't land a melee hit), then Time Stop. Spam Harm until you pierce the spell resistance; then cast Bull's Strength and Divine Power and attack in melee. Eventually either you'll hit, or the dragon will hit you, and either will kill the dragon.
  • Segmented: You can do this fight with just Holy Aura and Harm (in that order), but this requires a lot of luck (Harm has to hit, and the dragon has to attack you in melee).
• Once either the dragon is dead, or else it has taken fatal damage and is only alive due to Time Stop preventing it dying, run over to the chest, wait for Time Stop to end if it hasn't already, then open the chest.
• Loot any items from the chest you want (you probably don't want any, but if you're critically low on gold after buying Time Stop scrolls, take the gold so that you can afford to unrecall throughout the rest of the game), then take the Word of Power (this spawns Haedraline to force conversation with you, so you need to do it last).
  • Something to consider: This chest should spawn a guaranteed top-tier weapon for you, but it doesn't because you have Weapon Focus (greatsword) and a greatsword doesn't fit in the chest. This probably doesn't matter much, as the Greatsword +1 you've had nearly all game works just fine on this route.
• Go through Haedraline's conversation (spamming 1 works on this one), then recall out (don't be tempted to step into the portal, it's slower). You can't recall until the conversation ends naturally.

Beorunna's Well: Temple of Tyr

• Time to make two copies of the Word of Power; this is substantially more complex than making one copy, because there is no known way to do the plot item duplication glitch if two copies of the item already exist in the game.
• Run over to the divining pool; drop the original Word of Power, then buy a copy from the divining pool.
• Leaving the original on the ground, leave the area.

Beorunna's Well

• Enter Aarin's lodge via the nearer door (you'll have to open it, as you left via the other door).

Beorunna's Well: Aarin's Lodge

• Turn in the duplicate Word of Power to Aarin.
• Recall out (you have to leave the house first, because it's flagged no-recall for some reason).

Beorunna's Well: Temple of Tyr

• Pick up the original Word of Power, and drop it again.
• Buy a duplicate Word of Power from the divining pool.
• Pick up the original Word of Power again.
• Unrecall out (I think this is faster than just running to Aarin).

Beorunna's Well: Aarin's Lodge

• Cast Divine Trickery; there's a Persuade check you need to pass, and your natural Persuade score isn't high enough to guarantee passing (the odds seem to be a little better than 50:50).
  • Segmented: You don't need the Persuade bonus if you can use luck manipulation to ensure you pass the check; it's certainly not a remote chance.
  • Resets allowed: Because you can do the Instant Rest glitch without Time Stop in this category, you have more Persuade ranks because you need fewer ranks for Use Magic Device. This means that it's probably better to just risk the roll unbuffed.
• Turn in the two Words of Power. Persuade a bonus reward from the last Word you turn in (the third altogether); it's three Potions of Heal, which will potentially save a noticeable amount of time later on between the Aribeth and Maugrim fights (where you can't rest without recalling or backtracking), and/or allow recovery from problems in the Morag fight. This ends the chapter.

Chapter 4

Castle Never

• Talk to Lord Nasher at least until you reach the "generic questions" part of the conversation; this is required to unlock the door.
• Do an Instant Rest to replenish Harm charges. Even the full seven is not always enough to guarantee success at the Balor/Aribeth/Maugrim gauntlet; trying to do it with fewer in a single-segment run is just foolhardy. If you're feeling really confident and have six charges left, you can go for it, but you'll lose much more time than you saved if the luck doesn't work out.
  • Segmented: Assuming you used a minimum of spells earlier, resting probably isn't necessary. You might want to memorize a second copy of Bull's Strength over one of the redundant copies of Negative Energy Ray earlier in the run in order to account for the lack of a rest here.
• Cast Extended Invisibility Sphere.
• Leave through the main door of the castle.

City Core

• Cast Bull's Strength now; it lasts for ages, you'll want it against Maugrim, and casting it early means you also get the marginal benefits it has for the other fights in this chapter.
• While running, quickbar the Potions of Heal over Summon Creature I.
• Run forwards past the Hall of Justice and the Great Tree, then turn about 45 degrees to the left and run into the far left corner of the map.
• Enter the War Zone via running to the left of the two soldiers and impaled corpse; otherwise, you tend to get stuck.

