Going Rambo on D1 level 6 (And other levels)

vision · Post by **vision** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 2:26 pm

Do you have a spreadsheet with all your best times? I would love to see a chart.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 6:06 pm

You can find it here:
https://www.speedrun.com/descent1/individual_levels

vision · Post by **vision** » Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:24 pm

Made a chart, put the secret levels at the end because that makes more sense to me. Time is in seconds.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sun Mar 17, 2019 7:38 am

Cool!

Interesting, that later levels are actually shorter than most of the midgame levels.

Btw I worked on that challenge I spoke about earlier. So far I tried 3 out of 4 levels above 6 minutes and succesfully made them all under! But it was serious work! I had 6:09 in level 7, that is close, but that run was already very good. I always knew there is a faster route (cca by 10 seconds), but I didn't even try it before, because I thought it is not playable route on insane at all. But I definitelly improved my abilities, so I changed my mind and went for it. This faster route means you have no invuln for red mechs, but I realised it is not a problem, because you can save enough homing missiles for that one close to blue doors, and you can anihilate the another one by shooting vulcan to lava. Still I had to be really fast for time under 6 mins, hopefully I did 5:56. Then I tried level 17. I had 6:22 there, but I knew my later part was slow, I lost like 10 seconds at maze with advanced lifters. But still, I needed another 13 seconds for time under 6 minutes, so I experimented with new route also here and found there is a few seconds faster way. Anyway perfect cooperation of gophers is a must, so it is quite frustrating. I did 6:04, then 6:00 (damn!), then finally 5:58 (uf!). And it was quite scary run - I think I had 4 shields while taking yellow key! So I was close to death for quite long part of the run. The third level I tried was 14. Here I wasn't really sure if it is realistic at all to go under 6 minutes. I had 6:30 here before. I rewatched my demo file a few times to think about new faster ideas otherwise I would have no chance. I did many small changes in this level and improved technique and after that I was sure I can go under 6 minutes. But it was so "stupid", something went wrong all the time. You need 2 specific cloak drops in later part of level, which happens like in 1/4 tries at best (and many times I took that cloak accidentaly earlier then I need, so the succesfull ratio was way worse for sure). And there is more good RNG needed (some robots likes to roam really badly, I finished the level with solid run 5 or 6 times with one robot left in map (and usually different one! - there is cca 10 different robots, who can possibly roam to lost). Also I choked the reactor area 2 times while going for a good run. But I kept trying and finally did it. In 5:49. Feels good. So the last remaining level is "THE 9".

And yeah, I also improved level 27. Skipped the cloak at start and went directly just for invuln, idk why I didn't make it like that before. And I have to say, this level is really very easy to speedrun. But you need lucky boss fight for good time. In my new best run I had ridiculously good fight, I would say it was perfect. That means time 2:40. I don't think I will ever beat that time. That is really great I believe.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Mon Mar 18, 2019 6:16 am

No way, I was going for cca 5:45 on level 9. Had 43 shields and stupidly died at reactor room. That hurts, it was perfect run.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:04 pm

That was quite a brutal challenge, but it's done. Will post all new runs soon. Level 9 in 5:29!!

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sat Mar 23, 2019 4:45 am

Both boss levels uploaded:

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Mon Mar 25, 2019 1:58 pm

L17, L14 and L9:

vision · Post by **vision** » Tue Mar 26, 2019 12:30 pm

Congratulations! Are we at the end of your speed run challenge? What's next for you?

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Tue Mar 26, 2019 9:39 pm

Thank you!
I recently improved L8 by 13 secs and tried L16 for a while, because it felt to me it can be done better, but I think I will let it go, that level is so random and luck based for speedrunning and I don't want spend hours of frustrating trying to improve by 10 seconds if it goes really well. So I think that's it unless I get some new interesting idea, but I don't think so. I wish good luck to anyone, who decides to improve them, it is serious business I believe

.

I was messing around with vignettes a bit and speedrunned L1 and L2, but L3 already feels complicated in term of finding best strategy to reach fastest time. I don't know if I should use brown hulks to destroy other enemies, like I do for example in start of L5 of D1. It definitely requires serious amount of time to just find optimal option. That quite discourages me to go for it.

