Released on November 18, 2000, Rune used an enhanced version of the Unreal engine that included a skeletal animation system and a new particle effects system. Unlike many games on the Unreal engine, the weapons in Rune are a medieval assortment. Knives, swords, maces, and axes are some of the weapons that can be collected along the way. You play as Ragnar, who is initiated into the Odinsblade, a cabal of viking warriors whose oath is to defend the runestones, Odin's magical creations that bind the trickster god, Loki, and prevent Loki from unleashing Ragnarok - the end of the world, according to Norse mythology.
Best Hard mode time: 1:36:09 by Bart 'TheVoid' de Waal on 2007-07-22, done in 49 segments appended to one file.
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Author's comments:
Huge thanks to the whole SDA staff for creating and maintaining such a wonderful place. Also huge thanks for the support/feedback from everyone who posted in my Rune thread on the forum.
This is my first fully completed speedrun and I'm proud that I can finally contribute something to SDA after being on the forum for almost 2 years... It took me about a year to complete the run because I was also busy with some other projects. I still have multiple projects going on now, but I'm going to change that because it doesn't really work. Better to stick with one project and just finish it.
Thanks to YautjaElder for giving me a hint that I should approach ledges from above and for the "walk through mountain" shortcut in the first segment which I saw in his testrun. Everything else you see in this run was found by myself, I love to fool around in a game in search of tricks and shortcuts, it's one of the greater aspects of speedrunning in my opinion ;) And after completion of the run I checked the internet for tricks or shortcuts, didn't find anything...
Anyway, this speedrun has turned out quite well. It was a pretty tough nut to crack because Rune is quite buggy and it has a lot of invisible ledges/walls and whatnot where you can get stuck at (That's why you can also see me walking on thin air sometimes in the speedrun). It can be improved a bit and I'm planning to do that myself sometime (Some more polishing, skipping a Runestone in the beginning part of the game till I get captured in the cave with the Wendol, trying to create some longer segments (If I'm not losing time with it that is, maybe I even fall back to creating more segments...) and also a bit better save optimisation, maybe skipping picking up a weapon/shield here and there although I never really get off-track but these are still minor optimisations) but for now I'll give the game a little rest and I'm going to finish another project. If anyone else wants to improve this run then please be my guest, but be warned that I'll improve your run again sometime ;)
If you have any questions or anything else to say about this speedrun, you can post it in my Rune thread on the forum. If you have a question about something that happened in the run, be sure to check out the segment comments below first because there's a good chance I already talked about it.
Well, enjoy the speedrun!
Alright, I think that should do for the intro text. Now onto the more detailed explanations of the segments/tricks and stuff.
This speedrun has been done on game version 1.07 and on Game Speed [100%] since that's the normal/standard speed, I think any speedrun for Rune should be ran at 100% (At 200% Ragnar becomes quite uncontrollable...).
In the video when a new level starts you will only see the loading screen, and when a new segment starts you will only see the precaching screen. I've made it like this for a little recognition of parts. I also edited those loading/precaching screens so that they last for a maximum time of 1 second.
As for the differences between Easy and Hard, the enemies are stronger and there are less items (Lizards/Mead/Leg of Meat, and these also give you less health, and if I'm not mistaken also less Runes of Lesser Power and Bloodlust Stones). The amount of enemies is the same I think although I'm not entirely sure about that. Also, when you fall down from great height, it causes more damage to you on Hard.
Some cutscenes in this game can be skipped and some can't be skipped. Don't ask me why... Probably because the ones that can't be skipped hold some more important information considering the plot or how to move on or something. Or maybe it's just bad level design. The subtitles on some cutscenes are also sometimes a little messed up, there wasn't much I could do about that except turning them off but I wanted to include subtitles.
Another thing to note is that when you load/start a level and the game is in its precaching phase, the player can already move/perform an action so that's why I'm often a bit further away from the place I actually saved at (Which is also the reason why I kept those precaching screens in the video because otherwise you would see these "skips/warps" every time I started a new segment).
Another important thing to mention is that the engine of this game is quite buggy, and because of that and because of me restarting quite a lot, you'll see some chops happening throughout the speedrun. Of course I've tried to keep them to a minimum but at some points I got a bit fed up with it and just left them in the segments. In some levels (Mainly some of the later levels in the game), the levels are a bit badly designed which causes frame drops and thus more chops were happening in those levels. Don't expect huge chops happening all over the place though, just sometimes it has a little screw up.
And another thing is that the enemies in this game are designed to be path blockers, especially Goblins. When you walk towards a Goblin, he will run away from you (Or walks towards you and attacks...) but he'll always stay in front of you to block you. They were quite a pain in basically any segment which contained Goblins because of constantly blocking my path ;)
The following are some general tricks for the game:
Here are some options that I have enabled/disabled in this speedrun of which I think that could be/are of importance to mention:
A bit more in-depth stuff about the segments. Some informative, some entertaining, some dull and some useless ;) I've provided quite specific time points (I was tempted to write them in milliseconds but after second thought that would be a bit "too" specific for run comments...) because otherwise certain things were a bit difficult to explain where they happened exactly. So these are just some tidbits of information, improvement points, funny situations or things that occured while testing/attempting the level and stuff like that. Read at your own risk ;)
[0:00:12] - From the house in front it's possible to jump on Sigard for an instant knockout and then you can grab his axe. Strong axe and with it you can kill Ulf in the Longhouse a little bit faster but it's slow to get it this way for a speedrun, so unfortunately I couldn't implement it.
[0:00:19] - This is the "walk through mountain" trick I saw in YautjaElder's testrun. You can walk around a part of the level through this way and you can even get to the ocean and walk on it. It makes for a little shortcut (Otherwise I needed to walk allllll the way around the mountain corner and the plant...).
[0:00:23] - Here the trigger for closing the door behind you is in the middle of the room and thus you can skip it. So you could collect all the weapons/shield and the Lizard and just walk out through the front door. Funny, but not really useful. Although it can be an alternate way of obtaining Sigard's Axe by just killing him (And/or other villagers...) with a weapon ;)
Also, the door that will be opened in front is triggered when the "text" from either the hammer/axe or sword, and the shield is shown. That's why I'm not losing time grabbing that shield because the text already shows up (Me having a bit of problems picking up the shield doesn't really look pretty though, but I'm not losing time with it).
[0:01:15] - In this battle you can't die most probably because that wouldn't be correct according to the story (Ragnar wouldn't be accepted in his village as a warrior. In other words, he would be a complete loser/wimp/pussy or however you want to call it...). The battle could've been done a little faster though, I actually just needed to hit Ulf once and then let myself get hit, hit him once and let myself get hit again until my health reached a certain point where I wouldn't get damaged anymore and then fully attack Ulf. I should also have skipped picking up the Lizard earlier because then I would have a little less health so that I could fully attack Ulf sooner. The reason I kept this attempt is because of the cutscene at the end of the level.
That is one very random cutscene. Sometimes it speeds up (At random speeds), and sometimes not. The speeded up cutscene which you see in the speedrun is about the fastest you can get. I did once get a little bit faster cutscene but it's very random so I was satisfied with this one. I've searched/checked and tried all kinds of things but couldn't find anything that triggered this speeded up cutscene (The reason you see me jumping around and attacking and stuff after I defeated Ulf is because I was hoping to get a speeded up cutscene, and behold, it miraculously happened this time, hehe).
At the end of this segment (Just before the precaching screen) you'll hear the sound for a very short moment of me getting into the main menu to save. I've got no idea why this is the only place where you can hear this sound.
[0:02:19] - Those "chops" you see happening in this water part aren't chops actually. They're just quick (You could maybe call it choppy...) camera turnings.
[0:02:49] - All the way to the left side in the back is a little platform where you need to break the grate on top of the building and fall into it, and I found a shortcut at that place. From the platform below you can get on top of the building in a strange jumping way along the building but I couldn't get it done while recording... Too bad, it would've made a nice shortcut.
