Did a 1 hour 51 minute and 31 second speedrun using pure rules. The party consisted of a lvl 22 Elf Paladin, lvl 14/15ish H-Elf Monks, lvl 9 Wizard, and a lvl 1 Bard. This was an experiment to see the viability of H-Elf Monks. And they’re viable. They get blown apart at Mangar, but they easily hit -5 AC at level 8 which reduces their hp loss (giving some time and gold savings) over the course of the entire game.
The overall approach was similar to earlier speedruns. Level Paladin to 9 and Monks to 8 on Ogre Lords, Wizard to 7 on Samurai. Then I farmed out Catacombs 1 until Conjurer was level 10. Then I turned to Harkyn 1 until the Paladin had -6 AC, and by then Monks were -8 AC or better. The Monks are a sucker for the Grey Dragon, but we mostly lucked out. I’ve also been attempting the Spectre for some early gold when the Paladin is level 10, but I don’t recall if I did this time or not.
Ultimately, the item drops were really good and the Paladin had a full set of Mithril relatively early. Then the party went straight to wights to farm out the party to level 12. Then repeatedly hit the Spectre to bump everyone to 13 or better. Once Conjurer was 13, he was immediately promoted to Magician and the Silver Square and Crystal Sword were obtained. A luckshield dropped early which helped a lot. The Magician bumped up to level 8 or so (50k xp) on wights, and then Kylearan’s tower was attempted and the party got the Triangle and Onyx Key. A luckshield was dropped by the one eyed gatekeeper, bringing the total to two. (but no exorwand was dropped, sadly). And a late dropping pureblade ended up helping the team a lot in Mangar.
After that, the Magician and Paladin alone repeatedly killed the Spectre to get them both extra levels and gold. Once level 13, the Magician was promoted to Wizard. Then Wights were farmed to get the Wizard a level or two, then the Paladin and Wizard repeatedly killed the Spectre until the Paladin was 22 and Wizard was 9. At that point, the party headed to Mangar.
A level 1 Bard was created in the early game to give a bit of gold to the party and a Lak’s Lyre was saved for him. The goal being to use the Bard to get past the red dragon pair which can team wipe a party with ease. Unfortunately, the Bard died on a trap prior to getting there, and the mana cost seemed prohibitive to attempt to resurrect (ANDE/DISP). So, we risked it and the dragon’s died without a breath.
The Mangar fight was rough. The Wizard failed two DESTs on Mangar. The Monks died early, one to DEST, the other to a Demon Lord breath. The Wizard died (I think) to a DEST from a Vampire Lord or Mangar, and things were looking grim. Ultimately, the Paladin and Thor killed basically everything, with their saving throws keeping them alive just barely long enough. Kylearan came for a visit and the game was over.
The early game item drops were consistently good. But there was a full team wipe and several unnecessary deaths that cost precious time. Also, this was my first experiment with H-Elf Monks. Fortunately, the excess gold from farming the spectre made it possible to easily recover from the deaths.
It seemed really important to level the Paladin and Mag/Wiz together to the exclusion of the Monks (once the Monks were 14 or higher). There seems to me to be a greater benefit to give that time/levels to the Paladin and Wizard over sharing it with Monks and slowing the Paladin/Wizard growth. In the end, I think there’s about 10 minutes or so of additional improvement to be had in avoiding deaths and optimizing the balance between killing wights and letting the spectre bump team members up a level.
There are also some high level strategies I continue to explore, if they turn out to be useful I’ll write about them.