This is a speed run for Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem on the Nintendo GameCube.I did not do this speed run. I got it from www.speeddemosarchive.com. I got it for all those Eternal Darkness fans out there, and non-fans alike. So please don't accuse me of copyright infringement, or plagurism. Enjoy. Time: 2:27:36 by Andres 'Mad Andy' Montalbetti on 08.03.05 in 14 segments.(Parts 10, and 12 are 2 segments combined.) Author's comments: Back in January after Christmas, I began to catch interest of speed running eternal darkness, mostly because nobody did it before. I was interested in going through it as fast as I could, and aswell making up strategies for this very complex game to speed run. I knew that I had to do everything myself, that I had no sources whatsoever to give me speed running tips, but I hope this run will motivate other players to go through eternal darkness after me to find further time saving techniques. However, now let's get onto the run. This game spans 2000 years in which you play as 12 different characters, which have their own mission to accomplish to save the world from the Eternal Darkness. The game has 3 alignments to play through, which are Chattur'gha (Red god), Ulyaoth (Blue god) and Xel'lotath (Green god). Each of them changes the game slightly (the enemies are different, there are some graphical changes, but most of the changes occur in the cinematic cutscenes which I skip). I choose to play through the Xel'lotath alignment because it has the easiest enemies to kill, which surely gave me a faster time then the other alignments. Now however, let's get to the speed tricks I used. The most obvious speed trick I used was to completely skip all the spell scrolls and spell codex. Yes, I know that if you played through ED already you might find this extreme, because it means you need to memorize all the rune symbols. While this made the game harder, it also made it quite a lot faster. I made a few spells early too, like the magickal attack which I made 2 levels before you're supposed to find it. However, I will not list every single thing that I used in my run, so if you want to find out download it right away There were quite a few mistakes here and there, but none of them took away more than 10 seconds. While most of the mistakes were due to insanity effects and other random elements, they still take time away from me, and they can be avoided somehow. Below there are mistakes that I've made in my run: Chapter 1: The chosen one This chapter went well. I basically maybe didn't press the buttons at light speed. I believe that I could save 5 seconds if I go for ubber perfect. Chapter 2: The binding of the corpse god From the nature of this hard chapter, my time impressed me. I ran into a few traps, and Ellia got tired and ran slowly in a few parts. Nothing major. Chapter 3: Suspicion of conspiracy There were only 2 mistakes in this chapter. One was that I took a little too much to get rid of the trapper in the tight corridor after fighting the Monk, and I suffered from an insanity effect which could have been skipped in 1-5 seconds, instead of the 10 seconds which I took. Chapter 4: The gift of forever This chapter in my opinion wasn't very good at all, but maybe it's just me. The first half which was basically pure speeding went well, but the other half which was a kill fest went rather bad, and I lost a lot of life so I therefore had to use the healing talisman which you get at the start 4 times. Overall though, the other times I got before were way worse, so I'm still happy with this time. Chapter 5: The lurking horror This chapter only had 2 mistakes. One was that I went stupidly down the wrong stairs in the fight against the horror that held the Chattur'gha rune, and the other was that I enchanted the sword near the end to fight the guardian of Xel'lotath (the fight was faster, but for the 2 less hits I don't think it was a good idea to enchant the sword). Chapter 6: A journey into darkness This chapter caused me nightmares. I basically cannot describe how stupidly hard this chapter was before I started making complex strategies. It was soon that I gave up and decided to use the shield and recover sanity spells early to give me a chance to finish this chapter quickly (and in the end it ended up being faster lol). Thanks to the recover sanity spell there was only one insanity effect which costed me about 10 seconds, but aswell as that at one point near the end my life dropped really low so I had to use the only recover life spell in the game. I believe that if I used the magickal attack in this chapter I could have been even faster. I skipped the Mantorok Rune. Chapter 7: Heresy! This chapter is probably the worst level ever to speed run :p Loads and loads of running, and therefore I had to run 2 steps, stop, run another 2 steps, stop, and so on. Probably I could have used this technique a lot less. Apart from that I got trapped in between a bunch of zombies near the end, and getting rid of the bone thieves at the end took more than necessary. Overall I'm happy that I did this chapter well. Chapter 8: The Forbidden City Probably my worse executed chapter. I ran into a few walls, I spent quite a lot trying to use magickal attack to kill a trapper when I could have just picked up the crossbow before in the chapter, I went slowly in menus, and so on. Maybe it's because the next chapter is my favorite and I wanted to play it badly. Chapter 9: A war to end all wars My favorite chapter, so you can guess that I tried my best to do it well. The mistakes I had were that I suffered from the "please insert controller" insanity effect which costed me 10 seconds, and when fighting the Xel'lotath black guardian boss she did a sanity shock attack one extra time than necessary due to me not moving around enough. Chapter 10: A legacy of darkness Longest chapter which was a whole 25 minutes long, which I did in 2 segments. In the first segment with the vampire, before going into the basement, I for some mysterious reason got the urge to kill the servants and casted the magickal attack instead of using the reveal invisible spell to see the vampire in the basement. This therefore made my fight with the vampire longer and the time ended up being 3 seconds slower than the previous save I had. The other segment went rather well, with a few mistakes here and there. Probably the biggest mistakes were that I got tired of running a few times, and that I got confused with chapter 12 and walked in the area where the giant worm pops out of a hole. Chapter 11: Ashes to Ashes Here it is, the magick bar' best enemy. This chapter went very well. Probably the only mistakes were that I took a few seconds too much in the burning city puzzle with the staff and the ray of light, and that I ran too much some times when recovering magick. In this chapter I could have used the Ulyaoth magick pool to recover the magick power more quickly (but even then maybe I didn't have enough power to cast it, so you never know). Chapter 12: Gateway to Destiny This chapter went overall pretty well. In the first 18 minutes long segment I didn't make many mistakes. One of them was that when I summoned the Chattur'gha zombie it seems to have been summoned a little too far off the yellow magick teleportation circle., and the other mistake was that at the very end when going back to the teleport area I had to use 2 7-point bind magick spells instead of 1, and then I had an insanity effect which costed me 10 seconds. The final boss went pretty well. I only missed him a few times, and I could have used the 3-point enchant spell instead of the 7-point one for the first half of the battle. Well then, that's it of my boring talk then. This is the very first speed run I did in any game, so I really hope you will enjoy it. Have a good watch. :)
