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Released in January 2000, Nox tells us the story of a young man called Jack, who is sent into a parallel universe to a land called Nox. There he has to defeat the evil necromancer Hecubah, if he ever wants to return home. You can choose between three classes in this game, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The multiplayer gameplay of Nox could be described as "Quake meets Diablo."

 

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Wizard: 0:34:06 by Anders Örndahl, done in 15 segments.

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Author's comments:

Thanks go out to:
The SDA crew for being awesome.
Onin, Shyo, Gammadragon and Jabe on the SDA forum for help with route planning & tricks.

This run was done on the old 1.0 version of Nox, unlike my old run which was done on version 1.2. There are a 2 glitches that are fixed in the newest version which I use in the run:
Infinite jump - trying to cast spells while jumping will abort the jumping animation, but gameplay wise you'll keep hovering over everything you can normally jump over until you stop moving.
You can channel certain spells simultaneously if you cast them in the correct order, this lets you channel lightning and/or staff of oblivion while keeping a reflective shield up, as long as you cast the reflective shield last. Unfortunately fireball damage is very inconsistent in this version, so even though fireballs are only used early in the run, I have to grab a 2nd fireball spellbook.

Chapter 1: I use a physics glitch that we call "apple bump" to pass through a gate twice (credit goes to Shyo for this trick). This segment was improved later after Onin found this route improvement, so a few of the things done in this segment are done to keep it consistent with the following segment.

Chapter 2: here I use a trick I discovered that lets me move during the level up animation, which saves around 3 seconds every level up. It was later discovered by Shyo that you don't need to actually quickload, you can just hit F4 to open the quickload confirmation box and hit "No".

chapter 3: Compared to my old run, here I sell the sulfuric staff of recharge I got from chapter 2 in order to afford an earlier haste spellbook. Thanks to Onin for pointing this out when I was almost done with my run, had to redo the run from this segment forward. Saves almost half a minute though.

Chapter 4: Had to think of new strategies for the necromancer and warrior fights here thanks to the lack of sulfuric flare staff. The fastest way to kill the necromancer was to channel lightning and spam sulfuric flares simultaneously, but since I don't have the staff anymore I had to rely on lightning alone to deal damage. When the necromancer runs away and tries to go invisible, I have to hit him with a fireball. Instead of manipulating the warrior to just block flares, I go into a corner, place a few burns under him and just block his attacks with my staff. After the necromancer I take a small detour to pick up a 2nd fireball spellbook for later. The wizard fight is unchanged, but I pick up his lightning staff for later.

Chapter 5: Instead of luring an ogress out from her house and using swap location to get to the ogre lord like in my old run, I use a damage boost from an ogre's punch combined with the shockwave of my fireball hitting his face to bump through the gate. I use the lightning staff
against the ogre lord since fireballs are so unreliable in this version.

Chapter 6: This is one of the biggest improvements over my old run. I buy the trigger trap spellbook from the shop here. Instead of killing Horrendous slowly using lightning, magic missiles and help from the wizard npcs, I burst him down in a few seconds with 4 fireball traps and some fireball spam to finish him off.

Chapter 7: This is where infinite jump comes in handy, it allows me to run in a straight line through the lava. Also got a perfect demon boss fight.

Chapter 8: Just better execution.

Chapter 9: This is a tough chapter because it contains the only place where I think telekinesis sliding is viable for a speedrun. You do it by stacking telekinesis a bunch of times, then move your cursor as close to your character as possible, so that you push yourself backwards. This makes controlling the character very hard, but can save a lot of time if done perfectly. This could have gone slightly better in this run. The 3 necromancer fight is a bit easier in this version because you can channel lightning and reflective shield simultaneously. Doesn't save any time though because I have to wait for the lich to spawn anyway.

Chapter 10: Gammadragon found 3 useful tricks for this chapter:
- Placing a wall on a thick door lets you bump through it with telekinesis.
- You can create a gap in the moving stone blocks by placing a wall in their path.
- You can skip the double death ray by placing a wall to block one of them and using reflective shield to block the other, while sliding through using telekinesis.
Initially my method of skipping the double death ray was to use a wall + stacked push traps to bypass the death ray hitbox. later I noticed that it worked with fireball traps as well, saving some time from not getting the push spell, but gammadragon's method is the fastest since it doesn't require any traps.

Hecubah: Being able to channel the staff of oblivion and reflective shield simultaneously saves some time here.

Warrior: 0:36:29 by Maik Biekart, done in 22 segments.

