So far all but House Rules% categories use the default ending for the run. If you're interested in running a different ending post it here and I'll make a category for it.
Since the route would be so similar I don't think I'm interested personally. I guess I'm not interested in All Expansions for the same reason; the route should be the same as Any%, only with more RNG still. If you or anyone is planning on running that then it's fine of course but otherwise you could remove that category for now.
Yeah All Expansions was something I was thinking of doing and actually what I did for the showcase run but it is really similar to Any% so I think I'll remove it for now.
I'm not sure what you mean about the route being similar - there's a lot of endings that would be different, and I feel like they might make more interesting runs. Especially the "gathering" type runs like "Warlock Quests", "The Hunt" or "Sacred Pool".
I don't want to add any categories just yet, but I'll experiment around and see if I can find a "meatier" category to run. I really would like a category that feels like playing the game and not just hoping for a bunch of lucky rolls in a row. Like "Frostmarch only + Warlock Quests" might be good.
I guess I was mostly talking about "All Expansions" there. With non-default endings the route could be different, all expansions or not, but with all expansions Crown of Command is still the default ending (not Dragon Tower or Dragon Realm for example), although I actually wasn't sure about that since there is no "restore default options". In any case, I still think "All Expansions" is a little bit weird since there are more of them coming out.
In regards to something like "Any% - Ending X", that could be okay if there is something particularly interesting where you have to play slower. However, I would not like a thousand different categories for each ending, especially since many of them would have the same Any% route, or the same route between them, but yeah, like you said, there are some of those weird one's. Haven't though about it yet if they make sense or not, but of course if there is something you really want to run I won't protest that category being added.
After some experiments, I think the most interesting one I've come across may be "A Hero Rises" - reach the Crown of Command with 13 or more fate. It doesn't seem to require a bunch of extra conditions as far as what else is active to make it interesting.
There doesn't seem to be a "cheesy" way to boost fate, so you genuinely have to play, and the Highland route isn't necessarily optimal any more if you also use Dungeon (since beating the Lord of Darkness by a sufficient amount would be an insta-win).
Ok, I'd to formally request we add A Hero Rises. I got it down to a little over 10 minutes but there's definitely room for improvement.
Timer Starts when Player hits "Start Game" Timer Ends when victory animations begins to play. Only one non-AI player allowed Must set ending to A Hero Rises (this also means the Firelands expansion must be enabled) Any other expansions or DLC characters are also allowed All House Rules must remain on default settings All Characters may be used
Due to the similarity to Any% I decided to add it as a sub category rather than a main category.
omeganumber, it was a valiant effort to find a more "normal" category in A Hero Rises, but unfortunately I did find a couple of faster strats already.
My original idea was to start with Haunting Poltergeist as Wizard and walk back and forth between the Graveyard, but faster and actually more consistent was my current route as you can see.
I do have one tentative suggestion for a category if you want; "Confront the Dragon King". The default ending actually changes to that if you have Dragon Tower or Dragon Realm enabled (I think Dragon Tower is the default among those?), so an argument could be made for that ending having its own category. While you can still fly past the harder Inner Region or the Dragon Tower with Arnkell or Lord of Darkness, you do have to fight the Dragon King, where there should be somewhat limited ways of cheesing him. Not being able to cast spells on creatures in the Inner Region limit your options especially for anything halfway consistent. I still think there is going to be some sort of yolo-strat, but maybe you can't go straight there like in Any% or Vanilla%. Of course, the other "boss" endings would be similar to this but since we don't want each one as a separate category this would nicely cover all of those under one category.
And one small thing, with the Rules for A Hero Rises: "All House Rules must remain on default settings". You do have to change "Default Ending" to "Revealed Ending".
