Twilight Forums

Retcons 178 to 187, finished in one rollover cycle. This is probably what running a marathon is like. I thought I was going to die by #8. But I proved it can be done. You can retcon ten times in one Frayday! I still had just enough supplies to do an eleventh, but I got tired and was running out of RL time before rollover...

Big thanks to acidcat and erfmortium for giving and selling me the consumables I needed to do this

I can write one on the wiki if you like, Staunch, but I'll just post some general guidelines. I do everything in a very specific way for my one-day runs, but everyone's got different circumstances and preferences, so your mileage will vary.

-Obviously, most of the tenets of regular low-mettle speedruns apply. Quest shortcuts, optimizing like hell, remembering to pick up 77 habits, having quest-critical items, etc.

-Permed skills- have all the passives. All of them. And see below for which noncombat skills you will need. At least one healing spell should be a no-brainer, too. You will be using it a lot.
-Frayday is the best day for this.
-Go Naturalist. High max HP and Taming are essential.
-Edibles: Bray/Scalpel energy drinks and guatemalan pepperjuice (or 2x drop of hyper-C). For sugar, stroopwafels, IQ120s or those criminology cereals. However, if you are good at rushing through to level 10, you can also consider the dulce de diamante for its XP bonus and superior time returns. In any case, anything better than these options is only marginally superior for a much higher price. Vegetables are optional, and tend to be too hard to stockpile for me to recommend.
-Talisman- I like to use a special wooden cup for its +XP (heirloom cameo would be even better). However, anything that increases your effectiveness in combat is also good. Any other bonus is window dressing.
-Companion: clockwork spider all the way. Last nostronomian is slightly better when you get to level 10.
-Extra gear- daylight singularity or daylight savings blanket is nice for boosting every other retcon by 1 hour.

-Increasing Foe Toughness is the key to getting XP fast. Fights should not ever be easy. My rule of thumb is you should lose on average 1/3 of your max HP in every encounter, adjusting it up or down depending on how it's going. But don't overdo FT- getting beat up even once can set back a lot of your XP gains. There are many sources of foe toughness- my favorite is the furry pill, since it won't compete for equipment slots (but remember that there are no backsies for item-based buffs!)
-+XP is also important, but harder to get ahold of. Still, I recommend always prioritizing +XP over +FT unless you're breezing through fights or have a really efficient source of FT that has very weak +XP competition (such as the filthy sock puppet or personal copy of the internet).
-Dealing with Foe Toughness- You want bonuses (from various sources) to damage absorption, to-hit, offense, defense, dodge, weapon damage, and lowered fumble chance. Other enchantments, in my experience, tend to be iffy for serious combat. I don't like spell-based combat, so I don't recommend it. Also, damage absorption is very useful, but only up to a point, so don't overdo it.
-Skills- Priorities are proper hydration, mental magnetism, stealth and sinus of the shark. Second priority is either keen observation or aura of vim, for XP grinding. Combat skills are third priority (I recommend fire shield, armadillo armor, basic martial arts and battle armor, in that order), for letting you reach higher levels of foe toughness. Then finally, your last priority are healing skills (including starfish regeneration), improved tinkering, and damaging spells, which are all skills can be substituted with consumable items. Item drops do not matter except on the level 5 quest for the keycard and capo key. Other skills to consider, if your ears are pouring out with skill points like mine, are fast learner and sundowner breeze.
-Equipment/software/transport- During quests, prioritize maxing out your combat/noncombat chance and time, with XP and foe toughness as secondaries. During XP grinding, prioritize XP and foe toughness.
-XP grinding- porcelain bay is the only place for you (until the cube theater). Get a sub-ma-car, it has a very mild level 4 level requirement. Also have an eight tentacles of fury.
-PP items- Vital. You want to have a large stock to keep your boosts up, especially since you will be sacrificing putting points into healing skills and improved tinkering. There are a crapload of dirt cheap PP items on the mall, otherwise, power sticks from the downtown potion store will do. HP items are also nice to have, although PP items do basically the same thing.
-Combat items- When you're getting your ass kicked due to high FT or are fighting a boss, bring combat items that do a lot of damage. Stunning is nice, of course, but you only need something that's guaranteed to kill them in one or two rounds, before they can return the favor. So pack a lot of these.
-Item Buffs- echoing the above, noncombat/combat chance is very handy. Otherwise, freely abuse whatever you have lying around but don't go out of your way to grab item buffs- most item buffs will either have piddling affects against the amount of FT you will be facing or are too uncommon/expensive to maintain for long.
-Free Runaway items (such as byeons)- After foe toughness, this is the other crucial factor. You cannot possibly amass enough turns in one day to fight every single combat you run into. The best times to use free runaways are during the level 5 quest, after you've decrypted the swipe card, and any non-mandatory fights after level 9 (this includes during level 10 and level 11!). Basically whenever you're going to be fighting enemies that give way less XP than what you could earn through XP grinding. Seriously. You will need a lot of these. 150 or so per run is quite reasonable (number can go down if you have free XP items).
-Also, a few combat encounters are mandatory for quests- archons, VIP guests and capos, mob instigators, most elco hoist monsters, etc. Don't use free runaways on them.
-Free XP items- Mainly squid discs, although there are combat usables that give XP. These can partially substitute for XP grinding. Use them as early as possible, but remember not to go overboard.
-Time travel stuff- independent time modulator and black hole throwing star can be handy for giving back a little time from a combat, although I would save such things for emergencies when you're really pressed for time. The Gigantofirm lookout calendar is a great thing, but it is ultimately secondary to traffic avoider and mercantile monitor.

Pacing- Budget your turns. This is crucial. Assuming you eat all your sugar and caffeine by level 7, you should end up with at *least* 50 turns by level 9 (and that assumes you're going to use free runaways for all non-critical combats). If you really race through NCI live as possible and use all the shortcuts and free runaways you possibly can, it's okay to have about 15 turns by the time you reach level 11.
Fatigue- I'm going to be honest, the multiple-run thing was crazy exciting at first, but starting getting old at number five of the day and I hated it at number nine. Even if you can get near my record, it's probably going to be tiring and rote if you tax yourself. This should be an occasional thing if you ever go for it. The first few one-day runs might take you a couple hours each as you figure out what goes where, and still will take around one hour once you settle into a routine, so be sure to have lots of real-life time for this too. This is definitely a challenge for the hardcore retconner.

Don't forget: "Have a lot of free time."

Cristiona wrote:Don't forget: "Have a lot of free time."

And a very strong masochistic streak.