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Author's comments:

Thanks for this run go out to Shyo, gammadragon and especially Pjoxt for constant suggestions, support, etc. And Nate's a pretty cool guy too.

While the Warrior run of Nox doesn't nearly offer the amount of tactical depth that the Wizard run does, it's still nearly just as fast, surprisingly enough. Before going into the segments, some term explanations:

(Apple) Bump: Items on the floor have some degree of physics. Therefore, if you drop a bunch of items right at your feet, they'll push you backwards. With enough force, you can push yourself through locked doors, gates, fences, etc. Apples are most often used, hence the name apple bump.
Charge: The charge ability makes the warrior sprint in a direct line at massive speed. The downside: hitting a wall while charging gets you stunned for about 1,5 seconds. To prevent this, I try to make sure to hit an enemy as often as possible, or to cancel the charge by swapping weapons (which keeps you stunned until the time where ordinarily your charge would end). Sometimes it's fastest to just eat the stun, though.

Intro:
Character creation, nothing interesting at all.

Segment 1:
The first step in this run is to get 9 apples for the first few apple bumps. For some reason, this vendor pays more for my clothes than any other vendor in the next areas, so I sell everything and buy out his apples.

To sequence-break directly into chapter 3, I perform what I call the apple reload bump; Quicksave while at a door, walk away from it, drop 9 apples at my feet, reload the save, and the momentum from a powerful apple bump is preserved, pushing me through the locked door while keeping 9 apples in my inventory.

Segment 2:
Being level 1 and completely naked makes this fight exceptionally difficult. To overcome it, I manipulate the pygmy mage's AI to run into a corner while I wack on it. When he dies, two more pygmy mages enter the room, but by slipping through the door at the exact same time I avoid their aggro entirely.

No matter how fast I do all the next pickups, I don't believe it's possible to reach the elevator while it's still down, so I have to wait for it.

Segment 3:
I use the minimum amount of apples possible for this bump so I can make a later bump more consistent. I could've entered the catacombs one elevator cycle earlier, but I'd prefer to have this healing potion. I pick up a Sword of Bewilderment, which causes confuse on hit. A well-aimed shuriken pushes a button from range to enter that next door.

Segment 4:
The necromancer fight goes well enough to excuse a 3 fireball Hecubah cycle.

The biggest downside to being level 1 is being unable to equip pretty much everything I've found so far. The only exception is the fire mace I pick up now, which I immediately use to murder zombies to get my experience up. I then position (too) carefully for the next segment, as this bump is pretty hard.

Segment 5:
The remaining 7 apples are necessary for this bump. Some zombies get me my level 2, giving me the invaluable charge skill as well as the ability to use my sword of bewilderment and my armor, all of this are necessary for the next bossfight. He dies in just over two charges, so I hit him a few times while confused before waiting near the gate for the last hit.

The rest of the segment is 7 accurate charges and a bunch of running. It's an easy segment to ruin, so at times I'm a bit hesitant, but the charge past the skeleton guard makes up all that time.

Segment 6:
Again a boss that dies by the time the second charge comes off cooldown. He only has two moves: Pull, which effectively does nothing, and Lightning, which destroys me. Obviously I want the most of the former.

The rest of the segment is stocking up on bump materials as well as shurikens for pretty much the rest of the game.

Segment 7:
Amazing luck as only 1 ogre spawns at the gate to the village; I had planned to kill 3 before attempting the bump. The rest of the segment is a bit sloppy, partially because the AIs act weird, but those ogres at the cage need to die for the next segment to succeed.

Segment 8:
The objective here is to free the ladies from their cage and escort them back to town. However, they're very prone to dying, which is an immediate game over. So, in order to keep them safe, I keep the gate locked, and enter and exit it with bumps instead. The incoming ogre gives a very small window of time, but just enough.

Segment 9:
This segment has some very tight charges, but otherwise is very straight-forward. Finally a boss that requires a bit more than 2 charges to defeat, so I whip out some shuriken for a faster last hit.

Segment 10:
I restock on apples (buying 11 instead of 9 because they're automatically eaten if you're low on hp, and I need to have 9 left), and proceed to bump into the tower before that drunkard can report me for not responding to his taunts (apparently).

Gallava Tower is the most difficult area of the game, with many wizards being able to one-shot you with a well-aimed fireball. The first two levels are still somewhat tame, giving me enough time to perform a bump, and to grab a pair of boots with increased movement speed. I keep stocking up on potions, I will run out if I don't.

