Slowham

Another new run - just a 3.0 hour improvement over my last one, but I finally broke into Day 6. The improvement is driven by skipping my travels through Bledan. In my recent runs, I've been skipping the water of life, which led me to traverse the whole planet to run my military campaign because of my limited range. In this run, I invested additional time in Ergsun (3.0 hours) and Tsympo (1.5 hours) to attack the Bledan fortresses remotely, allowing me to double back from Haga once that region was cleared instead of continuing east around the planet (saving 7.5 hours, for a net 3.0 hour improvement). I give more details in the video description if you're interested. On the topic of my last post, where you can shorten the longer of two asymmetric trips by traveling in the desert first, I've found one more asymmetric trip on which this trick works - Arrakeen-Clam -> Arrakeen-Timin, which glitches without the trick and takes almost an entire day even though the reverse trip is only 1.5 hours. I haven't done exhaustive testing yet, but have poked around the shorter trips in my route and have yet to discover more. If anyone knows of more asymmetric trips, please let me know! Since my last post, I've also discovered that this trick works by foot too, not just when traveling by orni or worm - for example, when traveling from Haga-Harg -> Haga-Clam, if you walk ~20 frames north into the desert before calling a worm, it is fast travel instead of 1.5 hours.

A new run - Day 7 at 12:00 a.m. This is a 21.0-hour improvement over my last run, mainly due to optimization of my military campaign - new route, leveraging fast travel to fight on multiple fronts in Arrakeen and Tsympo, grinding for Harkonnen Captains to avoid having to espionage a few fortresses, and expending an extra two troops to defeat Arrakeen-Tabr and Arrakeen-Timin faster. More details in the video description if anyone is interested. One interesting discovery I made during this run that I haven't seen described elsewhere. There are at least a couple instances where you can fast travel between locations in one direction but not the other - (i) Bledan-Timin -> Bledan-Tabr takes no time, but Bledan-Tabr -> Bledan-Timin takes one time period, and (ii) Haga-Clam -> Haga-Harg takes no time, but Haga-Harg -> Haga-Clam takes one time period. You can shorten the Bledan-Tabr -> Bledan-Timin and Haga-Harg -> Haga-Clam trips so that they take no time as well. When using either a worm or an orni to travel from one of the starting fortresses (Bledan-Tabr or Haga-Harg) to one of the target fortresses (Bledan-Timin or Haga-Clam): When selecting the destination on the map, click on the desert - not the actual target fortress - in the general direction of the target fortress; Travel ~10 seconds so that you move a little closer to the target fortress; "Change destination" to the target fortress; and "Skip to destination." See 1:22:40 of my video for an example. I'll post here if I find more trips where this works. Note that I use CD-ROM version 3.8 - haven't tested this on other versions.

I've made a few posts on the "Dune Cheats" thread about my in-game speed runs to the extent they involve cheats, but I'm starting a new thread here so that I don't take the other one too far off topic. Two points: 1 - If anyone is interested, I wanted to share that I just finished a game at day 7 9:00 p.m. Video below - I summarize strategy and give some tips in the video description. General strategy is similar to what I've described in the "Dune Cheats" thread, but this time I used a single army instead of two, which allowed me to rally fewer troops and even skip drinking the water of life, therefore skipping lots of sietches in the early game. I also launched my attack into the Arrakeen region instead of Bledan, which allowed me to quickly equip my army with ornis and atomics, making my entire military campaign more efficient. 2 - Is there anyone else here who has tried to minimize in-game time on Dune? I've spent some time searching for other runs but haven't found much online. @Lord Winner has a nice post on the "Dune Cheats" thread detailing an impressive 17 day completionist route that involves visiting all sietches and rallying all troops, but he's not trying to optimize solely for time. Beyond that, I've found some videos on YouTube by someone who did it in 26 days, and a picture on a website of the end screen at 23 days, but that's about it. I assume that there are others who have tried in the past, and just not posted about it or I just haven't found it. Curious how quickly others have managed to beat the game, and if anyone has ideas / strategies / tricks to share?

Same, I've never had this problem before because of Arrakeen-Tuek. For example, in my 10 day game, I made a mad dash to Arrakeen-Tuek on the evening of the 8th day (skipping Arrakeen-Siet and Tsympo-Siet for the moment) to make sure it had enough time to convert on the morning of the 10th day. In my 9 day game, it became clear that this could be a limiting factor - none of the inner fortresses were going to convert until day 10 - so I experimented with old save files to come up with the workaround. It's a bad feeling getting hours and hours into a play through and finding a problem like that. I will add that even if you've converted Arrakeen-Tuek to a sietch, this trick can be helpful if it allows you to launch the attack from Arrakeen-Tabr fortress instead, as Arrakeen-Tabr -> Palace is fast travel and will save you one time period. EDIT: In hindsight, I suppose you could always just launch the attack from Arrakeen-Tuek, then fast travel from Arrakeen-Tuek -> Arrakeen-Tabr -> Palace. That's probably the easiest way to get the same result if Arrakeen-Tuek is the only inner fortress that is converted at the end.

Thanks to a few tips from @Lord Winner I started another run and ended up finishing on Day 9 at 4:30 p.m. Video below. Mostly incremental improvements, but I did have to use one new trick that someone on this board may find useful at some point. At the end of my game, none of the fortresses bordering the Harkonnen palace had converted into sietches. Of the five NPCs you need to be present to trigger the final attack, three of them (Jessica, Stilgar and Chani) won't "stay here" in a fortress. You can get around this problem for two of them by having them with you in your inventory, but that still leaves you short one required NPC. There is a relatively easy workaround though - you can force an NPC who wouldn't normally stay in a fortress to do so if you tell two other NPCs at the fortress to "come with me" and crowd the troublesome NPC(s) out your inventory. It's just a matter of doing it in an efficient order. I left Gurney in the fortress first, then brought Thufir and Jessica, and by telling both Thufir and Gurney to "come with me" it forces Jessica to stay. Then you tell Thufir and Gurney to "stay here," and can go get Stilgar and Chani and bring them back in your inventory. See 2:49 of the video for an example.

