Latest revision as of 15:08, 13 August 2015

If a trick applies to only some versions of the game, note which ones that is.

Enhanced movement

One of the most important things for a speedrun is being able to navigate through the world as quickly as possible. Following tricks will help you with that.

General

The image and the table below show the movement directions and their respective velocity. From the intended directions, moving diagonally is the fastest, notably increasing your speed by 41%. However placing your cursor where your character would normally run in the NEE or SWW direction and repeatedly clicking, additionally increases your speed along the x-axis by 50%, adding up to a total increase of 58% compared to normal speed.

Statue glitch

This is probably the most useful glitch for speedrunning this game, as it doubles your movement speed.

This glitch only works for the survivor class, as you have to use the class's special ability (crouch). You are also required one of the three statues (frog, cat or spider). You can buy one at Ars Magicana in Rivertown (usually a cat statue) or do the quest for Nericon's Garden to be rewarded with a frog statue.

To execute this glitch, start by using the statue. While the animation is still playing, you have crouch. Then use the statue again to leave the morphed state. If the glitch worked correctly you should be crouched once you morphed back. Now simply uncrouch and you'll move twice as fast.

I do not know how this glitch actually works, but I do have a theory.

When you crouch your speed gets reduced a certain amount. Using the statue sets your speed back to normal, so when you morph back, you're at normal speed again. The game for some reason forgets to uncrouch you, so as you are still crouching when you morph back, you can uncrouch, which adds to your speed.

If this is what is actually happening, then it might be worth trying to get other movement reducing effects on you, before executing this glitch.

Troll King

This works almost identical as the Statue glitch, but unlike it, it can be stacked multiple times. The Troll King casts a Slow spell to reduce your movement speed. Using the statues resets you movement speed and is increased when the spell runs out. Each execution doubles your movement speed.

The cave of the Troll King is located near the bridge crossing the river south of Aleroth (there's another one near the Archer's Guild a little to the SE). After a short dialog he'll start attacking you and at some point cast his spell. Now proceed in the following way: Use a statue and crouch while the animation is playing. Morph back and wait until the slow effect runs out (you have to stay crouched), then uncrouch.

After the second execution you'll move at 8x speed (2x Slow spell + crouch), which is enough to run through walls. As this makes controlled movement hard, use either crouch or switch to walk-mode for a more manageable speed.

Pyramid trowing

At the beginning of the game you are given a pair of Teleporter Stones, that teleport you from one to another.

The most straight forward use, is placing them to avoid backtracking, but the opposite is possible a well.

You can use throw one of you pyramids a long distance and then teleport to it. To do so, toggle CAPS LOCK (or hold down shift but caps lock is probably better) to freely scroll through the world. When you're at the destination, just take the pyramid from your inventory and throw it. If there is a wall or other obstacle in your way, it might block the throw so make sure you're clear. You can even run in the direction you're scrolling before throwing the stone.

When you scroll through unexplored areas, you either have to memorize the exact timing when to stop and drop your pyramid or use a slightly different method.

(using CAPS LOCK makes the next part simpler than this) The skill Wizard's Sight grants you vision of areas you haven't explored yet (note that NPCs are not shown). You can use the skill as often as you want, as long as you keep holding shift. When you have found the place you want to teleport to, grab the pyramid. Either open you inventory before or move your cursor over an element of the UI to avoid your camera resetting. If you move your mouse anywhere that's not part of the UI, the camera jumps back to your character, so you have to hold shift again when your mouse leaves your inventory. Place the pyramid and use the one you still have.

Note: Starting a cutscene or a dialog does not stop the timer on the flying pyramid. For a run it is a good idea to throw your pyramid before starting cutscenes.

Teleporting midflight

This somewhat allows you to set a destination although there is no pyramid.

Drop a pyramid at your location and then move it where you want to teleport later. You have to do this without placing it in you inventory, just drag it there. As long as the pyramid is in flight, using the teleporter you still have, will bring you to where you first dropped the pyramid. Once it lands, your destination will be changed accordingly.

Multiple Pyramids

Use the save/load duping method to get more than one pyramid and you should be able to set up a network of teleport destinations. So far we've managed to create a web where there is one "center" pyramid that you always teleport to from any of the other ones and that one teleports you to a particular one of the other ones. However, if you also save dupe some "Ancient Pyramids" (i.e. not Teleporter Stones) those will tp you between themselves independent of your other TP Stones.

To make a newly acquired TP stone work you may have to use drop & use once.

Map vision

Remove Fog of War

While this doesn't reveal parts of your map, it grants you vision of everything while scrolling around. This is especially useful for throwing pyramids, as it let's you avoid the necessity to navigate to your destination blindly.

To perform it, you require a cutscene, which reveals the map (e.g. Lanilor and Mardaneus after leaving Joram's house) and a savegame you want mapvision for. Simply reload the savegame during the cutscene.