AlexanderBorisov · Post by **AlexanderBorisov** » Thu Mar 28, 2019 11:04 am

Don't you want to just make a good walkthrough of Vignettes, Ironstar, or Ironblade? Would be nice to see good runs even if they are not the fastest ones possible.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Thu Mar 28, 2019 7:58 pm

I think you already did and ulpoaded walkthroughs of these on youtube, didn't? Anyway I managed to make decent level 3. Had an extremely lucky start, where I used brown hulk to kill all enemies super quickly (6 medium lifters and 2 drones). In total, brown hulks destroyed 24 robots in this level in my run

. Also did level 4, not perfect, but solid. I'm definitely not going to spend as much time on these as i did in D1 original levels. I also quickly checked level 5. Dude, I have no idea how to speedrun that one. Seems to be damn hard.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Mar 29, 2019 7:50 pm

I managed to do that L5! Also did L6. Checked L7. No idea how to speedrun that one for now. Many bad placed brown and red hulks...

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Apr 05, 2019 5:11 pm

It is getting worse. L8 is ridiculous. I doubt it was meant to be played on insane at all. I have no idea how to deal with that red mech close to red door.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sat Apr 06, 2019 4:14 pm

I found a way how to play it. Also did level 9.

vision · Post by **vision** » Sun Apr 07, 2019 12:30 am

I was never able to get D2 past level 23, even on ACE. I feel like D2 is harder than D1, but that might be because if have 20x more playtime in D1.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sun Apr 07, 2019 2:46 am

vision wrote: ↑Sun Apr 07, 2019 12:30 am I feel like D2 is harder than D1, but that might be because if have 20x more playtime in D1.

I heard from more players, that D2 is harder. I'm also D1 "expert", so I can't compare it. I played D2 just a few times and I think I finished the game only on ace and it wasn't even cold start playing (it is long time ago). But I also heard, that some D2 experts finds D1 problematic, probably because of no gauss - that weapon is big help.

Anyway, I play D1 Vignettes now, did first ⅓ of the game so far.

Alter-Fox · Post by **Alter-Fox** » Sun Apr 07, 2019 11:42 am

I found D2 easier on insane up until the last 6 or 7 levels where the prevalence of first E-bandits/Bulk destroyers and then spiders/spawn started to outstrip the equivalent portion of D1. But by that point I had gained enough lives I was able to throw myself at problematic spots a few times as long as I was somewhat careful.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sun Dec 08, 2019 8:03 am

I'm back with 3 new runs.

First of them is level 1. I had 1:32 and it already felt good, but I challenged myself to go under 1:30. Somehow I managed to do 1:27 after some 1:30 runs. That was quite unexpected and obviously I'm happy with that time.

Next one is level 16. This level was the one I was least satisfied with. So I tried it again and actually discovered some new strategies. But the problem of this level is how heavily RNG based it is. There is so many roaming dangerous robots which can cause sudden death or loosing a lot of time. Besides that you need many cloack drops including one from matcen, where it is not even guaranteed that cloaked lifter will be spawned. I failed so many attempts and finished the level only twice, but then this run happened, which means improving by exactly 30 seconds. RNG worked so well. And what is ridiculous I nearly finished it with 150+ shields. But I didn't see the last invisible hulk at the end and he smashed me hard. Would be really painful if I loose that try there..

Last one is level 21. That was my oldest run and I realised there is better possible route (like by 10 seconds) so I tried if I can do it. Answer is yes

, improved previous record by 14 seconds.

Ok, I think that's it, I'm more or less fine with all 30 runs now.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:05 pm

Like always, I have changed my mind and improved that L21 one more time. 5sec faster now.

vision · Post by **vision** » Tue Dec 10, 2019 7:18 pm

Very nice. I can't realistically see shaving off any more than one or two more seconds of L21.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Dec 13, 2019 5:36 pm

Thank you. It still can be done faster. I think I can go for cca 5 more seconds faster run if I try really hard. There is still some RNG, but much less than in other levels which makes it easier to speedrun once you learn it. For example there is technicaly more space for improvement in level 16, but in reality it is much harder to beat my time there than in L 21 I believe.
Anyway, it would be nice to see someone try to go for some faster runs, I know there are guys capable of that, just not interested.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Tue Dec 31, 2019 5:36 pm

vision wrote: ↑Tue Dec 10, 2019 7:18 pm Very nice. I can't realistically see shaving off any more than one or two more seconds of L21.

