XP and Gold are the two most important and time consuming factors in a speedrun. If you could start the game with each character having 5M XP and 50k gold, it would be a 15 minute speedrun. (Guild->Board->Spectre Eye->Harkyn 2->Kylearan Tower->Mangar)
But since we start with 0xp and 150 gold or so, it takes a little bit longer. And so, efficient farming is the heart of the speedrun.
Obtaining Gold
Gold is obtained in primarily two ways: killing creatures and selling items.
Killing Creatures:
The basic gold farming rates are as follows:
- Creatures in the city during the daytime generally drop 0-128 gold each.
- Creatures in the city at night generally drop 0-256 gold each.
- Creatures in the dungeons generally drop 0-256 gold each.
There are some important factors to consider:
- There are no gold rate modifiers. Killing higher or lower level creatures has no impact on the amount of gold dropped. There are also no skills to increase the rate of gold dropped.
- In all dungeons after the Sewers, killing creatures requires opening a booby-trapped chest.
- The maximum number of creatures in the city are 8 per fight.
- The maximum number of creatures in a random dungeon encounter is typically between 16 and 32 per fight in Catacombs and Harkyn.
- It’s unclear if the quantity of creatures in a group is random or biased. Some creatures tend to be highly biased (e.g., Gimps).
Item Drops
Items have a chance to drop after the end of a fight. Only zero or one items drops per fight (except with respect to hard coded special item drops, e.g., Spectre Eye) for all dungeon levels up to and including Harkyn 1 (in the MSDOS version). In Harkyn 2 and later, zero, one, or two items may drop.
Only certain items drop in certain dungeons. There are various item lists (which vary slightly based on the version of the game) that set that out.
The rate of item drops is some fixed random rate (which i’ll update when I see the link discussing it again). As such, the fastest way to obtain items appears to be to kill a single creature.
If at least one character has exactly one empty slot, then no more than one item will drop if a drop is rolled. If at least two empty slots exist in at least one character, then no more than two items will drop if a drop is rolled. If no character has an empty slot (i.e., all characters have 8 items), then no item will drop, including special items like spectre eyes and silver items. Thus it is important that several empty slots be present when fighting creatures like the Spectre in order to ensure an eye is obtained.
The party order of the character(s) with the empty slot does not matter with respect to the drop probability of an item. However, characters higher in the party order tend to obtain items with a higher preference than characters lower in the order, the mechanics of which are unclear.
Garth’s armor shop buys items at a flat rate and sells them for twice that rate. Garth will also identify an item for the same amount of gold from you that he offers to buy the item for. For example, Garth sells a mithril plate for 2k gold, buys it from you for 1k gold, and will identify it for 1k gold.
In terms of efficiency, selling items is generally a low value, high time consuming endeavor. It’s usually better in the later game to just drop less useful items, keeping only high value items for sale.
Spending Gold
Gold is spent in primarily three ways in a speed run:
- Healing – 10 gold/hp
- Spellpoint Restoration – 15 gold/sp
- Spell Advancements – varies/level
- Buying Items
In the early levels (1-10), gold economy is critical to manage because creatures can easily do much more damage than they provide in gold to heal. Gold also represents a barrier to the rapid advancement of spell casters.
Gold and Healing
Healing at a temple is 10 gold/hp.
Bard’s have healing abilities that are discussed at length in other places. They are generally very gold efficient, but not very time efficient, and a Bard is not a time efficient class generally.
Spellcasters can also heal, effectively turning SP into HP. The three major healing spells in a speedrun are FLRE, FLAN, and REST.
FLRE heals 6-24 hp per cast, costing 6 sp (90 gold) per single target cast. FLRE’s primary purpose is healing poison and insanity, for which it is very gold efficient (90 gold vs 3000 gold). In terms of normal healing, the “random” range is probably biased low and averages 13.125 hp/cast (versus an average of 15 hp/cast if the roll was truly random). This means that FLRE heals the equivalent of an average of 131.25 gold per cast of 90 gold, for a net efficiency of 41 gold per cast. But repeatedly casting FLRE is very time consuming, rapidly drains a very small mana pool, and is really only practical in critical situations when a temple is unavailable or too expensive.
FLAN is essentially FLRE for the party. It heals 6-24 hp per cast, costing 12 sp (180 gold) per cast, and affecting all members of the party, including the special summon. FLAN is not gold efficient for healing a single target, but is very gold efficient for healing two or more party members. FLAN is also castable by pureblades and pureshields, which have a 1/64 chance per cast of being consumed. In terms of time efficiency, FLAN can be cast very quickly using pureblades/pureshields.
REST heals the entire party to full, curing insanity and poison. It costs 12 sp (180 gold) so as long as you heal at least 18hp, it is gold efficient compared to the temple. It is also the most time efficient way to heal. But since spellpoint pools are limited, it must be used carefully.
As a side note, the Advancement board can substitute for healing in a pinch, giving 1-20 hp per advancement based on class and Con. This can be particularly useful for “healing” at early levels when gold is limited.
Spellpoint Restoration (and Spellpoint Loss Reduction)
Spellpoints are restored in only a few ways:
- Instant restoration at Roscoe’s for 15 gold/spellpoint.
- Slow restoration during daytime in the City (1 or two points every minute or so).
- Slow restoration at certain spots in certain dungeons. (Similar rate as the City)
- Slow to moderate regeneration by equipping a Magestaff. A magestaff appears to regenerate a character as if it was daytime during normal travels in any location in the game. During combat, it regenerates 1 mana per round of combat. The regeneration stacks additively with other sources of regeneration.
- Conjurer staffs cut the spellpoint cost of a spell in half. The caster must have the full value in order to cast the spell, but only 1/2 the value is ultimately deducted (rounding down for odd numbers). For example, a Conjurer with an equiped conjurer staff has 15 spellpoints. He casts APAR and teleports to a new location. The spellpoint cost is reduced to 7.5 sp, rounded down to 7 sp, leaving him with 8 sp. (Probably just Cost >> 1) However, if the Conjurer attempts to cast APAR again, he will fail for lack of spellpoints. The game imposes an initial cast check with the full cost, not the reduced cost.
Unfortunately, restoration other than Roscoe’s is essentially impractical in a speed-run. Magestaffs appear too late in the game to be of any significant consequence. Conjurerstaffs essentially double a spellcaster’s pool of spellpoints, but farming for one in Mangar 2+ competes with other more important objectives. In any case, as far as I can discern it is better to just manage spellpoints wisely and complete the game faster than to try to farm a Magestaff/Conjurerstaff.
Spell Advancements
Spellcasters pay fixed amounts of gold for the next level of spells. This creates a bottleneck, particularly in the early game, when a spellcaster has obtained the next level, but lacks the gold to obtain the spells. This can be particularly draining at level 11 and 13 when the cost increases to 10/20k gold.
Early game farming routes must take into consideration both the time to obtain XP and the time to obtain the necessary gold.
Buying Items
Outside of the first basic set of equipment, you don’t need to (and probably should not) buy items in a speedrun. In the early game, it’s more gold efficient, and not expensive in terms of time, to simply save items for heroes that are not (yet) part of the party.
Outside of Garth’s the only item that can be bought in game is the Master Key, which is not useful in a speedrun. The key gives easier access to Kylearan’s tower, but that area is not suited to rapid farming. It also gives alternative access to Mangar’s Tower, but the time savings (if any?!) are minimal compared to the time spent obtaining the key. Further, Mangar is usually a one time adventure and not revisited unless the team was killed off.