Quickest Victory?

[Slowham]

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?

 

[Slowham]

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):

1. When selecting the destination on the map, click on the desert - not the actual target fortress - in the general direction of the target fortress;
2. Travel ~10 seconds so that you move a little closer to the target fortress;
3. "Change destination" to the target fortress; and
4. "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.

 

[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.