I just tried it again today and improved by 3 more seconds or so (didn't check exact time yet) with same route and still, it can be done faster. Also I realised I can save 1 more second just at the beginning with new idea.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sun Jan 05, 2020 5:36 am

So I tried harder and I actually improved that posted run by 17 seconds! (from 3:26 to 3:09). As you can see from some small mistakes, it still can be done faster (btw I failed one 3:08, maybe 3:07 run in very end), but it requires great execution combined with great RNG. I don't think under 3 minutes run can be done, unless some new idea will be found.

AlexanderBorisov · Post by **AlexanderBorisov** » Mon Jan 06, 2020 7:48 am

Really impressive... Once someone says it cannot be improved you make it 15 or 20 secs faster... I like how you deal with the red hulk at 2:08 without cloak, not taking any damage, is it a bit of luck or you can do it every time?

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Tue Jan 07, 2020 6:48 am

Thank you! Sometimes I fail it and eat some missile (because of my mistake), but I'm usually fine there. It is not matter of luck at all, it is about execution. The key thing is to be close to the red mech while approaching him by trichording. If you are not close enough to him, missiles will take you in this situation.

I decided to improve L18 yesterday. That one was surely my worst run. If I remember well I finished it only once and immediately stopped playing that. There is so many randomness it this level. There is a lot of roaming robots (including red mech in reactor room), which means missing some kills, wasting time, or dying. That makes this level quite annoying to speedrun. I finished it once yesterday in 5:00 (old time was 5:09), today also once - in 4:45. I still don't like that run, because there is still quite big space for improvement with really good RNG and execution. But for sure much much harder to make it close to limits than L21. And mainly, I won't have time to play since tomorrow, so I take this one. Still solid improvement. Maybe I will try it one more time somewhen in the future.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sun Jan 12, 2020 12:40 pm

Things in my life went different way than expected (I should be out of my home for a long time and so far I'm not), so I actually had enough time to improve that L18 to what I wanted. Goal was a time under 4:30, so 4:26 feels good:). There is ofc still some place for improvement, but now it is hard. I was experimenting with skipping the cloak I take before going to blue door. That can save at least 5 more seconds, but it makes things in yellow door area much harder (but possible). Finally I refused to go for that, since the level is already hard and random and it might take "forever" to make it. Maybe I would keep trying that if the saved time would be more significant. Btw if you check it carefully, you will notice, that last secondary lifter died cca a second after exploading reactor. He was stucked behind the reactor.

After L18 I tried Secret Level 1 and it felt like easy compared to L18. I knew I can improve my 3:31 run without much troubles. But I actually went full crazy and did it in 2:57! Everything went fine. And the big room area was way to good, I have never cleared it as fast as in this try. That was obviously lucky. Well, I planned it +- this way, but it never worked that well before. Those invisible drillers usually avoid first shot, which is through fusion hulk and they also keep being split, so you need more shots. Also cloacked lifter likes to come to scene later and always from different dirrection. Now he was there just in time to take a fusion shot together with one PTMC defense prototyp. The second prototyp was killed by green platform. That helped to save some time and let me keep invuln for whole red key area, which is otherwise dangerous. Then I hoped for good RNG in reactor room - one of fusion hulks is sometimes on a bad spot. Fortunately it went the good way. Then the ending - it is always scary, it sometimes goes wrong, depends on how supervisers move and how are those four platforms spawned. I was low on shields, so I could easily kill myself with mega.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:48 pm

I remember, when I played L12 (cca 2 years ago?) I wanted to make it under 3 minutes, but failed and stopped trying when my best was 3:00. I tried it again and realised I can go "much" faster now. New best is 2:46, which I believe is close to optimal time. You still need good RNG at same places for good run, but overally this level is one of the easiest to speedrun I think.