[0:02:51] - If you played this game then I'll bet that this big fish (Which I like to call "The Nightmare Fish") has probably scared you quite a bit on your first playthrough ;) If I'm not mistaken, you'll encounter him 4 times. He looks pretty nice with the lamp above his head.
[0:02:57] - A bit tricky jump part (Hence me saving before it). At the first jump you must not get too close to the wall or Ragnar won't grab the ledge, and when you're next to the ledge turn the camera 45 degrees so that you're facing the ledge in order to get a climb-up (This sounds logical, but it needed to be done quite precisely). The main trick at the second jump is the little invisible ground part I'm walking on and jumping from, and then it requires a certain mouse motion/movement and at the right time pressing the right directional key. Et voilá watery tower part has been skipped.
[0:03:56] - It's possible here to not have a climb-up, but if I wouldn't have such a thing, the plant enemy would've probably hit me. But it should be possible to not have a climb-up and also not get hit, just depends on the randomness of the plant enemy. The rest of the segment was very good so I kept it.
[0:05:27] - In the beginning of this segment you can go down in 2 ways. From this point just go forwards, drop down on the platform and then drop all the way down and land on a slope so you won't get killed, and then you need to perform some other jumping and grabbing to continue. The other way is the way I use which is a little bit faster and much easier to do, unfortunately in this attempt I didn't capture Ragnar screaming "Aaahhh !!!" while falling down and grabbing the ledge :)
[0:06:13] - Don't you just love the effects in this game?
[0:06:18] - The reason I'm jumping here all the time is because of... you guessed it, the path blockers also known as Goblins.
[0:06:47] - This is some messed up little ledge. As you can see I'm having a bit of problems grabbing it, but this was about the fastest I ever got. Just mash the jump button below the ledge.
[0:07:07] - Walking along this side of the hole will skip the unskipable cutscene (That sounds rather funny). Dropping down required a certain approach/bit of luck in order not to get any damage. Sadly at the bottom part I wasn't able to grab the rope from any place there, instead I need to wait for the timed event of the rock falling down. From each and every spot I tried to grab the rope, I was always just inches away from grabbing it. There was only one time when something strange happened. I was able to stand still on a small plant pot for some weird reason (Normally Ragnar starts slipping off the pot and you can't jump off the pot), now if you could do that on a big plant pot you could most probably grab the rope but unfortunately I was never able again to reproduce such a thing.
I'm standing on this weird little edge of a rock so that I can quickly jump on the fallen rock, I could maybe jump a tad sooner but it's pretty optimised because if you jump too soon you'll get either squashed, you'll fall down or you grab the rock.
[0:08:01] - This is another one of those messed up ledge parts. Before I jump on the lower part I'm having a short pausing moment because otherwise there's a high chance of bumping against some upper invisible part and be bounced back.
[0:09:15] - I bumped a bit against this Goblin and the next Small Crab... Can be improved. This whole part was pretty difficult because of the Big Crab and the Goblin near those rocks which I need to break to continue. So I came up with this strategy which was often quite effective, I just let the Big Crab and Goblin fight each other while I take care of the rocks. Sometimes other enemies interfered but often they kept their distance (An improvement thing here would be to use the triple attack more often to destroy the rocks a bit quicker. But if I would move back there's a higher chance that the enemies will come to me, but it should be doable).
[0:11:08] - I make a very short detour here to grab the first Runepower block, this one could be a potential candidate to be skipped in the rerun.
[0:11:26] - In case you're wondering, I wasn't able to immediately jump from the second cage to the other side, you just can't make it because of the cage going down which gives you a weird downwards jumping motion. The jump to the other side after the cage goes up was pretty much perfect.
[0:11:52] - Now this is a weird shortcut. When I position myself between the wall and the door part, I don't get killed. Instead I get pushed inside the door. When I'm inside the door, I crouch (Walking doesn't work and I need to keep the crouch button pressed) against the slope next to the door which then somehow puts me in about the middle of the door. If I let go of crouch, I'll fall back to the ground again. When I'm in the middle, I crouch towards the end of the door which then somehow puts me on top of the door. And from there I can jump on the wall and continue, so I've skipped the Small Armored Crab fight. Why it works like this? I've got no idea :)
[0:12:42] - This is also something funny. When I stand on the handle, the Skeletons won't attack or come towards me. Again, why exactly, I don't know... Because when I would stand on another higher place, they will still jump and attack me. So it probably has something to do with a "model". This works with every handle in the game if I remember correctly.
[0:13:41] - See the bridge in front (Which you will cross later in the game)? It's possible to get up there by the use of the Big Crab glitch. The only problem is, both doors on the ends of the bridge are closed. And even then there's nothing behind those doors except a small dark room on each side. This isn't the same level as the one you'll get to later so sadly it couldn't be used as a shortcut, otherwise that would knock off a lot of time.
[0:14:03] - The reason I unequiped my weapon is because only then I can automatically grab the Torch which triggers the door to open. I could've kept the Torch a little longer so it could lit my path a bit though, but ah well... :)
[0:14:41] - On the right side of the gong there's this big building (Which I'll enter later on) in the middle of the lava lake and it's possible to jump to that place from the gong platform and grab a spike wall part so you won't get damaged/killed. But then you need to jump on a few such spike parts and then climb up a rope which appeared to be slower than the intended route. Also, after I hit the gong, I bump into the Skeleton a bit so that he does a melee attack (And misses me) instead of his breath attack (Which has a very high chance of hitting me). I could've let myself get hit a bit though since there are 2 Lizards at the end of the level.
[0:15:08] - Hah, I tried to keep the Skeleton at the same place so that he would be caught on fire, but I failed quite miserably ;) I love the way I dispose of the second Skeleton in this part! Had a bit of trouble with the third Skeleton though...
[0:16:37] - For some reason I never got a fast climb-up on this ledge, even though I approach it from above. Maybe I didn't get it because I approached it from WWWAAAYYY above? I'm not sure. The jump is quite neat though, the same with the jump from the rope (By the way, I could've jumped to the rope immediately instead of the platform, but that way appeared to be slower because of climbing up the rope quite a long way). I need to descend the rope a little or otherwise I would bump against the rock and in this attempt it went pretty much perfect. A little higher and I would bump against it even though it doesn't really look like that, just remember, invisible wall thingy parts are everywhere ;)
[0:17:14] - This was the fastest and most reliable (And awesome) way of killing the Skeleton quickly (Killing him triggers the rock to fall down that squashes the Goblin so I can climb on it to continue. I couldn't find any other kind of shortcut to get past this part). Decapitating the Skeleton appeared to be more difficult/time consuming because the Skeleton has an invulnerability moment when he scriptedly walks to that spot and stands there for a short period of time, and there's a high chance of knocking him down instead of killing him. Knocking the Skeleton in the lava is more difficult then you would probably think. The aiming needs to be precise and it even happened several times that I knocked him in there while he still had his invulnerability moment going on (And the invulnerability stayed when he was in the lava) and therefore he didn't die but just happily ran around on the bottom of the lava pool...
[0:17:22] - It's possible to get a fast climb-up here. Little improvement point.
[0:17:57] - This Skeleton was funny. First when I attempted this segment, I just tried to run past him on the left side but then he as good as always attacked me and thus also hit me. Whenever he hit me in the attempts, I always yelled to myself "Smack in the face!" because it happened very often :) To make going past him more consistently, I equiped the Viking Short Sword and just knocked him down.
[0:18:06] - There's quite a high chance of getting caught on fire if you jump like this, if you're just a little too much off to the right, you'll burn in hell! Grabbing a shield while I'm at it, always try to keep the best shield equiped. I'm destroying the wall (And some barrels, and a bench) with the Viking Short Sword because of its fast attack rate.
