The shortest way through
 

Amidamaru86 started a thread called "No losses Imp Mage high score help" in which Elwin wanted to find the shortest way through the game. I think this thread became a little clogged, so I start a fresh thread dedicated to Elwin's quest for the shortest way through. The Elwin Meta-quest :)

"KBAP travel quest" is a breakdown of what Elwin wrote (including his remarks in post # 14).
- Quests are broken down in 2 or 3 stages (1=start, 2=task, 3=collect reward, which is not always necessary).
- The challenge of the islands and the location of the navigational charts are taken into account.

"KBAP travel time" is my solution to for least amount of travel time. It's 108 hours.

No fancy pictures, just excel. Feel free to comment and I will update. If someone can make better looking attachments, feel free to do so.

i think uncicornxp did th shortest way

Unicornxp wrote: I thought the point here was to do all the quests in the shortest possible time, not to finish the game in the shortest possible way without doing all the quests. But maybe I misunderstood Elwin.

But he made second try with all quest.

Unicornxp wrote:
Loop 1: 3+4+4+4+6 = 21
Loop 2: 9+0+0 = 9
Loop 3: 4+3+4+5+5 = 21
Loop 4: 5+4(?)+0+0+5+4+4+3+7+4+4+5+4+4 = 53
Total = 104.

Yep, that's 4 hours shorter.

I have added all three routes into one pdf-file so that they can be easily compared. I modifyed my route so that it is even slower :-) - but on the other hand it should at least be easily played.

By combining Petwins and unicornxps routes it is possible to use only 102 hours. It requires going to Reha only once. It looks like this:

Debir
Scarlet Wind
Rusty Anchor
Verona
Bolo
Debir
Dersu
Elon
Uzala
Nameless
Reha
Umkas
Montero
Tekron
Rusty Anchor
Scarlet Wind
Debir
Sheterra
Dersu
Elon
Uzala
Nameless
Verona

Until proven otherwise, this is the optimal route :-)

Your wonderful spreadsheet missed "The Fallen Paladin" the bounty-hunting quest, which begins on Scarlet and ends either on Elon or Montero (depending on the game).

Not that that invalidates any of the proposed solutions. But in the interest of completion, I thought I ought to mention it.

I am aware. I left it out because you always begin in Debir and continue to Scarlet Island. If you talk to everybody you will not miss it. Another reason is that the desitnation of Torkve is random. He can be in Montero Underground, River of Memory in Elon or (i do not remember the third place where I have met him - think it was 3 locations.). In order to complete the lists I should also have included the contract for the Hungy Beast. But what is missing is the contract for Zag-Zag. This contract is picked up in Bolo and is completed in Rusty Anchor. Not all routes go to Bolo before Rusty. In this case Zag-Zag must wait until the second visit to Rusty.

Debir
Scarlet Wind
Rusty Anchor
Verona
Bolo
Debir
Dersu
Elon
Uzala
Nameless
Reha
Umkas
Montero
Tekron
Rusty Anchor
Scarlet Wind
Debir
Sheterra
Dersu
Elon
Uzala
Nameless
Verona

Are you meant to kill K'Tahu on your first visit to Reha?

Yep. With stone skin + magic spring + 1 stack of Trolls or Black Knights it is doable even at lower levels.

Nice try, but while this may be the fastest route in terms of traveling between islands for completing quests, you missed out on one important thing: the flying horse; taking on Dersu-Elon-Uzala-Nameless-Reha without first getting the flying horse at Montero might result in even more travel time.

Also, most 7-day games are also trying to go for a high score, and if you are going for a high score then that means chain-fighting heroes using Ancient Knowledge scrolls. And nothing beats the flying horse for picking off enemy heroes while skipping regular non-hero enemies for later, especially when you chain-fight heroes from one island to another.

You could say that you just do Debir-Scarlet-Rusty-Verona-Montero-Verona-Bolo... but at what level do you plan on taking on Hagni? :) No place to hide in a castle storm arena for even a Black Dragon, and the Gobots can reach you from anywhere anyways. Invisible Troll at night perhaps? This still begs the question on character level and mana supply.

I have not mentioned Montero at all since every time you go to Verona, you can go to Montero as well. But you are right about it being almost impossible. In my current game I followed the start of the route: Debir-Scarlet-Rusty-Verona. But even with trolls at night I had to give up some battles in Rusty (but that does not matter since I have to return to Rusty anyway). Verona was even worse. So I got to Verona to get the Lady, but ended up doing only a couple of battles. Then I went for Bolo and completing that island was easy. After the return to Debir I headed back to Verona to do Verona-Montero-Verona. Going to Verona and then Dersu, instead of directly to Dersu (from Debir) cost me 4 hours, so the travel time will be 105 hours. (I try to follow the the route shown below - the currently optimal route) This time it was doable and even easy. A couple of levels and some critical spells made a huge difference. So I guess an optimal travel route is just that, optimal. It does not need to be possible :-) And by the way it is not even optimal. I found another even shorter route:
Debir
Scarlet Wind
Rusty Anchor
Verona-Montero-Verona
Bolo
Debir
Dersu
Uzala
Elon
Nameless
Reha
Umkas
Montero
Tekron
Rusty Anchor
Scarlet Wind
Debir
Sheterra
Dersu
Elon
Nameless
Uzala
Verona
This travel route is 101 hours.

Again, the first visit to Verona can be more or less impossible since you need to get the flying horse...

debir->scarlet->bolo to get repair bots, then everything else becomes a fair chuck easier.

I managed to do the debir -> scarlet -> rusty -> verona -> monterro run with a single green dragon, but it was very (rediculously) hard, probably too hard as you have to do a fair amount of running around killing creeps in order.

Level 3 order + heal and guardian angel is what got me through, but yeah, warrior + repair bot is a winner.