Segment 11:
I skip almost all of the next level by forcing a purple wizard to Blink towards the exit and following him through the rift.

The fourth level I tend to refer to as That Room. It's pretty self-explanatory: Fireballs EVERYWHERE, and I have to go through 11 teleport pads (which are also used by wizards and even items, and have a cooldown time), activate 3 switches, gather 2 keys, and most importantly, survive without chugging too many potions. After finishing the segment, I realized I wasted a potion because I stood in a fire for a second or two, but it ends up not mattering.

Segment 12:
Level five is pretty simple, though the amount of wizards chasing me means I can't safely bump through the gate, so I just have to get the key instead.

Level six is the only mandatory fight in Gallava Tower. I wait for just a moment for charge to cool down before I engage, as comboing charge into warcry (which silences) causes the wizard to run into a wall and get picked off easily. I further use my trusty sword of bewilderment to keep them from casting anything at all.

I know those 3 healing potions looked delicious, but there's two final wizards on my ass and if either of them lands Slow on me, the segment is over, so I'd rather get out ASAP.

Segment 13:
Next up is the Temple of Ix. Bumping into the temple is surprisingly easy; it's possible to get through that locked door simply by running into it at the right angle. I haven't managed to get this consistent, though, so I use a shield for the bump.

This segment has some more extremely tight charges, as well as some random AI in the Beholders that has to cooperate (they also cast Slow). You're supposed to roll the boulders along the corridors, but they can also be broken with enough damage, so I just do that.

Segment 14:
The major random element here is the summoning stones. They can summon a wide variety of creatures, and if it's a pygmy mage and it hits a Confuse, the segment's over. In addition, my tactic on the rock golems is very risky, but it's the fastest way to kill them.

Segment 15:
Another segment mostly consisting of well-planned charges. Since the nymph fight blocks the exit with man-eating plants, I want to hang on to my charge so I can get out of there quicker.

Segment 16:
Pretty straight-forward, with mostly random mob AI being able to screw up the segment.

Segment 17:
Very precise charges throughout the segment, along with just health preservation: I want to end this segment at 9 potions for the final chapter.

Segment 18:
The hardest segment of the run, with just so many elements being able to screw up the run, especially random mob AI.
I stand still for a few seconds after flipping both switches waiting for the wall to move back so I can charge straight into that room, which avoids aggro on the gargoyles hiding in the alcoves. I survive the next room with a nicely timed level-up, then get gargoyles on perfect locations to get the long-range charges I need.

I pick up the greatsword before the vampire boss because it has knockback, which is the only semi-reliable way to deal good damage to him while avoiding his warhammer from one-shotting me.

Segment 19:
Losing the greatsword actually saves a bit of time as it hits slower than the halberd, and it means the lich doesn't slow or confuse me. The most important part of this segment is getting a fast iron golem fight, and this one is alost perfect.

Charging past the bat (which is another vampire) prevents it from aggroing me.

Segment 20:
By far the most inconsistent trick in the run, and therefore it gets its own segment. Since I have no other consumables left, I have to use 4 healing potions to do this bump, and it has about a 2% success rate.

Segment 21:
Since there are elevators leading to the next room, I want the lich fight to go perfect so I get an early cycle. I slightly miscount the damage taken by the lich king so the charge doesn't kill him and he ends up confusing me, but as I have to wait for the laser pattern in the next room, it's no time lost.

Normally, I intend to draw the golems and liches out of their alcoves with shuriken and then try to lure them into lasers, but sometimes they just feel like walking into that corner, not aggroing me, and then getting owned by lasers. That's totally fine with me.

Segment 22:
When completing the Staff of Oblivion, you're intended to bask in its power by murdering an army of minions. But I have 6 health potions left and I'm a Warrior, so I just run through, careful to dodge ghosts and liches' Slow or Confuse.

Killing Hecubah requires two charges and two pylons' worth of lightning channeling. Hitting a charge would normally cause Hecubah to blink away to safety, but if she's busy casting something else and I run backwards immediately, she sometimes won't. Aside that, I just pray she doesn't hit her Finger of Death spell, which for unknown reasons just doesn't always hit you.

Overall, the run has a few seconds lost on sloppy execution, but other parts with extraordinary execution or just good luck easily make up for it. With the currently known tricks, the planning is as good as optimal. Now the only thing left to do is bring this run down to one segment :)

Conjurer: 0:34:24 by Maik Biekart, done in 27 segments.

