What Makes a Win Legit?

[Patashu]

If somebody claimed he was extremely lucky getting multiple desired escorts is there a good way to test if it's BS?

No.

Well, you could test how likely it is that randomly chosen escorts would create the outcomes seen in their runs.
To do this, you'd also need to know how many runs they threw away due to bad escorts.
If the odds of random chance causing the outcome observed are less than, say, 1 in a billion (even 1 in a million chances happen to someone), then there's probably scumming or mods used.

[Shaidyn]

Said the guy with no wins on either Insane or Nightmare, and 0 Insane difficulty Achievements.

Could you please not?

[rincewind]

playing on insane right now and with this crazy amount of rare/random items i don't get why you are still need to kill poor civilians

also i really like ID, especially on possessor

[Effigy]

I would say save scumming is cheating in general, but I can give it a pass if you need a certain escort reward for your build. For instance, you're making a character that needs Celestial/Light or Tinkers. You could just keep rerolling until you get one of these escorts in T2, but on Insane that may take many hours of rerolling and replaying the early game, just to eliminate some randomness. It makes more sense to me to just save scum until you get the escort you need and play normally after that.

You might argue that escort rewards are optional, but in many cases they are a way of patching over a weakness in a certain class/race. If you don't get what you planned for your character, you may be doomed to failure 5 hours down the road when you don't have the tools to deal with a certain threat. It just seems like a waste of time to keep going for the long haul when you know early on that it's probably not going to work out. I really prefer the way EoR handles bonus talents/categories instead of the random allocation in the base game.

[ster]

I would say save scumming is cheating in general, but I can give it a pass if you need a certain escort reward for your build.

just use the addon if you really need it

at least most characters that want to take tinkers can also take Antimagic + Fungus to fill up those generics now, and if you're really screwed on a dude who wants Light you can take worldly knowledge instead

if you have locked survival and need stealth detection you're screwed though but that's about it for escorts

[Effigy]

The problem with using an addon is that they generally allow you to pick all your escorts, which is a much bigger advantage than just ensure a specific one through save scumming. It's definitely a lot more tedious to scum, but I'd generally rather just get what I need and then let the chips fall where they may.

[voltteccer]

playing on insane right now and with this crazy amount of rare/random items i don't get why you are still need to kill poor civilians

also i really like ID, especially on possessor

You don't need to drown at all since the starting gold is enough to buy a mindblast torque and a couple decent items, which can carry you through Trollmire. But drowning provides a significant benefit and there's no reason not to do it except the boredom of rerolling characters, and you have to reroll either way if you want that mindblast torque because shops are random.

Random shops is a bigger problem than drowning BTW, since things like gloves of dispersion/nighthunter, mindstars of sand, bows/slings with range 9, and shields of patience/earthen fury exist. And unlike drowning, gloves of dispersion and mindstars of sand are still very important even during the final boss battle.

[ster]

Random shops is a bigger problem than drowning BTW, since things like gloves of dispersion/nighthunter, mindstars of sand, bows/slings with range 9, and shields of patience/earthen fury exist. And unlike drowning, gloves of dispersion and mindstars of sand are still very important even during the final boss battle.

Wait you can dig in the final fight?

Going to second this, i don't regularly try and get anything from shops other than phys/mental wild because it's so mind numbingly tedious but if i die to fearscape/impending doom or need to dig twisty little passages then i start to regret not wasting an hour trying to get these items

[Zeyphor]

in order for a win to be legit, you should:
never savescum
never use the item vault to remove an item unless you used that character to put that item in there
never startscum; if you dont get any t1 or t2 escorts and none of the shops have waterbreathing gear and none of the towns have rares randbosses or uniques and the lumberjack village doesn't either, then thats too bad
not be the class called adventurer
not use an addon thats pretty much cheating, such as the exponential levelling addon and the hulk addon and to a lesser extent mex's start "rebalance" addon
not use cheat engine
never perform an exploit, such as abusing bad AI with dig
never drown or kill a friendly NPC on purpose(and don't let em drown if you can stop it without putting yourself at a considerable risk)
never stairscum, but that got nerfed anyway

