Looking at a minimal time retcon run: Seeking advice

[Harry Dresden]

The real trick to a sub 15h run is lots and lots and lots of free runaway items. I'm sure bmara and the others on that list burned up a lot of endless handkerchiefs and/or red eye mind tricks.

[Satan]

Looking back at my notes, you forgotten etiquette should be used until level 5, just to cut down on squid farming (it's not that much less optimal). Then 30 days for level 6, tao of the dow until 8, public broadcasting until 10, humans in the desert for 11. You could use tao of the dow until 11, if you didn't want to farm villains for discs, but obviously needs a lot more discs. You'll want to have Fast Learner at 10 points at the very beginning of the run, as it greatly boosts xp from squids, and it wouldn't hurt to have more than 10 bonus skill point items to help you along in certain skills. Make sure you have the best helmet you can afford for +squid xp, and buy smoke grenades from the market when they're in. I would say I used about 400 red-eye mind tricks to run away, the majority of those being used in quest 4 and quest 8 and quest 11. Unfortunately it's likely you'll still have some non-optimal turns in those 3 quests, but the rest are more or less easy to get the right adventures.

[Cristiona]

The real trick to a sub 15h run is lots and lots and lots of free runaway items. I'm sure bmara and the others on that list burned up a lot of endless handkerchiefs and/or red eye mind tricks.

Handkerchiefs are stunners

Now I see that bmara did an awesome run at 9h 32m 30s and I assume (without running the actual numbers) that this is darned close to an optimal run.

Very close, yes. Zillow crunched the numbers, but that was before the changes to the casino and sewer quest.

[xKiv]

I might be completely mistaken, but ...., wouldn't farming synesthesia + burning shoes + free runaways + disco demolition on frayday night fever (takes you 60 seconds back in time) make *any* run time non-optimal?

[Satan]

I might be completely mistaken, but ...., wouldn't farming synesthesia + burning shoes + free runaways + disco demolition on frayday night fever (takes you 60 seconds back in time) make *any* run time non-optimal?

Do you mean optimal? In theory, it could be possible. But the risk you run is that you get the patrol where you absolutely have to pick an option that uses a turn. It seems unlikely that the -1 minute patrol is > 4 times as likely as that forced non-com.

EDIT: black hole + red-eye in an area where black hole can't kill and there are no non-coms would however guarantee any run could reach 'optimal' time, but at that point, optimal time can literally be 0 hours 0 minutes by triggering 1 black hole for each minute spent. However it'd be especially red-eye consuming. If black hole's - 1 minute has a trigger rate of 10%, that's 10 red-eye's per minute. If you had say 9 hours exactly, that's 9*60 = 540 minutes, *10 = 5400 red-eyes. That's twice the amount I have currently, and I have 7 chests to summon with (granted, I have been using up alot for various things as I went).

[Harry Dresden]

The real trick to a sub 15h run is lots and lots and lots of free runaway items. I'm sure bmara and the others on that list burned up a lot of endless handkerchiefs and/or red eye mind tricks.

Handkerchiefs are stunners

Ain't nobody got time to remember which items really do what!

[xKiv]

Do you mean optimal?

I meant non-optimal, because, as you yourself realized, any time can be reduced by 1 minute with enough resources ...

EDIT: black hole + red-eye in an area where black hole can't kill and there are no non-coms would however guarantee any run could reach 'optimal' time, but at that point, optimal time can literally be 0 hours 0 minutes ...

That's assuming the game has a safeguard preventing time-spent-this-run from going below 0.
0-1=-1, -1-1=-2, ... what's the data type for storing it? Does it go to minus infinity?

BTW, if you only care about time-this-run, and not daycount, you can just use daily "free" runaways from certain wok pants.

[Satan]

I think I'll make a zero-time run next on my list, right after I finally go get the transmog badge. I have alot of the squid discs necessary already, and apparently I wasn't paying attention to my red-eye count for awhile, I'm up to 4420. Might start farming big left hooks to speed up getting to around 5400 runaway items. As for calculating run time, I'm not sure how the calculations are done. If it's a simple start timestamp difference with end timestamp, I suppose it could be a negative value, but it could also overflow and be the longest retcon ever. We'd have to ask Kinak how it's calculated, because I'm stopping when I hit 00:00:00.

[Cristiona]

All -1 minute combat items use the same counter, and you can't trigger more than one -1 minute per combat.

[Satan]

All -1 minute combat items use the same counter, and you can't trigger more than one -1 minute per combat.

That's why you need the free runaways. Get in the battle, throw the black hole star, hope for -1 minute, then free runaway. You set yourself back 1 minute in total if it triggered, you gain no time if it didn't. The only way to counter act this method would be to track the amount of time actually spent each turn (and not the -1 minutes). It's possible this is already the case, I haven't checked, but it feels more likely it's a simple subtract start time from finish time.

[Cristiona]

I had never realized the black hole star exists since I don't have a set. It's kind of a silly mechanic. Not sure why the -1 minute isn't limited to X times a day or is applied at the end of combat.

The two sources of in-combat -1 minute require Wok item(s) which is a limiting factor right away. The star gift set only had one black hole star in it, so you would need multiples. And since nobody sells black hole stars alone (or any of the stars, so much for that plan), you'd probably end up needing several unopened sets. The other source (which uses the same flag) requires the gloves and boots from April of last year, and triggering the boots requires 5PP. While throwing the boot effect is the same every time, what effect you get is random (as per prismatics). Only Heather Robinson/Doc Igor actually put out the effort to gather numerous black holes (12, if I recall) to "ensure" that she could get -1 minute every combat. Assuming the foes could survive that much psychic damage. Remember, each star is also doing between 5*Level and 7*Level (up to 50-70) damage.

Therefore, doing so with multiple stars is unlikely at best, which leaves you farming insane amounts of run-away items. It's further compounded by the fact that if you're pre-leveling with SQUIDS, you won't be able to use stars against foes in areas low level than you, which means you'll need even more run-aways so you can post-facto grind down your time. Frankly, this falls into the category of "if you really want to spend this much time, effort, and money, you deserve it."

As for your implied question, we didn't think to limit it to per day because we figured there was enough of a built-in limiter with only being able to use a star once and the low odds of -time. Having it trigger on use makes narrative sense, and means that you get the bonus even if you lose the fight. Also, it may have been easier to code that way.

And finally, well, there are far more abusive quirks in the game.

[Satan]

But if someone does do a 0 time run, will Kinak let it stand on the leaderboard for all time?