[0:18:16] - Now this is some nice shortcut. First I always waited for the Goblin to push the rock out of the wall and then I jumped from the fire pot (Which is just decoration, that's why I'm not caught on fire) to that open space and grabbed the ledge (Which is quite difficult to do hence the bit of lining up). But then I found out that I can just throw a weapon at the rock to destroy it so I came up with an, as I called it, "awesome scenario" which was throwing the Rusty Mace against the rock, then jump to the fire pot while grabbing the Rusty Mace again in mid-air. I've executed this so called "awesome scenario" a few times but grabbing the Rusty Mace was often very tricky to do fast because it could randomly bounce in any direction. It even happened a few times that the Rusty Mace destroyed the rock but then went through the hole. Later on I found out that I could grab the Rusty Mace again at the end of segment 11, so now I just throw the Rusty Mace without trying to pick it up again and that made this part much easier. Also, actually picking up the Runepower stone was faster than automatically picking it up because I would need to walk around the wall a bit. This Runepower stone could be a possible candidate to be skipped in the rerun.
[0:18:42] - There was something strange with the subtitles in the next cutscene. When I activated the cutscene more from the right at this spot, the subtitles became a little messed up (A sentence disappeared faster). But when I activated the cutscene from the left like I do in the speedrun, the subtitles behave correctly. Once again I've got no idea why...
[0:19:23] - It's possible to jump on the platform without having a climb-up but then you would need to wait a little bit longer, so the time it takes in both ways is about the same (Not to mention that if you wait a little, there's a high chance a Skeleton starts interfering). The reason the screen stays red for a moment when I activate the handle is because when Ragnar performs certain animations like pulling a handle, he becomes invulnerable. And just before I activated the handle, I got hit by a bolt so that's why the screen stays red for a moment.
[0:19:44] - This is such an awesome moment. If you watch this frame by frame, you can see that I jump "exactly" in between 2 blades just before they retract into the apparatus. Which means I was just a frame away from getting gibbed to pieces :)
[0:19:53] - The fire in Rune is quite strange actually. It's possible at this spot to go a little sooner through the fire without getting hit. The starting up animation of the fire and the going out animation of the fire are moments where you won't get hit, the same can happen with steam.
[0:20:01] - I walk against the wall to the right to avoid bumping into the Goblin, but then I need to move a step to the left because otherwise I would be stuck in the wall at the corner part.
[0:20:03] - This part was quite annoying because of those 3 Goblins and I'm also not happy how it turned out in this attempt, but because the rest of the attempt was pretty good I kept it. The Goblins were blocking me (As usual) so I couldn't go through the hole fast enough. It's possible to stand on the little ledge next to the grate and crouch through the hole quite fast, I now lost like 2 seconds or so because of the damn path blockers :) I could've maybe killed one of them but then they would probably hit me too. I couldn't come up with any real good strategy here.
[0:20:17] - It's possible here to keep running/jumping on the railings instead of the pathway, would save a little bit of time.
[0:21:08] - I always love these moments, jumping backwards and performing a 180 degree turn in mid-air and then landing perfectly. It didn't go entirely smooth this time though.
[0:21:17] - The reason I go through the door from the right (While I need to jump off the bridge on the left) is because the Skeleton on the bridge was mostly a pain in the ass when I went through the door from the left side. But of course this time he wasn't even there...
[0:21:24] - I could maybe grab the shield on the wall while waiting for the door to open. It's always better to have a better shield :) Also, it would've actually been better/a little more direct walking to go through the next part from the right instead of the left path.
[0:21:42] - Ragnar is the one that activates the end level trigger in the elevator (So it's not the elevator itself because you can activate the elevator from the outside but then the end of the level isn't triggered) so I'm not entirely sure why I waited in like the middle of the elevator... Would save a few milliseconds.
[0:22:06] - Jumping down was pretty difficult because of landing on the exact spots without getting hit too much or simply dying. It went very good in this attempt.
[0:22:15] - There's a reason I attack and block the Goblin because if I wouldn't do that and just continue walking to the door, the Goblin would walk in front of the tomb and then when I would be at that spot, the door of the tomb would kill me. So that's why I'm halting the Goblin a bit.
[0:22:38] - Ugh, this is a mistake that has haunted me for the entire duration of creating the rest of the speedrun ;) I need to destroy the ground part here and when I attacked, I forgot to crouch before attacking and that's why I'm not destroying the ground part so I needed to attack again. I'm only losing like 700 milliseconds with this but it just doesn't look good. Luckily the second attack destroyed the whole ground part so I kept it.
[0:22:55] - This is nice, activating both handles through the wall which saves me from going a bit through those tombs and dealing with Skeletons. Gotta love funkynistic design.
[0:23:03] - Ah, here's such a walking through fire moment again and as you can see I walk through it while the fire is in its starting up animation, thus I don't get hurt.
[0:23:22] - This door has always been bugged for me, somehow its animation is just a little borked up.
[0:23:33] - This part went very good, the sound of gibbing Skeletons is awesome ;) I need to auto-grab those 2 Lizards because if I would want to activate the handle right away, I would grab the Lizards instead. Also, pay attention to the way I get out of the room past those blades, very nicely done if I may say so myself because it's easy to get gibbed if you're this close to the blades. All the 3 rooms were done pretty much perfectly.
It's possible to destroy the big wall yourself that eventually will be destroyed by the lightning, but unfortunately the wall/door behind it is closed and I couldn't find any other way to open it besides activating the 3 handles.
[0:25:22] - This was a very tricky jump because I needed to walk alongside the wall and jump on the very last moment off an invisible ground part so that I can just barely make it to the other side. Saves some time because otherwise I would need to wait for the fire on the other side of the room.
[0:25:55] - This part has been done quite smoothly. The nice thing is that you won't get killed by the door or otherwise I needed to do time consuming stuff with the Skeletons ;)
[0:26:04] - Great Goblin extermination, I'm happy I captured it, hehe.
[0:26:40] - Some weird clipping through fence trick which gave me some time to consume 3 Lizards. I also show that the trick only works when you jump in the corner and then crouch instead of just walking against it and crouching.
[0:26:56] - You maybe wondered why I didn't pick up the Roman Sword back in segment 12? Well, this is why. The Roman Sword (Great weapon for decapitating Skeletons) along with a Leg of Meat and a Viking Metal Shield just lies in front of the Skeleton fighting room. Much quicker to pick up this way.
The Skeleton fighting room... Really a terrible place. Simply because decapitating Skeletons is very tricky, especially to do it fast and in 1 hit without knocking them down. Sadly a few Skeletons got knocked down but it's near impossible to get fast 1 hit decapitations on all the 19 Skeletons. I could never decapitate the fourth Skeleton in 1 hit ever for some weird cursed reason. If you can kill all the Skeletons faster than me and without knocking them down, then you've got my respect! :) I must admit that I got a little lost sometimes as to where the next Skeleton(s) would be spawned, I think I just restarted so much that I just got confused in some attempts including this one ;) It doesn't matter too much though since I either decapitate them right away or knock them down but then other Skeletons were approaching me. Still it does look a bit clumsy.
All in all a very troublesome area this is. Luckily the second phase is very easy, boring even. That's why I'm doing a little head dancing (Almost screwed up though...) while waiting for the door to lower down far enough.
[0:30:28] - Heh, this can be done in any moving elevator, pushing the handle model around a bit. If my memory serves me well, there was even 1 elevator where you could do it while the elevator wasn't moving and then you could walk around the elevator, standing on the handle and activating it so that you would enter the end level trigger faster. But of course the process to set it up like that would be slower.
[0:30:54] - This was a pretty tricky trick. Jumping off the falling rock and then throwing my weapon in mid-air to destroy a part of the wall AND the weapon needs to go through the wall in the right way so I could pick it up again (Needed to detour just a little bit...).
[0:31:11] - Perfect handle activation, you don't even see the handle go up :)
[0:31:20] - In cutscenes Ragnar is invulnerable, so you can hear the Skeletons attacking me but I'm not getting damaged (Can't say the same about my shield though...).
