Ya know, I've always been one to try to keep elapsed time short in game... but during this playthrough of BG:EE, I've wasted a lot of time wandering back and forth and sleeping too much. I think I just hit 700+ days. I'm curious what's the most time you've ever spent moseying your way to Saervok.
I like to play as if there is some urgency also, not resting until fatigued or casters low on spells most of the time. Always full parties of 6. Occasionally I'll travel "inefficiently" if I want to run down a timer. Most of my games finish around the 90 - 100 day mark but the longest was 130 days IIRC.
it looks like party size determines how long it takes for me to get to Sarevok
i had a two man team there in 90 or so days
i have a 6 man team that was a gold piece run at 723 000 gold for 194 days
i think the most i have ever had for a BG 1 run was around 450 days, and that was using cheats to grow up levels when i had a level cap remover like 15 years ago
in SoA i had the days go into the 10s of 1000s because i turned rest until healed on and with shadow keeper i had just over 32 000 HP and was brought back down to a couple of HPs and so you literally go into comas to regain all those HP
sometimes when i play IWD i will get over 1000 days for a play through because my "cleric" is growing up in fighter levels first
Ah very true. I never use rest until healed because it is "unrealistic" so that keeps my days count lower. Rested 90 consecutive hours in Firewine Ruin and naturally healed critical injuries, yeah right. Breaks the fourth wall for me so I can't do it. Should be an interruption check every 8 hours.
I used to see other players screenshots with massive counts and think pfft, stop rest spamming and learn to play the game properly. I actually thought they were buffing up for every hobgoblin fight and resting to get their buffs back for the worg pack round the corner. In reality they probably had no cleric or loaded up on command spells because "rest until healed", makes perfect sense.
Ah very true. I never use rest until healed because it is "unrealistic" so that keeps my days count lower. Rested 90 consecutive hours in Firewine Ruin and naturally healed critical injuries, yeah right. Breaks the fourth wall for me so I can't do it. Should be an interruption check every 8 hours.
I used to see other players screenshots with massive counts and think pfft, stop rest spamming and learn to play the game properly. I actually thought they were buffing up for every hobgoblin fight and resting to get their buffs back for the worg pack round the corner. In reality they probably had no cleric or loaded up on command spells because "rest until healed", makes perfect sense.
I also don't try to break the fourth wall, but I just travel a lot... Seems to eat up time. I rest when I'm tired. but never for consecutive days.
I don't think I've kept everything, but I do have a good number of final saves going back to 2019 when I first installed SCS. Eleven of them, although two are essentially duplicates of each other - it looks like I replayed a short segment at the very end.
My four longest runs are games I didn't document on the forum, with the longest ending just before midnight on day 205. What did I do to drag it out that time? I rested repeatedly at the farm for the ankheg spawns, so that I could complete Imoen's level 6 dual before the Nashkel mines.
The shortest is my run "The Dukes Get Off Their Butts", which ended before day 30. For roleplaying reasons, that party barely strayed off the main quest's path. They didn't even visit the gnoll fortress.
The rest are all within a 30-day range, from a little under 160 to a little under 190. That's what playing completionist-style does, including that long trip on a boat.
with liberal use of story mode and ctrl-J, I'm raiding the Iron Throne tower by day 14 (got to day 13 before I even had to rest thanks to 18 CON) and that's after losing a bunch of time travelling via wilderness connectors trying and failing to find Brage before hitting Nashkel. A proper IGT run should be about a month?
EDIT: Yeah, it's possible to finish within two weeks, but you aren't resting if you do that. I'd say 30 days for a "proper" IGT run.
IGT? What does that acronym stand for? (Oh, right, must be "In-Game Time")
My 30-day run ... there was definitely some travel that wasn't strictly needed. A detour to the Friendly Arm to talk to Jaheira rather than heading straight south to Nashkel. Exiting the Nashkel mines from the bottom instead of the top, adding travel distance from the tombs. Clearing out threats near Beregost while waiting for our commissioned ankheg plate to be finished. Back and forth for Tenya's quest. Visiting the zombie farm. A shopping trip to Ulgoth's Beard.