War Zone

• Run along the road that goes approximately forwards until you reach the dividing wall.
• Turn right, then enter the first house on the left.
  • Untested: It may be possible to get through the gate directly using a combination of Divine Trickery, extra Open Lock ranks, and Thieves' Tools. It's unclear if there's anywhere you could buy a set of Thieves' Tools +10 without losing more time than this would save, though. I believe that they can be manipulated out of the 6th Floor Portal Stone chest in chapter 6, but that would only be useful in a segmented run, because you've already decided how to allocate your skill ranks at that point in a single-segment run and so couldn't take advantage of a random Thieves' Tools drop. A Potion of Cat's Grace is also worth an effective point or two of Open Lock.
  • Untested: Is it possible to buy a scroll of Knock without losing time, and get through the gate that way?

Old Man's Home

• Run to the back bookshelf and open it.

War Zone

• You spawn facing backwards again, which is something to take note of as you start running in the area; using the mouse may help. Note, however, that the camera is facing in the correct direction; it's just the character that's facing the wrong way.
• Follow the only path to the burnt-out building; then run over that building to the intact building beyond, and enter via the door in the left-hand side as you look at it.

Luskan Guardhouse

• Buff up with Protection from Elements, Extended Divine Power, and Holy Aura.
• Open and go through the door. (It's trapped, but Protection from Elements will tank most of the damage; and you want all the HP you can get through here in case something goes wrong in the Aribeth fight.)

War Zone

• Spam Harm at the Half-Dragon Baalor until it lands. Then spam melee attacks until it dies, either due to it hitting you or due to you hitting it. Casting Time Stop makes this fight more reliable, but potentially slows you down if it takes too long to wear off.
  • Segmented, untested: With a freakishly lucky roll, you can kill this enemy using a single use of Finger of Death (it needs a natural 1 on its save, and you have to bypass its spell resistance). It shouldn't be beyond the limits of what you can manipulate. The issue is finding a Finger of Death scroll in the first place, although it's probably possible to manipulate one out of a chest.
• Run through the portal; you want to take on Aribeth with your buffs still active.

Maugrim's Sanctuary

• Run up to Aribeth and let her talk to you. If you don't, this can break her script in a way that will probably get you killed.
  • Untested: It might be possible to use Time Stop to break her script in a way that gets her killed instead, which would be preferable.
• Cancel the conversation via casting Harm on Aribeth. Spam it until it breaks her SR. (If you fail to break her SR, there is a decent chance she'll kill you, because she knows about the Harm + finisher combo too. In such a case, your only real backup strategy is to respawn.)
• Once you land Harm, don't bother with a finisher; Aribeth will surrender, and can't be killed in this state.
• It's faster to save Aribeth than kill her after she surrenders (she has far too many charges of Heal and isn't afraid to use them). The correct conversation path is to spam 1 until you get the option to Lie on 1, then follow with 212 and resume spamming 1. I'm not convinced that it's possible to fail the Persuade check involved here at your current stats; this particular route through the conversation gives the easiest Persuade check possible to save Aribeth. (Do not screw up this conversation; the resulting fight will run you so low on Harm charges that you will probably run out before your next chance to rest.)
• Heal up with a Potion of Heal.
• Remember the cloak you equipped back in Chapter 1e? That comes into play now, because it allows you to tank paralysis effects from traps. Combined with the Protection from Elements that should still be active (because you haven't been hit by the same element multiple times since you cast it), you can tank the unavoidable acid+paralysis trap in the route onwards to Maugrim. Once the route splits, take the leftmost direct route to avoid hitting further traps.
• Once you are near Maugrim, cast Time Stop. (You need to do this before his conversation trigger, or you get into a Time Stop war that lasts ages and normally causes him to reanimate extra enemies, which is an almost unwinnable situation with this build.)
• Spam Harm at Maugrim until it sticks.
• If Extended Divine Power has worn out, recast it. Then melee attack Maugrim until you hit. (Holy Aura does not work in this fight; being a spellcaster, Maugrim doesn't melee you anyway, so you can't get a retributive attack in.)
• Open the chest and loot the Word of Power and the upgrade to your current greatsword. (It is guaranteed to contain an upgrade to your greatsword, but which upgrade is random. There's no real reason not to upgrade, anyway.)
• Recall out.

City Core: Hall of Justice

• Leave via the main entrance.

City Core

• Head back to the castle where you started.

Castle Never

• Head towards the dungeons (go almost to the room where you started, then turn right).

Castle Never Dungeons

• Run through to the level below. You don't have to talk to anyone; in particular, there is no need to talk to Haedraline.

Castle Caverns

• Quickbar Lesser Dispel (over Divine Trickery) while you're running in this area.
• Do an Instant Rest (mostly for Harm charges, but you also need to ensure you aren't low on HP right now because you're highly likely to take moderately large amounts of damage against the Corrupted Dragons).
• Run to the Word of Power Pedestals, and place your Word of Power on the unlit one.
• Cast Extended Invisibility Sphere, then enter the Source Stone.