[0:31:51] - In this final elevator room I need to walk to about the middle of the room or otherwise the handle can't be activated. After the handle activation I position myself on the handle so that the level ends a bit sooner.
[0:32:15] - On your first playthrough you get out of the elevator and start to wander around the same area a little bit to search for stuff and Odin starts to talk here. Of course I'm not going to wait for Odin to appear and talk to me so that's why you can very silently hear him talking a little bit and then he stops, but the subtitles just keep going :)
[0:32:59] - A very nice little shortcut by jumping on top of 2 trees to reach the opposite side. Most trees/bushes and such have a solid top part, but this was actually the only place where they were truly useful.
[0:33:09] - This is a perfect example of an invisible wall. You may ask yourself why I didn't walk more straight to the entrance back there. The reason is the invisible wall part of which I bump a little bit against its corner at 00:33:08.533...
[0:33:21] - This level had some strange bug in the beginning which happened sometimes (After like every 20 attempts or so), then all of a sudden it was like all the input from the keyboard/functions were disabled all at once and I couldn't do anything anymore. Even some textures turned to black. It was like the game just shutdown itself in some way.
[0:33:40] - It may look like it but I'm not losing time by swimming towards the ground so much. The reason I do that is like a habit because of the hole I need to go into in a moment...
[0:34:13] - I needed to jump to a specific spot here in order not to get a climb-up.
[0:34:19] - Did you know that when you jump on such a bridge, you can fall through it? :) I can remember it happened one time that I jumped on the bridge just before the ground part and fell through it...
[0:34:35] - Here on the left side is a little house kind of thing much like the other house thing I jump onto further ahead, but here at the one on the left I could use a little bridge bouncing and then get on the house and continue from there. But the bridge bouncing and getting on the house/trampoline was VERY tricky to do fast (In other words, I never succeeded doing it fast in 1 go...), so I used the other way instead.
[0:34:47] - The reason I walk a bit more to the middle of the bridge is so that the Goblins won't start blocking me.
[0:35:28] - Here I activated the Magic Shield Runepower from the Viking Short Sword because I had one Runepower stone too many, this indicated that I can skip a Runepower somewhere up till this point (In the next level you lose everything including the Runepower blocks).
It's also possible here at the end to land on a mushroom without activating the cutscene (The cutscene is activated when you touch the ground), but I couldn't find a way to get out of the cage (And with cheats I checked the area outside of the cage but there's nothing there, the end level trigger is activated by activating the cutscene). Still funny though. It also happened a few times that Ragnar almost fell out of the cage in the cutscene because he just clipped through it too much.
[0:36:29] - This is some very nice shortcut to get through this part quite quickly, and I must be rather fast or otherwise the Torfar-Kolla (Mister Wendol) destroys the cage I'm in. The reason I climb on that little part with a torch on it and then jump on the Goblin to kill him is because from any other spot I couldn't deal enough fall damage to the Goblin in order to kill him. I needed the axe from him but he also gave me his shield, very friendly Goblin.
The long beetle cutscene indicates that I'm leaving the underground, on to Thorstadt!
The beginning part of this level was very VERY dark, not really funny. Of course I can't afford to pick up a Torch somewhere so I'll just do it as good as blindly ;) And I kept restarting to get fast climb-ups only in this dark part. After quite a lot of attempts you get a bit of a feeling how to go through it, but still it was easy to mess up.
[0:39:10] - It's possible here to jump on the higher place without getting a climb-up but an invisible roof part makes that troublesome. I got a fast climb-up so I continued. Could be improved though.
[0:39:24] - Here you can slide up the wall and get on the higher part also without a climb-up, and as you can see I tried it but failed. Again I had a fast climb-up and the rest of the segment was going very good so I kept it. Little improvement points though.
[0:39:39] - It's almost not noticable but here I'm having a very short pause in movement which enables me to get a fast climb-up here.
[0:39:47] - Hah, see the Wendol running and... gone ;) Gotta love scripted events, I'm just faster than the game's intention.
[0:40:29] - While I'm waiting for the door to open, I jump into that slope part where I slowly slide up. Using this method you can get up there and around/behind the castle and then even go under the hills.
[0:40:53] - When I walk on that elevator thing, I'm triggering it to fall down and when it reaches the bottom, the level ends. So I get off the elevator and just wander around the room a little till the level ends.
[0:41:29] - You can see a weird stuck-up for a moment at this place on the stairs, that happened quite often at that spot. I'm not sure why, probably just one of those invisible wall thingies again.
[0:42:06] - Even though it looks very easy, it was actually quite tricky to do. If I would walk up the bench just a bit too far, I would bump my head. If I would walk just a bit not far enough, Ragnar won't grab the ledge because of not enough height. So you need to jump the very moment you touch/get on the bench.
[0:42:16] - After I've grabbed the Runepower I hold up my shield for a moment and jump on the higher place. You can't pick up the Runepower automatically when you're using your shield, so it needed to be done pretty rapidly in order not to get a climb-up.
[0:42:31] - Nice way of ending the level, almost forgot my axe though...
It's possible in the beginning to destroy the door "silently" by attacking it at a specific moment in a specific way of which I'm not entirely sure how exactly ;) I didn't capture it this time though.
[0:42:54] - Very nice roof jumping shortcut and quite tricky to actually get on the roof. Grabbing that first ledge is not as easy as it seems (Which is often the case in speedruns :)). You actually need to stop in front of the ledge, jump and when you're at the highest peak of the jump, press forward and hopefully get a climb-up if the position was good. The next climb-up can also quite easily fail because of the cramped space/low roof. I got a fast climb-up at the second ledge which is pretty rare, and at the end of the level I got a slow climb-up where I could've gotten a fast climb-up. But because of the rare first case, I kept it. Could be improved a bit.
[0:43:37] - It's possible to block the Wendol in the cutscene and so it can't reach the wall, but the wall still gets destroyed anyway. Yay for scripted events!
[0:43:46] - Ah, fighting parts... Well, I'm using a kind of middle fighting approach by using a medium weapon with a fast triple attack. Bigger weapons are of course a bit stronger but they're also slower. This worked pretty good. And on top of that, the first Dark Viking is a little stuck (Which happened sometimes, a little AI retardation...) which makes for an easy kill. Also, I'm picking up his weapon (Viking Axe) because its Runepower (Ally) is going to be very useful in the next battle (I don't need the Tri-Mace from the other Dark Viking so that's why I kill him as second so that I don't have to worry about picking up his weapon).
[0:43:57] - I'm hitting the first Dark Viking in this hallway because otherwise there's a very high chance that he would block my path.
[0:44:00] - There's a reason I'm not walking in a straight line around the corner here, instead I walk forwards so that the 2 Dark Vikings on the left see me sooner and therefore they walk away faster in their scripted way. If I would try to walk in a straight line around the corner, I would interrupt their scripted behaviour and they would immediately come to me and attack me. Breaking both doors was done faster with the current medium weapon I'm holding, with bigger weapons I still needed to hit the doors 3 times, and bigger weapons attack slower...
[0:44:39] - I could've gotten a fast climb-up here, little improvement point. I'm also grabbing the Rusty Mace here because I need it for the Big Crab glitch later in the game, this was the only place I could find to grab this weapon in the fastest way possible.
[0:45:03] - In order to trigger the second phase of this battle, I need to kill these 2 Dark Vikings (Or make them allies which equals to them being killed). After that a little collection of weapons for my weapon collection ;) I'm a little careful with fighting in the second phase because as you can see they can knock off quite some health, and this place resulted in a lot of deaths...
[0:45:59] - Got a little bump against the wall which doesn't look pretty (And wastes a little bit of time). Also, the jump over the second gap could be improved because it's not needed to get a climb-up there (I even got a slow climb-up...) although you need to jump from the very last moment which can easily go wrong (I could've segmented before these gaps though).