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Author's comments:

This category was supposed to be run by Shyo, but it turns out he's a quitter, so I took it upon myself to complete the list of segmented Nox runs. Thanks go out to Pjoxt and Gammadragon for help in planning, and Nate for coping with encoding my garbage files.

The Conjurer class walks a weird middle ground between the Wizard and Warrior. He has access to bows, crossbows, and decent armour, while also learning a handfull of spells. Most Conjurer spells are pretty underwhelming, though, which makes him fall back on a lot of Warrior and Wizard strategies rather than having his own bag of tricks. So, in order to make this run a sub-40 (before segmentation penalty), I had to pull every known trick out of the hat.

Glitches used include:
Infinite jumping - Cancelling a jumping animation with a spellcast stops you from landing, so the game considers you in jumping state until you cancel this glitch. This allows you to "walk" over rocks, spiders, traps, lava, etc. It's used pretty much anywhere it has the smallest benefit.
Bumping - Nox has somewhat of a physics engine, and the way we abuse it is by using high momentum to clip through gates, doors, fences, and even death ray lasers. Types of bumps used in this run include the apple bump, fireball bump, and newly discovered imp bump.
Reload cancelling - The crossbow, while an extremely powerful weapon, has a long reload animation during which you're not supposed to be able to move. However, this animation can be cancelled by casting a spell, jumping, or switching weapons. You still can't attack until the reload time has passed, though.

Chapter 1&2:
Reloading the autosave on game start puts the first elevator down for some odd reason. It saves half a second over having to push the button. The rest is just running through and grabbing the necessary items.
In chapter 2 I sell my clothes to stock up on consumables, all of which will be used for bumping purposes. The first such bump pushes me into the level transition trigger for chapter 3, so I never really get Conjurer training. I'm a fraud!

Chapter 3:
At this point, you're supposed to either have bought or now pick up a bow. But doing so would cost time, so screw that.
The mana mines are the natural habitat of imps, annoying little creatures that do a lot of damage and have a habit of chasing you down. I could in theory run past all of them, but I'd quickly run out of mana spamming Lesser Heal if I did. Killing most of them saves more time than constantly having to recharge my mana.
On the bottom floor, you're expected to draw the 4 scorpions out of that room, then kill them with the explosive barrels. But doing so not only costs time, but also makes it very likely for those idiot miners to stand in the fire and die. Keeping the scorpions alive is actually safer for them.
Perfect elevator cycles up to the top, Kreygasm.

Chapter 4:
If you've seen both the Wizard and Warrior runs, you'll know what to expect from this chapter. The first Necromancer fight gets skipped with an apple bump, followed by another bump through the fence to speed things along. Then, the Tomb Guardian and Keeper of Souls both die to strategically placed Burns, the same way the Wizard does.
What's important for this chapter, though, is the loot. The items dropped by the bosses are worth almost 2000 gold, and the tombs also contain two quivers of stun arrows as well as a fireball staff, both of which are vital.

Chapter 5:
The vendor in the Hamlet gives me a lot more money for my loot, so I sell it all here. I need 2700 gold by chapter 6, and the vendor there gives me a good 200 gold less.
The fireball staff proves its use here, giving me two fireball bumps into the ogre village, and some vital extra damage on the ogre lord to kill him before he kills me. I take a little bit more damage getting out of the village than I could've, but at least I survived with minimal time lost.

Chapter 6:
First order of business is buying Meteor 2, increasing its damage by 20, and Counterspell, which will end up saving a bunch of time as my only counter to Slow or Confuse spells.
Running all the way to Horrendous has no obstacles whatsoever. After the cutscene, I pick up 1600 gold's worth of armour for my last shopping trip. Then I take a strategic level-up, which will give me mana for the 3 Meteor casts I need at the end of the level, first to quickly break the barrels, then to kill the necromancer speedily.

Chapter 7:
The 1600 gold buys me a Boots of Haste for extra movement speed. Normally, you might want to invest in fire protection armour here, but again, doing so doesn't save time. The Conjurer's version of Gallava is easily the hardest of any class, so I have to segment agressively, but I'm pretty proud of the result anyway.