@Lord Winner Here you go. DUNE38S0.SAV

Thanks for the reply! Not a typo. I bought my copy of the CD-ROM on eBay (my copy from the '90s is long gone) and that's what I run on DOSBox. It generates DUNE38S*.SAV files. Happy to share both the CD-ROM files and my .SAV files if helpful - I saved all of the .SAV files from the end of each of my segments on my 10 day run. I've attached my final .SAV file at Day 10 3:00 p.m. outside the Harkonnen palace to this post. Let me know if you want more, happy to email them or upload them somewhere. Yes, thank you for discovering this and sharing. It was really helpful in my runs. Got it - I assumed someone had figured this out before, I just hadn't seen it described. My army troops actually don't use ornis. I've toyed with it before, but using the route I run, I don't have enough ornis for my whole army and it's difficult to manage when the orni troops move faster than the troops on foot. I understand, it's a long video and it's not the most watchable - I save and load pretty much every in-game time period which really breaks up the flow. But you should check it out if you're curious. I don't enter all sietches, not even all the Kynes sietches, and I don't travel to the Haga region at all. I only have 35 troops rallied at the end. As mentioned above, I don't equip my army with ornis. I use the smuggler in Sihaya-Pyons to arm up my troops a bit in the beginning, then I rely on the weapons you recover from defeated fortresses. I definitely use fast troop moves, including for my own travel where possible. My main army attacks from Ergsun-Tsymyn north into the Bledan region, then east into the Tsympo and Arrakeen regions. This is the army I ride along with on a worm. My secondary army attacks from Ergsun-Tuek west into the Haga region. I don't travel to the Haga region, so I can't rally the prisoner troops there, so these five fortresses take about the same amount of time to defeat as all the others. I miss Tsympo-Timin with my main army, so I backfill it with leftover troops. Also, Haga-Harg is a bit of a free-for-all and the last fortress I defeat, I send leftover troops there as well to supplement my secondary army. Haha, I didn't know you could do this. Oops.

@Lord Winner Thanks for sharing this cheat, it got me experimenting with my version (the CD-ROM version which creates DUNE38S*.SAV files), and I discovered a variation that doesn't rely on the automatic save and therefore can be repeated indefinitely. I don't know whether it works with the floppy version. Here's how you do it: Save the game using the DUNE MAP -> Globe menu before the orders or dialogue you want to cram into one ninety minute in-game time period. Wait for the sixty second real time counter to roll over. You can watch the in-game time clock in the lower left hand corner. Once the in-game time advances, you know that the sixty second real time counter has reset. Immediately load your new save file. You will now have sixty seconds in real time before the in-game time advances. Get through as much dialogue or as many orders as you can and then save the game again before the in-game time advances. Wait for the real time counter to roll over again (as evidenced by the in-game time advancing). Immediately load your new save file. You now have another sixty seconds to play and your in-game time hasn't advanced. Repeat as needed (play, save, wait, load, play, save, wait, load, etc.). You can take advantage of this cheat to cram lots of orders or dialogue into a single ninety minute in-game time period. Note that this doesn't help you speed up battles, travel, troop movements, or converting fortresses. But it still has a decent impact on overall time. Also, this isn't really a cheat, more of a strategy that I haven't seen described before, but a great way to get a low in-game time is to use a single perpetually moving and replenishing army to defeat fortress after fortress without the army as a whole having to stop to transform the defeated fortresses into sietches. You have to be riding along with your army on a worm, and it takes some grinding, but it works. The key is to weaken a fortress until you can defeat it with a single troop, at which point you can send the rest of your army on to the next fortress, and then massive attack with your sole remaining troop. This leaves only one troop behind to convert the defeated fortress into a sietch, but you can quickly rally the prisoner troop inside the fortress and send it after the rest of your army, so that your army is replenished and stays the same size as it attacks the next fortress. You can repeat this over and over again. Here's how you do it: Attack a fortress en masse with an "army" (i.e., multiple troops). Ride a worm to the battle so that you will be able to rally the prisoner troop inside the fortress immediately after you win. Monitor the battle's progress carefully. You can watch the arm-wrestling icon that appears when you click on the fortress on the map, or check the battle results of each individual troop in your army (the easiest way to do this is by right-clicking each troop on the map if you're playing with a mouse). I save each ninety minute in-game time period during a battle. If I have lost any Fremen when the in-game time advances, I re-load and try again. There is some randomness in how well you do in battle. Conversely, if I accidentally win the battle using my whole army, I also re-load, because the goal is to have the weakest troop be the only troop left fighting when you win the battle. When you are about to win the battle, move all of your troops except for the weakest troop to the next fortress. Save again. Choose "Massive Attack" to finish the battle. Now you have only one troop transforming the defeated fortress into a sietch, and the rest of your army is moving on to the next fortress. Quickly go inside the defeated fortress and rally the prisoner troop before the in-game time advances. If the prisoner troop is decently sized and decently proficient (I aim for 2000+ men, Average skill), go ahead and arm them with whatever weapons are left behind, and then send them after the rest of your army to the next fortress. If the prisoner troop is small or inexperienced, re-load and try again. This is a grind, but if done correctly, your army stays roughly the same size and the same proficiency in the aggregate as you move across the map. Repeat as many times as you can, fortress after fortress. Note that you need to have a troop working espionage ahead of you to keep this up. Using the above cheat and strategy, I was able to finish a game on Day 10 at 3:00 p.m. Video below.