Hi folks,

I have been considring trying to do my very own little speedrun of Dishonored, but due to the particular nature of the game, there may be some thinking to do.

First : what would be worth it?
- A lethal/non-lethal mixed playthrough, since killing the main target always seem to be quicker with some exceptions ( Thinking about the pendleton twins, since you won't have to explore the golden cat and since robbing the art's dealer safe can bring you a nice amount of money which in turn will help to buy some very necessary upgrades like the muffled boots. Also Daud who is probably quicker to pickpocket than to fight. ).
- A full non-lethal playthrough, which would almost inevitably take more time than a lethal one ( bringing the Boyle sister to the kidnapper, killing the Lord Regent instead of stealing the audiograph then bring it to the tower ) ?
- Easy mode which is "lame" but quicker, or very hard which is more badass ?

I'd go for a full non-lethal run, but I'm unsure how killing some main targets can affect the rest of the game, actually. We sometimes get some nice rewards for letting the target walk away, but are we "punished" for killing them? How does that actually impact the Chaos rating?

Second : Runes technical question.
I never really bothered to buy Runes at Piero's. What I don't know is whether he will sell one rune per runes you missed in the previous mission, or if he will craft one rune total. Let's say I got 3/5 in my mission, will he sell 2? This could be quite important, since not having to worry about getting enough runes during the missions could then be offseted by buying Piero's Runes, providing you got enough money. Blink 2, Agility 2, Bend Time 2, and Possession 2 are probably mandatory to do a real speedrun.

Third : "luck" manipulation.
Manipulating the "luck" or memory is a recurrent thing in speedruns. As you may or may not know, the Charms are randomly generated - you won't always get the same Charm at a given location. We also know that loading the mission will force the game to re-generate the charms ( but not loading a quick, auto, or manual save ). Charms than improves anything related to time like faster choking, faster climbing, faster movement speed when carrying a corpse, faster movement with weapons drawn, and mana improvements like better mana regen, better max mana, are mandatory.
I feel it's unfair that some people could get a "perfect" Charms lineup during their playthrough while others would struggle with things like "better bolts, ennemy grenades take longer to explode, more health".


At any rate, a good "full" speedrun would be segmented to avoid hadaches. It also has to be a full campaign from start to finish, as replaying the missions don't work in regard to continuity ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oEmfV_seDk&hd=1 ) . Each mission time would go from the moment you get control of your character to the moment you loose it, including transition loading times ( so it has to be done on PC, as the PC got way better loading times than consoles. Saw a comparison some times ago ). Overall time on the other hand won't stop during cutscenes and loading times.

Any thoughts?

If your main goal is a speedrun, then do whatever saves you time in the long run. As you point out, that doesn't always correspond to what saves you time in the short run. So different people can experiment with whether saving time by killing now will be offset by chaos penalties later.

My understanding is that Piero sells one and only one rune. However, I haven't seen the theory that it might be variable before; now I'm tempted to do some experiments.

How do you feel about safes? Will you insist that people demonstrate finding the combination, or can they just open the safe directly?

The safes... Goot point. I hadn't think about that!
I think they can just open it directly - we all know, when watching a speedrun, that the player has been practicing, and practicing A LOT. That said, most of the safes I can think on aren't really on the quickest path... Maybe the safe in patchett's house during the Sokolov mission can be opened with previous knowledge of the code.

I suspect as much for Piero. One and only rune he will sell. Which would say that the biggest thing to plan before attempting a speedrun of Dishonored would be how much runes total we need to get the job done, how quick we need them ( sacrfice mission time in the first missions to grab'em all or slowly grind them as the plot progress ), and what powers are really needed. Shadow kill is probably a must have too for a lethal playthrough - no more bodies to hide. Money is a strategic thing to evaluate too. Should we sidetrack a bit to get that ￡300 Sokolov painting, or should we just hold our horses and grab the one that will be on the way later?

Heh. that's quite the planning to do. It's fun, actually.

If you're going for pure speed I'd just grab any runes/charms that are on route to the the main objective (i.e. no side missions) No need to get shadow kill if you're only planning to kill main targets. (Afterall, you can pretty much outrun everything else) So just grab agility and blink lvl 2 asap. Possession would also help with getting through stuff quicker (some rat holes are quick? but mainly you can get around walls of light/pylons while possessing an NPC) The wind ability might help as well to both quickly kill targets and get things out of your way. (Doors, people you name it)

The charm problem does add luck to it though.

I'm pretty sure killing main targets would always be faster, even on the twins, because you still have to save emily on that mission and heading back to slackjaw would take some time (rather than just running straight to the boat) Duad though should probably be skipped seeing as he puts up a nasty fight.