Take those out ... I think you end up around 20 days. That's with an overpowered party so leveling isn't a concern and nothing is a real challenge, but sufficient rest. They had high levels, not high constitution.
this has got me wanting to do a "proper" story mode speedrun, both igt and rta (I believe Story Mode is disallowed for BG1 world records), to see what the limit would be. It's too bad Cloakwood eats up so much travel time, you could get your revenge within a week without the CW mines. Where's that world map mod that puts names and travel times on all the regions?
this has got me wanting to do a "proper" story mode speedrun, both igt and rta (I believe Story Mode is disallowed for BG1 world records), to see what the limit would be. It's too bad Cloakwood eats up so much travel time, you could get your revenge within a week without the CW mines. Where's that world map mod that puts names and travel times on all the regions?
story mode speed runs are great with a barbarian dual wielding scimitiars;
rush and kill drizzt, grab and use goodies
rush through game areas only that are needed
make sure to grab those sexy boots of speed in cloakwood so you are super fast
and you can beat the game in like 30-40 minutes no sweat
So, thinking about minimum in-game time ... I finally figured out where the travel info is in the game files (all on the .wmp world map) and collected it.
Here is the path of absolute minimum possible travel time in BGEE (assuming no sequence-breaking) for the main quests:
Exit Candlekeep with Gorion: time advances to midnight, then 7 AM. 24 hours after the start, and activity in Candlekeep is basically free. Incidentally, game time starts at 2100; it's counting from midnight of day zero, 300 to the hour.
Travel east, then south along the roads to Nashkel. 28 hours travel time.
Go east or south from Nashkel to the mines, and head down to confront Mulahey. Head up through the entrance you came in, then back north to Nashkel. 8 hours travel time.
Head north along the roads to the Friendly Arm Inn, stopping either in Beregost to deal with Tranzig or at the Coast Way crossing to interrogate Deke so that the bandit camp is revealed. 24 hours travel time.
Head east to Peldvale, then north to the bandit camp. 28 hours travel time.
Head west to the fishing village/ankheg farm, then south to the Friendly Arm. 12 hours travel time.
Head south to the first Cloakwood area, west to the second, north to the third, east to the fourth, and south to the mine. 60 hours travel time.
Go down the mine, then come back up and return to the Friendly Arm. 68 hours travel time.
Head north along the road to Wyrm's Crossing and enter Baldur's Gate. 8 hours travel time.
Do quests for the Flaming Fist until Duke Eltan is ready to send you back to Candlekeep. 24 hours travel time.
Go through the Candlekeep quests, then return to the big city. 28 hours travel time.
Complete the endgame. No more travel time.
Total ... that's 312 hours travel time. 13 days, plus whatever time it takes to actually do the key quests.
Some shortcut notes ...
In general, travel along the roads is much faster than off-road travel. While Brage will teleport you to Nashkel instantly if you solve his riddle, it takes 40 hours to reach him from the Lion's Way if you take the shortest possible path, 12 hours more than just following the roads.
Reaching the bandit camp is another interesting one with divergent choices. Making a deal with Teven or Raiken is not a shortcut; their cutscenes include the travel time you would have spent anyway plus an axtra hour. The shortest link to the camp is east from the fishing village/ankheg farm, but that's a fake link; the east edge of that map is not enabled for travel. If it were real, it would shave off twelve hours. As it is, entering the forest is necessary, and the best option is to do so for only Peldvale.
The Cloakwood links are weird; there are two spots on the way in in which there are multiple links between maps of different lengths. The southern edge of the Friendly Arm map gets you into the Cloakwood four hours faster than the western edge, and the western edge of the first Cloakwood area gets you to the second four hours faster than the northern or southern edges.
