I'm very sorry for the delay on verifying your run. I've just moved house, and I haven't had internet/been extremely busy.

Thanks for reviving Summoner speedrunning! at least for now :) Your time is really great, and I was kinda expecting that it was due to some timesaves that I had discovered but never posted here, and didn't use in a run (a sub 2hour run ended with not enough scrolls etc at machival). Actually you found some more time-saves: (I'm actually not sure if these were your discoveries, or Lifelike's)

Summon in Catacombs: I tried this!!!!!! But I guess I gave up on the idea too quickly. For me, the summon died too fast or had too much issues with enemies.. I guess I'll have to practice it a bit. I think we could use a combination of both our strats to get a much better time here.

Tower of Eleh Skip: I spent quite a while looking for this.. this saves a lot of time and a headache.

Backstab: My original 3:30+ run included backstab but I got so sick of it, like what happened to you against evil joseph, that I completely gave up on it. That route included getting the trip ability and using them in combination - which although does crazy damage, its not feasible in this run because its too hard to pull off. I think this is best used against Pyrul, and Machival1&3. I don't include Luminar, because I'm pretty sure I had figured a better strat to beat him.

Galienne: This strat makes my original one look very silly -_-. I will definitely adopt this.

Multitasking your party in towns: I tried this and it really frustrated me so I gave up - there was only 1 or 2 places that I had used it so I didn't bother - but you manage to save quite a bit of time with it.

Invisibility Potion: I also tried for a long time to find a use for this,, and using it with Tears in the caverns is actually very useful!

Cleansing Potion: Very good addition,, I don't know why I never bothered with this.

Where you can save 15-20 minutes: I'm sorry if some of these are already apparent.

1. Sewers 1 - Route is not very good - I actually found a much better route, which I'll show in a future run.
2. Ikaemos - Using only Fleece on the first level is much faster, but the minotaur on the second level is an improvement, as well as avoiding sneaking with Fleece.
3. You missed a dialogue skip with Yago, when you enter the palace to talk to the queen and prince. You can save load when you get pulled over to Yago.
4. Murod - I had found a way to stop him from teleporting. I wrote it down somewhere. Also, I'm pretty sure there was a small skip there somewhere.. I'll have to look into it again.

Those were the ones I made mental notes of while watching the run, but there were quite a few small improvements that I had discovered also that save seconds here and there. I'll definitely do a de-rust run within the next week (probably offline), and then see if I can get the time lower. I think 1:45 will be the new target.

I was also very surprised at your level of knowledge of the game. You explained very well some of the speed strats that I don't think I ever went into detail about. I'll probably provide commentary on my next run too, to clarify some things and explain some old routes.

Don't worry about it speedrunning is a joke anyway. The QS/L skips are from Liifelike's run but my route and strats are mostly unchanged from the one I made a year ago. You need to equip the Ring of Darkness before doing the statue puzzle in the Catacombs for Blackfire to level up and get more than 11 hit points that might be why he was dying for you. I don't like my Catacombs strat but kiting was slower when I tested it. My Evil Joseph strat should just be trip with Red Minotaur then 2 backstabs to kill him but as you saw I got unlucky with the knockdowns but it's certainly faster than scroll spam. Yeah I have switched the Ikaemos strat and where I do skill menus so I can use Flece and Blackfire as he can slip passed the bacites the Minotaur can't. It's still a big reset spot for me and I detest Ikaemos and long for an early Priest King skip. I also have a better Wolong night route that saves about 20 seconds which involves getting Rosalind. I don't know what the sewers 1 time save is, I don't know a way to get into the palace plaza early or bypass the locked gates without opening them. You can skip the riders in Jade Temple but I couldn't find a way to escape the temple after the Murod fight as the door opening seemed tied to their being dead. I'm not sure what you are alluding to preventing him from teleporting unless it's some meme like paralysing him with the Frozen Club. I've seen Oni Murod take 500 damage from a backstab but I am not sure which animation made it do full damage so I decided to just spam spells. I'm not the grinding type, especially when there are other strats I don't know about so I might just wait for you to show your time saves before I do anymore. Do you know of any fix or patch that prevents the string error crash? Having to alt f4 the program twice in the run is pretty exceptional. I know there is a fan patch on the gog forums put I haven't tried it. Also has the community(lol) come to a consensus on whether binding keyboard functions to the mouse is permitted as the game doesn't have rebinding options.

