Here's a win I achieved a few months ago before releasing the alpha7b version with the leaderboards in it: http://bytten.net/leaderboards/lenna/v1/?id=26 I thought it was a pretty fast time until HammerGuy started getting 25 minute times! Tricks I used: Using the 1.5x speed option in the main menu helped bring my time down from the usual 1 hour I was getting (but also made it harder). I'm pretty good at beating the Gammonpork boss (the green pig) without taking any damage. If I stand in the top-right corner of the room with my sword out, I only have to move when there's going to be a direct hit from a bomb. You can just about see that in the timelapse.
After fiddling around a bit with the challenges (and getting under 30 minutes in the 2x speed run category), here's what I found: (I'm still on the alphas, but most of this should still apply) The most important tip is don't clear rooms. While it may be your natural instinct as a dungeoneer or alpha/beta tester to explore or attack everything, trying to clear a room is time-consuming and risky to your health. To finish a level you just need to collect key items and find the exit. (Don't grab the coins!) There are three main scenarios where you have to clear a room: There's a key item in the room - you can check for this with the map. Most of the time you have to battle your way through the room, but in the first level you can usually just grab it and run. The doors auto-lock - in particular, if you see a sokoban puzzle in the room, it's near guaranteed to have locking doors. Look out especially for rooms that are "half-locked" where one of the exits is not a regular locked door and can be opened with a key/item. And most importantly, use the map to check if the room is a dead end (faster than scanning the walls for exits). If it is, don't step in it. It would be dangerous to cross the room otherwise - This is subjective but as a general rule empty rooms are not dangerous unless ranged enemies are near the exits. Clearing the room will be a tradeoff between the time/risk taken to clear it vs the expected hearts lost passing through the room. (Also take into account backtracking - for small levels or forks it's likely that you'll come back.) Otherwise, you can just run through the room. Here's where your survival skills come into play: Use water to your advantage. You can swim faster in water (holding C), but it's also good for when half the room is flooded and you can just swim along the wall to evade enemies. Getting in and out of water causes a delay though. Exploit the diagonal-pit glitch (before Tom fixes it!) to increase the effective area of the room to walk on, or for the 2x speed run, skip the spring and just run over gaps. Using the shield slows down your running, so use it sparingly. Navigation through the map is important too (and don't forget, opening the map doesn't pause the game). In the early levels of the game, colored doors are likely to be boss doors, so memorize their location. Large rooms (2x2 blocks of rooms without internal walls) usually offer easy access to multiple exits, which is good for exploring the map. In the later levels it comes down to finding a dungeon map, and the technique of "touching" rooms by entering and then going back may be effective for finding routes and shortcuts. Similar obstacles occurring in adjacent or nearby rooms typically indicate a "wall" separating the start room from the boss room. I typically use this to guess the general direction in which to go. If you have to fight, these are tips for specific enemies: Slimes: don't deal with them until you get the first sword upgrade. If you have to, get them stuck behind blocks and hit them through the block or around its corner. Make the most out of your slashing range by staying diagonal from them. Or you can run around to lure them together, and slash multiple at once. Skeletons: shield up and use a bow, or shield-walk towards them. The shift (strafe) key is useful for this. If you don't have a bow, you can sometimes improvise. Skeletons create the most difficult dilemmas, because they can deal a full heart of damage and it is not immediately obvious if there's a safe path to run through. Witches: melee them (in a diagonal direction) just before or just after they teleport, or use ranged attacks (including bombs). If you have the Silver Shield, you can get right in front of them and reflect the flame, and use the 2 seconds of burning time to move towards the exit. Tips for specific items: Swords: If you get the Tungsten Sword, dual-wielding improves your damage, which is very helpful for bosses. You can also use the Tungsten Sword to safely or quickly clear rooms. Bows: Arrows are practically everywhere, so fire away. If you're comfortable with using a bow+shield+sword, it can be very formidable in open rooms or against bosses. Or you can sneak around corners to shoot witches and knights. There's also a known glitch with the bow which can be exploited in a pinch... Bombs: You need reflexes to pull this off, but with practice it's easy to lob it a safe distance before an enemy can hit it. Their usefulness is limited, and I prefer not to use them in combat due to the risk of collateral damage. However, quite a few of the bosses are easier to kill with bombs. Shields: Push enemies into pits or water for an instant kill Interestingly, you can live dangerously by skipping the shield when it's first offered to you, and you will still be offered the Silver Shield later. Lighter: I don't use it for the simple reason that waiting for the flames to go out takes forever. There aren't any real tips related to time trials here. Missinglasses: Can be used to quickly verify that a room doesn't have hidden slimes in it. That's nearly all it's good for, and thus it requires some strategy to avoid wasting that one slot in the level it appears on. Either get used to partial or full-glitch view, or keep it in a fixed position in the inventory for quick access. Secrets: It's not really worth going out of the way to look for them, but sometimes the room generation gives it away, and then it's a matter of how lucky you get. At best you get to skip a boss, at worst... you might get life advice? Tips for getting heart drops: Take note of rooms with lots of bushes in them, those are the easiest to grab hearts from. (This does not apply to forest levels, of course!) Also, save bats and knights unless they're blocking your path. However, to avoid long trips back to those rooms, you can spend some time slashing small patches of bushes or throwing rows of pots. Wallspinners drop hearts when destroyed. Just keep that in mind while you do your sokoban puzzles, though that should not be your primary strategy for regaining health. Don't get too obsessed with being at full health! You might get an easy boss on that level, and being close to full health is enough for most bosses. However, beware the killer rooms, which seem trivial to run through but end up locking six skeletons in with you. P.S. Since Gammonpork typically appears on level 4 or 5, I prefer to dual-wield and spam swords/bows, which gets the job done much faster. It can take a few hearts of damage, but the time tradeoff seems worth it to me.