Starting any other dialog or cutscene, which has the same effect, will cause you vision to be reset to normal.

Wizard's Sight

This glitch has exactly the same effect as the one described above, but only for the area affected by Wizard's Sight. Using this skill multiple times on the same area, causes this part of the map to be revealed permanently (may take a few tries; as before, your minimap is not affected).

Refill stamina

This glitch allows you to refill you stamina, when it's empty. Note that this requires the crouch skill, so it only works for survivor.

Simply make your stamina hit 0 while your crouching. Sometimes it will refill it, instead of uncrouching you. Probably this happens when it gets to exactly 0 and you attempt any stamina-consuming action.

Item duplication

Each of the following duplication methodes have their own uses.

Negative Input

This methode is most useful for quickly creating big amounts of the same item. The drawback is, that you need at least two of the item.

To duplicate the item, simply drop the item on the floor or into a container, while holding the Crtl-Key. This allows you to split the stack. Instead of entering a positive number, you have to enter a negative number. This glitch also works for trade windows.

When accepting, two things will happen:

1. The amount of items in your inventory will be determined the following way: You'll keep the original stack plus the number you have entered.

2. A stack of items will be dropped. The stacksize will change this way: for entering a number n [-1 > n > -256], 256+n items will be on the floor. For n < -255 about 65000 will be dropped.

Pausing

The advantage of this method is that it also works for single and unstackable items.

Open both your inventory and the container, then grab and hold the item with the mouse while hovering over the containers inventory. Pause the game and let go of the mouse button. Now open and close the menu. When you unpause the game, you should have two instances of the item your inventory.

Save and Load

This method works similar to the previous one but takes longer as you have to save and reload the game. The huge advantage is the fact that you can move items between savegames.

Open your inventory and grab the item. Hold mouse click until you have opened the menu (esc). You can now let go. Now load the savegame you want to transfer your item to (quickload also works). While the savegame is loading go back to holding mouseclick, so once the savegame is loaded, you'll still have it in your hand. If you don't do so, the item will be placed in your inventory.

Out of Bounds

The game offers two methods to get out of bounds. For one, you can glitch out of many dungeon walls, which then lets you explore the surroundings. The other way is to use you teleporters to access "maps", where you can find many of the dungeons used somewhere else.

Teleporting through walls

As far as walls are concerned, this game appears to be a bit broken. If you know how to, you can get through most of them.

For most wall types corners "pointing" southwest are the most reliable, although almost every wall works. For simplicity I will refer to the sides as right (where you are) and left (where you want to get to). All you have to do, is placing a pyramid in the very corner of the right side and use it. Every second teleport will teleport you to the left side, every other to the right side. So you can place you second teleporter on the left side, use it, grab the teleporter on the right side, use it again and pick up your second pyramid. Now you completely moved to the other side.

For a run this can be used to teleport through walls, for which you usually had to take a long way around. One area this applies to are the forts at the end of the game. Fortunately the walls in the fort are easy to get through.

OOB Area

For each main map in the game (like Verdistis, the Wastelands etc.), there exists an area south of the map, where all dungeons are located. Every dungeon, basement etc., you get no loading screen for when entering, can be found in said part of the map.

Another thing to be found there worth mentioning are items. Instead of just creating items, which get spawned as part of a quest or event, the game moves them to you. They are already on the map. You usually find all the items related to the area you are in one room in the OOB area.

To acess these areas, simply walking there doesn't work, as they are blocked of by invisible walls. These wally however do not completely block your path. After scrolling a bit farther past them, dropping your pyramid becomes possible again and you can teleport past.

Miscellaneous

Stealing items

To avoid being caught when trying to steal an item, you have to make sure you are not seen by the owner.

If this is not possible, there's a trick you can use. Look for a container you can take with you (e.g. the chest in the room you start out). Simply open the inventory of said container and drag the item you want to steal into its inventory. Now as you move out of the NPC's vision, you can just take the item from the container.

Infinite experience

The skill Resurrection brings back dead enemies to fight with you. While this is not too great, you can use a trick to farm experience.

Simple resurrect a bunch of enemies in a cave, sewer etc., then exit the cave and reenter it. The enemies that previous were friendly, now turned hostile again. This allows you to kill them for their experience once again.

Skip cinematic

After you have gathered the Council of Seven, there will be a movie scene which is about 45 seconds long.

This cinematic can be skipped by alt-tabbing out of the game and reopening it. Not only does this save some time, but it also saves your ears, as cinematics are not affected by the sound settings.

Quick casting

Using this glitch, allows you to cast your spells a lot faster. For it to work you need the Lightning skill.

Choose the Lightning skill as your active spell and bind the skill you want to spam to an hotkey. Now spam Lightning to attack an enemy and then change your skill using the hotkey. You can now cast the spell a lot faster than you are supposed to.

I have tested this for Meteorstrike and Hellspikes and it worked.