[0:46:06] - When I walk forwards and then immediately back, it triggers the door in front of me to close and the door in the back of me to open. Basically it needed to be done in the precaching phase, so through restarting, the rhythm became familiar :)
[0:46:18] - Little improvement point. When I hit the Dark Viking (He walks to a certain point because of an scripted event, that's why he doesn't attack me), I hit his shield first which shouldn't happen. Because of that I need to stand still for a short moment to give him the final blow.
When that Dark Viking is dead, 2 doors to the main hallway/path opens up and then I equip the Viking Axe to make the Dark Viking in there my Ally. When that Dark Viking is killed (Or made an ally), 3 Dark Vikings will spawn on the roofs and I need to kill/ally those too in order to trigger the cutscene which then opens the gate. After the cutscene I almost got butchered though :)
This segment was very tough and very random, especially those 3 Dark Vikings on the roofs behave very random. Sometimes they were completely lost up there and simply didn't come down. Of course the Dark Vikings on the ground were also quite troublesome mostly. This attempt went very fast, the fastest I ever got and basically every viking cooperated.
[0:46:39] - I changed my weapon here, and because of that I didn't pick up the shield. A shield is always handy but it wasn't a problem, but it would've been handy ;)
[0:46:50] - A little trick here. I start the triple attack on the ground and then jump so that I finish the triple attack in the air, this allowed me to more easily fall through the hole. It could be done without it but this way was much more reliable.
[0:46:55] - Bah, this didn't go very well and I'm not proud of it. I attacked a little too late so that the third attack didn't hit the third barrel on time and so I bump a bit against it.
[0:47:06] - These 2 Goblins were annoying because, of course, they blocked my path VERY often.
[0:47:19] - As good as perfectly done, I don't even bump my head against the wall. There was one time where I hit the glass even before I fell on it so that I continued to fall and ended up dead :)
[0:47:28] - This was a tricky jumping sequence, especially the third jump was difficult because of a climb-up followed by an immediate turn and jump around the pillar. That third jump failed quite often...
[0:47:36] - There's a reason I attack the door a little later. If I would attack the door immediately, the fifth attack wouldn't destroy the right-most part of the door. The Dark Viking behind the door is triggered when you destroy the middle-top part of the door, and then you would need to activate the handle to continue. Bigger weapons destroyed the door a little faster but they also always destroyed that middle-top part of the door, which shouldn't happen. Once again the Goblin Axe was used, very nice and fast weapon useful for all kinds of situations.
[0:48:06] - I got a little excited that it was going so well with this whole fighting part, so I tried to kill that last Dark Viking as fast as possible which made me a bit careless, so because of that he hit me once... ;)
In the beginning of this segment I've got some spare time because you can't activate the elevator handle immediately, so therefore I grab some Mead. I'm also destroying one little part of the glass window so that the other Dark Vikings won't come to me because they simply don't see me (It happened sometimes that one of them still followed me though).
[0:48:48] - It's possible to go through the doorway without bumping against it, but it requires walking through it in exactly the middle of the door which isn't simple, especially not when you approach it from a corner.
[0:48:56] - I need to grab the Mead first otherwise Ragnar would grab the Mead instead of activating the handle.
[0:49:01] - Here I back and forward walk for a very short moment in order to do a triple attack. If I wouldn't do that Ragnar would perform a double attack because of still falling down or bumping against the blockade, and a double attack won't destroy the blockade.
[0:49:17] - These are another of those decoration fires, they won't hurt you.
[0:52:16] - This is something strange. When you walk alongside a slope wall, you can get these kind of... slides or boosts or however you want to call them. It doesn't happen with every slope though, probably depends on the angle of the slope or something.
[0:52:38] - Very tricky fall down. It needed to be done with a specific mouse/key movement method and I needed to land on a specific spot in order not to die. The jump after it into the end level trigger was a bit too soon, could be improved slightly.
[0:52:59] - There's a water flow going on here hence the awkward swimming ;)
[0:53:12] - Pretty much perfectly done. I just barely didn't bump against the wall or otherwise I would bounce back a little.
[0:53:22] - This didn't go entirely according to my plan because Ragnar grabbed the ledge sooner than planned, I jumped and luckily landed on an invisible ground part. So it turned out pretty good :) The Goblins on top were also VERY cooperative.
[0:53:47] - Heh, a walk through a wall. The wall is supposed to vanish when the Goblin a little earlier on the route would scriptedly walk to this place. I don't know why there's a wall here in the first place, but it shows again that Rune wasn't meant to be played fast.
[0:53:56] - I jump on the icy part because otherwise it would sink too much and I wouldn't be able to have a fast climb-up on the next platform.
It was very difficult to survive this place. There was a high chance of getting stuck by the Wendols and Goblins in that little corridor and thus getting killed. The Wendols also often boosted me out of the corridor. I need to wait a moment to climb up the rock because there are still little rocks falling down, and when such a little rock hits you, you're instantly killed. Also, the climbing on the rock needs a certain approach, grabbing the ledge of the rock is no easy task to do it fast and in one go.
And in case you're wondering why there are no Goblins after the rock in those pathways, it's because I skip the rock and thus skip killing/spawning a Wendol which in turn spawns the Goblins.
[0:54:24] - Without a doubt, this avalanche kind of part has annoyed you a lot on your first playthrough. Probably even the playthroughs after your first playthrough (I'm talking from my own experience ;)). I found out that you can walk down in a certain way almost non-stop (And some luck required) to survive the whole path down. I needed to take cover for a moment as I couldn't find any other way to get through it without being killed. The rocks in this walking down part always fall at the same spot, but the type of rock (Big and small rocks) and where they fall exactly in that spot is random. Also, the last falling rocks just before the end are more random than the others, so that's why I look up to see where they're falling down. This time I was quite lucky because almost no rocks were falling down near the end.
[0:55:19] - Hah, very often the Dark Viking came to me and attacked me but sometimes he just continued his scripted event, and I wanted to capture his scripted event so I could stand next to him and just start slashing him a bit, looks funny :) I'm not losing any time whatsoever because I need to wait for the windblows anyway.
[0:56:00] - The Wendol dodge. Looks quite nice.
[0:56:10] - This was a bit tricky part because of the pathblockers and the trees so that it's hard to see where those Goblins are exactly... But it went very nicely this time.
[0:57:10] - It looks like I'm randomly jumping through this part, but it's all planned :) One time there was something awesome but awkward happening at the end when all those rocks are falling down. I was messing around in that place and suddenly I jumped very high, high enough to get on the platform and immediately continue. I'm not exactly sure what it was but I think I jumped on/off a little rock that fell down and it somehow, because it rotates and bounces back up, made me jump very high. I've tried to capture and reproduce it again but failed, it's very difficult and random because the rocks fall randomly on the ground and they are very small which makes it very hard to jump on one of them. As you can see in the video I tried it but didn't succeed (As a matter of fact, the rock fell on my friggin head!).
[0:58:04] - Quite a nice shortcut, skips luring the big Wendol to this place in order for the bridge to collapse.
[0:59:33] - You must stand against the barrels in order to activate the handle, otherwise Ragnar would kick a barrel.
[0:59:36] - This didn't go entirely smooth, for some reason I bumped back quite a bit. There's also quite a high chance of getting killed here if you try it too fast.
[0:59:53] - A nice Dwarf boost. The reason I walk to the right and then to the left again a little ahead, is because a Dwarf always fell down there and would kill you if he lands on top of you. But of course this time I was faster at that place because of the Dwarf boost so he didn't fall down yet and I used the right-left maneuver out of attempt restarting habit I guess :)
[1:00:30] - I need to wait here so that the Dwarf walks over the bridge and gets killed by the windmill blades (Otherwise he gets very troublesome). Then I grab his Dwarven Work Sword and because that's a two-handed weapon, I drop my shield on the bridge. Then I sadly get stuck a little bit which costs a few frames. I switch my weapon, activate the handle and on the way back I pick up the shield again. Nice sequence (Except the stuckage) in my opinion :)
[1:01:10] - Argh, I was just a little too close to the wall and because of that I got a slow climb-up...
