Revision as of 15:11, 10 December 2014

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 should help you with that.

Statue glitch

This is probaly the most useful glitch for speedrunning this game, as it boosts your movement speed by a lot.

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 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 should move a lot faster.

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, befroe executing this glitch.

Pyramid trowing

At the beginning of the game you are given a pair of teleport pyramid, that teleport you from one to the other.

The most straight forward use is backtracking to save time. But the opposite is possible a well.

You can use throw one of you pyramids and throw it a long distance abd then teleport to it. To do so you have to open you inventory and grab one of the pyramids. Then hold shift to freely scroll through the world. If there are no walls in the way, you'll be able to throw it wherever you want.

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 methode.

The skill Wizard's Sight grants you vision of areas you haven't explored yet (note that entities are not shown). You have to keep your inventory open, you can't open it while scrolling. So open your inventory, right click to activate Wizard's Sight and start scrolling. 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 our pyramid. You have to let go of shift to grab it. If you move your mouse anywhere that's not part of the inventory, 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. If you are at the wrong spot, but still grabed the pyramid, you have to let go of shift, to put it back into your inventory. Otherwise it will be thrown to where you cursor was.

Refill stamina

This glitchs allows you to refill you stamina, when it's empty. Note that tihs 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 ownuses.

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 enables 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 origial 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.

Containers

The advantage of this method is that it also works for single and unstackable items. To execute it, you need an empty container.

You start by opening both your inventory and the container. Grab and hold the item with the mouse while hovering over the container popup. Pause the game (spacebar) and open the main menu (esc). Let go of the mouse button and close the menu. When you unpause the game, you should have the item in both the container and your inventory.

This also works for duplicating containers that contain items.

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 mouselick, 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

Although I haven't found a way to implement out of bounds for my run yet, I still find it very interesting to play around with it.

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 way to glitch through. 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 completly 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, as you can even use straight wall sections, so in the forts of Moriendor, Iona and Josephina you only have to get through one wall to get to their boss room.

Maps

Using these maps, is a lot easier than the previous method, although I only know two of them. The first one is south of Verdistis (you can throw your pyramids through he gate to get past)(thanks to LotBlind), the second one is located to the south of the Wastelands.

To access them, throw you teleporters beyond the normally accessible area. Unlike in other areas, where both your movement and your pyramids blocked by an invisible wall, in this place your pyramids can move through. Just scroll beyond the wall and drop your teleporters somewhere.

I spent most of my time exploring the Wasteland map and tried to reveal the whole map. As the game doesn't create a map for it, I made a makeshift map myself.

Wastelands

In the west you'll get to a square cobble path. Although you can't walk to the center of it, you can throw you teleporters there and teleport back and forth safely. In the middle, there is an axe which can be identified (id lv. 5). A dungeon can also be found in the center of the map, although you will find, that the stairs don't lead anywhere. South of said dungeon you will find an NPC called "Konversation" (german version), who has no interactions. To the east there is a small cliff just like the ones in the wastelands.

Verdistis

Just like in the Wastelands, here you'll find dungeons aswell, but there are a lot more of them. Unlike the one mentioned above, most dungeons are not empty. They appear to be mostly basements and other things located in Verdistis. Although the probably the most interesting thing I discovered is the Council of Seven. Getting in works by teleporting through corners as explained above. Just like the other quest areas, the Council does not offer any sort of interaction. The Succubus is located in the south, where it's should to start the cutscene, but it doen't actually do anything. As you're not supposed to have the teleorters at this point in the game, they didn't bother making the doors "pyramid proof", so you can throw them though the doors to access the room with the stones. Again, you can put them into the pedestals, but nothing happens.

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 little 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 prevsious were friendly, now turned hostile again. This allows you to kill them anffor 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 als-tabbing out of the game and then opening it again. Not only does tihs save some time, but it also saves your ears, as it's not affected by 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 should now cast the spell a lot faster than you should.

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