furthermore, to make a win even better, you should:
in AoA and the arena and the ID campaigns, be a yeek solipsist with no manually-invested stat points talents or equipment(except bikini/mankini) except the 1 point into solipsism, and don't use any category points or inscriptions or randomly-placed environmental things such as fonts of life to your advantage
in EoR, be an orc solipsist instead, but otherwise adhere to the above
if in the ID campaign, complete all challenges, but only kill whatever is requires to complete the challenges and never, ever die
wear a bikini or mankini at all times, but only if you're a donator and have unlocked it
only kill the master, argoniel, elandar, the sher'tul high priest, and the orc boss in reknor that drops the orb, and after all of those that you can reach in the campaign you're in,
never buy anything from any shop
in AoA, enter only the following zones if starting in the west:
whatever zone you start in(once), then the iron throne(if possible, and just once), then the overworld map, then dreadfell, then last hope, then lost kingdom of reknor, then the unremarkable cave, then the prides in the hardest order, then high peak, then angolwen(once, to kill lilanill), then kill atamathon as soon as possible, then ruined dungeon, then infinite dungeon
in AoA, enter only the following zones if starting at the sunwall:
the sunwall(once), then the overworld map, then all 4 orc prides in the hardest order, then high peak, then sunwall again, then the sunwall starter zone, then wherever you get teleported to, which you should leave as soon as possible, then angolwen(to kill lilanill), then kill atamathon as soon as possible, then ruined dungeon, then infinite dungeon
in embers of rage, enter only the following zones:
kruk pride(once), then the overworld, then the steam palace, then the slumbering caves, then the ruined dungeon, then the infinite dungeon
open every golden chest, touch every demon statue(even in that one starting zone), and do every single vault and sub-zone that you find before leaving the zone that you found the stuff in
never use the likes of track or arcane eye, or track itself
never put more than 1 point into the talent Earth's Eyes, which you would ONLY get in order to get nature's balance; if you have the talent, act like you don't have it when meditating and never activate the talent
never use dig or the likes of it, except to reach a meaningful place(such as in-between trees in trollmire that might be hiding bees from you) that you couldn't reach unless you teleported, or couldn't even get to by teleporting but could reach by digging
purposefully kill every single escort that you come across, AND get the killing blows
never buy anything from any town
if you die, don't get the <Unstoppable> achievement
and lastly, get the infinite dungeon 500 floor achievement while completing every floor challenge successfully, putting its criterion above those listed in this post

and NEVER pick restart with the same character if you die, if you wanna be a yeek solipsist again, just make another yeek solipsist via the character creation screen, and you can even give him or her the same name


in sum: go big or go home and i think i went overboard for the second part


that mentioned I think I might have just 1 legit win on normal, without having completely made the win even better, and im not sure if ill ever completely make the win better

[Row]

in order for a win to be legit, you should:
never savescum
never use the item vault to remove an item unless you used that character to put that item in there
never startscum; if you dont get any t1 or t2 escorts and none of the shops have waterbreathing gear and none of the towns have rares randbosses or uniques and the lumberjack village doesn't either, then thats too bad
not be the class called adventurer
not use an addon thats pretty much cheating, such as the exponential levelling addon and the hulk addon and to a lesser extent mex's start "rebalance" addon
not use cheat engine
never perform an exploit, such as abusing bad AI with dig
never drown or kill a friendly NPC on purpose(and don't let em drown if you can stop it without putting yourself at a considerable risk)
never stairscum, but that got nerfed anyway

To make it shorter, in order for a win to be legit:

1. no savescum
2. no items from other characters
3. no adventurer
4. no cheating add-ons
5. no exploits (such as drowning civilians, using dig as combat tactic, etc.)

"Startscum" is fine, but you should not use automatized generations. Manually starting many characters is fine. Using stairs arbitrarily is fine.

[Mex]

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win

[ster]

in order for a win to be legit, you should:
wall of text

lol

how many mnemonics did you need to take out of the item vault to think up all that?

[Micbran]

Why does digging even exist if everyone sees it as a cheat? Just remove it so that madness will finally be impossible like it should be.

[Row]

Why does digging even exist if everyone sees it as a cheat? Just remove it so that madness will finally be impossible like it should be.

Dig is not supposed to help you in combat. It is supposed to be an utility ability allowing to reach otherwise unreachable areas. In the same manner, civilians are not meant to be drowned for items. They are there as flavor elements to make towns more lively.

Those are EXPLOITS. And abusing exploits equals cheating.

[Patashu]

Those are EXPLOITS. And abusing exploits equals cheating.

Only in multiplayer games. In single player games, you can do anything that the game allows you to, and take advantage of developer oversights that work in your favour. (In particular, this rule is necessary because given a game and a thing you can do in a game, it's impossible to know with 100% uncertainty if it's intended or unintended by the developer to be able to do that.) The only thing off-limits is external hardware and software manipulation (editing game data or save files, using macros, scripts or turbo buttons, using cheat engine or AHK, etc). This is the same as the ruleset used for speedrunning.