I wouldn't call speedrunning a 'joke' but I also wouldn't take it too seriously.. its supposed to be fun :). For me, the fun is in finding the exploits/bugs etc, and definitely not about the grinding - thats why I've only completed half a dozen runs or so.

I started writing a guide for the sub 2hour run, but I lost interest half-way through as there was no interest in this game. Also, LifeL1ke submitted his run to GDQ, and I told myself that I would really get invested in it if the run got in (super unlikely lol). I'll have a look for that guide.

As far as making modifications to this game, I am the only moderator for this game, and I am all for making changes that improve the performance of the game for speed-running purposes. One of those things was to remove the unskippable cutscene at the palace, and just starting the timer at the length of the clip (ie you start the game with +2mins or whatever it is on the timer). I looked into the crashing issues, but wasn't able to determine a fix for it - I have a IT/programming background so I am comfortable with helping solve the issue. Although, the resetting the game is not a massive issue, and there are plenty of other games that require the same sort of thing. I had never heard of the fan patch, I'll have a look into it.

As far as key bindings: I have already written AHK scripts to do a lot of things, including purchase spam (hold a key to buy at about the speed you were doing in your run). These should be permitted as they don't contribute much to the actual time you complete the game, they just improve your experience in doing so.

Priest King Skip: I looked for a while, and decided that he is only activated once the keys are inserted. So the only skip would be to open those locks without the keys,, not sure if this is possible at all.

Murod Skip: I'm pretty sure I'm thinking of what you just explained with the skip, and it saves a very small amount of time.

Do you happen to have savegames from major points in the game? I had an archive with all the saves but I can't find it anymore.

I uploaded my practice saves for you: https://www.speedrun.com/Summoner/resources

I don't think scripts should be allowed, they automate things a human can't do (for example with a script I can shop noticeably faster than I can on my own) and are open for abuse. I'm okay with binding keyboard to mouse though.

Modding a game is one of those things that if speed running is serious business can't be allowed, but is required to get some games working and overall can improve the experience so I do on runs I don't submit to leaderboards.

Cool. I put up the patch for download in the resources section :). I'll have to agree with you on the script thing - but I think AHK or similar software should be allowed for bindings, since there is no control options in the game. I think this patch allows skipping of the cutscene I mentioned near the start of the game. I think this should be allowed, because that scene is just terrible.

Could you please also put up your splits in the resource section? I would like to use them.

This newer route saves a pretty impressive amount of time. It's kind of funny, I had briefly tried testing separating party members in towns, but didn't think it would be viable since they always keep trying to follow the active character. Same thing with backstab, I only tried it out in early parts of the game and it just seemed really ineffective so I never bothered trying it out in the late game.

As for why I stopped running the game, I didn't even know more strats had been found and didn't want to just grind away with the strats that we had at the time.

It would be great to see the game get to where it's comfortably sub 2 though.

Honestly the microing of party members in town (or anywhere) is just a pain in the ass because of the camera changing angles each time. I tried some of these strats for Woolong1 and its just painful lol. Fast but painful.

@LifeL1ke I had made a lot of minor improvements and a few major ones, and I was just going to showcase them in a run, as I was working on writing a new guide. I lost interest at some point and had a lot of IRL stuff going on, and my sub 2hour run lost at Machival.

Radge's run is comfortably sub 2 with the changes I mentioned above and a few others, and looks more like 1:45 without any big mistakes + good RNG. 1:30 and below will take another skip, and/or some major route changes. The closer the time gets to the 1 hour mark, the more I am inclined to run it, as I don't like to spend a lot of time in one sitting doing speedruns.

