Speed running

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.

Real Time

• Melee is heavily prefered - Spells and MP are just way too thoughtful and run out too quickly to really consider. Meanwhile, melee has access to Axes, whose 8-tile cleave mows down monsters even in the most crowded situations. Traditionally "overpowered" species like Deep Dwarf, Minotaur, and Gargoyle reign supreme.
• 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!
  • In a similar vein, the Orcish Mines and even Vaults are completely optional to clear. You might visit them to get a specific item, or if you are ill-prepared for the challenges ahead.
• 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 with either autoinscribe += <item>:@<command><key> or item_slot ^= <item>:<letter>.
• Don't be afraid of dying (unless this is for a tournament). The best runs were done over and over again, hoping for a good enough RNG to pass through.

Top Runs/Version

• Deep Dwarf Fighter of Makhleb of 0.26 and earlier is a popular choice, and one that currently holds the world record, by EnegeticOcto.
  • Deep Dwarves' stats and heal wounds ability lets you win fights otherwise much too out of depth, 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.
  • 0.27 buffed earlygame monster weapon speed & damage, but more importantly halved Makhleb's healing rate

Low Turn Count

• Health is an incredibly valuable resource; resting takes up hundreds of turns normally. Try to avoid that as much as possible by exploring, potentially at floors you've skipped, at low health. Deep Dwarves don't regenerate, and dominate as a result. The fast-regenerating Vine Stalker is helpful, but most melee races can still do fine. Jiyva, if you are lucky enough to find it early, greatly boosts regeneration.
  • For regenerating species, bread swinging - or swinging a non-weapon over and over - will cause you to waste more time (regenerating more) for the same amount of turns.
  • Cheibriados lets you explore to the same effect, with a noticeable stat boost and LOS-wide attack in Slouch. However, its impact matters less for a 3 rune game.
• Careful movement is a must; autoexplore is very inefficient.
  • Even when scrounging for resources, it isn't good to travel over half the floor for a few segments of unexplored dungeon.
  • Skipping floors is even more important than during real time runs. Floors will always take hundreds of turns to clear.
• Try to avoid backtracking. The best runs should try and go from the Lair immediately to the rune branches, with all the skill/items that requires.
  • The Delver class allows you find an altar quickly, and even skip the first 4 floors entirely - at least, until the orb run. However, it's very unreliable, especially without the power of DD.

Top Runs/Version

• The current world record run, done in 0.27 by Sapher on Mar. 31 2022, was a Deep Dwarf Delver. It lasted 5246 turns.
  • Like Real Time runs, Deep Dwarves reign supreme. Instead of wasting hundreds of turns regenerating, their heal wounds ability uses 1 turn.
  • Similar to other two best turn count games, this Dwarf worshipped Okawaru. Okawaru's Heroism is effective for boosting both offence and defence, and Finesse further helps underlevelled characters beat tough fights. Because your level will be naturally low, the god will find lots more honor in your kills (and grant piety accordingly).
  • Another reason to pick Okawaru is weapon, armour, and ammunition gifts. Unlike Sapher's previous world record, this character relied heavily on boomerangs and javelins, especially in the second half of the game.

Rune Strategy

• The Slimy rune is often the most reliable 3rd rune. Even low level players can tackle The Royal Jelly with items like throwing nets, javelins, and/or a scroll of immolation. See TRJ's page for more details.
• The Abyssal rune is convenient if you happen to get banished. Forceful banishment (including from distortion) also plunges you deeper into the Abyss. If you've preserved a few scrolls of blinking, grabbing the rune should be possible. Finding the rune itself is a measure of luck, but its potential speed might make it even faster than Slime.
• Most of the time, the Silver (Vaults) rune is inefficient. Not only do you have to go through all 5 floors of a fairly large branch, but even if you cleared Vaults:1-4, V:5 isn't easy to skip. Vault wardens might lock out the stairs above, while fake runes serve to deter ninjas even more.

See Also

• For an up to date list of speedruns see the following links:
  • Fastest wins (time)
  • Fastest wins (turns)
• Score - turn count speedruns, for all 15 runes.
• Top Runs:
  • Video of current Time WR
  • Replay of current Turn Count WR
• Commentary:
  • Video commentary of former WR run (turn count)

History

Version 0.28: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

• 0.29-trunk Removed Deep Dwarf, added turn-count focused Meteoran. Ranged weapons reworked and no longer need ammo. Abyss' rune location now sensed instead of being pure RNG. Introduction of attacks of opportunity as well as background/consumable drop buffs.
• 0.28 Reworked Jiyva gives regeneration, even to DD. Spider reworked. The Depths shortened by a floor. Fixed quiver bug.
• 0.27 Makhleb healing dramatically nerfed, impacting the heavily reliant Deep Dwarf. Equipment now autoidentified, curses and negative gear removed. Weapon-wielding monsters don't attack slower anymore. Throwing ammunition reduced in quantity.
• 0.26 Tedious food system removed. Addition of Delver, which skips the first 5 floors of the Dungeon. New quiver introduces bug where a quivered god ability can be used even if you switch gods (say, to Uskayaw). Swamp reworked. Removal of Sticks to Snakes (and immolation "snakebombing"), Summon Butterflies. Scrolls of blinking usable as an escape while in Zot/orb run.
• 0.25 All summons can be immolated. Removal of (most) dangerous amulets.
• 0.24 Throwing rework gives javelins piercing and boomerangs returning, further buffed with the silver brand.
• 0.21 Borgnjor's Vile Clutch introduced; in this version only, was stronger and available to the Necromancer start.
• 0.19 Lair shortened 2 floors, Slime Pits shortened by 1.
• 0.12 introduced cleaving to all Axes.
• Autoexplore was conceptualized in the roots of Stone Soup, while 0.6 introduced autofight and Deep Dwarves.