Game:

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004)

Duration: 3:57

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GOTY/Steam release played under Windows 7 x64. Subject to the rules of the leaderboards at https://www.speedrun.com/wh40kdow.

Well, it seems I managed to streamline this mission down under 4 minutes somehow. This time could possibly go lower, but that would probably require more skilled combat and squad movement. There are also several other factors that could make this quite challenging. I am satisfied with the route as it stands now, but I'm also confident there are minor modifications that can be made to save time.

Like the previous DoW missions, the main objective here is to destroy all key ork structures as fast as possible. Unlike those missions, you are not required to build anything in this one. Amazingly, they give you way more req than you'll ever need, which turns it into quite a sprint. They even give you a starter camp as well as some half-built structures you can scuttle if you really thought you needed more req.

Note, this is my first posted DoW run with the mini-map glitch. Apparently you can do this consistently by mashing Esc immediately after starting the mission to skip the opening cutscene, at which point the map will show all enemy positions at the start of the mission. All in all, it's a pretty minor glitch, but it at least gives you a slight edge in navigation. I've also noticed another semi-related glitch that skips the fade-in when the mission starts, but this happens very infrequently and seems to be quite random. TBH it's not likely to save time or help in any meaningful way.


ROUTE NOTES

1. In addition to the bounty of req, buildings, and units, you're also given Force Commander, Librarian, and a Dreadnought. For the divide-and-conquer strategy, I find it best to pair FC and Librarian as they don't seem to last long enough individually. The Dreadnought is much more durable and can handle things on its own. Beyond that, it's important that these units can move around swiftly since the key structures you need to destroy are so spread out. Dreadnought can do this fairly safely, but I feel compelled to take advantage of the FC/Librarian respawn as they will usually taking a beating while traversing the map.

2. Though they don't start you off with an armory, I didn't find it entirely useful to build one. I suppose some parts could be done slightly faster with bolters, but I'm fine with just relying on the grenades of the guardsmen to do the bulk of the damage. For the most part, I'm not fully on-board with adding another task to an already busy route, but I wouldn't be surprised to see such modifications used to push the time down even further. Heck, I even chose not to build any additional squads, though I'm not entirely sure how I'd fit them into the route.

3. It probably won't be obvious unless you've attempted the speedrun, but this mission has a very long event cycle. It seems the game only checks if the last objective is complete every 10 seconds. It's not necessarily something you'd notice immediately, except if you narrowly miss a cycle then you're stuck waiting an awkward 9.5 seconds after you've destroyed the last building until the game finally tells you "Objective Completed". So, that means I would need to cut this time down to 3m30s (or other multiples of 10s) to get a significant PB. This would require some work and there certainly is a limit depending on how all your units fare. Also, random ork spawns can really put a damper on your squad mobility.

Twitter: @TascoDLX

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