[1:01:16] - I need to jump immediately to the windmill blade and must have a fast climb-up otherwise I would be gibbed to pieces. I'm also changing some weapons here to have them as top selection for that type of weapon for later in the game.
[1:01:24] - This was done very fast, I even fell immediately in the hole which almost never happened.
[1:01:38] - Here I could've thrown the weapon and immediately go to the handle instead of picking up the weapon first because after activating the handle I need to wait a little anyway.
[1:01:48] - A perfectly executed "jump backwards and turn 180 degrees in mid-air while landing perfectly", it's only for kicks though since I need to wait for the waterwheel anyway. But it looks neat nonetheless :)
Sadly I couldn't get on the waterwheel right away, no matter how I tried to be as quick as possible, I could never get on it immediately :( And if you swim directly towards it, the big Jellyfish will boost you away from it or halts you.
I'm using the Tri-Mace in the beginning because it has a good chance of "flooring" the Dwarfs which is very handy.
[1:03:13] - This is some nifty trick. I won't get killed from the elevator, instead I get pushed through it. And because of that the Dwarfs aren't aware of my presence so that they will walk off the elevator and then I can activate the elevator without them interfering. Sadly one of them came back and stood on the elevator, but luckily when I attacked him he clipped through the elevator, heh ;)
[1:04:02] - Again a water flow which causes a bit of awkward swimming. I was quite surprised in this attempt that the little Jellyfish didn't cause any problems with their shockwaves...
[1:04:19] - I could've dropped the shield sooner because I could take a shield from one of the two Dwarfs, but now they were in perfect position and I "floored" both of them which made the fight very easy and fast. I didn't expect those Goblins to show up though, so I was a bit surprised when it happened, but I managed ;)
[1:05:17] - I could've jumped over the Dwarf here though for a more direct path to the corner.
[1:05:48] - A pretty much perfect jump onto the bridge, about 1 frame away from not making it ;) Since the bridge was still extending, I should've jumped at least once while on it though.
[1:06:08] - I open one set of cages so that the Dwarfs will be distracted by the Goblins. When the 2 Dwarfs are killed, the door to the handle will open. In this attempt I got into Bloodlust because I also attacked/killed the 2 Goblins which greatly helped. Because of Bloodlust I probably didn't need to use the Invisibility Runepower but it doesn't matter because later on I'll pick up the Rune of Power which completely fills and increases my Runepower bar anyway, and I also didn't lose time grabbing the Runepowers for the Invisibility plus the fact that Invisibility made it much easier (Although it's a weaker weapon than the currently equipped Dwarven Work Hammer). The Bloodlust also greatly helped for destroying the wooden blockade after this part, very often the Dwarf there on the left after the blockade interferes but since I was faster through the blockade now, he was no problem at all...
[1:06:49] - And here's the Big Crab glitch with which I skip quite a big part of the level. I halt the Big Crab for a moment because that gave me more chance of him getting on his backfeet so that I could knock him over. After that I jump on him and attack him once so he bounces back, then I wait for a moment because otherwise he would keep bouncing back every time I would hit him. When he's dead I activate the Shockwave Runepower and hit him 3 times to get the correct jumping height.
[1:07:18] - Now this is some serious strange shortcut I found. You need to jump at an exact moment from an exact spot to get the weird climb-up and also to not get damaged/killed on top of that thing. Once again, why it works like this I don't know...
[1:07:27] - It's possible to jump and grab the ledge a little sooner while the fire is about to stop, but it's a bit difficult to time and if I would do it too fast and caught fire, Ragnar wouldn't grab the ledge anymore. It's not like it's a huge time loss or anything...
[1:07:38] - The Goblins on these bridges were very often quite a pain. Especially the last Goblin on these bridges was troublesome, he often blocked me in the air between 2 bridges so that I fell to my death.
[1:07:55] - The bump here is pretty much inevitable because of the pillar. Maybe with a lot of Goblin luck and precise precision you could jump through it without a bump.
[1:08:01] - This was a very dark segment, and those fire shooting/jumping and spinning machineries are very annoying, especially at the second encounter in the segment (The long dark hallway). They can kill you in split seconds, this time I got hit only a little bit. You can hear them all go like "wham, poof, ching, kapow!" and fire sprouts, blades spin and bones are cracked!
[1:08:31] - Another one of those lovely Dwarf boosts. This one was also very tricky to get done. I jump and attack (So that I hit the ground) to grab his attention at a certain specific point, then I strafe a bit (This was very important, if I didn't strafe he would actually always boost me in the wrong way) and get lined up, jumped and got boosted correctly. Pretty much precisely right, such a beautiful sight...
[1:08:46] - This is probably an illusion, but when you attack and then jump, it looks like Ragnar gains a little height in the air. But I've tried to get on platforms this way but I was never successful so it's probably just somekind of animation screw up (Maybe the animation itself does indeed gain more height, but the hitbox of the character doesn't).
[1:09:19] - It's possible here to throw a weapon against the gong before the trigger of the (Unskipable) cutscene. But I really needed the Rune of Power, and I would lose more time grabbing Runestones elsewhere (Or not using them) so I'll just do it as the game intended it to be done.
[1:09:42] - I'm skipping a cutscene trigger here (Located in/on the right side of the barrel) and because of that I also skip spawning a Dwarf in the doorway.
[1:09:45] - Aren't staircases supposed to be made in such a way that you only need to walk on them instead of jumping? :)
[1:09:49] - I always liked this move. Jumping, hitting the gong, landing on the Rune of Power and immediately falling down. It happened several times that I didn't pick up the Rune of Power for some reason and fell down powerless ;)
[1:10:01] - Now this is awesome. When you've destroyed those 3 wooden bars, the big pillar will fall down. When that happens, stand under the pillar and when it's about to hit you, jump. The pillar will just bounce back and revert to its original position. So much for physics...
Also, when the pillar falls down and destroys the machinery, I can't jump off the board too soon or else I'll be killed because those electric blue beams are still active for a certain time even though you won't see them anymore.
I also take a little damage to end the level a tad faster ;)
[1:10:36] - I need to wait a little bit with skipping the cutscene because otherwise the big Robot Dwarf won't get spawned and he needs to be killed in order to continue.
[1:11:01] - Now this was a "once in a lifetime" awesome moment ;) When you look down on one of these bridges, the middle portion of the bridge becomes invisible. And exactly at the moment I show the bridge glitch, the Dwarf dies underneath it!
[1:12:12] - Here in the water I show 2 things. First, infinite breath. In some waters you can get infinite breath for some reason. Just dive in the water and that's it, infinite breath :) The second thing is, when done correctly, you can make Ragnar look like a ballerina. Swim up to the surface and when you get out of the water hold crouch and a direction key, then Ragnar will stay in the same kind of motion until the water has risen too high. Getting out of the water is troublesome because of the weird water planes (I think the weird water planes are causing it), if I would try it too fast I would get stuck.
[1:13:02] - Unfortunately I got hit once from this Robot Dwarf, but besides that, the rest of the segment was very good so I kept it. Sometimes with these Robot Dwarfs you can get hit in a weird way, sometimes you get hit while it doesn't seem like you could get hit, and sometimes you don't get hit while it seems like you should've been hit. You can also see this later on with 2 other Robot Dwarfs. The wall I walk through is removed when the Robot Dwarf walks scriptedly to his spot which didn't happen because I already attacked him and thus halted him from getting to that spot. Of course the Goblins after this part are a major pain in the sunless spot, but this time they were quite cooperative.
[1:13:32] - Because of the cutscene, I'm not getting any fall damage.
