cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/13009800
This is the fastest time since the release of v2.6 (which had a bunch of additions and changes that slowed down the speedrun for everyone) so we're calling this the new world record speedrun in this post-v2.6 era. This was played on v2.6.3.6 Alpha.
Nitram came on to the scene very quickly getting sub-2 hour runs with a totally different strategy than we've been doing. Previously we were focusing on running past everything as quickly as possible and hacking all computers in our path. But Nitram starts the game with lots of looting, more careful combat with less deaths, and typically not getting the Computer skill until the end of the game or not at all! In this run he got Computer skill right at the very end (1:38:57 in the video) because of Silo. I guess since he found the computer right away he didn't have time to find the datacube before finding the computer.
It is yet to be seen if the minimal, run past everything approach can beat this time in v2.6+, we will have to wait and see if other runners attempt it or follow this strategy. But it is exciting to have such a shakeup in the meta, and it seems the Randomizer is currently balanced enough to allow these completely different strategies to be viable even for the speedrun.
The previous world record was 1:28:02 by Ramisme in v2.5.4, about 5 months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN7GkIGILwk
(And yes, we have our own version of LiveSplit built right into the game's HUD. It autosplits and removes load times.)