Source Stone Sanctuary

• Run to the end of the level. (I like to ensure the minimap is open for this, as it's easy to get lost.) There's a nasty trap just before the portal; you want to keep along the right-hand wall in that area to avoid taking damage from it.
• Before entering the portal, buff up with Holy Aura (the only buff you need for the area; you also need fear immunity, but the boots you equipped in Chapter 1e provide that).

Source Stone Guardian Lair

• Run forwards for about 1 second, then cast Time Stop.
• Cast Harm at the dragons until it sticks.
• There isn't much you can usefully do in the remaining duration of Time Stop; I like to buff my melee attack and then try to melee them to death, but this doesn't actually save any time. (Incidentally, you can't safely cast Holy Aura during Time Stop because it gives you less time to cast Harm, and that sometimes matters if Time Stop happens to roll a low duration. You would do things in that order in a segmented run, though.)
• The dragons will melee attack you and die to the retributive damage.
• Loot the keys off the dragons, and use them to open the gates.
• Before leaving the area, Instant Rest to heal up (mostly for Harm charges). Then cast Extended Invisibility Sphere and move onwards.

Source Stone Inner Sanctum

• There are two possible strategies for the first part of this fight:
  1. Original strategy (probably faster, but a lot can go wrong):
     • Run up to the first door, cast Extended Divine Power, then open the door and Harm+melee the Old One Cleric.
     • Run up to the next door. You can't open it because you're missing a key, but it'll get you far enough from the enemies that you can (and should) break combat by casting Extended Invisibility Sphere.
       • Segmented: It's faster to swap this step with the next one, but this will cause you to take much more damage, and you'll probably die as a result. So that strategy is segmented-only without huge buffs to AC (as are available on, e.g., no-large-skips or 100%).
     • Run back to the Old One Cleric's deathdrop, and loot the Key.
     • Open the large door. If there are any nearby Old Ones, you may need to close it again to stop them following you into the fight.
  2. Newer strategy (much more reliable for single-segment):
     • Run up to the first door. Open it, run past the cutscene trigger (otherwise it screws with your controls) then cast Time Stop, Extended Divine Power, Harm at the Old One Cleric, and melee to do the remaining damage (you'll need to watch the combat log, as you can't see it die during Time Stop).
     • Run back the way you came, round the corner.
     • Once you're safely round the corner, wait for Time Stop to end (if it hasn't already ended), then immediately cast Extended Invisibility Sphere.
     • Run back into the fight, loot the Key, and run into the next section. If you've done things correctly, none of the enemies should know where you are, and so you won't be attacked.
• Bash down the door before Morag, even though you can open it normally. This sets your "in combat" flag and breaks her script. It possibly breaks differently in patched to unpatched, but in unpatched it's particularly useful because it causes the fight to not start until you're ready. (And in patched, you shouldn't be using this route,
• Get past the blade barrier. There are three methods to do this, from the riskest to the least risky (I normally try the second):
  • Try to run past it before it spawns. This is possible with a low probability, based on the interaction between timers. If you fail this, you die.
  • Make it temporarily disappear using Lesser Dispel, then run past it before it respawns. This is more likely to work than the previous case, but also capable of instakilling you through bad randomness, as the respawn will take a random length of time from 0 to 6 seconds. Note that if you cast Lesser Dispel within about 1 second of it spawning and you're near enough (within about twice the distance the Statue is from the barrier), you're guaranteed to have enough time to run past it before it respawns, because the spawn and respawn are on the same timer.
  • Kill the Statue with melee attacks and wait for it to despawn. This is 100% safe, but takes ages.
• Kill the Protector Against the Lessers using Harm (until it sticks) then Negative Energy Ray.
• Cast Negative Energy Ray at Morag (to cause her to teleport to your current location). You may want to precede this with Holy Aura to hedge against emergencies (in particular, Morag entering melee mode; she doesn't normally, but you can run out of Negative Energy Ray due to spell disruption if she does, and then you'll have to rely on a backup strategy).
• Kill Morag with Harm (until it sticks) then Negative Energy Ray. If it doesn't stick quickly, Morag may cast Time Stop, in which case you can just wait for it to finish then continue Harm spam.
  • Backup strategy: If something goes wrong with your normal boss kill strategy, cast Divine Power, then kill the Protector Against the Sword and try to melee Morag to death, healing as necessary.
• After killing Morag, stay where you are; the exit portal should spawn almost on top of you, about where Morag teleported to.

Astral Pocket

• Spam transition clicks on the portal in order to skip Haedraline's conversation.