OK I found my guide,, and here is the mechanic used for some minor skips:: If you touch a trigger that teleports your team (not a yellow line), your summon will not be teleported if you are in solo-mode. For example, if you summon celestial samurai at the start of jade temple, and kill the riders + murod in solo mode with joseph (obviously he can't be allowed to die), then you can speak to the NPC after the fight without running the whole way. The summon can interact with NPC's like a normal party member.

I noted that there are some other places in which this could be abused to save quite a bit of time. I'm going to look into them now.

Liangshan minor skip: There is a spot just to the left of the first 2 mages that you encounter (the path with the large bones on the ground), where you can summon across the water. Start the route as normal, and use a couple of infernos as you get closer to this spot, which can knock the chasing Onis out of aggro range (otherwise you will need to kill them), then summon the celestial samurai across the water (X will turn blue around the edge of the small structure across the water), run the rest of the way with the samurai. I also improved the time here by having Fire7 with joseph, and casting fire wall on the NPC to kill him faster (as well as the Onis). I might need to show this in a video, to get the summoning position right.

Neat thanks for sharing, so you can use that to save running downstairs after Pijian and running back after Oni Murod. I can't think of anywhere else right now.

Yup thats right. I have to test the Pijian one (assuming it works the same), coz that will save the most time. The Liangshan skip saves 30sec-1min btw

Edit: It works with Pijian. Just summon in the spot where Jekhar shows up later, and then run to the fight with Joseph. Obviously you have to kill joseph when he gets teleported too - which could be a spot to put the points into fire if you're gonna use him like that.

I've already checked Blue Imp before Pijian talk to Jekhar with it, suicide and leave with Jekhar works just fine. Also the Liangshan skip makes getting the Spinesplitter trivial which makes backstab on the Jade Temple riders and Murod viable, heck you can use Poison Elemental at Jade Temple to trip the riders and talk to Qifeng.

Damnnn.. this will still be a bit tricky to pull off I think :/ worth a try tho. Another side effect of killing joseph is that the summon will go hostile and engage enemies that get in jekhars way :O

LuL.. this fucking game:

Not really sure of the timesave potential here, as you still have to backtrack a tiny bit. However, I think there may be more places to use this 'bug'. wtf..

Haha this tech is exactly what I'd expect from Summoner... I played around with it for about 40 minutes and only got it 4 times, 3 of those were on the right side of the door. I'm not sure what's happening is he clipping into the door and just walking though like you can do with summons or is the door losing collision? Idk. I'm not sure which is a more agonising prospect: looking for a consistent setup or trying it on every other door and gate in the game looking for skips. Whoever tries it is better prep their hugbox. ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ Not it.

LuL.. Actually I found a consistent setup shortly after making this video. I'll record it and post here.

I think that there is an actual gap there, but the devs thought it would be too small to fit through? but somehow you can...

My patience is wearing very thin with this game, without having changed anything with my setup I have had 5 crashes in 2 days no error message just on leaving an area it's crashing all of a sudden.

Is this in typical areas for crashes or just completely random?

I've had similar issues before that went away after moving/deleting my saves. Try the timeslip patch? It fixes some issues with savegame corruption I think - worth a try,, you just extract 2 files into the main folder and it works magically.

Looks like deleting the quicksave file every so many attempts prevents it. I did a playthrough with the patch and it didn't fix the string crash or allow skipping the Temple Plaza cutscene so I think it should be banned as it includes hax.

I got a 1:55:40 that lost a lot of time but unless something new is found i'll probably drop this game on my next PB.

Yeah I agree about the patch.. I did some testing and didn't see a great improvement either.

I did a run that was on the same pace and lost to completely screwing up the wolong microing.. I really hate doing that shit.

I would be surprised if there was nothing else new to find, but at the moment I can't think of anything to try.

Three minutes ahead entering Liangshan with minutes to save for easy 1:49:xx and the run dies because both Female Oni get stuck on a rock and I can't kill the Sanctuary Guard due to his magic resist. I am so close to uninstalling this shit heap of a game.