
Planning a Morrowind all-faction speedrun with simulated annealing, part 2 - mildbyte
https://kimonote.com/@mildbyte/travelling-murderer-problem-planning-a-morrowind-all-faction-speedrun-with-simulated-annealing-part-2-43269/
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JasonSage
This was a blast to read! I enjoyed both parts, and I'm really looking forward
to the next.

Reflecting on the pieces, the author is pretty talented at communicating
effectively—I found the material interesting, the writing style lively enough
to enjoy, and the presentation to have just the right balance of explanation
and example. It's so well done I didn't think of any of these things as I
read.

The author's bio is also a standout piece of writing to me:
[http://mildbyte.xyz/about.html](http://mildbyte.xyz/about.html)

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MrBuddyCasino
This guy can write. Another good one:
[https://kimonote.com/@mildbyte/starving-children-or-the-
fall...](https://kimonote.com/@mildbyte/starving-children-or-the-fallacy-of-
relative-privation-32827/)

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rav
10 minutes for Dijkstra on a graph with only 6500 vertices and 16000 edges
sounds fishy - I'd expect that to take way less than a second.

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Deestan
> 16000 teleportation edges [...] doesn't include physical travel edges
> between the vertices

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ball_of_lint
Even with 6500 vertices, you have a total max of 6500^2 edges (after filtering
for minimum distance per edge, which is very fast). Using a performant
language such as C++ and a priority queue there is no way that you would reach
even 10s for a single djikstras.

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shawnz
What kind of software do speedrunners normally use for route planning? It
seems like an underserved niche to me.

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foota
I think a lot of speed run games are much more linear than this.

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hsljekskfh
correct, but also this person gave themself a hard goal of beating 9
storylines, not one. this is essentially a traveling salesman problem where
the salesman has to talk to 9 sets of ordered lists of 3-10 people, and can
work on them simultaneously, along with a couple other things. the author
quickly realized that brute force wouldn’t work and chose a genetic algorithm
instead.

the normal unpatched speed run of morrowind basically involves gaining the
ability to run at hundreds of miles per hour, getting two items, getting to
the final boss and killing him in one hit. takes about 5 minutes. hilariously
the item is called the “boots of blinding speed” and let’s you run incredibly
fast but turns your screen black while equipped

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arctice
The Boots of Blinding Speed are not used in Morrowind speedruns. The high
speed is achieved with a weapon swap glitch(only present in the 1.0 version of
the game) where swapping between two weapons quickly will apply all of their
buffs permanently to your character. This is done with two story related
artifacts that happen to buff all sorts of useful stats, including movement
speed.

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Mithaldu
That sounds like a deeply boring speedrun. What's the time on a patched
Morrowind?

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skocznymroczny
Now do it with blockchain.

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LoSboccacc
> marksman, mysticism and sneak secondary

stealth archers best build confirmed empirically
[https://imgur.com/gallery/4xAA7](https://imgur.com/gallery/4xAA7)

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nsbq71
This is Morrowind, not Skyrim. Stealth archers are not a thing here. In fact
I'd say magic-based characters are much, much better than combat or stealth-
based ones.

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strken
Morrowind is sufficiently broken, in the best possible and most fun way, that
any character can become a god. Abusing alchemy, 1pt levitate spears, doors,
the teleportation shrine in Vivec, or infinite potions can be done by any
class.

It's incredibly impressive that a game can have hundreds of hours of content,
yet be speedran in 7 minutes.

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nsbq71
I wouldn't call it broken. It's by design. Proof is that most of the
"exploits" were carried over Oblivion and then Skyrim. For example, creating
very very overpowered potions is possible in all games. It's your choice if
you want to spoil the fun or not.

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shakna
I wouldn't call it "spoiling the fun", half the fun of Elder Scrolls games is
that you can become transcendent.

In Arena, you start humbly, but rise high enough that you destroy Jagar Tharn,
one of the most powerful mages in the whole of the history of the Elder
Scrolls games.

In Daggerfall, you're the right-hand man of the Emperor, and seek out a world-
ending superweapon, and may just take it for yourself.

In Morrowind, you are a god, or very close to. The reincarnation of the
Nevarine. That you can become overpowered makes sense. Bandits should fear
you. Ordinary people should.

In Oblivion, you're the right-hand man of someone who ascends. You walk into
literal Hell and fight demons. The bare mysteries of the world are laid clear
by you. You steal the book of spells of immortal characters.

In Skyrim, you're descendant from a man who became a god. You have a gift that
can shatter the heavens, and break open portals between worlds. You kill the
son of Akatosh.

You're right, it is design, because it makes sense.

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pvg
_The bare mysteries of the world are laid clear by you._

What does this mean?

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shakna
A reference to the contested ownership of Tamriel between Akatosh and Mehrunes
Dagon.

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pvg
What are bare mysteries? Bear mysteries?

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shakna
Bare mysteries.

Bare as in raw, foundational, etc.

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pvg
I think you might be confused with something like 'mysteries laid bare'. Bare
doesn't mean foundational and if mysteries were already bare, what kind of
mysteries would they be?

