There are a few of us who are going to be attempting it. I am currently trying to find glitches and other skips... so far only found a major game breaking out of bounds glitch but haven't been able to trigger anything needed for a run. The moderator of this forum is already doing runs on his twitch but hasn't posted them as runs on this site. I know a few people who are playing through it trying to get a feel for it and may be running it, but most people are probably waiting for that one glitch or method that'll make the run a lot shorter. Keep in mind this game probably won't be too popular for speedrunning based on the RNG factor and popularity.
There's A LOT of controversy surrounding this game, some people didn't even buy it because of the Warner Bro's drama so I was already surprised there was a few people who even had interest in this game. I got a pretty solid any% run (uploading now) to the point of where I'm done with that category because of how much RNG there is in the game, it's ridiculous, the entire game especially Act II can vary by 5 - 15 minute margins, hell you could could probably do 3 runs with the best execution you could ever hope for but always be in the red because a lot of different reasons. If you are running this game it's because you want the adventure and the experience because it is fun to run but sure as hell not fun if you look at it from a competitive standpoint, that's just silly.
I'll be attempting True Ending when I have time but I literally have to wait for one of my days off because of how long it could potentially be, I'd say any% can reliably be around 4:40 ish and then Act 4 could just tack on many more hours depending on the rng you get but True Ending in my opinion would just be more of an achievement than a speedrun haha, should be interesting.
yeah this game is a lot of RNG. I might have a skip that will eliminate a lot of the RNG elements, I just need it to trigger. Basically I am able to break into a fortress' overlord room without even capping any points. If I could just get the overlord to spawn and trigger the intro cut scene then we will barely need to brand any uruks, in fact you won't need any if I can get it working. Gotta love out of bounds glitches. And if this game breaking glitch can be implemented there would be another category as the glitchless%.
I just finally finished the game and wow, what a disappointment. At first I was like.. you didnt finish the game to the credits to count as Any%.. then I checked the requirements for the true ending.. Yea fuck that. So with that said, first of all I would recommend changing the category names because really True Ending = Any% and your current Any% is really Story% or something else.
As for the RNG, it was the same with the first game.. You will probably find that after there is a few runners you could probably drop the time quite a bit. I really doubt there is going to be much sequence breaking, but the Fortress OOB clipping had potential, too bad it didn't work out :(
The other issue I would say right now.. I dont think any Market place chests should be allowed in the run at all. If you want to complain about RNG this should be banned. Because one day someone will get the most OP Captain who will destroy everything in a region, and the split will be incomparable. That is just my opinion anyway.
I dont know if I am going to run this.. but first I need to figure out what are the requirements to get to the end game. It seems most missions are skipable at a glance? I dunno.. Just the tower ones are needed?
It's always a controversy with these types of games but everywhere I had looked everyone said the ending was after defeating Sauron so that's why I made that as any% considering that not all games have to reach credits to count as any% so in this case my initial impression is that defeating Sauron is the cannon ending with certain articles stating that the shadow wars is "post-game" so essentially whatever decision is made would just be more of a personal choice unfortunately, I never like games that put confusion toward where the actual ending is at it's nice to just look at it and see it matches with a general system.
Well, I respect your opinion Acefrog but to me that's kind of how it goes in other regards like - one day someone will get all good RNG and hold world record, with or without loot boxes and this game at least offers in-game currency to do so, the game's fastest time is achieved by using in-game currency for quick captains/upgrades. The flip side to that is you add a ton of time to the run if this wasn't allowed because you either would run around to recruit captains, get lucky enough to have some or well, no captains to recruit mid siege or you would have to painfully run and gun the sieges which would take quite a bit longer and if you get bad rng, extremely difficult. It's an RNG mess no matter what and using the in-game currency to me is the lesser of two evils. The compromise would essentially have to be different categories/subcategories in the end if there's no agreement.
After 2/3 runs I figured out you pretty much need to do everything that appears on the overhead map and doing different missions allow the next part of the chain to unlock but in my run I did missions in a specific order to gain more experience to blow through sections where a higher level is extremely beneficial. The Bright Lord didn't unlock until I did all missions, captures, etc on the overhead map, you are able to skip some of the sub missions that appear after sieges though, all the missions in my splits are required.