Most of why I was going for Brage is because the "Two-handed Sword, Cursed Berserking +3" is a solid asset that happens to be compatible with the Cloakwood Boots of Speed (I wound up using Spider's Bane for the story mode run since I had gotten lost coastwise looking for Brage)
And yeah, following the major roads is definitely faster - if you use the Brage Warp, you have to manually follow the roads back out of Nashkel to Beregost anyway.
A correction to my previous post: the link from the ankheg farm to the bandit camp is real. You don't have to enter the Wood of Sharp Teeth at all, except for the camp itself. The minimum required travel time for the BG1 plot is 300 hours, or 12.5 days.
Well, I decided to put things into practice with an actual in-game time speedrun. Build up a character in the Black Pits, then set them loose at ludicrous speed. Documented in the no-reload thread, starting here.
Including the Black Pits time, the total in-game time spent was 13 days, 5 hours, 32 rounds, 3 seconds (94695 game seconds).
If you level up a solo non healer on ankhegs with rest until healed on, the days really start to add up. I think I got my undead hunter to 12 before gathering the party. So that was probably a decade right there.
Well, I decided to put things into practice with an actual in-game time speedrun. Build up a character in the Black Pits, then set them loose at ludicrous speed. Documented in the no-reload thread, starting here.
Including the Black Pits time, the total in-game time spent was 13 days, 5 hours, 32 rounds, 3 seconds (94695 game seconds).
i just attempted this by starting the game fresh at the beginning on story mode and the time i got to sarevok my time was;
13 days, 6 hours ( according to the time at the bottom left )
by my save game was
12 days, 23 hours
i noticed as well, when travelling from area to area, the game already forces you to take the fastest path, which is good because then you don't need to waste time going to previous areas and walk through them to waste time, although the only real short cut was the one going to the bandit camp through the ankheg area, that shaved 4 hours off of the traveling time, but when you go back, for some reason it takes 8 hours instead of 4, weird
Time gets counted in more than one way. The time "day A, hour B" shown in game starts at 7 AM on day zero. The time "M days, N hours" reported on the "Load Save" screen counts the time since then, that player 1 has been in the party. They will normally differ by seven hours.
What I'm reporting is the latter (by looking at the saves in NI for exact numbers), so on that count you're about six hours faster than I was. Except that I had about eight and a half hours worth of Black Pits play before the main campaign, which I included in my total time. So I saved a few hours of main campaign time with my pre-stocked loadout of boots of speed, oils of speed, and potions of invisibility, but at the cost of twice as much time preparing that. My final save reports "12 days 19 hours".
Also, I was playing on Core Rules, so I had to worry about actually winning the few fights I engaged in. If you can just story mode through, you don't need that prep time.
The game tracks two internal time numbers that get recorded in the save.
Game time (game seconds): Starts from 2100, linked to those day numbers. 6*50*24=7200 per day. That's what we're trying to optimize here. It doesn't go up when the game is paused, but does jump forward when you rest or travel.
Game time (real seconds): I don't know what it starts from, but it starts counting before you even start playing. Maybe the beginning of the character creation process, maybe even before that. This goes up while the game is paused, but doesn't jump forward when you rest or travel.
Timer variables can look for either of these time numbers. Most romance events and banter checks are based on the "real seconds" time. Most quest timers are based on the "game seconds" time.
The number you have reported is clearly the "game seconds" time. Your 95474 ... that's 93274 seconds since the game began. Equivalently, 12 days + 22 hours + 45 rounds + 4 seconds.
My run did get through the main BG1 campaign faster than yours. But that's not where I started. I started the character as part of a four-member party in the Black Pits, before exporting the character and starting from the import. And I'm counting the time that party spent there (about eight and a half hours) towards my speedrun total.
My character started at Candlekeep with (a) more levels than the standard campaign's XP cap allows, (b) nearly full gear including boots of speed, (c) an effectively unlimited supply of oils of speed and potions of invulnerability, and (d) two items you can't get at all in the BGEE campaign. It just isn't fair to compare that with a character starting fresh from level 1 with no gear as i they were the same. That's why I added the BP prep time to my count.
I just ran another try at the speedrun. No Black Pits pre-show this time, just starting fresh from Candlekeep. Core Rules difficulty. LN gnome illusionist/thief.
