Speed running

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Speed running is a type of informal conduct designed to test a player's skill, creativity, resourcefulness, or, perhaps most importantly, luck. There are two types of speedruns: real time (clock time) and turn count. Either way, you try and ascending with the fastest/lowest time possible.

How Fast is Fast?

Ascensions are typically completed in 60,000 to 160,000 turns and can take a few hours to days depending on the play style. A speed run in real time will aim for less than 3 hours of play time. Turn count speed runs are typically below 30,000 turns. This, of course, is where you obtain only 3 runes - low turn count 15 rune runs are documented in score.

Real Time

• Deep Dwarf Fighter of Makhleb is a popular choice, and one that currently holds the world record. Deep Dwarves' heal wounds ability lets you win otherwise out of depth fights, Fighter gives immediately strong gear and a one time out in a potion of might, and Makhleb makes up for your lack of passive regeneration.
  • Other melee warriors, such as Gargoyle and Minotaur, still can be fast! Melee is always preferred over magic; autofighting is much more reliable if you have the armor and HP to back it up.
• Autoexplore and autofight are your friends!
• You don't have to explore every level; even when autoexploring, it wastes valuable time.
  • Exactly how much have to explore is fairly arbitrary - it depends on lots of luck!
• Use macros and [rc file options] in order to automate less useful tasks. For example, you can set emergency items like scrolls of blinking and potions of haste to specific keys.

Low Turn Count

• Like Real Time runs, Deep Dwarves reign supreme. Instead of wasting hundreds of turns regenerating, your heal wounds ability can solve that instantly. The fast-regenerating Vine Stalker works, but most melee races will still do fine. Jiyva, if you are lucky enough to find it early, also provides regeneration.
  • For other classes, bread swinging - or swinging a heavy weapon like an executioner's axe will cause you to regenerate more for the same amount of turns. Cheibriados lets you explore to the same effect, though matters less for 3 runes rather than 15 runes. Better yet - avoid resting as much as possible by exploring, potentially at floors you've skipped, at low health.
  • The current lowest turn count run uses the Delver class to find an altar immediately and skip the first 4 floors until getting the Orb of Zot.
• Careful movement is a must; autoexplore is very inefficent.

History

• Makhleb's HP heal was nerfed in 0.27, impacting the ease of the heavily reliant Deep Dwarves.
• In 0.26, and 0.27, there existed a bug where quivering a god ability would let you use it, even when you switched gods (say, to Uskayaw).
• In 0.21, Necromancer started with Borgnjor's Vile Clutch, an incredibly strong and useful spell, especially for a starting book. Gnoll had high starting attributes and aptitudes, though this was most commonly used for 15 rune LTCs.
• 0.12 introduced cleaving to all Axes.

Speedrun Ranking

For an up to date list of speedruns see the following links:

• Fastest wins (time)
• Fastest wins (turns)