I just did a mock slow run up too the first Fortress capture, so far all the way up too dominating the first two captains to unlock the fortress mission could be easily optimized and routed to 'perfection' minor how your Captains stats spawn. After that it opens up too much to optimize perfectly but oh well :P
The name of the categories really does not matter at all, as long as everyone agrees what is the final bit haha. I would hate for this game (Not that many people are going to run) to turn into another one where there is massive dispute over categories and a million of them!
And I noticed you couldn't use boxes on the first section which kinda sucks. I guess you only can in the next zones? Either way, I think as long as people arent using bought gold to buy boxes in a run (Which would be insane!) it should be OK.
It would be good if we can figure out a full tree of the mission and what they unlock at one time etc to plan it properly.
Fellowship Shadows Of Past The Seeing Stone Knife In The Dark No Mans Land Rain Of Arrows Traitors Gate The Arena Before Dawn The Fall Ring Of Power WK's Vision Violent Nature Recruiting The Etten Conquest/FP
At this point you have access to Carnan's Bane but you can do the Cirith Siege with no issues since it's the lowest level siege with very little required and being a higher level helps for completing the mission faster.
Cirith Siege
Carnan's Bane (completing this unlocks Frozen Flame)
Allies (unlocks bloodsport)
Blood Sport (unlocks Seregost Siege)
Seregost Siege
Frozen Flame (is in the same zone, required and gives an advantage for the next missions where stats matter)
The Best Defense (unlocks damaged) Damaged
These next missions just unlock 1 after the other (these are done later so that Nazgul 1 Cycle fights are "possible," much easier and faster).
- Tower Of Sorcery
- The Scourge
- Fire And Fury
- Gravewalkers
Gorgoroth Siege (final siege and done last because it has higher level and stat requirements to clear faster and it's right next to the final mission)
The travel distance and back tracking is taken into consideration for the order of the missions as well.
The Bright Lord (final mission)
I think we can get this under four hours its just going to be rough. I lost some time recruiting my 2 captains because i accidentally killed one, i failed the dominate 10 archers while stealth mission twice and lost about ~30min on the overlord for gorgoroth. I agree that glitch hunting is probably going to be necessary because its frustrating to be on par or slightly ahead going into something and then the RNG just reks you. 4-5hours is a long time to be dependant on RNG.
I will be running it again because i think i can beat BnH but if a few more people would submit their runs that would help get the popularity up and maybe speed up someone finding a glitch. I think we need an Act I category as well since that is the fastest and best act. I will not be participating in the True Ending run because i felt that the 12 bonus sieges were overkill and made specifically to get us to spend money on chests.
Under 4 hours would require recruitment to have 4 easy captains to dominate consistently following good rng for every single point of the rest of the run so that's not the most reliable time expectation unless skips/glitches are found. Every glitch hunter I've known will usually break the game before they even start any runs but the stigma surrounding this game will scare people off regardless.
It's not even really about beating people, it's about beating the RNG you got in your previous runs. This isn't the best speed game and I have no doubt any of our current runners will have anything but fantastic execution after a few runs but that doesn't matter if you get captains that lose you 2-5 minutes because of their stats in just about any Act II/III mission, mainly sieges. The focus should be on finding glitches/skips and methods to reduce these issues as much as possible and seeing if there's a way to manipulate the RNG you get with captains such as starting a siege with defenders makes captain A, B, C spawn or spawns more shieldbearers, tanks, assassins, etc. Possible patterns or a way of starting a pattern, just looking for things like that would help quite a bit.
You can manage with in-game currency, you just have to be careful on those sieges and once all of your forts are steadily upgraded with good defense and you dominated decent captains mid siege/defend, the rest of the missions go by smoother, it's still a bit of a challenge though.
Well I just did my first run and it was very meh.. I can improve it so much. I think my biggest issue besides the deaths was trying to figure out how to trigger Bruz after dominating the two captains, it seems very random? I am guessing speeding time thingy might trigger it, I dont know.
From my experience it's a timed event of anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute later, so after dominating each captain you can expect him to come and make sure you aware because he can make nearby captains disappear unfortunately but it can also cause some weird bugs based on the terrain that you are on when the encounter starts.
I did another mock run just now, the first captain he came instantly and so did the same on the second one. The third captain he came after I warped to a tower and jumped off looking for more captains. So that might be the answer to doing it, dunno.
Yeah picking up that fast travel is important, allows you to access any nearby events for captains and seems to be the most reliable method so far