[1:13:35] - Because I get over the wooden bars (Instead of destroying the lower ones), I'm not triggering the Dwarfs up ahead.
[1:13:40] - And here's the swimming speed glitch. Pretty nice, sadly I couldn't find other places where it could be used.
[1:13:44] - Here's a little extra thingy. Just before I fall in the water, I use my shield. Because of that I can still hold my shield in front of me while I'm swimming. When you're underwater you actually can't use your shield.
[1:13:59] - This is a nice shortcut. Originally I intended to do it a little differently, then I would stand on top and skip the cutscene and then I would fall down and grab a ledge all the way at the bottom. But this was a hard and tricky method. Then I found out that you can activate the cutscene in the air and because of that cutscene, Ragnar becomes invulnerable but still falls down all the way to the bottom. I needed to be careful not to skip the cutscene too fast or otherwise I would still be damaged/killed, but this method was much easier/safer and faster.
[1:14:02] - Too bad I didn't capture it this time but it's possible at this place that a Dwarf uses his bump attack and because of the slopes on the ground he would get launched in the air which looks rather funny ;)
[1:14:36] - This part has caused me a lot of deaths. I got lucky that when the door opened, I didn't get hit by anyone (Most likely at this spot the Goblins started bashing me already, or still actually since they're bashing me in the cutscene). Killing the first Warrior Dwarf on the pillar is very easy, but the other 2 Warrior Dwarfs I need to kill are much harder because the room also gets crowded very fast. When I've killed the first Warrior Dwarf, I jump on the ground for a moment so that the other 2 would come to me and then I jump on the higher place so that they would stop and not doing anything anymore. Then I knock one down, get on the ground and quickly try to kill him and just hope that all the others won't start interfering too much. I was also lucky that I got into Bloodlust, but I continued a bit late though, I didn't immediately notice that I already killed the last Warrior Dwarf. It is and/or can be quite a chaotic part :)
[1:14:59] - First I planned to go to the right here and climb on the building and then fall off onto the big pipes which would cost me a lot of health. But then I found out you can jump across the gap to the big pipe, but you need to jump at pretty much the very last moment though. I was still somewhat careful by jumping down on the pipes because I was afraid of losing a bit of health. Normally in the previous battle I was always damaged quite a lot so that's why I was careful this time, but it wasn't necessary because I wasn't hurt at all (Which I didn't notice during this attempt) and there were even a couple of Lizards on my way. So it was just another habit thingy because of the other attempts I guess ;)
[1:15:38] - This fight went very good and here I saw that I only needed to hit one of the Dwarfs only 3 times instead of 4. I was a bit confused about that but later in the game there were also Dwarfs that I only needed to hit 3 times, so I guess some Dwarfs are just weaker or something. Pressing the handle could've been done a bit faster though, I wanted the Dwarf to come off the elevator which, of course, he didn't so that's why I press the handle a bit too late.
[1:16:02] - Now this long hallway would be a very good spot for the unequiped backwalking. Need to implement that in the rerun ;)
[1:18:43] - This part could've been done a bit better but those Dwarfs behave quite random. It's possible to get 2 Dwarfs squashed under one pillar, but the reason I kept it is because I could squash the second Dwarf as good as right away and I also "floored" the third Dwarf immediately. Still it could've been done a little better.
[1:19:05] - If the big bridge in front is lowered, then go to the other side, raise the bridge and quickly walk on to the end of the bridge (The top part that goes up). It's possible to get on this top part when the bridge is fully raised. Not really much to do up there except enjoying the view :)
[1:19:14] - It was much easier and safer and also faster to just head dance on the Dwarfs instead of trying to go around them. When I would go around them they can bump me off the bridge (Or at least hurt me) but also the Robot Dwarf ahead would start shooting fireballs because I would be too long in his front view.
[1:19:26] - I heard the Robot Dwarf preparing to shoot so I jumped so that he would shoot in the air while I would land on the ground again, and thus miss me.
[1:19:37] - This part became so very very easy because when I skip the cutscene, I can just continue but all the Warrior Dwarfs are still in their cutscene behaviour which makes this part a piece of cake. Thankfully though, because battling 7 Warrior Dwarfs the normal way isn't too funny ;) I need to kill all these Warrior Dwarfs (Except the one on top) by the way so that the handle becomes active. It's also possible here to skip the cutscene and immediately walk to the top and through the door that will close a moment later. The problem is that the 2 Robot Dwarfs won't be spawned and they need to be killed in order to continue...
[1:20:06] - Here I jump and attack a few times in order to try to grab the attention of the Robot Dwarf on the right. It happened quite often that he would just stay at his position which is all the way in the back. Killing both Robot Dwarfs (And especially the second one) was done very fast.
I show a weird glitch thing in the beginning with the Dwarven Battle Hammer. When you equip either the Dwarven Work Hammer or the Dwarven Battle Hammer and then crouch and go diagonally backwards to the right, Ragnar will have this weird stance.
The boss battle was very random, and even though the segment doesn't look very good and looks a bit clumsy in my opinion, it's very fast because I was VERY lucky in this attempt. When I jump down and he starts shooting at me, I only got hit just a little bit, while most of the time he would fry my ass. I can also often fall down and enter another portal very fast again. The reason I'm sometimes searching behind me is because I'm looking for a Lizard and I know a Lizard is somewhere behind me at some point. I couldn't find him and later on, when I fell down to end the level, I saw him up ahead, hehe ;)
Also, I can't skip the cutscene in the next level immediately or otherwise the game stalls. In the cutscene Ragnar kneels and when you skip the cutscene immediately, he gets up and immediately kneels again and the game basically just hangs. Everything continues (Birds fly around, Odin keeps floating, etc.) but there's no input or anything so you can't continue.
[1:22:09] - In order not to get fall damage, I needed to fall down from the railing (Not entirely necessary but it gave a much higher success rate) and then fall near the bottom against the wall, but not too far away or else you can still get fall damage.
[1:22:14] - Normally these Dwarfs carry a shield and a weapon, but on most of my attempts they did not. I think I skip a certain trigger in that doorway or something, I'm not really sure. Would've looked nicer if they had a shield and a weapon though, ah well.
[1:22:24] - This was a nice method to get around the Warrior Dwarf, otherwise there's a very high chance of him blocking you or hitting you, or both. Luckily he also didn't throw his weapon against me when I walked away from him. That's a pretty awesome action (Although not for my health...) from the Dwarfs in this game.
[1:22:31] - This Dwarf was actually the most annoying Dwarf in this segment because he very often blocked my path and/or threw his weapon against me in my back (And I must not get hurt in this segment) while I was activating the handle. The next Dwarf was luck based because I wanted to "floor" him with 1 hit and as far as I know it can't really be controlled. I think you need to hit him somewhere on the side in a specific way, like you need to slide your attack against his side. But I succeeded and it looks great :)
[1:22:43] - Here's another of those damageless dropdowns. Sometimes I got damaged at the bottom and sometimes not, you just really need to fall in a certain way at a certain spot.
[1:22:50] - Here on the left side against the wall there's something odd. When that big door is closed, you can make yourself float a little between the wall and the door, and when you do that it looks like a part of the texture on the wall starts to burn and gets bigger the more you move the camera (It won't keep on growing though, it stops at some point). When you get out of the floating motion, the burning mark will slowly return to a normal texture.
[1:23:07] - I unequiped my weapon here because I was going to do "a little bit" of backwalking when going down the hill ;)
[1:23:49] - Did you see the Dwarf fly? Heh, it's because he used his bump attack against that slope wall a little earlier. Jumping through the door like that is pretty difficult by the way, I did it exactly right this time.