Floor 1 is skipped with an apple bump.
Floor 2 shows why this place is so difficult. Without armour, the ogres can shred me easily. Even with armour, demon imps can easily one-hit you with a fireball. And unlike the wizards in the Warrior campaign, these imps are ridiculously accurate. The only way to dodge their fireballs is with really twitchy movement, and luck. So where-ever possible, I prefer using Counterspell, or just killing them instead.
Floor 3 looks easier than it is. The two imps that shoot fireballs at me are really difficult to manipulate to not outright kill me, due to the level design. I do get a free crossbow here, though I can't use it yet.
Floor 4 features two new skips. The first is simply manually pulling a switch through the gate, originally foun by Shyo. The second is the imp bump: Demon imps explode on death, which has just as much force as a fireball, so it's ideal for bumping.
Floor 5 shows off some more imp AI manipulation and another imp bump.
On floor 6, I speed up the cutscene with two Burns, making the ogres die faster. Then, to activate the pressure plates, I need another trash item, and I need two imps to die in one meteor, so I can safely get my halberd upgrade.
Overall, it's not a perfectly clean Gallava, especially floor 2 is a bit sloppy, but I'm still satisfied with how it looks.

Chapter 8:
A lot of running, followed by two very tight tricks, followed by a lot more running. Don't ask me why boulders take damage from Burn, I'm not a wizard.
I want to spend only 2 apples bumping through the gate, so I have 4 left for the final applebump, but doing so makes it a pixel-perfect trick. To make matters worse, two rooms later I run into a pair of Beholders with extremely unreliable AI. I got extremely lucky that they decided to completely ignore me in this segment while I wait for the boulder to crumble.
The rest of the chapter is infinite jumping over everything, counterspelling Slows, not dying to the traps, and grinding out a good golem fight. I want to have 3 fireball charges left after this fight for use in the Swamps.

Chapter 9:
This segment was surprisingly difficult, especially considering how simple it looks.
I just leveled up on the golem fight, but I'm still one level too low to be able to use my crossbow. To fix this problem I kill as many man-eating plants as possible, and I don't lose a single second doing so. Since they're stationary, a single Burn will kill them, and I can just cast those while on the run. Except for that one at the end, which actively blocks my path, so he eats fireballs instead.
The most difficult part of this segment is grinding out a good Dryad fight. I first have to take as little damage from the little shadow before it, hence the Stun cast, and then I need the Dryads to cast as Confuse and Summon Plant, not Pixie Swarm. I can survive one, but a second would have killed me.

The second part of this chapter, the ogre stronghold, is pretty straight-forward, requiring only good crossbow accuracy and not dying.
The third part pretty much comes down to manipulating a good 3 Necromancer fight. The fight is on a 50 second timer, all I really need is to not die to the necromancers and then set up a quick kill on the Lich that spawns, but I wanted to make the segment look fancy.

Chapter 10:
So, as you might've noticed, I've been running around in my underwear for pretty much the whole run. That hasn't really been a big issue. Until now. Because chapter 10 is filled to the brim with gargoyles, who do a LOT of physical damage. The warrior survives that thanks to armour. The wizard skips past them with invisibility or other skips. I have neither of those.
My best bet for surviving the gargoyles is Meteor, which can one-shot them with a perfect hit, and strategic level-ups, to save me from just chugging potions endlessly and running out. The hardest part of this strategy is getting the multi-kills on meteor that I need in some segments, considering how fast 3 of them can murder me.

On the bright side, my crossbow makes extremely quick work of the bosses. The vampire dies in two bolts and two Burn casts, the iron golem dies in 4 bolts and one meteor. The second vampire, hilariously enough, gets its pathing confused by my running into the pillar, so he just runs into a death ray and kills himself.
The four apples I have left allow me to bump past the death ray lasers (a trick with about 2% success rate). Two more mini-boss fights are taken qquick care of with crossbow and Burns. The spinning laser puzzle shows off a bit more AI manipulation; the golems and liches seem to hear me flipping the switches, so they move slightly out of their alcove, but they can't aggro me from that range, so they eventually just die to lasers.

Again, unlike the Wizard with his invisibility and the Warrior with his armour and yolo-mode, the Conjurer has no skip available for the Staff of Oblivion room, so I just have to make do with killing everything as fast as possible. A small amount of time is saved by not killing the final golem, and I don't even recharge my staff before entering the final battle.

Chapter 11:
Before the first cutscene starts, I can just barely place a Burn in the doorway. Doing so prevents the ogre lord outside from coming in and blocking my way.
Now, all I need is to manipulate Blink to put me close to the cutscene trigger, and then for Hecubah to Blink close by so she immediately comes running for me again, and I won't have to chase after her. Since my staff barely has ay charge left, the best I can do is SPAM THE BURNS!

I'm sure we can all agree, Conjurer ending is best ending.

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