Much different story is L8, that one is so much harder to do as fast as possible. There is like "bilion" of possibilities, how can RNG work. Most of the time it means sudden death, no matter how much shields do you have. Sometimes you survive, but it is not ideal RNG for fast time. My old time was 5:41. After many failed tries I improved to 5:26, then to 5:24 and then, after a lot of wasted attempts I finaly got a really good run here. Unfortunatelly I stupidly failed the end and it drives me a little bit mad. I knew I need 6 missiles for the reactor, but for some reason I didn't count and moved after 5. Such a clown.. Whatever, final time is 5:16, I'm done here. Who knows how much time it would take to repeat it for better ending..

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sat Jan 25, 2020 9:27 pm

I tried improve 2 more levels:D.
I chose L6 and L26, since these were second and third oldest runs, so I assumed I should be able to do them faster, although they already looked ok. My by far oldest run is L24, but I didn't have enough courage to play and relearn it now:D and I think that run was actually good even it is long time ago...

L6 is quite easy one, compared to other levels, so it took just a while to get into it. Old time was 3:40, now I did 3:35 (or so) and then 3:30 which felt decent, so then I moved to L26. That level is intense. You have to find specific technics to survive in some places. Mainly the corridor, where 2 green platforms shoot from outside. Just trichord is usually not good enough to survive, you need specific position and way how enter the corridor to make your chances higher. Anyway at some points you need just luck. For example not be hit by fusion hulk at some places. Pure luck for me is secret area with red mech guarding cloak, smart and mega missiles. Idk if there is a way to force it, but he sometimes doen't see you immediately, which is exactly what you need to kill him quickly. You can see in my new fastest run he was waiting with his shots extremely long, which is rare. Usually it is a reset there, sometimes you have just enough time, but need to be precise. But this time I had so much time to kill him easily. Once you make it up to invuln, you have quite a big chance to finish the level, since rest is much easier. Old time was 4:12. Then I did 4:04 (with optimized route, which saves cca 5 seconds) and forced myslelf to make it sub 4mins. I was lucky, because I did exactly 3:59.85:D. But after that, I improved to 3:57 and stopped at that point. Mistake at time 2:25, where I failed shot to heavy driller doesn't really matter, because then I would have to wait for next cloak. With this mistake I was there right in time. Shot at 2:32 is to fool fusion hulks, otherwise there is quite a big chance they would kill you randomly, since you are cloaked. When I left yellow doors I knew there still should be one medium hulk roaming somewhere so I was hoping to meet him somewhere. Luckily it happened at last possible time. It cost me some time, but reactor room went well, so I gained 2 seconds at the end to my previous fastest time.

vision · Post by **vision** » Sat Jan 25, 2020 11:52 pm

Marvin wrote: ↑Sat Jan 25, 2020 9:27 pmL26

Jesus, that part at ~1:35 right before you get the invulnerability... Yikes!

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sun Jan 26, 2020 9:49 am

Yeah, that is scary and lucky. I died a few times just a frame or couple of frames before taking invuln and I expected the same thing here. Fortunately driller failed to kill me:).

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sun Feb 16, 2020 5:01 am

I have 9 new runs! I will post them soon!

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Wed Feb 19, 2020 10:08 am

So, actually 10 and I'm done with it. I know, I know, I told that many times:D.. I will post them chronologicaly as they were done.
First of all, I improved 26 once more (by 5 seconds).

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Fri Feb 21, 2020 11:50 pm

L17: 21 seconds improvement. Same route just better execution and cooperation of gophers.

L15: I optimized the route a bit and improved by 12 seconds or so. Anyway, this level is one of the easier to speedrun. But these two brown hulks close to red key are annoying, they are often badly placed and got you.

L20: This one id crazy, probably hardest to speedrun. First part with gophers is pure luckfest, there is no patern at all, they can be anywhere and often are out of shooting range. In this run my first part was cca just 5 seconds slower than my best start ever, so that is really good. At second part I was so lucky with green platformers. Full volley is 5 missiles, but both of those who faced me surprisingly (they are roaming) decided to go for just 1, or 2 missiles (dirrect hit of one missile takes over 40 shields). When I was setting the trap for for drillers behind secret doors, I was out of energy and had 25 vulcan amo - that is litteraly just one "tic", lol. I was lucky again with platformer in red doors, here it was just a stupid mistake by me, fortunately I survived. I was hoping for the key bot to go up and join the fight - that is the fastest and easiest way to go here, but it didn't happen. So I was hoping to meet him near exit, because that is the only other possibility to take him down quickly. All other options on insane are most likely total mess. Uf, he was there. At the end I went a bit safe + I was lucky again - shot from last red mech nearly went up to me, but mostly I nearly failed the very last part with hostages. I aimed to hostages door really poorly, that was so scary. So all in all, this run was really lucky. But might be actually deserved, due to how really unlucky attempts I had here before this one.

