I've not seen the runs so I'm not following. But for max cycles, you should keep the version dosbox in mind, and if it's a main-line build or a fork.

Side note, I just beat Curse on my phone. Magic DOSBox is awesome there.

I'll catch back up with you two! Just gonna be a while, like in the fall. Dang toddler eating up my time....

One of the biggest time saves would be to use an exploit that I discovered a little while ago that’s a bit cheap, and certainly would fly in the face of your preference for doing things properly. You can actually skip most of the planned encounters. This being an eighties game, where any way to tighten coding is vital, it keeps track of the number of fights you’ve had in the area, and marks it as complete when you’ve done 24 and resolved the Ohlo mission.

That's the way I did it since a kid. I generally go to the area near the fortune teller, there's an area with walls on three sides. Go in there and just rest. Because of the limited space, you won't face many foes. Then just reset since it forces a fight quickly.

If we say 100% includes clearing all sections of Phlan that noris would be required. Clearing the library would then be required which is just the basilisk fight since the other required fight to clear it is forced when you leave.

But then if we do that, we should also count clearing textile house, plaza and wealthy areas. But these aren't quests given to you, just extra ones, so, meh. I can see it both ways, but I lean more towards just the quests given to us explicitly.

The rings I think are a bug, some magic rings get through, some don't. I'm not sure if they meant all rings to make it through (Since there's no plus to them) or remove them all, but yeah, they most definitely planned this as a nerf.

Most people don't know that drow and non-magical items also pass through, I know first few games I played, I went through there butt naked.

As for 100%, I keep flip-flopping on clearing of podol plaza, since it gives a reward. Along with the Cadorna Textile House and Wealthy Area. But clearing these three seems so pointless and there's no XP.

Not that it matters to much, I can't run it, the 1 hour was a killer for me. I have a (almost) 2 year old running around the house, And that dang work keeps getting in my way too. Don't they know I've got kobolds and dragons to slay?!

Missed this:

I wonder if avoiding that permanent effect was the reason.

I'm going to guess no, I think Vorpal swords in 1st edition I think were immune to the effects of travel between planes. Generally how it worked, the farther you are from your home plane, weapons and armor lose 1 + value, but I could swear seeing somewhere that vorpals has an exception to it. I'll have to check my DMG and manual of the planes sometime, it may also have been in the Throne of Bloodstone adventure, the first D&D adventure I bought. It's also for characters levels 18-100, so the first actual D&D adventure I ever saw was the highest leveled adventure they ever created.

I know the disintegration glitch. It also works if you dual class your characters and any items get automatically unequipped because their new class can't use them.

I actually came back to mention that, cause the dual class, as far as I know, works in curse on the PC. I know it worked on the C64, cause I found it when I changed class after having a potion of giant's strength.

In later games, the walking away from people to force their attacks have something else that's cheap, but feel would still be a legit tactic in an any% run: Fire shield. Every attack that lands, the foe takes 2x damage, and you can use ESC to reset your movement rate. It sounds way over-powered, and is strong, but it does in effect turn HP into damage, you lose 1 HP for every 2 HP you do to foes. In a speedrun we're most likely not going to have fighter\dual class magic users with huge amounts of HP, so I doubt this would be anything we even need to worry about. Even with large HP pools, it's not TOO overpowered.

...Unless a cleric uses a heal spell on you the next turn, and you do it again.

In later games, another glitch that's awesome is using disintegration on someone, all item effects become permeant. Besides letting you have more item space cause you no longer need all your rings equipped, it keeps vorpal status. So you get Fine Vorpal Long Bows + 2. I don't think mace is disruption works though.

If it's the same glitch I know of, I don't know if the bag of holding is the trigger, or if you get some "bags" in your inventory which have strange properties. As a kid in Curse I remember getting a bag that did 254 damage and dropped my THAC0 by like 10. Could also do cool stuff by ejecting the disc in the middle of loading.

I also thought about trying the C64 version of Pool sometime again. I think my discs are still good, and I have a C64SX I could lug into my office (I work from home) and give it a shot. Recording would be tough, with no video out and all, but I wouldn't be setting any records anyways,

I also like the glitchless one, but the hard part is defining glitches. Mostly it would be a non-duping run I think.