[1:23:53] - When the next level starts you can walk back a bit and activate a handle behind the door on the outside, and then the door opens and you can walk on the outside around a bit but it's surrounded with walls. When you go back and leave the door open and then activate the cutscene, the Dwarfs will activate the handle again which now closes the door and they're stuck for a moment but eventually they will open the door ;)
[1:24:17] - This tomb part could've been done slightly faster because it's possible to jump on and destroy the tomb, then walk back on the button and jump backwards without bumping against the tomb a bit but it's quite difficult to do.
[1:24:50] - I'm hitting the Sark Skeleton or otherwise there's a very high chance he would hit me instead, which must not happen.
[1:24:56] - It's possible to get a fast climb-up out of the icky water stuff, but it's a bit tricky. I'm not entirely sure how exactly but it's probably just grabbing a small very specific spot...
[1:25:07] - When I wasn't recording and just practising/checking this part I always made it to the other side without dying, but when I was recording I always died just before the other side. But luckily I found out that I could jump just before the shore so I wouldn't die. I actually intended to get out of the water barely alive with no health shown on the health bar, but it's a good thing I kept some health because it was useful in the next level and having no health in that bar while still being alive could look somewhat suspicious although it's possible in this game :)
The beginning statue corridor part was annoying because a lot of chops happened here and also the camera can have these weird quirks because of cramped space. I grabbed a Lizard automatically on a wall when I passed by which in turn allowed me to get hit in the 6 statue part, otherwise I would've been dead, heh.
[1:25:37] - Very effective way of dealing with this Sark Skeleton. Fighting him normally while there's a big possibility of getting in the icky water stuff, isn't too funny.
There's something weird in this room. If you kill the Sark Skeleton, the door opens up. If you Ally the Sark Skeleton (Like I did in the run, which equals to him being killed), the door opens up. But if you use the Runepower of Sigard's Axe (Freeze) and then hit the enemy (So that the enemy gets shattered to pieces and is thus killed) the door WON'T open up, which is rather awkward...
[1:25:40] - See the Runepower effect stuck in the wall? I've acually never bothered checking if it works with the other Runepowers/effects, but I bet it does ;)
[1:25:54] - This was a difficult part and caused the most restarts. I use those higher parts on the floor to get fast climb-ups but that wasn't all too difficult, jumping from a doorway directly in another doorway was the difficult part. It needs to be done very precise from the middle of the doorway, then press forward+right just before you fall off and move the mouse to the right at a specific point in a specific motion, then you can just barely get in the other doorway. Very tricky and I needed to do it twice ;)
[1:26:11] - It was easier to fall with my back against the wall (So I wouldn't get a climb-up) instead of using my weapon because you also land on the ground in a bit better way which prevented a climb-up down there. I couldn't fall directly to the bottom because then I would die so I need to touch the ground part a bit. After this part I had some bumps in the maze unfortunately, and I'm not proud of those. But the rest went very good so I kept it.
[1:28:12] - 2 possible enemies can approach you here, a Sark Skeleton with an axe or a Sark Skeleton with a sword. The one with the axe isn't very difficult because that weapon is quite slow, but the one with the sword was more difficult. But I found a strategy which works with both type of enemies, run towards them so that they'll turn around and walk away from you and then attack them so that they'll stop for a moment, and then just run around them. The one with the sword could sometimes still hit me but often not.
[1:28:21] - Only one time it happened that 1 Skeleton was spawned here... These 2 guys quite often blocked my path and that's why, after activating the handle, I zigzag a bit.
[1:28:47] - This was also a very random spot. Sometimes 2 Skeletons were spawned here and often 3, as happened in this attempt. They can also very easily block the doorway. I just stand there waiting for them to clear the doorway, and one of them hits me but I'm like "Yeah? So?" since I'll grab a Rune of Health later on anyway :) The Sark Skeleton with the axe after it was a very random guy and sometimes it happened that when you walk towards him, he walks away from you, I then activate the handle and backwalk quickly so he won't kill me (That's why I unequiped my weapon earlier because if I would backwalk with a weapon equiped, I would be too slow and he would kill me).
I'm luring the Sark Skeleton with the axe behind me so that he can be my Ally against Conrack, because the 3 Sark Skeletons that jump down will be removed when Conrack appears. The 3 Sark Skeletons are jumping downwards in a timed fashion so hitting the third one as fast as possible is the goal here, because when I kill/Ally the last one, Conrack is spawned. Conrack and the Sark Skeleton started to fight as good as immediately which very rarely happened, then I tried to hurt Conrack a bit too but the slashes from Conrack and the Sark Skeleton have a pretty wide range so I got almost killed, but the health is no problem because the next level always starts with the same health amount. Then I took some cover and Conrack got killed at that very moment when I was at the edge of the icky water stuff so I was a bit surprised and skipped the cutscene a little later ;)
By the way, throwing weapons against Conrack would've been a possibility but just hitting him a bit with my sword was just as effective. The animation of throwing weapons is rather slow, especially for the bigger weapons (The smaller weapons have very little impact on him).
[1:31:42] - In order to reach the other side and have an immediate climb-up, I needed to have the speedup glitch and walk/jump through the exact middle of the doorway.
[1:32:07] - Straight ahead there's a wall part where you can jump over/through and then you can walk behind the mountains a bit.
The shortcut in the beginning, which skips a big part of the level, was very difficult and so I gave it a segment of its own. The most difficult part was grabbing the ledge because you can't really jump directly towards it, but also not too far away from it. And it was also possible to jump just a little too far along the ledge and then you would slide off an invisible wall part and you couldn't grab the ledge anymore. After that a bit of jumping and falling in the end level trigger from the opposite side (From the intended side you can jump over the end level trigger too and just walk around in the pathway a bit. Nothing to do there though :)). In the next level I quickly activate the speedup glitch after the level has started.
When I jump towards the Sark Skeleton, he will walk away from me. If I wouldn't jump, there's a very high chance he would kill me.
The trick after the Sark Skeleton, getting a fast climb-up while approaching the ledge from below, was also very difficult. I needed to walk against the wall, after coming from around a corner, and almost immediately jump to grab the ledge at a specific spot which failed quite easily.
[1:33:44] - It's possible to jump and grab the ledge more to the right, but it's very dark here which made jumping a bit troublesome (It's difficult to see where you land exactly because there are quite a few ledges in this place and I must not get an extra climb-up). Could be improved a little bit.
[1:34:09] - This time only one Sark Skeleton spawned here. 2 Sark Skeletons could be spawned here which increases the chance of me getting blocked... So that was rather lucky.
[1:34:30] - This is most probably one of the lamest final boss battles you've ever seen in a speedrun! It's the fastest method though (I must admit that I missed the first attack against him. Although on the way up the mountain, I hit him...). As a matter of fact, Sark Conrack is quite difficult to defeat in a normal way on Hard and it requires a hit and run method (None of the Runepowers have any effect on any boss except the fire from the Roman Sword but that causes as good as no damage) because he attacks very fast with that sword of his (Which is actually a bit lame, enemies can attack with the sword much faster then I can...). When he's dead I gib him to pieces, you bastard! First I wanted to grab his head and take it with me into Valhalla but decided not to do that. He (Or any part of him) deserves no place there ;)
[1:36:55] - Now this was pretty awesome. I actually intended to unequip my weapon and then walk on the bridge, but instead I pushed the wrong button. Now it looks like Ragnar is tired of fighting, throws down his weapon and goes to Valhalla to relax a bit. Looks much better ;)
When the text of the credits was at its end, the music just started again before the text had completely stopped and I didn't want to suddenly abort the video so I let the music finish.
Congratulations if you've read through all this rambling! I hope I didn't make a mistake or forgot something somewhere. If you've watched the speedrun then I hope you enjoyed it, if you're going to watch the speedrun then I hope you will enjoy it. It was great to work on this project because Rune is a nice game and I really hope they will create Rune 2 some day (No, not with immediate speedrunning thoughts in mind... First just play and enjoy the game fully at a slow pace, and maybe then speedrun it ;)).
If you would like more information about Rune, you can visit the following sites:
Goodbye and till the next project!