Nox Warrior Hardcore Mode Speedrun – 2:46:06 (Part 1)

This is Part 1 of the run, recorded in segments due to a computer crash. This speedrun is based on skipping from Episode 3: Trouble in Ix after defeating Horrendous and obtaining the Halberd, and then progressing directly to Episode 7: The Heart of Nox. The key rule is that if a save is loaded even once, Horrendous disappears, meaning he must be defeated in a single attempt without saving or loading. However, there is a serious issue in this run. After defeating Horrendous, the massive amount of experience causes the character to level up by two to three levels at once, which triggers a bug that prevents the Harpoon skill and Eye of the Wolf skill from being learned. As a result, it becomes impossible to destroy the gear mechanism in the tower of Galava Castle in Episode 7 using the Harpoon skill. Under normal conditions, this route is therefore technically impossible to complete. Because of this, the hardcore mode creator Paul has stated that in a future patch, instead of granting experience upon defeating Horrendous, the game will force-set Cheat Level 6, allowing all required skills to be learned properly. He also mentioned that rotten meat will be removed from the map in a future update. Since that patch is not yet implemented, this run is performed under the assumption that the fix is already in place by manually entering the command racoiaws cheat level 6 in the F1 console. The run was therefore completed through clean mechanical execution, without relying on the rotten meat exploit. There are also several minor mistakes throughout the run, such as not purchasing apples in Galava, along with other small inefficiencies, which should be taken into account. Finally, I would like to express my thanks to Paul Kim for creating this mode, and @Akuretaki_Nikolay for discussing and helping refine this run. Once the official patch is released, I will revisit this route and upload a more optimised and carefully refined run.