L2: I changed aproach to red key here and skipped 1 pack of homers in end which resulted in 8 sexonds improvement.

L5: Two little route optimization and much better execution means 18 secs faster time

L13: Same route, but much better run now - 29 seconds faster after all! I failed homing missile shot to driller guarding invuln and it cost me over 50 shields, but fortunately I was still fine. There are some dangerous parts in this level, but there is not much of roaming, so it can be learned and once you understand it, it is not that bad.

L23: This one is intense and I like it. God bless for that fusion hulk, that helps so much. I don't think I would like this level without fusion canon! Hardest part by far is whole area in yellow doors. That is so random and dangerous. End is ofc also scary. But I realised that the red mech behind trap door close to exit is often turned backwards, so if you are fast enough, you can destroy him without taking care. Still scary... This and also better execution of the rest resulted in 19 secs improvement.

L24: At the end I decided to go for the king of levels - L24. This one was by far my oldest run - from 2017 (second oldest was from november 2018 I think, so that is a big gap). Dude, that outdated run was actually really solid and it was hard to improve. So much roaming here! Also you need cloack drop at the end of level, so that might be quite annoying. But at least also here you have fusion canon nearly from start. Great, I enjoy playing with it:). Best run at the end was 17 seconds faster.

L11: I went for one more. Definitely one of the hardest levels. I thought I will let it go after failing try after try, but at the end I did it. 15 seconds faster run. But dude, that shield situation, lol. I didn't expect to survive.

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Sun Feb 23, 2020 4:21 am

The main reason for these improvements was a challenge to make sum of all runs below 2 hours. I did so and actually went a bit further. Total time now is 1:58:46.201. Yes, I counted even miliseconds, they make over 14 seconds together. If I count just full seconds, it is 1:58:32.

Now it is your turn:)...

vision · Post by **vision** » Sun Feb 23, 2020 3:24 pm

Marvin wrote: ↑Sun Feb 23, 2020 4:21 ambelow 2 hours.

Nice. There is a speedrunner meme going around right now that goes something like --

Developer: This release has over 80 hours of gameplay!
Speedrunner: Actually...

Sum0Beatz · Post by **Sum0Beatz** » Tue Feb 25, 2020 8:49 am

Marvin is the best descent 1 player in the world

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 12:26 am

Sum0Beatz wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 8:49 am Marvin is the best descent 1 player in the world

I believe there are better players, they are just not interested in this kind of craziness:D (I wish to see others compete in this). But I might be one of the most experienced in D1 single player.

Sum0Beatz · Post by **Sum0Beatz** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 4:44 pm

Marvin wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2020 12:26 am
Sum0Beatz wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 8:49 am Marvin is the best descent 1 player in the world
I believe there are better players, they are just not interested in this kind of craziness:D (I wish to see others compete in this). But I might be one of the most experienced in D1 single player.

Xfing is also very good at this game and i believe maybe the only other pilot able to tackle what you are doing, however this is due to my limited exposure to the descent scene. I consider beating the game cold start on insane to be the pinnacle of a top tier descent one player.

I have started my journey not too long ago to cold start this game, but due to my attention span I am only interested in having fun and challenging myself to beat every level in order isnt interesting me at the moment.

I've beaten levels 1-6 on cold start and then jumped to level 9 where i have been having a blast trying to beat it with one life. The experience I have gotten from level 6 and now 9 are shaping my skills as a pilot.

I am more of a run and gun player, I am having fun and not really developing safe tactics to increase my odds of survival, but I'll have to learn that sooner or later !

Marvin · Post by **Marvin** » Thu Feb 27, 2020 10:10 pm

There are more players who can play the game on insane, but they are not recording it and not interested to make posts about it.
You can try some other and easier levels and then come back to level 9. For example 10, 12, 15, 21, 22, 25, 27...