Final game time 96187. 13 days, one hour, 31 rounds, one second since the start. Ending on day 13, hour eight. A clear improvement, though not as fast as story mode.
In the course of the run, I discovered something about the travel mechanics: when there are multiple edges of a map linking to the same destination, which edge you take does not determine the travel time. Instead, it seems to be whichever is listed last in the map file. The listing order is north, west, south, east.
So, at the two places this matters:
- Friendly Arm to Cloakwood 1 is 12 hours by the west edge or 8 by the south. South takes priority, and the actual travel time is 8 hours.
- Cloakwood 1 to Cloakwood 2 is 12 hours by the west edge or 16 by south/north. South takes priority, and the actual travel time is 16 hours.
With that taken into consideration, the total minimum travel time is 304 hours (12 days, 16 hours). I spent about nine and a half hours of actual game time on the maps (excluding Candlekeep).
Added in edit: OK, I gave the speedrun its own thread. I'll post the full version of my latest run there once I get some sleep.
There was an interesting bug (?) back in the original BG 2 version. I am not sure if it is still present in EE, but I have not heard anything about it in a long time.
Basically, if you had Spelltrap up (e.g. from Staff of Magi), were wounded and rested what happened is that the "cast heal on rest" spells get absorbed and you suddenly ended up resting like 50 days due to rest until healed.
>10,000 in-game days in IWD on HoF (a lot of resting without healing spells). ?
aren't comas wonderful?
Oh well, after each tough melee, my solo fighter (lvl30, >200HP) slept a lot, each time >50 days, in the middle of dungeons. ??
The monsters there must be very polite! ?
And very gentle(!), especially when U sleep 50 days at the crossroads of a dungeon full of monsters. ?
Seriously speaking, there should be different "sleepability" options for different locations. A distant dark corner is clearly more appropriate for sleeping than the middle of crossroads. ??
N.B. Actually, my fighter had a regeneration belt and 8 hours of sleeping would be enough to regenerate. So, this is a little bug. ?
Comments
Yep... Hey I figure it takes time for this crap to go down. Better 2 years than 2 months, right?
i had a two man team there in 90 or so days
i have a 6 man team that was a gold piece run at 723 000 gold for 194 days
i think the most i have ever had for a BG 1 run was around 450 days, and that was using cheats to grow up levels when i had a level cap remover like 15 years ago
in SoA i had the days go into the 10s of 1000s because i turned rest until healed on and with shadow keeper i had just over 32 000 HP and was brought back down to a couple of HPs and so you literally go into comas to regain all those HP
sometimes when i play IWD i will get over 1000 days for a play through because my "cleric" is growing up in fighter levels first
ah, comas, the best way to gain your HP back haha
I used to see other players screenshots with massive counts and think pfft, stop rest spamming and learn to play the game properly. I actually thought they were buffing up for every hobgoblin fight and resting to get their buffs back for the worg pack round the corner. In reality they probably had no cleric or loaded up on command spells because "rest until healed", makes perfect sense.
I also don't try to break the fourth wall, but I just travel a lot... Seems to eat up time. I rest when I'm tired. but never for consecutive days.
My four longest runs are games I didn't document on the forum, with the longest ending just before midnight on day 205. What did I do to drag it out that time? I rested repeatedly at the farm for the ankheg spawns, so that I could complete Imoen's level 6 dual before the Nashkel mines.
The shortest is my run "The Dukes Get Off Their Butts", which ended before day 30. For roleplaying reasons, that party barely strayed off the main quest's path. They didn't even visit the gnoll fortress.
The rest are all within a 30-day range, from a little under 160 to a little under 190. That's what playing completionist-style does, including that long trip on a boat.
Hah. My run in which I didn't allow either arcane or divine spellcasting only lasted 175 days. Basically average by my standards.
EDIT: Yeah, it's possible to finish within two weeks, but you aren't resting if you do that. I'd say 30 days for a "proper" IGT run.