Side note, I triggered a level underflow glitch on NPCs, but can't recreate it. After leveling up mad man, he gained a property of 254 levels drained. Restoration spells "restored" the levels, but only gave him 1 hp. It also gave him the exp to be just shy the next level. If you restore him past level 8 his levels show split like dual class, but his class remained fighter. I had him to level 17/8, bit he wasn't a superpowered tank, so even if I could reproduce it, it doesn't help much. It wasn't just him, on that game, all NPCs were affected on level up. I was using GoldBox explorer writing notes for my faq, and I wonder if it was the cause of the bug, not the game.

However, I did trigger the money overflow glitch too, so it might be related to the trigger (sell a ton of wands, buy something, all youroney turns to jewelry)

Another run I'm wondering about, 100%. I'm thinking just complete all quests, but that might still miss stuff, not including the random caves/groves.

So Rich, how often would you say a run on your path goes south and fails? I was adding a speedrun section to my faq I'm working on, and was just wondering. I think of the three runs on here, yours is the most luck dependant, but it doesn't seem like too much luck involved. From what I see, it's the last fight where you would have the most trouble with bad RNG.

So I was playing around with dragon butt some more on 1.3 version. Running away from him does control his attacks and makes him "waste" his turn, so he won't use the breath weapon. But with a dex of 19, he goes first pretty quickly. And with 3 attacks, even if the cloak did work, he would still have 1-6/2-20/1-6/2-20/bite attack/2-20. I was hoping could skip the dust this way since it's one of the last remaining out of the way items; should really be able to skip sokol keep too without the dust.

There are spots where he can't use his breath weapon, so placing your best fighters there will help, but he has such a good change of blasting you with it first round. If you could get a mage to level 5 though, use invisibility 10' at the end of the last combat, that might also help.

Dragons attack three times every round, so his 'ignoring' Cloaks might just be the first attack auto-missing but the other two getting full chances to hit

What I saw was 3 hits strike him, plus three fires. Then the same round, he breathed lightning. There might be some "surprise rounds" in there though, sometimes some of your party can move before others it seems.

I think the "unaffected" for the stinking cloud is tied to his attacks though. I'll try to record a video of the two versions so you guys can see what I'm seeing.

What it did for me testing now, 2 clouds caused 2 saving throws a round. When you cast it on Tyrax, he for some reason has 3 texts, in my case, unaffected, unaffected, coughing. With 2 cast on him, I got 6 notifications. If I'm not too busy in the morning I will try to see how exactly it does work on him.

I also want to see if he can be "tricked" into wasting his attacks on a displaced foe.

Oh hey stinking clouds stack in this version, causing 2x saving throw rolls. They dont do that in 1.3

Odd, your version starts at speed 1 is looks like. The numbering of PoR versions is a bit confusing, as only 1.3 has a number. There's a 1.0/1.1/.1.2 as far as I know. The non 1.3 version I have starts out with speed of 4.

And after testing, Tyranithraxus is sorta affected on this version. He'll cough, but won't lose AC like in the 1.3 version.

His "blind spots" for breath weapon seem about the same. If you attack the lower left side for example, he can't hit you with lightning. Not much help since you're using the dust, but if you ever think you want to try it without dust, it's an option. He normally gets the opening shot though, so that's 80-160 HP damage right there, meaning 1-2 people instakilled.

I've been working on some Tyranthraxus strats, but he has strange powers that I don't understand. Like he can hit displaced people it seems, and attack even when you've forced a pre-emptive attack. The second thing though might only apply to his breath weapon.

Edit: If he worked like other foes, the cloak of displacement would prevent his breath attack most rounds, and cause one of his 1d6 attacks to miss every time, plus cause all the attacks to be focused on one target. The problems is that he seems to ignore that, has a 19 dex so can go first more often than any other foe, ect. Stinking cloud however DOES WORK on him. It can't paralyze him, but if he does cough, his AC changes from -4 to 4.

I've not checked to see if you use the dust of disappearance yet, which nullifies his breath.

Also, if you use good aligned NPCs, they won't turn on you in the final fight, likewise, that mage at the end you can get to join also doesn't turn on you, but all he likes to do is spam lightning bolts from his wand. Neutral aligned are supposed to side with majority vote if it follows the tabletop rules, but I've not tested yet.

All the fighters you can get in the hall are evil, so they always turn on you. However, Skullcrusher I think is good, so if you can add him into the route near the end, you have another npc. I think it's 2 required fights to get him, and they're fights that sleep works in.

Another option, bring the evil fighters with you, and charm them. You lose one turn, but if you move faster than them (Odds are good) and you charm them (Odds are also in your favor), I THINK you have an 80% chance to charm them. Magic armor does affect saving throws, so if you try this, after the 8th level fighters fight, use the view command to unequip their armor. they should re-equip it, but if not, I think they have an AC of like, 3, with armor. And with dragonbutt's THAC0 of 5, wearing that armor doesn't help much vs an AC of 10.

Also, mirror image doesn't seem to work right on him, but I'm not 100% sure how it's supposed to work in this game, they changed it.

Also not sure if you saw it in my route, but I used clerics from town, who could 1) use hold person on the 8th level fight 2) be meat shields against Tyranthraxus 3) Use resist fire to lower his 2-20 fire damage aura to 1-10 The 4th level clerics have non-magical plate mail, so with the rings +3 they have an AC of 0. They will stop and cast hold person on Tyranthraxus so that hurts. They;re also harder to find in the training hall than fighters, so even more luck added to the run, but they might work better in the end than fighters. 4 hold persons per round can really take out a lot of fighters.

I guess I should comment to on the heroes, I'm not real thrilled with them. Great for the beginning, but if you take on the town guards in a controlled fight right off the bat, you get Chain Mail + 2 which is only 1 AC off from their plate mail.

I normally try to buy non-magical plate mail since the rings of protection + 3 you can get later on stack with it.

No heroes were killed in my run..... Two Theurgist were killed though right off the bat to get their rings which sell for 5k gold each, so I have the gold for some level ups. Then I hire two Curates, and force them to fight town guards, where I then kill the curates after the fight to get more EXP. Then I kill town guards till I'm out of money, clear sokal keep so the town folk will talk to me again + a quick route to the gate. Then I kill more town guards for some quick level ups, and storm the castle.

I do hire two more curates at the end to help with the 8th level fighters fight, not sure if they helped or not. Stinking cloud and charm person clears up most of that fight.

I'm fine with 6000, and no sound.

Some games we need to be careful with versions too. I know in Curse there's an extra early dark elf lord in hap that they removed.

I'm not sure if I'll run any other games, or even this one much more, I mostly did it cause I'm writing a faq\walkthrough for Pool right now on gamefaqs. Once I'm done there, on to curse, and all the other goldbox games. I started writing it 15 years ago, so this revision is fairly easy to complete. It's an HTML one sorta like Marco's ones on the-spoiler, but with more detail and text. Trying to make it informative but not just one giant wall of text.

As for fighting Tyranthraxus, I do know his breath weapon has 3 shots, and looks like it can leave any of the top two squares at 90 or 45 degree angles, so there's some blind spots. He's somewhat "weak" to stinking cloud.

Move + Snap-back I'll start off with a basic one that's a bit questionable depending on how you use it. When you start moving in a round, pressing the ESC key moves you back to where you were. Any damage done while you've moved, however, will remain, as will any attacks used. When you have two attacks in one round, you can run up to a foe, attack them once, and as long as it kills them, you can use ESC to warp back to where you started, and move again with your remaining attack. This by itself is nothing too special, but it is used in some later tricks, and can be abused like crazy in games with fire shield if you want to be very cheap.

Cloak of Displacement Renewal The cloak of displacement is a great item. Not only does it grant you a -2 AC bonus, it causes you to be "displaced", a feature you don't see mentioned often. What this means, the first attack in combat will always miss you. By itself this is great, but like many items, if you unequip the cloak and re-equip it in combat, this effect renews, meaning the first attack after your turn will always miss. This can be combined with the Move + Snap-back trick and the following trick for some cheap fun.

Force Enemy Actions If you move away from a foe, they get a "free" back attack on you. If a foe uses this free attack before their normal turn, they will not get their actual normal turn. In other words, you can force any foe you can reach into performing an attack on you, rather than say, using breath weapons or casting spells. Combine this with being displaced, and unlimited movement with using snap-back, and you can cause your foes to waste turns attacking someone they can't hit. This does not seem to work correctly on the final boss, however.

So in theory, equip the cloak, run up to him, then leave, and he'll attack the person with the cloak, missing his first attack, and never use his breath weapon, like a poor mans dust of disappearance. I'm wondering if sees invisible counters it in this game.