My 30-day run ... there was definitely some travel that wasn't strictly needed. A detour to the Friendly Arm to talk to Jaheira rather than heading straight south to Nashkel. Exiting the Nashkel mines from the bottom instead of the top, adding travel distance from the tombs. Clearing out threats near Beregost while waiting for our commissioned ankheg plate to be finished. Back and forth for Tenya's quest. Visiting the zombie farm. A shopping trip to Ulgoth's Beard.
Take those out ... I think you end up around 20 days. That's with an overpowered party so leveling isn't a concern and nothing is a real challenge, but sufficient rest. They had high levels, not high constitution.
story mode speed runs are great with a barbarian dual wielding scimitiars;
rush and kill drizzt, grab and use goodies
rush through game areas only that are needed
make sure to grab those sexy boots of speed in cloakwood so you are super fast
and you can beat the game in like 30-40 minutes no sweat
Here is the path of absolute minimum possible travel time in BGEE (assuming no sequence-breaking) for the main quests:
Exit Candlekeep with Gorion: time advances to midnight, then 7 AM. 24 hours after the start, and activity in Candlekeep is basically free. Incidentally, game time starts at 2100; it's counting from midnight of day zero, 300 to the hour.
Travel east, then south along the roads to Nashkel. 28 hours travel time.
Go east or south from Nashkel to the mines, and head down to confront Mulahey. Head up through the entrance you came in, then back north to Nashkel. 8 hours travel time.
Head north along the roads to the Friendly Arm Inn, stopping either in Beregost to deal with Tranzig or at the Coast Way crossing to interrogate Deke so that the bandit camp is revealed. 24 hours travel time.
Head east to Peldvale, then north to the bandit camp. 28 hours travel time.
Head west to the fishing village/ankheg farm, then south to the Friendly Arm. 12 hours travel time.
Head south to the first Cloakwood area, west to the second, north to the third, east to the fourth, and south to the mine. 60 hours travel time.
Go down the mine, then come back up and return to the Friendly Arm. 68 hours travel time.
Head north along the road to Wyrm's Crossing and enter Baldur's Gate. 8 hours travel time.
Do quests for the Flaming Fist until Duke Eltan is ready to send you back to Candlekeep. 24 hours travel time.
Go through the Candlekeep quests, then return to the big city. 28 hours travel time.
Complete the endgame. No more travel time.
Total ... that's 312 hours travel time. 13 days, plus whatever time it takes to actually do the key quests.
Some shortcut notes ...
In general, travel along the roads is much faster than off-road travel. While Brage will teleport you to Nashkel instantly if you solve his riddle, it takes 40 hours to reach him from the Lion's Way if you take the shortest possible path, 12 hours more than just following the roads.
Reaching the bandit camp is another interesting one with divergent choices. Making a deal with Teven or Raiken is not a shortcut; their cutscenes include the travel time you would have spent anyway plus an axtra hour. The shortest link to the camp is east from the fishing village/ankheg farm, but that's a fake link; the east edge of that map is not enabled for travel. If it were real, it would shave off twelve hours. As it is, entering the forest is necessary, and the best option is to do so for only Peldvale.
The Cloakwood links are weird; there are two spots on the way in in which there are multiple links between maps of different lengths. The southern edge of the Friendly Arm map gets you into the Cloakwood four hours faster than the western edge, and the western edge of the first Cloakwood area gets you to the second four hours faster than the northern or southern edges.
And yeah, following the major roads is definitely faster - if you use the Brage Warp, you have to manually follow the roads back out of Nashkel to Beregost anyway.
Including the Black Pits time, the total in-game time spent was 13 days, 5 hours, 32 rounds, 3 seconds (94695 game seconds).
i just attempted this by starting the game fresh at the beginning on story mode and the time i got to sarevok my time was;
13 days, 6 hours ( according to the time at the bottom left )
by my save game was
12 days, 23 hours
i noticed as well, when travelling from area to area, the game already forces you to take the fastest path, which is good because then you don't need to waste time going to previous areas and walk through them to waste time, although the only real short cut was the one going to the bandit camp through the ankheg area, that shaved 4 hours off of the traveling time, but when you go back, for some reason it takes 8 hours instead of 4, weird
What I'm reporting is the latter (by looking at the saves in NI for exact numbers), so on that count you're about six hours faster than I was. Except that I had about eight and a half hours worth of Black Pits play before the main campaign, which I included in my total time. So I saved a few hours of main campaign time with my pre-stocked loadout of boots of speed, oils of speed, and potions of invisibility, but at the cost of twice as much time preparing that. My final save reports "12 days 19 hours".
Also, I was playing on Core Rules, so I had to worry about actually winning the few fights I engaged in. If you can just story mode through, you don't need that prep time.
does that also include pause time and looking inside your inventory time?
Game time (game seconds): Starts from 2100, linked to those day numbers. 6*50*24=7200 per day. That's what we're trying to optimize here. It doesn't go up when the game is paused, but does jump forward when you rest or travel.
Game time (real seconds): I don't know what it starts from, but it starts counting before you even start playing. Maybe the beginning of the character creation process, maybe even before that. This goes up while the game is paused, but doesn't jump forward when you rest or travel.
Timer variables can look for either of these time numbers. Most romance events and banter checks are based on the "real seconds" time. Most quest timers are based on the "game seconds" time.
The number you have reported is clearly the "game seconds" time. Your 95474 ... that's 93274 seconds since the game began. Equivalently, 12 days + 22 hours + 45 rounds + 4 seconds.
My run did get through the main BG1 campaign faster than yours. But that's not where I started. I started the character as part of a four-member party in the Black Pits, before exporting the character and starting from the import. And I'm counting the time that party spent there (about eight and a half hours) towards my speedrun total.
My character started at Candlekeep with (a) more levels than the standard campaign's XP cap allows, (b) nearly full gear including boots of speed, (c) an effectively unlimited supply of oils of speed and potions of invulnerability, and (d) two items you can't get at all in the BGEE campaign. It just isn't fair to compare that with a character starting fresh from level 1 with no gear as i they were the same. That's why I added the BP prep time to my count.
12 days 20 hours save game
13 days 3 hours in game time
game time; 94799
Final game time 96187. 13 days, one hour, 31 rounds, one second since the start. Ending on day 13, hour eight. A clear improvement, though not as fast as story mode.
In the course of the run, I discovered something about the travel mechanics: when there are multiple edges of a map linking to the same destination, which edge you take does not determine the travel time. Instead, it seems to be whichever is listed last in the map file. The listing order is north, west, south, east.
So, at the two places this matters:
- Friendly Arm to Cloakwood 1 is 12 hours by the west edge or 8 by the south. South takes priority, and the actual travel time is 8 hours.
- Cloakwood 1 to Cloakwood 2 is 12 hours by the west edge or 16 by south/north. South takes priority, and the actual travel time is 16 hours.
With that taken into consideration, the total minimum travel time is 304 hours (12 days, 16 hours). I spent about nine and a half hours of actual game time on the maps (excluding Candlekeep).
Added in edit: OK, I gave the speedrun its own thread. I'll post the full version of my latest run there once I get some sleep.
Basically, if you had Spelltrap up (e.g. from Staff of Magi), were wounded and rested what happened is that the "cast heal on rest" spells get absorbed and you suddenly ended up resting like 50 days due to rest until healed.
aren't comas wonderful?
Oh well, after each tough melee, my solo fighter (lvl30, >200HP) slept a lot, each time >50 days, in the middle of dungeons. ??
The monsters there must be very polite! ?
And very gentle(!), especially when U sleep 50 days at the crossroads of a dungeon full of monsters. ?
Seriously speaking, there should be different "sleepability" options for different locations. A distant dark corner is clearly more appropriate for sleeping than the middle of crossroads. ??
N.B. Actually, my fighter had a regeneration belt and 8 hours of sleeping would be enough to regenerate. So, this is a little bug. ?